The Epigrams of Crinagoras of Mytilene: Introduction, Text, Commentary ed. by Maria Ypsilanti (review)

More than a half century ago the field of Greek literary epigram was made accessible to a wider range of scholars and readers by two editions with basic commentaries: A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge 1965) and The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams (Cambridge 1968). Scholarship made possible by these foundational collections has since advanced in two directions. One involves development of methods for reading epigrams as legitimate literary objects, particularly when treated in groups or in poetic contexts. The other involves publication of comprehensive commentaries on the epigrams of individual epigrammatists, which include textual issues and explanations of the finer points of poetry, as well as literary readings. The two approaches are complementary, and Ypsilanti's commentary on Crinagoras is an excellent example of blending traditional editorial subjects with literary interpretation.

Crinagoras is a figure of note who should be better known to both Greek and Latin scholars. Inscriptions from Mytilene indicate that he belonged to a prominent family of Lesbos and that he made at least three trips to Rome on official business between c. 48 and 25 bce. His literary output makes it likely he spent a significant amount of time in Italy, where he clearly received literary patronage from high-status Romans, including members of the imperial family. A fair number of his epigrams reflect these relationships, such as poems that accompany gifts (as later in Martial)—a silver pen, a toothpick, a bronze oil flask, and a garland of roses (3–6). Of particular interest are epigrams that concern a gift of Greek poetry: a box holding five books of Anacreon's poetry presented to Antonia (36 bce–37 ce) on a special occasion (7), and a copy of Callimachus' Hecale given to Marcellus, to encourage him to follow the example of the young Theseus (11), the latter epigram perhaps being Crinagoras' best known. The fifty-one epigrams that remain to us were preserved in Philip's Garland, intermingled with others of the Julio-Claudian era in a rough alphabetical order. Ypsilanti argues that Crinagoras' "preference for personal experiences and current events over the traditional topoi of the genre" led to a "'renovated' type of court-epigram" that breathed "new life" into the epigrammatic tradition (13). Although she does not say so, it is highly likely that Philip selected from a collection of epigrams made by Crinagoras himself, mirroring his own gifts of Anacreon and Callimachus.

In her Introduction Ypsilanti presents the usual series of topics: life and work, language and style, meter, and manuscript tradition. Her presentation of the two main manuscripts from the Byzantine era is rather barebones, reasonably enough, however, since descriptions of these are available in other editions. She focuses rather on the lesser-known apographa of the Palatine Codex, manuscript copies of epigrams that were rediscovered at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Saumaise but first fully published only in Brunck's edition of 1772. The value of these apographa lies mainly in their marginal emendations, which have been but rarely acknowledged in modern editions. Ypsilanti's principal contribution to the topic is the attention she calls to Parisinus Coislinanus 352, which has escaped the notice of most other editors. She argues at length that this apographon, written c. 1633 and ascribed to Philaras, bridges the two branches of apographa, the French and the Dutch, and possibly derives directly from the famous lost copy made by Saumaise. Oddly, however, in her apparatus criticus she cites, in the traditional manner, the select apographa that were the basis for the first printed editions, when in my view it is better practice to cite the earliest apographon that contains a given reading.

Quibbles with such a full and well-presented commentary are just that, and therefore I limit my examples. Three epigrams that are of doubtful authorship because of differing attributions...