Anth. Pal. 10.92, ascribed to Palladas of Alexandria, appears to be a short iambic prologue to a single epigram.Footnote ¹ Evidently addressed to a judge of some sort,Footnote ² it survives only in the Palatinus, which preserves the text as follows:

The first three verses are clear enough: ‘Since you render judgments and deliver public lectures, I too present to you a product of my nightingale [sc. Muse], a dignified epigram that deserves to speak frankly.’ The final line, however, has been a source of much confusion.

Friedrich Jacobs, a heroic figure in the history of scholarship on the Greek Anthology, long ago proposed emending the line in three places: ὁ γὰρ σὲ μέλπων τῆς Δίκης ὕμνουςχέει (‘for the one who sings of you pours out hymns in praise of Justice’).Footnote ³ In other words, the addressee is so committed to justice that praise of him is tantamount to praise of Lady Dike herself. Somewhat remarkably, this is the version of the line that has been adopted in every edition of the Anthology since Jacobs first suggested it.Footnote ⁴ There is no doubting the ingenuity of his proposal: he has deleted the second letter of the line, substituted μ for π in ὕπνους, and inverted the first two letters of ἔχει, changing the lexical value of three words. Each of these emendations is economical, and in isolation any one of them might be justifiable. In combination, however, this constellation of proposed changes is highly speculative and ultimately improbable. Moreover, the emended line, while comprehensible on its own, clashes badly with what precedes. The third verse indicates that the attached epigram should be allowed to speak openly and honestly. The final line should then explain (γάρ) why the poem that originally followed this prologue deserves such liberty, but Jacobs's changes yield instead a bland and platitudinous generalization. Not only is this no explanation, his version of the final line implies that the attached epigram will flatter rather than speak frankly.

Several decades ago, Alan Cameron noted the lack of coherence in Jacobs's proposal and suggested a variation: οὐ γὰρ σ' ὁ μέλπων τῆς Δίκης ὕμνουςχέει (‘for he who lauds you, sings not the praises of Justice’).Footnote ⁵ This retains Jacobs's emended conclusion to the line, but by reclaiming the negative particle that initiates the verse in the Palatinus, Cameron has reversed the sense. On this reading, Palladas concludes by implying that the addressee is in fact unjust – a slanderous conclusion that forces the reader to return to the first three lines and reinterpret their ostensibly respectful tone as ironic. Although Cameron has managed to wring some sense out of the poem, problems remain. Most glaringly, one is still being asked to accept a line that bears only a superficial resemblance to what is preserved in the manuscript. Moreover, on this interpretation, the entire point of the epigram depends on a verse that has been essentially rewritten.

More recently, Heather White essayed a defence of the manuscript reading.Footnote ⁶ She understands οὐ γὰρ σὲ μέλπων τῆς Δίκης ὕπνους ἔχει to mean ‘for he who sings of you does not enjoy the sleep of Justice’. White explains: ‘The poet has been forced to stay awake at night in order to write a poem for the magistrate. Hence he has not been able to enjoy the “sleep of Justice”, i.e. the sleep which is enjoyed by just men … Palladas is speaking ironically, and implies that the magistrate is himself not just.’Footnote ⁷ Even if the line as it stands can convey what White wants it to convey, the sense is barely intelligible. And it is not clear that even such limited sense can be extracted from these words. Apart from the fact that it would be strange for μέλπων, if substantive, to lack an article,Footnote ⁸ it is not at all natural that ‘enjoys the sleep of the just’ would be expressed by τῆς Δίκης ὕπνους ἔχει.Footnote ⁹ I have been able to find no other use of a plural object in the expression ὕπνον ἔχειν (= ‘to sleep’). Moreover, a good night's sleep does not belong to Dike herself, who should be vigilant, but rather to people who are untroubled by pangs of conscience.

It seems to me that White has not solved the matter, but I do agree that the radical solution of Jacobs should be set aside. There is, in fact, a much simpler solution to be considered: in place of μέλπων, one might supply the neuter μέλπον. After the distinction between long and short vowels was lost in Greek pronunciation (already in Late Antiquity), the confusion of omicron and omega became commonplace. And in this case, the neuter participle generates superior sense; it looks back to the previous line's ἐπίγραμμα, which is the unexpressed subject of the prologue's conclusion. I would thus read:

As long as the grammatical subject was thought to be personal (ὁ μέλπων), τῆς Δίκης ὕπνους ἔχει was a very odd predicate. But if the grammatical subject is the ‘epigram’, then the predicate simply expresses what it ‘holds’ or ‘contains’ (ἔχει). Evidently, it contains the ‘slumbers of Justice’. In other words, Lady Dike, who should have been vigilant, was sound asleep while an injustice was perpetrated against the poet.Footnote ¹⁰ By exposing this situation in the attached epigram, Palladas hopes that his addressee will rouse Dike from her slumbers (that is, rectify the injustice). But there may also be a second way to read the phrase: one might understand τῆς Δίκης ὕπνους ἔχει to mean ‘it contains (my) dreams of justice’.Footnote ¹¹ On this reading, the poet's hope for vindication from the judge would be even more explicit. Perhaps there is no need to choose between these two options; they can be held together as complementary. The ἐπίγραμμα σεμνόν is going to expose an injustice perpetrated against the poet (the ‘slumbers of Lady Dike’) and it is going to express the poet's hope for vindication (his ‘dreams of justice’).

The minor emendation proposed above (μέλπον for μέλπων) remains as faithful as possible to the text of the Palatinus and does no violence to the natural sense. Moreover, the final line now truly does explain why Palladas' ἐπίγραμμα σεμνόν is frank and why it deserves such liberty. Flattery is the appropriate posture when seeking a favour from a powerful man, but Palladas is not going to sing the judge's praises in the attached epigram. The poem should be allowed this licence because it is going to draw attention to an injustice that the recipient will want to rectify. It hardly needs to be said that this is also an oblique form of flattery: ‘You, sir, are the sort of person who does not care about conventional platitudes, only about seeing justice served.’

Where, then, is the epigram that once followed this prologue and what does it say? The Palatine lemmatist blindly assumed that it was the next entry in the Anthology and wrote τὸ ἐπίγραμμα in the margin beside Anth. Pal. 10.93. The two epigrams, however, have nothing in common.Footnote ¹² In truth, the process of anthologization, by its very nature, is a process of lifting poems from their original context. Therefore, either the promised epigram has not survived (a genuine possibility) or it is one of the other 150 or so that are ascribed to Palladas in the Greek Anthology. A survey reveals exactly one candidate that fits the criteria: (1) addressed to a judge; (2) lacking open flattery; (3) containing an exposure of injustice and a plea for vindication. Here is the sole candidate:Footnote ¹³

Palladas claims to have fallen on hard times owing to an ‘unholy embassy’ undertaken against him by a certain Dorotheus. In other words, Dorotheus (if this was a real case and that was his real name) lodged a complaint or accusation against Palladas in a Roman court, whether belonging to a provincial governor, a prefect or an emperor.Footnote ¹⁴ The result of this embassy was apparently a conviction, or if this was not strictly a legal case, then at least a decision in favour of Dorotheus, for Palladas was stripped of his σύνταξις (that is, the regular salary that he had earned as a city's stipendiary grammarian).Footnote ¹⁵ This matter is presented as an injustice perpetrated against the poet, that is to say, the ‘slumbers of Justice’ (Anth. Pal. 10.92.4).

But what of the addressee? Was Anth. Pal. 9.175 composed for a judge, as the prologue requires? Palladas addresses him directly in the final couplet as ‘Friend of God’, appealing to him to undo the injustice and save the poet from finishing his life in dire poverty. It has been suggested in passing that this apostrophized θεῷ φίλος was probably the emperor Constantine I.Footnote ¹⁶ Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the 320s and 330s, frequently calls Constantine θεοφιλὴς βασιλεύς or simply ὁ τῷ θεῷ φίλος.Footnote ¹⁷ And in two other epigrams, Palladas borrows Constantine's propaganda pertaining to the civil war with Licinius (a. 324), referring to the victorious emperor three times as τὸν (ὃν) θεὸς φιλεῖ.Footnote ¹⁸ According to these two epigrams, ‘a certain someone’ (sc. Licinius, who is identified as such because he suffered abolitio memoriae) made the grave error of indulging in envy and hatred of God's Friend, undertaking a futile war against him and his divine protector, whereas any reasonable person should rather love the man whom God loves.Footnote ¹⁹ Palladas' own poetry, therefore, contains precedent for referring to Constantine as the ‘Friend of God’. And there is no more logical person than the emperor to be the recipient of an appeal to overturn a decision made in another court (the result of Dorotheus' embassy).Footnote ²⁰

It appears, therefore, that Palladas may have composed Anth. Pal. 9.175 for Constantine in the context of an appeal. If correct, this context would go some way towards explaining two potentially surprising facts: (1) that several of his surviving epigrams reflect Constantine's late political and religious propaganda, and (2) that he seems to have been in Constantinople around the time of its foundation in the year 330.Footnote ²¹ The poems reflecting Constantine's own propaganda might well be the remnants of a literary gift for the emperor, offered either in the hope of receiving a favourable outcome in court or in thanks for a favourable outcome already received. Among the many precedents for this type of scenario in antiquity, most relevant is the case of Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius, who submitted a gift of poetry (filled with imperial propaganda) to Constantine as an accompaniment to his legal appeal for recall from exile.Footnote ²²

In any event, on the more modest point that is presently under discussion, Anth. Pal. 9.175 fits seamlessly with the iambic prologue considered above: (1) it is addressed to a judge (the highest judge); (2) it is respectful but lacks open flattery of the recipient;Footnote ²³ (3) it both exposes an injustice suffered by the poet and also contains a plea for vindication. It is the only extant poem by Palladas that meets these criteria. If the epigram introduced by Anth. Pal. 10.92 has survived, then this is it.

There is perhaps one potential obstacle to this hypothesis. The prologue describes the attached epigram as σεμνόν (Anth. Pal. 10.92.3), but in what sense could this apply to Anth. Pal. 9.175? Despite the serious subject matter, this epigram is notable more for its cleverness than for its solemnity. I would suggest, however, that Palladas is here drawing on the discourse of poetics, in which this adjective is used in a quasi-technical sense. Aristotle classifies poetry as σεμνός if it contains words that are out of the ordinary (ξενικός).Footnote ²⁴ His subsequent discussion privileges especially metaphor, by which he means words that are plucked from their usual context and used creatively in a different linguistic environment. This is precisely the featured technique of Anth. Pal. 9.175, in which Palladas takes Greek grammatical terms and applies them in clever ways to his current circumstances: the ‘declensions’ (πτώσεις) have become his own ‘decline’ into poverty; the ‘syntax’ (σύνταξις) has become the ‘salary’ of which he is deprived; the ‘conjunction’ (σύνδεσμος) has become the ‘conjunction’ of his old age with poverty. This is the defining characteristic of the style that Aristotle calls σεμνός – a style, he notes, that produces nothing more than a riddle if taken to extremes. Anth. Pal. 9.175, therefore, is indeed an ἐπίγραμμα σεμνόν according to Aristotelian canons, and this, I suggest, is primarily what Palladas means in Anth. Pal. 10.92 (itself a plain-speaking iambic prologue) when he introduces it as such. Of course, if this is right, then he has also imparted to the adjective a secondary meaning of ‘dignified’ or even ‘holy’ – a pointed contrast with Dorotheus' embassy, which he describes in the attached poem as ‘unholy’ (9.175.3). The prologue's characterization of the epigram as σεμνόν, far from being an obstacle, offers a strong point of connection with Anth. Pal. 9.175.

Another point of connection between the two is less decisive than the factors considered above but adds to the overall coherence. The prologue identifies the judge as someone who not only renders judgments but also ‘delivers public lectures’ (10.92.1). As emperor, of course, Constantine was expected to give occasional orations.Footnote ²⁵ But this was a role that he apparently embraced with great zeal during the latter years of his reign. Eusebius makes this one of the most salient characteristics of his hero in Book 4 of the Vita Constantini. Typical is the following:Footnote ²⁶

In fact, with a sparkling record of military success behind him, this final phase of Constantine's reign was supposedly characterized above all by two things – oratory and law. Here is a summary statement from Eusebius:Footnote ²⁷

This is a very good fit indeed for Palladas' addressee, the ‘Friend of God’ (Anth. Pal. 9.175.5) who ‘renders judgments and delivers public lectures’ (Anth. Pal. 10.92.1). One wonders what Palladas might have thought of the emperor's ‘philosophical’ orations as he awaited his turn to plead in Constantine's court.Footnote ²⁸

Finally, the association of Anth. Pal. 10.92 and 9.175 in the context of an appeal might explain the curious use of an iambic prologue to introduce a single epigram. As noted at the outset, this sort of prologue (although usually longer) typically introduces a long hexameter poem. Iambic trimeter, however, was employed for this purpose precisely because it was the metre of straightforward communication. In the case of Anth. Pal. 10.92, therefore, Palladas offers in unambiguous language a captatio for the judge, suggesting that the man's verdicts and lectures are the products of inspiration, no less than the epigram that he is about to present in return. And he concludes the prologue with a sort of apology for omitting conventional platitudes, as well as a statement of the grounds for his confidence. Anth. Pal. 9.175, then, is a sample of his craft (he was primarily an elegiac poet) that by clever turns exposes the injustice and calls on his addressee to intervene. I would imagine that this pair was composed first for oral delivery before the judge and only later included in a written collection, but that is frankly a guess.

The textual emendation proposed at the beginning of this article, in my opinion, must be accorded a very high degree of likelihood. At least, it is more economical and generates better sense than any reading hitherto suggested. Once Anth. Pal. 10.92 is properly understood, its association with Anth. Pal. 9.175 also seems quite likely. At any rate, 9.175 is a far better candidate than any other extant epigram ascribed to Palladas. The identification of his addressee – the judge and ‘Friend of God’ – as Constantine is naturally somewhat more speculative, but it fits very well with the emerging picture of Palladas' place in the early decades of the fourth century.