A Note on Theocritus' Aeolic Poems Author(s): M. L. West
Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol.
17, No. 1 (May, 1967), pp. 82-84 Published by: Cambridge University
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A NOTETHEOCRITUs'
ON THEOCRITUS'
AEOLIC
POEMS
four known Aeolic poems, 28-31, are all in metres used by Sappho
and Alcaeus. 28, 30, and apparently 31, are in greater Asclepiads,
and 29 is in Sapphic fourteen-syllablelines. Neither of these
metres was in common use,' and Theocritus is likely to have based
his metrical practice, like his dialect, on the Lesbian models. Of
the four forms which the 'Aeolic base' can take in the Lesbian
poets, spondee, trochee, iambus, and pyrrhich, the last, which is
comparatively rare from the start,2 is not admitted by Catullus and
his contemporariesin their Aeolic metres; Horace is even stricter,
and admits only the first.3Theocritus admits all four. But the
examples of pyrrhich base are distributed in a remarkable way.Poem
28 (25 lines): none.
29 (40 lines) : two examples-the last two lines of the poem.
30 (32 lines): four examples (lines 6, 9, 19 cj., 25)-
31 (beginnings of first five lines preserved): two examples.
Taking the poems in the transmittedorder, we thus have 102
consecutive lines, of which the first 63 contain no instance and
the remaining 39 contain eight instances. To calculate the odds
against such a distribution resulting from chance4 one would have
to pretend that a human versifier was a roulette wheel, and then
guess at its design; I predict that anyone who tries it will find
that, whatever assumptionshe makes, the resulting odds are
alarming. But mathematics apart, it would obviously be a plausible
hypothesis that Theocritus composedthe poems in the order 28, 29,
30, 31 or 28, 29, 31, 30, and that to begin with he was unaware
that a line might legitimately start % - , -. This supposi- tion
receives some support from the following considerations.(I)
is unparalleled and to many scholars incredible.s It can,
however, be arracoAwI Greater Asclepiads were used by Asclepiades
(whom Theocritus admired, 7. 40), Callimachus (fr. 4oo), and Horace
(C. I. II, I8, 4. Io). 2 In the fragments of Sappho and Alcaeus I
have counted 16 examples in 226 lines in Aeolic metres whose
beginnings are preserved. I found no fragment of more than ten
lines that lacked an instance except Sappho fr. 44 (28 lines)-a
significant exception, in view of the known abnormalities of that
poem (see D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus,pp. 65 ff.). 3 In C. I.
15. 36 ignis Iliacas domos, the variant Pergameas, whatever its
source, is unlikely to be a conjecture designed to meet the
metrical point, which was surely
In 28. 4 &0T7ra KvtrrpL~os 'pov
XcApov CaAdCtLW
ra' dTrdA,
the prosody
too subtle for fifteenth-century scholars; and could Horace have
written Iliacas only three lines after Ilio? He varies his words
for Greek and Trojan throughout the ode. 4 Gow, ii. 511, notes that
the pyrrhich base is admitted in 30 and does not occur in 28, and
says that this is 'probably no more than accident'. s Of the many
conjectures the most in(Pohlenz, genious is perhaps 3Trral hAdAw(L)
NGG 1949, 231); though while I have heard from Greek poets and some
others of 'babbling water', I cannot say I have ever heard of
babbling rush. Trees 'whisper' in (with an object) in the I. I, and
AaAE'ovc post-Theocritean 27. 58.
A NOTE ON THEOCRITUS'
AEOLIC POEMS
83
explained, if we allow that when he composed this poem
Theocritus did not
recognize the pyrrhich base. For in Sappho 94. 21 ff. we
find:KatalraAav7ra[ ].
o-rpwttwv[av ]7rtbLoAOcaKav cr
for Sappho's next words (94- 24 ff.) are beginning 0r5rra L'pov,
KvrrptoSKWWVE TL&[ Tv OV]TE
in 22 was Reading this poem, Theocritusmay have supposedthat
7rd~Aav scannedas a cretic; he perhapsimaginedthe lengthening to be
analogous to and similarwords.It is curiousthat he wroteard7cow
that in 7TrIroOEv in a line
EIAET o Ev tbLLEg oIT7r[' aTrETrKob0EV, 6 OVK aAlTOS .
and Cypris is present in the context at least in thought. (2)
The relative chronology of Theocritus' Aeolic poems that the
hypothesis presupposestends to be supported by such hints as the
poems themselves give. In 28, Theocritus rejoicesat the prospect of
seeing his friend Nicias and Nicias' wife Theogenis. Everything
suggests that they are a fairly young couple.Theogenis is E'u6vpos
(I 3), full of energy (13-16), and she LAE'EL 6dua uao'dpovEs (14),
which is decorous Greek for 'no flirt'; she will make clothes
galore (io-i i), become celebrated among her neighbours for her
distaff (22), and remember the poet who gave her it for evermore
(23). Nicias himself is Xaprowv LL EpoqPJvw fEpov dt-ov (7), which
is Alexandrian for 'a promising young poet'.'
If Nicias is still on the young side, then so is Theocritus, for
the tones in whichhe speaks to him, in this poem, in poem i, and
especially in 13. I i o10X c'V NLK'a, clearly indicate that the two
were "Epo-ra /0vo0 sTEX' d" 'OKE-/Es, 7v coevals.2 older man:
&AA' at' tol rloLo L v&oS7rpoyEVErwTE'p ( o). When the boy
grows his o beard, they will become (34). Then in poem 30,
Theocritus has 4XLAAXE'Lo OAot
In poem 29, Theocritus addressesa boy, and addresseshim as a
somewhat
white hair (13), and unless we are prepared to suppose that a
young poet is here assuming the persona of an old man in deference
to some literary convention, we must regard this as a work of at
least middle age. In general, the order in which Theocritus' poems
are transmitted differs in different sources.But the order of the
Aeolic poems seems to be stable, so far as present evidence goes.C
(Ambr. 104 B 75 sup., s. xv-xvi): 28, 29, 30. H (Vat. gr. 913, s.
xiii-xiv) : 28, 29. 1-8. (Hence X = Vat. gr. 1311, S. xv.) H73(P.
Antin., C. A.D. 500): 28, 29, 30, 31. P. Oxy. ined.3 (s. iv?): 17,
28.Cf. ipvosin 7. 44, with Gow's note. So Gow, ii. 2o8. It must be
remembered that poem 28, to all appearance, is later than poem 13;
and the balance of probability is that poem 13 is later than the2 3
Gow, i. 257. In I1 also, if Gallavotti's reconstruction is correct
(Riv. Fil. lviii [9301o], 500-3; Theocritus,p. 303), 28 was
preceded by I7. Cf. Gow, i. 1, n. i.
first version of Argonautica i-ii.
84
M. L. WEST
The only variation is that D (Paris. 2726, s. xv) contained
poems 28 and 29 far apart from each other and in reverse order. But
this is not significant, for the manuscript is not homogeneous, and
the two poems fall in different sections drawn from different
sources.' The grouping together of the Aeolic poems, and the actual
order 28-31, is thereforecertainly ancient, and may go back to the
earliest collected edition of Theocritus' poems, perhaps to the
poet himself: granted that the mixed-up collection we have does not
reflect his arrangement, there is no reason why he should not have
published a book containing Aeolic poems, from which The fourare
arranged a group of four (or more) survivedinto the later
'LcAv3pa'. among themselves, not by metre, since 29 is in a
different metre from 28, 30, and 3', but rather by subject. 28 is
the Distaf, 29-30 and perhaps 31 are paederastic. But the grouping
by subjects might reflect the order of composition. Our conclusions
may be summarized as follows. Poems 28, 29, and 30 were written in
that order. When he wrote 28, Theocritus did not know the rare
pyrrhich form of the Aeolic base, and was misled by a Sapphic case
of it into committing a false quantity. In the course of writing
29, he discovered it, and the fact that he ends the poem with two
successiveexamples of it suggests that he regarded it not as a
dubious licence to be used in times of need, but rather as a fully
legitimate variation that demonstrated his close acquaintance with
Lesbian metric. In 30 he used it freely. Its free use in 31 may be
taken as evidence that that poem was also composed after 28 and 29,
whether before or after 30. It is not out of place to recall
another feature of Lesbian metrical practice that he may have
learned within the period covered by these poems. In Sappho, the
greater Asclepiad line was used only in two-line stanzas. This was
known to some later scholars.2Theocritus did not know it when he
wrote 28, which has 25 lines. He may have known it later: 29 has 40
lines, 30 has 32, and 31 may have had 34.3 But this could easily be
fortuitous. M. L. WEST College,Oxford UniversityGallavotti,
Theocritus, pp. 288 ff. 2 Hephaestion 63. 17. 3 Gow, ii. 519. If
so, there will be no significance in the fact that 29 and 30 could
be divided into four-line stanzas. With Horace's greater Asclepiad
odes, which have eight or sixteen lines, it is another matter, in
view of his regular use of quatrains.
