Two fictive dedicatory inscriptions, by Callimachus

Placed sequentially in Book 6 of the Anthology, these two poems are by the famous Alexandrian scholar-poet Callimachus, one of literary epigram's early masters. Like many of the poems I’ve been posting lately these are fresh versions and won’t be in the book.

In this first poem, 6.149, the inscription ‘speaks’ when the passer-by reads it aloud, but speaks in the persona of the dedicated object, and what does a bronze cockerel know about anything? Including that it is a bronze cockerel? A statue cannot bend to see the inscription on its own base, and it's not as though cockerels are great readers to begin with.

'The Tyndarids' are Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, and brothers to Helen of Troy. Pollux was a famous boxer, so the victory being celebrated by Euaenetus son of Phaedrus is surely meant to be in a boxing-match. Strictly speaking only Castor is a Tyndarid; Pollux’s father was Zeus, making the boys only half-brothers despite being twins. Improbable in normal circumstances, but when gods get involved, all bets are off.

6.149 (on YouTube)

CALLIMACHUS

The man who set me here, Euaenetus,

Assures us (for I cannot tell myself)

That I am hung here for a victory,

His own, and I a cockerel made of brass,

And dedicated to the Tyndarids.

I trust the son of Phaedrus, he in turn

Being the offspring of Philoxenus.

The second poem, 6.150, is written as if to be inscribed on the base of a votive statue of a young woman in a sanctuary of Io/Isis. Callimachus asserts identity between the goddesses through a patronym that he probably invented for this poem, ‘Inachian’ (Inakhios). Inachus was the mythical founder and first king of Argos; his many children included Io, the city's first priestess of Hera. Io was said to have spent time in Egypt and introduced the cult of Isis, and was occasionally identified with her. Both goddesses were depicted as horned, Io because Zeus had turned her into a cow when Hera got jealous of him sleeping with her. Greek mythology's list of reasons not to sleep with Zeus is never-ending.

6.150 (on YouTube)

THE SAME

Inachus’ Isis — in her shrine she stands.

Daughter of Thales, Aeschylis fulfils 

The promise of her mother, Eirene.

In myth, both Io and Isis were well-travelled, and Callimachus does not specify a notional location for the sanctuary in which Aeschylis' statue has been placed. The poem invites us to take a guess, if we want. A cult of Io at Argos is not firmly attested, but that is not to say there was none; there is better evidence for her worship at Antioch. But it is Isis who is named, not Io. Callimachus’ own Alexandria had a temple of Isis on the royal island (now sunken) of Antirhodos, and of course there were plenty of others across Egypt.

Isis was worshipped as the loving and determined mother who revived Horus, and surviving spells show that people often appealed to her to protect their own children from disease, or to ensure safe childbirth. The scenario conjured by Callimachus’ fictive inscription, and by the imaginary statue it accompanied, is that Eirene had promised the statue to Isis as payment if she kept Aeschylis safe through one or other of these dangers. Now she gratefully fulfils her vow.

Shields of the defeated, from southern Italy

The shields of my last blog post were hung in temples as dedications by the men who owned them, on the occasion of their retirement from successful careers as mercenaries. The shields in the poems below might have hung alongside them, but are there for a very different reason -- they were taken as spoils by the victors in battle. The first of these epigrams is in the book, as is a companion poem (6.129) by the same author; the second is freshly translated for this blog post. Both of them celebrate the victories of Greek city-states over non-Greek peoples in southern Italy in the third century BC.

Shields are cumbersome objects and very heavy. Anyone trying to run from a battlefield would need to throw theirs away; hence the famous injunction of Spartan women to their menfolk to come back either with their shields (victorious), or on them (dead).

Leonidas was from Tarentum, the modern Taranto in Apulia, just at the instep of the heel of Italy's boot. Nossis was from Epizephyrian Locris, right down in the toe. These were major and long-established cities in what the Romans called Magna Graecia, the Greek presence in coastal southern Italy.

The Lucanians were a native Italic people, and the Bruttii were close relatives who lived just to the south of them in what is now Calabria.

6.131

LEONIDAS <OF TARENTUM>

These long shields taken from Lucanians,

This row of bridles, and the polished spears

Hung on each side, bereft of horse and man: 

To Pallas. Man and horse, black death devours.

Nossis is a woman poet but seems every bit as keen on war as Leonidas, at least when their own cities are winning at it. The adjective that I translate as 'keen fighters', ōkumakhos, is found only in this poem and may be her own coinage.

6.132

NOSSIS (on YouTube)

Bruttian soldiers cast these arms away

From shoulders fated to a sorry end,

Falling beneath the blows of Locrians — 

Keen fighters, of whose courage they now sing,

Hanging within the temples of the gods,

And do not miss the forearms of those men,

The cowards they forsook and left behind.

The Greek Anthology on YouTube

I’ve recorded my recent translations from Book 6 and made a YouTube playlist of them — it’s my first time trying something like this, and I hope someone out there will enjoy them. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY2GBapteg3mLFcUn-WhfYRKWNRzVW-mg

The shields of three retired mercenaries

Soldiers of fortune were a staple of ancient Greek warfare, and never more so than in the early Hellenistic age. They left their mark on the up-and-coming genres of new comedy (Plautus' Miles Gloriosus is a mercenary recruiter) and epigram. Book 6 of the Anthology preserves many poems in which veterans hang up their well-used gear as they retire on the profit of war. You will find some in my book, but these three are done fresh for the blog. 

6.124 (on YouTube)

HEGESIPPUS

Timanōr’s bloody shoulders bore me once,

And now, a shield, I hang beneath the eaves

Of Pallas’ shrine, Defender in the Fight.

I often knew the dust of iron war,

And ever warded death from him who bore.

 

Doubtless plenty of real-life mercenaries did make offerings on retirement to whatever deity they credited for their survival, and though I don't presently have access to a library to check, it's a fair bet that many of them commissioned inscriptions, a minority of which were surely in verse. These literary versions, though, are consciously participating in an extended conversation (which may nonetheless have intersected with and enriched actual inscriptional practice) between authors writing for publication and performance. The following poem by Nicias implicitly acknowledges that plenty of poets have tried their hand at the 'shield' trope already ('just like the others') -- and Nicias, a friend of Theocritus, comes very early in epigram's development as a literary genre.

6.127 (on YouTube)

NICIAS

Just like the others, I was always bound

To leave behind the hateful strife of War

And listen to the chorus of the girls

Beside the shrine of Artemis, the place

Where Epixenus dedicated me,

When pale old age began to sap his limbs.

Mnasalcas was a contemporary of Nicias.

6.264 (on YouTube)

MNASALCAS

The shield of Alexander, Phylleus’ son,

I hang here as a holy offering

To lord Apollo of the golden hair.

Worn is my rim and tired by constant war,

Worn too my boss, but courage makes me shine,

Courage I earned in arming that brave man

Who set me here. From when I first was made,

I never have been worsted or outdone.

Two rustic offerings

These poems too are from the sixth book of the Anthology, the book of gifts dedicated to the gods. Typically the real or imagined context is a temple or sacred precinct, but Pan is not a god to be penned in.

The 'droves' of 6.37 are an instance of translator's liberty. The Greek just says 'herds' (boukolia), but these are herdsmen who pasture their cattle in the high places (ouresin) practising transhumance. They drive their herds and flocks up in the spring and down again in autumn. Go up to those same mountain pastures at the right time of year and you will see their descendants doing the same today.

John Barbocallus is an author I very much like. My Worlds Classics translation includes versions of two epigrams by him on the city of Berytus in Libya: one a celebration of its deliverance in battle from the Sassanid Persians; the other, written not much later, lamenting its total destruction in an earthquake. Berytus rose again, and kept its ancient name; it is now Beirut. He was a Christian, of course, and the pagan idyll of this epigram is a nostalgic literary fiction reminiscent of Theocritus. 'The Paphian' is a common enough cult epithet of Aphrodite, and Peitho is the goddess of persuasion. Eurynomus has cause to thank them both, and by keeping them sweet, he keeps his future options open. I note that his bride does not get a name.

6.37 (on YouTube)

ANONYMOUS

It too is stooped with age: this beechwood bough

The herders of the mountain pasture cut,

Shaved off its bark, and set it up for Pan

Upon the road, a handsome ornament

For the protector of the yearling droves.

6.55  (on YouTube)

JOHN BARBOCALLUS

This cottage cheese and beehive honeycomb

Eurynomus the oxherd, freshly wed,

Offers to Peitho and the Paphian;

But count the cheese as offered for her sake,

And know the gift of honey is from me.

A net for Astarte

6.24 (on YouTube)

<ANONYMOUS>

This woven net worn out, but worn in vain,

Does Heliodorus hang as offering

Here in the temple porch for Syria’s Queen.

Guiltless of blood it was in fishery;

Instead it gathered countless strands of wrack,

Piling it high upon the friendly shore.

Like my last post, this is a new translation that won't be in the book.

Plenty of dedicatory epigrams concern fishermen and their gear. In addition to the many variants on the ‘three brothers’ who hunt with nets by land, sea, and air (6.11-16 and 179-87), there is a substantial run of fishing poems at 6.23-30. In epigrams on trades and crafts generally, the typical occasion for dedicating tools is retirement after a a successful career, but that expectation can also be subverted.

In an essay titled On the Syrian Goddess, the second-century sophist Lucian, himself a Syrian, says of Astarte’s cult at Hierapolis: ‘In the great court oxen of great size browsed; horses, too, are there, and eagles and bears and lions, who never hurt mankind but are all sacred and all tame’ (41). (Various modern sources attest as well that fish were sacred to Astarte, but that's a rabbit-hole down which I don't want to go.) Under Astarte’s miraculous protection humans and animals live alongside one another, doing and suffering no harm. I suppose this makes her a fit dedicatee for a fishing-net that was never any good for catching fish.

Heliodorus may have scraped a living from his net all the same: seaweed was gathered and fermented to produce the purplish-red dye orchil, used for rouge, and called phukos just like the wrack from which it was made. When Lucillius at AP 11.310 critiques a woman’s purchase of expensive cosmetics — ‘For that amount you might have bought a face’ — orchil is on his list (that one's in the book).

The poem’s authorship and date are unknown. I do not imagine a connection with the Syrian Heliodorus who wrote the Aethiopica in the fourth century AD.

You can read Lucian’s essay on Astarte in an old translation by Herbert Strong and John Garstang, available online.