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UNDER THE SIGN OF THE DISTAFF: AETIA 1.5, SPINNING AND ERINNA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Kathryn Gutzwiller
Kathryn Gutzwiller*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
*
gutzwikj@ucmail.uc.edu
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Extract

Scholars continue to make progress addressing the lacunae in our papyrological sources for Callimachus’ prologue to the Aetia, both by lending additional support to old supplements and by discounting others or demonstrating their weaknesses. To the first category belongs the crucial verb at the end of line 5, where, in my view, Callimachus first characterizes the making of his poetry (Aet. 1–6):

      πολλάκι μοι Τελχῖνες ἐπιτρύζουσιν ἀοιδῇ,
      νήιδες οἳ Μούσης οὐκ ἐγένοντο φίλοι,
      εἵνεκε]ν οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς ἢ βασιλ[η
      ⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]ας ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν
      ἢ⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]⋅ους ἥρωας, ἔπος δ᾽ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλ[ίσσω
      παῖς ἅτε, τῶν δ᾽ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη.
      Often the Telchines mutter at my poetry,
      being ignorant and no friends of the Muse,
      because I have not completed one continuous poem
      in many thousands … on kings and …
      … heroes, but I … my poem only a little
      like a child, though the decades of my years are not few.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 177 - 191
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

Scholars continue to make progress addressing the lacunae in our papyrological sources for Callimachus’ prologue to the Aetia, both by lending additional support to old supplements and by discounting others or demonstrating their weaknesses.Footnote 1 To the first category belongs the crucial verb at the end of line 5, where, in my view, Callimachus first characterizes the making of his poetry (Aet. 1–6):Footnote 2

πολλάκι μοι Τελχῖνες ἐπιτρύζουσιν ἀοιδῇ,
νήιδες οἳ Μούσης οὐκ ἐγένοντο φίλοι,
εἵνεκε]ν οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς ἢ βασιλ[η
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]ας ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν
ἢ⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]⋅ους ἥρωας, ἔπος δ᾽ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλ[ίσσω
παῖς ἅτε, τῶν δ᾽ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη.
Often the Telchines mutter at my poetry,
being ignorant and no friends of the Muse,
because I have not completed one continuous poem
in many thousands … on kings and …
… heroes, but I … my poem only a little
like a child, though the decades of my years are not few.

AETIA 1.5

In the editio princeps of P.Oxy. 2079, Hunt supplemented the line with ἑλ[ίσσω, and translated ‘Ι … make but a slight roll of poetry’.Footnote 3 His suggestion continues to be popular with scholars, though the translation is known to be quite impossible:Footnote 4 ἔπος never refers to a ‘roll of poetry’,Footnote 5 τυτθόν is not here an adjective but part of an adverbial phrase, and ἑλίσσω does not in any direct sense mean ‘make’. Other supplements have found less acceptance,Footnote 6 and scholars who have sought to translate Hunt's ἑλίσσω do so in various ways, all of them problematic. Some have compared βίβλον ἑλίσσων, ‘rolling/unrolling a papyrus roll’ (as in Posidippus 118.17 Austin–Bastianini); however, that phrase, as others have noted, refers to reading a book roll and that is not the meaning needed in the Aetia prologue.Footnote 7 Some scholars who accept Hunt's supplement find a reference to mental activity (LSJ s.v. I.5), as, for example, Harder who translates ‘turn around words [sic] a little in my mind’.Footnote 8 It is altogether unclear, however, how brevity of thought fits the context here. What is needed is a verb that delineates Callimachus’ method of poetic composition, as Hunt recognized in translating ‘I make’.

Before proceeding further, it is useful to consider the opening lines in narrative terms. Some scholars read the entire first sentence as an accurate report of the criticism made by the Telchines. Acosta-Hughes and Stephens have strongly supported such a reading, arguing that Callimachus’ response to his critics begins only with his direct address to them at line 7.Footnote 9 This approach treats the second and third couplets as an objective narration more or less precisely paraphrasing the arguments against Callimachus by his detractors. Yet, surely they constitute a subjective restatement made from the scarcely disinterested point of view of the Callimachean narrator as the target of that criticism.Footnote 10 The first couplet, in which Callimachus characterizes the Telchines as muttering gossips, ignorant about poetry,Footnote 11 signals that his version of their recurring backbiting will be conveyed from an individualized narratorial perspective, which is then set out in an oppositional format. In the first, longer clause (1.3–5) the narrator embeds, in elegant poetic style, what are presumably key words and phrases from the Telchines’ complaints (οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκές, βασιλ[η, πολλαῖς, χιλιάσιν, ἥρωας). In the δέ clause, however, there is slippage into a different mode of expression that, in its shortness, imagery and dichotomous juxtaposition of youth and old age, conveys Callimachus’ prideful acceptance of Telchin criticism, when recast positively as an illustration of his own poetic principles.Footnote 12 While the δέ clause may paraphrase criticism made of his poetry as too brief, it does so in a way that reflects the narrator's own voice, his rephrasing of that criticism. It is exactly this sort of subjective narratorial presence that is the signature achievement of the Callimachean voice.

I will argue for an interpretation first made in brief compass by Marcello Durante more than half a century ago and generally ignored by later scholars. Durante perceived that Hunt's ἑλίσσω, with the meaning ‘twist’, presents spinning as an image for the composition of poetry.Footnote 13 If ἔπος is temporarily given its core meaning here, as the cognate to εἰπεῖν (as in, for example, Il. 1.543), this interpretation produces a syntactically simple and immediately understandable translation of ἔπος δ᾽ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλίσσω—‘What I have to say I spin but a little’.

THE ART OF SPINNING

From at least the fifth century b.c. ἑλίσσω, with the meaning ‘twist’ (LSJ s.v. I.4), became a standard term for spinning thread.Footnote 14 In Euripides’ Orestes Helen spins flax from a distaff by twisting it with her fingers: ἁ δὲ λίνον <λίνον> ἠλακάτᾳ | δακτύλοις ἕλισσεν, | νῆμα δ᾽ ἵετο πέδῳ, ‘she was twisting the flax on the distaff with her fingers, and thread was let down to the floor’ (1431–3).Footnote 15 In Aristophanes’ Frogs Aeschylus parodies Euripides’ emotional and sensational monodies by representing a female character who describes her spinning duties with a comically extended form of the verb: ἐγὼ δ’ ἁ τάλαινα | προσέχουσ’ ἔτυχον ἐμαυτῆς | ἔργοισι, λίνου μεστὸν ἄτρακτον | εἰειειλίσσουσα χεροῖν, | κλωστῆρα ποιοῦσ’ (1346–9), ‘I, wretch that I am, happened to be tending my tasks, twi-i-isting with my hands a spindle filling with spooling, as I make thread.’ Earlier, in critiquing Euripides’ lyric metres, Aeschylus calls on spiders that spin with the same vocal mannerism: αἵ θ᾽ ὑπωρόφιοι κατὰ γωνίας | εἰειειειειειλίσσετε δακτύλοις φάλαγγες | ἱστότονα πηνίσματα, | κερκίδος ἀοιδοῦ μελέτας (1313–16), ‘in the corners under the roof, you spiders use your fingers [= legs] to twi-i-i-i-i-ist weft threads for the loom, tuneful work for the shuttle songstress.’Footnote 16 The verb so used appears as well in the poetry of Callimachus’ contemporaries. Alexander Aetolus mentions spinning as the activity of a new bride who, ironically, will soon plot adultery: ἔτι νύμφης | ἠλάκατ᾽ ἐν θαλάμοις καλὸν ἑλισσομένης, ‘while yet the bride was giving fair twists to distaff threads in her chamber’ (fr. 3.3–4 Magnelli). In a simile Apollonius describes Medea's anxiety through comparison to a poor widow spinning: οἱ ἐν στέρνοις ἀχέων εἱλίσσετο θυμός, | οἷον ὅτε κλωστῆρα γυνὴ ταλαεργὸς ἑλίσσει | ἐννυχίη, ‘anxiously her feelings in her chest were twirled about, as when a hard-working woman twists her thread at night’ (Argon. 4.1061–3). Here Apollonius perhaps perceives spinning as the source of the metaphorical use of ἑλίσσω for emotional and mental turbulence (for example Soph. Ant. 231, Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.3; cf. Verg. Aen. 1.305, plurima uoluens).

The spinning of thread is illustrated on vases and described in various other literary passages.Footnote 17 These depictions and descriptions help us comprehend the details of the ubiquitous ancient practice of spinning, details that are essential for the correct interpretation of Callimachus’ poetic imagery. The fibres to be spun, almost always of wool or flax, were first cleaned and carded before being wound on a distaff (ἠλακάτη), a rod usually made of wood, the purpose of which was to keep the fibres from matting or tangling.Footnote 18 Holding the distaff with the left hand, the spinner then carefully pulled down (κατάγω) with her right hand a short length of fibre called a κάταγμα (in English a rove, roving or rolag); she twisted it with her fingers as her thumb set turning the spindle (ἄτρακτος) on which the thread would collect. When the spindle was full, the thread was removed and wound into a skein or ball (κλωστῆρ) to be used in weaving. In all of the passages above, as in similar Latin ones, the focus is on a woman's action, her skill in twisting (ἑλίσσω) raw fibres so as to set a spindle in motion and collect there the spun thread.Footnote 19

The process of spinning thread elicited in Aet. 1.5 by the verb ἑλίσσω thus figures Callimachus’ ἔπος as a roving (κάταγμα) that in the process of being pulled down (κατάγω) is twisted and spun into thread. The meaning of ἔπος here has been widely disputed, and for that reason I earlier translated it simply as ‘what I have to say’. Elsewhere in the Aetia, it apparently denotes an ‘account’ or a ‘narrative’, both easily extended to refer to a ‘poem’, not necessarily a hexametric one.Footnote 20 The phrase ἐπὶ τυτθόν, to be taken adverbially with ἑλίσσω, means ‘only a little’, on the model of ἐπὶ μικρόν and ἐπὶ ὀλίγον,Footnote 21 and should not be translated ‘little by little’ in the sense of segmentally.Footnote 22 It fits a quick and light twist with the hand, performed by an adept spinner. As the counter to ἐν πολλαῖς … χιλιάσιν, ἐπὶ τυτθόν indicates the brevity of Callimachus’ poetry, which is exemplified by the prologue, if not also by the individual aetiological tales to follow, and may be applied to his other poems as well. Countering ἤνυσα, ἑλίσσω offers the spinning of thread as a metaphor for his composition of poetry, as both are forms of ‘making’. With ἔπος δ᾽ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλίσσω, then, Callimachus images his poetry as a skilled intertwining with connotations of both brevity and subtle complexity.Footnote 23

Importantly, the spinning image points to the best recognized quality of Callimachus’ poetry, its λεπτότης. The normal adjective describing thread spun ‘fine’ is λεπτός, as, for instance, in the Odyssey Penelope is ‘twisting fine threads from the distaff’ (λέπτ᾽ ἠλάκατα στρωφῶσα, 17.97).Footnote 24 It also appears in an anonymous fragment of Aeolic poetry, ascribed to Sappho or Alcaeus: Μᾶλις μὲν ἔννη λέπτον ἔχοισ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀτράκτῳ λίνον (Lesb. inc. auct. fr. 21.2 V), ‘Malis was spinning her fine thread onto a spindle’. Hellenistic poets sometimes replaced that adjective with its by-form λεπταλέος. In one of several references to weaving in Posidippus’ epitymbia, this contemporary of Callimachus celebrates an elderly woman who even at the time of her death was able to interweave ‘fine (weft) thread’ into the warp (λε[πταλέον] στήμονα, 45.4 Austin–Bastianini), and Antipater of Sidon later describes each of three textile workers as ‘equal to a spider in knowledge of how to make fine thread’ (ἶσον ἀράχνᾳ τεῦξαι λεπταλέον στάμον᾽ ἐπιστάμεναι, Anth. Pal. 6.174.1–2). Callimachus’ preference in the Aetia prologue for poetry that is both short ([ὀλ]ιγόστιχος, 1.9) and fine (λεπταλέην, 1.24) is thus foreshadowed in the initial spinning metaphor.

EVIDENCE FROM LATIN ALLUSIONS

The strongest evidence that the language of Aet. 1.5 was read in antiquity as a spinning metaphor is found in the image of finely spun poetry in Augustan and later authors.Footnote 25 A core example appears in Virgil's imitation of the Aetia prologue at the opening of Eclogue 6. There Apollo admonishes the shepherd/poet Tityrus, who was singing of kings and battles, to ‘pasture his sheep fat’ but to ‘utter a poem that is drawn down fine’ (pastorem, Tityre, pinguis | pascere oportet ouis, deductum dicere carmen, 4–5). Virgil is of course imitating, all but translating, Apollo's words to the young Callimachus in the Aetia prologue (1.23–4):

‘…….]… ἀοιδέ, τὸ μὲν θύος ὅττι πάχιστον
θρέψαι, τὴ]ν̣ Μοῦσαν δ᾽ ὠγαθὲ λεπταλέην,
‘…. poet, nourish your victim as fat as possible,
but, good fellow, tend your Muse thin’.

In so doing, he hews close to Callimachus’ image of nourishing the victim fat (πάχιστον = pinguis), but it is less clear just how deductum … carmen stands in for Callimachus’ Μοῦσαν … λεπταλέην, ‘thin Muse’. If, however, we understand μοῦσα in the sense ‘poem’ (as in ἡμετέρην … Καλλίοπην, Aet. 75.77; ἐμὴ μοῦσα, 112.1), carmen then becomes a close translation, and deductum works as an equivalent of λεπταλέην if it is understood as a spinning image.Footnote 26 Servius (on Ecl. 6.5) defines deductum as tenue, ‘thin/fine’, and explains that ‘the image is from wool, which is drawn down into thinness/fineness’ (translatio a lana, quae deducitur in tenuitatem).Footnote 27 deduco is thus the exact linguistic equivalent of κατάγω, the action of drawing down fibres from the distaff to make an appropriately thin roving, an action that when skilfully done involves simultaneously twisting the fibres and setting the spindle in motion.Footnote 28 The action of deduco and that of ἑλίσσω are then concurrent parts of the art of spinning, so that the phrase deductum … carmen acts as the equivalent of μοῦσαν … λεπταλέην by providing a translation (in passive voice) of Callimachus’ ἔπος … ἑλίσσω.Footnote 29 Servius even seems to channel ἐπὶ τυτθόν with in tenuitatem, the standard Latin equivalent of λεπτότης.Footnote 30

From the Early Augustan era deduco acquired a programmatic significance that the majority of scholars now accept as a spinning metaphor. While the metaphorical use of the verb appears in a good number of passages in Latin literature, for my argument it is significant that some of them make direct allusion to the opening lines of the Aetia prologue, not just to the Μοῦσα λεπταλέη phrase. For instance, at the beginning of the second book of his Satires, Horace clearly evokes the first six lines of Callimachus’ prologue, as he sets out the complaints of his critics about his first satirical book.Footnote 31 One group is said to find fault with the harshness of his satire, while another maligns the slackness of his verses being of the sort that can be composed (deduci) a thousand lines a day (2.1.1–4). Here the second group of critics mock, with deducere, the refinement of his poetry, mischaracterizing it as compositional carelessness from excessive speed.

Ovid's preface to the Metamorphoses is another example that famously points directly to the Aetia as he asks the gods to ‘spin a continuous poem’, by drawing it down from the world's origin to his own time (ab origine mundi | ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen, 1.3–4; cf. Ov. Tr. 1.1.39, Pont. 4.1.1).Footnote 32 As both homage and deviation, Ovid rewrites Callimachus’ prologue, proclaiming that his own epic-length narrative will present a perpetuum … carmen (translating ἄεισμα διηνεκές favoured by the Telchines) while yet composed in the manner of Callimachus’ finely spun verse. In narrative form the image of spinning returns in Book 4, where one of the daughters of Minyas (the first extended example of an internal narrator in the Metamorphoses) is ‘drawing down thread with the light touch of her thumb’ (leui deducens pollice filum, 4.36), as she proposes that her sisters narrate stories as they weave.Footnote 33 Her skill at spinning is conveyed with the adjective leuis, which does much the same work as Callimachus’ ἐπὶ τυτθόν, since it is this light touch of the fingers both in drawing down a small strand of fibres and simultaneously in twisting them gently that produces fine thread.Footnote 34 With the agreement of her sisters, she begins the first tale ‘as the wool turns into her thread’ (lana sua fila sequente, 4.54). Ovid here expands in narrative mode upon the spinning image of his proem, casting the making of thread as the idea of narration (the proem, so to speak) and the act of weaving as the telling of the stories themselves.Footnote 35

The same connection between deducere and the Aetia prologue is present later in Quintilian, but transferred from poetry to oratory to apply to the prologue of a speech. The term for an oratorical prologue is exordium, which originally meant the warp thread set on the loom before weaving begins. In Quintilian's view, a prologue should not be ‘always finely spun and sophisticated, but often simple and apparently unworked’ (deducta semper atque circumlita, sed saepe simplici atque inlaboratae similis, 4.1.60). He here holds in mind the Callimachean image of spinning fine thread, an act of πόνος/labor, even as it is warded off as unsuitable for a live audience.Footnote 36

ERINNA AS MODEL

Weaving imagery, as an inheritance from the Indo-European tradition, is found as early as Homer to figure speech and mental activity.Footnote 37 On the larger scale of narrative, woven textiles, primarily the robe that Helen makes in the Iliad (3.125–8) and Penelope's weaving and unweaving of a shroud in the Odyssey, act as narrative metaphors for the plot line. Spinning imagery in earlier Greek poetry, on the other hand, was generally associated with the threads of life spun by the Fates, not with production of poetry.Footnote 38 It was seemingly through the enormous influence of Callimachus’ prologue that spinning, as a variation on weaving imagery, came to represent poetic novelty, achievable through stylistic refinement made possible by smallness of scale and exacting attention.Footnote 39 But why did Callimachus choose spinning as the initial image for his poetry in the prologue? What models might he have had?

In fifth-century texts ἑλίσσω has acquired a variety of extended meanings. The earliest known use involving mental turbulence appears in Sophocles’ Antigone, where the cowardly messenger describes his whirling thoughts (τοιαῦθ’ ἑλίσσων, 231). With likely allusion to the Sophists, Euripides characterizes speech with a double meaning as ‘twisting words’ (λόγους ἑλίσσων, Or. 892), and similarly in Democritus (fr. 150 DK) ἱμαντελίκτης, ‘rope-twister’, refers to someone who advantageously uses tricky subtleties of speech.Footnote 40 In Euripides’ later tragedies ἑλίσσω and similar words for whirling were associated with the dithyrambic style of the New Music; in these plays ἑλίσσω often evokes a feminine emotionalism exemplified by wild dancing of Dionysiac character.Footnote 41 Euripides only once uses the verb of spinning, in the Orestes passage quoted above, where a Phrygian slave in a lyric monody describes with sensationalism and broken syntax the murder of Helen, who has been calmly spinning. In comparison with other Euripidean uses of ἑλίσσω, the twisting of fibres to produce thread on a fast turning spindle, an endless domestic task that bound women to their homes, suggests the sublimation of feminine energies and desires that could be released in whirling dances. An important example of such sublimation symbolized by spinning was apparently depicted in the Distaff of Erinna.

I propose that in placing the image of spinning prominently at Aet. 1.5 Callimachus was acknowledging Erinna as the forerunner of his own aesthetic programme. A poet generally dated to the late fifth or the fourth century, Erinna was famed for a 300-line hexameter poem (SH 401), in which she adapted the tradition of women's laments to hexameter poetry.Footnote 42 The poem, of which only fragmentary lines survive, was spoken in her own voice as she remembers and mourns her girlhood friend Baucis. In three consecutive lines (37–9) Erinna mentions the number nineteen (her purported age at death), names herself, and speaks of ‘looking at a distaff’ (ἀλακάταν ἐσόρει[σα(-); cf. δερκομένα, 44).Footnote 43 From these damaged lines we may surmise that the poet represented herself alone, gazing upon this essential tool for spinning. Epigrams praising her indicate that with the distaff Erinna evoked both the spinning of the Fates and the making of her own poetry, perhaps in connection with a prediction that she too would die young. In one epigram (anon. Anth. Pal. 7.12) Moira, ‘mistress of the thread-spinning distaff’ (λινοκλώστου δεσπότις ἠλακάτης, 4),Footnote 44 is said to have driven Erinna to the underworld, while in another (anon. Anth. Pal. 9.190) she is called a ‘handmaiden of the Muses’ (Μουσέων λάτρις, 6), when she ‘stood tending her work by a distaff and a loom’ (ἐπ᾽ ἠλακάτῃ …, ἣ καὶ ἐφ᾽ ἱστῷ ἑστήκει … ἐφαπτομένη, 5–6). Christodorus (Anth. Pal. 2.108–10) later describes a statue of a sitting Erinna ‘not plying thread of great complexity’ (οὐ μίτον ἀμφαφόωσα πολύπλοκον, 2) but in silence dripping the drops of a Pierian bee.Footnote 45 As I read the epigram, Erinna, now a lifeless statue, is no longer spinning or speaking as she did in the Distaff, though her honeyed tears for Baucis yet survive through her fame as a poet.Footnote 46

Even though Erinna is not explicitly mentioned in any extant work by Callimachus, she is closely and meaningfully associated with him in an epigram by Antiphanes, a poet from Philip's Garland. In Anth. Pal. 11.322 Antiphanes mocks pedantic grammarians who judge poetry based on correct linguistic usage rather than on literary effect. In his second couplet he addresses them as

τῶν μεγάλων κηλῖδες, ἐπ᾽ Ἠρίννῃ δὲ κομῶντες,
πικροὶ καὶ ξηροὶ Καλλιμάχου πρόκυνες,
defilers of great poets, you who preen yourselves on Erinna,
bitter and dry hounds of Callimachus.

Antiphanes casts the grammarians as overly critical and drily erudite, displaying their adherence to Callimachean aesthetics by finding fault with great poets and by exulting Erinna. The remainder of the epigram explains how these pedants search for minor flaws in famous poets. But why should such grammarians take pride in Erinna, who does not seem to have practised erudite allusion? It is important to recognize, I submit, that the two halves of line 3 refer, obliquely, to the oppositional structure of the Aetia opening (1.3–6), since the grammarians are supporting with their picky criticisms Callimachus’ choice not to compose like the ‘great’ poets (τῶν μεγάλων) of the past but rather to produce finely spun verse in the manner of Erinna. Antiphanes’ allusion to Erinna comes to make sense, then, if he read ἑλίσσω in Aet. 1.5 and interpreted it as an allusion to the Distaff.

The early third-century epigrammatist Asclepiades praised Erinna's Distaff for the very poetic qualities that came to form the Callimachean aesthetic.Footnote 47 He characterizes the 300-line poem as a καλὸς πόνος (Anth. Pal. 7.11.1), a laboriously made work of art (cf. anon. Anth. Pal. 7.12.5), much as Callimachus praises Aratus’ Phaenomena for its λεπταὶ ῥήσιες, ‘refined words’, the product of sleepless labour (ἀγρυπνίη, Anth. Pal. 9.507.3–4).Footnote 48 The brevity of Erinna's poem is emphasized by various epigrammatists—in Asclepiades’ first line (οὐχὶ πολύς), in anonymous Anth. Pal. 9.190.1 (τι μικρόν), and three times in one couplet of Antipater of Sidon (Anth. Pal. 7.713.1–2):

παυροεπὴς ῎Ηριννα καὶ οὐ πολύμυθος ἀοιδαῖς,
ἀλλ᾽ ἔλαχεν Μούσας τοῦτο τὸ βαιὸν ἔπος.
Erinna was brief with words, not a teller of many tales in songs,
but from a Muse she was allotted this small poem.

In addition to Antipater's triple reference to brevity, his choice of ἔπος at the couplet's end, in ring composition with παυροεπής at its beginning, is to be noted. This early use of ἔπος to mean ‘poem’ may indicate Antipater knew that Erinna's Distaff was regularly so called and served as the model for Callimachus’ spun ἔπος in Aet. 1.5. In his reply to the Telchines, Callimachus praises someone—himself or another poet—as [ὀλ]ιγόστιχος, ‘of few lines’ (Aet. 1.9), and continues with a series of images favouring brevity over length. Asclepiades also praises the Distaff as γλυκύς (Anth. Pal. 7.11.1), just as Meleager figures Erinna's poetry as ‘a crocus sweet like maiden's skin’ (γλυκὺν … παρθενόχρωτα κρόκον, Anth. Pal. 4.1.12, with a likely pun on κρόκη, ‘weft thread’). In Anth. Pal. 9.190 her poem is labelled ‘honeycomb’ (Ἠρίννης … κηρίον, 1), and elsewhere she is a ‘bee … plucking the flowers of the Muses’ (Anth. Pal. 7.13.1–2; cf. μελισσοτόκων, Anth. Pal. 7.12.1; Christodorus, Anth. Pal. 2.110). Likewise, Callimachus values the quality of sweetness, in the poetry of Mimnermus (γλυκύς, Aet. 1.11) and (it seems) in nightingales (μελιχρ[ό]τεραι, Aet. 1.16), while in Anth. Pal. 9.507 he admires Aratus’ borrowings from Hesiod as ‘the sweetest of his words’ (τὸ μελιχρότατον | τῶν ἐπέων, 2–3).Footnote 49 Even his charge of jealousy against the Telchines (ἔλλετε Βασκανίης ὀλοὸν γένος, ‘away destructive race of Jealousy’, Aet. 1.18), though suited to those malignant demons, may look back to Erinna: the phrase ‘βάσκανός ἐσσ᾽, Ἀίδα’, ‘you are jealous, Hades’, appears both in Leonidas/Meleager (Anth. Pal. 7.13.4) as a quotation from Erinna and again in an epitaph for Baucis ascribed to Erinna (Anth. Pal. 7.712.3). The phrase is, in all likelihood, a quotation from the Distaff.

The objection might be raised that the continuation of Callimachus’ first-person utterance with παῖς ἅτε mitigates against this interpretation. Read most simply, παῖς ἅτε indicates that the Telchines have accused Callimachus of being childlike in composing short poetry; another reading in which Callimachus accepts that criticism by identifying his own poetry with children's play has also been influential.Footnote 50 But neither reading takes into consideration that παῖς may refer to any male or female who is not yet accepted as a mature adult.Footnote 51 If we understand ἔπος δ’ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλίσσω, | παῖς ἅτε not, or not just, as a paraphrase of Telchin insults but also as Callimachus’ ironically understated assertion of his poetic technique, the words can simply mean ‘I spin my poem but a little, like a girl.’Footnote 52 So read, the spinning girl, unnamed like Callimachus’ ‘large woman’ and ‘the tender [girls]’ (Aet. 1.11–12), surely evokes Erinna. Adolescent girls were, in all likelihood, taught to spin as a preliminary stage in their preparation to become accomplished weavers in married life,Footnote 53 and Erinna's innovative use of spinning rather than weaving as a metapoetic image stems then from her unmarried status, which she seemingly never expects to escape. Importantly, too, Erinna is twice spoken of as a παῖς in the testimonies, as part of her literary identity (also παρθενική/ά in Anth. Pal. 7.11.2, 7.13.1, 9.190.4 and 2.108). One Hellenistic epigrammatist, uncertainly Leonidas or Meleager, calls her ἁ παῖς (Anth. Pal. 7.13.4), and Tatianus, who knew a statue of Erinna (ad Gr. 33.1), evidently expects her to be recognized as the nameless pagan παῖς who speaks beside her distaff in contrast to Christian maidens who speak only of godly matters as they spin (33.2). Callimachus’ use of παῖς can then be read not, or not just, as a reference to his own childlike self but as, or also as, an allusion to the Erinna of the Distaff.

It is not to be overlooked that Theocritus’ Idyll 28, itself entitled Distaff, presents a distaff as a metaphor for making a poetry book. Theocritus begins the poem by addressing a φιλέριθ᾽ ἀλακάτα (1), ‘distaff that loves spinning’, which he is taking to Miletus as a gift for Theugenis, the wife of his friend Nicias.Footnote 54 As a physical object, made of ‘ivory crafted with much toil’ (ἐλέφαντος πολυμόχθω, 8),Footnote 55 the distaff serves as an example of πόνος, just like Erinna's poetic Distaff, and so easily figures the qualities of the poem addressed to it.Footnote 56 The metapoetic implication is even wider, however, since Theocritus’ Distaff appears to have occupied the opening position in a book roll of compositions in Aeolic dialect and lyric metres.Footnote 57 Idylls 29–31 on pederastic themes show the influence of Alcaeus, but the collection as a whole might also have alluded to Aeolic Sappho and even to Erinna, who combined Aeolic and Doric dialects (noted in her Suda biography, η 521). In parallel with Theugenis’ projected use of her ivory distaff to produce clothing for men and women (Id. 28.10–11), Theocritus offers his introductory Distaff as a metaphor for the refined weavings to be found in his poetry book dedicated to Nicias and his wife.Footnote 58 An admirer of Theugenis’ distaff will call it a μεγάλα χάρις | δώρῳ σὺν ὀλίγῳ, ‘great charm in a small object’ (Id. 28.24–5), a closing phrase that grants the distaff the poetic qualities of charm and brevity characteristic of both Theocritus and Callimachus (for the Charites as an emblem of poetic style, see Id. 16, Aet. 7.13–14). So then, like Callimachus’ Aetia prologue, Theocritus’ Aeolic collection apparently opened with an allusion to Erinna's Distaff, a poem that served as a primary model for the novelties of Alexandrian compositional technique.Footnote 59

In conclusion, I consider how the spinning image evoked by ἑλίσσω contributes to understanding the structural pattern in the Aetia. Harder has pointed out the metapoetic implications of references to weaving in programmatic positions: particularly, the colourful himatia and shimmering chitons worn by the Parian Charites who are asked to wipe their oiled hands on Callimachus’ elegies in the opening aition of Book 1 (7.12–14) and the fragments mentioning ‘close-woven’ [garments?] (καιρώτους, 54.13) and shearing [linen?] fine (λεπταλέους ἔξυσαν, 54.15) in the ‘Victoria Berenices’, the opening aition of Book 3.Footnote 60 In this programmatic context, the use of λεπταλέος as a descriptor for materials from which garments are to be woven suggestively links back to the ἔπος … ἑλίσσω/Μοῦσα λεπταλέη imagery of the prologue. Despite much uncertainty, we can entertain the possibility that Callimachus’ finely spun ἔπος figures the prologue as the beginning (cf. Latin exordium) of a non-continuous poetic work composed of narrative episodes imaged (at times) as separate weavings. To add a final point, I once argued that in the last aition, in which a catasterized lock of Berenice's hair laments separation from her queen (Aet. 110), Callimachus produced a feminized voice modelled on that of Erinna mourning Baucis.Footnote 61 Through the reading of παῖς in 1.6 as Erinna, these programmatic passages—in the prologue, in the first aition, in the ‘proem in the middle’ and in the final aition—come to suggest a pattern of imagery that connects the art of women's spinning and weaving with the aesthetics of Callimachus’ ‘thin Muse’.Footnote 62

References

1 For instance, Pontani, F., ‘The first word of Callimachus’ Aitia’, ZPE 128 (1999), 57–9Google Scholar, adducing a scholium on Od. 2.50, has confirmed the reading πολλάκι in line 1. In addition, G. Bastianini, ‘ΚΑΤΑ ΛΕΠΤΟΝ in Callimaco (fr. 1.11 Pfeiffer)’, in M.S. Funghi (ed.), ΟΔΟΙ ΔΙΖΗΣΙΟΣ, le vie della ricerca: Studi in onore di Francesco Adorno (Florence, 1996), 69–80 has shown that αἱ κατὰ λεπτόν at the end of line 11, derived from scholium 1d.11, does not match the traces of the scholium in the papyrus; αἵ γ’ ἁπαλαί τοι, suggested by W. Luppe, ‘Kallimachos, Aitien–Prolog V.7–12’, ZPE 115 (1997), 50–4, at 52–4, has found some favour despite the accumulation of particles.

2 Citations of the Aetia are from Harder, A., Callimachus Aetia: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar; the Hecale is cited from Hollis, A.S., Callimachus Hecale: Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; other citations of Callimachus are from Pfeiffer, R., Callimachus (Oxford, 1949–53)Google Scholar. The translations are my own.

3 Hunt, A.S., ‘2079’, in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 17 (London, 1927), 45–57Google Scholar, at 49–50.

4 As noted, early on, by Pfeiffer, R., ‘Ein neues Altersgedicht des Kallimachos’, Hermes 63 (1928), 302–41Google Scholar, at 310–11, repr. in Bühler, W. (ed.), Ausgewählte Schriften: Aufsätze und Vorträge zur griechischen Dichtung und Humanismus (Munich, 1960), 98–131Google Scholar, at 105.

5 Asper, M., Onomata allotria: Zur Genese, Struktur und Funktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos (Stuttgart, 1997), 148Google Scholar, for instance, tries to get around this problem by interpreting ἔπος as the metaphorical equivalent of a papyrus roll (= ἔπος … ἑλισσόμενον, at 150), to signify an essential aspect of ‘die neue Schriftlichkeit’. In my view, however, understanding ἔπος as some form of poetic speech (e.g. ἀοιδῇ, 1), not as a container for poetic speech, is required by the context. The metaphor lies in the verb, not in the noun.

6 Friedländer, P., ‘Retractationes’, Hermes 64 (1929), 376–84Google Scholar, at 383 (repr. in id., Studien zur antiken Literatur und Kunst [Berlin, 1969], 313–18, at 317) proposed ἐλαύνω, which was accepted by Alan Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 340. Friedländer compares τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα in Anth. Pal. 7.89.12, 16, a proverbial phrase meaning ‘drive your own path’, applied to children playing with tops. Lehnus, L., ‘Callimaco fr. 1.5 Pf.’, ZPE 89 (1991), 24Google Scholar has supported that suggestion by adducing [Metrod.] Anth. Pal. 14.121.10–11, where ἐλαύνω (in a different sense) follows an echo of Aet. 1.4. The difficulty, however, is fitting ἐλαύνω with ἔπος in any readily understandable or standard meaning: the usage in Anth. Pal. 7.89 involves a different image, referring to suitable life choices. Another supplement, ἔλεξα, suggested by Acosta-Hughes, B. and Stephens, S.A., ‘Aetia fr. 1.5: I told my story like a child’, ZPE 136 (2001), 214–16Google Scholar, at 215–16, has found even less favour. Not only does ἔλεξα seem too prosaic for this important position in the prologue, but the aorist is unlikely, as Harder (n. 2), 2.27 points out.

7 E.g. Cameron (n. 6), 340, citing Pfeiffer on Callim. fr. 468, γράμματα [= συγγράμματα] δ᾽ οὐχ εἵλισσεν ἀπόκρυφα. Examples of this usage include M. Arg. Anth. Pal. 9.161.1, anon. Anth. Pal. 9.540.1, Strat. Anth. Pal. 12.208.4 and Nonn. Ev. Joh. 7.191–2.

8 Harder (n. 2), 1.116, with 2.26–7. Similarly, Massimilla, G., Callimaco Aitia libri primo e secondo (Pisa, 1996), 204Google Scholar, translating ‘rigiro la poesia su un piccolo tratto’ (at 175), and G.B. d'Alessio, Callimaco: Aitia, Giambi, e altri frammenti, volume secondo (Milan, 1996), 369.

9 Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (n. 6), 215, and Acosta-Hughes, and Stephens, , ‘Rereading Callimachus’ Aetia fragment 1’, CPh 97 (2002), 238–55Google Scholar, at 242. Cf. Harder (n. 2), 2.26: ‘After saying what Callimachus does not do the Telchines apparently added that he was playing around like a child in spite of his age.’

10 On the distinction and similarity of ‘narrator’ to ‘poet’ in Hellenistic poetry, see Morrison, A.D., The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 In the words of Cameron (n. 6), 340, it ‘conveys Callimachus's contempt’. The key to this disparaging tone is the onomatopoetic ἐπιτρύζουσιν (1.1), which is of uncertain translation but is clearly derogatory; cf. Hesychius’ explanations, interpreting both the character and the intent of the verb: ἐπιγογγύζουσιν, ἐπιλέγουσιν (ε 5365 La.), ‘mutter, speak against’.

12 A number of factors make Callimachus’ report of the Telchines’ criticism necessarily unreliable. First, the Telchines are multiple nameless persons, and their speech occurs in the present tense as if it is continuing to happen, so being subject to variation. Second, the narrator, as the object of complaint, may not have heard this criticism firsthand, and is clearly hostile to its perceived content.

13 Published in three versions: Durante, M., ‘Ricerche sulla preistoria della lingua poetica greca: la terminologia relativa alla creazione poetica’, Atti Academia Nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 15 (1960), 231–49Google Scholar, at 240; ‘Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte der griechischen Dichtersprache: die Terminologie für das dichterische Schaffen’, in R. Schmitt (ed.), Indogermanische Dichtersprache (Darmstadt, 1968), 261–90, at 275–6; and Sulla preistoria della tradizione poetica greca, parte seconda: Risultanze della comparazione indoeuropea (Rome, 1976), 175. Very briefly, Grilli, A., ‘Vecchio e nuovo nella cultura ellenistica’, in Aspetti e momenti del rapporto passato-presente nella storia e nella cultura (Milan, 1977), 83–98Google Scholar, at 97 n. 10 and, independently, Clauss, J.J., ‘Vergil's sixth Eclogue: the Aetia in Rome’, in Harder, M.A., Reguit, R.F. and Wakker, G.C. (edd.), Callimachus II (Leuven, 2004), 71–93Google Scholar, at 73 have made a similar connection (the latter on the suggestion of M. Cuypers), seemingly without knowledge of Durante's discussions.

14 In Homer we find a different verb with the same basic meaning, ἠλακάτα στρωφάω, ‘keep turning threads from a distaff’ (Od. 6.53, 6.306, 7.105, 17.97). Hesychius (ε 2088 La.) reports that the thread spun onto a spindle was called ἑλίκων.

15 Metrical difficulty in this line has produced a variety of texts. Following J. Diggle's OCT text, I understand the noun ἠλακάτᾳ to be a locative dative (schol. ad loc. τὸ λίνον τὸ ἐν τῇ ἠλακάτῃ εἵλισσεν); so Biehl, W., Euripides Orestes (Berlin, 1965), 155Google Scholar, who in Euripides Orestes (Leipzig, 1975) prints ἁ δὲ λίνον ἠλακάτᾳ | δακτύλοις ἕλισσεν. In ‘On the Orestes of Euripides’, CQ 40 (1990), 100–23, at 115, J. Diggle explains that he supplied the second λίνον for metrical reasons and because of its suitability for ‘the repetitive act of spinning’; the repetition fits the style of the Phrygian's excited monody (Φρυγίοις … Φρυγίοισι, 1426; Ἑλένας Ἑλένας, 1428; ἄγει δ᾽ ἄγει, 1444). Possible, however, is the adjective form ἠλάκατα (neut. acc. pl.). In the view of C.W. Willink, Euripides Orestes (Oxford, 1986), 317, λίνον was added in antiquity as the object of ἕλισσε by someone who misunderstood ἠλάκατα as a dative of the noun. D. Kovacs, Euripides Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 570 chooses more simply to print ἁ δὲ λίνε’ ἠλάκατα | δακτύλοις ἕλισσε. In all these versions, my point about the meaning of ἕλισσε stands.

16 In both instances the number of extensions in the verb ἑλίσσω varies in the manuscripts. Aristophanes is making fun of a device called ἐπέκτασις, ‘prolongation’ (schol. ad loc.), by which a performer sings multiple notes on one syllable or repeats the same note. This is a common feature of the New Music, as comic poets mocked its elaborate twists and turns (e.g. Pherecrates, fr. 155 K.–A.).

17 Ancient descriptions of the spinning process are found in Ar. Lys. 567–86 (where carding and joining flocks of wool are explained but not the spinning itself), Pl. Plt. 282a6–283a1 (less clearly); the fullest description appears in Catull. 64.311–19; see too Ov. Met. 4.32–6, 6.19–22. Modern descriptions are found in D. Müller, Handwerk und Sprache: Die sprachlichen Bilder aus dem Bereich des Handwerks in der griechischen Literatur bis 400 v. Chr. (Meisenheim am Glan, 1974), 192–210, especially at 203–4; Barber, E.W., Women's Work, the First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (New York, 1994), 37–8Google Scholar; and Spantidaki, S., Textile Production in Classical Athens (Oxford, 2016), 38Google Scholar. Illustrations of spinning in Spantidaki: fig. 4.15 (Acropolis Museum ΠΡ27–4), fig. 4.16 (British Museum 1873.0820.304), fig. 4.17 (Archaeological Museum of Kerameikos Τ 20/ΙΧ) and fig. 4.18 (National Archaeological Museum, Athens 1584).

18 Prominent among textile workers mentioned on Linear B tablets at Thebes, Knossos and Pylos are ‘spinners’ (a-ra-ka-te-ja), a word that is connected to the later form ἠλακάτη, ‘distaff’ (= *a-ra-ka-ta); see Freo, M. Del, Nosch, M.-L. and Rougemont, F., ‘The terminology of textiles in the Linear B tablets, including some considerations on Linear A logograms and abbreviations’, in Michel, C. and Nosch, M.-L. (edd.), Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Third to the First Millennia b.c. (Oxford, 2010), 338–73Google Scholar, at 345, 354–6. The noun ἠλακάτη is found in Homer (e.g. Il. 6.491) as is the adjectival form [τὰ] ἠλάκατα (e.g. Od. 6.53), meaning ‘threads drawn from a distaff’. Homer has no separate word for ‘spindle’, which was later called ἄτρακτος. Barber, E.W., Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (Princeton, 1991), 264Google Scholar (followed by Nosch in her contribution to Del Freo, Nosch and Rougemont [this note], 355–6) has argued that ἠλακάτη originally meant ‘spindle’. This approach, however, leaves us without a Homeric word for distaff. The explanation may be that originally, in Mycenean times and even later, ἠλακάτη was a term for any rod used for making thread, whether it held the fibres for spinning or collected the twisted threads; cf. Spantidaki (n. 17), 42 and Neri, C., ‘Telai, conocchie, fusi e … lessicografe (per amor di ΗΛΑΚΑΤΗ)’, in Casanova, A., Messeri, G. and Pintaudi, R. (edd.), E sì d'amici pieno. Omaggio di studiosi italiani a Guido Bastianini, vol. 2 (Florence, 2016), 555–63Google Scholar, at 563. That ἠλακάτη and ἄτρακτος were distinguished by the fifth century b.c. is clear from Hdt. 4.162, where the mother of a Cyrenean king was reportedly given a golden spindle and a golden distaff with wool on it for spinning; cf. Leonidas, Anth. Pal. 7.726.3 on the elderly weaver Platthis, who sang πρὸς ἠλακάτην καὶ συνέριθον ἄτρακτον, ‘beside her distaff and its assisting spindle’ (cf. Neri [this note], 561–2).

19 Plato (Soph. 226b8–10) considers all the actions involved in spinning and weaving to be ἐν ταῖς τέχναις. In Ov. Met. 6.14–23 Arachne's skill was so great that Nymphs gathered to gaze upon her artful production of cloth, both the spinning and the weaving (tantus decor adfuit arti, 18).

20 On pre-Hellenistic usages of ἔπος, see Koller, H., ‘Ἔπος’, Glotta 50 (1972), 16–24Google Scholar. Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (n. 6), 215 have pointed out that Callimachus uses ἔπος of ‘significant speech’, and it may introduce a speech of some length in variable metres, often with a narrative and/or prophetic quality, e.g. Aet. 75.21–37, fr. 384.7–15, Hymn 4.162–95 and Hymn 5.96–130. Even so, the word has a series of more specific meanings that might have appealed to readers of the prologue. The common meaning ‘verse’ is possible (cf. Ov. Pont. 1.5.13, deducere uersum), and even the meaning ‘word’ might resonate, as a reference to Callimachus’ rare and obscure vocabulary. Most likely, however, the meaning would be understood from the context as ‘poem’. There is a parallel in Theoc. Id. 17.136, ἔπος οὐκ ἀπόβλητον (cf. Il. 2.361), ‘what I say will … not be rejected’, as cautiously translated by R. Hunter, Theocritus Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Berkeley, 2003), 91, where ἔπος clearly refers back to the encomium that is ending. The meaning ‘poem’ later appears in Antipater of Sidon, Anth. Pal. 7.713.2 (second century b.c.), of Erinna's Distaff, and in Anth. Pal. 9.545.1 (Augustan), of Callimachus’ Hecale. Greek grammatical sources state that ἔπος commonly meant a hexameter poem, though some point out that it could also be applied to any stichic metre (e.g. [Theodosius] Περὶ γραμματικῆς, K.W. Goettling, Theodosii Alexandrini grammatica [Leipzig, 1822], page 59.16–20: ἔπος λέγεται πᾶς στίχος ἰαμβικὸς καὶ τροχαϊκὸς καὶ ἀναπαιστικὸς καὶ δακτυλικὸς καὶ οἱῳδήποτε ποδὶ μετρούμενος κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν δὲ καὶ ὑπεροχὴν τὸ ἡρωϊκὸν μέτρον ἔπος καλεῖται; sim. schol. Dion. Thrax, GG i.iii page 21.6–10 Hilgard = 751b.1–4). The ancient reader might therefore find reference in Callimachus’ ἔπος to the elegiac Aetia, or to his poetry more generally. Acosta-Hughes, B., ‘A gift of Callimachus’, SIFC 10 (2012), 24–39Google Scholar claims a specific reference to the Hecale, arguing that this hexameter poem preceded the Aetia in a comprehensive edition of Callimachus’ work, in parallel with the poet's look forward to his Iambi in the epilogue (Aet. 112.9; as in P.Oxy. 1011, late fourth century a.d.). But possible evidence that the Hecale directly preceded the Aetia in such an edition appears only in an epigram of the sixth century or later (Hymns, Hecale, Aetia, Ibis) affixed to a copy of Callimachus’ Hymns (Test. 23; Pfeiffer 2.lv); the order in the iambic paraphrases by Marianus (a.d. c.500) was different (Hecale, Hymns, Aetia, Epigrams) (Test. 24).

21 As Pfeiffer (n. 4), 310–11 = (1960), 105 points out; note too ἐπὶ βραχύ (Xen. An. 3.3.17). Tmesis of the verb ἐφελίσσω, ‘roll up’, as of book rolls, should be (and generally now is; e.g. Massimilla [n. 8], 205 and Harder [n. 2], 2.27) discounted because that meaning is unsuitable to the context. Callimachus uses the adverbial phrase in the same way as do Apollonius (‘blew only a little’, Argon. 1.1359, and ‘all but dying’, 4.1529) and Nicander (‘parch just a little’, fr. 70.11). The Florentine scholia (Aet. 1b.9) gloss ἐπὶ τυτθόν with τὸ κάτισχνον, ‘the quality of thinness’, and Pollux (Onom. 7.32) reports that one of the terms used in spinning is ἀπισχναίνειν, ‘make thin’.

22 As translated by Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (n. 9), 239 and explained at 242 (‘with the story told in small increments’). That would be κατὰ τυτθόν, as in κατὰ βραχύ (Thuc. 1.64.2).

23 At the end of Lycophron's Alexandra, Cassandra's enigmatic speech is called ἑλικτὰ … ἔπη, ‘twisted words’ (1466), a direct reference to Callimachus’ ἔπος … ἑλίσσω. Cf. Looijenga, A., ‘Unrolling the Alexandria: the allusive messenger-speech of Lycophron's prologue and epilogue’, in Cusset, C. and Prioux, É. (edd.), Lycophron: Éclats d'obscurité (Saint-Étienne, 2009), 59–80Google Scholar, at 71–2, who connects the two phrases without recognizing Callimachus’ spinning image. Later, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Thuc. 48) ἕλικες is a term for convolutions in complex sentence structure.

24 The phrase ri-no re-po-to = λίνον λεπτόν, ‘fine thread’, occurs once in Linear B (KN L 693.1); see Del Freo, Nosch and Rougemont (n. 18), 344.

25 For fuller discussion of the Latin passages, see Gundlach, I., Poetologische Bildersprache in der Zeit des Augustus (Hildesheim – Zurich – New York, 2019), 227–35Google Scholar.

26 Eisenhut, W., ‘Deducere carmen: ein Beitrag zum Problem der literarischen Beziehungen zwischen Horaz und Properz’, in Radke, G. (ed.), Gedenkschrift für Georg Rohde (Tübingen, 1961), 91–104Google Scholar, repr. in id. (ed.), Properz (Darmstadt, 1975), 247–63 traced the development in Latin poetry of deductum carmen as a metaphor for fine poetry; like others, he associated it with spun thread but failed to explain in detail the connection to actual practice or to note its source in Aet. 1.5. In general, scholars have worried little about how Virgil's image of spun thread functions in relation to fat sheep. An exception is Deremetz, A., ‘Le carmen deductum ou le fil du poème: à propos de Virgile, Buc., VI’, Latomus 46 (1987), 762–77Google Scholar, at 766 and 775, who argues that Virgil's sheep are the source of the wool that is to be drawn down to make the fabric of his poem. To my mind, this is an unlikely reading that obscures the opposition between fat sheep and thin Muse inherited from the Aetia prologue.

27 Cf. Macrob. Sat. 6.4.12 on Ecl. 6.5: deductum pro tenui et subtili eleganter positum est.

28 Barber (n. 18), 42 explains: ‘To achieve control over the fineness and evenness of the yarn, one must draw and twist the fibers simultaneously and with some speed.’

29 We may also note that the placement of ἔπος … ἑλίσσω in the fifth line of the Aetia prologue is paralleled by the placement of deductum … carmen in the fifth line of Eclogue 6. Cf. Scodel, R.S. and Thomas, R.F., ‘Virgil and the Euphrates’, AJPh 105 (1984), 339Google Scholar on a similar phenomenon in Callimachus’ Hymn 2.108 and three Virgil passages (G. 1.509, 4.561; Aen. 8.726), in all of which the river Euphrates is mentioned six lines from the close.

30 Fineness and shortness were conjoined concepts in Callimachean poetics; see Lohse, G., ‘Der Aitienprolog des Kallimachos als Reproduktion von Wirklichkeit’, A&A 19 (1973), 20–43Google Scholar, though his evidence from the reading κατὰ λεπτόν is now to be discounted.

31 So Wimmel, W., Kallimachos in Rom: Die Nachfolge seines apologetischen Dichtens in der Augusteerzeit (Wiesbaden, 1960), 164Google Scholar.

32 Scholarly discussions concerning the allusions to the Aetia prologue in the proem of the Metamorphoses have been extensive; for a survey, see Tress, H. van, Poetic Memory: Allusion in the Poetry of Callimachus and the Metamorphoses of Ovid (Leiden, 2004), 26–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 The meaningful detail of the fingers, found also in Eur. Or. 1432 and Ar. Ran. 1314 and 1348, appears elsewhere in neoteric and Augustan poetry: e.g. Catull. 64.312–14 (of one of the Parcae) leuiter deducens fila supinis | formabat digitis, tum prono in pollice torquens [torqueo = ἑλίσσω] | … uersabat … fusum; Tib. 2.1.64 fusus et adposito pollice uersat opus; Ov. Met. 6.22 (of Arachne) leui teretem uersabat pollice fusum, 4.229 colus et fusus digitis cecidere remissis, and 14.264–5 uellera motis | nulla trahunt digitis nec fila sequentia ducunt. Ironically, in Ov. Her. 9.73–80 Hercules’ mighty thumb pulls down only coarse strands of fibre (crassaque robusto deducis pollice fila, 77), while his rough fingers prove so inadequate for twisting thread (digitis dum torques stamina duris, 79) that the spindle is crushed, a marker of genre violation in the inverted elegiac paradigm of the hero performing female tasks as Omphale's slave (cf. Prop. 3.11.17–20, 4.9.47–50; Ov. Ars am. 2.217–20).

34 The phrase leuiter deducens in Catullus’ description of the Parcae spinning (64.312) can be understood, ambiguously, as either ‘drawing down gently/lightly’ or ‘drawing down only a little’ (OLD s.v. leuiter 2 and 3).

35 The metapoetic implications of tying the prologue to the story of the Minyeides through deducere have been much discussed, though without any connection, to my knowledge, to the source of spinning imagery in ἑλίσσω. An essential study is that of Rosati, G., ‘Form in motion: weaving the text in the Metamorphoses’, in Hardie, P., Barchiesi, A. and Hinds, S. (edd.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on the Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge, 1999), 240–53Google Scholar; see too Jouteur, I., Jeux de genre dans les Métamorphoses d'Ovide (Leuven, 2001), 71–2Google Scholar; Barchiesi, A. and Rosati, G. (edd.), Ovidio Metamorfosi Volume II Libri III–IV (Milan, 2007)Google Scholar, 244, 252 and 255; Heath, J., ‘Women's work: female transmission of mythical narrative’, TAPhA 141 (2011), 69–104Google Scholar, at 86–94; and Ohrman, M., ‘From calathos to carmen: metapoetic in the story of the daughters of Minyas (Ovid Metamorphoses 4)’, in Fanfani, G., Harlow, M. and Nosch, M.-L. (edd.), Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol and Narrative Device in Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 2016), 285–95Google Scholar.

36 Because of wide scholarly acceptance, it is worthwhile to examine Skutsch, O., The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 329–30Google Scholar on the metaphor in a line of Ennius that apparently opened Annales Book 6: ingentis oras euoluere belli (fr. 164 Skutsch). He interpreted the image in euoluere to be that of unrolling a book and ascribed it to an unknown Hellenistic text with similarity to Callimachus’ ἔπος … ἑλίσσω. I suggest, however, that Ennius may employ a different textile image, one more appropriate for a book of epic poetry. In Ov. Her. 12.3–4, a despairing Medea, abandoned by Jason, proclaims that ‘the sisters [Fates] who apportion the threads of human life ought to have unrolled [the threads on] my spindles’ (quae dispensant mortalia fila sorores | debuerant fusos euoluisse meos). Similarly, the image evoked by Ennius’ euoluere may be the unwinding of thread from a spindle to form the borders (orae) that determine the size of the garment to be made (for ora as ‘border’ of a woven garment, see Catull. 64.308, Ov. Met. 5.398, Quint. Inst. 11.3.138). Ennius thus images the extreme boundaries of the war (oras belli) that he is just beginning to recount as the borders of a woven garment. For the metapoetics of such borders in early Greek poetry, see Harlizius-Klück, E. and Fanfani, G., ‘(B)orders in ancient weaving and archaic Greek poetry’, in Fanfani, G., Harlow, M. and Nosch, M.-L. (edd.), Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol and Narrative Device in Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 2016), 61–99Google Scholar, at 89–96. If this interpretation is right, Ennius was perhaps after all alluding to Aet. 1.5, though changing the metaphor from spinning thread to weaving borders to suit the kind of continuous epic narrative that Callimachus eschewed. For later examples of euoluo with (metaphorical) reference to rolling out epic-type poetry or themes, see Verg. Aen. 9.528 (a clear allusion to Ennius), Sil. Pun. 5.40–1 and Stat. Theb. 1.1–3.

37 As, for instance, in μύθους καὶ μήδεα … ὕφαινον (Il. 3.212). For weaving as a symbol for poetry in the prehistory of Greek and other Indo-European languages, see Schmitt, R., Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1967), 298–301Google Scholar; Durante (n. 13 [1960]), 238–9; id. (n. 13 [1968]), 272–4; id. (n. 13 [1976]), 173–4. Nünlist, R., Poetologische Bildersprache in der frühgriechischen Dichtung (Stuttgart, 1998), 110–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides references for metapoetic imagery involving textile production in archaic and classical poetry. There exists a substantial body of scholarship on weaving as a poetic metaphor, including Snyder, J.M., ‘The web of song: weaving imagery in Homer and the lyric poets’, CJ 76 (1981), 193–6Google Scholar; Nagy, G., whose primary theory of making poetry concerns the rhapsodic art of stitching, (e.g.) Plato's Rhapsody and Homer's Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 70–98Google Scholar; Nosch, M.-L., ‘Voicing the loom: women, weaving, and plotting’, in Nakassis, D., Gulizio, J. and James, S.A. (edd.), KE-RA-ME-JA: Studies Presented to Cynthia W. Shelmerdine (Philadelphia, 2014), 91–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With implications for the origins of the metaphor, Tuck, A., ‘Singing the rug: patterned textiles and the origins of Indo-European metrical poetry’, AJA 110 (2006), 539–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that the complex woven designs known from representations of archaic cloth indicate that women weavers matched patterns of warp and weft to metrical schemes through the songs they sang as they wove.

38 Nünlist (n. 37) lists no metapoetic images from spinning in the archaic and classical eras. For the image of the spinning Fates in Greek and Indo-European poetry, see Giannakis, G., ‘The “fate-as-spinner” motif: a study on the poetic and metaphorical language of ancient Greek and Indo-European (part I)’ and ‘(part II)’, IF 103 (1998), 1–27Google Scholar and 104 (1999), 95–109.

39 For finely spun verse as an image for poetic novelty, cf. Prop. 1.16.41 tibi saepe nouo deduxi carmina uersu.

40 It is worth noting that by the fifth century a metaphor from thread had come to signify exactness or subtlety of thought or speech; see Durante (n. 13 [1960]), 239–40; id. (n. 13 [1968]), 274–5; id. (n. 13 [1976]), 174–5. While some examples (κατὰ μίτον, Pherecrates, fr. 156.7 K.–A.; λίνον λίνῳ συνάπτεις, Pl. Euthyd. 298c6) seem based on the intricacies of weaving, in the Meno (80e2) Plato's image of ‘drawing down’ a proper eristic argument (ἐριστικὸν λόγον κατάγεις) is derived from the shaping of fibres into a narrow, precisely formed roving.

41 See (e.g.) E. Csapo, ‘Later Euripidean music’, ICS 24–5 (1999–2000), 399–426, at 419–26 and ‘The politics of the New Music’, in Murray, P. and Wilson, D. (edd.), Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford, 2004), 207–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 230–2.

42 Neri, C., Erinna: testimonianze e frammenti (Bologna, 2003), 94–8Google Scholar and ‘Erinna's loom’, in G. Fanfani, M. Harlow and M.-L. Nosch (edd.), Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol and Narrative Device in Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 2016), 195–216, at 206–7 discusses the origin of the title Distaff, concluding that it came either from Erinna herself or from the Hellenistic literature about her.

43 The lacunose text also may contain references to shearing sheep (SH 401.13) and to wool workers (SH 401.23). A section of the poem appears to have concerned a child's game known as ‘Tortitortoise’ (χελιχελώνη, perhaps with a secondary reference to the lyre), during which a girl who sat in the middle as other girls ran around (like a dancing chorus) would utter the words ἔρια μαρύομαι καὶ κρόκην Μιλησίαν, ‘I am pulling down wool and Milesian thread’ (Poll. Onom. 9.125). In SH 401.40–1, which follows the phrase about looking at a distaff, we might speculatively read κ[λωστῆρες suggested by M.L. West, ‘Erinna’, ZPE 25 (1977), 95–119, at 110, with E. Wolff's ἀμφέλικες (a hapax legomenon contracted like ἀμφελικτός, Eur. HF 398), and τελέ[θουσι (Lloyd-Jones and Parsons, dub.) to mean ‘threads (or ‘distaffs’) become wound around’.

44 Neri (n. 42 [2003]) prints ἠλεκάτη, the text of P, here (T 5) and in Anth. Pal. 9.190.5 (T 7), with discussion at 191. This variant is attested in Hellenistic inscriptions, e.g. an epitaph from Cyrene (GVI 758.4, second or first century b.c.); cf. ἠλετάκη, Hesych. ε 307.4, 333.1 La. Similar forms survive in Byzantine manuscripts and in Modern Greek; see Neri (n. 18), 562–3. It is entirely possible that the variant is due to scribal error.

45 The phrase μίτον … πολύπλοκον might refer to ‘tangled thread’, but it fits better as a stylistic metaphor for Erinna's poetry (LSJ s.v. πολύπλοκος 2.b, ‘subtle’, ‘acute’, of words and thoughts).

46 The anonymous authors of Anth. Pal. 7.12 and 9.190, Hellenistic or Early Imperial, undoubtedly had copies of the Distaff (the papyrus dates to the second century a.d.), though it is not clear whether Christodorus of the Justinian era would have known firsthand a text of Erinna or rather relied on the tradition about her; see Neri (n. 42 [2003]), 10–12.

47 Neri (n. 42 [2003]), 10: ‘La poetessa viene … clamorosamente inclusa … tra i modelli della poetica callimachea’. É. Prioux, Petits musées en vers: Épigramme et discours sur les collections antiques (Paris, 2008), 245–6 has suggestively argued that Asclepiades’ epigram praising Erinna for her λεπτότης was of a pair with his epigram praising Antimachus’ Lyde for its σεμνότης (Anth. Pal. 9.63) and that Callimachus’ quarrel with the Telchines stemmed from his disagreement regarding the admiration of others for Antimachus.

48 Spinning is often presented as laborious (e.g. Leonidas, Anth. Pal. 6.288.2–3, 6.289.8; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.1062–3; Antip. Sid. Anth. Pal. 6.47.1–2; Catull. 64.310; Tib. 2.1.63, femineus labor), and poor spinning women often work late into the night (Leonidas, Anth. Pal. 7.726; Antip. Sid. Anth. Pal. 6.160.7). Horace (Epist. 2.1.224–5) expressly connects finely spun poetry with labor: cum lamentamur non apparere labores | nostros et tenui deducta poemata filo. Cf. Val. Max. 3.7.ext.1 [Euripides] queretur quod eo triduo non ultra tres uersus maximo inpenso labore deducere potuisset.

49 The honey and bee metaphors, standing for the sweet quality of the Distaff, also resonate with the metapoetic bees in the programmatic coda to Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo (2.110–12). Sens, A. (ed.), Asclepiades of Samos: Epigrams and Fragments (Oxford, 2011), 190Google Scholar suggests that Erinna's comparison to a bee may be connected to the Distaff as a πόνος.

50 E.g. Snell, B., The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (transl. T. Rosenmeyer) (Oxford, 1953), 271–2Google Scholar; discussion in Ambühl, A., Kinder und junge Helden: Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos (Leuven, 2005), 9–12, 386–90Google Scholar. Interesting from the perspective of the spinning image in Aet. 1.5–6 is Goldhill, S., ‘An unnoticed allusion in Theocritus and Callimachus’, ICS 12 (1987), 1–6Google Scholar, who connects Callimachus’ παῖς ἄτε with the metapoetic scene of a boy plaiting a grasshopper cage in Theoc. Id. 1.52–4. It should also be noted that the twisting ivy tendrils decorating the goatherd's cup (μαρύεται, ἑλιχρύσῳ, ἕλιξ εἱλεῖται, 1.29–31) seem to herald Callimachus’ ἑλίσσω as an image of spinning. Against the metapoetic background of both Theocritus’ plaiting boy and Callimachus’ spinning girl, Virgil at the end of the Eclogues pictures himself singing as he plaits a basket of ‘slender marshmallow’ (gracili … hibisco, 10.71).

51 In Euripides’ Ion Creusa explains to her son that, when she exposed him as a baby, she wrapped him in a piece of cloth that she had been weaving for practice, since she was then but a girl (παῖς ποτ’ οὖσ’, 1417). Among examples from Callimachus, παῖς describes both Acontius (Aet. 67.2, 75.76) and Cydippe (Aet. 75.22, 75.26) as young persons on the cusp of marriage, and also the young hero Theseus of the Hecale (236.1 = 10.1 Hollis, 345 = 13 Hollis).

52 As noted by Grilli (n. 13), 97 n. 10, ‘a mo’ di fanciulla’. Since I view Aet. 1.3–6 as a Callimachean speech act that simultaneously reports, critiques and positively recasts what is said by his critics, it is altogether possible that Callimachus had been accused of girl-like behaviour, a slam against his authority conferred by age, his position at court, and his masculinity. Perhaps too there is an allusion to this analogy in Propertius’ very Callimachean aetiology, 4.9, where, at lines 47–50, Heracles demands to be admitted to the sanctuary of the Bona Dea because once, in servitude to Omphale, he spun with a Lydian distaff and actually ‘was a girl equipped with rough hands’ (manibus duris apta puella fui, 50).

53 Barber (n. 17), 88–9 describes how Hungarian girls of the twentieth century were taught to spin at the age of ten to twelve, while mature women wove the cloth. A similar custom is indicated in an epitaph by Posidippus (46 Austin–Bastianini), where an elderly hired woman, who taught young girls to process fibres, spin threads and plait hair nets, was buried by her older pupils who were approaching marriage.

54 Another address to a distaff is seemingly found among the epigram incipits in P.Oxy. 3724, vi.16, παῦε φιληλακατη[. . The compound φιληλάκατος seems excluded (e.g. Antip. Sid. 6.160.5), and Parsons points out that the feminine ending indicates φίλ’ ἠλακάτη; see Sider, D., The Epigrams of Philodemos: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (New York, 1997), 220Google Scholar.

55 There is no reason to doubt the possibility of such a precious gift; cf. Hdt. 4.162 (n. 18 above). In the fantasy world of the Odyssey (4.130–2), Helen received as gifts a gold distaff and a silver wool basket trimmed in gold. Spindles, or possibly in some cases distaffs, of silver, bronze and ivory have been found at various Bronze Age sites, and in the Classical Age ‘fancy’ distaffs were often in bronze; see Barber (n. 18), 61–3, 69–70.

56 Cf. Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge, 1988), 176Google Scholar: ‘[T]he distaff, like The Distaff, is in fact precious, highly wrought and exotic in appearance.’

57 For the initial position of Idyll 28 on one of three papyrus rolls that were combined in the Antinoe Papyrus, see Gutzwiller, K., ‘The evidence for Theocritean poetry books’, in Harder, M.A., Regtuit, R.F. and Wakker, G.C. (edd.), Theocritus (Groningen, 1996), 119–48Google Scholar, at 140–1. For the introductory aspects of the poem, see Acosta-Hughes, B., Arion's Lyre: Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry (Princeton, 2010), 107–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The argument by F. Cairns, ‘The distaff of Theugenis – Theocritus Idyll 28’, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 1976 (1977), 293–305 that Idyll 28 is dedicatory in form, albeit for human recipients, supports the poem's introductory character; cf. ‘Theoc.’ Epigr. 1 = Anth. Pal. 6.336, apparently heading a libellus of epigrams ascribed to Theocritus.

58 Papadopoulou, M., ‘Textile and textual poetics in context: Callimachus’ 4th Iamb and Theocritus’ Idyll 28’, in Fanfani, G., Harlow, M. and Nosch, M.-L. (edd.), Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol and Narrative Device in Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 2016), 217–39Google Scholar, at 231 suggests that, just as the distaff is to have a new home in Miletus, a centre for wool working, so Theocritus hopes to find there a place for ‘weaving new poetic texts’; she also wonders, at 234, if Theocritus has Erinna in mind; see earlier Gutzwiller, K., A Guide to Hellenistic Literature (Malden, MA and Oxford, 2007), 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Given Erinna's fame in the Early Hellenistic period, it is hard to believe that a poem addressed to a distaff would not have immediately evoked her Distaff.

59 There is no certainty about the chronological relationship of Idyll 28 to the prologue, which may have been written for Aetia Books 1–2 at an unknown date or for the whole Aetia in the mid 240s. If the prologue was composed significantly earlier than the 240s and the Aeolic Idylls perhaps later than the earlier ones, Theocritus might have been alluding to Callimachus’ ἑλίσσω. Alternately, if the collection of Aeolic Idylls was earlier (as is most likely), the evocation of Erinna through the address to the distaff would have prepared for Callimachus’ subtler spinning image. In either case there seems to be a connection of one poet to the other, through the model of Erinna.

60 Harder (n. 2), 2.130 (cf. 2.134) and 2.410 (cf. 2.268). Other weaving references are preserved in Aet. 26.5 (τὸν ἐπὶ ῥάβδῳ μῦθον ὑφαινόμενον, ‘the story woven beside the [rhapsode's] staff’, perhaps as object of ἀείδω in 26.8) and in Aet. 66 about Argive girls ‘whose task it is to weave a sacred garment for Hera’ (῞Ηρης | ἁγνὸν ὑφαινέμεναι τῇσι μέμηλε πάτος, 2–3) and who after a ritual bath ‘stand by the heddle rods’ on the loom (στῆναι [πὰ]ρ κανόνεσσι, 4).

61 Gutzwiller, K., ‘Callimachus’ “Lock of Berenice”: fantasy, romance, and propaganda’, AJPh 113 (1992), 359–85Google Scholar, at 375–6; for a supporting view, see Harder (n. 2), 805.

62 The main ideas in this paper were presented at a conference on La Fémininité dans les arts hellénistiques at Lyon, France in September 2017, and a fuller version was read at the Midwest Classical Literature Consortium, Ann Arbor, Michigan in April 2018. My thanks to both audiences for encouraging discussion. I am grateful to Évelyne Prioux for her stimulating suggestions and Jim Clauss for his comments. I especially offer my appreciation to the journal's reviewer for a careful reading and helpful suggestions.