15. The Structure of the Hippika in P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309

Marco Fantuzzi, University of Macerata and Graduate School of Greek and Latin Philology of the University of Florence

In their introduction to the editio princeps, Bastianini and Gallazzi already noted the complexity of artistic structuring in the Hippika section of the new Milan papyrus (AB 71–88). Their discussion is part of their valuable analysis of the poetry book’s “artistic intentions,” the establishment of criteria on which epigrams were grouped together within different sections. [1] In the Hippika, the editors discern a bipartite structure; in their view, individual epigrams are arranged in two distinct groups comprising twelve and six poems respectively (AB 71–82 and AB 83–88). [2] They perceive the poems dedicated to Ptolemaic queens as marking the conclusions of each group. [3] Their observations on the contents of each group led them to take a skeptical stance on the presence of underlying reasons and aims for the organization of the Hippika, and to doubt even whether there was an intentional organic/ artistic arrangement of the whole. Specifically, they conclude:

The main problem involved in Bastianini and Gallazzi’s hypothesis is the lack in unity of the epigrams on the royal victories. Seven of the Hippika celebrate Ptolemaic victories: five of them name (often together with other Ptolemies) a queen Berenice who may be identified with Berenice II or, as D. J. Thompson has convincingly argued, with Berenice the Syrian (AB 78–82), while the last two epigrams mainly focus on Berenice I (AB 87–88). [5] Royal victors are the common denominator here, and above all, as we shall see, the epigrams in question are in many ways different from the rest whose laudandi are non-royals. This is also very different from the Anathematika, where the four epigrams involving Arsinoe (AB 36–39) are set at the beginning of the section. One wonders then why the royal epigrams are not gathered together, but rather are divided into two clusters, one placed at about the middle of the Hippika, the other at its end. Are we to follow Bastianini and Gallazzi’s suggestion that the arrangement of the Hippika in two mixed groups, each one including epigrams for non-royal and for royal victors, derives from the existence of two separate, earlier collections? My article aims at proposing a different solution for the structure of this section, and at suggesting a specific principle for this arrangement which, if correct, would serve highly artistic purposes.

Let us first consider the possibility that the distinction between non-royal and royal victors is the main criterion for the arrangement of the Hippika. If this is the case, we may distinguish four groups of texts: AB 71–77, AB 78–82, AB 83–86, and AB 87–88.

According to my hypothesis, the Hippika would be headed by a first group comprising seven epigrams. The first six honor victors in the κέλης event (‘steed-races’; 1–3, 6) and in the chariot-races (4–5), but all place a strong emphasis on horses at least as much as on their owners. Indeed, in most cases the horses are κέλητες, which were traditionally accorded a protagonistic role in equestrian victories. [6] But also in the case of the two victories in four-horse chariots (AB 74 and 75) the main focus is on the horses: they are the real protagonists of the first three out of four lines in AB 75, and the real victor/protagonist in the competition commemorated by the epigram AB 74 is the right horse that shows extraordinary intelligence. The special attention on horses in the first six epigrams of the Hippika may also have led the anthologist (perhaps Posidippus himself, if all the texts of the P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309 are by Posidippus), to place epigram AB 71 strategically first because of its strong parallelism between the victory of the owner and the “personal” victory of his horse. Emphasis in this perspective is placed on both distichs by the use of rather heavy pleonasm through repetition:

Both the emphasis on the victorious horse in the κέλης-race and the position of a κέλης-epinician in the beginning of a section on equestrian victories are also well paralleled in the collection of Pindar’s Epinicians. Indeed, according to the schol. Pind. I, p. 7.14f. Drachmann, the first Olympian Ode, composed in commemoration of the Syracusan tyrant Hieron’s victory in single-horse racing (476 BCE), occupies the first position in the Epinicians tout court, at least from the time when Pindar’s corpus was edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium (since Aristophanes lived between 265/257 and 190/180, the chronology of his akme fits the age the anthology of P.Mil.Vogl. was presumably compiled: see below n. 28). Interestingly, it also constitutes the only epinician for a victory with the κέλης to be found in Pindar and is followed by five Olympian odes for winners with the horse- or mule-chariot, and so violates the criterion of importance of the agonistic specialty, which appears to have orientated Aristophanes’ arrangement of Pindar’s epinician poems (chariot-races are elsewhere more important), in order to feature the presence in O. I of the paradigm of Pelops, who had been the first Olympian winner (cf. schol. Pind. I, p.7.16f. Drachmann). Furthermore, Pindar’s ode places the horse Pherenicus as protagonist in a manner that prefigures the first of the Hippika of P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309: the courser is said by Pindar to have ‘joined’ his owner Hieron of Syracuse in his triumph (lines 20–22):

In commemorating the same Olympic victory by the same horse and owner, Bacchylides also highlighted the achievement of Hieron’s κέλης (5.183–186):

Also the very few inscriptions that have survived, or are quoted by ancient authors, commemorating victories with a κέλης, strongly suggest that this emphasis was traditional at least as early as the Archaic period. This protagonistic role of the animal in the victory was possibly motivated by the fact that actual commemorative monuments often displayed the horse itself. An epigram from the Greek Anthology, attributed to Anacreon, presumably refers to the dedication of the sculpture of such a κέλης which won victory for the Corinthian Phidolas in the late sixth century BCE (AP VI 135, FGE 502 f.): [10]

Pausanias describes this monument’s dedication in detail, offering additional information on victories in the same event scored by the horse belonging to Phidolas’ sons. He also quotes an epigram that was associated with their own votive and focused all the same on the horse as protagonist. [12]

The victorious owner of a four-horse chariot dominates only the seventh of the Hippika (AB 77), where his personal οὐκ ὁλίγα δαπάνα is stressed, as well as his concern about his own δόξα:

I suggest that this last epigram in the first section of the Hippika (AB 83), which is dedicated to non-royal winners, may owe its final position to its separate emphasis on the figure of the chariot’s owner, rather than the horse’s. This feature may have led the (author?-)anthologist of the epigrams of the P.Mil.Vogl. to isolate the poem at the end of this first cluster of the Hippika. [15] We observe the same editorial stratagem in the case of two epigrams for deceased men (AB 60–61) at the end of the section of the ἐπιτύμβια, a section that primarily features dead women.

After all the epigram AB 77 of the Hippika, with its stress on the specifics of the δόξα that is garnered by victory in chariot-racing, marks perfectly the transition from the first to the second cluster, consisting of five epigrams which are dedicated to queen Berenice II (or Berenice of Syria), and to her ancestors, and are characterized by a strong emphasis on the royal owners of the victorious chariots. [16] It seems that there was some kind of historically attested hierarchy of relevance between victories in the κέλης events on the one hand and in chariot-racing on the other. Apart from Aristophanes’ opinion, cited above, Pindar had already declared that among the equestrian victories success with the chariot is ‘sweeter’ (γλυκυτέρα) than with the κέλης. [17] The anthologist (or the author at the moment he was the anthologist of his own work) may have liked to pave the way for epigrams celebrating royal δόξα gained in chariot victories by accurately defining the implications of this glory in his last epigrams dealing with non-royal winners (AB 77). Indeed, if the reading provided by the editors for the problematic last line of this epigram is correct (AB 77.4: ε̣ἴ γ̣᾿ ἀ̣[ρ]κ̣ε̣ῖ δόξαι, λείπεται οὐ[δ]ὲν ἐμοί), it follows then that the poet adheres to the idea that δόξα—this word at least is sure—is gained through chariot victories as a consequence of the heavy (οὐκ ὀλίγαι) expenditures for the κομιδά (AB 77.3, = ἱπποτροφία), proved by the fact that the winner “is left with no revenue.” [18] Assuming that also the reading δ̣ό̣ξ̣[α at the end of what we can read of AB 78.2 in the first royal epigram is correct, the explicit statement of the non-royal winner of AB 77 on the relevance of glory coming from success in chariot-racing would anticipate the idea that could be taken for granted for the monarchs without further remarks in AB 78.2 (μοι δ̣ό̣ξ̣[α παλαιόγονοϲ], ‘my renown is of ancient origin’).

This idea would have found full support in contemporary mentality, as exemplified in a famous speech of Thucydides’ Alcibiades. In the spring of 415 BCE, during a discussion on the Sicilian expedition at the Athenian Assembly, the Athenian general Nicias stood firmly against it, and Alcibiades spoke in favor of the proposed campaign. In attempting to strengthen his position in favor of war Alcibiades made the following statement on his authority based on his spectacular performance in the chariot-racing during the 416 BCE Olympic games:

Further, in his introduction to this speech, Thucydides reveals that in this passion for horse-breeding, among many others, Alcibiades had been wasting almost all his property, more or less in the same way as the winner of P.Mil.Vogl. AB 77, at least according to Gärtner’s interpretation:

If the first seven epigrams of the Hippika correspond, as is suggested here, to a first cluster of texts, we may then observe an internal symmetrical structure in it as well. The section begins with three epigrams comprising four lines each. These are followed by one long central epigram of fourteen lines (AB 74) narrating the tale of an unusual, indeed paradoxographical, final judgment, with unusual descriptive quality, and consequently of unusual narrative length—an anomalous dimension which may also point out the great political relevance of the victor, Callicrates of Samos, the famous nauarch of the Ptolemies and first eponymous priest of the cult of the Theoi adelphoi, who also were the dedicatees of the bronze chariot erected by Callicrates to celebrate his victory (AB 74.12–14). [21] The first cluster is rounded-up by three further epigrams each four lines long. The symmetry here described is of course artistically refined and self-explanatory in itself, but it also finds another parallel within the Milan papyrus. Indeed it seems to be mirroring the structure of the ἐπιτύμβια, where, in a series of seven epigrams for deceased maidens (AB 49–55), the fourth (AB 52) stands out from the beginning and the last ones because of its peculiar content: the girl on whom the epigram concentrates is not dead, but the deceased is her father, whose tomb beside his sundial she guards faithfully.

According to my interpretation of the structure of the Hippika, a second cluster of five epigrams follows the first one, and this is dominated by the chariot-victor Berenice, to be identified (see above n5) either with Berenice II Euergetis or Berenice the Syrian (AB 78–82). The third cluster consists of four epigrams honoring non-royal winners in the κέλης event (AB 83–86). Once again, as in the first group of epigrams, the epigrams of the third group place the main emphasis on racing horses, mirroring in size the first three and the last three of the seven epigrams in total of the first cluster: each epigram is four lines long. The third cluster of epigrams would separate the previous five epigrams in honor of Berenice (Euergetis or the Syrian) and other Ptolemies from the two epigrams which conclude the Hippika and make up the last (fourth) small group of texts: of these the first one (AB 87) as a whole honors Berenice I, while the second one at least ends by commemorating her victory (AB 88).

Of course, the structure that I have suggested above presupposes the awareness by the author of the epigrams of a distinction between the courtly voice of the epinician/encomistic poet celebrating Ptolemaic queens and kings on the one hand, and the purely epinician voice of the singer of the victories of all other, non-royal, victors on the other. If poet and anthologist are not the same, [22] the latter managed to catch the courtly tone of the epigrams commemorating victories of kings and queens remarkably well, distinguishing it from the voice of the celebrator of other equestrian victors.

I suggest that this distinction, which mainly deals with the orientation in the advertisement of kydos, is especially obvious in the first and last of the royal Hippika (AB 78 and AB 88). In the Hippika epigrams which praise non-royal victors, the protagonists, namely the human victors themselves and their horses, are celebrated for their own single, or iterated, exploits. In this context, the text of each epigram fulfills the task of establishing and recording their own kydos. On the other hand, AB 78, in which queen Berenice (Euergetis or the Syrian) seems to speak in her own voice [23] , the glory (κλέος) the poets are invited to sing is deemed as already well-known (γνωστά: AB 78.2). Additionally, the name of the victor in this, as well as in the last of the Hippika (AB 88), comes only in the penultimate line. This choice of emphasis by the poet is probably due to the fact that the victories of individual kings and queens appear to have become a point of departure for the celebration of the super-individual equestrian glory encompassing the entire dynasty—a glory which had to be seen as proof for the continuous presence of divine favor and of dynastic “identity” which the Ptolemies liked to show perpetuated in their lives. [24] This practice precisely mirrors the presentation of Berenice II in the Victoria Berenices by Callimachus (SH 254), where the queen does not appear to have been explicitly mentioned by name, but is just introduced with the patronymic designation κασιγνήτων ἱερὸν αἷμα θεῶν, which on one side certainly pays a reverent homage to the official title of the reigning Ptolemaic couple [25] , but on the other stresses the belonging of the un-named Berenice (here not individualized) to the dynasty in which every reigning couple usually had the title. However a special and individual emphasis was accorded at least to the victory of Berenice I, since it was she who started the long-lasting line of female victors, which functioned as another special family-record testifying to Ptolemaic gift in equestrian victories. [26]

My idea of the arrangement of the Hippika involves an interpretative key that explains the inclusion of a cluster of epigrams (the third) in honor of non-royal victors between the epigrams mainly centered on Berenice (Euergetis or the Syrian), located in the middle of the section, and the epigrams focused on Berenice I at the end. In arranging this collection, its anthologist may have broadly adopted as template a structure also found in Callimachus’ Aetia, another collection of apparently unrelated pieces on different aetia within a very thin narrative frame of the dialogue with the Muses (in the first two books), or no frame at all (as it appears to be the case in the last two), where the coherence of the encomiastic voice of the author celebrating Ptolemaic queens at the middle and at the end of the work could be especially characterized and identifiable inside the work. [27] Of course, I am not referring to a numerically or qualitatively precise attempt at miniaturization. I simply suggest that the author of the epigrams when editing them, or their anthologist, may have tried to mimic the alternation of poetic voices found in the Aetia, namely Callimachus’ mixing of courtly and non-courtly voices, through the same kind of alternation: the Aetia would actually have instantiated the idea that to celebrate the glory of the kings at the middle and at the end is a better and more effective homage than to concentrate the celebration in a single point of the work. In the Hippika this alternation results not only in juxtaposing unrelated non-royal protagonists—the owners of the κέλητες together with their horses—versus the well-known, coherent, and dominating figures of two queens and of other royal members of the Ptolemaic dynasty, but also in refraining from gathering in the same position all the epigrams to honor victories of kings and queens.

If the supposition proposed above is correct, the beginning, fairly long series of Hippika discussing disparate non-royal winners would ‘correspond’ to the first two books of the Aetia. In both sections neither the epigrammist’s nor Callimachus’ voices as courtly encomiasts are heard or anticipated. However, at about the middle of the Hippika occurs a cluster of coherent epigrams commemorating victories by Ptolemaic queens and kings: this ‘corresponds’ to Callimachus’ long poem on the equestrian victory of Berenice II, the Victoria Berenices, which Callimachus placed at the beginning of his third book, namely in the middle of the Aetia. Turning back to P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309, the sequence of four more epigrams commemorating further non-royal winners in the κέλης event would aim at re-establishing the alternative kind of emphasis on the κέλητες, which can be found in the first epigrams of the Hippika: this third section would then ‘correspond’ to the non-courtly aetiological tales of the third and fourth books of the Aetia, that separated the “Victory” of Berenice II from the “Lock” of Berenice II. Only at the end of the series of the Hippika would the anthologist of the epigrams (or maybe the author-anthologist of his own work) have reproposed again the courtly voice and focused on royal victors. This ‘second installment’ of the courtly voice would find its parallel in the divinization of the plokamos of Berenice II sung by Callimachus at the end of the fourth book of his Aetia. [28]

Especially the penultimate epigram of the Hippika (AB 80), namely the first of the couple of texts which mainly aim at the commemoration of the greatness of the equestrian success of Berenice I, may have been proposed by the (author?-)anthologist as a parallel to the Plokamos of Berenice II. It is possible that after a first reading of the entire Hippika a learned reader would hear in this collection of epigrams the echo of alternating voices and topics which had featured in the Aetia (Ptolemaic queens versus non-royal, disparate characters/disparate aetia not connected to the Ptolemaic family) [29] : if the memory of this template was activated in the readers’ minds, it is very tempting to suggest that the form of presentation of AB 87—the epigram adopts the persona loquens of the statuary group of the horses who won the victory for Berenice I and takes the form of a flashback recollection—might sound like (though not necessarily conceived by the author to be) a distant echo of the persona loquens of the Callimachean πλόκαμος. More specifically, the wishful thinking of the πλόκαμος remembering its past life on the head of the queen might be read underlying the beginning ἵπ[ποι] ἔθ᾿ ἁμὲϲ ἐοῦϲαι of AB 87. In the same way that the πλόκαμος wished to provide the queen with a memorial equivalent to Ariadne’s corona in heaven (cf. Cat. 66.59–62), the statuary horses would remember the precise moment when they won the στέφανος for Berenice (AB 87.2), and the fact that they are “speaking” again and again through the voices of the readers of their inscription (or anyway of their epigram), re-enacts that moment eternally, thereby “crowns” Berenice for ever. [30] Last but not least, in the same way that the protagonists of the epigram on the victory of Berenice are horses, the πλόκαμος was said to have been carried to the sky by the wind Zephyros, and in an expression that is unclear and has provoked much scholarly debate, this wind is once metaphorically described as “the horse of Arsinoe” (Callim. fr. 110.53–5; cf. Cat. 66.52–54.). [31]

After all, the possibility of paralleling in some way the Lock of Berenice with an equestrian courtly epinician may not have occurred only to Callimachus alone as editor, when he sought a model for his new edition of the Aetia, or to the anthologist of the Hippika of the P.Mil.Vogl. It likely took place elsewhere at least once: in P.Oxy. 2258, which apparently preserves an annotated anthology of Callimachus’ poems, the Coma Berenices, here not in the role of epilogue that it plays in the Aetia, is immediately followed by an equestrian epinician in honor of Sosibios. [32] Furthermore, Callimachus’ placement of an encomiastic piece for Berenice II both in the middle of the Aetia, at the beginning of the third book, and at the end of another eulogy, most probably attracted the attention of another author, Virgil, who in his Georgics appears to have placed two passages in honor of the military successes of Octavian at exactly the same position, namely at the beginning of the third of a four-books work, and shortly at the end (III 1–48 and IV 559–566). [33] In contrast to the first Ptolemies, Octavian could be proud of a properly military kydos, which of course was a more traditional and impressive path to glory than equestrian success.