The Amatory Epigrams of Rhianus

Echos du Monde Classiqucttl lassicai Views XXXIII, n.s. 8, 1989, 301-313 THE AMATORY EPIGRAMS OF RHIANUS 301 'AYPEvaw:; rov VE f3 pO V a;rwAEaa, xw pEv ava,Aac; uupia /(ai aH}aac; 8[nv(X /(ai a,aAl/(ac; auv/(EvE alC; xd pEaalv a;ripxopa l' Ot 8' (XPOYTJ' [ ,apeX cpipovalv, "Eptoc- oic; aUyivo w f3 apvc;. (A P. 12.14 6)1 Initially this appears to be an epigram on hunting? and it seems most natural to take a;rwAEaa as "I killed", so one suspects that this is the type of epigram in which the hunter dedicates his prey to a deity.' Doubts about the meaning of a;rwAEaa may occur in the rather startling line 3 and grow with the opening two words of 4; in the remainder of that line Rhianus at last reveals that in fact the hunting is figurative, the subject amatory and the sense of a;rWAEa(Xwas "I lost" (late revelations which together with the briskness of oie;auyivow f3 apvc; mean that the poem ends with a flourish). Yet, engagingly, the poet is inexact about the background-situation (we cannot even be sure of the sex of the beloved)," and the plurality of rivals is intriguingly unusual; similarly, oie;au yivow f3 apvc; is imprecise, although one gathers more or less what Rhianus has in mind: most obviously Eros would operate in connection with his rivals' affair with his beloved and spoil it for them (an aptly symmetrical punishment). One particular image is developed in detail and at length. Rhianus' version of amatory hunting>is also fanciful, teasing and innovative (the stakes and the loss 1 Th e text used thr ou gh out (wi th a few min or altera tio ns) is tha t of A.S .F. Go w and D.L. Page, The Gree k Anthol ogy Hellen ist ic Ep ig ra ms (Ca mbridge 1965 ) (he nce forth ref erred to as II E). Here I have change d their comma after "E p wr; in lin e 4 to a semico lon, to refl ect better the pause in struc ture and sens e there. Rhianus' epigram s, of co urse, wer e not exclusively ama tory; for an epigram by him conce rned with real hunting see A .P . 6.34. 3 For cb ro,U.v,u [ of killing animals see e.g. Hdt. 6.77 and cf. Eur. Ph oen. 664, i\. P. 6.1 85. 2, 7. 216.5. For the hunt er 's dedicatio n epig ram see Rhianus' own A .P . 6.34 , and also 6.57, 110-112, 168. There may be sti ll furth er generic (and them atic) blendi ng here, if the final sentence rep resen ts an inversion of the epitap h's sit tibi terra levis (for which see ll E 200 and 675). 4 Because of the paederastic nature of the othe r ero tic epigrams of Rhianus and beca use the fawn in 1 is masculine, it may seem likely that the beloved is a boy, but, of co urse , many Gr eeks (and Rom ans) wro te bo th heter osexual and hom osexual poetry, and else where females arc compared to masculine anima ls (e.g. Aleman 1.47 -51 PMG, Horace C.I .23). For heterosexual epig rams in I\.P . 12 see e.g. 53 and 82 . 5 On this figure see my article in La to mus XLIII (1984) 362-368 . 302 P. MURGATROYD of the prey to others are new; the likening of the beloved to a fawn , if not novel in the figure, is as yet unusual: several scholars" suggest as a mod el Theognis 949-950 = 1278 C-D [VE{3poV lJ1rE~ fAacpoLO AEWV w~ aAK"i nowt8wc;!n oaai K"a'rallapll'(X~ (X i'l(XrO~ OU K" E'nw v], as both passages contain vE{3p6~ and the success ful hunter not enjoying his ca tch, but vE{3p6~ is hardl y an uncommon word, there are no oth er verb al similar ities, imagery inv olving fawn s had occurr ed elsew here ;' the...