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Catalogue Technique in Dionysius Periegetes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Extract
Dionysios gehört zu den interessantesten Problemen der griechischen Literaturgeschichte.
Knaack (1905) 916.34f.
Within the general context of increasing interest in Greek literature in the Roman period, interest in Dionysius the Periegete is certainly on the rise. Our knowledge of his extensive textual tradition is still expanding, and further editions are under way; the ideologies that structure his work have been explored in a series of publications by Christian Jacob (1990, 1991); and the welcome increase in the volume of publications over the last five years or so includes a collection of essays which is especially geared to one of my themes in this essay, Dionysius' relations with Hellenistic poetry and poets. Yet there are some basic aspects of his poetics that remain un-, or under-, studied. At the heart of the matter, I suggest, are two major backgrounds that need to be explored further.
The first is the reception of Hellenistic poetry in the imperial period. Dionysius is a neo-Hellenistic poet. Indeed, he is so convincing a neo-Hellenistic poet that a critic as astute as Tycho Mommsen placed him in the first century BCE on the basis of a whole array of stylistic and metrical and other sorts of linguistic criteria. Dionysius' true date has been known for a century and a quarter; but we are really none the wiser about what it was that gave rise to this extraordinarily competent and convincing Hellenistic imitation. It is not only that he imitates Apollonius, Callimachus, Nicander, Aratus and others in purple passages of his own, but that so many of his techniques of composition and allusion, and—as this paper will demonstrate—his formal evocation of certain styles of writing, are thoroughly Hellenistic. So the first thing that is needed is an exploration of the various ways in which imperial writers respond to the masters of the high Hellenistic period, and their successors: is Dionysius a representative of a special and distinctive strain in imperial poetics, or is he a particular instance of something more multiform and complex?
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References
1. The convention adopted in this essay is that where a line-reference is cited without any further identifer of the work (e.g. Il. 2, Or. Sib.), the reference is to Dionysius.
2. The text of Dionysius used in this essay is that of Tsavari (1990), which is reproduced in the most recent edition, that of Amato (2005a; see 177 for further planned editions). Amato’s edition is supported by various collections of textual and exegetical notes (2002, 2003, 2004). The collection of essays published in REA 106 (2004) includes contributions by P. Counillon, C. Cusset, R. Hunter and Y. Khan; it also considers Dionysius’ Hadrianic context (E.L. Bowie) and allusions to Athens (E. Oudot). Other studies include those of Hunter (2003, 2004b); Amato (2005b); Magnelli (2005a, 2006). The dissertation of Greaves (1994) unfortunately remains unpublished.
3. Mommsen (1886) 806–24. He had just missed Leue (1884), who had discovered the acrostich referring to Hadrian (513–32), and a second naming Dionysius (112–34).
4. For the elements of which see Thomas (1982) 1–7.
5. Fragments in SH 23–38. They show that, like Dionysius, he drew on the ethnographical tradition (remarks on situs, SH 25, 29; geometrical shape and fauna, SH 36); was interested in ktistai (SH 34); and included an element of mythological narrative (SH 38); as for ethos, like Dionysius, he stressed the loveliness of the terrain he covers (
, ‘lovely Lapethos’, SH 34). For his influence on Dionysius, see Knaack (1905) 920.27–31,921.32–40.
6. What Hunter (2003) 348 describes as ‘Dionysius’ signature technique of the inclusion of a “fragment” of one poet within the reworking of another’ is very often used to combine references to Homer and a Hellenistic poet. Excellent examples occur at 525–32 (Hunter ibid. 346f.) and 826–38 (Hunter ibid. 347–50), but the technique is ubiquitous. For the more specific technique of ‘window allusion’, where Dionysius combines an allusion to a Hellenistic poet together with the latter’s archaic source, see Hunter (2004b) 218.
7. Hunter (2005b), Asquith (2005); see also Lightfoot (2009).
8. Amato (2004) 6 n.26, quoting from Counillon (1983) 205f.
9. Hunter (2003) 354.
10. Hunter (2004b) 225 (boundlessness) and (2003) 352–56 (epanalepsis and anaphora: see below).
11. Jacob(1990) 18–23; Korenjak (2003) 14–16.
12. Cf. also 14.230 (Lemnos and its founder Thoas) and 24.544 (Lesbos and its founder Makar).
13.
Or. Sib. 7.1 
(‘wretched art thou, Rhodes’); 7.60f. 
(‘unhappy Corinth, you will receive oppressive wars about you, wretched one’); 4.140 (et al.) 
(‘unhappy Antioch’); 5.210 
, (‘Pentapolis, you will grieve’); 5.189–91 
(‘Thebes, you will mourn’); 5.541 
(‘Paphos will lament’); for the idea of the city mourning see also 5.60–65.
14. (i) At line-beginning: 217, 769 
370 
617 
913 
cf. Il. 2.758 
. (ii) At feminine caesura: 168, 206, 253, 306, 338, 558, 564, 729, 732, 740, 955, 974, 1020, 1066, 1070, 1083, 1141, 1144 
363 
cf. Il. 2.535, 626 
. No correspondence in Dion. Per. for Il. 2.511 
in this position, (iii) 4th/5th feet: 958 
no correspondence in Il. 2. (iv) At line end: 453,910, 1088 
cf. Il. 2.522,593, 615,681, 854 
.
15. (i) At line-end: 248, 265, 330, 375, 679, 793, 847, 856, 1001 (περι)
cf. Il. 2.539, 841 
. (ii) At feminine caesura: 232; no correspondence in Il. 2.
16. (i) Before main caesura: 285, 835 
, cf. 1033 
; cf. Il. 2.496, 499, 531, 571, 583, 591, 605, 633, 639, 711 
. (ii) At line-end: 77, 184, 281, 652, 726, 736, 749, 758, 787,934,960, 1015 
cf. Il. 2.504,608,635, 682,716,738,751 
.
17. At line-end: 127, 164, 635 
cf. Il. 2.521, 574, 585, 634, 649, 835, 853 
. Dion. Per. has no match for 
before the main caesura (Il. 2.655).
18. In Il. 2, the position of 
is very flexible: (i) before the main caesura: masculine (504, 519, 523, 536, 539, 635, 717, 738 
559, 574, 585, 607, 608, 632, 646 
); feminine (505, 546, 584 
); (ii) before the bucolic diaeresis (507 
); (iii) ending the first foot (562, 603, 730, 734, 735 
); (iv) across first and second feet (581, 683, 695, 729 
); (v) after the masculine caesura (676 
). In Dion. Per., 
(‘live’) seems to be less flexible: (i) exouai at line-end: 247, 261, 668, 779, 803, 902, 1018, 1135. (ii) 
, at line-end: 323, 686, 1084. Where Homer uses this verb of definite, named, places, Dion. Per. uses it occasionally of cities but also of countries and more vaguely-defined territories.
19. Müller’s text here adopts the reading of the transliterated archetype of the Byzantine recension, which reads 
; but a couple of other manuscripts read 
, which also seems implied by the paraphrast’s 
. See Tsavari’s apparatus for details.
20. Visser(1997)638f.
21. Cusset (2004) 215: ‘Lès Argonautiques ne sont pas d’abord une épopée géographique; mais seulement une épopée qui mobilise un certain nombre de réalités géographiques dont la présence dans le récit n’est pas toujours liée à leur importance dans l’espace parcouru…. Chez Denys au contraire, les réalites géographiques sont là pour elles-mêmes…. Les deux textes sont done très éloignes l’un de l’autre…. Denys donne bien des indices d’une certaine allégeance poétique à l’épopée hellénistique, mais cette allégeance n’empêche pas une réelle indépendance du cartographe à l’égard du poète épique.’
22. Il. 2.749–55.
23. See Brügger, Stoevesandt and Visser (2003) 146 and 264: tables are provided in which it is possible to see the proportion of place-names (‘Ortsnamen’) to names of landscape features such as islands, mountains, lakes and rivers (‘Toponyme’). (The table fails to mention the toponym Ida in the Trojan entry, 816–18.)
24. An ultimate descendant is the spectacular catalogue of English and Irish rivers in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 4.11 stanzas 8–53 (somehow relating to a projected, or unpublished, ‘Epithalamion Thamesis’, itself conceived as a catalogue of English rivers). This begins (stanza 9, vv. 6–9) with a signature-style imitation of Virg. Aen. 6.625f./Georg. 2.42–44 (‘not even if I had a hundred tongues’), itself an imitation of Homer’s topos of d7topia at the beginning of the Catalogue of Ships (484–93).
25. Wilamowitz on Eur. HF 1296; Gow on Theocr. 17.92.
26. Strattis’ 
(‘on rivers and springs and lakes’), second half of the fourth century (Suda σ 1179/FGrH 118); Diogenianus’ 
(‘on rivers, lakes, springs, mountains, mountain ridges’), contemporary with Dionysius under Hadrian (Suda 8 1140; Cohn [1905] 782.38–48).
27. Counillon (2004) 187–202.
28. See Brügger, Stoevesandt and Visser (2003) 244.
29. There are a few unlovely places: the 
(‘rough land’, 731f.) of the Cadousians; the frozen wastelands of Scythia (668–78); the scrubby desert of the Arieni, 
(‘not inhabiting a lovely land’, 1099f.). But even these may have their compensations; the Arieni, for example, have coral and sapphire. The uncivilised Nomads of north Africa are balanced by the civilised Egyptians, the wretched soil of the Erembi (963–69) by opulent Arabia (935–53). Most of the time Dionysius’ world is a pleasant place to live in.
30.
410, 794 (both of rivers), 802, 925 (both of Arabia); Il. 2.532, 571, 583, 591, 607 (not of rivers), and elsewhere of place-names: 3.239, 401, 443, 5.210, 14.226, 18.291, 
(‘lovely streams’, 21.218). In the Odyssey, of a place only at 7.79. See Visser (1997) 123f.
: 1107.
31.
354 (Rome), 369 (Croton), 537 (Tenedos); Il. 2.751 (river Titaresios). 
: 534 (Samos), 806 (Kios).
32. 816 (Ilium), 838 (Cayster); Il. 2.506 
(‘splendid grove of Poseidon’).
33. A direct imitation: ‘
(‘the Rhebas, whose water is the fairest to flow on earth’, 796); ‘
(‘the Axios, whose water is the fairest to spread over the earth’, Il. 2.850).
34. 246 (Nile), 289 (Eridanus); Il. 2.752 (Titaresios).
35. 433 (Acheloos), 1140 (Kophes); II. 2.753 (Peneios)
36. 472, 521, 815 (Ilium), 831, 855,912,1091, 1129; Il. 2.606.
37. 258, 356,564,734, 955, 1004; Il. 2.570.
38.
,, used in Dionysius, as in Homer, not only for places with a particular connection to a god (916, 1153), but also more broadly: 88, 298, 448, 747, 788, 1005, 1182; Il. 2.506, 535, 625 (Visser[19971 114f.). 
: 814;Il. 2.508,520 (also Il. 1.38 = 452; 9.151 = 293; 15.432).
39.
, (‘spacious’): 537, 825; Il. 2.498, al.
(‘uttermost’): 65, 135, 451; Il. 2.616. 
(‘near the sea’): 912; Il. 2.640, 697. 
. (‘rough’): 499, 732; Il. 2.633, 717. 
, (‘lofty’): 521; Il. 2.573. 
, (‘well-founded’): 869; Il. 2.569. 
, (synonymous with 
),: 552; Il. 2.592.
40. Epithets that Apollonius shares with Dionysius: 
(4.48); 
, (1.520, 2.941, 4.573, cf. 3.1085); 
, (1.57, 2.1186, 3.1073); 
, (1.1355); ίερóζ, (2.515, 1015; 3.165, 1135; 4.134, 505; cf. also 4.1396, 1417). Apollonius uses ίερóζ, especially of rivers (1.1208, 2.515, 3.165, 4.134, 4.1417), and while this draws on the common notion that rivers are sacred (West on Hes. Th. 788, Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. Odes 1.1.22), Apollonius’ prime model is Il. 11.726 (
, ‘sacred stream of Alpheus’; cf. 
, ‘sacred stream of Ocean’, Hes. Op. 566): most of his examples have 
,(and cases) in the same metrical sedes. But he and Dionysius also apply it more widely, as does the Homeric Catalogue, to place-names, islands and other features. Epithets present in Apollonius but absent in Dionysius: 
, (‘wintry’, 1.213); 
, (‘grassy’,4.115).
41. Cf. only 306, 338,731f., 766 (оϊ); 251f., 1097 (ὅσσι).
42. Hunter (2003) 352–56; cf. also Mommsen (1886) 807f. (‘Es hat eben jeder Dichter auch seine Schwächen’); Knaack (1905) 918.65; Effe (1977) 189 n.6.
43. References in Hunter (2003); outside the Catalogue they include Il. 6.395f., 12.95–97, Od. 1.22–24.
44. Should we also compare ps.-Scymnus 339f. 
, (plus apposition) at the beginning of a miniature purple passage on the decline and fall of that city?
45. Brögger, Stoevesandt and Visser (2003) 148, 216f.
46. Slightly modified versions of the same pattern are found for the double anaphoras on Thebes (248f.) and Parthenope (358f.), and for the quadruple anaphora on Ilium (815–18).
47. Bowie (1990) 74f.
48. Even though it was known that the Axios’ waters were anything but beautiful (Strab. 7, frr. 21,23).
49. A. Dicola: 
, (‘broadest Sardinia and lovely Corsica in the sea’, 458); 
, (‘windy Scyros and lofty Peparethos’, 521); 
(‘Byblos near the sea and flowery Sidon’, 912) ∽ Il. 2.697 
(‘Antron near the sea and grassy Pteleos’; cf. also 570 
‘wealthy Corinth and well-founded Cleonae’, 640 
, ‘Chalcis near the sea and rocky Calydon’). Less close approximations to Homeric patterns: 187, 309, 653, 911, 1002.
B. Tricola: ‘
(‘Oreitae and Aribae and linen-clad Arachotae’, 1096) ∽ Il. 2.537 
(‘Chalcis and Eretria and Histiaia rich in vines’); 
(‘Geli and Mardi and men of Atropatene’, 1019) ∽ Il. 2.532 
(‘Bessa and Scarphe and lovely Augeae’); 
(‘Minnaei and Sabai and neighbouring Cletabeni’, 959) ∽ Il. 2.606 ‘
(‘Rhipe and Stratie and windy Enisbe’); 
(‘Cissi and Messabatae and Chalonitae dwell’, 1015) ∽ Il. 2.502 
(‘Copae and Eutresis and Thisbe with many doves’); 
(‘the Persian, the Arabian and the deeply-eddying Hyrcanian’, 632); 
(‘the Sindi, the Cimmerians and those near the Euxine’, 681) ∽ Il. 2.561 
(‘Troezen, Eionae and Epidaurus rich in vines’); 
(‘the Etruscan, Sicilian and teeming Adriatic’, 100); 
(‘the Cercetii, Toretae and valiant Achaeans’, 682); 
(‘the Macrones, Philyres and those who inhabit wooden houses’, 766); 
(‘Corycus, Perge and windy Phaselis’, 855); 
(‘Telmessus, Lyrbe and the city which was founded by the people …’, 859) ∽ Il. 2.498 
(‘Thespeia, Graia and spacious Mycalessus’). Less close approximations to Homeric patterns: 416 (compounded with Call. Hymn 1.21–26), 499, 752, 867f.; 914;1069.
C. Tetracola: 304,310, 875 (no Homeric background).
50. πóλιζ (Il. 2.648, 677, 739): 356, 827. ἅστυ 509, 524. πέδov: 97, 337, 494, 505, 522. 
, (Il. 24.544): 213 (majority reading). 
: 534. The only example of 
in apposition is 85 If.; otherwise Dionysius uses it with a genitive identifier (261, 369,512,918), as in Il. 2.538.
51. For the word in this sense, see also Call. Hymn 2.72, fr. 12.4 Pf. 
. It may also refer to temples, sacred precincts etc. (Matthews on Antimachus fr. 33.2), but Dionysius seems to be using it in a secular sense. In any case it is an instance of Dionysius’ refurbishment of early Greek hexameter devices with Hellenistic vocabulary.
52. Rutherford (200 l)4f.
53. For example, epic in frr. 719–21, the Argonautic story (question to Muses, 7.19; initial accusative nouns introducing topic, 7.23; mention of 
[‘memory’], 7.24; epic introductory formula 
[‘beginning with how’], 7.25 [cf. Od. 8.500 
‘taking the story from the point at which’, and Ap. Rhod. 1.1 
]; epic speech incipit, 7.28; dawn formula, 21.3f.); sympotic poetry in fr. 178 (proverbial utterances; 20f., exhortation to named addressee); epinician in the Molorchus narrative at the beginning of Aitia 3 (cf. fr. 57.1, lyric break-off formula); sepulchral epigram in fr. 64 (the deceased as speaking subject).
54. Arat, Phaen. 262f. 
(‘Alcyone and Merope and Celaeno and Electra/and Sterope and Taugete and lady Maia’; cf. Hes. fr. 169 M.-W.); Hermesianax, fr. 7 P. For an ‘appreciation’ of the style of the latter, see Alan Cameron (1995) 383: ‘The structure was monotonous and the mechanisms all too obvious…the crudely Hesiodic 
is repeated five times in 15 stories.’
55. See the map in Brügger, Stoevesandt and Visser (2003) 145, and comments on the itinerary in 153f.
56. Knaack (1905) 919; West (1992) 568: ‘a rotten geographer but a competent versifier and re-cycler of Alexandrian flosculi.’
57. Lydia and Tmolos: 830–46; for Dionysius’ use of Hellenistic poets here, see Hunter (2003) 347–50.
58. Counillon’s comment, quoted above, seems to envision Dionysius’ itinerary of Greece as a reversal of Homer’s, but that is rather too schematic. Where the Iliad starts at Aulis and covers, first, the eastern portion of central, mainland Greece, then the Peloponnese, then a small area of western Greece, which is separated from northern Greece/Thessaly by a section on islands, Dionysius describes Greece in a rough figure-of-eight, beginning with a west-east review of the Peloponnese, then covering Greece north of the isthmus anti-clockwise. The islands are covered in the next section, rather than bisecting Greece into two parts as they do in the Iliad. But in both cases, the south is dealt with before the north.
59. Apollonius uses tricola to similar effect: compare the Liburnian islands named in 4.565 
(‘Issa and Dyskelados and lovely Pityeia’)—again for members of a series, not for an ordered itinerary.
60.
, 1.2.20.
61. Dionysius also departs from itinerary order in his route northwards up the coast of Syria and Phoenicia (itself a disruption of the overall southward direction of travel) at 910 and 912. But 914 contains a tricolon that does observe itinerary order.
62. Effe (1977), especially 190–92.
63. Ap. Rhod. 2.705-07; Call. fr. 88 Pf. (not attested in pre-Hellenistic sources). Σ Ap. Rhod. 2.705–11a-b reports disagreement about its gender. Callimachus makes it feminine (so too Dionysius); 
in Apollonius and Nonn. D. 13.28 is ambiguous. See further Jacoby on FGrH 491–2 F 14. The very specific information about the skin’s position next to the tripod is not taken from Apollonius (was it in Callimachus?). The golden quiver may come from Call. Hymn 2.33, though a golden bow also figures elsewhere (see F. Williams ad loc.).
64. This also recapitulates the Catalogue of Ships, which ends in Thessaly.
65. Unlike Homer (Il. 2.517-35), Apollonius makes Lokris and Phokis, though contiguous, part of different routes (1.69–76, 207–10). So does Dionysius, though his itinerary is different (426, 437–46). The result, in both cases, is that Phokis is avoided on the outward leg of their journey, and saved up until the return.
66. West (1985) 49f.; cf. esp. 49: ‘There are some indications that the poet may sometimes have allowed himself an ampler and more artistic narrative excursion than usual at the end of a stemma.’
67. One of the most commented-on features of Dionysius’ text is the ‘embedded anthropology’ in his itinerary of Libya (174–269), which begins with the primitivism of the Nomads, and ends with the civilisation, even culture-heroism, of Egypt. Here we can see him in the act of structuring an itinerary in order to bring out some underlying cultural contrast. In order to end with the Delta cities and his own homeland, he has abandoned the coastal route he has followed hitherto, swooping from the Garamantes in the vicinity of Cyrene to the Ethiopians and Blemyes in the far east (218), bypassing Egypt in order to return to it later. The east of Africa also has another tribe of miserable nomads, the Eremboi, but Dionysius does not want to use these in the same itinerary; rather, he saves them up for the contrast with the rich Arabs of Arabia Felix (933–53, contrasted with the Eremboi in 962–69). He wants this contrast even at some cost to his itinerary, because it means crossing back over the Arabian Gulf to reach a tribe he could have dealt with at the sources of the Nile (cf. the Blemyes, 220). The Eremboi, in turn, contrast with the inhabitants of Mesopotamia a little later (992–1000), who are close to the gods in their prosperity.
68. Jacob (1990) 66–75.
69. Effe (1977) 193, cf. Hunter (2004b) 218 n.1. For the 
(‘one/with many names’) topos, see Robert (1971) 608, 612, citing Festugière (1949) 516–18 and (1954) 65–70; Aristotle, DeMundo 401a; Servius on Virg. Georg. 1.5, Aen. 4.638.
70. Effe (1977) 192f.; Hunter (2004b) 226.
71. Bowie (2004) 185.
72. Although Dionysius has his god born in Arabia (939–41), he identifies Nysa not with Arabia, but with India; this enables him to begin and terminate his account of Asia with it.
73. See Müller ad loc. (1.525); Étienne (1990) part 3, especially 151–55 (Rauh 11992] 565: ‘few questions of antiquity offer “blacker holes” than this’).
74. ApoUonius also connects Dionysus‘ return from India with the establishment of choirs (though he sets them at the river Callichorus near Heraclea, Bithynia), but in his version Dionysus himself instituted the choirs, and there is no mention of anyone else entertaining him (Ap. Rhod. 2.904–10; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus 22.8.22). Dionysius has adopted a version, whether or not he invented it himself, which improves the parallel with Apollo at Delos: both gods have χoρoί set up for them by others.
75. The notice on Delos is an excellent instance of Dionysius’ combinatory/harmonising approach. (i) The spring festival is presumably the Apollonia, celebrated in the month Hieros (February/March) (Bruneau [1970] 65-75; Hesiod, Op. 569, uses the expression 
, ‘when spring is just getting under way’, of a February date). It is combined with references to (ii) the choirs that accompanied the theoriai to Delos (527 alludes to Call. Hymn 4.279; cf. Bruneau [1970] 108f.) and (iii), through the word pvaia, ‘offerings for deliverance’ (LSJ 
, III.2), which Dionysius substitutes for Callimachus’ 
(‘first fruits’), to the famous Geranos dance, supposedly commemorating Theseus’ deliverance from the labyrinth (Call. Hymn 4.310-13; Plut. Thes. 21; Pollux, Onom. 4.101; Bruneau [1970] 29–32). These are all separate events and did not necessarily fall at the same time of the year (Bruneau [1988] 576f., argues for an autumn date for the Geranos). As for the passage about Tmolos, Himerius (Or. 46.6, 47.6, 48.7) confirms that the Lydians celebrated the festival of Dionysus at the beginning of spring.
76. Consider, for instance, the questions raised by Hopkinson (1994b), especially 14–16.
77. Dio 69.4.6 = Suda s.v. 
, (a 527), Antim. Test. 30 Matthews.
78. Bowie (2002), and, for a general literary history, Bowersock (1985). On the whole issue of a neo-Hellenistic strand in imperial Greek poetics, see the typically brilliant article of Ma (2007), especially 109–11.
79. Effe (1977) 137–53 and 173–84.