Gallus Fr. 2.6

[falmouth]

          [          ]. . . . . tandem fecerunt c[ar]mina Musae

(Gallus Fr. 2.6)

Leaving aside what the traces might or might not show, am I right that one could complete the line (1) 'Pierides tandem fecerunt carmina Musae' or (2) 'Pieriae tandem fecerunt carmina Musae' or even (3) 'Pieridae tandem fecerunt carmina Musae'? Cf. in particular, Ecl. 10.70-2, among other reasons for the suggestion. The latter two forms seem to be legitimated by Cic. ND 3.54 ‘[sc. Musae] quas Pieridas et Pierias solent poetae appellare’ (interestingly, roughly contemporaneous with Gallus Fr. 2.2-5 if that refers to Caesar's Parthian expedition).  

Anderson, Nisbet and Parsons said ‘The sense suggests some possible patterns. (i) an epithet for carmina. Any such epithet will end in a short a; therefore something else would have to stand between it and tandem. Patterns: dulcia iam, blanda mihi. (ii) An epithet for Musae. Any such epithet will end in –ae or –es. Patterns: Castaliae, Aonides; haec Latiae, haec dulces, etc. (iii) A series of short words like en mihi iam.’. tandem), although there is a lot of it. Another way is to take it as part of a superscript letter’).

Could the stray traces even be explicable by one form of the Pierian Muses being corrected supralineally to another - e.g. 'PIERIDES' with the 'ES' crossed out and 'AE' written above? 

[Leofranc Holford-Strevens]

Pieriae, though in the Augustan age it would feel rather prosaic, is  not unsuitable for the galumphing Gallus of the papyrus; however, even the longer Pierides is too short for the space available.

 

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford usque adeone
OX2 6EJ scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?

tel. +44 (0) 1865 552808 (home)/353865 (work) fax +44 (0) 1865 512237

 

From: falmouth

Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 5:04 PM

To: mant...@googlegroups.com

Subject: VIRGIL: Gallus Fr. 2.6

 

          [          ]. . . . . tandem fecerunt c[ar]mina Musae

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[falmouth]

Thanks, Leofranc.

Might the scribe have written 'PEIERIDES' for 'PIERIDES' (cf. SPOLIEIS, DEIVITIORA and DEICERE) - that might be long enough? 

NB the 'F' of 'FATA' (Fr. 2.2) seems to be substantially larger than e.g. 'P' of 'POSTQUE', suggesting (given the breaks marked by the H-markings) that the first letter of Fr. 2.6 would be similarly oversized.

To expand a little on the attraction of the supplement, in 3 out of 5 of the appearances of the word Pierides - the only instances where it stands as first word - in Vergil's Eclogues (V. uses the word nowhere else), there seems to be a connection with the diction of Gallus Fr. 2.6-7. These are:

Pollio amat nostram, quamvis est rustica, Musam

Pierides, vitulam lectori pascite vestro

Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina: pascite taurum

Iam cornu petat et pedibus qui spargat harenam

 (Ecl. 3.84-7)

(‘Musam’ at hexameter end (84), ‘facit … carmina’ (86))

incipe, si quid habes. Et me fecere poetam

Pierides; sunt et mihi carmina; me quoque dicunt

uatem pastores: sed non ego credulus illis;

nam neque adhuc Vario uideor nec dicere Cinna               35

digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores.

(Ecl. 9.32-36) (Ecl. 9.32-4 ‘fecere poetam’ (32) ‘carmina’ (33), 'dicere... digna')

pauca meo Gallo, sed quae legat ipsa Lycoris,

carmina sunt dicenda: neget quis carmina Gallo?

…

Haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam,               70

dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco,

Pierides: uos haec facietis maxima Gallo…

(Ecl. 10.2-3, 70-3) Ecl. 10.70-72 ‘divae’ ~ ‘Musae’ (70); ‘[sc. Musae] facietis [sc. carmina] (72)

[Leofranc Holford-Strevens]

He might have done; as it happens SPOLIEIS and DEICERE are historically correct, and DEIVITIORA may be, whereas PEIERIDES would not be, but Gallus can hardly have known that.

 

Leofranc

 

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford usque adeone
OX2 6EJ scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?

tel. +44 (0) 1865 552808 (home)/353865 (work) fax +44 (0) 1865 512237

[falmouth]

Thanks, again - the objection of it being too short for the lacuna would/might then fall away?

There are two more points which can be deployed in support of my suggestion:

(1) Prop. 2.13.1-16 seems to be an expansion of the thought of Gallus Fr. 2.6-9 (as Nisbet pointed out in the 1979 article), with traces of similar diction - e.g. especially 'domina iudice ... quae... possum' at 13-16. One would compare Prop. 2.13.5-6 with Gallus Fr. 2.6-7 as supplemented:

non ut Pieriae quercus mea verba sequantur,

     aut possim Ismaria ducere valle feras,

(Prop. 2.13.5-6) (and NB 'Musas' at the end of the preceding hexameter at Prop. 2.13.3)

Peierides tandem fecerunt c[ar]mina Musae

     quae possem domina deicere digna mea.

(Gallus Fr. 2.6-7)

(one might even suggest that Propertius' feras might hint at a humorous connection of Gallus' Lycoris (whom one might tendentiously designate as a lupa) with Gr. 'lukos').

(2) Where Hinds detected a highly wrought allusion to Gallus Fr. 2.6-7 at Ov. Met. 5.344-5 ('illa canenda mihi est. utinam modo dicere possim / carmina digna dea! certe dea carmine digna est.') one might have expected to find some clue as to the what began Gallus Fr. 2.6-7. If the suggested supplement were correct, there is no echo of 'Peierides' there. But one can see exactly why that should be - for the it is not Calliope (who here speaks) and the other Heliconian Muses but the *other competing would-be-Muses* who are daughters of Pieros in Ovid Met. 5. Alerted to that point, it seems to me that Ovid *studiously avoids* the word Pierides in Met. 5 (presumably since it was commonly used of the Heliconian Muses). Thus the rival Muses are introduced by ‘Pieros has genuit Pellaeis dives in arvis’ (Met. 5.302); to refer to the Heliconian Muses, Ovid coins the word ‘Aonides’ (Met. 5.333, 6.2) a patronymic form, but obviously not a true patronym) ; to refer to the daughters of Pieros, Ovid coins the word ‘Emathides’ (again, a geographical designation in the form of a patronym); the Heliconian Muses are referred to twice as ‘Mnemonides’ (Met. 5.268, 280, a matronym reflecting the genealogy of the Muses as daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, as attested to in e.g. Hesiod). Each of ‘Aonides’, ‘Emathides’ and ‘Mnemonides’ are far more exotic terms than ‘Pierides’ which Ovid uses frequently elsewhere.

[Leofranc Holford-Strevens]

Indeed, the objection might fall away.

 

Leofranc

 

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford usque adeone
OX2 6EJ scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?

tel. +44 (0) 1865 552808 (home)/353865 (work) fax +44 (0) 1865 512237

 

From: falmouth

Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 10:44 AM

To: mant...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: VIRGIL: Gallus Fr. 2.6

 

[falmouth]

See now Gagliardi, P. (2013) 'Le Muse Pierides nel papiro di Gallo?' ZPE 187 pp. 156-163 acknowledging the discussion here at footnote 7.

[falmouth]

See now Gagliardi, P. (2013) 'Le Muse Pierides nel papiro di Gallo?' ZPE 187 pp. 156-163 acknowledging the discussion here at footnote 7.

On Thursday, 7 July 2011 17:04:33 UTC+1, falmouth wrote: