Aetia (Callimachus)

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Aetia
by
Aetiology
MeterElegiac couplet
Linesc. 4,000

The Aetia (

elegiac couplets
. Although the poem cannot be precisely dated, scholars estimate it was probably composed between 270 and 240 BC.

Emerging from a tradition of writing going back to the poems of Homer, the Aetia provides the earliest source for almost every myth it relates. The stories of Books 1 and 2 have a dialectic structure, wherein characters engage in a discussion or debate. Books 3 and 4 offer a diverse range of linked dramatic settings. Two poems dedicated to Berenice II of Egypt—Victory of Berenice and Lock of Berenice—bookend the poem's second half.

Widely read in antiquity, the poem elicited responses from several Roman poets. A translation of the Lock of Berenice by Catullus inspired Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712). During the High Middle Ages, the Aetia disappeared from circulation. Systematic recovery of the text began during the Renaissance. In the late 20th century, substantial fragments of the poem were recovered following the discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

Name and genre

The Greek word αἴτιον (aition, 'cause')

epinician poetry.[3]

For example, the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides attempted to explain Athenian rituals by setting them in the mythical past.[2] In the Hellenistic period, a rising interest in the genre led to ever more obscure origin stories being incorporated within literary works. Apart from Callimachus himself—who had woven aetiologies into his other poems—his contemporary Apollonius of Rhodes also made frequent use of such stories in the Argonautica.[4]

Content

Picture of a marble bust of Queen Benerice the Second of Egypt's head.
Berenice II of Egypt, to whom part of the Aetia is dedicated. This bust of her is housed in the Munich Glyptothek.

The Aetia contains a collection of origin stories. Ranging in size from a few lines to extensive narratives, they are unified by a common metre—the elegiac couplet. With a few exceptions, the collection is the earliest extant source for most of the myths it presents.[2] The poem is thought to have had about 4,000 lines and is organised into four individual books, which are divided in halves on stylistic grounds.[5]

Books 1 and 2

After the

Linus and Coroebus,[7] Theiodamas, king of the Dryopes[8] and the voyage of the Argonauts.[9]

The second book continues the first's dialectic structure and may have been set a

Akragas, who were known for their excessive cruelty.[11]

Books 3 and 4

The second half of the Aetia does not follow the pattern established in Books 1 and 2. Instead, individual aetiologies are set in a variety of dramatic situations and do not form a contiguous narrative.

epinician narrative is an aetiology of the games themselves.[14] The end of Book 4 and the Aetia as a whole is marked by another court poem, the Lock of Berenice. In it, Callimachus relates how the queen gave a lock of her hair as a votive offering which later became a constellation, the Coma Berenices ("Hair of Berenice").[15]
Another notable story from the second half of the work is the love story of Acontius and Cydippe.[16]

Textual history

Composition

While exact dating of the Aetia is uncertain, it has been estimated that the text was composed between 270 and 240 BC. Some parts of the poem have been dated to an early phase in Callimachus's career, suggesting 270 BC as an approximate starting date for the poem's composition. Books 3 and 4, by contrast, mention queen

Hellenist Annette Harder, on the other hand, writes that Callimachus began working on the Aetia in his youth and kept developing its content throughout his life.[17]

Transmission

Having been read widely during the

epistolographer Aristaenetus, the poet Nonnus and the monk Marianus of Auxerre show their familiarity with the text around the year 500 AD. The poem is thought to have been available during the Byzantine Empire, with 12th-century scholar Eustathius of Thessalonica being the last person to display first hand knowledge of its content.[18]

The Aetia disappeared from circulation in the 13th century; two centuries later, Florentine scholar Poliziano sought to reconstruct the text from brief quotations found in other classical works.[19] Although restoration efforts have continued since, a breakthrough was only achieved after the discovery in 1898 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri in Egypt. Hence, the 20th century saw the publication of many fragments of the poem recovered from papyrus scraps found at Oxyrhynchus,[20] culminating in 1976 with the publication of the substantial Victory of Berenice fragment.[21] Together with the diegeseis, a collection of prose summaries, these fragments have allowed scholars to form a fairly comprehensive overview of the poem.[22]

Reception

Portrait of poet Alexander Pope holding a book.
The English poet Alexander Pope, from the studio of Godfrey Kneller. His poem The Rape of the Lock was inspired by Catullus's translation of a section of the Aetia.

Like all poems by Callimachus, the Aetia was read and studied widely by Roman poets of the

epigrammatist Martial dedicated a poem (10.4) to the sentiment that the Aetia, with its obscure mythological content, was irrelevant to contemporary Roman life.[25]

One aetiology in particular, the Lock of Berenice, has been subject to well known imitations. In the first century BC, the Roman poet Catullus wrote a Latin translation of the story which has been handed down as his poem 66. Catullus's composition, in turn, provided inspiration for the narrative poem The Rape of the Lock, published by the English poet Alexander Pope in 1712.[22]

Modern critics have stressed the Aetia's prominent place in the study of Callimachus. The poem is regarded by classicist

Hellenistic literature, states that Roman allusions to a small number of surviving passages from the Aetia have led to an undue prominence of those passages in modern criticism of Callimachus.[28]

Selected editions

References

  1. LSJ. Oxford. 1940.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  2. ^
    Brill's New Pauly. Leiden.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  3. ^ Harder 2012, p. 24.
  4. ^ Harder 2012, p. 25.
  5. ^ Parsons, Peter (2012). "Callimachus". Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ^ a b c Gutzwiller 2007, p. 63.
  7. ^ Callim. Aet. fr. 26–8
  8. ^ Callim. Aet. fr. 24–5.
  9. ^ Callim. Aet. fr. 7.19–21.
  10. ^ Harder 2012, p. 10.
  11. ^ Callim. Aet. fr. 44–6.
  12. ^ Hutchinson 1997, p. 45.
  13. ^ Harder 2012, p. 11.
  14. ^ Gutzwiller 2007, p. 66.
  15. ^ Clayman 2011, pp. 229–30.
  16. ^ Hutchinson 1997, pp. 47–8.
  17. ^ Harder 2012, pp. 22–3.
  18. ^ Harder 2012, pp. 70–2.
  19. ^ Harder 2012, p. 72.
  20. ^ Harder 2012, pp. 63–4.
  21. ^ Parsons & Kassel 1977, p. 1.
  22. ^ a b Gutzwiller 2007, p. 67.
  23. ^ Barchiesi 2011, pp. 513–14.
  24. ^ Barchiesi 2011, p. 525.
  25. ^ McNelis 2007, p. 178.
  26. ^ Gutzwiller 2007, p. 62.
  27. ^ Thomas 1983, p. 92.
  28. ^ Hunter 2012, pp. 1–2.

Works cited
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