Callimachus Hymn to Apollo: A Commentary

121 Pages·1978·7.53 MB·English

by  Frederick Williams

CALLIMACHUS
HYMN TO APOLLO
A Commentary
BY
FREDERICK WILLIAMS
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1978
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British Library Cataloguing in PubUcation Data
Williams, Frederick
Callimachus 'Hymn to Apollo', a commentary.
t, CaUimachus. Hymn to Apollo
I. Title II. Callimachus. [Hymnos eis Lon Apollonn],
Hymn to Apollo
884'.01 PA3945.Z5 77-30643
ISBN 0-19-814007-X
Printedi ii GreatB ritni/I
at the U11iuersPiir,,e ss,O .iford
by Virn"aR111" dler
Printerl o the U11iversi!)t
PATRIS
MEMORIAE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THIS commentary is a revised version of a doctoral thesis pre
sented to the University of London in 1974. I owe a double debt
of gratitude to Professor Giuseppe Giangrande: he has created
the fine facilities which the Department of Classics at Birkbeck
College offers for research in Greek, and, as my supervisor, he has,
with his unique combination oflearning and generosity, lavished
advice and encouragement, lent books, and, not least, kicked
'1>06voHs. is own devotion to research, and his contributions to
our understanding of Hellenistic poetry, have been a constant
inspiration.
My thanks are due also. to Professors W. G. Arnott and
H. Lloyd-Jones, who both made many useful suggestions, to the
Central Research Fund of the University of London for a grant
which enabled me to visit the Istituto di Filologia Classica in the
University of Urbino and to discuss problell_!Sin the Hymn with
Professor Bruno Gentili and his colleagues, and to the Advanced
Studies Committee of the University of Southampton for a hand
some subvention towards the costs of publication.
I am grateful to Mrs. Sheila James for typing the final version
so patiently and efficiently, to the staff of the Press for their un
failing helpfulness and courtesy, to my wife for undertaking the
chore of proof-reading, and to my children for allowing her to
complete it.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION I
NOTE ON THE TEXT 7
CONVENTIONS 7
SIGLA 8
TEXT 9
COMMENTARY 15
APPENDIX: Homer as Oceanus 98
BIBLIOGRAPHY 100
INDEXES 107

INTRODUCTION
IN this commentary I attempt to solve some of the literary· prob
lems of the Hymn to Apollo,a nd to examine in detail Callimachus'
use and enrichment of the epic language he inherited from his
predecessors.
The Hymn has often been approached from other directions :
it has been regarded as primary evidence for the political and
diplomatic history of Ptolemaic Egypt and the city of Cyrene;
as a source ofbiographical material on the poet's life and especially
on his relations with Apollonius Rhodius; and as a· document
for the study of Cyrenean religion. These non-literary approaches
can hardly be said to have produced satisfactory results. One
factor is that the poem cannot be securely dated; for not only
are there 'no precise dates in any of the Hymns' (Fraser, Ptolemai.c
Alexandria,i . 652), but the value and validity of the references to
contemporary events which they allegedly contain are question
able, above all in this hymn, as Vahlen's study showed (Uber
einige Anspielungeni n den Hymnen des Callimachus,1 895). Often
these allusions are conventional, and unspecific, as in lines 26-7,
where hostility to Apollo is equated with hostility to 'my king' ;
sometimes Callimachus' words have been forced to yield a 'con
temporary reference' without any regard for their context, as
has happened with. line 68; and the wild allegorical fantasies
catalogued by Ehrlich in 1894 (De CallimachHi ymnis Q_uaestiones
Chronologicaea),n d justly ridiculed by Kuiper in 1898 (Studia
Callimm:heaii,. 139-41) continue to be canvassed as serious con
tributions to scholarship. The credulity which can see Ptolemy
Philadelphus (o r Euergetes; or even both) disguised . as the
beautiful beardless Apollo, or detect Berenice masquerading as
the Thessalian nymph Cyrene, or uncover· the ruler Demetrius
hidden beneath the mane of the cow-slaughtering lion, testifies
to a deep human craving to identify Literature and Life even
at the cost of a few category-Inistakes. While such fancies, as
long as they are entertained in private, may bring their authors
harmless psychological comfort, they are as irrelevant to an
understanding of Callimachean poetry as the Persian chain.
INTRODUCTION
More soberly, it has often been argued that the Hymn must be
dated to 246 B.c. or thereabouts, since Callimachus could not
have written it before the reconciliation of Egypt and Cyrene
(see most recently Fraser, Ptol. Alex. i. 652). While there are good
reasons for seeing the Hymn as a comparatively late product of
the poet's mature style (in particular the close similarity between
·t he final section and the prologue to the Aetia), it is wrong to
pretend to a fuller acquaintance with the complex and tangled
relations between Cyrene and Egypt than our inadequate sources
permit. Certainly we are not justified in reading back the attitudes
of the Cold War to the very different conditions of the third
century B.c. Nor should we forget that Callimachus was an
aristocrat from Cyrene; in the words of Von der Mi.ihll (MH 15
(1958), 7): 'Der aus Kyrene stammende Dichter konnte den
Apoll von Kyrene preisen und herzhaft sich als Angehorigen
seiner Heimat vorstellen, jederzeit und ohne politische Absicht.'
In the absence of firm and independent evidence, we must be
content to interpret the Hymn without the illusory benefit of
a dating derived from a priori assumptions and supported by
circular arguments.
Another unprofitable approach to the Hymn has been the
attempt to relate it to an alleged quarrel, beloved of literary
historians, between Callimachus and Apollonius. Whether there
ever was such a quarrel may reasonably be doubted, and as
Pfeiffer warned (Historyo f ClassicalS cholarshipi,. 144) 'fiction
is no substitute for evidence'. The Argonauticas hows detailed
knowledge and profound sympathy with Callimachus' poetry;
Apollonius is not numbered among the Telchines of the Aetia
prologue, and it is a gratuitous assumption of modem writers
to suppose that Callimachus singled out his pupil for attack in the
final scene of the Hymn. It is also an assumption which belittles
the significance of Apollo's utterance, which, as I hope to show,
has a much richer and more positive meaning than previous com
mentators have allowed it.
That the Hymn was not written for performance at an actual
religious ceremony seems to me self-evident from its form and its
esoteric learning; but the belief that it was 'composed in con
nexion with the festival of the Carneia at Cyrene' and performed
in public has been revived recently by Fraser (Ptol.A lex. i. 653,
c£ ii. 916 n. 289; c£, with a different emphasis, Bundy, Cal. Stud.