Kallimachos: Werke. Griechisch und deutsch (review)

Everybody who is confronted with the task of a new edition of the fragments of Callimachus would first have to deal with an awkward choice. Indeed, one has to decide whether to retain the sequence of the Diegeseis (elegiacs, iambics, epics) or to stick to the pattern of Καλλίμαχος όλος current in late antiquity. The former has the advantage of magnifying the role of the Aetia prologue and of adhering to the Diegeseis, the latter that of reproducing something which appears to have existed as a collected works at some time (see Marianus' Callimachean metaphrasis test. 24 and the anonymous epigram test. 25 Pf., and in fact P.Oxy. 1011). In both cases, but much more in the second one, a difference from Pfeiffer's numeration (1949) seems inevitable, disturbing though it is—while Bentley's figures had lasted for two centuries and a half.

Markus Asper's complete edition and German translation (with only rather essential notes with a full and helpful introduction) actually follows Pfeiffer's disposition (that of the Diegeseis), while adopting a slightly different numeration of the fragments, as had already been the case with Massimilla's Aetia 1–2. Asper had already obliged Callimachus scholars with a substantial book on Onomata allotria (Stuttgart 1997), chiefly about the imagery of the Aetia prologue. He now offers a compact, handsomely-printed one-volume text, which is bound to remain in use for a long time; the translation, whose literary value I cannot judge, presents itself as an instance of what W. Schadewaldt used to style dokumentarisches Übersetzen.

The book is easy to handle and contains all that the user may be expected to need; it only lacks the scholia and some three hundred fragments variously controversial or deemed to be of minor interest; but a generous Delectus e fragmentis grammaticis is appended. I strongly recommend the introduction, which is skeptical on the Egyptianizing wave, is otherwise clear and informative, and proves especially good on the connections between Callimachus and Ptolemaic cultural institutions.

Students of Callimachus fragments from now on will have to store on their tables, besides Pfeiffer, Pfeiffer's threefold series of Addenda, SH and (now) SSH, Hollis' Hecale, Massimilla's Aetia 1–2, D'Alessio's Καλλίμαχος όλος, Kerkhecker and Acosta-Hughes on Iambi, Lelli's Carmina, Durbec's Fragments poétiques (Paris 2006)—and Asper. That is a huge set of textual scholarship, sometimes an open road, sometimes a labyrinth. Meanwhile, Massimilla III–IV has been announced and more papyri (Aetia, Hecale, Diegeseis) impend. But the fact is that Callimachus has always been in progress and still is, though more slowly than it used to. Nobody, not even Pfeiffer, has ever been able to produce an unchanging text.

Asper may be questioned on the single point but is generally sound and accurate. A few misprints and slips may be detected (I noticed τεχνίτων 10, Atanadas 30 n.125, P. J. Parson 47: Pollias 21 is probably deliberate, see 189 n.30, but I doubt it is right). Fr. 1.11 α_Lί Ύ άπαλαί τοι is too dubious to be confidently put into the text; fr. 87.58 Κιρώ[δης (G. Murray) is definitely not there (but please find the excellent Κυρή[νης / υί]ό[ς in the apparatus); the crux in Hymn Del. 41 had already been removed by Schneider (cf. fr. 455). Otherwise Asper is often happy in passages where even Pfeiffer had remained debatable. So it is with Hymn Del. 226–227, where the paradosis is retained against Maas (and with Wilamowitz, Hell. Dicht. 2.72 n.1), and with fr. 181.6 (Apotheosis of Arsinoe), where παρέθει<ς> is given credit, again with Wilamowitz—and indeed with Hermann Diels, as it now appears.

Even if not completely carried out (why are the Florentine and the Michigan Diegeseis omitted while the Oxonian and the Milanese ones are retained?), Asper's main task seems to me to have been fulfilled. Though he claims that his work (Callimachus minimus, as he styled it) is meant for readers who want to work with the text, not on it...