Marcus Argentarius, the witty and obscene epigrammatist included in the Garland of Philip,Footnote 1 has recently received several in-depth analyses of his programmatic engagement with Hesiod, the only poet he mentions by name in his surviving epigrams, but Hesiod is not the only ‘serious’ Greek poet to whom Argentarius juxtaposes his ludic, erotic poetry.Footnote 2 In this article, I argue that he also engages with Hesiod’s Hellenistic ‘heir’ Aratus and that his two poems on the stars and the cosmos (Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P and Anth. Pal. 9.270/26 G–P) implicitly contrast Argentarius’ brand of naughty epigram with the lofty tradition of astronomical poetry associated with Aratus.Footnote 3 Argentarius does not mention Aratus by name, but his epigram on Menophila’s cosmos (Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P) likely alludes to a ‘dirty astronomy’ poem of Philodemus which makes the Aratean connection explicit (Anth. Pal. 11.318/28 G–P/31 Sider). While it is universally accepted that Argentarius has provided an obscene meaning to Menophila’s cosmos in Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P, scholars have read Anth. Pal. 9.270/26 G–P, in which Argentarius compares his garland and lyre to the constellations, simply as a manifesto of the sympotic life. I will argue, however, that like Argentarius Anth. Pal. 5.105, Argentarius Anth. Pal. 9.270 contains an obscene layer of meaning, which conflates Argentarius’ lyre-playing with masturbation and uses this ultimate ‘non-serious’ sexual activity as a symbol of his ludic poetics. Thus, in both Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P and Anth. Pal. 9.270/26 G–P, Argentarius invests the cosmos with base meaning and transforms the subject matter of learned poetry into dirty jokes or an obscene manifesto.
The Carnal Cosmos of Menophila (Marcus Argentarius Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P) and Anticrates (Philodemus Anth. Pal. 11.318/28 G–P/31 Sider)
Before examining Anth. Pal. 9.270, I will briefly review the less controversial obscenity of Argentarius’ Menophila poem and then compare it to Philodemus’ model:Footnote 4
Ἄλλος ὁ Μηνοφίλας λέγεται παρὰ μαχλάσι κόσμος,
ἄλλος, ἐπεὶ πάσης γεύεται ἀκρασίης.
ἀλλ’ ἴτε Χαλδαῖοι κείνης πέλας· ἦ γὰρ ὁ ταύτης
οὐρανὸς ἐντὸς ἔχει καὶ Κύνα καὶ Διδύμους.
Anth. Pal. 5.105
Menophila’s universe is said by the lewd ladies to be different, different since she tastes every kind of debauchery. Come near her, Chaldean astrologers; for her heaven keeps hidden within both the Dog and the Twins.Footnote 5
While some of Argentarius’ erotic puns are subtle or open to interpretation, scholars are nearly unanimous in their interpretation of the key double entendres in this epigram, in which the οὐρανός (‘heaven’) stands for Menophila’s mouth and the Dog-Star and Gemini evoke the penis and testicles.Footnote 6 Thus, Menophila’s ‘cosmos’ boils down to the act of fellatio.Footnote 7 It is even possible that Argentarius subtly portrays Menophila as both a cunnilinctor and a fellator. While the epigram clearly ends with a reference to fellatio, the first two lines focus on her reputation with the ‘lewd ladies’ (1) for ‘tast[ing] every kind of debauchery’ (2). Gow and Page struggle to explain the point of bringing the ‘ladies’ into it and even consider Brunck’s conjecture Μηνοφίλαι … παρὰ μαχλάδι to deal with the difficulty,Footnote 8 but perhaps Argentarius is signalling that Menophila engages in oral activity with both women and men, a characteristic which has a parallel in Argentarius’ Philodeman model.Footnote 9
Indeed, Argentarius’ Menophila epigram continues in the tradition of Philodemus Anth. Pal. 11.318, another ‘dirty astronomy’ poem, which makes explicit the Aratean backdrop:
Ἀντικράτης ᾔδει τὰ σφαιρικὰ μᾶλλον Ἀράτου
πολλῷ, τὴν ἰδίην δ’ οὐκ ἐνόει γένεσιν·
διστάζειν γὰρ ἔφη πότερ’ ἐν Κριῷ γεγένηται
ἢ Διδύμοις ἢ τοῖς ἰχθύσιν ἀμφοτέροις.
εὕρηται δὲ σαφῶς ἐν τοῖς τρισί· καὶ γὰρ ὀχευτὴς
καὶ μῶρος μαλακός τ’ ἐστὶ καὶ ὀψοφάγος.
Anth. Pal. 11.318
Anticrates knew astronomy much better than Aratus, but he did not know his own birth sign. For he said he was unsure whether he was born under the Ram, the Twins, or both Fishes. But clearly he has been found among all three: for he is a stud, a sluggish effeminate, and an eater of dainties.
Even though scholars have agreed on the bawdy nature of Philodemus’ astrological puns,Footnote 10 there has been some disagreement on the exact meaning of the signs and their ramifications for Antricates’ sexual behaviour, so I will briefly discuss the possibilities before returning to Argentarius. First, as P. G. Maxwell-Stuart notes, ‘Κριός is an ὀχευτής, a male animal kept for breeding, hence an active heterosexual’.Footnote 11 I differ slightly from Maxwell-Stuart in assuming that Philodemus is focusing more on the ‘penetrating’ activity implied by both Κριός and ὀχευτής and less on the gender (‘heterosexual’) of Anticrates’ sex-partner given the tendency in Greek culture (and particularly astrological texts) to conceptualise sexual roles along the penetrative/penetrated axis more than along gender lines.Footnote 12
My understanding of the Twins and their connection to the human reflex, the ‘sluggish effeminate’ (μῶρος μαλακός), is also a bit different from that of other commentators. Some have wanted to take μῶρος with ὀχευτής instead of μαλακός,Footnote 13 but I would argue that μῶρος μαλακός are more naturally read together and that both of them contribute to the notion that Anticrates also likes to be penetrated. While I acknowledge that μῶρος has a wide semantic range and can mean ‘foolish’, ‘crazy’, and ‘licentious’ – all meanings that could work with μαλακός – it also has a medical meaning in Hippocrates: it describes why those whose testicles have been crushed are impotent, namely due to the insensitivity (μωρά) of their νεῦρα – the cords which run from the testicle to the penis and permit erections (Gen. 2). Thus, I believe that both μῶρος and μαλακός (or μαλακῶς if Sider is correct) depict Anticrates as liking to be penetrated.
So, how do the ‘Twins’ fit in? The easiest explanation is that they refer to the testicles, as they do in Argentarius’ Menophila epigram and in Philodemus Anth. Pal. 5.125.6/25 G–P/22 Sider, and commentators are unanimous in accepting that it means the same thing here. However, it is not immediately clear why ‘testicles’ go along with effeminacy or liking-to-be-penetrated, and scholars’ explanations have been unhelpful.Footnote 14 One possibility is that the testicles connote eunuchs and the removal of the testicles, which in fact is the context of their appearance in Philodemus Anth. Pal. 5.125.6, whose punchline involves cutting off the ‘twins’.Footnote 15 Another possibility is that ‘Twins’ means something other than ‘testicles’ here and instead refers to Anticrates’ ‘double nature’, or his penchant for playing both the active and passive role sexually. Ernst Schmidt has argued that Catullus uses ‘twins’ (gemelli) in precisely this sense in Poem 57.6 of Caesar and Mamurra, who are not only depicted as active sexually with women (57.9) and passive with men (57.1–2,10), but as engaging in this ‘twinned’ sexual behaviour with each other together ‘on one couch’ (uno in lectulo, 57.8), that is, taking turns playing the active and passive role with each other.Footnote 16 Sider interprets the Twins as ‘“testicles” and/or “ovaries”’ but his overall conclusion about their meaning still fits with my interpretation: ‘The inherent duality of δίδυμοι contributes to this amphiboly. Bisexuality as such (a dubious ancient category) is not the point, but that Antikrates will take his sex in any and all ways.’Footnote 17 This last point, I believe, is ultimately Philodemus’ message, though I would simply add that since the Ram already emphasised his role as penetrator, the Twins particularly highlight that he also likes to be penetrated – that is, he is μῶρος μαλακός.
Philodemus is not done with his sexual riddles, and now the reader is left to figure out in what sense the (two) Fishes make Anticrates an ‘eater of dainties’. While Gow and Page simply translate ὀψοφάγος as ‘glutton’ and suggest that he is labelled as such ‘because of the connexion between ἰχθῦς and ὄψον’,Footnote 18 Sider explicates the obscene underlying meaning, which he believes depicts Anticrates as a cunnilinctor: ‘Sexual delights come in various forms: Alexis uses ὄψον to stand for both vagina (fr. 168.6f. K-A) and penis (fr. 50). As an explication of Antikrates’ link with Pisces, the former is to be understood here.’Footnote 19 Maxwell-Stuart also understands the term as referring to oral sex but argues it refers to fellatio: ‘ὄψοφάγος – here unmistakably “penis-eater”’.Footnote 20 The fact that Sider and Maxwell-Stuart interpret Anticrates as (only) a cunnilinctor and (only) a fellator, respectively, is useful for my own theory, namely that Philodemus suggests that Anticrates is both a cunnilinctor and a fellator.Footnote 21 ‘Fish’ can stand for both the vagina and penis, just as ὄψον can, and that is why Philodemus specifies both Fishes in line 4 (τοῖς ἰχθύσιν ἀμφοτέροις).Footnote 22
Philodemus’ epigram, then, implicitly contrasts his own witty poetry, full of obscene double meanings, with the dry, learned poetry of Aratus and denigrates the latter by portraying Aratus’ exponent, Anticrates, as a sexual profligate who lacks self-knowledge despite his learning. Whichever epigrammatist influenced the other, Marcus Argentarius in his Menophila epigram similarly participates in the downgrading of serious astronomical poetry and knowledge by using it as a setup for raunchy jokes.
Argentarius’ (Auto)erotic agrupnia and the Sexualised Lyre (Anth. Pal. 9.270/26 G–P)
Argentarius returns to the theme of the cosmos in Anth. Pal. 9.270, a more personal poem which is spoken in the first person. While Argentarius certainly celebrates the sympotic life in other epigrams,Footnote 23 this is the only one in which he invests that life with cosmic importance and, once again, creates an implicit rivalry with the astronomical poetry of Aratus:
Κωμάζω χρύσειον ἐς ἑσπερίων χορὸν ἄστρων
λεύσσων, οὐδ’ ἄλλων λὰξ ἐβάρυνα χορούς.Footnote 24
στέψας δ’ ἀνθόβολον κρατὸς τρίχα τὴν κελαδεινήν
πηκτίδα μουσοπόλοις χερσὶν ἐπηρέθισα.
καὶ τάδε δρῶν εὔκοσμον ἔχω βίον· οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτός
κόσμος ἄνευθε λύρης ἔπλετο καὶ στεφάνου.
Anth. Pal. 9.270
I revel, gazing at the golden chorus of the evening stars, nor have I burdened with my foot the choruses of others. But, having encircled the garlanded hair of my head, I stimulated the sounding lyre with my muse-serving hands. And, doing these things, I lead a well-ordered life; for neither is the cosmos itself without a lyre or a crown.
Spending the night looking up at the stars brings to mind the famed star-gazing and poetic agrupnia (‘wakefulness’) of Aratus praised by Callimachus in Epigram 27.3–4 Pf. (χαίρετε λεπταί | ῥήσιες, Ἀρήτου σύμβολον ἀγρυπνίης, ‘Hail slender utterances, token of Aratus’ sleeplessness’) – praise that also points to Aratus’ famous LEPTĒ acrostic in Phaenomena 783–7.Footnote 25 But while Aratus’ agrupnia was a symbol of his highly crafted poetic artistry – his λεπτότης (‘fineness’, ‘subtlety’), as expressed in a learned astronomical poemFootnote 26 – Argentarius’ agrupnia is symbolised by a sympotic epigram in praise of the lyre and the garland. These symbols of the symposium are also intensely metapoetic objectsFootnote 27 that lay claim to a different type of artistry, one focused on baser pleasures, but which Argentarius clearly finds more valuable. I will argue that there is also an obscene double entendre underlying these images, namely masturbation, which serves as a metaphor for creating erotic and ludic epigrammatic poetry.Footnote 28
Argentarius, then, draws upon several different types of agrupnia in this epigram: the wakefulness required for literal stargazing (with its concomitant intellectual aspirations); poetic agrupnia, or the wakefulness motivated by literary endeavours, which Callimachus most famously linked to Aratus’ Phaenomena (and thus to both literal and literary stargazing);Footnote 29 and erotic agrupnia, or wakefulness caused by desire – though the erotic element is found primarily in the poem’s obscene subtext.Footnote 30 Agrupnia is a frequent feature of erotic epigram, often accompanied by an invocation of the stars and/or nightFootnote 31 and sometimes accompanied by masturbation.Footnote 32 A difference between Argentarius’ agrupnia and these other instances of erotic agrupnia, however, is that Argentarius’ persona is not longing for another person but seems happy and content with himself and his sympotic lifestyle – a perfect symbol of (auto)erotic agrupnia.
Since Argentarius’ epigram has some textual problems in line 2, I will first analyse the underlying sexual imagery involved in Argentarius’ lyre-playing (and garlanding) before tackling line 2. The sexualisation of the lyre is present at its very invention in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, when Hermes bestows ‘her’ on Apollo and tells him to ‘sing well, holding with your hands this clear singing girlfriend’ (εὐμόλπει μετὰ χερσὶν ἔχων λιγύφωνον ἑταίρην, 478). This sexualisation had been foreshadowed by the description of Hermes’ first encounter with the tortoise that would become his lyre: she is described as ‘walking seductively’ (σαῦλα ποσὶν βαίνουσα, 28), and then Hermes proceeds to address her as a female with a beautiful body and as a chorus dancer and companion of the feast (χαῖρε φυὴν ἐρόεσσα χοροιτύπε δαιτὸς ἑταίρη 31), as well as a ‘beautiful plaything’ (καλὸν ἄθυρμα, 32).Footnote 33
I would also argue that Sophocles presents a sexualised lyre in the Ichneutai, the satyr-play version of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.Footnote 34 In this fragmentary play, the satyrs are terrified by a strange noise (Ichn. 124–220), which they later find out is Hermes playing his lyre. Cyllene describes how Hermes has, in just days since his birth, reached his ‘youthful prime’ (εἰς ἥβης ἀκμήν, 280), invented the lyre from a dead tortoise, and enjoyed playing it:
καὶ τοῦτο λύπη[ς] ἔστ’ ἄκεστρον καὶ παραψυκ[τ]ήρ̣[ιο]ν̣
κείνῳ μόνον, χα[ί]ρει δ’ ἀθύρων καί τι προσφων[ῶν μέλος·
ξύμφωνον ἐξα[ί]ρει γὰρ αὐτὸν αἰόλισμα τῆς λ[ύ]ρ̣α̣ς.Footnote 35
Ichn. 325–7
And this is his only remedy and consolation for his pain. He rejoices in playing with it and singing (a song?) to it; for the lyre’s harmonious shifting tone lifts him up/arouses him.
Most of the language in this description of lyre-playing works as well for masturbation as for playing music: masturbation is elsewhere depicted as a consolation or release from erotic longing or pain and anxiety, including in Dio Chrysostom’s recounting of Diogenes the Cynic’s praise of masturbation, an art which he says Hermes invented and taught to Pan who, ‘when he learned it, ceased from his great distress [over Echo]’ (καὶ τόν, ἐπεὶ ἔμαθε, παύσασθαι τῆς πολλῆς ταλαιπωρίας, Or. 6.20).Footnote 36 A particularly pertinent example on the Roman side, which combines lyre and masturbation imagery, is found in Juvenal 6.383–4, a passage in which a Roman matron uses a lyre plectrum as a dildo to console herself (hunc tenet, hoc se | solatur, gratoque indulget basia plectro, ‘she holds this, she consoles herself with this, she grants kisses to the pleasing plectrum’).Footnote 37 In addition, words of ‘playing’ (ἀθύρων, 326) are used of erotic activity.Footnote 38 Finally, while στύω/στύομαι, as Jeffrey Henderson notes, ‘was the standard improper word for getting an erection or being erect’, it is easy to imagine that ἐξαίρω (‘lift up’) could be a euphemistic substitution, especially as ἐπαίρω (‘lift’, ‘raise’) is used in just that way in Aristophanes, Lysistrata 937.Footnote 39 In the next speech of Cyllene, she scolds the satyr chorus for masturbating (368) – perhaps they were inspired by Hermes’ example?Footnote 40 If the Homeric Hymn to Hermes has male maturation as a theme,Footnote 41 then it would make perfect sense for the comic reflex of that theme to be the invention of the lyre as an allegory for masturbation, especially if Hermes was known as the inventor of both ‘arts’. The masturbation-double entendres in the Ichneutai also fit with Sophocles’ decision to have Hermes reach adolescence in his play, a decision which contrasts with the chronology of the hymn, in which ‘Hermes accomplishes all his deeds on the first day of his life while still wearing his swaddling-clothes’.Footnote 42
Another series of sexualised lyre-playing scenes clusters around the myth of Achilles, who, like Hermes, is associated with solitary lyre-playing.Footnote 43 In a fragment of a Greek comedy about Achilles’ centaur teacher, namely Chiron by Pherecrates (fr. 155 K–A), Music (Μουσική), personified as a lyre/hetaira, complains of the sexual assault she has suffered at the hands of four rival musicians and musical innovators.Footnote 44 While we do not know if Achilles’ lyre-playing from Iliad 9 appears in the play, one of the fragments parodies the embassy scene in the Iliad (fr. 159 K–A; cf. Il. 9.270), which famously begins with Achilles playing his lyre (Il. 9.186–9). Perhaps the Chiron also included a sexualised lyre-scene with Achilles or even a scene in which Chiron instructs him in the art.Footnote 45
The lyre-as-hetaira metaphor is also present in an anonymous epigram of the Palatine Anthology addressed to a female lyre player:
Ἤθελον, ὦ κιθαρῳδέ, παραστάς, ὡς κιθαρίζεις,
τὴν ὑπάτην κροῦσαι τήν τε μέσην χαλάσαι.
Anth. Pal. 5.99
I wished, player of the lyre, standing beside me, that, just as you play your lyre, I could strike your highest string and loosen your middle one.
This epigram plays upon the sexual orifice humour so common in erotic Greek epigram, as well as the theme of sexualised lyre-strings, which was also present in the Pherecrates passage. While the strings here probably stand in for female sexual organs/orifices,Footnote 46 it is more common, particularly in Latin, for the lyre-strings to stand in for the penis, and both nervus and νεῦρον (‘sinew’ and ‘lyre string’) can evoke the phallus in Latin and Greek.Footnote 47
To return to the Achilles-myth, the connection between ‘sinew/penis’ and ‘lyre string’ lies behind the comparison of the cithara to the penis in Varro’s description of Briseis’ sexual/musical activity in Menippean Satire fr. 368 Bücheler/366 Cèbe: et id dicunt suam Briseidem producere quae eius nervia tractare solebat (‘and they say that he should bring out Briseis who used to caress his instrument’), as well as in Priapea 68.15–16 (ille Pelethroniam cecinit miserabile carmen | ad citharam; cithara tensior ipse sua, ‘He [Achilles] sang a mournful song to the Pelethronian lyre, himself more taut than the lyre itself’).Footnote 48 Indeed, Priapea 68.15–16 reads like a sequel to Varro’s passage: after losing Briseis (13–14), Achilles is stuck caressing his own strings.Footnote 49 Finally, another sexualised element of the lyre is the phallic tool used to strum some versions of the stringed instrument, namely the plectrum (πλῆκτρον, plectrum, or pecten), terms that in Latin can double as words for the lyre itself.Footnote 50 Thus, the lyre is both a ‘substitute woman’ and the ‘penis’, and playing the lyre can be suggestive of an autoerotic experience which, like music itself, soothes the soul and releases care.
To return now to Argentarius’ lyre-playing: Argentarius makes clear that he uses his ‘muse-loving hands’ and not a pick to strum his lyre, and, indeed, the focus on the hands in his epigram contributes to the masturbatory undertone, as does the verb ἐρεθίζω (‘stimulate’, ‘arouse’).Footnote 51 Even the detail about encircling the ‘garlanded hair of the head’ (ἀνθόβολον κρατὸς τρίχα, 3) could fit with a masturbatory theme since the combination of some form of ἀνθεῖν (‘flowering’) with θρίξ (‘hair’) is used metaphorically of the pubic hair in Aristophanes (Eccl. 13; Ach. 791),Footnote 52 while ‘head’ is certainly a familiar term for the penis in Latin, and it is easy to imagine a bilingual double entendre here.Footnote 53 Indeed, the awkward phraseology in line 3 might be explained by the sexual interpretation: Argentarius encircles (with his hand?) the flowering hair of his ‘head’ in preparation for stimulating the ‘lyre’. The lyre, then, may join Argentarius’ wine flask as a sympotic object which stands in for a sexual partner and enables him to find contentment with himself.Footnote 54
In the final couplet, Argentarius trains our gaze back up to the sky when he compares his life to the cosmos, which also contains a Lyre and Crown (5–6). Since Argentarius frequently reserves his most obscene punchlines for the final couplet, we should consider whether there is further meaning that relates to the underlying double entendre. One possibility is that the phrase ἔχω βίον contains a pun on ἔχω βιόν (‘I hold a bow’), another object that can connote the ‘penis’ due to both the ‘bow-string’ (the same nervus and νεῦρον of the lyre) and the ‘“horny” frame of the bow which suggests the male organ’.Footnote 55 Since the Archer is also a constellation described by Aratus (Phaen. 305–6), and the bow is linked to the lyre as attributes of Apollo,Footnote 56 perhaps Argentarius asks us to envision himself as the ‘bow-holder’ in the sky. Of course, the Archer is not Apollo but is associated with the lusty figures of centaurs and satyrs: as D. Mark Possanza has noted, ‘unlike the other zodiacal constellations its identity was never permanently established by a generally accepted myth’ and ‘the shape of the constellation was thought to represent either a two-legged satyr or a four-legged centaur’ – sometimes Chiron himself.Footnote 57 Certainly, these lusty creatures are apt models for Argentarius the epigrammatist. But regardless of whether any other specific constellations are invoked in Anth. Pal. 9.270 besides the Lyre and the Crown, in the final lines Argentarius becomes a cosmos unto himself and invites us to envision him as a sympotic (and erotic) reflection of the night sky.Footnote 58
I would now like to consider the controversial line 2 and see whether the sexual interpretation of the poem can shed light on the text and its meaning. Gow and Page print the version of the text from the Anthologia Palatina and place daggers around all but the first word of line 2: λεύσσων, †οὐδ’ ἄλλων λὰξ ἐβάρυνα ὄρος†. They leave the Greek untranslated after λεύσσων since they believe there must be further corruption and that no version of ‘nor have I burdened with my foot the ____ of others’ can make sense. Finally, they also dismiss the reading of the Anthologia Planudea, which is identical but for the final word: χορούς instead of ὄρος. They explain their reasoning: ‘Pl’s text, which looks like an attempt to cure a corruption, will not serve, for it must mean “nor have I oppressed with my foot the dances of others”, an irrelevant idea in grotesque phraseology.’Footnote 59 I will argue that χορούς makes perfect sense, particularly when juxtaposed to a sexualised reading of Argentarius’ lyre-playing. As the sixteenth-century commentator Jean Brodeau recognised, a Greek proverb informs the line (ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ χορῷ πόδα τιθέναι, ‘to put one’s foot in another’s chorus’) and supports the reading of χορούς.Footnote 60 Plutarch utilises the proverb twice, and it makes its way into Erasmus’ book of Greek and Latin proverbs as an expression that refers to meddling in someone else’s affairs.Footnote 61 The proverb gives an understandable surface meaning to the text in that Argentarius claims to be minding his own business and not causing any trouble for anyone else while he is looking at the stars and playing his lyre.
I suggest there is also a sexual subtext that adds further meaning and that Argentarius’ expression recalls not just the proverb preserved in Plutarch, but also proverbial expressions for adultery, such as the one in Theognis:
Ἐχθαίρω δὲ γυναῖκα περίδρομον ἄνδρα τε μάργον,
ὃς τὴν ἀλλοτρίαν βούλετ’ ἄρουραν ἀροῦν.
Thgn. fr. 581–2
I hate the roaming woman and the lecherous man who wishes to plough the field of another.
There are several formulations of this idea in Latin that involve similar imagery of either ploughing another man’s field or treading on fenced off territory, such as Plautus, Asinaria 874: fundum alienum arat, incultum familiarem deserit (‘he ploughs the field of another and leaves his own uncultivated’).Footnote 62 While ploughing is a recognisable sexual double entendre, I would argue that ‘putting the foot’ somewhere it does not belong is also legible as a double entendre given the common use of ‘foot’ for ‘phallus’ in Greek.Footnote 63 Gow and Page are particularly troubled by the use of ἐβάρυνα (‘weighed down’, ‘burdened’, ‘wearied’),Footnote 64 but several similar verbs are used of sexual activity, such as πιέζω (‘press’, ‘weigh down’), ἐρείδω (‘press hard’, ‘push’, ‘press down᾽), or βαίνω (‘mount’ or ‘step [with the foot]’).Footnote 65 Since χορός can connote both the place in which the chorus dances and the dancers themselves, it can pick up on the metaphorical expressions for adultery that involve stepping into a restricted space that is not your own, while also suggesting the young women (or men) of a chorus who might be the object of sexual pursuit. Thus, on a sexual level of interpretation, Argentarius encourages the positive revaluation of a supposedly shameful activity and lifestyle (i.e. masturbation and the sympotic life) by contrasting it with a worse activity (i.e. adultery).Footnote 66 Of course, Argentarius’ use of ‘chorus’ also nicely picks up on the ‘chorus’ of stars in line 1. Given Argentarius’ erotic propensities in his epigrams and the common equation of stars with maiden choruses in Greek literature, it seems natural for him to think of dancing women when he looks at the stars while ‘playing his lyre’ before shifting to a mention of ‘real’ dancing choruses in line 2.Footnote 67
Finally, Argentarius’ use of ‘chorus’ connects to the metapoetic aspects of the epigram. The chorus, along with the lyre and garland, might symbolise Argentarius’ sympotic epigrams,Footnote 68 and his statement that he does not step in the chorus of another may also evoke expressions of poetic originality involving the untrodden path, most famously expressed in Callimachus’ Aetia fr. 1.25–8. Horace’s formulation of that topos is particularly close to Argentarius’ expression (Epist. 1.19.21–2): libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps, | non aliena meo pressi pede (‘I first planted free footsteps in unclaimed territory, nor did I weigh down with my foot the [footsteps] of others’).Footnote 69 Thus, on a poetic level, line 2 makes clear that Argentarius’ lyre-playing is boldly original, and on a sexual level, that he does not interfere with others’ relationships but finds erotic contentment with himself.
In Anth. Pal. 9.270, Marcus Argentarius recreates the cosmos in his image and, like a playful Hermes or lustful satyr, finds sexual and poetic fulfilment with his lyre and his ‘muse-loving hands’. His comastic epigram reads as both a poetic manifesto and a statement of his life’s philosophy.Footnote 70 Unlike Aratus, whose agrupnia led to the production of a learned, didactic poem, reflective of a Stoic universe guided by Zeus, Argentarius ‘did it his way’: his agrupnia produces poetry that, while still learned, aims to amuse and arouse and reflects a hedonistic summum bonum – qualities well symbolised by masturbation. While not as explicit as the Menophila epigram in its use of obscenities, Anth. Pal. 9.270 showcases a more subtle form of obscene wordplay in Argentarius’ poetry. Indeed, it is a perfect encapsulation of his penchant for uniting the lofty and the base in his poetics: for infusing his poems with literary allusions and wordplay while at the same time deflating their pretensions with sexual activity and dirty jokes.
