Dialect, Diction, and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram

Evina Sistakou, Antonios Rengakos, Evina Sistakou, Antonios Rengakos

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783110497021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Language and style of epigram is a topic scarcely discussed in the related bibliography. This edition aspires to fill the gap by offering an in-depth study of dialect, diction, and style in Greek literary and inscribed epigram in a collection of twenty-one contributions authored by international scholars. The authors explore the epigrammatic Kunstsprache and matters of dialectical variation, the interchange between poetic and colloquial vocabulary, the employment of hapax legomena, the formalistic uses of the epigrammatic discourse (meter, syntactical patterns, arrangement of words, riddles), the various categories of style in sepulchral, philosophical and pastoral contexts of literary epigrams, and the idiosyncratic diction of inscriptions. This is a book intended for classicists who want to review the connection between the stylistic features of epigram and its interpretation, as well as for scholars keen to understand how rhetoric and linguistics can be used as a heuristic tool for the study of literature.?

Endnotes

1	For Honestus see Jones 2004, 93–6; Bowie 2008 [2012], 236.
2	But for the absence of local dialect features from the works of both Theophanes and Crinagoras see Bowie 2011, esp. 195.
3	Cf. Magnelli 2007, 178.
4	οἷον δὴ τόκα πῶμα διεκρανάσατε, Νύμφαι, | βωμῷ πὰρ Δάματρος ἁλωίδος; ἇς ἐπὶ σωρῷ | αὖτις ἐγὼ πάξαιμι μέγα πτύον, ἃ δὲ γελάσσαι | δράγματα καὶ μάκωνας ἐν ἀμφοτέραισιν ἔχοισα.
5	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/36 = GVI 806.
6	The Doric forms are φιλωρείτᾳ (3) and ἅλῳ, ποτὶ, and ἔπαξαν (5). For a succinct and judicious statement of the debated relationship between this poem and the Arcades ambo of Vergil, Eclogue 7.1–5 see Clausen 1994.
7	Epic colour noted by Gow-Page 1968, 2.282–282. For a defence of the Palatinus’ αὐτᾶς and a rejection of Gow-Page’s emendation αἰπᾶς see Giangrande 1975, 41–42.
8	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/47 = GVI 1792 = IK 18.520: [τᾶς] ᾿Aφροδίτας ναός (1), ἐτερπόμαν (3), Ματροδώρου (8): ναός, regular in Attic tragedy, might well not be perceived as Doric. For the special case of personal names see Sens 2004, 73 with n.38.
9	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/45 (assigning to the late Hellenistic period) = GVI 1585 (assigning to the second or first century BC) = IK 18.516: Φερσεφόνα (1), θνατοὺς ἁλικίαν θεμένα (2), τᾷ (3), ἀλλοδαπὰν (5), δεικνυμένα (6), γενόμαν … λειπομένα (8), Φερσεφόνας (9), Λάθας λουσαμένα (10).
10	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/46 = GVI 1552 = IK 18.519 τὰν (1), ἀνδρολέταν (6).
11	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/33 = GVI 1816 = IK 18.492: δμαθεὶς (1), Λάθας (2)
12	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/34 = GVI 1610 = IK 18.494: ἁ … ποτὶ (1).
13	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/04.
14	CIG 3671 = Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 08/01/07. On Nestor of Laranda see Ma 2007.
15	I set aside the sporadically Doric poems describing to mythological scenes represented on columns of the early second century BC temple of Apollonis, mother of Attalus and Eumenes of Pergamum: it seems clear that the 19 poems, constituting Book Three of the Palatine Anthology, are late, perhaps as late as Nonnus, cf. Demoen 1988, Cameron 1993, 148.
16	Gow-Page 1968, 2.117 rightly see his geographical references as confirming the ethnic ‘Byzantine’ attached to 24 poems, though they miss the mise-en-scène of Elaeous at xxiii (= AP 7.141). See also Robert 1979.
17	On these other dedications see Ypsilanti 2006. For an interesting proposal that Antiphilus xi GP (= AP 10.17) was a programmatic first poem in an Antiphilan collection and xvi (= AP 6.199) an epilogue see Höschele 2007, 360–361.
18	Gow-Page see this as an adaptation of the ‘proverbial phrase’ comparing the singing of larks and swans, AP 9.380.1 and Dioscorides xxxvi 5–6 Gow-Page (= AP 11.195.5–6). Konstan 2008, 296–7 suggests that Antiphilus’ point is that like Zeus he will be a singing bird – not indeed a swan, but ‘at all events’ a lark. This still lacks force, and I suggest there may also be a pun – with itacism κόρυδος can sound like κόρη δός, ‘Give, girl’.
19	Or perhaps Antiphilus has been reading the Iliou Persis of Stesichorus, a well-known poem, or that of the Argive poet Sacadas, still known to Athenaeus 13.610c some 150 years after Antiphilus, cf. Bowie 2014a.
20	For a discussion of this and the three other epigrams on Timomachus’ Medea see Gurd 2007.
21	IK 58.30
22	IK 58.10.
23	IK 58.103.2.
24	Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 09/05/04, 05, 06, 07 and 08 (on pages 159–163).
25	Cameron 1993, 316.
26	IK 9.85: Γ. Κάσσιος Φιλίσ|κος, Γ. Κασ|σίου ᾿Aσκληπιοδότου υἱός,| ζήσας ἔτη πγ. Cf. Bekker-Nielsen 2008, 112,
27	Bowie 2014b, 42–5.
28	But it does appear as a name in other provinces, e. g. in Egypt, Baillet 1920–1926, no. 1742.
29	C. Cassius Chrestus is described on his late first-century sarcophagus, found outside Nicaea’s East (Lefke) gate (for whose reconstruction between AD 70 and 81 he was responsible, IK 9.25), as πρέσβυ[ς καὶ] (or πρεσβύ̣[τερος]) | ἀρχιερεὺς καὶ σεβαστοφάντης̣ | ἐτῶν νηʹ, IK 9.116.
30	Merkelbach 1987, repeated Merkelbach and Stauber 2001, 159.
31	In this line the Palatinus reads ἢ, ‘or’, giving the feeble sense ‘who attained the highest honours for mind or for tongue’. Merkelbach-Stauber 2001, 160 translate ἢ ‘und’. I print and translate ᾗ, ‘just as’, which will of course have been indistinguishable from ἢ in the epigraphic text copied at Nicaea.
32	Bekker-Nielsen 2008, 28 n.3. Note also the Doric form γυνά in IK 9.225 Ὀλυμπιὰς Διονυσίου γυνὰ ἐτῶν σεʹ χαῖρε of which Robert Bull. 1980 no. 562 wrote that the woman ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Dialect and Diction
• Form and Design
• Style in Literary Epigram
• Style in Inscribed Epigram
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Endnotes