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The ‘Gallus papyrus’: a new interpretation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Janet Fairweather
Janet Fairweather
Affiliation:
Faculty of Classics, Cambridge
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Extract

The elegiac lines in PQasrlbrim inv. 78–3–11/1 (L/2), first edited and ascribed to Gallusby R. D. Anderson, P. J. Parsons and R. G. M. Nisbetin 1979, raise a number of major problems of interpretation yet to be resolved. As is now well known, the papyrus fragment contains nine fairly well-preserved lines: first a pentameter, followed by two quatrains each composed of two elegiac couplets; the two quatrains are carefully marked off from each other and from the lines which preceded and followed them by a pair of signs which have defied interpretation; another such sign can be seen to have marked a similar separation between groups of lines in the next column of the papyrus. One might think that the sets of lines thus marked off were quite separate epigrams, or perhaps excerpts from longer poems, for they are concerned with separate, indeed discrepant, topics – the naughtiness of Lycoris, the morale-boosting effects of Caesar's forthcoming successes, the love-poet's fearless stance before his critics – and they do not seem prima facie to follow logically after one another. However, various unmistakable verbal and thematic connections between them have rightly been pointed out by Nisbet. So what is this sequence of related verses and why is it set out in this way?

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , May 1984 , pp. 167 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1984

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References

1 ‘Elegiacs by Gallus from Qasr Ibrîm’, JRS 69 (1979), 125–55Google Scholar.

2 cf. the brief elegiac poems on amatory and other subjects in the last part of Catullus' collected works. However, the best-preserved quatrain in the papyrus, lines 2–5, if taken as a self-contained epigram, seems less full of punch and purpose than the Catullan specimens, being a mere statement of forthcoming felicity.

3 To accept such a hypothesis means dismissing the correspondence, dulcia/tristia, and the echo, tua/tueis, as coincidental, and irrelevant to the argument.

4 JRS 69 (1979), 149Google Scholar.

5 The apostrophizing of Lycoris and Caesar in two successive lines tells against the supposition that this could be any other kind of dialogue-poem.

6 cf. Hephaestion, , Enchiridion, p. 75. 5 ff. Consbruch (in a discussion of punctuation signs in lyric and dramatic texts): τῇ δ παραγρøῳ (sc. χρώμε;Өα) ἢτoi κατ πρσωπα μoiβαȋα ἔν τε; τoȋς ἰαμβiκoȋς κα τoȋς χoρiκoȋς, <ἢ> με;ταξὺ τς τε; στρøς κα τς νττiστρøoυ. See also+με;ταξὺ+τς+τε;+στρøς+κα+τς+νττiστρøoυ.+See+also>Google ScholarJRS 69 (1979), 129 fGoogle Scholar. on the paragraphus.

7 None of the Theocritus papyri is as early as our example; see Pack, R. A., The Greek and Latin literary texts from Greco-Roman Egypt 2 (Ann Arbor, 1965), p. 87Google Scholar; see especially Hunt, A. S. and Johnson, J., Two Theocritus Papyri (London, 1930)Google Scholar, for POxy. 2064 (saec. A.D. II), which includes part of Idyll 8 with interlinear dashes to denote speaker-change. The one papyrus fragment of Vergil's Eclogues is unilluminating about Roman practice. Early Vergil manuscripts do give abbreviations of competitors' names (in red) — so at least P (saec. iv/v) and M (saec. v) — but this need not reflect the practice of the first century B.C.

8 Such mirror-correspondence, whereby elements in the last line of one song are picked up in the first of the next (or alternatively elements in the first line of one song in the last of the next), is not nearly so common in amoebaean verses as is the parallelism between corresponding lines exemplified by tua/tueis. See, however, the amoebaean distichs of Verg. Eel. 3 for some examples: lines 76, 79 Iolla/Iolla; lines 101, 102 amor/neque amor; lines 104, 107 et eris mihi magnus Apollo/et Phyllida solus habeto. So clearly mirror-correspondence was not absolutely against the rules in Vergil's view. (See also n. 34 below on the possible indebtedness of Eel. 3 to a Gallan original.) Nor was it invariable practice, if one's singing opponent introduced apostrophe, to echo it in the corresponding line of one's reply: note, in addition to the case of lolla (Eel. 3. 76 ft”.), the failure of Thyrsis in Eel. 7.41 ff., to echo Corydon's apostrophe to Galatea in the preceding quatrain.

9 So Nisbet, , JRS 69 (1979), 147Google Scholar.

10 ibid. pp. 148 ff.

11 Text in e.g. The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, ed. Raby, F. J. E. (Oxford, 1959), pp. 99–101Google Scholar.

12 There is a comparable abrupt transition (Eel. 10. 41) in a monologue which Vergil assigns to Gallus. See below, n. 34.

13 JRS 69 (1979), 148Google Scholar.

14 See e.g. Sandbach, F. H., ‘Victum frustra contendere Thyrsim’;, CR 47 (1933), 216 ff.Google Scholar; Pöschl, V., Die Hirtendichtung Virgils (Heidelberg, 1964), pp. 93–154Google Scholar.

15 CR 47 (1933), 217Google Scholar.

16 See the examples of similar compensation in Vergil given by Sandbach, loc. cit.

17 See Nisbet's, comments, JRS 69 (1979), 148Google Scholar, on the hiatus, of a type unparalleled in extant elegy, but not without parallels in good poets.

18 Ultra placitum (line 27) and pro tempore (line 35) are found nowhere else in Vergil, nor in Catullus, Lucretius, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid. With ilia … rumpantur (line 26) compare Catullus 11. 20.

19 See Nisbet, , JRS 69 (1979), 142 and 149Google Scholar; Putnam, M. C. J., ‘Propertius and the new Gallus fragment’, ZPE 39 (1980), 49–56Google Scholar; Whitaker, R., ‘Apropos of the new Gallus fragment’, Ada Classica 24 (1981), 87–96Google Scholar. Note in addition Sen. Suas. 7. 12, where a young declaimer uses the expression ita te legam and the rhetorician Cestius Pius interprets this, sensu obsceno, as ita te fruar.

20 See Vitae Homeriet Hesiodi,ed. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. (Bonn, 1916), p. 41Google Scholar. This version of the Certamen contains a reference to the emperor Hadrian, but the tradition was much earlier in origin, having been related by, among others, Alcidamas; see P. Petrie 25. 1, ed. Wilamowitz, , op. cit. pp. 45–7Google Scholar; P.Mich. 2745, ed. Winter, J. G., TAPA 56 (1925), 120 ff.Google Scholar; West, M. L., “The contest of Homer and Hesiod’, CQ n.s. 17 (1967), 433 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richardson, N. J., “The contest of Homer and Hesiod and Alcidamas’ Mouseiori', CQ n.s. 31 (1981), 1 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Words attributed to ‘Gallus’ in Verg. Eel. 10. 69.

22 See the criticisms of Skutsch, O. in his review of Pöschl, Gnomon 37 (1965), 105–8Google Scholar; Rossi, L. E., ‘Vittoria e sconflitta nell' agone bucolico letterario’, GIF 23 (1971), 13–24Google Scholar.

23 For the convoluted expression in lines 4–5 of the papyrus there is admittedly no close parallel in Eel. 7. Compare, however, the ambiguity of wording about war in Eel. 10. 44 f. (from the monologue of ‘Gallus’): nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis / tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes, and see n. 34 below, on the possible relationship of these lines to Gallan poetry.

24 It became clear at the Liverpool Colloquium that the provisional total of 20 possible allusions given by van Sickle, J., ‘Style & imitation in the new Gallus’, QUCC n.s. 9 (1981), 115–23Google Scholar, now needed to be considerably augmented.

25 For disrespect towards Julius Caesar cf. of course Catullus 93. On Gallus' military and public career and his eventual downfall see Boucher, J. P., C. Cornelius Gallus (Paris, 1966), 1–65Google Scholar.

26 See Coleiro, E., An introduction to Virgil's Bucolics (Amsterdam, 1979), pp. 269–76Google Scholar, for a survey of these interpretations. See also Conte, G. B., Il genere e i suoi confini (Turin, 1980), pp. 11–43Google Scholar.

27 See Coleman, R. G. G., ed. Vergil, , Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 294–7Google Scholar.

28 Aus Vergils Fruhzeit (Leipzig, 1901), pp. 1 ffGoogle Scholar.

29 Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 85–106Google Scholar.

30 ibid. p. 46.

31 ibid. p. 86.

32 Aus Vergils Fruhzeil, p. 18.

33 Could these have been two contestants in a singing consent? See Calp. Sic. Eel. 2 for a singing match in which the contestants were Idas lanigeri dominus gregis, Astacus horti (line 2), i.e. not the usual two herdsmen.

34 This is a very tempting line of enquiry. Inevitably it will be asked if our papyrus fragment could not have come from a stage in this hypothetical contest poem just after the section paraphrased by Vergil. Support for such an idea, though of course flimsy, is not so flimsy as one might expect. If one compares Eel. 3. 76–95 with Eel. 10. 35–49 plus the ‘Gallus papyrus’ (in that order), the following successive correspondences may be noted: Phyllis – 3. 76–9 cf. 10. 37; Amyntas – 3. 82–3 cf. 10. 37–40; Amyntas + willow – 3. 83 cf. 10. 40; abrupt transition to contemporary Rome – 3. 84 cf. 10. 42; facere carmina – 3. 86 cf. ‘Gallus papyrus’ 6; harsh criticism of poets (two examples) – 3. 90–1 cf. ‘Gallus papyrus’ 8–9. Disrupting the order there is also the notable correspondence, triste/dulce – 3. 80–2; tristia/dulcia ‘Gallus papyrus’ 1, 2. Note also the use of convoluted language about war in 10. 44—5 and ‘Gallus papyrus’ 4–5. If one believes that these correspondences all point to a common Gallan original, of which the papyrus forms a part, it may be supposed that the contest in it began with traditional pastoral themes, but went on to demonstrate a novel way of singing Gallus' amores, his love for Lycoris and the insanus amor which involved him in war. It may further be conjectured, on the basis of Eel. 10. 31 ff., that the contestants were Arcadians (though n.b. pastoris Siculi … avena, line 51), and maybe, in view of 50 ff., that the poem culminated in Gallus' acceptance of a Theocritean vocation. But note that even the over-simplifying Servius (on Eel. 10. 46) suggests that poems (plural), not just one poem, by Gallus were drawn on by Vergil in the tenth Eclogue.

35 See the discussion of these lines and the testimonia connected with them in Ross, , Backgrounds (see n. 29, above), pp. 40–6Google Scholar.

36 Servius on Eel. 6. 72. The legend had also been related in Hesiod, Melampodia; see fr. 278 Merkelbach/West. If this fragment is representative, the contest of Calchas and Mopsus took the form of challenge by difficult questioning (like much of the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi), and was thus of a type distinct from the amoebaean contests of the Theocritean tradition.

37 See JRS 69 (1979), 153 and n. 142Google Scholar; cf. Coleman, R. G. G., ed. Vergil, , Eclogues 14 fGoogle Scholar. for the relevant ancient testimonia.

38 See Suet, . Iul. 37Google Scholar on the triumphs of 46 and 45.

39 JRS 69(1979), 151–5Google Scholar.

40 There is scope for dispute here, however: St Jerome's datings are not always to be trusted, and this one, though it refers not to Gallus' birthdate but to his age at the time of his death in 27 B.C. (Ol. 188. 2; see Hieronymus, , Eusebii Pamphili Chronici Canones, ed. Fotheringham, J. K., London, 1923, p. 246)Google Scholar, could be derived from the tradition that Gallus was Vergil's condiscipulus (Probus, , Prooem, ad Buc. in Servii in Verg. Commentarii, ed. Thilo, G., Hagen, H., Leipzig, 1927, iii. 328)Google Scholar, a tradition which is open to the suspicion of being merely an inference from expressions of friendship for Gallus in Vergil's poetry.

41 cf. JRS 69 (1979), 155Google Scholar.

42 Note, however, that the reditus of Caesar which would have been uppermost in people's minds in late 46 and the earlier part of 45 would have been his return from Spain (see Cic. Phil. 2. 78), rather than his return from the projected Parthian expedition.

43 See JRS 69 (1979), 152–4Google Scholar. One need not assume that Cytheris ever made a total break from Antony before or during her affair with Gallus, given how Roman love-elegy thrives on rivalry and the need for concealment.

44 A tributary of the Po which flows from (Catullus') Lake Garda through (Vergil's) Mantua and the transpadana regio where Gallus is said by Vergil's commentators to have been one of those responsible for the land-division remembered in Eel. 1 (see Boucher, , C. Cornelius Gallus, pp. 16 ff.)Google Scholar.