The Diegeseis Papyrus: Archaeological Context, Format, and Contents

Cover illustration: Black granite statue of a Ptolemaic queen (59.1 inches high). 3rd century BC. Discovered at Canopus. Image reproduced courtesy of the HILTI Foundation. Photograph by Christoph Gerigk. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brill’s companion to Callimachus / edited by Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Luigi Lehnus, Susan Stephens. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-15673-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Callimachus—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Greek poetry, Hellenistic—Egypt—Alexandria—History and criticism. I. Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin, 1960– II. Lehnus, Luigi. III. Stephens, Susan A. IV. Title: Companion to Callimachus. PA3945.Z5B75 2011 881’.01—dc22 2011011254 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/bccs. ISSN 1872-3357 ISBN 9789004156739 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CHAPTER FOUR THE DIEGESEIS PAPYRUS: ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT, FORMAT, AND CONTENTS Maria Rosaria Falivene Abstract The Diegeseis papyrus preserves what is left of fourteen columns (Y, Z, I–XII) of the original roll of diegeseis (‘summaries’) of Callimachus’ oeuvre. It was unfinished in antiquity: its writer failed to go beyond Hymn 2. Although it is now missing the first half of what must have contained summaries to the first three books of the Aetia, it is essential in retrieving the framework within which Callimachus’ fragments can once more find their proper place. This paper retraces the possible archaeological links connecting the Diegeseis papyrus to the other literary papyri found by Achille Vogliano and Gilbert Bagnani in or near the cantina dei papiri at Tebtynis in 1934. Considerations about provenance, format and contents lead to suggestions about the origin and purpose of the Diegeseis papyrus, and of the text it preserves. By about half past ten on March 14—we had been working from six o’clock—my foreman brought me some baskets and ropes that were being found in the cellar. We both went down into it and worked alongside the two men who were digging, while at the same time I sent to the camp for boxes. In another quarter of an hour we realized what we had found. A layer a couple of feet deep right over the cellar floor was one solid mass of papyri, old baskets, ropes, palm fibre, and old mats, an ideal medium for the preservation of papyri. Archaeological Context The epigraph to this chapter is from Gilbert Bagnani’s 1934 report about the find (in Begg 1998: 206),1 of about a thousand papyri in 1 Vogliano indicated different dates: 21 and 22 March, then 27 March, finally 23 March. See discussion in Gallazzi 2003: 167 n. 101. Gallazzi himself favors 21 March as the actual date of the find. 82 maria rosaria falivene the so-called Insula of the Papyri, at the site of ancient Tebtynis (near modern Umm-el-Breigât, in the Fayum). A more recent assessment reckons the number of papyri that have been found at about 750, including anything from mere fragments to entire rolls (Gallazzi 1990 and 2003: 166). The other main actor on the Tebtynis scene in 1934 was Achille Vogliano. On his very first trip to Egypt, he had arrived in Cairo on 24 January, reaching the Fayum no sooner than 28 February: he was the head and sole member of the newly established (in December 1933) archaeological mission of the University of Milan.2 Pursuant to his apparently unwritten agreement with Carlo Anti,3 Vogliano engaged Bagnani, whom he described as “reluctant” (1937: XIV n. 1), in some very determined, if methodologically unsound,4 papyrus hunting,which in a couple of weeks led to the extraordinary discovery of what has since been known as the Cantina dei Papiri.5 According to Vogliano (1937: 66), the future PMilVogl 1.18 “almost surfaced” amid the thirtycentimeter stratum of papyri covering the cellar floor. Within a few days of its being found, it was placed in a metal box (provided by David L. Askren)6 and transferred to Cairo, there to be photographed “on a Sunday afternoon” by an Italian phographer (Vogliano 1937: XII). Before pictures could be taken, the papyrus must obviously have been unrolled and restored: some information on the procedure adopted at the time can be gleaned from Stewart Bagnani’s letters to his mother (who was herself wintering in Cairo), including one of 26 March: I am sleepy and rather gaga on account, as it seems to me, of having done nothing but clean, stick together, and frame paps for years! 2 Gallazzi 2003: 139 and 154, respectively. In his capacity as head of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Egypt, Anti had been in charge of the Tebtynis excavations since 1928 (Gallazzi 2003: 136–139). 4 Vogliano himself was aware of this, or later became so (Vogliano 1937: XV n. 2, quoted by Gallazzi 2003: 171). 5 After Anti’s return to Italy upon his appointment as dean of the University of Padua in October 1932, Bagnani had been acting as the field director on the Tebtynis site (Begg 1998: 195; Gallazzi 2003: 137). 6 David L. Askren: “La prima sera attorno al nostro tavolo di lavoro, compresi del nostro stesso entusiasmo, stavano due ospiti non inoperosi: il dottor Askren, un medico missionario degli Stati Uniti, da trent’anni stabilito nel Faiyûm . . . ed il rappresentante inglese della Barclay’s Bank a Medinet el Faiyûm. Tutti aiutarono la causa nostra” (Vogliano 1937: XII). See also Gallazzi 2003: 145 n. 43. 3 the diegeseis papyrus: context, format, and contents 83 and another of 29 March:7 We have decided to stop the digging when this group of houses is finished which will be in about five days’ time. I am profoundly thankful as then Gil can get his photos and cataloguing done peacefully to say nothing of the packing of all those foul little things. Could you get me boxes of Meta[ldehyde]. Four of 5’0. I want them for ironing paps. Just post them to the bank. The photos were presently sent by air mail to Girolamo Vitelli, in Florence, who was to prepare the editio princeps. On 12 May 1934, permission was obtained for the papyrus itself to be sent to Italy. (Rudolf Pfeiffer [1949–53: 2.xii] would be able to inspect it in Florence in October 1935.) About half the papyri from the same find followed a couple of months later, reaching the Civici Musei del Castello Sforzesco on 26 October. The remaining ones would be sent no sooner than 1938 (Gallazzi 2003: 173–174); a few were returned to Cairo after publication, including PMilVogl 1.18, which is presently exhibited in the Egyptian Museum (Room 29). Excellent reproductions are also available on line:8 it may be useful to inspect them alongside the very accurate plates provided in the edition of Vogliano (1937), which obviously represent an earlier stage in the preservation of the papyrus. The vast majority of the papyri from the 1934 Tebtynis excavations— many of them still unpublished—are documents belonging to several archives or dossiers whose dates range between the second half of the first and the late second century ad,9 and whose connection, if any, with the literary papyri found at the same site remains to be determined.10 For the time being, it seems worthwhile to try retracing the possible archaeological links connecting the literary papyri found on that occasion, as the former seem to be consistent with a philological 7 Quoted in Begg 1998: 201 (and n. 31 on the uses of metaldehyde); see also Gilbert Bagnani’s report in Begg 1998: 206. 8 http://ipap.csad.ox.ac.uk (Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents/Photographic Archive of Papyri in the Cairo Museum). 9 These include the archives of the descendants of Patron (see Clarysse and Gallazzi 1993), the descendants of Pakebkis, Kronion, the family of Harmiusis, Diogenis, and Turbo. See Gallazzi 2003: 166. For more information on each archive, see: www. trismegistos.org/Archives s.vv. 10 Van Minnen 1998 (an important contribution to the study of literary texts, both Egyptian and Greek, from Tebtynis), p. 166: “Whether the literary texts belonged to one of these archives or ended up in the ‘cantina’ independently of them is unclear.” 84 maria rosaria falivene connection, in that some, at least, of these papyri share a scholarly attitude toward texts. Among the published literary papyri from the 1934 Tebtynis excavation, PMilVogl 6.262, part of a commentary on Nicander’s Theriaca, deserves first consideration here. It is recorded as found in the Insula of the Papyri (Insula 1 in the aerial view from 1935; reproduced in Gallazzi 2003: 190 fig. 4)11 at the end of March—that is, after the discovery of the Cantina dei Papiri—and provides a link to other literary papyri that were found, along with documentary texts, in the so-called Street of the Papyri (numbered 4 in the 1935 aerial view) before the Cantina was discovered. These literary papyri include another fragment (PMilVogl 2.45 + 6.262 = SH and SSH 563A) of the same commentary on Nicander’s Theriaca, and some scholia minora on the Iliad (PMilVogl 3.120). A mythological compendium listing Zeus’s mistresses (PMilVogl 3.126, reedited by Salvadori 1985) was most probably also found in the Street of the Papyri—unless it was retrieved from the Cantina along with the Callimachean Diegeseis,12 in which case the association of these two papyri would be especially close, and consistent with their contents: both are included among the “ancient readers’ digests” that Monique van Rossum-Steenbeek (1998) studied a few years ago. Literary texts found in the Street of the Papyri were probably blown there by the wind from one or another of the four rooms in Insula 2 (immediately north of the Insula of the Papyri, alias Insula 1; see the 1935 aerial view). According to Bagnani’s excavation daybook, this is where work started on 4 March 1934, and where on the following day papyri were retrieved from a thick layer of ash in the southernmost room at the southeastern corner of Insula 1 (Bagnani in Begg 1998: 198), among them a prose anthology compiled during the reign of Hadrian (PMilVogl 1.20),13 a Euripides papyrus,14 and Apollodorus of 11 Plan of the site: Gallazzi and Hadji-Minoglou 2000: 39; Bagnall and Rathbone 2004: 148. 12 PMilVogl 2.47 (Acta Alexandrinorum) was certainly found in the Cantina. All these data are elicited from Gallazzi 1990 (note especially p. 286, on PMilVogl 3.126) and Gallazzi 2003: 156–69. 13 It comprises a section on the so-called Flower of Antinous (Vogliano 1937: 176). 14 According to Gallazzi 2003: 157 n. 71, “versi euripidei non si trovano fra il materiale recuperato in quell’ambiente,” but the future PMilVogl 2.44 (a hypothesis to Euripides’ Hippolytus) would fit very well into the picture: note that it, too, is reckoned among Van Rossum Steenbeek’s (1998) “readers’ digests.” See also Barrett 1964: 95–96 and 431–32; Luppe 1983. the diegeseis papyrus: context, format, and contents 85 Athens’ Grammatical Inquiries into Book XIV of the “Iliad” (PMilVogl 1.19), of which only the title at the end is preserved, followed by the note !"!#$#. This last has been plausibly interpreted as referring to the Sosii, famous booksellers in Rome (Turner 1968: 51). The fact that this book or its exemplar may have been produced in Rome also reflects on other books found in its company: Are we dealing with volumes reaching the Fayum via Rome, whether because they themselves or their exemplars were produced there, or because their readers had connections to the capital? This question also applies to PMilVogl 1.18, since Roman literati of the first and second centuries ad showed considerable interest in Callimachus. Medea Norsa and Girolamo Vitelli’s (1934) editio princeps of the newly unearthed Callimachean Diegeseis Papyrus appeared within a few months of its being found. There followed a host of reviews and other contributions,15 which soon necessitated a revised edition. When Vitelli died, in 1935, Vogliano took it upon himself to produce one. The papyrus thus became number 18 in Papiri della Reale Università di Milano, volume 1 (1937),16 which included two additional fragments, both pertaining to the beginning of the preserved portion of the original roll (Vogliano 1937: 114). As it presently stands in Cairo, the roll measures 139 centimeters in length by 30 centimeters in height, consisting of the twelve columns numbered I to XII by Norsa and Vitelli in their editio princeps, plus what was left of a preceding column (designated Z in Vogliano’s second edition); a central gap, caused by worms eating the roll from 15 Vogliano (1937: 67–68 n. 2) lists eighteen of them, besides referring in the Addenda (p. 274) to Herter 1937. A more comprehensive list is found in Lehnus 2000b: 78–79. 16 Hence the acronym P. PRIMI, later superseded by P. Milano Vogliano, which is now the title in general use for the whole series. For reviews of Vogliano’s edition and further discussion, see Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.xii–xiii; Lehnus 2000b: 79. An anticipation of Vogliano’s edition (Dal I° volume dei papiri della R. Università di Milano) was presented at the Fourth International Congress of Papyrology, held in Florence in April 1934. Vogliano himself was not present, having gone back to Egypt, where he spent little more than a week at the Tebtynis site before moving on to Medînet Mâdi (Gallazzi 2003: 174–175). Anti, on the other hand, read his paper “Scavi di Tebtynis (1930–1935),” which was later published in Atti del IV Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia (Florence, 1935), 473–78 (Begg 1998: 208–209). 86 maria rosaria falivene the outside, narrows down toward its inner, best-preserved portion,17 which coincides with the end of the text.18 In 2001 two more fragments from the same roll were identified in Milan “tra il materiale della Collezione Milano Vogliano” (Gallazzi and Lehnus 2001: 7): they are inventoried as PMilVogl inv. 28b and 1006, measuring 1.7 centimeters by 8.6 centimeters and 4.0 centimeters by 6.2 centimeters, respectively. As the editors saw,19 PMilVogl 28b connects precisely to the bottom left of column Z in the main part of the roll. The other fragment, PMilVogl inv. 1006, completely detached and preserving part of a column’s upper margin, has been convincingly placed to the left of column Z, being assigned to the top of the preceding column (Y). To sum up: we now have what remains of fourteen columns (Y, Z, I–XII) of the original roll of the Diegeseis to Callimachus oeuvre. PMilVogl 1.18, written in a basically bilinear, expert, but informal hand with cursive tendencies, occasionally betrays chancery training.20 Because of its archaeological context—namely the dated documents with which it was found—it can be safely dated between the second half of the first and the first half of the second century ad (Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.xxviii); palaeography supports this dating. The back is blank. Format The layout of the Diegeseis roll is quite carefully planned, though the plan is executed with an increasing approximation as the work approaches the end (which in fact it fails to reach). Column width varies around an average of 9 centimeters. Column height is on average 17 By taking the dimensions and shape of this gap into account, one can assess the number and cross-section of the successive volutes, or coils, of the roll: D’Alessio 2001. 18 After last being opened in antiquity, the book had been rerolled properly, from right to left, so that it would open again from the beginning. 19 Gallazzi and Lehnus 2001, reproductions on Tafel 1. 20 Cursive tendencies: note ligatured diphthongs AI, EI; often rounded %; # often in one movement, though in two possible shapes; short second vertical stroke of H, this letter being often drawn in a single movement. Chancery training: note elongated C especially, but not exclusively at end of line (cols. III.5, 39, 40; IV.4, 8, 13; VIII.4; IX.5, 15; X.18 in title and below passim; XII.7, 13); emphatic & (IV.30; VI.3; VII.25, 31; X.22); enlarged ' (III.12, VII.22); very rapid ( (IV.38); elongated # at end of line (IX.26, 27). the diegeseis papyrus: context, format, and contents 87 21 centimeters. Upper and lower margins are approximately 4 centimeters and 5 centimeters, respectively. The columns show a downward slant to the left (Maas’s law) that is quite regular and consistent from one column to the next, creating the impression that the slant was intentional.21 In the ideal format, or template, of this book roll each diegesis dealing with one of Callimachus’ poems begins with a quotation of the first line (incipit), written in ekthesis with enlarged initial letter or letters underlined by a paragraphos and followed by an empty space to distinguish it from what follows; the end of each diegesis is then marked by a very long paragraphos, decorated with a hook on its left end, and by a blank space clearly separating it from the next diegesis. This format is applied somewhat inconsistently— perhaps most noticeably, the ekthesis device is abandoned from column VII.25—and variably: for instance, the enlarged initial in column VIII.1 occurs amid a diegesis and a decidedly unimportant word. There are initial titles (in midline and midcolumn): in col. II.9, a ) surmounted by a horizontal stroke (i.e., the Greek numeral 4) refers to the beginning of the section devoted to Aetia Book 4; in col. X.18 the title “[sc. diegesis] of the Hecale” is marked out by horizontal lines above and below it, and two strokes on the sides.22 Something resembling a main title is found above column VI: unlike the two just mentioned, it refers to what precedes it. (It is here that the term diegesis appears [The Diegeseis of the Four (Books) of Callimachus’ “Aetia”: col. VIa–b], which Norsa and Vitelli reasonably extended to the whole work.) This title does not fit the layout of the text as presented in PMilVogl 1.18: it is, strictly speaking, a subscriptio and should be found at the right end of a roll. A possible explanation could be that it did in fact originally belong with a separate roll of the Diegeseis to Callimachus’ Aetia, part of the complete edition, in more than one volume, of the Diegeseis to Callimachus’ poems. If so, it would have no place in the layout initially envisaged by a compiler reducing two volumes into one, but it might have been inserted by him, on second thought and in the upper margin, as it turned out to be useful in order to mark the transition from the Aetia to the Iambi (beginning, with no title of its own, at col. VI.1). No title signals any distinction between col. IX.38 21 A very accurate description of the layout of PMilVogl 1.18 can be found in Van Rossum-Steenbeek 1998: 75–76. On Maas’s law, see Johnson 2004: 91–99. 22 A short diagonal to the left; on the right a different sign, cut short but otherwise similar to the long paragraphos marking the end of each diegesis. See below. 88 maria rosaria falivene (end the diegesis to Iambus 13) and col. X.1, the incipit of the first of four ‘lyric’ poems, which may therefore be seen as belonging with the Iambi (Lelli 2005a). Finally, no distinction is made between the end of the Hecale section (col. XI.7) and the diegesis to the Hymn to Zeus (col. XI.8): any attempt at explanation would be entirely speculative here, but it seems appropriate to remark that the compiler may have interrupted his work, left it unfinished, and had no time or wish to deal with this last layout problem (Bastianini 2000). Contents As it presently stands, PMilVogl 1.18 preserves a dozen or so diegeseis for Aetia Book 3 (cols. Y–II.8; Gallazzi and Lehnus 2001: 18) and all those to Book 4 (cols. II.9–V), followed by the diegeseis to the Iambi (cols. VI.1–IX), the four ensuing ‘lyric’ poems (col. X.1–17), the Hecale (cols. X.18–XI.7), the Hymn to Zeus (col. XI.8–19), and the Hymn to Apollo (cols. XI.20–XII.3). There is considerable variation in the length of the different diegeseis, possibly because some poems are more straightforward, easier to summarize, than others. According to a famous distinction of Plato’s (Rep. 392d–394d), taken up by Aristotle (Poet. 1448a20–24), diegesis means “narration without mimesis”: that is, told from the point of view of the author rather than of the characters. This is exactly what each diegesis in PMilVogl 1.18 does, narrating what a poem is about while reducing it to the third person of its author and to sheer facts. By the same token, in the diegesis to Iambus 6 (col. VIII.25–31) the verb diegeomai is used of the poet who “reports” the dimensions and costs of Phidias’ Zeus of Olympia, thereby reducing a celebrated work of art to, as it were, its basic ingredients. The Diegeseis Papyrus was not meant to be an ambitious scholarly work; rather, it is a user-friendly text, meant for studying, understanding, and possibly teaching the poetry of Callimachus.23 But its lack of distinction in handwriting and format, mirrored by its characteristic clumsiness in both spelling and syntax as regards contents, should not disguise the fact that these diegeseis are firmly rooted in the tradition of Callimachean exegesis. As Paul Maas first observed, Rudolf Pfeiffer 23 “A careful summary of a long and complex work with a few scholarly references may be of service even to serious readers” (Alan Cameron 1995: 123 n. 96, adducing Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on “Don Quixote” in support of his argument). the diegeseis papyrus: context, format, and contents 89 eventually agreed, and Alan Cameron more recently restated,24 the same template used in PMilVogl 1.18 can be detected in PSI 11.1219, POxy 20.2263, and PMich inv. 6235. The first two of these papyri certainly concern Aetia Book 1, as the third may possibly also.25 This makes a strong a priori argument in favor of their descending from one original, variously transmuted in later versions to suit the needs, uses, and related tastes of particular readers, or groups of readers, of Callimachus’ poetry. In other words, these four papyri, taken together, provide the material for a case study in the basics of Parallelüberlieferung. The beginnings of Callimachean exegesis may well go back to Callimachus’ school—if not to Callimachus himself, who was certainly very good at self-promotion. A very well-known Lille papyrus (PLille inv. 76d, 79, etc., preserving fragments of a line-by-line commentary to The Victory of Berenice) provides evidence of very early, detailed, ambitious exegetical work on Callimachus’ poetry. Dated on palaeographical grounds to the second half of the third (Turner: 250–210 bc) or early second century bc (Cavallo), it is, in Eric Turner’s authoritative judgment (1987: 126), “the most beautiful example of a Ptolemaic book-hand that I know.” That is, it cannot have had an origin distant in time, or possibly in space,26 from such first-generation Callimacheans as Hermippus, Istrus, Stephanus, and Callimachus’ nephew and namesake. The commentary, however, appears to be “of the most jejune kind and rarely goes beyond paraphrase” (Turner 1987: 126). The Lille Papyrus may be a case of Parallelüberlieferung at a very early stage, or else its apparent naïveté may be misleading: Hellenistic scholarly prose can admittedly be disappointing, the usual explanation for this being that earlier Hellenistic treatises have come down to us through less worthy epigones;27 alternatively, scholarship in the third century bc may have accorded with methods of composition, patterns of circulation, techniques of explanation, and other scholarly habits altogether different from what modern readers tend to prefer. 24 Maas 1934: 437 and 1937: 159 (with reference to PSI 11.1219 and the Diegeseis roll, the only two papyri in this group to have been published at the time); Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.xxviii and n. 2 (contra himself, Pfeiffer 1934: 5); Alan Cameron 1995: 120– 126 (widening the scope of Maas’s observation to include PMich inv. 6235). 25 Editio princeps of the Michigan papyrus (about the aition on King Teuthis and Athena “of the Bandaged Thigh”): Koenen, Luppe, and Pagán 1991. For possible attribution to Aetia Book 1: Lehnus 1992; Hollis 1992c. For summaries, see Massimilla 1996: 439–441; D’Alessio 2007: 570 n. 41. 26 Its high “bookish” quality may even suggest an origin in Alexandria itself. 27 Alan Cameron 1995: 192, with reference to Stephanie West’s work on Didymus. 90 maria rosaria falivene There may also exist internal or external evidence in favor of the inbred origin, as it were, of Callimachean exegesis. As regards internal evidence, it has long since been observed that the device of introducing each diegesis by quoting the first line of the relevant poem ultimately derives from the catalogue (Pinakes) of the Library of Alexandria, and this latter enterprise was of course Callimachus’ lifework, and most certainly his school’s also (Maas 1937: 156). On the other hand, at least one attestation of Callimachus’ commenting on himself may provide a piece of external evidence: a fragment from his Hypomnemata (fr. 464 Pf.) deals with Adrastea (Nemesis), a deity also appearing in his poetry (Hecale fr. 116 H. = 299 Pf., and possibly fr. 176 H. = 687 Pf.). Perhaps Callimachus’ Hypomnemata was a commentary to the poet’s own oeuvre and, if so, the foundation for all or most of the later critical work on it, including commentaries and a collection of prose abstracts for each of his poems—of which, apparently, “Duae . . . ‘redactiones,’ ut ita dicam, extant: altera uberior et paulo doctior . . . altera brevior et simplicior in P.Med.”28 In my opinion, this could explain the presence, even in the “brevior et simplicior” version of the Diegeseis, of a few circumstantial pieces of information that, one assumes, would not have been readily available to a critic writing the first work on particular poems long after the date of their composition. The most easily detected instances are column VI.3–4 (in Iambus 1, a reference to the “so-called Sarapideum of Parmenio” as the meeting place for the philosophoi or philologoi in Alexandria); column VII.20–21 (in Iambus 5, on the schoolteacher Apollonius or, “according to others,” Theon); and column X.10–13 (in fr. 228 Pf., a dedication to the deified Arsinoe of an altar within a sacred precinct “near the Emporium” in Alexandria). As for the “uberior et paulo doctior” version (represented in this case by PSI 11.1219), there is of course the all-too-famous instance of the identity of the Telchines in the Prologue to the Aetia. There are further tokens of inherited scholarly accuracy. We may consider the quite specific expressions employed in the Diegeseis Papyrus with reference to genre and occasion: *+,-./01 (col. VIII.21–22, with reference to Iambus 8); 20320 45467+27. 891 :;<0=7 >?4726,0? (col. IX.25, with reference to Iambus 12); +760,-.0- (col. X.6, denoting the second lyric poem); */>[email protected] B6A.-CD1 (col. X.10, presumably referring to the occasion of the third lyric poem, the dedication 28 Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.xxviii. “P.Med.” is Pfeiffer’s siglum for PMilVogl 1.18. the diegeseis papyrus: context, format, and contents 91 of an altar and sacred precinct to the deified Arsinoe). Several terms for the poet’s activity are also precisely appropriate: Callimachus “tells the story of ” the Pelasgian Walls in Athenian territory (EA2068F, col. IV.2);29 in Iambus 1 he “puts up the fiction” of Hipponax coming back from Hades (G+02,>827., col. VI.2); he “blames” the values of his time in Iambus 3 (/727=5=H827., col. VI.34); he “assails [a schoolteacher, whether Apollonius or Theon] in iambics” in Iambus 5 (97=;,I8., col. VII.21); he “reports the exact dimensions and costs” of the Phidian Zeus in Iambus 6 (<.D48F27., col. VII.27); in Iambus 13 he “counters those who blame him for experimenting with too many genres” (+6J1 20K1 /727=8=H0=5-0?1 7L2J- *+M 2N. +0O?8.<8,7. P+7-2Q- HDA.- R2. /2O., col. IX.33); he “talks to the jeunes garçons en fleur” (+6J1 20K1 S67,0?1 HDA,-) and “sings a hymn and prays,” respectively, in the first and second of the four lyric poems (G=-8F /7M +767/7O8F, col. X.1–2 and 7–8); and he “leads a choral dance” to celebrate the epiphany of the god in the Hymn to Apollo (+60286728?AT=8-01 . . . *+.O548., col. XI.21–25). At the opposite chronological end, the latest avatars of Callimachean exegesis have reached us through codices F and At (both dating from the early fifteenth century; Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.125 [Addenda]), and through Ianos Lascaris (Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.lxxvi–lxxix). For Hymns 5 and 6, the scholia are preceded by abstracts that, however short,30 clearly belong to the same tradition as the Diegeseis of PMilVogl 1.18. The abstract to Hymn 5 shares with the Diegeseis Papyrus (col. XI.18–19) an apparently improper use of the adverb */8FA8 in lieu of */8F. The same adverb is also found in a scholion to Hymn 4.165, the historical character of which connects it with the abstract to Hymn 6. Ptolemy II Philadelphus is the subject of both the scholion and the abstract: from the scholion to Hymn 4.165 we learn that he grew up in Cos, whereas the abstract to Hymn 6 informs us that Ptolemy imported the ritual described therein from Athens.31 Once more, this is circumstantial evidence, ultimately deriving from a source very near in time to Ptolemy II 29 Cf. col. II.12 (EA206,7, with reference to “the first elegy” in Aetia Book 4) and PSI 11.1219 fr. 1.35. 30 This brevity is seen especially in the diegeseis to Hymns 1 and 2, apparently lost in the medieval tradition but preserved in PMilVogl 1.18; they were nevertheless deemed incomplete by Pfeiffer 1949–53: 2.41 (here following Vogliano 1937: 144). 31 Despite Hopkinson’s skepticism (1984a: 32–33), this may well coincide with the +7-D4?6,1 at Alexandrian Eleusis mentioned by Satyrus in his Demes of Alexandria (POxy 27.2465 fr. 3 col. II.4–11). 92 maria rosaria falivene and Callimachus, and to Theocritus as well: in fact, a similar piece of information concerning Ptolemy’s birth in Cos (enriched by a reference to his mother, Berenice I) also appears in a scholion to Idyll 17.58. Such matter-of-fact historical information on Ptolemy II and the Ptolemaic royal family is found already in the line-by-line commentary of the Lille Papyrus (PLille inv. 82.1.2–6), pointing to one authoritative source dating from the third century bc. As suggested above, this may have been the Callimachean Hypomnemata. Midway, as it were, between the Diegeseis Papyrus and the early fifteenth-century manuscripts F and At, continuity in the tradition of the diegeseis during late antiquity may be confirmed by certain verbal parallels between the diegesis of the Hecale in PMilVogl 1.18 and what little survives of a summary of the same poem in POxy 20. 2258.32 At this stage of its transmission, continuity of the exegetical lore could be insured, if at all, only by its migration into the margins of books in the new format, the codex. This meant assembling into the margins material that used to be available in separate book rolls containing commentaries to and abstracts from an author’s main text. Theocritus’ medieval manuscript tradition may be adduced to illustrate this point: each Idyll is in fact provided with an abstract that is remarkably similar to a diegesis in PMilVogl 1.18; the scholia then follow, just as with Callimachus Hymns 5 and 6. As set forth by Pfeiffer (1949–53: 2.lxxviii), the scholia to Callimachus cannot have differed much from those to Theocritus. To this date, the Diegeseis Papyrus is the best-preserved testimony for ancient criticism on the whole of Callimachus’ poetry. It also provides the main framework within which a large number of Callimachus’ fragments can be assigned their place, notwithstanding the puzzle, still unsolved, of the order in which several parts of Callimachus’ oeuvre succeeded one another according to the author’s intention, and according to editors in later antiquity. 32 Alan Cameron 1995: 125, with reference to Hollis 1990a: 65–66.