20. ‘Tropoi’ (Posidippus AB 102–103)

Dirk Obbink, University of Oxford

The section comprising the eight poems following col. xv 23 in P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309 (Posidippus AB 102–109) is headed by the sub-title Τρόποι. It comes late in the collection as preserved, but it was not its final one: the blank space left after AB 109 originally contained the heading of another section, now lost, but which may have been Erotika. [1] If so, this would be a category of poetry that might have been expected in any self-respecting Hellenistic collection of epigrams, but which is otherwise absent in this collection represented by the Milan roll, as far as it has been preserved.

Not so the Tropoi. The expected content of a section sub-titled Tropoi, is anything but clear. The last four Tropoi are frustratingly fragmentary, and the second pair harbor grave uncertainties of reconstruction. The reconstruction of the first two poems of the Tropoi, by contrast, is at least reasonably clear in outline if not in detail. They are especially noteworthy in that they comprise the clearest examples in the collection of a set of intentionally paired and ordered successive epigrams. [2] I give here their texts as printed by AB:

(i) AB 102:

(ii) AB 103

The epigrams purport to record the speech of two dead men, each speaking from the tomb on the same theme, each suggesting a different attitude of the passerby toward them and their burial. The first is unfriendly and unwelcoming; Menoetius of Crete is portrayed through his speech as a misanthrope or δύσκολος. The second is similarly critical of the passerby for ignoring him, and instead demands attention and sympathy. The second directly inverts some of the same topics used in the first (‘why are you asking who I am, from where I come or what country I belong’ in AB 102 becomes ‘why didn’t you ask me from where I come … not even who I am, or from what family’ in AB 103, both in the second line of their respective poems)—so that the second is a more or less symmetrically balanced, perfect reversal of the first, an inverted variation on exactly the same theme.

But why should these epigrams have been classified under the sub-title Tropoi? A glance at the way in which the Milan papyrus is structured by the sub-titles of each section is necessary:

Since the complaints of Menoetius and Soses in AB 102–103 are in the form of funeral epigrams, we are entitled to ask why these epigrams have not been classed with the other examples under the sub-title Ἐπιτύμβια. [3] A preliminary answer might be that the earlier section of funeral epigrams is far and away the most extensive of all the sections in the collection as preserved, comprising 20 poems in all—a number matched only by the section sub-titled [Λιθι]κ̣ά̣) and extending to 116 lines (exceeded again only by the [Λιθι]κά at 126 lines). A compiler wishing to maintain a degree of balance among the various thematic subsections of the collection might well have felt it proper to distribute additional epigrams of the commoner types among further, more sophisticated sub-divisions in his classification. But even if this motive is assumed, [4] we would have to explain what is distinctive about these particular epigrams that justifies them having such a separate and distinctive place and sub-title all of their own.

The notion of attitude and characterization in their respective speakers immediately suggests comparison with Theophrastus’ use of the term τρόπος to designate character-types in his work Characters. The term appears prominently in section 1 of the preface to the work (cf. III 5) ἐθαύμασα … τί γὰρ δήποτε … συμβέβηκεν ἡμῖν οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν τάξιν τῶν τρόπων ἔχειν, ‘I have long wondered why it is that we do not all have the same composition of character’. Later at XIII 3 10 Theophrastus describes the type of character who exhibits περιεργία ‘over-doing-it’: [5]

Theophrastus’ characterization of περιεργία bears comparison not only with AB 102–103, currently under discussion, but also more widely with other poems in the Milan roll. Posidippus AB 78.3–8, for example, praises Arsinoe for having as grandfather Ptolemy, as father’s mother Berenike, as father king son of a king with his father’s name. A similar succession occurs in AB 88.1–5, apostrophising ‘my parents and I Berenike, and my mother’. The model for all these seems to have been the epigram attributed to Simonides FGE 26a on Archedike daughter of Hippias. This kind of hyperbolic self-encomiastic boast seems to well fit Theophrastus’ description περιεργία.

Thus we might conclude that the sub-title Tropoi in the Milan roll designates the characters of the speakers of the epigrams of this section, together perhaps with language of emphatically characterizing or personally speaking funeral inscription: i.e. the character, τρόποι of the individuals represented as speaking in the epigrams insofar as they react to νόμοι, i.e. social conventions about how one treats a tomb, attitudes toward burial, monuments, praise of the dead, etc. It is in exactly this sense that Soses in AB 103.1 complains that the passerby (= reader) does not act in accordance with received custom, νόμου χάριν. It is worth considering whether we should attempt here to read (or emend to) νόϲου χάριν, i.e. “You didn’t even ask me (did I die) on account of disease, nor (did you ask me) from where I come.” Spacing and the trace preserved on the papyrus, [6] however, lend slightly more support to νόμου. Reading διὰ νόϲου would mean abandoning the more or less exact parallel with the second line of the preceding epigram (AB 102) and with it the inversion of topics that makes these two epigrams so fittingly paired in succession. At any rate, they would be less balanced, inverted versions of each other. In addition, νόμου χάριν is an expression that is paralleled, for example, in an epigram by Lucilius in AP XI 141.7–9 where a speaker, annoyed by his prosecutors, says:

Another epigram by Lucilius contains the same expression, from the section ‘On Gluttons’ (AP XI 206):

Here the speaker is complaining of his treatment at a banquet and appeals to what is customary in a bid to make the addressee feel that he is in the wrong in doing something that the vast majority of hosts would not. A similar usage of the expression reflects an association with unwritten or customary law: cf. Euripides, Heracles 1322: [7]

Thus in AB 103 the expression νόμου χάριν is clearly a rhetorical one, designed to make the passerby/reader feel that he needs to ingratiate the speaker. A similar appeal to custom or law is at work in Menoetius’ complaint in AB 102. It warns to the passerby/reader to stay away from the tomb and not to bother it and the diseased. With this injunction may be compared the numerous inscribed imprecations on graves [8] that forbid any kind of tampering, damage, theft, or vandalism of the tomb, often under stated penalty, imposed either privately by the gods or publicly by the city. Such inscriptions purport to impose a kind of ἱερὸς νόμος on the passerby/reader, and in this way AB 102 could be seen as a literary adaptation in the voice of the diseased occupant of the tomb of a kind of inscription regarding burial custom which must have been encountered fairly frequently in antiquity.

Peripatetic interest in classifying of all sorts, including ethical character types is well known. Peripatetic influence in scientific matters, especially regarding logical division and classification in cataloguing, at the time of Posidippus and Callimachus is in any case to be expected, as evidenced by Callimachus’ debate with the Peripatetic Praxiphanes. There may also be Theophrastean and Peripatetic influence seen elsewhere in the epigrams of the Milan roll. This is particularly apparent in the classifying function of the thematic sub-headings of the Milan roll, and in the stichometic counts that accompany these sections. [9] It is has also been argued [10] that the prognostications from birds in the section sub-titled οἰωνοσκοπικά derive from a lost prose-work by Theophrastus. If these parallels have any validity, the sub-title Tropoi would then designate evaluative sketches of the characteristic emotional responses of different social groups (young, old, dead, or from this or that place, etc.), a collection of ‘style-markers’ of defective or unusual ethical types, thus emphasizing the idea found in the philosophers (e.g. Aristotle, NE 9.4) that only the virtuous have real stability and cohesion of character, and that the non-virtuous are dominated by unreasonable and fluctuating desires or passions. This is an idea worked out for example in Philodemus, Horaces’ Satires and Epistles, and in Virgil and Plutarch’s biographies. [11] It is also well illustrated in Philodemus’ Περὶ τοῦ κουφίζειν ὑπερηφανίας, On Relieving Arrogance, an important source which draws closely on early analyses of ethical character by Aristo (whether the Peripatetic or the Stoic is not clear). [12]

However, not all references to ‘character’ in philosophical literature (whether ἦθος or τρόπος) are to ethical character, i.e. ‘character’ with connotations of morality or in the modern sense of personality. A different use of the term τρόπος appears in the musical works of Aristoxenus (another pupil of Aristotle), where it refers to ‘styles,’ i.e. personal preferences of performing or appreciating music, something approximating more what we might call ‘stylistic taste’. The author or the Pseudo-Plutarchean treatise On Music XXXIII 1142e (attributed by the author to Aristoxenus) notes, for example:

The exact meaning of the vague term tropos here is difficult to pin down. A. Barker, for example, rejects the meanings harmonia (Aristoxenus, El. Harm. VI 19ff), tonos i.e. ‘pitch’, ‘key’ (El. Harm. XXXVII 8ff), and settles ultimately for ‘technically specifiable melodic genre’. If this is correct, in the context of classification of musical styles at any rate, the term would designate ability of a given form to be characterized in generic terms. Applied to the epigrams of the section sub-titled Tropoi in the Milan roll, the term would then be seen to designate something like ‘modes of discourse’, i.e. genres, where genre not by context of performance, composition, or dedication (for in this sense these poems would belong among the Ἐπιτύμβια), but by a stereotyped or characterizable way of speaking. Tropoi in this sense would not be divorced from the Theophrastean sense of ethical character, but closely related to it (as it is in the context of musical styles for Aristoxenus), being deepened and enriched by the concept of speech genres, Tropoi, we may conclude, are generic ‘turns’ or stereotyped ‘adaptations’ of characterizable ways of speaking. Callimachus, famously, in Ep. 27.1 uses the term τρόποϲ to refer to Hesiod’s and Aratus’ ‘mode’ or ‘genre’ of composition.

In theory, there could be tropoi, ‘adaptations’ of this sort of any of the categories of poems represented in the collection. However, AB 104 is clearly a funeral epigram (in which the dead man speaks), and AB 105 is likewise a funeral epigram (the dead man is addressed); enough is preserved of the remaining AB 106–109 in the section sub-titled Tropoi to show that they, like AB 102–105, were funereal in form. In light of this fact, the Tropoi section seems somewhat displaced in the collection, in that it does not immediately follow the Ἐπιτύμβια as an appendix to them. [14]

This seems to explain the distinctive moodiness of the voices of Menoetius and Soses respectively in AB 102–103, as well as that of AB 104, on a philosopher who studied with Menedemus. This kind of characterization of voice in a funeral epigram reminds one of of the epigrams on Timon in AP, which have a remonstrative, crabby tone similar to that of Menoetius in AB 102. [15] In AB 103, however, the voice of Soses may strike a different note, one appealing to the reader for sympathy. This seems clear already from ἀλλὰ ϲύ in line 3. According to Denniston on ἀλλά (4) in commands and exhortations, it signals “a transition from arguments for action to a statement of the action required. Hence ἀλλά, in this sense, usually occurs near the end of a speech, as a clinching and final appeal … ‘Come’ or ‘come now’ will often get the meaning. This usage is rare in oratory, being probably too intimate in tone” [16] (and cf. καὶ σύ). Hence the expression implies a level of familiarity with the addressee that may or may not be justified, but which is invited by the speaker.

In this light we may reconsider the final words as reconstructed by the original editors: [ὁμοϲ, φίλ]ε, ϲοῦ. [17] How justified are we in accepting such an extensive restoration, in light of parallels from epigrammatic poetry? [18] ὁμός is a poetic form of ὁμοῖος. See Etym. magn. p. 627.37 Gaisford, citing Il. IV 437 (οὐ γὰρ πάντων ἦεν ὁμὸς θρός οὐδ᾿ ἴα γῆρυς) as typifying the Trojans’ speech. Further parallels, however, may be adduced showing it typical of Homeric poetry in which it is used to modify a variety of abstract nouns: Il. XIII 354 (ὁ. γένος), XXIV 57 (ὁ. τιμή), XV 209 (ὁ. νεῖκος), XIII 333, VIII 291 and Hesiod, Theog. 508 (ὁ. λέχος). Closer to the present passage are IG XIV 1721 ὁμὰ χθών and οὐ καθ᾿ ὁμὰ φρονέοντε. Compare also Callimachus fr. 1 26–27 Pf. ἑτέρων ἴχνια μὴ καθ᾿ ὁμὰ δίφρον ἐλᾶν.

A parallel [19] in epigram occurs in the Anthologiae Graecae Appendix 656, 8–10 (Cougny vol. III p. 200, also at e.g. AP XII 234,4, 2.1,314) in the last three lines of an epigram from a wife for her dead husband:

As editors have noted, this is an allusion to the urn at Il. XXIII 91 to be shared by Achilles and Patroclus ὣς δὲ καὶ ὀστέα νῶϊν ὁμὴ σορὸς ἀμφικαλύπτοι. If ὁμός is correctly restored in AB 103.4, it could have Homeric resonances. What of the similarly restored φίλ]ε? Here another Homeric resonance may be discovered in Achilles’ calling Lycaeon φίλος in the very act of killing him (Il. XXI 106–107):

Commentators have suggested that Achilles calls Lycaon his friend because they are united by the common bond of mortality: so Richardson ad loc. (p. 61f), who notes that Achilles ‘accepts Lycaon’s’ allusion to their earlier bond of ξενία, calling him φίλος (AB 106), and thereby suggesting a sense of sympathy which is developed in the reference to his own impending death, although at the same time there is a bitter note of irony in his use of the word “friend”.’ [20] Similarly in AB 103, we are to understand via the Homeric resonance that the speaker is not simply being polite in addressing the passerby/reader as ‘friend’: he is suggesting they are the same, in that the share a deeper bond of mortality. [21]

All of this is relevant not least to the identity of the speaker. He is someone we know, not from historical sources but from the Milan roll. He is Soses of Cos, a name that has already appeared in the section sub-titled Iamatika in AB 97 where he is said to have been miraculously cured of epilepsy through the intervention of Asclepius: ‘non si puo excludere che si tratti della medesima persona’ (BG): [22]

This poem is a plausible dedication by a man who has been cured of epilepsy in an Asclepius sanctuary, [24] only to have his final end inevitably and ironically recorded later in the collection in his own epitaph. As a final twist, parallel to the miracle recorded in AB 97, AB 103 may now be read as a ‘play’ on the form of the dedicatory epigram (in this sense a tropos), now used, instead of the marker of a dead man, to bring the dead man back to life and let him speak, reminding the reader of the common fate he will share.