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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
After slipping away from Athens about evening (Dieg. 10.27–8 περ σπέραν πρεν), Theseus on his journey to Marathon runs into a violent rainstorm, which breaks out suddenly after a warm and brilliant afternoon, so that he has to take refuge in Hecale's poor cottage. We owe to P. Oxy. 2216 fr. 1 as well as to some Testimonia the following text of the tempest, fr. 238.15–32 Pfeiffer = 18 Hollis
1 Text above as in Callimachus Hecale, edited with Introduction and Commentary by Hollis, A. S. (Oxford, 1990), pp. 74–5Google Scholar: a most valuable edition, which updates Pfeiffer in both the arrangement of all fragments and the copiousness of the commentary.
2 Oddly enough, commentaries are silent on the Callimachean renovatio of a Homeric formula, Χάλκεος οὐρανός (from Iliad 17.425 χάλκεον οὐρανόν to Pind. P. 10.27, N. 6.3, Theogn. 870, Simias, fr. 24.6 Powell – cf. also Call. Del. 257–8 αἰθήρ|χάλκεος! –including a contemporary reuse by A. Sikelianόs, Πνευματικ μβατήριο 5 ὂλο τ διάστημα. Here of course ἣνοΨ, a traditional epithet of χαλκός, is a pointed allusion to the Homeric formula. In his brief simile ὑλοιο ϕαάντερος Callimachus is giving an account of Alexandrian learned interpretations of ἣνοΨ, cf. schol. BV ad Od. 10.360 διαυγει, ν ᾡ στιν ἰδεῖν αυτόν.
3 For a similar description of the morning awakening in terms of human activity (four categories of workers are considered: thieves, drawers of water, carters, blacksmiths) in Hec. fr. 74.22ff. see Hollis, p. 254, adding Sapph. fr. 104 Lobel–Page (?) and Ap. Rh. 2.660–8, 4.1630 with the comm. of Livrea, p. 449. We are not allowed to apply to Callimachus what Fränkel, H., Noten zu den Argonautika des Apollonios Rhodios (Munich, 1968), p. 612Google Scholar, acutely remarked about Apollonius Rhodius, whose interest in the humble world of toil serves the purpose of stressing ‘im Kontrast die ρετή der Helden’.
4 The picture of the hard toil of women weaving their wool evokes the humble world of a poor household (cf. Leon. Tar. A.P. 7.226 = LXXII Gow–Page and Gigante, M., L'edera di Leonida (Naples, 1971), pp. 86ffGoogle Scholar.; Livrea on Ap. Rh. 4.1062, pp. 304–5). This poor μήτηρ is an admirable anticipation of the λιπερντις Hecale, thus confirming the structural, by no means ornamental, 1 function of our ‘Stundenbild’.
5 See Lapp, Fr., De Callimachi Cyrenaei tropis et figuris (Diss. Bonn. 1965), p. 55.2bGoogle Scholar; for the ellipsis of ἣν or στι copious materials are collected ibid., p. 75. We can even infer that ταλασήιον ἔργον suggested to Apollonius the nonce word γυν ταλαεργός ‘weaver’(4.1062), cf. also 3.292.
6 Omitted in Pamprepii Panopolitani Carmina (P. Gr. Vindob. 29788 A–C) ed. Livrea, H. (Lipsiae, 1979), pp. 62–3Google Scholar (Subsidia interpretationis).
7 On ‘les giboulées et les embellies, les rayons et les ombres, les bourrasques de neige et de grêle, et les brusques percées de soleil d'une journée de printemps' in Pamprepius' epyllion see Grégoire, H., ‘Au camp d'un Wallenstein byzantin: la vie et les vers de Pamprépios, aventurier païen’, BAGB 24 (1929), 35Google Scholar. We are now ready to accept that the poem deals with a ‘descriptio diei autumnalis’ (the title suggested by Heitsch, GDRK, p. 111): on this extremely difficult question see Livrea, E., ‘Pamprepio ed il P. Vindob. 29788 A–C’, ZPE 25 (1977), 124ff.Google Scholar
8 Lines 120 άψ]αμένω θυόεσσαν Ὲλεσινίης ϕλόγα πεύκης and 129–30 Tριπτολέμῳ ζε ύξασα δραḳọṿ[τείων ζυγ] δίϕρων|θεσμοϕόρον δ᾽ τέλεσσεν γήνορα δμον Ἀθήνης. Of course we may wonder whether these and other lines depend on the Demeter myth in Hecale (fr. 171 inc. sed. Hollis = 61 1 Pfeiffer). The festival described by Pamprepius, which could be compared to the Athenian Προηρόσια or Θεσμοϕόρια (see Livrea, , ZPE cit., 126–7Google Scholar), belongs to the poet's own experience as a visitor to Attica, where he spent a good deal of his youth. For all the chronological data, cf. Graindor, P., ‘Pamprépios et Théagénès’, Byzantion 4 (1929), 469–75.Google Scholar
9 Kυρήνη may here designate Callimachus' country stricto sensu. Another possibility is that it designates lato sensu Egypt, where Pamprepius took refuge after the anti-Zenonian sedition, in order to form a coalition putting together Chalcedonian orthodoxy and Neoplatonic pagan aristocracy; see the facts reconstructed by Asmus, R., ‘Pamprepios, ein byzantinischer Gelehrter und Staatsmann des 5. Jahrhunderts’, ByzZ 22 (1913), 320–47Google Scholar; Keydell, R., s.v. Pamprepios, R.E. 18.3 (1949), c. 412–13Google Scholar; Livrea, , ZPE cit., 132–3.Google Scholar
10 The parallel is omitted in Bornmann's commentary ad loc., pp. 70–1; see instead Vian on Q.S. 7.530, p. 126; Livrea on Pampr. fr. 3.186, p. 62; for the charming Alexandrian ‘Kleinkunst’ in both Pamprepian ‘genre paintings’, see Livrea, , ZPE cit., p. 124.Google Scholar
11 It seems unlikely that διπλόον prosaically hints at the size of a cloud, ‘twice as big’ in Hollis's interpretation, p. 159.
12 The relationship between Callimachus' and Apollonius' passages seems to have been caught by the very learned Pamprepius, who is manifestly borrowing from the Argonautica: 181–2 πεκρύπτοντο δ πάντα|τείρεα πουλυθέμεθλα, κα οὐκέτι ϕαίνετο μήνη∼ Ap. Rh. οὐκ ἅστρα διίσχανεν, οὐκ μαρυγα|μήνης.
13 On the supernatural, wondrous aspect of the darkness enveloping the Argonauts, see Vian, ad loc., p. 207Google Scholar, adding Wachsmuth, D., ΠOMΠIMOΠ O ΔAIMΩN (Diss., Berlin, 1967), pp. 206–9Google Scholar. In my commentary I omitted to quote an obscure Sophoclean passage, Ant. 585ff. ὥδτε ποντίας λς|οἲδμα δυσπνόοις ὅταν|Θρῄσσῃσιν ἔρεβος ὓϕαλον πιδράμῃ πνοαîς,|πνοαîς βυσσόθεν|κελαινν θῖνα κα δυσάνεμοι|στόνῳ βρέμουσιν ντιπλλες κταί, on which see Livrea, E., ‘L'episodio libyco nelle Argonautiche di Apollonio Rodio’, QAL 12, 1983 (1987), 190.Google Scholar
