CALLIMACHUS HYMN TO APOLLO A Commentary BY FREDERICK WILLIAMS OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1978 DefordU niversitPy ress,W altonS treet,O xfordo x2 GDP D"1'DRD LONDON 0i..U00W Kl!\11 YORK TORONTO MiLDOURNB \VBLLINO'fON kU~LA. LUMPUR llNOAPORB JAK/LR'tA JlONO KONO TOKVO lll!f.111 BOMBAY CALCUTTA &IAl>RAS KARj\CIII lllADA!f NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAH CAP& TOWN © OxfordU 11iversiP/}r'e ss1 978 All rights reservedN. o parl of tliis p11blicaliom11a y be reJ1rod11ml, storedin a retn·euasly stem,o r tra11smil/e1d1, a1t! )' form or by arty1 11tt111s, tledroriic,t ntcha11i~aplh, otocopyingr,e cordi11ogr, otherwise,w ithout theP riorp ermissio1o1f O>iforUd 11iversiPtyr ess British Library Cataloguing in PubUcation Data Williams, Frederick Callimachus 'Hymn to Apollo', a commentary. t, CaUimachus. Hymn to Apollo I. Title II. Callimachus. [Hymnos eis Lon Apollonn], Hymn to Apollo 884'.01 PA3945.Z5 77-30643 ISBN 0-19-814007-X Printedi ii GreatB ritni/I at the U11iuersPiir,,e ss,O .iford by Virn"aR111" dler Printerl o the U11iversi!)t PATRIS MEMORIAE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THIS commentary is a revised version of a doctoral thesis pre sented to the University of London in 1974. I owe a double debt of gratitude to Professor Giuseppe Giangrande: he has created the fine facilities which the Department of Classics at Birkbeck College offers for research in Greek, and, as my supervisor, he has, with his unique combination oflearning and generosity, lavished advice and encouragement, lent books, and, not least, kicked '1>06voHs. is own devotion to research, and his contributions to our understanding of Hellenistic poetry, have been a constant inspiration. My thanks are due also. to Professors W. G. Arnott and H. Lloyd-Jones, who both made many useful suggestions, to the Central Research Fund of the University of London for a grant which enabled me to visit the Istituto di Filologia Classica in the University of Urbino and to discuss problell_!Sin the Hymn with Professor Bruno Gentili and his colleagues, and to the Advanced Studies Committee of the University of Southampton for a hand some subvention towards the costs of publication. I am grateful to Mrs. Sheila James for typing the final version so patiently and efficiently, to the staff of the Press for their un failing helpfulness and courtesy, to my wife for undertaking the chore of proof-reading, and to my children for allowing her to complete it. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I NOTE ON THE TEXT 7 CONVENTIONS 7 SIGLA 8 TEXT 9 COMMENTARY 15 APPENDIX: Homer as Oceanus 98 BIBLIOGRAPHY 100 INDEXES 107 INTRODUCTION IN this commentary I attempt to solve some of the literary· prob lems of the Hymn to Apollo,a nd to examine in detail Callimachus' use and enrichment of the epic language he inherited from his predecessors. The Hymn has often been approached from other directions : it has been regarded as primary evidence for the political and diplomatic history of Ptolemaic Egypt and the city of Cyrene; as a source ofbiographical material on the poet's life and especially on his relations with Apollonius Rhodius; and as a· document for the study of Cyrenean religion. These non-literary approaches can hardly be said to have produced satisfactory results. One factor is that the poem cannot be securely dated; for not only are there 'no precise dates in any of the Hymns' (Fraser, Ptolemai.c Alexandria,i . 652), but the value and validity of the references to contemporary events which they allegedly contain are question able, above all in this hymn, as Vahlen's study showed (Uber einige Anspielungeni n den Hymnen des Callimachus,1 895). Often these allusions are conventional, and unspecific, as in lines 26-7, where hostility to Apollo is equated with hostility to 'my king' ; sometimes Callimachus' words have been forced to yield a 'con temporary reference' without any regard for their context, as has happened with. line 68; and the wild allegorical fantasies catalogued by Ehrlich in 1894 (De CallimachHi ymnis Q_uaestiones Chronologicaea),n d justly ridiculed by Kuiper in 1898 (Studia Callimm:heaii,. 139-41) continue to be canvassed as serious con tributions to scholarship. The credulity which can see Ptolemy Philadelphus (o r Euergetes; or even both) disguised . as the beautiful beardless Apollo, or detect Berenice masquerading as the Thessalian nymph Cyrene, or uncover· the ruler Demetrius hidden beneath the mane of the cow-slaughtering lion, testifies to a deep human craving to identify Literature and Life even at the cost of a few category-Inistakes. While such fancies, as long as they are entertained in private, may bring their authors harmless psychological comfort, they are as irrelevant to an understanding of Callimachean poetry as the Persian chain. INTRODUCTION More soberly, it has often been argued that the Hymn must be dated to 246 B.c. or thereabouts, since Callimachus could not have written it before the reconciliation of Egypt and Cyrene (see most recently Fraser, Ptol. Alex. i. 652). While there are good reasons for seeing the Hymn as a comparatively late product of the poet's mature style (in particular the close similarity between ·t he final section and the prologue to the Aetia), it is wrong to pretend to a fuller acquaintance with the complex and tangled relations between Cyrene and Egypt than our inadequate sources permit. Certainly we are not justified in reading back the attitudes of the Cold War to the very different conditions of the third century B.c. Nor should we forget that Callimachus was an aristocrat from Cyrene; in the words of Von der Mi.ihll (MH 15 (1958), 7): 'Der aus Kyrene stammende Dichter konnte den Apoll von Kyrene preisen und herzhaft sich als Angehorigen seiner Heimat vorstellen, jederzeit und ohne politische Absicht.' In the absence of firm and independent evidence, we must be content to interpret the Hymn without the illusory benefit of a dating derived from a priori assumptions and supported by circular arguments. Another unprofitable approach to the Hymn has been the attempt to relate it to an alleged quarrel, beloved of literary historians, between Callimachus and Apollonius. Whether there ever was such a quarrel may reasonably be doubted, and as Pfeiffer warned (Historyo f ClassicalS cholarshipi,. 144) 'fiction is no substitute for evidence'. The Argonauticas hows detailed knowledge and profound sympathy with Callimachus' poetry; Apollonius is not numbered among the Telchines of the Aetia prologue, and it is a gratuitous assumption of modem writers to suppose that Callimachus singled out his pupil for attack in the final scene of the Hymn. It is also an assumption which belittles the significance of Apollo's utterance, which, as I hope to show, has a much richer and more positive meaning than previous com mentators have allowed it. That the Hymn was not written for performance at an actual religious ceremony seems to me self-evident from its form and its esoteric learning; but the belief that it was 'composed in con nexion with the festival of the Carneia at Cyrene' and performed in public has been revived recently by Fraser (Ptol.A lex. i. 653, c£ ii. 916 n. 289; c£, with a different emphasis, Bundy, Cal. Stud.