Reviews
KATHRYN GUTZWILLER (ed.), The New Posidippus: a Hellenistic
Poetry Book (New York, Oxford University Press, 2005); xvi plus
394p; ISBN 0199 267812; paper US$60.00.
The publication in 2001 of P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309 by Guido
Bastianini and Claudio Gallazzi not only brought to light around
one hundred ‘further epigrams’ by the third-century poet
Posidippus of Pella, but also offered an actual example of an early
collection of poems datable to the second half of the third century
BC. In the following year, the roll was the subject of at least two
high-profile conferences, one at the Harvard Center for Hellenic
Studies, the other at Cincinnati. Each of these events formed the
basis of a collection of essays, Cincinnati’s resulting in this superb
volume edited by Kathryn Gutzwiller.
Doubt was expressed by some scholars at the papyrus’ first
appearance that all the poems are by Posidippus, given the alleged
unevenness of their quality, but Gutzwiller and her fourteen co­
contributors incline to the view that the collection is exclusively
Posidippan. If so, we have an epigram book which is arranged on
significantly different criteria from the ones adopted by Meleager
one-and-a-half centuries later, and one which radically alters our
conception of early poetry books.
Gutzwiller organizes The New Posidippus’ fourteen essays into
four parts. Part One is entitled ‘Papyrus Rolls, Readers, and
Editors’. Colin Austin offers a harrowing but hilarious personal
vignette about his first encounter, during emergency heart-surgery,
with Posidippus’ poems on the untimely dead. William Johnson
analyzes the roll’s physical history, illustrating how the beginning of
the roll was torn off, and opening up the possibility that at least one
column was lost in the process of repair, so that the papyrus might
not have started with the section on gemstones. Nita Krevans finds
that the principle for ordering the epigrams is utilitarian rather
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than aesthetic, a librarians rather than a poets. Dirk Obbink
characterizes the epigrams as ‘subliterary’, which helps explain why
so few of the poems in the roll were admitted to Meleager’s Garland.
In Part Two, on the remarkable and uniquely headed sections
of the papyrus, Peter Bing argues that the section on gemstones,
with its references to India, the Arabian mountains and Ptolemaic
territory, is a map of the regions to which the Ptolemies at least
aspired, while Ann Kuttner shows how the section also performs the
role of an inventory of a Ptolemaic gem cabinet which offers insight
into the uses and meanings that the elite of Alexandria associated
with the different gems. David Sider regards the section on omens
as a versification of a prose treatise, much like Aratus’ treatment
of Eudoxus, and therefore perhaps as ‘didactic epigram’, a category
which Posidippus himself may have invented. Two contributions
are devoted to the fascinating section on statues. Andrew Stewart
patiently explains Posidippus’ view of the truth in sculpture in
the light of art and art-history: Posidippus regarded Lysippus as
surpassing the realisms of his predecessors with his ‘phenomenal
idealism’, only to be trum ped by Hecataeus’ ‘straight canon of truth’
in his statue of the poet Philitas. Alexander Sens expands on the
idea of Posidippus’ admiration for Hecataeus’ Philitas as having
validity for poetry as well, especially given the programmatic
passage on Philitas and truth in the seventh Idyll of Theocritus.
Part Three helpfully places the new find in the Ptolemaic context.
Susan Stephens convincingly demonstrates how Posidippus
celebrates the royal house, especially Arsinoe Philadelphus, as
belonging to a direct Macedonian tradition, thus differing from
the strategy of Callimachus, who in Stephens’ view emphasizes the
Egyptianizing elements in Ptolemaic cult, again especially that of
Arsinoe. This difference is offered as the real opposition between
Posidippus and Callimachus detailed by the Florentine scholiast.
Marco Fantuzzi concentrates on the Hippika section of the roll, and
interprets the comparison of Berenice Is Olympic chariot victory
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with that of the earlier Spartan queen Cynisca as a legitimation of
the Ptolemaic monarchy and eventual deification of the Ptolemaic
queens. Dorothy Thompson surveys the whole of Posidippus’
output in order to determine whether his intended audience was
Macedonian, Alexandrian or generally Hellenic, and what role
Egyptian elements play. She concludes that all racial features are
represented, and that Posidippus is best viewed as a Hellenistic
poet. In the process, Thompson offers powerful arguments for
identifying the younger Berenice who won equestrian victories
at the Olympic, Nemean and Isthmian games not as the wife of
Ptolemy II Euergetes, but as the daughter of Ptolemy II Philadelphus
who was given in marriage to Antiochus II of Syria to m ark the end
of the Second Syrian War in 252 BC; this Thompson proposes as
the latest date for the papyrus’ poems.
Part Four rounds off the volume, addressing the issue of authorial
versus editorial organization of poetry books. Kathryn Gutzwiller
argues that the Milan papyrus bears signs of unified, authorial
arrangement, not only by means of the divisions into sections, but
more particularly by the presence of carefully deployed themes, like
the theme of the Ptolemies as divine or heroic monarchs, which
can shape the sections themselves, or permeate all sections, so that
total meaning of the collection is greater than the sum of its poems.
Alessandro Barchiesi analyzes the lessons the roll has to teach us for
the study o f ‘the perfect book’ in Rome. He points out, for example,
that the non-Homeric book-divisions of the Iliad and the Odyssey
by the end or beginning of a day became for Roman poets a m otif to
be exploited. He makes the eminently sensible proposal that in our
search for Roman poetry books and their models we should jettison
the sharp distinction between authorial and editorial collections,
and take into account the physical constraints of book-production
illustrated by the new papyrus.
This brief description of contents may serve to give some idea
of the admirable breadth and comprehensiveness of this book, but
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cannot hope to do justice to the depth of its engagement with the
new text. Close readings include Sens’ discussion of the first four
poems of the section on statues ‘that associate the poet and the
sculptor, the sculptor and his subject-matter, and even the speaker
who views the work of art and the individual who is represented
in it’ (221) by means including the use of Doric dialect in poem
AB 64, where the narrator admires the realism of Cresilas in the
same Doric as the sculpture-group’s Idomeneus is made to urge his
companion Meriones to run. Gutzwiller’s analysis of the sundial
poem AB 52 (295-99) is only one more example among many.
But what is also impressive about the volume is the way in which
the contributors help us contextualise the new poems, especially in
terms of Ptolemaic history, and, strikingly, the Ptolemaic queens.
In particular, Stephens, Fantuzzi and Thompson all emphasize
the short shrift the roll’s poems give to Egypt in comparison with
Macedonia, Posidippus’ homeland, and they try to account for
this. Interestingly, Posidippus is a figure who lends support to
P.M. Fraser’s conclusion that at least under the first three Ptolemies
Alexandria exerted a socially centrifugal force, with a population
of visitors who never engaged with the city or the Egyptian
presence. Posidippus is therefore a counter-instance to the position
adopted elsewhere in particular by Stephens, that the poets like
Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius allow Egyptian beliefs and
motifs into their poetry. But, with characteristic honesty, Stephens
acknowledges the problem, and offers a perfectly reasoned and
satisfactory explanation for the two poets’ differences in this regard.
Moreover, we are given a precise idea of the Milan papyrus as a
material artefact, and of the strategies by which it was arranged.
We are given a firm contextualization of its contents within earlier
and contemporary literature, the position of the Lithika in relation
to Hellenistic responses to the different gemstones, the Hippika
in the Pindaric epinician tradition, the Oionoskopika within
contemporary philosophy and religious writing, the statue and
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gemstone-poems within an art-historical framework and within
the contemporary poetic scene. Perhaps one of the most fascinating
side-insights of the book is the relation of the roll to prose: Sider
is clearly persuasive in seeing the Oionoskopika in the tradition of
prose treatises on divination, Krevans is clearly right to associate
the Lithika and Oionoskopika with wonder-books like Callimachus’
Collection o f Marvels throughout the World, by Location. This
supports Obbink’s characterization of the collection as a whole as
‘subliterary’, and further helps explain why Meleager included so
few of the roll’s poems in the Garland.
In sum, this is a magnificent contribution to Posidippan studies.
Gutzwiller is to be congratulated on her organization of the essays,
which, rather in the m anner she herself thinks the papyrus’ poems
were arranged, fall naturally into headed sections while cutting
across them thematically. It also enhances the poetic pleasure of
her book that she heads it with Frank Nisetich’s elegant translation
of Posidippus’ known oeuvre into English elegiac couplets.
Graham Zanker
University of Canterbury
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