Gli Epigrammi degli Antipatri (review)

When, sometime around 100 B.C., Meleager published his anthology of Greek epigrams, the Garland, he included compositions by a Sidonian poet named Antipater. Somewhat more than a century later, probably about A.D. 40, Philip of Thessalonica produced another Garland of epigrams in which he assembled poems written since the publication of Meleager's work. Among these were epigrams by a Macedonian from Thessalonica who also bore the name Antipater. Through a long and obscure process of selection and reorganization, both Meleager's and Philip's Garlands contributed significantly to the Greek Anthology, and as a result that collection includes the work of both Antipater of Sidon and Antipater of Thessalonica. Most poems in the Anthology are preceded by a lemma indicating authorship, and in many cases those that ascribe authorship to "Antipater" include an ethnic designation. Others, however, do not, but consist only of the name (in the genitive). Moreover, even lemmata that specify one or the other poet cannot be accepted uncritically, since the point at which ethnic designations were introduced into the tradition is unclear. Finally, for some poems, the lemmata offer alternative ascriptions that reflect an uncertainty about authorship traceable to an early stage of the tradition; for others, the lemmata in individual witnesses stand at variance with one another. Thus the ascription of any particular epigram to "Antipater" (with or without ethnic designation) is problematic.

Argentieri's book considers the epigrams assigned by their lemmata to Antipater in the Anthology, whether they are accompanied by ethnic specification or not. Although it is therefore a specialized study, the problems it confronts and the methodologies it uses are of broader interest to scholars interested in Hellenistic epigram, since similar problems of authorship attend other poets as well. After an introductory chapter laying out the state of the question, Argentieri opens his investigation in the second chapter by identifying poems that can be assigned to one of the two poets on the basis of two "external" criteria. First, some epigrams contain references to historical events and individuals uniquely appropriate to the age of one Antipater but not the other. Second, because various sections of the Anthology seem to reflect the organization of either Meleager or Philip, the presence of an epigram in such a sequence can sometimes be used to show that the poem derived from one or the other of the Garlands. These criteria allow Argentieri to assign to each poet a body of epigrams—in some cases, epigrams ascribed by their lemmata only to one Antipater can be shown to be the work of the other—and use this body as the basis for determining the characteristics of each author. In chapter 3, Argentieri considers internal stylistic criteria, including meter and prosody; the use of compound epithets and rhetorical figures; the relationship between the number of nouns and the number of adjectives modifying them; the length of individual poems; and—of particular interest to students of the history of epigram—theme, narrative, and rhetorical technique. As Argentieri acknowledges, many of these criteria must be used with sensitivity and caution—the case of meter is particularly telling, since the small number of deviations from certain "norms" means that the differences between the two poets are not guaranteed to be statistically significant—and indeed for some poems the evidence provided by one internal consideration, taken in isolation, stands at odds with the external evidence. In the fourth chapter, Argentieri applies the internal criteria to poems assigned by their lemmata only to "Antipater," while in the fifth he considers poems assigned alternatively to an Antipater and another poet, as well as those dubiously connected with one or the other of the Antipaters in other ways. Although Argentieri's conclusions about the authorship of particular epigrams can sometimes be questioned, his arguments are always nuanced and insightful and should be widely consulted.

In short, this is a learned and interesting book, which should be owned by all research libraries and by individual scholars interested in Hellenistic...