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ANTHOLOGIA LATINA 109.8 SHB: A NEW READING FOR YOU

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2022

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Abstract

This note addresses briefly the difficulties associated with the personalities named in the epigram Anth. Lat. 109.8 ShB and their roles before suggesting that tibi should be read rather than mihi in line 8.

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Anth. Lat. 109 ShB (120 R):Footnote 1

Aliter (De balneis)
Fausta nouum domini condens Fortuna lauacruM
Inuitat fessos huc properare uiaE.
Laude operis fundi capiet sua gaudia praesuL
Ospes dulciflua dum recreatur aquA.
Condentis monstrant uersus primordia nomeN      5
Auctoremque facit littera summa legI.
Lustrent pontiuagi Cumani litoris antrA;
Indigenae placeant plus mihi deliciaE.
2 uiae Heinsius: uitę A: uiros Salmasius
4 ospes Müller: hospis A
5 uersus Riese: uersos A: uerso Stowasser: uersa Zurli
6 auctoremque A: actoremque Kay      summa Courtney: prima A

This epigram is the second in a series of six or seven on baths.Footnote 2 It contains the acrostich FILOCALI and the telestich MELANIAE.Footnote 3 The identities and roles of these people have occasioned much debate. Prosopographical arguments have been advanced for their being historical figures from North Africa (where most of the poems in the Latin Anthology were written or assembled), and the meanings of condens (lines 1 and 5) and auctor (line 6) have attracted scrutiny.Footnote 4 Nevertheless, questions remain.

For instance, when arguing as to their identities, Cameron proposes that, while the so-called Elder Melania, the bath's condens (in the sense of ‘founder’) financed/built the baths,Footnote 5 the famous calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus, condens in the sense of ‘literary composer’, ‘engraved (and possibly composed) the poem’.Footnote 6 In arguing for different meanings for condens in lines 1 and 5, however, Cameron does not note that dominus in line 1 is masculine and so cannot apply to Melania. Instead, it seems likely that lines 1−2 refer to the same person as the one referred to in line 5, whom we know for definite is Filocalus (as shown by uersus primordia).Footnote 7 Meanwhile, line 6 refers to Melania (note littera summa). It is possible that lines 3−4 do as well, since this makes for a neat alternation in the ordering of lines: Filocalus (1−2) Melania (3−4) Filocalus (5) Melania (6); but it is also possible that they refer to Filocalus, that is, he is both the dominus and condens in line 1 and the fundi … praesul in line 3. In this case, either Melania is the auctor of the epigram, which raises questions about women poets and their position/influence,Footnote 8 or auctor carries an unusual sense: though the auctor of a building is usually the person responsible for its erection, might the baths have been Melania's idea although Filocalus executed it?Footnote 9

Whatever the correct identifications and the respective functions of the condens and the auctor, however, questions arise as to whom mihi in line 8 refers. Kay suggests, in addressing it,Footnote 10 that it must be to ‘the protagonist of the epigram and founder/owner of the baths, Filocalus, who effectively recommends his reader/clients to enjoy the local facilities and shun fancy foreign establishments’. The word sits oddly, however, since there is nothing to explain the first person here.

A possibility is that one should instead read tibi. This would do away with the difficulty of identifying the first-person mihi with the third-person references earlier in the poem; arguably, it would make the subjunctive placeant easier; and, in view of the contrast between fessos … uiae (line 2) and pontiuagi (line 7), it would achieve a more pointed ending to the epigram. Also, if the poem were originally written up in or engraved on the walls of baths, as seems likely,Footnote 11 tibi would resonate with each bather as he read it.Footnote 12 Compare Mart. 11.80.7, where tibi has replaced mihi (that is, the opposite to the case here): quod si deorum munere hoc mihi [Gilbert: tibi βγ] detur.Footnote 13 Compare also the confusion at Mart. 12.2(3).4 dat patrios amnes quos mihi [β: tibi γ] terra potens.Footnote 14

Before the possibility of tibi can be accepted, however, there is a further consideration to be met: it would appear that the current epigram is closely related to that immediately following it, Anth. Lat. 110 ShB (121 R), where the first line (quisquis Cumani lustrauit litoris antra) recalls line 7 lustrent pontiuagi Cumani litoris antra.Footnote 15 Might balnea nostra in line 4 lend any support to mihi in Anth. Lat. 109 ShB (120 R)?Footnote 16 This is possible;Footnote 17 but, instead of being a poetic plural referring to Filocalus/the bath's proprietor, and especially if this epigram too was displayed on the walls of the baths,Footnote 18 nostra could be an expression of local pride and identity: our baths are better than the foreign ones, overseas at Baiae—as anyone knows who has experienced both (lines 1−2). One cannot therefore insist that mihi is supported by nostra.

The case therefore remains for reading tibi instead of mihi at Anth. Lat. 109.8 ShB (120.8 R).

Footnotes

I am grateful for their comments to Dr N.M. Kay and the anonymous CQ reader.

References

1 The text given here is based on that of Kay, N.M., Epigrams from the Anthologia Latina. Text, Translation and Commentary (London, 2006)Google Scholar, who has preserved the numbering in Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, Anthologia Latina 1.1. Libri Salmasiani aliorumque carmina (Stuttgart, 1982)Google Scholar. Also given is the numbering of A. Riese's Teubner text (Leipzig, 1894). On this epigram, see too Zurli, L., Unius poetae sylloge (Hildesheim, 2007), 82−5Google Scholar and 150, and Bergasa, I. and Wolff, É., Épigrammes latines de l'Afrique Vandale (Paris, 2016), 30−1Google Scholar. See also Müller, L., ‘Zu Meyer's Anthologie’, RhM 20 (1865), 633−7Google Scholar (on line 4), Stowasser, J.M., ‘Lexicale Vermutungen zur lateinischen Anthologie I’, WS 31 (1909), 279−92Google Scholar, at 281 (on line 5), and (on line 6) Courtney, E., ‘Observations on the Latin Anthology’, Hermathena 129 (1980), 37−50Google Scholar, at 41−2, and id., Musa Lapidaria (Atlanta, 1995), 266; cf. Evans-Grubbs, J. and Courtney, E., ‘An identification in the Latin Anthology’, CPh 82 (1987), 237−9Google Scholar, at 238 and Cameron, Alan, ‘Filocalus and Melania’, CPh 87 (1992), 140−4, at 140Google Scholar.

2 See Kay (n. 1), 173 and cf. 191.

3 For which, see Kay (n. 1), 177−8. Also Evans-Grubbs and Courtney (n. 1), 238 and Cameron (n. 1), 140.

4 Evans-Grubbs and Courtney (n. 1), 237−9, Cameron (n. 1), 141−4; cf. Trout, D.E., Damasus of Rome (Oxford, 2015), 49Google Scholar.

5 Regarding the Elder Melania, see Cameron (n. 1), 141. She was the grandmother of the Younger Melania, for whom see Evans-Grubbs and Courtney (n. 1), 238−9.

6 Cameron (n. 1), 141−2. He refers to OLD s.v. condo 10 and 14.

7 Cf. Kay (n. 1), 178. Versus is a collective singular, as at Prop. 2.34.93 Cynthia … uersu laudata Properti.

8 Courtney (n. 1 [1980]), 41 observes that there is no known work by any poetess in the Latin Anthology. See too the arguments in Kay (n. 1), 184.

9 Courtney (n. 1 [1980]), 41−2. Courtney is, of course, thinking of the Younger Melania; but his reasoning here applies also to the Elder.

10 Kay (n. 1), 179; cf. Bergasa and Wolff (n. 1), 30−1.

11 Cameron (n. 1), 140−1.

12 Engaging bathers thus means that, while the absence of any first-person words earlier in the poem is odd, the absence of any second-person words is not a difficulty.

13 See Kay, N.M., Martial Book XI. A Commentary (London, 1985)Google Scholar, ad loc.

14 Cf. too e.g. Mart. 9.42.6 (me γ and te β) and 12.60.5 (meis β and tuis γ). Note also Lindsay's apparatus criticus at Mart. 13.48.2 mittere, where he suggests that the abbreviation lies behind mihi T and tibi R.

15 It seems possible, given hic lauet at both Anth. Lat. 110.3 ShB (121.3 R) and Anth. Lat. 108.7 ShB (119.7 R), that Anth. Lat. 108−10 ShB (119−21 R) form an integral group.

16 Given the connection between Anth. Lat. 109 ShB and Anth. Lat. 110 ShB (120 and 121 R), should hospes at Anth. Lat. 110.2 ShB (121.2 R) be written as ospes?

17 Cf. Kay (n. 1), 179.

18 See Cameron (n. 1), 143 and n. 14.