Erudition and Scholarship in Greek Epigram

Abstract

English original of ‘Érudition: Épigramme Grecque’ in C. Urlacher-Becht (ed.) (2022) Dictionnaire de l'épigramme littéraire dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine, Turnhout, pp. 592-4, 597-9

Full text

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ERUDITION AND SCHOLARSHIP IN GREEK EPIGRAM
Thomas J. Nelson
English original of Nelson, T. J. (2022) “Érudition: Épigramme Grecque”, in C. Urlacher-Becht (ed.) (2022),
Dictionnaire de l'épigramme littéraire dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine. Turnhout (Brepols): 592–4, 597–9.
1] The scholarly climate of the Hellenistic age had a significant influence on the growth and
development of literary epigram. As part of their competitive cultural politics, Hellenistic
kings patronised science and scholarship as much as poetry, and many poets actively
engaged in scholarly study themselves [23; 27, 67-279]. Their own and others’ research in
literature and science directly influenced their own poetic production [15], resulting in works
which were avowedly learned (εὐμαθία, AP XII, 257.8) and the painstaking product of
toiling, sleepless nights (→ Agrypnie). In → Alexandria, this interplay of poetry and
scholarship was particularly encouraged by the → Ptolemies’ patronage of two specific
institutions, the Library and Museum [12, I. 305-479], but the erudite nature of Greek
epigram continued well beyond the fall of the Hellenistic kingdoms, drawing on continuing
scholarship and rhetorical training [22]. In epigram, as much as in other literary genres, we
can witness this cross-fertilisation of scholarship and art in the poetry’s frequent interest in
literary history, recondite myths and language, as well as its allusions to contemporary
science, medicine and philological debate. The genre itself also proved a popular medium for
literary polemic, judging by the numerous poems we have that mock scholars’ pedantic
interests (e.g. AP XI, 20, 130, 321, 322, 347).
2] Literary learning is one of the defining features of Hellenistic and later Greek poetry, and
epigram is no exception. The systematic cataloguing and classification of past literature in
Hellenistic libraries (→ Bibliothèque) prompted an intensified interest in literary history:
numerous epigrammatists dwell on the careers and lives of both contemporary and past
poets (→ critique), especially in the form of fictive epitaphs, which express their sense of
both rupture and continuity with former greats [3, 58-65; 30]. Moreover, their poems’ dense
and elaborate allusions to past and contemporary literature (→ Intertextualité) exploit a
reader’s expected familiarity with texts both common and rare (e.g. Pollianus’ echoes of
Callimachus, Parthenius, and Epictetus in AP XI, 130 [24, 188-193] or Fronto’s euphemistic
use of canonical Menandrian titles in AP XII, 233 [25, 120-122]). Formal scholarly interests in
→ metre, → dialect and genre also manifest themselves: from the Hellenistic period onward,
epigrammatists manipulated newly-codified generic boundaries to toy with the limits of
their own genre [5, 389-425] and encapsulated core features of other genres into their own
poetry (so-called → Mélange des genres); dialectal variants were exploited for a variety of
literary and cultural effects [7; 8; 29]; and epigrammatists freely experimented with metrical
forms [9, 39 n.155], often with striking results, as in Erucius’ elaborate imitation of
galliambics in AP VI, 234 [5, 454-5]. The scholarly editing and ordering of earlier texts into
poetry books also influenced epigrammatists’ arrangement of their own poems, as poets
became artful editors of their own collections (→ Poète-éditeur), while the very textuality of
the written epigram inspired a host of visual literary games and technopaignia [21], as poets
played with the distinction between → image and text [35; 36]: these include → acrostics,

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which spell out a word or phrase at the start of consecutive lines (e.g. ΘΕΙΕ, AP VI, 330;
ΓΕΡΜΑΝΟΥ, AP XIV, 148; and the abcdaria of AP IX, 385, 524, 525); more complicated
varieties of acrostics, in which a single word is hidden in a string of separate words (e.g.
ΚΡΑΝΙΟΝ, AP V, 74 [16]); palindromic anacyclica, which can be read both forwards and
backwards, without disrupting metre or sense (e.g. Nicodemus of Heraclea, AP VI, 314-20,
323; IX, 53); → isopsephy, the art of using Greek letters’ numerical value to produce couplets
or individual verses of equal value (e.g. → Leonides of Alexandria); and → carmina figurata
which are written in the shape of the objects they describe [18].
3] Greek epigrammatists also display a learned interest in philology and → language. This is
visible in their etymological play and puns, such as Ammianus’s exploitation of the common
etymology for Apollo from ἀπόλλυμι, ‘I destroy’ (AP XI, 188) and punning collocation of
φθειρῶν, ‘lice’, and φρενῶν, ‘brains’ (AP XI, 156) [11, 90-93]. They also flaunt their
knowledge of foreign words (e.g. Meleager’s combination of the Syrian σάλαμ, Phoenician
ναίδιος and Greek χαῖρε, AP VII, 419), alongside their mastery of technical vocabulary (e.g.
Leonidas of Tarentum’s lists of craftsman’s tools, AP VI, 204-5 [5, 450-3]). But their most
learned exploitations of language come in their allusions to lexicographical research.
Hellenistic and later scholars compiled lists of rare or obsolete words, especially from epic
and lyric poetry (known as glossai), whose meanings were often unclear or disputed. Like
poets of other genres [28], Epigrammatists relished using such glossai not only to display
their erudition, but also to signpost an intertextual connection with pinpoint precision or
indicate their preferred interpretation of a word’s meaning [5, 426-450; 32]: Callimachus’ use
of the Homeric hapax legomenon συνέριθος, for example, directly evokes the innocent world
of Nausicaa’s Scheria (AP VII, 459.3; Od.6.32) [32, 405], while various epigrammatists took
differing sides in interpreting the meaning of the Homeric hapax legomenon κρήγυον
(Il.1.106), which was understood by some to mean ‘good’, but by others to mean ‘true’: see
Asclepiades AP VII, 284.5; Archias AP V, 58.1; Leonidas of Tarentum AP VII, 648.9, AP IX,
335.2; Theocritus AP 13.3.3 [31, 205; 32, 396]. In so doing, poets conducted exegesis and
interpretation through their own poems: epigram became an active form of literary criticism
and commentary.
4] However, erudition in epigram is not limited to the spheres of language and literature.
Epigrammatists also exhibited a broad range of knowledge and learning in other fields,
including:
• Aetiology: e.g. Dioscorides on the foundation of a shrine to the Magna Marta (AP VI,
220) and on the invention of the double flute for Cybele (AP IX, 340); Hedylus on the
origins of the deer sanctuary at Kourion’s temple of Apollo Hylates (SH 459) [5, 97-
114].
• Astronomy: e.g. Antipater of Thessalonica on two bowls that together represent the
whole celestial sphere (AP IX, 541); Philodemus on a certain Anticrates’ star-signs (AP
XI, 318).
• Botany: e.g. Meleager’s list of plants, fruits and flowers in his prefatory epigram (AP
IV, 1), cf. Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum.
• Ethnography: e.g. Philodemus’ epigram on the beauty of the black woman Philaenion
(μελανεῦσα), whose hair is more curled than parsley (σελίνων οὐλοτέρη, AP V,
121); cf. Asclepiades on the black Didyme (μέλαινα, AP V, 210) [34].

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• Geography and Topography: e.g. Callimachus’s possible allusion to scholarly debate
about the distance between Mounts Ida and Dicte (AP VII, 518) [5, 207-9]
• Local Antiquarianism: e.g. epigrams by Theodoridas (AP VI, 156) and Euphorion (AP
VI, 279) on epichoric hair-cutting traditions [5, 294-306]
• Mathematics: e.g. Eratosthenes’ epigram on duplicating the cube (fr.35 Powell, p.66)
[20]; Archimedes’ epigrammatic Cattle Problem (SH 201) [2; 19]
• Medicine [5, 216-242]: e.g. Callimachus’ epigram on the cures of love (AP XII, 150)
[10]; Asclepiades’ manipulation of the language of disease (AP XII, 46).
• Mythology: e.g. Antipater of Thessalonica’s mention of Sleep’s wife, Pasithea (cf.
Il.14.275-6), and mythical musicians in AP IX, 517 [30, 381-383]; numerous epigrams
evoking Trojan myth [14].
• Paradoxography: e.g. Posidippus on the θαυμάσιον τέρας of a double magnet (AB
17) [4, 132-5; 17, 88-92]; Archelaus Chersonesites’ epigrams on creatures that emerge
from animal corpses (SH 125-9, FGE pp. 20-24).
• Philosophy [5, 66-94; 6]: e.g. Meleager’s treatment of Democritean theories of vision
(AP XII, 127); Callimachus’ engagement with Platonic doctrine [1].
• Zoology and Life Sciences: e.g. Callimachus’ epigram on the nautilus shell (14 HE),
which draws on Aristotle’s account of the animal [13], and Posidippus’ Lithika, a
section which owes much to prose treatises like Theophrastus’ On Stones [33].
5] The concise nature of epigram evidently made it an attractive and successful vehicle for
the display of much learning and erudition from a variety of spheres. But we should not
simply take this as a sign that literary epigram was solely designed for or read by a highly
esoteric and cloistered elite; for there is in fact evidence that it was read and enjoyed by a
considerably wider audience. Epigrams feature alongside Homer, tragedy and comedy in
school anthologies from the Hellenistic period (e.g. SH 978-9) [26], while the very nature of
Greek education, with its emphasis on the texts of Homer and an atomistic focus on
individual words, facts and language, is not worlds apart from many of the erudite interests
we have discussed above (see e.g. the schooling question-and-answers of Aristophanes
Daitales [Banqueters], fr. 233 K.-A.; Herodas 3.24-6). Much of the learning on display in
epigram would thus be, at least to some degree, familiar and accessible to a relatively broad
audience.
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T. J. Nelson