If you believe that Rome’s first love poet was Catullus (as Google does, as I did), Erik Pulz will prove you wrong: it was Laevius, a poet apparently active in the second half of the second century b.c. Laevius was the author of a collection titled Erotopaegnia, written in a variety of lyric metres, in which he treated love stories from Greek mythology. Of these only some fifty fragments survive (mostly preserved by grammarians), about half of which are no longer than three or four words, with the longest (the first two lines of the Phoenix) consisting of thirty-one words. The scarcity of surviving evidence explains why Laevius is not better known, but P. makes a compelling case for wishing that we could read more substantial portions of Laevius’ poetry. The book has a traditional commentary format: an edition of the testimonies and fragments (65–78), preceded by introduction (3–61) and followed by detailed discussions and comments (81–286). Yet it is rather more than just a commentary: at 286 pages (excluding bibliography and indexes), it offers over ten times what its most recent predecessor did (the 26 pages of E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (20032), 118–43).
Ch. 1 (3–14) discusses Laevius’ date and historical context, concluding that the Erotopaegnia was produced between c. 130 and 110 b.c. Ch. 2 (15–42) is the centrepiece of the introduction, lucidly synthesising everything there is to know about Laevius’ oeuvre. The collection was titled Erotopaegnia, but individual poems had titles of their own (such as Alcestis, Phoenix or Protesilaodamia). At least some of them will have consisted of hundreds of lines, and most must have reworked plots from Greek epic and tragedy, but with an erotic twist, in the fashion of Hellenistic poetry. Laevius’ language was stylistically diverse, ranging from low to high, and often experimental (though the latter impression is amplified by the quoting grammarians’ interest in non-standard features), but he should firmly be classed with early Latin poets and not viewed as a protoneoteric. Laevius used a wide range of lyric metres, most prominently anacreontic and other ionic metres (perhaps the first to do so in Latin), but also iambs, anapaests and trochees; in contrast to later lyric poetry, aeolic metres and epodes are not securely attested for Laevius. Ch. 3 (43–51) discusses Laevius’ reception: his trace influence is felt from Catullus to Ausonius, though surprisingly none of the Roman love poets names him as a predecessor. Of particular interest are P.’s observations that many of the erotic mythological exempla employed in Roman elegy are derived from stories previously treated by Laevius, that Laodamia’s complaint (fr. 30) fits in the long tradition of monologues of abandoned heroines, and that Catull. 68.74 Protesilaeam Laodamia domum may be intended to echo the conjoined title of Laevius’ Protesilaodamia. Ch. 4 (52–6) gives an account of Laevius’ transmission (mostly through ancient grammarians, where his name is often corrupted to either Liuius or Naeuius, complicating attribution), and ch. 5 (57–61) reviews earlier scholarship, from the sixteenth century on.
The commentary proper tackles individual titles and fragments with a comparable comprehensiveness, starting from earlier (mostly Greek) treatments of the topic, through attempting to reconstruct the overall narrative context, to notes on individual lemmata, not to mention the more technical aspects such as attribution, textual criticism and metrical analysis. One of the most fascinating items is the fragment of the Phoenix (fr. 26), apparently the first Latin carmen figuratum (representing the wings of a phoenix), which served as the coda to the Erotopaegnia (153–72). To P.’s attractive proposal that the phoenix may be intended to secure the immortality of Laevius’ poetry, I am tempted to add a further factor that may have motivated its choice as a sphragis poem: it evokes the closural coronis, which could take a range of elaborate shapes, including that of a bird. Another highlight is the four hexameters quoted by Terentianus Maurus (1935–8; fr. 12a Courtney): as P. persuasively argues (pace Courtney), they cannot be by Laevius and are probably post-classical (129–43). This brings me to my one quibble: the arrangement of fragments according to the alphabetical order of the titles, followed by those unattributed to any individual poems within the Erotopaegnia. As a result, the closural Phoenix fragment comes up right in the middle of the collection, and the hexametric fragment, quoted by Terentianus as coming from an Ino, gets discussed in the section on Laevius’ Ino (rather than, say, in an appendix).
P. is no doubt the greatest, perhaps the only, living authority on Laevius, and to pronounce on his book one would have to become one too. But as a novice, one cannot but be astonished by the depth and breadth of his commentary, offering an exhaustive treatment of metrical, linguistic, text-critical and literary aspects of Laevius’ fragments. All this in an enjoyably lucid German. I have only spotted one acute accent in place of a grave (259), and fr. 44.3 trochisci iynges for trochiscili unges goes at least as far back as J. Meursius, Ad Theocriti Syracusani poetae idyllia spicilegium (1597), 11, not Scriverius 1624 (257). Whether or not Google will learn to name Laevius as the first Roman love poet, P.’s commentary will profitably be read not just by Laevius aficionados.
