Callimachus Epigram 1 - τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα?

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’ve tried my hand at Callimachus 1 which took me a long time but I think I’ve got most of it. One bit, obviously the most important bit, I couldn’t make head nor tail of - 1.12 τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα. I assume this must be some kind of gnomic tidbit as it’s repeated at the end, and given the rest of the poem I suppose the meaning is something like ‘don’t get above your station’. But that’s as far as I get. Drive your own way? Stay in your lane?! Googling didn’t bring anything useful up and I can’t seem to find a commentary on Callimachus apart from the hymns.

Comments and corrections on the rest of it very welcome. It’s less literal in some places.

Ξεῖνος Ἀταρνείτης τις ἀνήρετο Πιττακὸν οὕτω
τὸν Μυτιληναῖον, παῖδα τὸν Ὑρράδιον·
“ἄττα γέρον, δοιός με καλεῖ γάμος· ἡ μία μὲν δή
νύμφη καὶ πλούτωι καὶ γενεῆι κατʼ ἐμέ,
ἡ δʼ ἑτέρη προβέβηκε· τί λώιον; εἰ δʼ ἄγε σύμ μοι
βούλευσον, ποτέρην εἰς ὑμέναιον ἄγω.”
εἶπεν· ὁ δὲ σκίπωνα, γεροντικὸν ὅπλον, ἀείρας,
“ἠνίδε, κεῖνοί τοι πᾶν ἐρέουσιν ἔπος.”
οἳ δʼ ἄρʼ ὑπὸ πληγῆισι θοὰς βέμβικας ἔχοντες
ἔστρεφον εὐρείηι παῖδες ἐνὶ τριόδωι.
“κείνων ἔρχεο” φησὶ “μετʼ ἴχνια”. χὠ μὲν ἐπέστη
πλησίον· οἳ δʼ ἔλεγον· “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα”.
ταῦτʼ ἀίων ὁ ξεῖνος ἐφείσατο μείζονος οἴκου
δράξασθαι παίδων κληδόνι συνθέμενος.
τὴν δʼ ὀλίγην ὡς κεῖνος ἐς οἰκίον ἤγετο νύμφην,
οὕτω καὶ σύ, Δίων, τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα.

A traveller from Atarneia asked
Pittacus the Mytilenian, son of Hyrradius, this:
“Father, I’m torn between two marriages. One girl is a
budding rose, my equal in wealth and birth,
but the other is a class above. Which is the right choice?
Come, give me some advice, which one
should I lead in the wedding song?” He said,
and the other lifted his staff, an old man’s rapier.
“Look! Those there will tell you everything”
Boys with quick spinning tops spun them
with flicks at the place where the roads met.
“Go” he said “and follow in their steps”.
He stopped nearby. They said “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα”
Hearing this, the stranger gave up chasing after
the greater house, in light of the boys’ omen.
And so he took the lesser bride into his house
even as you, Dion, τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα.

2

τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα answers to νύμφη καὶ πλούτωι καὶ γενεῆι κατʼ ἐμέ.

ἔλα is from ἐλάω, an alternative form of ἐλαύνω. See LSJ s.v.ἐλαύνω:

The pres. ἐλάω is rare and mainly Poet., imper. “ἔλα” Pi.I.5(4).38, A.Fr. 332, E.HF819, Fr.779.1

But τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα apparently has a proverbial meaning that is relevant to the game the boys are playing with tops, as well as to other contexts. I cheated and looked at The Loeb (Callimachus Hymns and Epigrams, Lycophron, Aratus), which suggests as a translation, “drive your own line”, and says that it’s a proverbial expression that is echoed in Aeschylus and Aristophanes. So the stranger from Atarneus understands τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα to mean in his case, “Stick to the woman of your own social standing.”

Nice translation: not too literal, but it captures the meaning of the Greek very well.τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα resists translation.

3

I would have thought: Whip the girl below you. (He means that you have more leverage.)

Edit: But probably better, whip your own girl (not the person’s next to you, I assume the other usages involve horses?). Notice the broad road and that the boys yell it at him when he stands too close to them whipping the tops. Nothing leverage related.

4

A similar thought from Aeschylus, Prometheus 887 ff. (I found this in the LSJ entry for κατά):

ἦ σοφὸς ἦ σοφὸς ἦν ὃς
πρῶτος ἐν γνώμᾳ τόδ᾽ ἐβάστασε καὶ γλώσ-
σᾳ διεμυθολόγησεν,
ὡς τὸ κηδεῦσαι καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸν ἀριστεύει μακρῷ,
καὶ μήτε τῶν πλούτῳ διαθρυπτομένων
μήτε τῶν γέννᾳ μεγαλυνομένων
ὄντα χερνήταν ἐραστεῦσαι γάμων.

Loosely:

Truly wise was he who first conceived this in his mind and expressed it with his tongue: that it is by far best to marry at one’s own level and being a pauper, not to desire a marriage either with those who are corrupted by wealth or with those who are boastful of lineage.

ἐραστεῦσαι is aorist. Maybe “seek after”?

5

Maybe ”fall in love with (the idea of marriage)”? Or ”become fixated with”?

6

Ah, thank you! That makes sense that it’s something relevant to their game. I’d imagined them turning and speaking to the ξεῖνος directly a bit like midwich cuckoos, but now that you point it out it makes more sense that he’s overhearing them playing. Also thanks for clarifying the κατʼ ἐμέ/κατὰ σαυτὸν antithesis and the Aeschylus. The Greek world was clearly teeming with anxious fathers writing literature about how poor boys should keep their hands off their daughters.

An interesting suggestion, but I don’t like the idea of any girls being whipped - perhaps in the context of the boys playing their game ελαυνω (as strike rather than drive, as you suggest) could be made to echo the earlier πληγῆισι. Maybe the boys are fighting over their spinning tops and one says to the other “Keep your hands off my top!” or “Spin your own top!” given I’ve translated πληγῆισι as ‘with flicks’ and βέμβιξ is feminine to match τὴν. It being more nonsensical does make it more omen-like. Crucially no girls were harmed in the making of this poem.

He stopped nearby. They were saying “Spin your own top!”
…
even as you, Dion, should spin your own top. (this is a bit silly but I actually quite like it as a tongue in cheek ending)

Am I justified in making the second instance of τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα a moral imperative with ‘should’? I don’t fully understand the way the imperative is operating here.

Edit: They’re so out of place that they would be distracting, but the temptation to use the words dreidel and teetotum in this translation is strong.

7

Completely irrelevant to the Greek but I watched this and had to share. The enormous one at 0:37!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS0mQ8Z_bdo

8

I like the idea of wives and horses being whipped less than you do, I assure you, but that’s the whole point of this epigram. You drive a horse or a top by whipping it. While there is no particular risk of accidentally driving someone else’s horse, it is an easy thing to whip whatever is next to you if you are not careful, especially in crowded conditions like a race, for example. It’s also a particularly futile thing to do. Hence the proverb.

The image builds up:

ὑπὸ πληγῆισι
εὐρείηι
χὠ μὲν ἐπέστη πλησίον· οἳ δʼ ἔλεγον

And the futility associated with the proverb needs to be kept in mind to understand why the stranger applies it to himself. Miss any of this, and the epigram doesn’t come together tightly. And there is certainly contempt of women here too. How to turn all that into English, I have no idea.

9

Am I justified in making the second instance of τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα a moral imperative with ‘should’? I don’t fully understand the way the imperative is operating here.

It’s an imperative. It has probably irrecoverable meaning in the context of the game the boys are playing with the tops. They’re shouting it at one another. But the stranger understands it metaphorically in the context of his choice of brides as an exhortation to stick to his own social class.

There are two meanings of κατα in play here. In the context of the marriage choice, the meaning is clearly “in your own social class”, an extended meaning. In the context of the game of tops, κατα has a literal, spatial meaning which is obscure and irrecoverable without specific knowledge of the game.

I don’t see any implication that the stranger expects or is expected to whip or beat his bride. Striking or whipping is something boys playing with tops would do with a stick, but that doesn’t carry over to the idea of not marrying above your station. The stranger is after all proposing to lead someone into the hymenaios – the marriage dance.

I don’t see this at all:

The image builds up:

ὑπὸ πληγῆισι
εὐρείηι
χὠ μὲν ἐπέστη πλησίον· οἳ δʼ ἔλεγον

ὑπὸ πληγῆισι certainly implies whipping or striking, but that’s just how you play with tops.

But εὐρείηι and χὠ μὲν ἐπέστη πλησίον· οἳ δʼ ἔλεγον? How do these build up an image of cruelty to women?

The epigram does reflect a casual arsenocentric (to coin a word) attitude, in that it’s the husband who chooses the bride, which would be a normal and widespread assumption in the ancient world (not just in the Greek world). But the focus of the epigram is on the choice of a bride, not on her treatment after the wedding – just as in the Aeschylus passage I quoted, which expresses essentially the same thought. In fact, a reason for a man to avoid a marriage above his station is to avoid a marriage in which the wife and her family have the upper hand. Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin.

10

Joel I’m not sure I understand your post, but I think the point of the epigram is that ‘marrying up’ brings you nothing but trouble (as with Hylander’s quote from Aeschylus).

See also Plato, Laws, 6.773a φύντι, τοὺς παρὰ τοῖς ἔμφροσιν εὐδόξους γάμους χρὴ γαμεῖν, οἵ σοι παραινοῖεν ἂν μὴ φεύγειν τὸν τῶν πενήτων μηδὲ τὸν τῶν πλουσίων διώκειν διαφερόντως γάμον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐὰν τἆλλα ἰσάζῃ, τὸν ὑποδεέστερον ἀεὶ τιμῶντα εἰς τὴν κοινωνίαν συνιέναι.

My child, you must make a marriage that will commend itself to men of sense, who would counsel you neither to shun entirely connection with a poor family, nor to pursue connection with a rich one, but, other things being equal, to prefer always an alliance with a family of moderate means. (Perseus)

I’ve done a bit more digging on this:

Pittacus of Mytilene is supposed to have been a commoner who married into the Penthilid royal family on Lesbos (and later became tyrant and one of Callimachus and Plato’s Seven Sages of Greece), only to find that his wife was a bit of a snob. The only account of this seems to come from Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 1.4.81:

δοκεῖ δ᾽ ἐκ διαθέσεως αὐτὰ εἰρηκέναι. εὐγενεστέρα γὰρ αὐτῷ οὖσα ἡ γυνή, ἐπειδήπερ ἦν Δράκοντος ἀδελφὴ τοῦ Πενθίλου, σφόδρα κατεσοβαρεύετο αὐτοῦ.

The advice seems to have been prompted by his situation. For he had married a wife superior in birth to himself: she was the sister of Draco, the son of Penthilus, and she treated him with great haughtiness. (Perseus)

Also, this in Suda for τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα:

[This] was said from a certain oracle. That is: whatever you are, behave like it and do not strive for better things.
Some assert that this is a Delphic utterance,[1] whereas others [regard it as one of] Solon’s;[2] but some [believe that] Chilon said it to someone seeking his advice, on whether to opt for a wealthy marriage. (url)

Edit: Cross post with Hylander

11

In an earlier Loeb, A.W. Mair interprets “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα” as “hold your own rank” and states in his footnote that it is a proverb meaning “drive your own line (or path)”:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.237477/page/n141

12

I forgot κείνων ἔρχεο μετʼ ἴχνια, another emphasis of the idea of getting too close. (As Hylander noticed above with his suggestion of “stay in your lane.”)

No as far as the advice being something along the lines of not marrying above yourself, that is of course obvious. It’s proverbial advice across cultures, and there are good reasons for it. I gave similar advice to a friend the other week.

But it’s just too loose to read this as “a man goes to one of the seven sages for advice, the sage tells him to stand next to some boys, they say something about sticking with the one beneath you, he takes that as marriage advice and goes off to marry the poor girl”. If you do, you’ve missed the tightness.

In fact, the sage tells him to stand very close to some boys spread out in a broad road whipping tops, he gets too close, and they call out (to him, but they are likely calling it out to each other already whenever a strike goes wild) “ἔλαυνε the one beneath you [don’t ἔλαυνε my top or me].” The stranger realizes how stupid he would be to ἐλαύνει a top/girl that wasn’t beneath him, and goes off and marries the poor girl from the bad family.

13

The advice is not to marry a girl beneath him, but rather to marry a girl from the same social rank. In that context κατα doesn’t mean “down” – it means something like “according to” or “consistent with”.

14

And also the target of a strike. But I don’t disagree. “According to” is better than “beneath”.

15

If κατα did mean down, the social relationships would be inverted: κατὰ σαυτὸν would imply that the woman was above the stranger.

One minor point in the translation:

τὴν δʼ ὀλίγην ὡς κεῖνος ἐς οἰκίον ἤγετο νύμφην,
οὕτω καὶ σύ, Δίων, τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα.

ὡς is correlative with οὕτω: 'Just as he took the lesser bride into his humble abode (note the diminutive οἰκίον marking his own humble station), so you too, Dio, τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα.

We don’t know whether Dio faces a marriage choice or some other choice between something beyond him and something within his range (or even whether Dio is a real person). And even if Dio’s choice involves marriage, the whole point of the epigram, leading up to the advice to Dio, makes no sense if the advice is to beat his wife.

Note also imperfect οἳ δʼ ἔλεγον: the boys happened to be uttering τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα as part of the game, not as an admonition to the stranger. The humor consists in the fact that the stranger takes τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα, which he overhears by chance, in a different sense as advice specifically applicable to him. The story also illustrates the sage’s cleverness at directing the stranger to the boys, apparently anticipating what they will say as they play their game, as well as the double meaning applicable to the stranger’s dilemma.

16

No, the advice is not to beat his wife. The advice is approximately to “stay in your lane.” But the whipped top is meant to make the stranger (and the reader) think bride, and it’s impossible that the confluence is accidental. And yes, it’s what the boys were already yelling to each other, as I wrote above.

But whipped tops don’t move about, and I feel like you’re imagining the boys driving them around as part of the game. They stay in place, and the game is to keep them up the longest. You might strike someone else’s either accidentally or to knock it over, in either case drawing the cry of ἔλα τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν.

EDIT: maybe they do move about – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lje1QwWWcqM

17

the whipped top is meant to make the stranger (and the reader) think bride, and it’s impossible that the confluence is accidental.

Quite the contrary. The piquant point lies precisely in the unanticipated relevance of the expression τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα in two wholly unrelated contexts.

κείνων ἔρχεο μετʼ ἴχνια – nothing about getting too close. Pittacus is just saying, in a poetic fashion, “Go over there to where those boys are.”

18

Mair takes this as “follow their tracks”, because I think the verb here is μετέρχομαι, with “μετ’ ἴχνια” being a case of tmesis. I believe he does the same thing with συμβουλεύω in lines 5 and 6.

19

Mair takes this as “follow their tracks”, because I think the verb here is μετέρχομαι, with “μετ’ ἴχνια” being a case of tmesis. I believe he does the same thing with συμβουλεύω in lines 5 and 6.

That seems right. My point was simply that he’s just telling the stranger to go over where those boys are, not to somehow get too close to them. And M is surely right about σύμ μοι βούλευσον, as the spelling suggests.

It’s the same Loeb I’ve looked at. I don’t think there has been a revised version.

20

Right, it doesn’t mean getting too close, and that wasn’t offered as a translation, just the point that the spacing is brought up three times.

I guess the real question is how you take the τὴν, which I’ve taken it to refer to the βέμβιξ.