Gallus and Anth. Lat. 812 / CLE 271

[falmouth]

I thought I would share something which I think is ultimately a red herring, but which I found interesting

CLE 271 is an fragmentary inscription from the Kalabsha temple in Nubia - the inscription dates from Hadrian (who is expressly mentioned at line 6 and contains an acrostic IULII FAUSTINI M...). The inscription, however, appears to refer to something which happened in the Augustan period ('invicti veneranda ducis per saecula' - where 'veneranda' presumably glosses Augustus (Courtney guesses Trajan but the 'veneranda' ~ 'sebastos' ~ 'Augustus' seems to me to be far more compelling) whereby the Muses and Apollo were intending to pour forth 'laeta ... carmina' but, however, fled from the wicked falsehoods of men etc. (lines 4-7). The Kalabsha temple appears to have been rebuilt/extended in the Augustan age (perhaps during the prefecture of Gallus).

The text as given by Courtney (who attests to personal inspection) in Musa Lapidaria is as follows (ML 26):

Invicti veneranda ducis per saecula vellent

Victrices Musae Pallas crinitus Apollo

Laeta serenifico defundere carmina caelo

Intemerata malas hominum set numina fra[udes]

Iurgiaque arcanis et perfida pectora curis                 5

Fugere Hadriani tamen ad pia saecula verti

Ausa per occultas remeant rimata latebras

Ut spirent cautes et tempora prisca salute[nt]

Sacra Mamertino sonuerunt praeside si[gna]

Tum superum manifesta Fides stetit in civi[tate]          10

Inachias sospes diti pede pressit haren[as]

Namque in percelsi densata sedilia tem[pli]

Incola quo plebes tectis et funditur a[ltis]

Munera caeli[colis]

I came across this old article (it's available on JSTOR)

Rainier, P. (1833) 'Papers Connected with a Latin Acrostic Inscription Engraved on a Stone Brought from the Great Temple at Kalabshe in Nubia' Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 261-268

which contains an autoptic sketch of the text which read line 3 as follows; 

Laeta serenifico defundere carmina Gallo

In the sketch, the 'G' of Gallus is clearly drawn as a 'G' and the first 'L' as an 'L'.

It is clear from the article that the author of the autoptic sketch read 'Gallo' without appreciating the possible connection with Cornelius Gallus (he identifies two other Galluses as the possible referent). A Captain Rainier then identified the 'Gallus' as Cornelius Gallus - pointing out (i) that the line termination resembles Ecl. 10.3 'neget quis carmina Gallo'; and (ii) made a connection with the Servian report of the Laudes Galli excised from Georgics 4; (iii) identified the 'invicti ducis' as Augustus, without apparently appreciating that the temple of Kalabshe was indeed rebuilt in the Augustan age. The possible connection with the laudes Galli seems prima facie compelling, given the otherwise hard to explain thrust of the inscription. 

The temple of Kalabshe would have been near the southern extremity of Roman Egypt, an area which Gallus boasts of having brought into Roman rule/influence in the Philae inscription. 'serenifico' would be an apt epithet for Cornelius Gallus (what would the burden of 'serenifico ... caelo' be?) - cf. in particular the account of his quelling of the Egyptian revolts. 'Musae... / defundere carmina' also slightly puts me in mind of Gallus Fr. 2.6 [....] tandem fecerunt carmina Musae'.

The inscription is now in the British library - I have obtained a high resolution photograph - I've attached the relevant portion to this post - (i) the first letter of  'GALLO' appears to be a 'C' although 'C's and 'G's are not always easily distinguishable; (ii) the ending of the word is obscured as it appears the stone has been broken and repaired. It looks possible that the break post-dates the first autoptic sketch as the sketcher indicates no difficulty with reading -LLO.

I'd be very interested if anyone has any thoughts on this - in particular whether the reference could be to Gallus.

[Leofranc Holford-strevens]

It looks like CACLO to me, which must be wrong; but the horizontal top of the third letter favours E (squashed since the cutter was near the edge), certainly not L. As for the sense, 'from the serene heaven' (rather than 'serene-making'; for _-ificus_ as a meaningless extension cf. _mirificus_, plus other epithets in Christian Latin) seems more natural, when deities are the subject, than 'to serene/serene-making Gallus'; and what of the prefix _de-_ in _defundere_, to pour down? In fact, the deities seem to be not so much pouring down their _laeta carmina_ but bringing them down, only to flee like Aidos and Nemesis before human wickedness. (I suppose in principle you could take _defundere_ as perfective; they wanted to pour forth their praises, but were rudely interrupted; but that seems a mite comical.)

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford
OX2 6EJ

                                                         usque adeone
scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?

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From: mant...@googlegroups.com [mant...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of falmouth [adria...@googlemail.com]
Sent: 16 October 2014 14:53
To: mant...@googlegroups.com
Subject: VIRGIL: Gallus and Anth. Lat. 812 / CLE 271

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[falmouth]

Thanks, Leofranc, I imagine you're probably right - and 'serenum ... caelum' is a collocation found in Lucretius, Propertius and Vergil (inter alios). Do you have any ideas about what this poem may be all about? It just seemed such a strange coincidence that the initial reader read Gallus and was quite convinced of this without knowing who the Gallus was, when this would be doubly apt ((i) given the Laudes Galli; (ii) the fact that this temple may well have been rebuilt while Gallus was prefect of Egypt and galumphing around the lower cataracts of the Nile. One can easily imagine some sort of dedication of/at the temple being interrupted when Gallus was being recalled from Egypt. What does it mean for the Muses ('victrices' - implying some sort of victory paean) to have hid themselves in Augustus' time (I am convinced that 'veneranda' so indicates) and to have re-emerged in Hadrian's?

[falmouth]

Btw, I meant in 'the British Museum' rather than the 'British Library'... in the original post.

[Leofranc Holford-strevens]

The Muses were _victrices_ in their contest with the Pierides, but that being irrelevant here, they must as Courtney argues have borrowed their victories from the emperor. Although Trajan won victories in the East, they were a ticklish subject under Hadrian, who had (it was said at Rome) abandoned his conquests (or rather accepted that Parthoa had recovered them); nor can the suppression of the Jewish revolt in Alexandria have been of any great interest in Kalabsha. Augustus, by contrast, or rather Imp. Caesar, had conquered Egypt; but what the iurgia and fraudes (or rather frudes; see Courtney) may have been is hard to see (easy enough at Rome, of course); I can see why you might like to associate them with Gallus' fall, but that was due precisely to Augustus' conviction that he himself was the _dux bonus_, as Horace put it, and there was no room for another; unless indeed the poet was thinking in Greek (ἡγεμών = governor).

As to the text, in l. 4 Courtney gives not fra[udes] but fr[u]d[es, a back-formation from the compound-form (cf. cludo); l. 9 not si[gna but sig[na; l. 10 not in ciui[tate with a monstrous false quantitu but inclut[s - x (heros would combine grotesque flattery with ill omen, since ἥρως was by then frequent in epitaphs), l. 11 not haren[as but harena[s, l. 13 not al[tis but at[, which Courtney tentatively emends to ar[tis , l. 14 not caelli[colis but caeli[colum..

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From: mant...@googlegroups.com [mant...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of falmouth [adria...@googlemail.com]

Sent: 16 October 2014 17:16
To: mant...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: VIRGIL: Gallus and Anth. Lat. 812 / CLE 271

[falmouth]

Thanks again, Leofranc. Apologies re the text - yes, I think I set out the text as it appears in CIL rather than Courtney's improved text.

You agree, therefore, I take it that the reference is probably to Augustus rather than Trajan - as I read your post, this is one more reason to take the reference as such. I find it tantalizing that the poem seems to dovetail quite nicely with Gallus' activities around this area under Octavian - particularly if one factors in the possibility that one aspect of Gallus' downfall may have been his constitutionally ambiguous / anomalous / aberrant status as prefect of Egypt: in particular, an aspect of his purported maiestas may have been his incursions beyond the southern frontiers of Roman Egypt without the necessary authority (presumably, with Octavian's blessing but not that of the senate, the consitutional position yielding to realpolitik until Octavian wished to rationalise the position in 27BC). And, of course, Gallus would not have been shy of (and was not shy - cf. the Philae inscription) in celebrating his achievements in the lower cataracts of the Nile. So the idea that some sort of poetic celebration of such achievements (an inscription - cf. Dio Cassius re Gallus' predilections for those? a performance?) was cut short by Gallus' embarrassing recall is a very natural one (even leaving aside the Laudes Galli story). Then one finds that the first person to find this inscription is quite confident that it read 'GALLO' (purportedly faithfully reproducing this word in his sketch) without having any idea of the significance. 

[Leofranc Holford-strevens]

Of course the other problem is that if this inscription did record an aborted panegyric to serenific Gallus on would wonder how the author had known of it; do you wish to envisage a stele with an incomplete poem that according to tradition had been abandoned when the news came of Gallus' fall?

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From: mant...@googlegroups.com [mant...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of falmouth [adria...@googlemail.com]

Sent: 17 October 2014 16:37

To: mant...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: VIRGIL: Gallus and Anth. Lat. 812 / CLE 271

Thanks again, Leofranc. Apologies re the text - yes, I think I set out the text as it appears in CIL rather than Courtney's improved text.

You agree, therefore, I take it that the reference is probably to Augustus rather than Trajan - as I read your post, this is one more reason to take the reference as such. I find it tantalizing that the poem seems to dovetail quite nicely with Gallus' activities around this area under Octavian - particularly if one factors in the possibility that one aspect of Gallus' downfall may have been his constitutionally ambiguous / anomalous / aberrant status as prefect of Egypt: in particular, an aspect of his purported maiestas may have been his incursions beyond the southern frontiers of Roman Egypt without the necessary authority (presumably, with Octavian's blessing but not that of the senate, the consitutional position yielding to realpolitik until Octavian wished to rationalise the position in 27BC). And, of course, Gallus would not have been shy of (and was not shy - cf. the Philae inscription) in celebrating his achievements in the lower cataracts of the Nile. So the idea that some sort of poetic celebration of such achievements (an inscription - cf. Dio Cassius re Gallus' predilections for those? a performance?) was cut short by Gallus' embarrassing recall is a very natural one (even leaving aside the Laudes Galli story). Then one finds that the first person to find this inscription is quite confident that it read 'GALLO' (purportedly faithfully reproducing this word in his sketch) without having any idea of the significance. 

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[falmouth]

Yes - I'd overlooked that very obvious point! I think that what I had in mind was that the whole rebuilding of the temple at Kalabshe was intended mainly to celebrate Gallus/Octavian's achievements in Egypt - ie (i) the defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra but also (ii) Gallus' successes at and beyond the Southern extremities of Egypt but that plans changed during or after this because of Gallus' disgrace - ie that all of this was sufficiently prominent and public to remain in historical memory. If, as is probably the case, there was a formal damnatio memoriae of Gallus, the erasure of prominent celebrations of his achievements (ie cf Dio Cassius account of his inscriptions all over the place, none of which survive except the Philae inscription which may have been intentionally removed and the Vatican obelisk one which also was removed, perhaps also as part of the damnatio memoriae, others were probably more successfully obliterated) may have remained in the public memory / record for a long time. The more prominent, the longer it would take for oblivion to set in. But this is all wild speculation on thin sand.

[falmouth]

Leofranc - would you mind if I ran a couple of other Gallus-related ideas by you by email? Thanks, Adrian  

[Leofranc Holford-strevens]

Fine. Leofranc

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford
OX2 6EJ

                                                         usque adeone
scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?

From: mant...@googlegroups.com [mant...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of falmouth [adria...@googlemail.com]

Sent: 21 October 2014 11:45

To: mant...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: VIRGIL: Gallus and Anth. Lat. 812 / CLE 271

Leofranc - would you mind if I ran a couple of other Gallus-related ideas by you by email? Thanks, Adrian  

On Saturday, 18 October 2014 11:59:55 UTC+1, falmouth wrote:

Yes - I'd overlooked that very obvious point! I think that what I had in mind was that the whole rebuilding of the temple at Kalabshe was intended mainly to celebrate Gallus/Octavian's achievements in Egypt - ie (i) the defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra but also (ii) Gallus' successes at and beyond the Southern extremities of Egypt but that plans changed during or after this because of Gallus' disgrace - ie that all of this was sufficiently prominent and public to remain in historical memory. If, as is probably the case, there was a formal damnatio memoriae of Gallus, the erasure of prominent celebrations of his achievements (ie cf Dio Cassius account of his inscriptions all over the place, none of which survive except the Philae inscription which may have been intentionally removed and the Vatican obelisk one which also was removed, perhaps also as part of the damnatio memoriae, others were probably more successfully obliterated) may have remained in the public memory / record for a long time. The more prominent, the longer it would take for oblivion to set in. But this is all wild speculation on thin sand.

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