Callimachus Epigram 1 - τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα?

Greek Learning Greek
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This is from the preface to the second edition:

The second printing of this volume, and now its second edition, have given me the opportunity to correct some of its errors and infelicities; I thank various friends and colleagues, especially Ed Beall, Richard Janko, Tetsuo Nakatsukasa, Michael O’Brien, and Stefano Vecchiato for bringing these to my attention. I have also now added a section of selected “Further Testimonia” following T157 at the end of this volume (and so too I have added some further fragments at the end of volume 2); my thanks in particular to Stefano Vecchiato for his help with these additions.
Firenze, February 2018

Similarly Fitch’s (comparatively) new edition of Seneca tragedies has been superseded. Perhaps it s a new policy. I have stopped buying Loeb volumes and almost always just read them on line. Its obviously much cheaper to revise a new text than initiate a wholesale replacement of an old text.

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In that case I’ll keep reading Homer and alongside work my way through Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns before coming back to Callimachus (possibly sneaking a look at his hymns). Thank you for the advice, as always, though I must say it was an emotional rollercoaster going from ‘you only really need to read 3 out of 33 Homeric Hymns’ to realising that they contained more than 70% of the total verses in all the hymns. All good practice!

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As I mentioned, I think that once you have some Homer under your belt, you shouldn’t find either Hesiod or the Homeric Hymns too difficult. The Hymn to Aphrodite is also one you should read at some point.

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Hi Sean. In addition to the good recommendations from Hylander, Seneca, and others, I will repeat what I have mentioned before, that I find the Chicago Homer an excellent vehicle for the combined study of Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns, especially its cross references and its ability to turn on and off the English translations (and/or German, though that feature is currently producing an error in my browser).

Randy

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Can anyone tell me what the standard reference is for this poem? Of course there may not be one. I was searching to see if it is mentioned in Francis Cairns, " Hellenistic Epigram: Contexts of Exploration” 2016 CUP with no success.

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This thread! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I think it may be Gow & Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, II: Commentary and Indexes.

There’s a bibliography with this extremely short (2 pages) and completely baffling article about the epigram, which suggests that there’s a hidden answer to the stranger’s question in some of the consonants of the last line (κασιγνήτην!). There’s also a discussion of the disputed reading in the last line of γ’ ἰὼν vs. Δίων.

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Back on that long epigram. τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα (which I cited for κατὰ σαυτὸν, not for ἔλα, which matters far less) of course does not originate with Callimachus. He’s taken one of the famous Sayings of one of the Seven Sages (here assigned to Pittacus, perhaps for the sake of incorporating the Lesbian Ὑρράδιον?) and come up with a mock-aition for it in the boys’ game, wittily reversing its direction (for the game will simply have adopted the pre-existent saying, if in fact it actually was used in the game, as I expect it was).

Resources for Callimachus’ Hymns are tricky, but now far less so than in the past. There are good commentaries on most of the individual hymns, and for all six there’s Susan Stephens’ text and commentary, which I recommend despite my lack of sympathy with some of her viewpoints. I’ll also mention the two Groningen “workshops” devoted to Callimachus, largely on the fragmentary papyri of the Aitia, Callim’s most important work, but (going against the grain) I contributed a piece on the Hymns in the first.

The primary resource is earlier Greek literature, far and away the best companion, the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony above all (Theog more essential than Works and Days, I’d say). Coupled with sensitivity or at least openness to Alexandrian poetics, as instantiated and explicitly articulated in Callim’s work (esp. the Aitia opening, enormously influential on Catullus and Augustan poets and successors). For Zeus you need the part of the Theogony dealing with his birth etc.; for Delos, other parts of the same poem. For Apollo, and also Artemis, you need the Homeric hymn to Apollo (both parts). And so on. And more Pindar than we have.

The Hymns are subtle and thoroughly allusive poems (I think allusion is still an apter term than intertextuality for Callim vis-a-vis archaic poetry: Pasquali’s l’arte allusiva was pioneering and fundamental.) The Greek must absolutely be read in Greek. If you know Homer and Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns off by heart (as I do not), so much the better. But I believe it is possible to gain at least a vague appreciation of Callimachus with remarkably little background. I first encountered the Hymns reading the old Loeb in the bath, knowing very little of Greek literature, and I was hooked right then and there.

The standard reference for Callim (though now outdated in parts) is Pfeiffer’s magnificent edition of Callimachus.

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Is this your own mock-aition? I assumed you’d been bitten by a radioactive papyrus.

Thanks for the many breadcrumb trails, I’ll follow them eagerly!

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Thank you, mwh. As usual, you’ve added a new level of understanding, at least for me.

As I now understand the epigram, (1) Callimachus’ first twist is to take the pre-existing proverbial expression, whatever it may have meant originally, and give it a wittily surprising new meaning in the context of the boys’ game, which it surely didn’t have when it came from the Delphic oracle – a weighty oracular utterance reduced to a call in a boy’s game, something like “offsides!”. (2) Next, he gives it another witty new application in the context of the stranger’s marriage choice. (3) Then, in the last line he gives it the final twist, applying it to his friend Bion and Bion’s immediate circumstances.

It seems clear that Callimachus must have made up the amusing aition himself out of whole cloth just for this epigram, because its humorous application in the boys game would almost certainly have been very different from its original meaning. I had assumed that the story wasn’t original to Callimachus, and I was puzzled how the boys could have used an expression that had some more weighty meaning, but it becomes obvious that Callimachus must have invented this when I see that it’s the first twist of the epigram.

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This is very interesting thank you. This has prompted me to think a bit more about the poem. Its easy to get lost in the minutiae of driving spinning etc and lose sight of the broader meaning of the poem. Hylander has given an excellent summary of his understanding about how the epigram works. But the point you make here may have been overlooked.

Whether or not this epigram was ever placed first in a collection (the normal place for programatic poems) it nevertheless is an expression of Callimachus’s poetics. The advice on marriage then can be seen as as a metaphor for writing in a style which does not affect other (more lofty? more verbose? simply epic?) styles. I guess it was contemporary epic (μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν?) that he had a real problem with rather than Homeric. The only Hellenistic poetry I have ever really engaged with is Theocritus which seems less erudite. It’s a pity that my next project in Greek is Thucydides.

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It’s a pity that my next project in Greek is Thucydides.

No it isn’t!

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The advice on marriage then can be seen as as a metaphor for writing in a style which does not affect other (more lofty? more verbose? simply epic?) styles.

That’s a very good thought, and I’m inclined to think you’re right. That may well be the point of the advice to Bion, perhaps (in fact, likely) nothing to do with marriage, but rather advice on what kind of poetry to write, consistent with Callimachus’ own poetics, if Bion was a poet attempting a grandiose epic.

The context for the advice in the last pentameter is not made clear in the epigram itself, but that would be in accord with Callimachus’ own emphatically stated poetic program, and perhaps we’re meant to assume that poetry is the subject of the epigram: “Write poetry at your own level”, i.e., small, exquisitely crafted compositions.

That would mean yet another context for τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα, and another twist of Callimachus’ wit: (1) original oracular or gnomic context (unknown), (2) boys’ game, (3) marriage, (4) poetry.

However, I’m not sure by whom or when this epigram was placed first in the collection of Callimachus’ epigrams. Perhaps it was placed first because it’s unusually long for this genre of composition.

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I read the opening to the Aitia after mwh’s post and I couldn’t help finding some extra meaning in 5-6 in light of the present epigram as he talks about writing on a small scale ‘like a child’ in contrast with writers of sprawling epics. I see one of the suggestions for the missing verb at the end of line 5 is ελαυνω!

5 ἔπος δ’ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ελ[
6 παῖς ἅτε,

This epigram is very sonnet-like. I’m reminded of Wordsworth and his nuns who “fret not at their convent’s narrow room” as he argues for the form, which is sort of the opposite in some ways of On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, a poem looking out at the Pacific of epic from within the confines of a sonnet.

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Sean, yes, this is what Callimachus is aiming at. Aitia 20ff:

“. . . βρονταν ουκ εμον, αλλα Διος”
και γαρ οτε πρωτιστον εμοις επι δελτον εθηκσ
γουνασιν Απολλων ειπεν ο μοι Λυκιος
. . . ] αοιδε το μεν θυος οττι παχιστον
θρεψαι], την Μουσαν δ’ωγαθε λεπταλεην.

“Thundering isn’t my job – it’s Zeus’ job.”
And when I first placed my tablet on my knees, Apollo, the Lycian Apollo, said to me
" . . . poet, raise the sacrificial animal as fat as possible,
but the Muse as slender as possible."

The allusiveness in which Callimachus couches his programmatic statement here would be entirely consistent with Epigram 1, if that poem is in fact an exhortation to eschew grandiose poetry.

Vergil echoes Callimachus’ language and poetic ideology in Eclogue 6, 3-5:

Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem
vellit, et admonuit: “Pastorem, Tityre, pinguis
pascere oportet ovis, deductum dicere carmen.”

When I tried to sing of kings and battles, Cynthian Apollo tweaked my ear and admonished me: “A shepherd, Tityrus, should graze fat sheep but recite a stripped-down song.”

Similar Callimachean ideology appears in Roman elegy: Catullus and Propertius, especially (and Ovid parodies it in Amores 1.1., the programmatic elegy that stands at the head of his book.). Ultimately, however, Vergil didn’t adhere to this advice. the Aeneid is the exact opposite of the Callimachean short poem Apollo told him to write.

The only Hellenistic poetry I have ever really engaged with is Theocritus which seems less erudite.

Theocritus implements the Callimachean/Hellenistic program of shorter poems crafted with consummate artistry and musicality, studded with mythological allusion, ecphrases, etc., and the Doric and pastoral setting of some of them deliberately contrasts with epic/Ionic grandiosity. You don’t think the shepherds and goatherds, with their exquisite amoebeic couplets, exchanging beautifully crafted artifacts, reflect the reality of life in rural Sicily, do you?

Theocritus is really a very erudite poet, a poet’s poet.

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I don’t know the answer to this, but in few disciplines outside of Classics would a revision after 13 years be considered “hasty.”

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Theocritus is really a very erudite poet, a poet’s poet.

I am red with embarrassment. :blush: I have only really read the cyclops and Gorgo and Praxinoë.

I was thinking that Callimachus had a connection to the library of Alexandria (or museum) which I don’t think Theocritus is thought to have had, although we know nothing for certain about his life. I see in the Loeb it says: “Although Theocritus’ poetry is not obtrusively learned, the song of Simichidas in Idyll 7 shows that he was familiar with the erudition of the avant-garde.” I suppose it’s all a matter of degree. I think your appreciation of him is spot on.

Quite right to pull me up on this. No I try not take anything I read at face value and encourage others not to. :smiley:

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Theocritus’ poetry is not obtrusively learned

“Obtrusively” is the key word. Summa ars est celare artem.

On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, a poem looking out at the Pacific of epic from within the confines of a sonnet.

Well put.

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I’d say the Aeneid is very much a hellenistic poem. But this is no place to discuss that.

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I liked this idea, and checked the Loeb to see if I could find a footnote on Dion, but found instead that it prints οὕτω καὶ σύ γ᾿ ἰὼν τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα, instead of the Diogenes Laertius version that started this thread.

Otherwise, epigrams addressed to Dion seem to be Plato’s thing. If we were to just change the author’s name, it suddenly becomes quite erotic advice. (Grab my Aristophanes quote if anyone feels like writing a paper advocating it.)

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I confused Bion for Dion. I think D.L’s text is more likely correct. The epigram, and in particular, the last line, call for a proper name, I think.