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APHRODITE'S GIFT: THEOGNIDEA 1381–5 AND THE GENESIS OF ‘BOOK 2’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Hendrik Selle
Hendrik Selle*
Affiliation:
New York
*
hendrik.selle@diplo.de
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Extract

When Immanuel Bekker, the editor to whom Aristotle owes his page numbers, travelled to Paris in search of manuscripts between 1810 and 1812, Theognis had been a mainstay of classical scholarship for many hundreds of years. Even so, the small tenth-century parchment volume Bekker discovered there came as a surprise. Not only did it contain a text of the Theognidea which was four hundred years older than the earliest codex known so far; it also added an entirely new section of 176 lines. Presented by the scribe as ‘book 2’ of the Elegiac Poems by Theognis (ελεγειων β´), they revolved around the theme of pederastic love – until then a topic not usually associated with the moralist from Megara. In spite of their similarities to what had now turned into ‘book 1’, they were dismissed as a late forgery almost instantly after Bekker's 1815 edition. Although that view came to be challenged later and can now be considered obsolete, even van Groningen's first comprehensive commentary to the Theognidea, published in 1966 and not superseded since, breaks off where the second book would have begun. Until today, research on this part of the Theognidean corpus has not grown much beyond a trickle flowing at some distance from the classical mainstream.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 461 - 472
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

INTRODUCTION

When Immanuel Bekker, the editor to whom Aristotle owes his page numbers, travelled to Paris in search of manuscripts between 1810 and 1812,Footnote 1 Theognis had been a mainstay of classical scholarship for many hundreds of years. Even so, the small tenth-century parchment volume Bekker discovered there came as a surprise. Not only did it contain a text of the Theognidea which was four hundred years older than the earliest codex known so far; it also added an entirely new section of 176 lines. Presented by the scribe as ‘book 2’ of the Elegiac Poems by Theognis (ελεγειων β´), they revolved around the theme of pederastic love – until then a topic not usually associated with the moralist from Megara. In spite of their similarities to what had now turned into ‘book 1’, they were dismissed as a late forgery almost instantly after Bekker's 1815 edition.Footnote 2 Although that view came to be challenged later and can now be considered obsolete, even van Groningen's first comprehensive commentary to the Theognidea, published in 1966 and not superseded since, breaks off where the second book would have begun.Footnote 3 Until today, research on this part of the Theognidean corpus has not grown much beyond a trickle flowing at some distance from the classical mainstream.Footnote 4

The manuscript Bekker had found, misnamed Mutinensis on the assumption that it originated from Modena, has remained the only surviving trace of these poems.Footnote 5 Towards the end of its text of the Theognidea, just a few lines before it moves on to its next author, Pseudo-Phocylides, readers find themselves stumbling over a passage of four lines which fail to make immediate sense:Footnote 6

῎Ανθρωποί σ′ ἐδόκουν χρυσῆς πάρα δῶρον ἔχοντα  1381

ἐλθεῖν Κυπρογενοῦς δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου     1382–3

γίνεται ἀνθρώποισιν ἔχειν χαλεπώτατον ἄχθος   1384

ἂν μὴ Κυπρογενὴς δῷ λύσιν ἐκ χαλεπῶν     1385

Men imagined you to have come (or ‘gone’), having a (or ‘the’) gift from (or ‘of’)

the golden Cyprus-born, a gift from the violet-crowned.

Having (it?) turns out to be (or ‘is’) the heaviest burden for men,

unless the Cyprus-born grants relief from heaviness.

While the first two lines add up to a somewhat obscure, but grammatically correct main clause, their ending δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου raises suspicion, as it repeats δῶρον after a distance of only four words without adding any new information. More curiously, the second couplet lacks a noun that could be connected with ἔχειν. It cannot easily be found in δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου, since the beginning of a new clause should then have been marked by a particle. In short, the ending of the second line, while seemingly meaningful in relation to what precedes as well as to what follows, fails to produce a grammatical connection between the two halves.

PREVIOUS EMENDATIONS

Bekker's solution was to assume that the scribe, misled by a recurrence of Κυπρογενοῦς at the same position of the pentameter, had skipped one or several couplets – a saut du même au même. His edition therefore indicated a lacuna of unknown extent after the caesura of verse 1382. Bekker had the transmitted text resume with a repetition of Κυπρογενοῦς in a new pentameter, which he counted as verse 1383. Hence the two couplets of the codex Mutinensis appear as five verses (1381–5) in this and all later editions of the Theognidea,Footnote 7 probably making them the only work in elegiacs with an odd line total (viz. 1431). Hartung's less intrusive proposal to delete the two final words of line 2 (δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου) offered an alternative reconstruction of how the error could have evolved:Footnote 8 unwittingly or for want of a clear antigraph, the scribe could have repeated a half-line which had followed the word Κυπρογενοῦς already in verses 1304 and 1332.Footnote 9 Both suggestions, however, stopped short of restoring a possible original text.

Others were less cautious: Heimsoeth ventured to correct δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου to τῆσδε δὲ τοι ζυγὸν ἄρ (‘Therefore its yoke’).Footnote 10 Carrière suggested substituting βωμὸν (‘the altar’) for δῶρον in line 1, while deleting the second half of the next pentameter.Footnote 11 Even though in this case a saut du même au même would no longer have been likely, he retained the traditional assumption of a lacuna preceding the third line.Footnote 12

In contrast, Peek's intervention was of an almost surgical precision. Without recourse to the hypothesis of missing lines, he removed only the most irritating feature of the transmitted text: the absence of a connecting particle. This was supplied by his replacement of δῶρον in the second line by δῶρα δ′, changing only two letters.Footnote 13 Others sought to defend the text as it stands, most notably Diehl's successor as Teubner editor of the Theognidea, Douglas Young.Footnote 14 He and his followers attributed the repetition of δῶρον to the poetic norms of an aural culture, while either denying the need for a particle in the second line or attempting to make sense of the last two lines as an independent couplet.

SIGNS OF CORRUPTION

Could these four verses, then, be interpreted in any way that would allow them to stand as they are? Since the manuscript leaves breaks between poems unmarked, this question must be tested for two alternatives: the verses could either form two separate pieces of two lines each, or belong to a single poem. In the former case, the second couplet would be particularly puzzling. Ercolani translates: ‘It happens to human beings to have a most painful burden, if the Cyprus-born does not remove the difficulties.’Footnote 15 But if the ‘painful burden’ refers to the hardships of life in general, why would relief depend on Aphrodite rather than any other deity? Moreover, no parallel can be found for the supposed impersonal use of γίνεται, combined only with a dative and an infinitive, meaning ‘there is a chance that something happens to someone.’Footnote 16 In the only two analogous constructions found in the Theognidean corpus, the infinitive is the complement of a predicative adjective, while a noun supplies the subject of γίνεται, used as a synonym of ἐστί. Interestingly, both of these phrases also concern burdens: ‘This prize is the best to carry away for a wise man’ (τόδ′ ἄεθλον … κάλλιστον … φέρειν | γίνεται ἀνδρὶ σοφῷ, Thgn. 1003 = Tyrt. 12.14) and ‘Love is hard to bear for a man’ (ἔρος … χαλεπὸν γίνεται ἀνδρὶ φέρειν, Thgn. 1322). This last parallel, which is almost identical to our passage, leaves little room for doubt that γίνεται here as well needs a subject and a predicate. In other words: the syntax of the third and fourth lines in their transmitted form is incomplete. As for the first two lines, however they are to be interpreted, they can hardly remain unchanged if separated from the following couplet. The repetition of δῶρον within the same clause could, if at all, appear acceptable only as an intentional rhetorical device. Thus, for instance, the anaphora of θεοῖς in verse 171 dramatically underlines the urgency of the appeal. In our passage, however, the emphatic recurrence of δῶρον in what would have to be regarded as an apposition is followed by yet another commonplace epithet of Aphrodite's (who has already been called ‘golden’ and ‘Cyprus-born’ in the previous line), which adds nothing to the sense.Footnote 17

But the passage would be no less corrupt if the two couplets are treated as one poem rather than two. In this case the epitheton ornans ‘violet-crowned’ (ἰοστέφανος) – or ‘golden’ (χρυσῆ), if the second clause is taken to start with Κυπρογενοῦς – would have to shoulder the meaning ‘Aphrodite’ all alone. The only, itself doubtful, example of either of these epithets being used on its own is a fragment of Simonides, where it refers not to Aphrodite, but to Thetis.Footnote 18 The fact that Κυπρογενοῦς is needed by both clauses, while it can only belong to one, is also the reason why Bekker's conjecture repeated it after the lacuna. Moreover, the lack of a connecting particle between the two statements is at least striking.Footnote 19 While asyndeta are by no means absent from Greek poetry and do also occur in the Theognidean corpus, it is not easy to see why the beginning of a new sentence and thought in the middle of a verse would have been left completely unmarked, especially since the last two words of the second line are prone to misinterpretation as an apposition.Footnote 20

HOW MANY LINES AND HOW MANY POEMS?

Thus, the transmitted text cannot with any degree of probability be considered sound, whether taken as a whole or divided into two separate couplets. A remedy is needed. But while the assumption of a lacuna hardly ever fails to defuse a textual problem, its effect is rather that of a tranquilizer than of a causal therapy, unless a probable reading can be supplied to fill the gap. In our case, no such link has been offered by editors and none is evident from the context.Footnote 21 When trying to reconstruct a six-verse original that could have caused the supposed saut du même au même, one is immediately struck by the resulting repetition of forms of Κυπρογενής, in the same metrical position, in each of the three pentameters. This seems unlikely, both because of its undesirable aesthetic effect if within the same poem and the slim probability of its double recurrence if in several adjacent poems.Footnote 22 The assumption of a lacuna caused by a slip of the eye therefore not only fails to restore the original text, but is in itself improbable. There is in fact nothing to suggest that the defect of the four lines should be attributed to a loss of text.Footnote 23 Even if a felicitous supplement could be found between the second and the third lines – and none is obvious – this would not repair the lack of a particle at the end of the second line.

What we should therefore be looking for is a well-founded emendation that remains within the scope of four lines. Among the existing suggestions, Peek's idea to replace δῶρον in the second line by δῶρα δ′ seems the most ingenuous. It resolves the most conspicuous problem – the lack of a connecting particle; and the misreading of ΑΔ as ΟΝ is plausible palaeographically.Footnote 24 What it does not explain is the singular use of the epithets ‘violet-crowned’ or ‘golden’ without their noun. More importantly, however, it is doubtful whether the two couplets are indeed likely to have belonged to the same poem. Undeniably, both parts seem to treat a similar topic, as indicated by lexical parallels, especially the epithet Κυπρογενής, which is quite rare in Greek poetry.Footnote 25 Yet parallels of this kind are so frequently found in neighbouring poems of the Theognidean corpus that some have even suspected this to be a general scheme according to which the collection was originally arranged.Footnote 26

The crucial question is whether the meaning of the ‘gift of Aphrodite’ in the supposed former half of the poem can be reconciled with its meaning in the latter half. What is it that the daughter of Zeus gives to mortals? A close parallel to our passage can be found in verse 1304: the boy is advised to give in to his lover's pleas in good time, because οὐκέτι δηρόν ἕξεις Κυπρογενοῦς δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου (‘not for much longer will you have the gift of the violet-crowned Cyprus-born’). The gift that is lost by passage of time is the beauty of youth, which makes the beloved one desirable.Footnote 27 Exactly the same wording recurs in verse 1332: the boy is warned that ποτε καὶ σύ ἕξεις Κυπρογενοῦς δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου, χρηΐζων καὶ ἐπ′ ἄλλον ἐλεύσεαι (‘one day you too will have the gift of the violet-crowned Cyprus-born and will imploringly approach another boy’). The gift which Aphrodite confers here is not sex appeal but the lover's desire.Footnote 28 Finally, verse 1293 refers to the story of Atalanta, φεύγουσ′ ἱμερόεντα γάμον, χρυσῆς ᾿Αφροδίτης δῶρα (‘who tried to escape from lovely marriage, the gift of golden Aphrodite’). In this context, the metaphor is explained as the bond which unites lover and beloved. Thus, even if we confine ourselves to the immediate environment of our passage, ‘book 2’, Aphrodite can be observed bestowing three closely related, but distinct gifts: the grace given to the beloved that magically renders him or her attractive, the corresponding mystery affecting the lover which causes him to feel attracted, and the consummation of this mutual force in the union of both partners. In the first half of the passage at hand, the gift of Aphrodite is said to be possessed by ‘you’. In ‘book 2’, ‘you’ invariably refers to the erōmenos. The gift metaphor must therefore carry the same meaning as in verse 1304, ‘loveliness’. In the second half, on the other hand, if it is made to start in the middle of the second line, the gift of Aphrodite is characterized as being a ‘heavy burden’, unless the same goddess also provides relief. What is described here is unmistakably the ‘longing’ of the erastēs, as in verse 1332.Footnote 29 It follows that if the entire passage is read as a poem of four lines, the emphatically repeated expression ‘gift of the Cyprus-born’ would have two contradictory meanings.Footnote 30 For this reason, Peek's emendation, however felicitous, cannot be correct. The quest for the original text must start from the realization that the two couplets can only represent two separate poems.Footnote 31

TOWARDS RESTORING THE SECOND COUPLET (THGN. 1384–5)

In contrast to the first couplet, the intended sense of the second is relatively clear in spite of the corruption: ‘(Love) is a painful thing, unless Aphrodite provides relief.’ The problem is the want of a subject of γίνεται meaning ‘love’. It does not take much acumen to identify ἔχειν as the location of the fault. Until verse 1381, every poem of ‘book 2’ is marked by some form of παῖς, ἔρως or φίλος. Precisely such a word is missing here. Among the few available possibilities, the replacement which needs the least palaeographical change from ἔχειν is ἔρως.Footnote 32 The corruption could easily have been induced by the mistaken connection with δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου of the preceding line, the more so since ἔχειν recurs in the next poem (Thgn. 1387). The restored poem would read:

Γίνεται ἀνθρώποισιν ἔρως χαλεπώτατον ἄχθος,  1384

ἂν μὴ Κυπρογενὴς δῷ λύσιν ἐκ χαλεπῶν.    1385

Love is the heaviest burden for men,

unless the Cyprus-born grants relief from heaviness.

The thought that love can be hard to bear, as well as the structure of the phrase, have a close parallel in verse 1322: … γνοὺς ἔρος ὡς χαλεπὸν γίνεται ἀνδρὶ φέρειν (‘… understanding that love (or: desire) is heavy for a man to bear’).Footnote 33 Here too, the dynamic colour of γίνεται ‘comes into existence, turns to, turns out to be’ has worn off in elegiac versification, leaving an almost neutral ‘is’. The only difference is that in verse 1322 ἔρος is accompanied by a verb (φέρειν).Footnote 34 An alternative emendation, requiring only little more palaeographic leeway, could be ἀνθρώποισι φιλεῖν.Footnote 35 A similar construction, this time with ellipsis of a verb of being, can be found in verse 295: Κωτίλῳ ἀνθρώπῳ σιγᾶν χαλεπώτατον ἄχθος (‘Being silent is the heaviest burden for a chatty man’).

Two-line poems in the Theognidean corpus usually aspire to impress through surprise and conciseness, even if not every example can be said to hit the mark. In the present case, the description of sweet love as the ‘heaviest burden’ fulfils the task of contradicting expectation. This confidential wink to an audience of experienced erastaí is then exploited in the riddle of the ‘relief from heaviness’ granted by Aphrodite. The deliberate ambiguity of the metaphor makes it more likely that it implies sexual success rather than a loss of appetite.Footnote 36

TOWARDS RESTORING THE FIRST COUPLET (THGN. 1381–3)

What is awkward about the first couplet is its ending: the emphatic repetition of δῶρον, followed by an anticlimactically redundant cliché. ‘The gift of the violet-crowned’ looks like a poor attempt at filling space, quite the opposite of the pithy style vital for two-line poems. Repetitions are certainly not generally avoided in the Theognidea: the second couplet is a good example of how their use (in that case, of χαλεπός) in the right place can sharpen rather than weaken an aphorism. But how could the missing clou of the first couplet be found in the irrelevant observation that Aphrodite wears a crown of violets (as opposed to a more pertinent conclusion such as, for example, ‘the gift of the patron of boys’)? A solution to this problem with the tools of textual criticism would therefore have to strive either to remove the duplication of δῶρον, which directs inadequate attention to ἰοστεφάνου, or to modify this last word so as to return it into a punchline en miniature. Since the greater part of the pentameter (Κυπρογενοῦς δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου) has exact parallels in c. 1304 and 1332, it seems as if only the first occurrence of δῶρον in the hexameter could be wrong. Yet Carrière's correction βωμὸν, however plausible palaeographically, only creates a virtually undecipherable mesh of three accusatives (σε, βωμόν, δῶρον) without making the point of the poem any clearer. Given that there are just over 50 verses between verse 1332 and our couplet, the possibility must be taken into account that it may have been the earlier phrase itself that caused the error, having been copied here by mistake. This would be particularly likely in the case of a mechanical loss of text in the antigraph, as suggested by both the coincidence with the assumed corruption ἔχειν in the line below as well as by its location on the last page of ‘book 2’. Our couplet is different from all the preceding poems of the second book in that it lacks any form of either παῖς, ἔρως or φίλος. A relatively cautious emendation might therefore consist in replacing the offensive repetition by the formulaic address of ‘book 2’, ‘o boy’:Footnote 37

῎Ανθρωποί σ′ ἐδόκουν χρυσῆς πάρα δῶρον ἔχοντα  1381

ἐλθεῖν Κυπρογενοῦς, ὦ παῖ, ἰοστεφάνου.    1382–3

Men imagined you to have come, having a gift from

the golden violet-crowned Cyprus-born, boy.

A misreading of ΩΠΑΙ as ΔΩΡΟΝ would be within the range of plausibility. The alternative would be to athetize the whole second half of the pentameter as concealing an unrestorable conclusion such as – for the sake of illustration – the following:

῎Ανθρωποί σ' ἐδόκουν χρυσῆς πάρα δῶρον ἔχοντα  1381

ἐλθεῖν Κυπρογενοῦς· † δῶρον ἰοστεφάνου †*  1382–3

*exempli gratia: δωροφάγος δ′ ἐφάνης

Men had the impression that you had come with a gift from

the golden Cyprus-born, but you have proven to be someone who devours gifts.

Unlike the second couplet, therefore, the first one does not lend itself to a single cure by textual criticism with a satisfying degree of probability. An interpretation must therefore rely on the transmitted text, bearing in mind that it could – but equally might not – be corrupt. Given this uncertainty, there is little hope that its meaning can be reconstructed cogently. But tracing some of the outlines of its content will be worth a try.

‘Book 2’ contains a fair number of poems in which an unnamed speaker addresses an equally anonymous ‘you’. Wherever the relationship between the two can be identified, it is the adult male erastēs speaking to an actual or potential adolescent male erōmenos.Footnote 38 In our couplet, too, this is the context which the audience must have inferred from the use of the second-person pronoun. Without any indication of origin or destination, the boy is said to have either ‘come’ or ‘gone’. The fact that he is addressed and therefore conceived as present, as well as a comparable use of ἔρχομαι in Thgn. 511–12,Footnote 39 favour the hypothesis that the speaker greets him as someone who has ‘arrived here’. This arrival can be located nowhere else than in the sympotic group, which was the exclusive original setting of Theognidean poetry.Footnote 40

The emphasis, however, is not placed on the boy's appearance as such, which is referred to in the shortest way possible (ἐλθεῖν), but on an attribute he bears: he has come with a ‘gift from Aphrodite’.Footnote 41 Since in this case the gift is ascribed to the addressee, who invariably represents the erōmenos, it can only be a metaphor of ‘charm’ or ‘beauty’, as argued above.Footnote 42 Either the boy's arrival, however, or his possession of Aphrodite's favour is marked as unrealized by the verb ἐδόκουν ‘they believed, thought’. Its connection with an aorist infinitive suggests that this belief concerns an imaginary impression rather than an expectation for the future.Footnote 43 This would square nicely with the ensuing figurative expression: men ‘had the impression as if’ the new guest had been endowed by Aphrodite herself. In this context, the reference to ‘human beings’ implies more than just ‘people’. The exaltation of the lover's flattery appears to be the gist of the short poem: ‘When you arrived, mortals fancied you had descended from heaven with a gift from none other than the goddess of love (– so exquisite is your beauty).’ After the imperfect tense ἐδόκουν, a contrastive conclusion such as ‘but now you have shown your unfaithfulness’ would fit the antithetical style of the Theognidea.Footnote 44 Yet such an ending cannot be read into the tradition without significant changes to the text. Some pieces contained in the corpus, while not technically fragments, can be traced back to longer poems, parts of which were thus adapted and reused.Footnote 45 One could imagine that a previous version offered a continuation of our couplet as well. As it stands, it is an epigrammatic welcome to the symposion, with no less substance or wit than other Theognidean two-liners.

THE LINK BETWEEN THE TWO COUPLETS

While verses 1381–5 can be divided into two short, but meaningful poems, the similarities between them can hardly be put down to coincidence. Both deal with love within the confines of two lines, and both contain the words ‘men’ (ἄνθρωποι) and ‘Cyprus-born’ (Κυπρογενής), the latter a comparatively rare epithet. According to Ercolani, these are traces of a ‘sympotic chain’ connecting these lines as well as the following poem (Thgn. 1386–9), the last of ‘book 2’. Lexical cross-references, he argues, and signs of oral composition mark this passage and others in the corpus as ‘an ex-tempore transcript of the successive interventions by the hetaíroi at the symposion’.Footnote 46 Recurring words or structures in neighbouring poems are a well-known feature of the Theognidea.Footnote 47 This was the starting point for Nietzsche's hypothesis that the entire collection had originally been arranged by placing poems that shared one or several ‘catchwords’ next to each other. Likewise, the influence of oral poetry can be observed throughout the corpus.Footnote 48 In comparison, the connection between the three last poems of ‘book 2’ is neither stronger nor otherwise different: if we leave aside what may be attributed to formulaic versification and to the general theme of pederastic love, the only remaining link consists in the triple use of Κυπρογενής.Footnote 49 This is a typical effect of a redaction which, while lacking the resolve to implement a systematic scheme, groups together poems reminiscent of each other – a phenomenon evident in many ancient collections.

Ercolani's explanation, while promising a fascinating glimpse into the real world behind the elegiac cliché, is difficult to visualize in practical terms. Should we imagine that amid the drunken revelry – which would have been a necessary condition for finding the stale humour of the typical Theognidean couplet amusing – the symposiasts put the drinking cup and aulós aside and reached for writing utensils, hastening to preserve the exact sequence of each other's ad hoc inventions for posterity? Given the superficial connections between the poems, which never make an important contribution to the substance, why should they have been rehearsed in the same order on later occasions? It is, of course, quite possible that the tradition of sympotic elegy was treated more seriously under specific circumstances, namely when it was growing unfashionable with the younger generation at the same time as literary and archaeological studies gained popularity. However, a monocausal attribution of the observed patterns in the arrangement of the Theognidea to simultaneous recording of sympotic responses cannot do justice to the complex genesis of the collection nor to the scarcity of available information. The length and variety of the transmitted corpus make it obvious that it cannot be a single chain of poems recited at one occasion, but must have been assembled from smaller units. In this process, if there was no previous rule of arrangement, some poems would naturally have recalled similar poems, which would therefore have been added next, just as a joke tends to elicit another related one. Or, some of those smaller units could have consisted of variations on a particular theme, perhaps scribbled on a potsherd by someone who in his life had already heard a good many songs at symposia. It is also quite possible that reminiscences of sympotic practice have inspired some arrangement decisions. Which of these factors, however, has produced the specific sequence that we find at the end of ‘book 2’, who can say?

THE FINAL POEM (THGN. 1386–9) AND THE GENESIS OF ‘BOOK 2’

The piece, however, that immediately follows the two couplets – the last of the sequence and the last of the Theognidea – is worth a final look:

Κυπρογενὲς Κυθέρεια δολοπλόκε, σοί τι περισσόνFootnote 50  1386

Ζεὺς τόδε τιμήσας δῶρον ἔδωκεν ἔχειν.      1387

δαμνᾷς δ′ ἀνθρώπων πυκινὰς φρένας, οὐδέ τίς ἐστιν  1388

οὕτως ἴφθιμος καὶ σοφὸς ὥστε φυγεῖν.       1389

Cyprus-born Cytherean, weaver of wiles, to thee has Zeus given

something special, this gift here as an honour for thy possession:

thou overpowerest the sharp senses of men, and no one is

so mighty and wise as to escape.

It is one of only two miniature hymns contained in the latter part of the Theognidea: while this last poem praises the deceptive power of Aphrodite, the other one, extolling the irresistible guiles of her son Eros, stands at the very beginning of ‘book 2’ (Thgn. 1231–4). That a collection dedicated to the love of boys is programmatically framed by these two poems cannot be explained but as a deliberate editorial decision.Footnote 51 While it may well have been an existing sequence of poems,Footnote 52 beginning at verse 1381 or even earlier, that was thus placed at the end of ‘book 2’, some ‘mechanical’ redaction has therefore taken place. ‘Aphrodite's gift’ in verses 1386–9, harking back to verses 1381–3 in words, but not in meaning (which is here a gift bestowed on Aphrodite, not by her), leads one to suspect that the arrangement of the last three poems itself was a ‘mechanical’ intervention by the redactor rather than the reflection of a ‘sympotic chain’.

This is also proof that ‘book 2’ cannot be the product of Byzantine censorship – an old theory that dies hard. It is rooted in a misunderstanding of the Suda's entry for Theognis, which credits him with ethical maxims: ‘but dispersed among them are dirty ones and love poems for boys as well as other matter which the righteous life rejects’.Footnote 53 This has been interpreted as a reference to the pederastic poems of ‘book 2’, which would consequently have been scattered over the entire corpus at the time of this remark (hardly earlier than a.d. 850) and relegated to an ‘X-rated’ appendix by a Christian zealot prior to our oldest manuscript (early tenth century).Footnote 54 Yet while one would be hard-pressed to detect anything ‘dirty’ in this book beyond the pederastic theme as such, ‘book 1’ does contain a number of poems on the same topic, some of them quite explicit, as well as an ample array of other moral judgements likely to offend Byzantine taste.Footnote 55 What a curious kind of censor it would be, who removed just a few of the noxious pieces, leaving others untouched, and rather than expunging them forever, carefully collected them in a special anthology, which subsequently happened to be transcribed together with the main text, thus rendering the whole exercise utterly futile! But what ultimately strips this scenario of all likelihood is the affectionate casing of ‘book 2’ by a proem and a precisely parallel epilogue invoking the pagan gods of love. In reality, this book is an independent collection of anonymous elegiac poems from the Theognidean tradition, chosen along a given theme.Footnote 56 It differs from ‘book 1’ in the repeated use of the address ‘o boy’ (ὦ παῖ) as well as linguistic and metrical features which suggest that it may in fact be the most ancient part of the corpus.Footnote 57 Even if it turns out a line shorter without the lacuna in verses 1382–3, ‘book 2’ deserves our interest as a songbook of comparable value, but superior extent to the Attic Skolia.

References

1 Cf. Schröder, W.A., ‘Immanuel Bekker – der unermüdliche Herausgeber vornehmlich griechischer Texte’, in: Baertschi, A.M. and King, C.G. (edd.), Die modernen Väter der Antike. Die Entwicklung der Altertumswissenschaften an Akademie und Universität im Berlin des 19. Jahrhunderts. Transformationen der Antike, Bd. 3 (Berlin and New York, 2009), 329–68Google Scholar, at 339–40.

2 Bekker, I., Theognidis Elegi (Leipzig, 1815)Google Scholar. Athetized by Welcker, F.T., Theognidis Reliquiae (Frankfurt, 1826)Google Scholar, lxxi; Nietzsche, F., ‘Zur Geschichte der Theognideischen Spruchsammlung’, RhM 22 (1867), 161–200Google Scholar, at 181; Couat, A., ‘Le second livre d'élégies attribué à Théognis’, Annales de la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux 5 (1883), 257–90Google Scholar, at 270–1, among others.

3 van Groningen, B.A., Théognis. Le premier livre (Amsterdam, 1966)Google Scholar, 3: ‘Je ne parviens pas à m'intéresser à ces fades épigrammes pédérotiques.’

4 Noteworthy are Couat (n. 2); A. Corsenn, Quaestiones Theognideae, in Programm des Progymnasiums und der höheren Bürgerschule zu Geestemünde. Ostern 1887 (Leipzig, 1887); Frese, H., Quae ratio intercedat inter librum Theognideorum primum et posteriorem (Kiel, 1895)Google Scholar and, above all, Vetta, M., Teognide, Elegie, libro II (Rome, 1980).Google Scholar

5 Thgn. 1253–4 have, however, independently been handed down as Solon's (Hermias; Plato: ὁ ποιητής; Pseudo-Lucian: ἀπόφασις τῶν σοφῶν). On the Mutinensis cf. Ronconi, F., ‘Il Paris. suppl.gr. 388 e Mosé del Brolo da Bergamo’, Italia Medievale e Umanistica 47 (2006), 1–27.Google Scholar

6 The text is presented here as it appears in the manuscript, with the exception of accentuation (disputed in the case of πάρα/παρὰ; the Mutinensis indicates accents and breathings only occasionally) and the apostrophe separating σ' and ἐδόκουν (introduced by Bekker).

7 Except in Garzya, A., Teognide. Elegie (Florence, 1958)Google Scholar and Young, D.C.C., Theognis, Pseudo-Pythagoras, Pseudo-Phocylides, Chares, Anonymi Aulodia, Fragmentum teliambicum (Leipzig, 1971Google Scholar2), ad loc.

8 J.H. Hartung, Die Griechischen Elegiker I (Leipzig, 1859), 285. The reason he gives for this deletion – ‘denn diese [δῶρον] ist keineswegs eine schwer zu tragende Last, sondern der Eros [desire] allein ist diese Last (s. v. 1324), wofern nicht die Kypris zu Hilfe kommt und Lösung, d. h. Befriedigung durch Gewährung ihres δῶρον, verschafft’ (δῶρον being ‘eben die Reize welche man in der Beiwohnung genießt’) – is less persuasive. As argued below, Aphrodite's gift can mean desire.

9 Young (n. 7), ad loc. seems to attribute this hypothesis to Bekker, but it only makes sense for Hartung's proposal.

10 Heimsoeth, F., De interpolationibus commentatio, in Index lectionum (Bonn, 1874)Google Scholar, 15. Heimsoeth argues that Aphrodite's gift (which he takes to stand for ‘sex’) cannot possibly be said to be hard to bear.

11 Carrière, J., Théognis. Poèmes élégiaques (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar, 135.

12 This objection was raised by Vetta (n. 4), 146–7.

13 W. Peek, to whom Young (n. 7), ad loc. attributes the emendation without specifying his source.

14 Kalinka, E., ‘Review’ of Kroll, J., Theognis-Interpretationen, Philologische Wochenschrift 57 (1937), 705–16Google Scholar, at 712 (‘Am wenigsten darf man es einem Gedicht vorwerfen, dass … etwas wiederholt wird, zumal da die alten Griechen und Römer gegen Wiederholungen nicht so überempfindlich waren wie wir’); Young (n. 7), 82; A. Garzya (n. 7), 291; Ercolani, A., ‘Theogn. 1381–1385: una nuova catena simposiale?’, Seminari romani 1 (1998), 231–42Google Scholar, at 232 (‘una intenzionale ripresa del verso precedente’).

15 Ercolani (n. 14), 235: ‘Capita agli uomini di avere penosissimo peso, se Ciprogenea non scioglie le difficoltà’.

16 Ercolani (n. 14), 235 n. 17 cites Anac. fr. 29: ἀπό μοι θανεῖν γένοιτ′ as a parallel. But this optative aorist is not only a different form, it also has a somewhat different basic meaning: not ‘it happens to me sometimes’, as Ercolani interprets Thgn. 1384, but ‘it is granted to me, I get to’, implying a desirable success, rather similar to Thgn. 474 (οὐ πάσας νύκτας γίνεται ἁβρὰ παθεῖν) and 639 (Πολλάκι πὰρ' δόξαν τε καὶ ἐλπίδα γίνεται εὖ ῥεῖν ἔργ' ἀνδρῶν; cf. also with nouns instead of infinitives: Thgn. 172, 859, Archil. 131, Mimn. 12.2). In all other cases in the Theognidea, γί-(γ)νεται stands for ‘becomes, turns into, turns out to be’ or simply offers a handy metrical version of ‘is’ (e.g. in Thgn. 699, 986, 1030).

17 Even Ercolani (n. 14), 239, who defends the transmitted text, calls the repetition ‘piuttosto dura’, excusing it as a shortcoming of extempore composition.

18 When referring to Aphrodite, ἰοστέφανος is also combined with Κυπρογενής in Thgn. 1304, 1332; elsewhere with Κύπρις (Solon 7.4), Παφία (Anth. Pal. 12.91.6), Κυθέρεια (Hymn. Hom. 6.18), κούρα (Bacchyl. Epin. 3.2). It is always the toponomastic or κούρα which substitutes the goddess' name, not the epithet. In other contexts, ἰοστέφανος is used for the Muses (Thgn. 250, Bacchyl. 5.3, Theoc. Syr. 7), Thetis (Bacchyl. 13.89, Simon. 48.1), and Athens (Pind. Dith. 76.1).

19 Ercolani (n. 14), 237–8 argues that the asyndeton is characteristic of replies in catene simposiali, as in Thgn. 578, 941–2, or Carm. conv. 21–2 Fabbro, reflecting the habits of colloquial discourse.

20 Among the asyndeta collected by Young (n. 7), 169 are seven cases of sentence break within a verse. Four (Thgn. 190, 612, 1172, 1104) represent a type where the second half of the pentameter contains a gnomic conclusion. In two (Thgn. 1041, 1303), the break comes in a hexameter between an admonition and its justification, which continues into the following verse. Only one case (Thgn. 1104) is similar to our passage in that the break occurs within a pentameter, with the second clause bridging two couplets – although most editors have chosen to supplement the missing particle here. It is clear, however, that asyndeton cannot entirely be ruled out for our passage either (cf. also the repetition of δῶρον with γνώμη in Thgn. 1172, and Smyth, H.W., Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA, 1956), § 2167d)Google Scholar.

21 There is, of course, no limit to hypothetically possible supplements to the line of thought, such as (on the basis of the lacuna as suggested by Bekker) ‘… down to the earth. | The gods give us mortals manifold gifts. But the …’ etc.

22 Forms of Κυπρογενής are also found in Thgn. 1304, 1308, 1323, 1332, 1386; only in one of these cases (Thgn. 1304) in the same position of the pentameter.

23 It would therefore make sense to reform the conventional line-numbering, which counts Thgn. 1382–3 as two verses.

24 Cf. also Thgn. 250: Μουσάων δῶρα ἰοστεφάνων at the same position of the pentameter.

25 Κυπρογενής is found once in each of Solon and Stesichorus, a dozen texts in all. The two couplets also share the terms ἄνθρωποι and ἔχειν. Moreover, the Theognidea offer no parallel for γίνεται emphatically placed at the beginning of a poem (only once, in Thgn. 609, at the beginning of a verse). The section is therefore treated as a single poem by Diehl, E., Anthologia Lyrica Graeca I.2 (Leipzig, 1949–523), 86–7Google Scholar; Young (n. 7), 82; West, M., Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati I (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, 240.

26 This so-called Stichworttheorie was first proposed by Welcker (n. 2), cv, then famously defended by Nietzsche (n. 2). Cf. Selle, H., Theognis und die Theognidea (Berlin and New York, 2008), 165–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 A meaning attested since Il. 3.54 describing Paris.

28 Cf. Vetta (n. 4), 108 (‘Non credo che l'immagine usuale δῶρον Κυπρογενοῦς rinvii qui alla bellezza giovanile, com’è sicuro al v. 1304 … ma semplicemente ad ἔρως, come di nuovo al v. 1383'), who paraphrases Thgn. 1332 f. ‘quando sarai diventato a tua volta erastes’.

29 It cannot reasonably be argued that the plural δῶρα as reconstructed by Peek would include both aspects of love. The parallel Thgn. 1293 shows that δῶρα is a poetic plural. A conscious reflection of the multiplicity of the ‘gifts of Aphrodite’ referred to in elegiac cliché cannot be expected in a poem.

30 Similarly Vetta (n. 4), 147: δῶρον Κυπρογενοῦς means ‘bellezza’ in Thgn. 1381 and ἔργα in Thgn. 1383. Differently Welcker (n. 2), 146: ‘δῶρον Κυπρογενοῦς sensu accipiendum est impurae huic Musae congruo’.

31 The two couplets are also separated by Garzya (n. 14) and Vetta (n. 4), 147 (‘A parte il Satzbeginn a metà pentametro, che è tendenzialmente evitato … non appare alcun plausibile legame di senso tra le due parti dell'elegia’).

32 This corruption would have been more likely if the antigraph was already in minuscule (with an ει ligature resembling ω, and ς resembling ν with a left leg reaching down).

33 Φέρειν in Thgn. 1322 and ἄχθος in Thgn. 1385 also belong to the same semantic field. Further parallels for the content: Thgn. 1337–8, 1357–8, 1370. The term ἔρως in a similar context occurs also in Thgn. 1322, 1350, 1354, 1369.

34 This construction would have been mirrored by the text as given by the manuscript, if read from δῶρον Κυπρογενοῦς.

35 I had already offered this suggestion in Selle (n. 26), 425 (with a misprinted ἀνθρώποισιν for ἀνθρώποισι). For a similar use of φιλεῖν as predicative, cf. Thgn. 1094: χαλεπὸν δ' οὐκ ἐθέλοντα φιλεῖν. In this position, abstract nouns and verbs regularly substitute each other. Both types in Thgn. 699: Πλήθει δ' ἀνθρώπων ἀρετὴ μία γίνεται ἥδε, | πλουτεῖν. Abstract noun in Thgn. 218: κρέσσων τοι σοφίη γίνεται ἀτροπίης. Noun with verb as complement in Thgn. 1003: ῞Ηδ' ἀρετή, τόδ' ἄεθλον ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἄριστον | κάλλιστόν τε φέρειν γίνεται ἀνδρὶ σοφῷ.

36 Cf. Vetta (n. 4), 148. The second meaning has a parallel in Thgn. 1339 (ἐκλέλυμαι δὲ πόθου πρὸς ἐυστεφάνου Κυθερείης), the first in Sappho 1 L–P (Ἀφρόδιτα, … χαλέπαν δὲ λῦσον ἐκ μερίμναν, ὄσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι θῦμος ἰμέρρει, τέλεσον), cf. also Thgn. 180. Ercolani (n. 14), 235 suggests an improbably concrete interpretation, based on the manuscript reading: ‘Il suo tentativo è stato infruttuoso e il suo insuccesso è stato determinato da motivi esterni, indipendenti e superiori alle sue possibilità.’

37 ‘Book 2’, however, provides no parallel for ὦ παῖ in this position of the pentameter (the first metron of the hexameter being by far the preferred position). The vocative Κύρνε in ‘Book 1’, on the other hand, frequently follows the main caesura of the pentameter: cf. Thgn. 76, 78, 132, 148, 174, 176, 180, 236 etc.

38 Erotic relationship: Thgn. 1238ab, 1241–2, 1243–4, 1245–6, 1278a–d, 1363–4. That the speaker is always the erastēs (and never the erōmenos) is an inevitable conclusion from the address ὦ παῖ or similar, which is invariably used wherever the addressee is described (excluding only the prayers to Eros in Thgn. 1231–4, and Aphrodite in Thgn. 1323–6, 1386–9).

39 ῏Ηλθες δή, Κλεάριστε, βαθὺν διὰ πόντον ἀνύσσας | ἐνθάδ' ἐπ' οὐδὲν ἔχοντ', ὦ τάλαν, οὐδὲν ἔχων. This could be a jocular welcome address to a new guest.

40 Cf. Bowie, E., ‘Early Greek elegy, symposium and public festival’, JHS 106 (1986), 13–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A different view, however, has been taken by West, M., Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin and New York, 1974), 10–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Πάρα is used as a postposition as in Il. 19.3 (θεοῦ πάρα δῶρα φέρουσα), cf. Garzya (n. 14), ad loc.; Vetta (n. 4), 147; Ercolani (n. 14), 233. Hudson-Williams, T., The Elegies of Theognis and Other Elegies Included in the Theognidean Sylloge (London, 1910)Google Scholar, ad loc. interprets as παρέχω in tmesi, but no parallel is evident.

42 Thus Vetta (n. 4), 147. It is possible that the concept of the boy's ‘charm’ can be stretched far enough to imply ‘success in love’ or, even more specifically, an ‘amorous conquest’ made by virtue of this charm (thus Garzya (n. 14), 158 n. 134: ‘Il concetto è forse che il giovane ha avuto successo in amore, o che si presenta come portatore di un messagio d'amore’), but not one made by the erastēs (pace M. van der Valk, ‘Theognis’, Humanitas [Coimbra] 4–5 [1955/6], 68–140; Ercolani [n. 14], 235, who identifies the δῶρον with the conquered boy).

43 Cf. Aesch. Cho. 527, Hdt. 1.107 (both of a dream), Pl. Phd. 96c. In contrast, in Thgn. 1315 the future infinitive signifies expectation or hope.

44 Cf. Thgn. 1361–2, 959–62, 237–54.

45 Thgn. 227–32 ~ Sol. 13.71–6, Thgn. 585–90 ~ Sol. 13.65–70, Thgn. 935–8 ~ Tyrt. 12.37–42, Thgn. 1003–6 ~ Tyrt. 12.13–16, Thgn. 1020–2 ~ Mimn. 5.4–6, Thgn. 1278cd = Thgn. 949–50. On this phenomenon cf. Bowie, E., ‘The Theognidea: a step towards a collection of fragments?’ in Most, G. (ed.), Collecting Fragments – Fragmente sammeln (Göttingen, 1997), 53–66; Selle (n. 26), 151–8Google Scholar and 212–26 with further references.

46 Ercolani (n. 14), 241: ‘trascrizione estemporanea degli interventi in successione degli ἑταῖροι al simposio’. The sympotic practice was known as δέχεσθαι, cf. Ath. 10.86 = 457e: … τῷ πρώτῳ ἔπος <ἢ> ἰαμβεῖον εἰπόντι τὸ ἐχόμενον ἕκαστον λέγειν καὶ τῷ κεφάλαιον εἰπόντι ἀντειπεῖν τὸ ἑτέρου ποιητοῦ τινος, <ὅτι> εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν εἶπε γνώμην.

47 Cf. Selle (n. 26), 148–96.

48 Cf. Selle (n. 26), 136–7, 202–3, 221–2.

49 Ercolani (n. 14), 234: ‘Non si tratta certo di riprese lessicali isolate, ma di una massa consistente di richiami, iterazioni e insistenze etimologiche che non possono essere semplicisticamente attribuite in toto ad accostamento meccanico in sede di redazione del corpus o a incidente della tradizione.’ Regarding the links in vocabulary quoted by Ercolani, χαλεπός recurs in the same couplet, δίδωμι and ἄνθρωποι are very frequent in the Theognidea, δῶρον in Thgn. 1383 must be considered corrupt. Concerning possible signs of extemporization, the reuse of Κυπρογενής in the same position of the pentameter is formulaic (cf. Thgn. 1304, 1332), while I would regard the repetition of δῶρον (‘piuttosto dura’) as a trace of corruption.

50 The reading of τι without accent follows Bekker (n. 2); whether the accent contained in the Mutinensis was added by the first or a second hand, is doubtful. Its position in the first breve of the fifth metron is too weak for an emphatic interrogative pronoun.

51 For other references to the epilogue function of this poem see Corsenn (n. 4), 25; F. Jacoby, ‘Theognis’, Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse (1931), 90–180, at 164; Hasler, F., Untersuchungen zu Theognis. Zur Gruppenbildung im 1. Theognisbuch (Winterthur, 1959)Google Scholar, 118; Selle (n. 26), 179–80. A comparable later case is Strato's Μοῦσα παιδική – the only book of the Anthology framed by a prologue (12.1) and an epilogue (12.258).

52 It seems possible, though not likely (address to deity postponed to third line? repetition of Κυπρογενής?), that Thgn. 1384–9 are to be regarded as a single poem rather than two.

53 Suda θ136: ὅτι μὲν παραινέσεις ἔγραψε Θέογνις· ἀλλ′ ἐν μέσῳ τούτων παρεσπαρμέναι μιαρίαι καὶ παιδικοὶ ἔρωτες καὶ ἄλλα, ὅσα ὁ ἐνάρετος ἀποστρέφεται βίος.

54 The author of this theory seems to have been Croiset, A., Histoire de la littérature grecque II (Paris, 1890)Google Scholar, 139, prominently followed by Edmonds, J.M., Elegy and Iambus I (London and Cambridge, MA, 1961 4)Google Scholar, 17; Carrière, J., Théognis de Mégare: Étude sur le recueil élégiaque attribué à ce poète (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar; West (n. 40), 44; Vetta (n. 4), xii–xiii. Rejected by Reitzenstein, R., Epigramm und Skolion (Gießen, 1893)Google Scholar, 54 n. 1; Hudson-Williams (n. 41), 100 and others.

55 Pederastic poems in ‘book 1’: 237–54, 371–2, 595–602, 719–28, 959–62, 993–6, 1036–7 (!), 1091–4, 1097–100. Greg. Naz. Carm. mor. 708.12 and other Byzantine authors took offence at the poet's preference for suicide over poverty in Thgn. 175–6. Book 1 also propagates pagan gods and oracles, supports the institutions of aristocracy and slavery, recommends self-interest, deception, glee, vengeance, murder and, above all, drinking and feasting.

56 Further on ‘book 2’ cf. Selle (n. 26), 77–9, 116–19, 179–80, 191–3, 389. On the succession of Thgn. 1231–4 and Apollonius 4.445–9 cf. Vetta, M., ‘Ps.-Teognide 1231–34 e Apollonio Rodio’, Rivista di istruzione classica 100 (1972), 283–94Google Scholar; Selle (n. 26), 82–3. A recent discussion of the authorship of these poems is offered by Lear, A., ‘The pederastic elegies and the authorship of the Theognidea’, CQ 61 (2011), 378–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 ‘Book 2’ presents a significantly higher incidence of digamma-induced hiatus, of hiatus in general, of position-making νῦ ἐφελκυστικόν, of muta cum liquida preceded by a breve, and a significantly lower incidence of dispensable definite articles. Cf. Selle (n. 26), 122, 131, 138–9.