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DIDYMUS’ COMMENTARY ON PINDAR'S PAEANS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Enrico Emanuele Prodi
Enrico Emanuele Prodi*
Affiliation:
University College, London
*
e.prodi@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the citation of Didymus’ ‘first’ commentary on Pindar's Paeans in Ammon. Diff. 231 Nickau. It argues that the commentary on the Paeans was the first volume in Didymus’ commentary to all of Pindar.

Keywords

DidymusAmmoniusPindarPaeanscommentariesbibliography
Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , May 2023 , pp. 481 - 483
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

The beginning of the entry in the epitome of Herennius Philo ascribed to Ammonius on the difference between ‘Thebans’ and ‘Thebes-born’, along with its twin in the epitome of Herennius Philo which circulated as Herennius Philo (91 Palmieri), contains the only explicit quotation of Didymus’ commentary on Pindar's Paeans (fr. 68 Braswell = °172 Coward–Prodi):Footnote 1

Θηβαῖοι καὶ Θηβαγενεῖς διαφέρουσιν, καθὼς Δίδυμος ἐν ὑπομνήματι τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου φησίν⋅ “καὶ τὸν τρίποδα ἀπὸ τούτου Θηβαγενεῖς πέμπουσι τὸν χρύσεον εἰς Ἰσμήνιον πρῶτον”. (Ammon. Diff. 231 Nickau)

‘Thebans’ and ‘Theban-born’ are different, as Didymus says in the first commentary on Pindar's Paeans: ‘and from there the Theban-born escort the golden tripod to the Ismenion first’.

Readers have been perplexed by the expression ἐν ὑπομνήματι τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου.Footnote 2 What is ‘the first commentary on Pindar's Paeans’? Did Didymus write multiple, different commentaries on the Paeans? Unlikely.Footnote 3 Wilamowitz amended τῷ πρώτῳ to τοῦ πρώτου, ‘the commentary on the first of Pindar's Paeans’.Footnote 4 But the normal meaning of the expression—‘the first book of Pindar's Paeans’—is precluded by the fact that the Paeans consisted of a single book,Footnote 5 and the phrase cannot be made to mean ‘the first poem of Pindar's Paeans’ instead.Footnote 6 Eschewing Wilamowitz's conjecture, several scholars have inferred a multi-volume commentary, of which Ammonius quotes the first book.Footnote 7 To square the Greek with this interpretation, Filoni deleted ὑπομνήματι as an intrusive gloss explaining the referent of an original ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου, viz. the commentary rather than the Paeans themselves.Footnote 8 Braswell argued instead for ‘ὑπομνήματα (treatises) on individual Paeans’, with the first dealing with the first Paean.Footnote 9

I shall make a different suggestion, starting from Didymus’ attested bibliographical praxis. The colophon of the Berlin roll of the Περὶ Δημοσθένους (P.Berol. inv. 9780 recto, fr. °281 Coward–Prodi) reads:

ΔΙΔΥΜΟΥ

ΠΕΡΙ ΔΗΜΟΣΘΕΝΟΥΣ

ΚΗ

ΦΙΛΙΠΠΙΚΩΝ Γ

Didymus’ work on Demosthenes, then, had both a continuous numeration of volumes across the entire work (of which this was Book 28) and separate titles for commentaries on individual speeches or groups of speeches (here the Philippics, of which this was Book 3).Footnote 10 I submit that the same may have been true in our case: Didymus’ commentary on Pindar had a continuous numeration running alongside the titles of the individual volumes, and the commentary on the Paeans was the first. Indeed, the only explicit citation of Didymus’ commentary in the Pindaric scholia uses the plural, ἐν δὲ τοῖς Διδύμου ὑπομνήμασιν (schol. inscr. Ol. 5 Drachmann, fr. 7 Braswell = °110 Coward–Prodi): the scholiast's point of reference is the multi-volume commentary collectively, not the individual volume which included Olympian 5. We may imagine the colophon as:

ΔΙΔΥΜΟΥ

ΠΙΝΔΑΡΟΥ ΥΠΟΜΝΗΜΑ(ΤΑ)

Α

ΠΑΙΑΝΩΝ

A piece of circumstantial evidence can be called upon from the Pindaric scholia. Four times in the Olympians and in the Pythians a scholium cross-references a commentary on the Paeans with ἐν παιᾶσιν εἴρηται or the like (schol. Ol. 1.26g, 2.70d, Pyth. 6.5c, 12.44a Drachmann, frr. 69–72 Braswell).Footnote 11 In secondary literature, when εἴρηται and similar expressions do not refer to the commented author's words, they are often used for self-citation by the commentator, including by Didymus.Footnote 12 If in these cases, too, εἴρηται denotes self-citation, it follows that the anonymous writer had commented on the Paeans before he commented on the Olympians and the Pythians. It cannot be proved that he was Didymus, but the suggestion has some interest.Footnote 13 Didymus is the most quoted source in the Pindaric scholia; indeed, the very note we started from is summarized, without Didymus’ name, in a scholium to Pythian 11 (schol. Pyth. 11.5 Drachmann). The references in the four εἴρηται-scholia concern the kind of erudite matters that were the bread and butter of Didymus’ commentaries, though they need not have been unique to him.

Footnotes

I am grateful to Stefano Vecchiato and to CQ's reader for their comments.

References

1 Here and henceforth ‘Braswell’ = B.K. Braswell, Didymos of Alexandria: Commentary on Pindar (Basel, 20172); ‘Coward–Prodi’ = Coward, T.R.P. and Prodi, E.E., ‘A checklist of the testimonia and fragments of Didymus’, BICS 63 (2020), 95–120Google Scholar.

2 The words τῷ πρώτῳ are not present in ‘Herennius Philo’: Δίδυμος ἐν Ὑπομνήματι τῶν παιάνων Πινδάρου φησίν, κτλ. I therefore leave him aside in the remainder of this article. On the relationship between ‘Ammonius’ and ‘Herennius Philo’, see Nickau, K., Ammonius: De adfinium vocabulorum differentia (Leipzig, 1966), xl–xliv; VGoogle Scholar. Palmieri, Herennius Philo: De diversis verborum significationibus (Naples, 1988), 49–70.

3 D'Alessio, G.B., ‘Pindar's Prosodia and the classification of Pindaric papyrus fragments’, ZPE 118 (1997), 23–60Google Scholar, at 46; the suggestion came from Radt, S.L., Pindars zweiter und sechster Paian (Amsterdam, 1958), 5Google Scholar n. 1.

4 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, Pindaros (Berlin, 1922), 185Google Scholar.

5 Vita Ambrosiana I, page 3 Drachmann; P.Oxy. 2438 col. ii (FGrHistCont IV/A 1132) 37. Wilamowitz wrongly stated that there were two: Irigoin, J., Histoire du texte de Pindare (Paris, 1952), 37Google Scholar n. 3.

6 Filoni, A., Il peana di Pindaro per Dodona (frr. 57–60 M.) (Milan, 2007), 75–6Google Scholar; Prodi, E.E., ‘Notes on Pindar's Dithyrambs’, MH 78 (2021), 194–211Google Scholar, at 203–6.

7 Bona, G., Pindaro: I Peani (Cuneo, 1988), xxiGoogle Scholar; Rutherford, I., ‘Et hominum et deorum … laudes (?): A hypothesis about the organisation of Pindar's Paean-book’, ZPE 107 (1995), 44–52Google Scholar, at 46 n. 10; Rutherford, I., Pindar's Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre (Oxford, 2001), 356Google Scholar; A. Pardini in D'Alessio (n. 3), 46 n. 142 (with D'Alessio's objection). A complex text like the Paeans may well have required more explanation than a single roll could contain, and a multi-volume commentary on a one-volume text is not unheard of: the hypomnēma to Eupolis’ Marikas in P.Oxy. 2741 was probably the second of two (?) volumes (W. Luppe, review of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 26, in Gnomon 43 [1971], 113–23, at 119).

8 Filoni (n. 6), 74–5. Scholarly texts provide several examples of ‘in [title]’ used as shorthand for ‘in the commentary on [title]’: Käppel, L., ‘Pindar, Pae. fr. 67, 68, 69, 70 + *249b Sn.–M.’, RhM 135 (1992), 44–8Google Scholar. One clear example in Didymus: P.Berol. inv. 9780 col. xii.36–7 ἐν τῷ Περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου δεδηλώκα[μ]ε[ν]. But Filoni's emendation may not be needed to yield his intended meaning: Braswell (n. 1), 258 n. 351.

9 Braswell (n. 1), 259.

10 I follow Leo, F., ‘Didymos Περὶ Δημοσθένους’, NGG 1904, 254–61Google Scholar, at 260. See Luzzatto, M.T., ‘Commentare Demostene (le strategie dell’hypomnema nel Didimo di Berlino)’, BollClass 22 (2012), 3–72Google Scholar, at 26–31. Leo parallels Ath. Deipn. 7.15 (281f) Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ἐν τῶι τρίτωι Περὶ Σώφρονος τῷ εἰς τοὺς Ἀνδρείους μίμους; now see also P.Oxy. inv. 51 B 44/G(b) ] ̣ου Ἀ[ριστο-]φ̣ανείων ϛ ὑπ(όμνημα), ‘Commentary by -os on the plays of Aristophanes, vol. 6’ (M. Caroli, Il titolo iniziale nel rotolo librario greco-egizio [Bari, 2007], 191–4).

11 Käppel (n. 8); as he remarks, editors are wrong to regard them as citations of the Paeans.

12 Käppel (n. 8), 46. Didymus: P.Berol. inv. 9780 col. vi.54–5 καθ]άπερ προέκκειται (referring to v.18–21), xii.41–2 εἴρηται μ(ὲν) ἡμῖν ἐντελῶς (probably referring to the commentary on the speech On the Crown cited at xii.36–7, see n. 8 above).

13 So already A. Boeckh, Pindari opera quae supersunt, II/1 (Leipzig, 1819), xvii–xviii; Schmidt, M., Didymi Chalcenteri grammatici Alexandrini fragmenta (Leipzig, 1854), 239–40Google Scholar. Sensibly, Braswell (n. 1), 261 n. 352 believes that they are ‘very likely Didymos’, but without corroborative evidence they should more properly be included as dubia’.