"New Simonides" or Old Semonides? Second Thoughts on POxy 3965, FR. 26

In an earlier publication I had argued on a number of grounds for a late sixth-century date for the iambic poet Semonides of Amorgos and observed that this dating would make it possible for the disputed elegy on the "leaves and lives of men" (previously identified as either Semonides fr. 29 D, or Simonides fr. 8 W¹) to be a reply to Mimnermus fr. 2 W, as it seems to be, and still be written by Semonides, as suggested by its close parallels in theme, tone, and wording to the iambic fr. 1 W of Semonides.¹ The new Simonides papyrus (POxy 3965), which appeared very soon after the writing (and somewhat before the publication) of this article, clearly necessitates a reconsideration of the authorship question, since POxy 3965, fr. 26 of the papyrus contains the remains of what had been vv. 6–13 of that elegy and demonstrates that they were in fact part of a longer elegy than what is quoted in Stobaeus 4.34.28. Although some controversy has arisen concerning the unity of the poem (which West now divides into frr. 19 and 20 W²),² it seems quickly to have become a matter of established consensus that the authorship controversy has been resolved, since the same papyrus contains other fragments which are unquestionably from works of Simonides.³

The purpose of my present contribution is to suggest that this consensus may be premature. What the new papyrus does prove is that Simonides of Ceos produced a wide range of elegiac poetry, including both historical narratives (such as the Plataea and Artemisium poems) and traditional sympotic elegy (such as the poem on the voyage to the happy island = fr. 22W²). Advocates of Simonidean authorship of the "leaves" poem thus need no longer resort to the problematic hypothesis that this poem was originally one of the Simonidean funeral epigrams, as Fränkel once proposed.⁴ However, the papyrus really adds little to the attribution debate beyond this.

We must bear in mind that ancient tradition, with only two exceptions, uniformly records the iambic poet's name not as "Semonides," but "Simonides." The late grammarian Choeroboscus (ap. Et. Magn. 713.17) distinguishes the two names, identifying "Semonides" as an iambic poet, "Simonides" as a melic poet, and the spelling Semonides appears to be confirmed by the Herculaneum papyrus of Philodemus' Poetics (PHerc 1074, 20 N = Tract. tert., fr. f, col. III [Sbordone]). Modern scholars have, for the sake of avoiding confusion, adopted this distinction in spelling, but the preponderance of references to "Simonides" of Amorgos suggests that this was probably the name (or at least a name) by which even the Alexandrians knew him. The possibilities for confusion in attribution of works to these two poets are manifold, and it was likely even a conundrum for Alexandrian editors, who often had to make highly arbitrary decisions about where to place a given text. While the iambic poems could easily enough be assigned to "Simonides" of Amorgos and the melic poems to Simonides of Ceos, the issue becomes much murkier with regard to elegiacs. References to historical events or personages connected with the Cean's life might be of some help. But the iambic poet's date was apparently unknown to the Alexandrians,⁵ and I have suggested that it was probably much closer to the other Simonides' time than usually recognized, in which case this too could be suspect as a ground for distinguishing them.

The Suda tells us with some specificity that the Amorgine "Simonides," in addition to his iambs, wrote two books of elegy and an Archaeology of the Samians.⁶ To be sure, the Suda's titles are not always reliable. But since Semonides' ties with Samos seem well grounded,⁷ the Archaeology, presumably in elegiacs,⁸ must indeed be his and not the other Simonides'. It is unlikely that this longer work would have been his only venture in elegiac composition; the parallel cases of Archilochus and Solon show that it was common for the same poet to write...