The first part of the article foregrounds Walter Wimmel’s impact on Callimachean scholarship by focusing on the key concept of ‘short form’ (Kleinform). In Wimmel’s view this novel concept explains Callimachus’ success among Augustan poets; it is also critical for understanding how the literary experiments carried out by Alexandrian poets are a reaction to the crisis of poetic language already begun in the classical age. Among recent discussions of Wimmel’s impact on Hellenistic aesthetics, J.I. Porter’s critique of the ‘ideology of λεπτότης’ is both radical and thought-provoking. The second part of the article discusses some of the ideas advanced by Porter and develops them within the framework of an anthropology of literature that foregrounds how poetic texts enact representations of the world as total space. Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos is a particularly remarkable case study in that it offers multiple instances of a poetics of world composition.
Analyzing how Roman poets of the 1st century BC refer to Callimachus, Philitas, and Euphorion allows us to appreciate their sensitivity to different kinds of Hellenistic poetry and ‘Alexandrian’ taste – a difference that the following ages will often overlook.
This paper investigates the reuse of terminology and metaphorical expressions, characteristic of Callimachus’ poetics, by Atticists in their polemic against Asianists. This very analysis shows how expressions, already used in rhetorical treatises concerning the two genera dicendi, subtile and grave, have been re-semanticized by the Atticists in a Callimachean manner. The aims and implications of this re-sematization will be examined.
This article aims at demonstrating that Callimachus’ work as a whole is a model for Augustan poets not only in relation to ideology, mythical themes, poetological terms and concepts, but also from a structural point of view. The example of Callimachus showed Roman poets both how to structure a single text and how to connect various separate texts within an articulated poetic corpus. Some significant cases are examined in Virgil, Horace, Propertius.
This article examines some aspects of Wimmel’s interpretation of Propertius II 1 (Kallimachos in Rom, 1960). The unity of II 1 has been repeatedly questioned and repeatedly defended. Wimmel believes that the presence of the theme of ‘closeness to death’ in the second part of II 1 is linked to the motif of ‘old age’ in the prologue of Callimachus’ Aitia; the prologue of the Aitia would therefore be imitated by Propertius both in the first part, containing a recusatio addressed to Maecenas in which Callimachus is mentioned, and in the second, and this would guarantee the unity of the elegy. In reality, such an argument appears very unconvincing. The difficult lines 51-56 are then examined. There Propertius says that, even if he were subjected to the action of magical potions by three ‘witches’ (Phaedra, Circe, and Medea), he would remain faithful to his love for Cynthia. Phaedra’s exemplum is particularly problematic. Also in this case, after discussing the interpretation of these lines, we examine and criticize the allegorizing explanation of Wimmel, who, again in an unconvincing way, sees the three sorceresses as overshadowing both the Telchines of Callimachus and Maecenas himself. Finally, we consider the Fortleben of Wimmel’s explanation, particularly in the book by P.J. Heslin, Propertius, Greek Myth, and Virgil (2018).
The warp of Prop. III 3 reveals a dense interweaving of learned suggestions of heterogeneous origins. The intertextual dialogue with the two proems of Callimachean Aetia (as well as with the Hymn to Apollo) from which the landscape pieces (Mount Helikon, sources, rivers), that form the background to the epiphanies of Apollo and Calliope, are mostly derived, reveals how, behind the lesson of the Battiades, the Propertian metaliterary language has become figurative tout court.
The article, after an initial review of certain or eventual reception of Callimachus as ‘art historian’ in Latin literature, reexamines the iambus 6 on Phidias’ Zeus at Olympia. The value of the composition is much debated. That Callimachus, with the insistence on measurements, alludes to the Herodotus’ rhetoric of wonder is suggested by the perhaps Ionic word used fifteen times by Herodotus for expense, anaisimōma, otherwise rare. It can be added that the measurements and, more occasionally, the cost are highlighted in the literature for those large constructions which, like the Zeus, fall into the category of the seven wonders of the world. The particular treatment of the statue does not seem to have given stimulus to the Roman authors. The article then analyzes the use of the figure of Phidias, sometimes with metapoetic meanings, in the literary production from Cicero to Martial and Statius.
At Mart. I 114, 5 modern editors print the third family text (ad Stygias aequum fuerat pater isset ut umbras), instead of the one carried by the second family (et Stygias sed dum fuerat pater ire sub umbras). However, a close analysis of the text raises doubts about the vulgate text. On the other side, the text transmitted by the second family, much more difficult to understand, but extremely appropriate to the context, should be very carefully considered.
The name of i-pe-me-de-ja, a female divinity of minor rank in the tablet PY Tn 316, defies interpretation: -me-de-ja may conceal /°mēdeia-/ (cfr. μήδεα ‘plans’) or /°medeia-/ (: °μέδεια), but i-pe- remains obscure. An identification of i-pe-me-de-ja with Ἰφιμέδεια (Od. XI 305 +) is untenable: i-pe- cannot match Ἰφι° /wīphi°/. Starting from A. Heubeck’s interpretation of i-pe° as /ip-e°/ (cfr. aor. ἰψα- ‘to press hard, afflict’: Hom. ἴψαο λαòν Ἀχαιῶν Il. I 454, ἴψεται υἷας Ἀχαιῶν, II 193 with gods as the agents), and on the strength of the evidence for the synonyms of ἰψα-, ἰψο/ε- (namely βλάπτο/ε-, φθείρο/ε-, θέλγο/ε-, τύπτο/ε-) and μήδεα in Homer and in the Ancient reflection on the Homeric passages where they occur, the present paper makes the case for an interpretation of i-pe-me-de-ja /Ipe-mēdeia-/ as ‘she who truncates plans (sc. of battle)’ (cfr. the formula /μάχης ἐπὶ μήδεα κείρει # ‘cuts across our plans of battle’ Hom.) or, less probably, as ‘she who troubles, beats the mind’ (cf. βλάψε φρένας Hom.+, παρακόπτει φρένας Eur. + et sim.), whence ‘she who makes mad’ (as divinized Ἄτη ‘bewilderment’ or Λύσσσα ‘madness’ do). Both possible interpretations apply to i-pe-me-de-ja /Ipe-mēdeia-/ as the speaking name of a divinity who brings to nothing the plans of others and / or causes madness, two characteristics which are actually shared by Athena and by Hera. This does not mean, however, that i-pe-me-de-ja was a Mycenaean forerunner of Athena and Hera or that she was absorbed by one of them in post-Mycenaean times. There is no recognizable continuity between Myc. i-pe-me-de-ja and the Ἰφιμέδεια wife of Aloeus (Hom.) or the Ἰφιμέδη daughter of Agamemnon (Hsd.).
As it is well known, the Aristophanean Clouds bear several symbolic significations. This paper deals with their self-introduction in the strophe of the parodos (Nub. 275-290). On the one hand, the solemnity of this section matches the dignity of the new deities of the ‘Socratic’ Thinkery. On the other, formal and linguistic devices (metre, vocabulary, phraseology), as well as images and contents, point instead to the values praised by traditional literature, especially archaic epic. The Clouds share the characterization of traditional figures such as the all-seeing Sun and the immortal mist-dressed watchers sent worldwide by Zeus to supervise the mortals’ deeds. The evident analogies imply indirectly that the Clouds also share the related functions and disposition: watching over the actions of men and safeguarding justice, acting on behalf of the Olympic gods. So, the first Clouds’ song foreshadows their real nature, which will become explicit just in the finale.
As Plutarch’s Quaestiones Romanae 10 summarizes, the origins and meaning of the Roman custom of veiling one’s head during several religious ceremonies were for long and thoroughly discussed by ancient historians, grammaticians, poets and philosophers. The surviving sources demonstrate the existence of at least three different explanations: the ‘customary’ (witnessed by orig. gent. Rom. 12, 2 and Fest. p. 432 Lindsay), the allegorical (represented by Castor from Rhodes’s fr. 15 Jacoby) and the ritual one (which we find in Dionys. Hal. Ant. Rom. XII 16, 1-3 and Verg. Aen. III 396-409 and 543-547)
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