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THE LITERARY POLEMICS OF ANTH. PAL. 11.275

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2020

Rachel Philbrick
Rachel Philbrick*
Affiliation:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
*
rsphilbrick@gmail.com
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      Καλλίμαχος τὸ κάθαρμα, τὸ παίγνιον, ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς,
      αἴτιος ὁ γράψας Αἴτια Καλλίμαχος.
      Callimachus [means] trash, trifle, wooden mind:
      the cause is the Callimachus who wrote Causes.

This abusive epigram, probably composed in the first century c.e. by a certain Apollonius ‘Grammaticus’, has become famous on account of its false attribution to Apollonius of Rhodes and of its consequent identification as ‘evidence’ for the literary feud between Apollonius and Callimachus. Its literary features have attracted less interest. Cameron, for one, dismissed it, finding ‘no coherent literary thrust to the polemic’. I argue here that this epigram in fact shows close engagement with the poetics of Callimachus and his language of literary self-definition. As we find in other anti-Callimachean epigrams, the author of Anth. Pal. 11.275 crafts his insults by appropriating and transforming several Callimachean terms of literary-aesthetic value, which he then directs back against their creator.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 261 - 267
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2020
Καλλίμαχος τὸ κάθαρμα, τὸ παίγνιον, ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς,
αἴτιος ὁ γράψας Αἴτια Καλλίμαχος.Footnote 1
Callimachus [means] trash, trifle, wooden mind:
the cause is the Callimachus who wrote Causes.

This abusive epigram, probably composed in the first century c.e. by a certain Apollonius ‘Grammaticus’, has become famous on account of its false attribution to Apollonius of Rhodes and of its consequent identification as ‘evidence’ for the literary feud between Apollonius and Callimachus.Footnote 2 Its literary features have attracted less interest. Cameron, for one, dismissed it, finding ‘no coherent literary thrust to the polemic’.Footnote 3 I argue here that this epigram in fact shows close engagement with the poetics of Callimachus and his language of literary self-definition. As we find in other anti-Callimachean epigrams, the author of Anth. Pal. 11.275 crafts his insults by appropriating and transforming several Callimachean terms of literary-aesthetic value, which he then directs back against their creator.

The epigram's structure has inspired some of the most significant interpretative work. The list-like arrangement of line 1 has led to the idea that this line parodies a lexical entry defining the lemma ‘Callimachus’.Footnote 4 The significance of such an entry's ‘definitions’ has been queried, and hidden meanings have been sought—spurred perhaps by the obscurity of the phrase ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς. Ferguson proposed for each term in line 1 a synonym beginning with καλ- and suggested that the entire line was inspired by ‘an alphabetical dictionary’ turned to a page for the letter kappa.Footnote 5 This clever hypothesis, however, did not explain what these words or the proposed synonyms had to do with Callimachus. Cairns, expanding on Ferguson's idea, has suggested that a connection to Callimachus resides in the shared stem καλ-. He argues that Callimachus’ famous play with καλ- words in the Hekale influenced the type of lexical entries that the epigram parodies.Footnote 6

These interpretations of the epigram, while ingenious, do not take into account the context of Anth. Pal. 11.275 as one in a class of anti-Callimachean epigrams, which should condition how we read the insults in line 1. This type of epigram endorses an anti-Callimachean literary aesthetic that rejects the poetic values and practices of ‘pedantic’ scholar-poets following in the tradition of Callimachus.Footnote 7 In their literary polemics, the authors of these epigrams frequently adopt and subvert Callimachean literary-critical terminology—that is, the language Callimachus used in order to describe his own and his rivals’ poetry, which is found in the most programmatic parts of his poetry, particularly in the prologue to the Aetia, at the end of the Hymn to Apollo and in Epigram 28 Pf. (= 11 HE).Footnote 8 These epigrams frequently mention Callimachus by name, but their broader target is an entire class of poets who evidently sided with him in literary debates about style. Thus, when Antipater of Thessalonica (first century b.c.e./first century c.e.) addresses the ποιητῶν φῦλον ἀκανθολόγων | οἵ τ’ ἐπέων κόσμον λελυγισμένον ἀσκήσαντες | κρήνης ἐξ ἱερῆς πίνετε λιτὸν ὕδωρ (‘tribe of thorn-eating poets and you arrangers of twisted word order who drink plain water from a holy spring’, Anth. Pal. 11.20.2–4 = 20 G–P), he is turning against Callimacheans the language of Callimachus himself: φῦλον is used by Callimachus to refer to the Telchines at Aet. fr. 1.7 (cf. their designation as an evil breed also at Aet. fr. 1.17: βασκανίης ὀλοὸν γένος) and Antipater's κρήνης ἐξ ἱερῆς πίνετε in line 4 adapts both πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς (Callim. Hymn 2.112) and οὐδ’ ἀπὸ κρήνης | πίνω (Callim. Epigr. 28.3–4 Pf.).Footnote 9

This practice lies behind the specific insults of Anth. Pal. 11.275, a fact that has not drawn the attention of commentators, even though the pun on aitios and Aitia in line 2 makes it clear that the epigrammatist's strategy is to re-semantize Callimachus’ own words to form literary-critical insults. However obvious, the aitios-Aitia pun works by manipulating a Callimachean value-word (here, the title of a work) to form an insult by changing its referent from poem (thing) to poet (person), with a consequent change in value from positive to negative. The same process is at work in line 1. Callimachus is described with three terms, and each of these is an insult formed from a Callimachean value-word, that is, a literary-critical term Callimachus has used in programmatic passages to claim the superior value of his poetry over the poetry of his literary adversaries and critics.

The first term of insult, τὸ κάθαρμα, derives from καθαιρέω (‘to cleanse’) and is thus connected to the adjective καθαρός (‘pure, spotless’). In the famous metapoetic passage that closes his Hymn to Apollo, Callimachus describes the water bees gather—the type of water his Apollo values more than the ‘great stream of the Assyrian river’—as καθαρή (Hymn 2.108–12):

Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοῖο μέγας ῥόος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πολλὰ
λύματα γῆς καὶ πολλὸν ἐφ’ ὕδατι συρφετὸν ἕλκει.
Δηοῖ δ’ οὐκ ἀπὸ παντὸς ὕδωρ φορέουσι μέλισσαι,
ἀλλ’ ἥτις καθαρή τε καὶ ἀχράαντος ἀνέρπει
πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὁλίγη λιβὰς ἄκρον ἄωτον.

Callimachus’ poetry is the pure and undefiled water suitable for holy ritual, while the poetic style he rejects is the massively flowing river, which draws all manner of trash along with it.Footnote 10 The two positive-value adjectives in line 111 (καθαρή τε καὶ ἀχράαντος) balance the two words for ‘refuse’ in line 109, συρφετόν (‘off-sweepings, litter’) and λύματα (‘waste-water, off-scourings’). The latter is synonymous with κάθαρμα: both refer to dirt that is washed away in the cleansing process (cf. Hesychius s.v. λῦμα).Footnote 11 The epigrammatist is responding to the programmatic language in this passage: with κάθαρμα, he retains the sense of λύματα (a Callimachean negative-value word) and redirects it against Callimachus, while assimilating it in sound and etymology to the positive-value term καθαρός. He also seems to be playing with the ease with which this inversion can occur: a single ‘μ’ is all that is needed to flip the value from positive to negative.

The second insult, τὸ παίγνιον (an unusual use of the word, as Page notes),Footnote 12 operates on several levels. First, generally, ‘playing’ (παίζειν, Latin ludere) is a way to describe the act of composing (usually ‘light’) poetry, and the product of that playful composition is a παίγνιον or ludus/lusus.Footnote 13 Philetas of Cos wrote a book of epigrams titled Paignia.Footnote 14 The term παίγνιον appears in two Callimachean poems, both times with metapoetic significance, in which the poet's composition is implicitly aligned with a divine offering. In a dedicatory epigram spoken in the voice of a nautilus shell, which has been dedicated by a girl named Selenaia ‘to become the admired paignion (treasure)’ of Arsinoe (ὄφρα γένωμαι | σοὶ τὸ περίσκεπτον παίγνιον, Ἀρσινόη, Epigr. 5.7–8 Pf. = 14 HE), the word refers literally to the shell but applies equally to the epigram, the poet's own modest but beautiful offering to his divinized queen.Footnote 15 The Ionic form παίχνια appears twice in Iambus 12 (fr. 202.28 and 33 Pf.) in reference to literal toys given by Athena and Poseidon to the child-god Hebe, presents which Apollo's gift of song surpasses; the Iambus is the poet's gift, on the parallel occasion of the birth of a friend's daughter (Diegesis 9.27 [Pfeiffer vol. 1 page 200]), for which Apollo's song provides the paradigm.Footnote 16

Children and childhood are important themes not just in Iambus 12 but broadly across Callimachus's œuvre, and the idea of ‘childlikeness’ inherent in παίζειν/παίγνιον was embraced by Callimachus as a distinctive characteristic of his poetic style.Footnote 17 In the Aetia prologue, the poet distinguishes himself from those who write long poems about kings and heroes. He instead writes his ‘poem little by little, like a child, although the decades of my years are not few’ (ἔπος δ’ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλ[ίσσω] | παῖς ἅτε, τῶν δ’ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη, Aet. fr. 1.5–6). This charge was originally laid against Callimachus by the Telchines as a criticism of the inappropriateness of his poetry: his ‘childlike’ compositions are not appropriate (prepon) to someone his age. Although this was intended as a negative assessment of his poetics, the image of the child captures one of the distinctive features of the Aetia's composition, namely its non-linear narrative.Footnote 18 Furthermore, for Callimachus, childhood is the period of life when true poets are first favoured by the gods of poetry (cf. Aet. fr. 1.21–2 and 37–8, Epigr. 21.5–6 = 29.5–6 HE). Ιn Anth. Pal. 11.275, the insult of τὸ παίγνιον resides in the transfer of the literary term from the poet's product to the poet himself, thus presenting him as ridiculous and trivial, just as the aitios-Aitia insult functions in line 2. While Callimachus in the Aetia prologue appropriated his rivals’ criticism and refashioned it into a positive-value term, the epigrammatist reactivates the negative value of ‘childishness’ and recovers it as an insult.Footnote 19

The third and final insult in line 1, ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς (‘wooden mind’), is the most obscure. No clear referent can be found in the extant Callimachean corpus. Elsewhere, the adjective ξύλινος occasionally has the meaning ‘unresponsive’ or ‘stiff’ (that is, non-human in response or movement),Footnote 20 but its use to mean ‘stupid’, as it is commonly interpreted here, is unparalleled.Footnote 21

For the insult ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς to function according to the same principle as the epigram's other insults, the phrase must be drawn from a Callimachean passage where the poet defends his poetics and which contains references to (1) something wooden, as a metaphor for his poetry, and (2) the mind or mental processes. Wood carries metapoetic significance in Callimachus’ works with some regularity,Footnote 22 but the confluence of all three of the necessary elements—self-defence of poetry, wood, mind—is found with certainty only once, in Iambus 13 (fr. 203 Pf.). This makes it an intriguing potential source for the epigrammatist's obscure insult, although the fragmentary survival of the Iambi means that only speculation is possible.

Iambus 13 provides an extended defence of Callimachus’ poetry, particularly its generic variety (πολυείδεια), and has strong connections to the programmatic passages of the Aetia prologue and the Hymn to Apollo.Footnote 23 According to the Diegesis (9.36–8), Callimachus in this poem defended himself against critics who censured his πολυείδεια through self-comparison to a woodworker or carpenter (τέκτων), who produces a variety of (wooden) artefacts.Footnote 24 Although this portion of Iambus 13 (fr. 203.34–40) is very poorly preserved (only the middle of the papyrus is legible and there is a lacuna of nine or ten lines immediately preceding line 34), the metapoetic implications of the metaphor are clear: the poet is a craftsman who possesses τέχνη, which he uses to create his finely wrought poems from the raw material available to him, carefully joining the pieces together. This metaphor is traditional (for example Pind. Ol. 6.1–4, Pyth. 3.113, Nem. 3.4; Cratinus, fr. 70 K.–A.) and a consistent feature of Callimachus’ self-presentation as poet, which emphasizes skill over divine inspiration.Footnote 25

This self-defence comes in response to the attack of a critic (fr. 203.2–22), who accuses Callimachus of (inter alia) poor mental health (ὑγιείης, 21). The poet's friends, the critic says, will forcibly intervene, ‘if they have sense’ (κ[ἢ]ν νοῦν ἔχωσιν, 20)—a contrast that highlights the distance of the ‘mad’ poet from reasonable people. The remainder of the poem contains the poet's response, in which he systematically appropriates the critic's own images and words, and redeploys them in his defence of his poetry.Footnote 26 The critic's insanity charge is turned back against him at line 40 (the only complete line in the carpenter section), where the poet says: τὰ νῦν δὲ πολλὴν τυφεδῶνα λεσχαίνεις (‘but in these things now you are talking much nonsense’). It is possible that Callimachus also appropriated in this section, where he self-fashions as a woodworker, the critic's point about ‘having sense’ (νοῦν ἔχειν) in order to turn it into a positive description of his own poetics. This passage would then unite the images of ‘wood’ and ‘mind’ in an overtly polemical passage, and it therefore might have provided the author of Anth. Pal. 11.275 with the phrase he in turn appropriates in his abuse of Callimachus. Whereas ‘wood’ in the context of Iambus 13 had a positive value because it referred to the material on which the poet exerted his skill, its application instead to Callimachus in the phrase ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς flips the value. No longer the craftsman, Callimachus now resembles the raw material, and the insult implies a ‘stiff’ mental process and a poet who cannot shape his material. Although speculative, this reading follows the process that lies behind the three other terms of abuse in the epigram, all of which adapt language found in passages of literary self-defence—language that Callimachus has often taken over from his own critics and transformed into positive descriptors of his literary aesthetic. The image of Callimachus this phrase then gives is of a poet who cannot master the material, a pendant who merely digs up obscure stories without refining them through artistic skill and imagination.Footnote 27

The pentameter that caps the epigram provides the ‘reason’ (aition) for the hexameter's new definition of the term ‘Callimachus’: Callimachus, through his poetry (especially the Aetia), is to blame for the insulting redefinition of his name. The Aetia—with its obscure stories and rare vocabulary that draw upon deep, scholarly work—exemplifies for this critic the worst qualities of Callimachean poetics: the ‘childish’ assembly of the results of pedantic research on trivial topics. The whole epigram, then, imitates a single lexical entry: the hexameter supplies the lemma and the (re)definition, while the pentameter provides the aetiology of the new term.Footnote 28 This basic structure (lemma, definition, aetiology/etymology) is common for lexical entries (such as Suda α 98 Adler, for just one example). Ironically, our epigrammatist is imitating the author he criticizes, since providing explanations and aetiologies of obscure practices and words was precisely Callimachus’ project in the Aetia and elsewhere. At the level of the whole poem, then, as well as at the lexical level, the epigrammatist subverts Callimachean values by imitation and appropriation.

Reading Anth. Pal. 11.275 in this light, we can appreciate that its author had enough cleverness and wit to create novel insults within the well-trod field of Alexandrian literary polemics. These are attributes with which this epigrammatist is usually not credited, perhaps primarily because of the lack of subtlety in the aitios-Aitia pun in line 2. The obviousness of that pun, however, serves an important function, exposing the mechanism with which we should investigate each of the descriptors in line 1 and revealing to a reader immersed in the literary polemics of the time an original contribution to the subgenre of anti-Callimachean epigram.

References

1 Anth. Pal. 11.275 = 1 Page FGE Ap. Rhod. = 13 Powell Coll. Alex. Ap. Rhod. = T 25 Pfeiffer. I accept Bentley's conjecture Καλλίμαχος in line 2 for the reading Καλλιμάχου recorded in the Palatine and Planudian manuscripts, but cf. the argument against the emendation by Lehnus, L., ‘Notizie callimachee, II’, Paideia 45 (1990), 277–92, at 291–2Google Scholar.

2 See Cairns, F., ‘Callimachus the “woodentop” (AP XI 275)’, in Belloni, L., Milanese, G. and Porro, A. (edd.), Studia classica Johanni Tardi oblata (Milan, 1995), 607–15Google Scholar, at 608 (with bibliography); Cameron, Alan, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 227Google Scholar; Lefkowitz, M.R., The Lives of the Greek Poets (Baltimore, 20122), 114Google Scholar; cf. Page, D.L., Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981), 17Google Scholar, who accepts the attribution to the Rhodian.

3 Cameron (n. 2), 228: ‘Indeed, the most important objection to connecting the poem to Apollonius in any way is simply that there is no coherent literary thrust to the polemic. Line 1 contains mere abuse, and though Line 2 attacks the Aetia, the attack turns on nothing more profound than a pun.’

4 The lexical interpretation was first suggested by Croiset, A., Histoire de la littérature Grecque: Periode Alexandrine, vol. 5 (Paris, 1901), 211 n. 5Google Scholar; Rose, H.J., A Handbook of Greek Literature: From Homer to the Age of Lucian (London, 1934), 325Google Scholar accepted and expanded the idea to encompass also line 2, which he suggested introduces a second lemma (‘αἴτιος’) and definition.

5 Ferguson, J., Callimachus (Boston, 1980), 162–3Google Scholar. He suggests κάλλυσμα for κάθαρμα, καλλοπίσμα for παίγνιον, and καλόπους for ξύλινος νοῦς. Apparently independently, Aubreton, R., Anthologie Grecque, tome 10 (Paris, 1972), 168 nGoogle Scholar. 2 arrived at a very similar interpretation: ‘Le premier vers cite des terms rares employés par Callimaque qui auraient été rassemblés dans un lexique ou une glose alphabétique: κάλλυσμα⋅ τὸ κάθαρμα – καλο…⋅ τὸ παίγνιον – καλόπους⋅ ὁ ξύλινος νοῦς’.

6 Cairns (n. 2), 611 cites Suda κ 201 Adler as an example of the kind of lexical entry that the author of Anth. Pal. 11.275 was parodying. He concedes (at 613) that the connection to Callimachus would only have been appreciated by ‘the true cognoscenti’.

7 See Gutzwiller, K., Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context (Berkeley, 1998), 168CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The appropriation of Callimachean aesthetic vocabulary need not be exclusively antagonistic (cf. Sens, A., ‘Hedylus [4 and 5 Gow–Page] and Callimachean poetics’, Mnemosyne 68 [2015], 40–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

8 The language and the practice are discussed in detail by Cairns, F., Hellenistic Epigram: Contexts of Exploration (Cambridge, 2016), 125–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; he discusses the following epigram of Antipater at 174.

9 The epigram concludes by contrasting water-drinking (bad) poets with wine-drinking (good) poets such as Archilochus and Homer, which takes up and elaborates on Callimachus’ self-association with holy water and sacred springs, in a process very similar to what I describe below in the case of Anth. Pal. 11.275. The water/wine contrast may originate with Antipater (Knox, P., ‘Wine, water, and Callimachean poetics’, HSPh 89 [1985], 107–19, at 111Google Scholar). Also like Anth. Pal. 11.275, a lexicographical influence is suggested by the string of three obscure terms in line 1 (λόκκας ἢ λοφνίδας ἢ καμασῆνας); cf. Cameron (n. 2), 366 n. 26; Cairns (n. 8), 173.

10 Cf. Asper, M., Onomata allotria: Zur Genese, Struktur und Funktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos (Stuttgart, 1997), 109–34Google Scholar; Cheshire, K., ‘Kicking ΦΘΟΝΟΣ: Apollo and his chorus in Callimachus’ Hymn 2’, CPh 103 (2008), 354–73Google Scholar (with further references). καθαρός appears once elsewhere in Callimachus’ poetry, at Epigr. 7 Pf. (= 57 HE): ἦλθε Θεαίτητος καθαρὴν ὁδόν; cf. the similar language in an overtly metapoetic context at Aet. fr. 1.27–8 Harder (with n. ad loc.). In the Alexandrian literary-critical vocabulary, καθαρός is roughly synonymous with λεπτός, another positive-value term (cf. Arat. Phaen. 783: λεπτὴ μὲν καθαρή τε, which begins the famous ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic that runs lines 783–7; cf. Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos [Phén., 783–87]’, REA 62 [1960], 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more recently, Hanses, M., ‘The pun and the moon in the sky: Aratus’ ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic’, CQ 64 [2014], 609–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with references). Callimachean ‘pure’ (purus) style is adopted by later Roman poets, e.g. Prop. 3.1.3 (puro de fonte, a clear adaptation of Callim. Hymn 2.112: πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς, in an elegy that begins Callimachi manes); Prop. 2.13.12 (auribus et puris scripta probasse mea); Tib. 1.1.38 (diui … nec e puris spernite fictilibus); cf. Hunter, R., The Shadow of Callimachus (Cambridge, 2006), 14–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 λύματα appears four times in the extant Callimachean corpus: Hymn 1.17, Hymn 2.109, Aet. fr. 75.25 Harder (= fr. 75.25 Pf.), Hecale fr. 114 Hollis (= fr. 295 Pf.), where it is paired with φορυτόν; cf. Hopkinson, N., Callimachus: Hymn to Demeter (Cambridge, 1984), n. on 6.115Google Scholar. κάθαρμα does not appear in the extant corpus.

12 Page (n. 2), 17.

13 ludere is commonly used in this sense (cf. OLD s.v. 8b); for Gk. παίζειν used similarly, cf. Pind. Ol. 1.14; Ion, fr. 27.7. On the terms παίζειν and παίγνιον, cf. Reitzenstein, R., Epigramm und Skolion (Giessen, 1893), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar (who identifies the phrase οἴνῳ καίρια συγγελάσαι at Callim. Epigr. 35.2 as a periphrasis for the ‘terminus technicus παίζειν’) and n. 2 there. The nouns παίγνιον and lusus are both well attested in reference to poetic compositions (e.g. Ael. NA 15.19 [about Theocritus]; Leonides, Anth. Pal. 6.322 = 2 Page FGE; Meleager, Anth. Pal. 7.196 = 13 HE; Ov. Tr. 2.223).

14 Stobaeus (Flor. 2.4.5) preserves the title and the following lines (fr. 25 Spanoudakis = fr. 12 Sbardella = fr. 10 Powell): οὐ μέ τις ἐξ ὀρέων ἀποφώλιος ἀγροιώτης | αἱρήσει κλήθρην, αἰρόμενος μακέλην⋅ | ἀλλ’ ἐπέων εἰδὼς κόσμον καὶ πολλὰ μογήσας, | μύθων παντοίων οἶμον ἐπιστάμενος. The phrase ἐπέων εἰδὼς κόσμον καὶ πολλὰ μογήσας may lie behind ἐπέων κόσμον λελυγισμένον ἀσκήσαντες at Anth. Pal. 11.20.3 (quoted above). Cf. Sbardella, L., Filita: Testimonianze e frammenti poetici (Rome, 2000), 127–36Google Scholar.

15 Cf. Gutzwiller, K., ‘The nautilus, the halcyon, and Selenaia: Callimachus's “Epigram” 5 Pf. = 14 G.–P.’, ClAnt 11 (1992), 194–209, at 208–9Google Scholar, on the presence of the poet's voice in this epigram. Strengthening the metapoetic reading of paignion here is the observation of Gutzwiller (n. 7), 194 that separation of this poem from its dedicatory context in a collection of epigrams would make the poet's voice more prominent.

16 Cf. Acosta-Hughes, B., Polyeideia: The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition (Berkeley, 2002), 120–43, especially 130–1Google Scholar (the Callimachean terms used to describe Athena and her paignia) and 134–5 (Apollo's song).

17 Cf. Ambühl, A., Kinder und junge Helden: Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos (Leuven, 2005), especially 385–413Google Scholar (on the Aetia prologue); Snell, B., The Discovery of the Mind (New York, 1982), 264–80Google Scholar; Asper (n. 10), 148–50.

18 Cf. Harder, A., Callimachus Aetia: Volume 2 Commentary (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Cameron (n. 2), 242–3; Acosta-Hughes, B. and Stephens, S., ‘Aetia fr. 1.5: I told my story like a child’, ZPE 136 (2001), 214–16Google Scholar; Stephens, S., ‘Linus song’, Hermathena 173–4 (2002–3), 13–28Google Scholar. Age, especially the contrast between child and old man, is a key theme in the Aetia prologue; cf. Acosta-Hughes, B. and Stephens, S., ‘Rereading Callimachus’ “Aetia” fragment 1’, CPh 97 (2002), 238–55, at 240–1Google Scholar.

19 Cf. the similar insult from the roughly contemporary Lucilius, Anth. Pal. 11.140.4 (νηπυτιευόμενοι Νέστορι καὶ Πριάμῳ, ‘playing childish games with Nestor and Priam’), also directed against Callimacheans, where ‘childishness’ is clearly connected to pedantry and triviality.

20 Ach. Tat. 5.22 (ὁ δὲ σιδηροῦς τις ἢ ξύλινος ἦν), Palladas, Anth. Pal. 11.255 (Δάφνην καὶ Νιόβην ὠρχήσατο Μέμφις ὁ Σῖμος, | ὡς ξύλινος Δάφνην, ὡς λίθινος Νιόβην = Auson. Epigrammata Varia 9 in Green, R.P.H., The Works of Ausonius [Oxford, 1991]Google Scholar: Daphnen et Nioben saltauit simius idem, | ligneus ut Daphne, saxeus ut Niobe; a similar idea is expressed in Lucilius, Anth. Pal. 11.253).

21 In later Latin, ligneus is attested in reference to stupid people (TLL 7.2.1384.45–9), but the inference that the Greek phrase means something equivalent to ‘stupid’ is difficult to support through comparanda (cf. Cairns [n. 2], 613); Aubreton (n. 5), 168 translates the phrase with different emphasis, as ‘le cabochard’ (‘pigheaded’). He and Ferguson (n. 5), followed by Cairns (n. 2), have seen an allusion to a similar phrase, ὁ ξύλινος ποῦς, attested at Suda κ 201 (as a gloss on καλόπους, a cobbler's wooden foot form); cf. the reference to a poet's ‘wooden leg’ (crure ligneo) at Mart. 10.100.6, an overt metapoetic critique.

22 E.g. the laurel and olive trees in Iambus 4 (cf. Acosta-Hughes [n. 16], 191–204); Demeter's ξύλον ἱερόν in Hymn 6 (cf. P. Bing, ‘Callimachus and the Hymn to Demeter’, SyllClass 6 [1995], 31 and Müller, C.W., Erysichthon [Stuttgart, 1987], 27–45)Google Scholar; Aet. fr. 178.12 (ὀλίγῳ κισσυβίῳ, with Cameron [n. 2], 136) and Aet. fr. 73 (with Harder [n. 18], 577). The Aetia prologue unites the themes of youthfulness and wood in the description of Apollo's visit to the poet as a child, when he first put his writing tablet (δέλτος, synonymous with τὸ ξύλινον) on his knees (Aet. fr. 1.21–2).

23 Cf. Kerkhecker, A., Callimachus’ Book of Iambi (Oxford, 1999), 268–9Google Scholar; Acosta-Hughes (n. 16), 102–3. The programmatic status of Iambus 13 is first signalled by the opening address to the Muses and to Apollo (Μοῦσαι καλαὶ κἄπολλον, οἷς ἐγὼ σπένδω, fr. 203.1).

24 Dieg. 9.33–8 (Pfeiffer vol. 1 page 205): ἐν τούτῳ πρὸς τοὺς καταμεμφομέ- | νους αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῇ πολυειδείᾳ ὧν γρά|φει ποιημάτων ἀπαντῶν φησιν ὅτι | Ἴωνα μιμεῖται τὸν τραγικόν⋅ ἀλλ’ οὐ|δὲ τὸν τέκτονά τις μέμφεται πολυειδῆ | σκεύη τεκταινόμενον (‘In this [poem] he says to those criticizing him for the variety of poems he writes, that he is imitating Ion the tragedian: no one criticizes the carpenter who crafts varied instruments’). Note the similar language in the Florentine scholia's summary of the Aetia prologue (Pfeiffer vol. 1 page 3 lines 8–9): [τοῖς με]μφομ(έν)ο[ι]ς αὐτοῦ τὸ κάτισ[χνον τῶν ποιη]μάτ(ων) (‘[he responds] to those criticizing the thinness of his poems’). Barber, E.A., ‘Review: The fragments of Callimachus’, CR 1 (1951), 78–80, at 80Google Scholar suggests the supplement δί]φρα καὶ τράπ[εζαν (‘chairs and table’) in fr. 203.36, which would provide the specific wooden products of the metaphor.

25 Also at Iambi 6 (ἁ τέχνα, 1) and 12.56–7 (with Acosta-Hughes [n. 16], 92–5, 135, 290–1; Kerkhecker [n. 23], 263), Hymn 2.55–64; cf. Aet. fr. 1.17 (τέχνῃ). Iambus 12 unites the themes of childhood, play and woodworking skill in the detail of the πολλὰ τεχνήεντα ποικ[ίλ]α γλ[υφῇ | παίχν[ια] (fr. 202.27–8 Pf.) that Athena gives to Hebe. Steiner, D., The Crown of Song: Metaphor in Pindar (Oxford, 1986), 52–65Google Scholar discusses Pindar's use of the craftsman metaphor; cf. also Finkelberg, M., The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1998), 100–11Google Scholar; Asper (n. 10), 28 and 71 n. 204. There is likely also Platonic influence in the references to the τέκτων and to Ion in Iambus 13: cf. Clayman, D.L., ‘Callimachus’ thirteenth Iamb: the last word’, Hermes 104 (1976), 29–35, at 32–3Google Scholar; Depew, M., ‘ἰαμβεῖον καλεῖται νῦν: genre, occasion, and imitation in Callimachus, frr. 191 and 203Pf.’, TAPhA 122 (1992), 313–30, at 326–7Google Scholar; Acosta-Hughes (n. 16), 85–9.

26 E.g. 13.64–6 (likely the poem's closing lines), which echo the critic's insults from lines 11–14. The process of assimilation in Iambus 13 likely goes in both directions, from poet to critic and back, since it appears that the critic in his turn appropriated the poet's language (e.g. the critic's [καλ]αι̣ Μοῦσαι at fr. 203.22 echoes the poet's Μοῦσαι καλαί at line 1), but the poet has the final word. Cf. Acosta-Hughes (n. 16), 79–82, 99 and 102–3.

27 Pedantry (characterized by an obsession with obscure and trivial subjects) is a common criticism of Callimacheans: e.g. Philip, Anth. Pal. 11.321 = 60 G–P; Antiphanes, Anth. Pal. 11.322 = 9 G–P; Philip, Anth. Pal. 11.347 = 61 G–P (cf. especially ἡ δὲ μέλαινα | ἱστορίη τήκοι τοὺς Περικαλλιμάχους, 5–6); Lucilius, Anth. Pal. 11.140.

28 The pentameter has historically posed interpretative problems (e.g. Page [n. 2], 18: ‘the meaning, especially in relation to the previous line, is obscure’), and the solution that has gained broadest support reads αἴτιος as a second lemma; so Paton, W.R., The Greek Anthology (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 4.199Google Scholar; Rose (n. 4), 325; Cairns (n. 2), 613–14.