Simias of Rhodes. The Artsy Avantgardist PDF

M. Perale, Simias of Rhodes. The Artsy Avantgardist, in M. Perale, J. Kwapisz, G. Taietti, B.
Cartlidge (eds.), A Handbook to Hellenistic Poetry Before Callimachus, Cambridge University

Press 2019.
Provisional Draft. Not to be cited without the author’s permission.
Upload date: 3/8/2018

Conference oral draft: 14/6/2016
. 1
Simias of Rhodes. The Artsy Avantgardist
Marco Perale
The Wild-but-edible One
“The red lilies of Anyte, the white lilies of Moero, the blossoming iris of Nossis, Alcaeus’
hyacinth, Erinna’s sweet saffron, Callimachus’ myrtle – sweet, but ever full of sour honey,
Euphorion’s rose campion … Simias’ barely edible wild pear (βρωτήν τ’ ἀχράδα)”. 1 Thus
Meleager in his preface to the Garland, associating flowers with different poetic sensitivities and
leaving Simias of Rhodes the puzzling privilege of being represented by the Pyrus
amygdaliformis, a variety of pear known from Aristophanes for its constipating effects.2 The
ἀχράς is the food of the culinarily uneducated, i.e. the gluttonous and the animals.3 The fruit is
indeed bitter and astringent, and –at least according to Theophrastus – can hardly be turned into a
‘domestic’ pear by cultivation.4
1
Translation adapted from Paton/Tueller’s Loeb. Mel. AP 4.25-30 = HE 3950-55 = Simias T d Fränkel
τῇσι δ’ … ἐνέπλεκε (Meleager) … βρωτήν (P : βλωθρήν Hecker) τ’ ἀχράδα Σιµίεω. I prefer the
manuscripts reading βρωτήν ‘edible’ over Hecker’s correction βλωθρήν ‘high’, which is based on Od.
24.234 ὑπὸ βλωθρὴν ὄγχνην, where the adjective qualifies a pear tree. It is clear, however, that Meleager
refers to the ‘blossom or foliage’ around the fruit (Gow-Page ad 3955), cf. 27 = 3952 γλυκύµηλον ἀπ’
ἀκρεµόνων, and vv. 16, 19, 39, where the floral vocabulary always qualifies the tree’s branches or shoots,
not the tree itself. In 49-50, the palm of Aratus reaches the sky (οὐρανοµάκευς), but it is its newborn
tendrils the poet weaves.
2
Ar. Ec. 354-55 νῦν δέ µοι / ἀχράς τις ἐγκλῄσασ’ ἔχει τὰ σιτία. ‘some sort of choke pear’s got my food
blockaded inside’ (Blepyrus; tr. by J. Henderson); cf. Hp. Vict. 55 ἀχράδες χειµέριοι πέπειροι
διαχωρέουσι καὶ τῆς κοιλίης καθαρτικαί· αἱ δὲ ὠµαὶ στάσιµοι. ‘wild winter pears when ripe pass easily by
stool and purge the bowels; when unripe they are binding’ (tr. W.H.S. Jones). Antipater calls the wild
pear ὠµή, which means ‘harsh (in taste)’ (Gow-Page ad Leon. AP 9.316.5f. = HE 2131f., but the
adjective may also refer to the scaly surface of the tree trunk: see Gow-Page ad GPh 523f. = AP 9.706.3-
4).
3
Bagordo ad Pher. fr. 13 [Agrioi]. Leonidas humourously describes the ἀχράς as inappropriate food for
Hermes, but instant prey for all-eating Heracles (AP 9.316.6 = HE 2132). In Cyllenius, AP 9.4.1, it is
fodder for pasture. In Telecl. fr. 34.1 K.-A., ἀχράδες are rejected in favour of a warm cake and hare-meat
on béchamel sauce.
4
HP 2.12.2. Theophrastus describes the ἀχράς as a wild form of ἄπιος, the cultivated pear (HP 1.14.4).
Cyllenius and Palladas in a series of epigrams at the beginning of book IX of the Palatine Anthology on
the art of pear-grafting describe a παράδοξον, a miracle of the techne; here, the skilled and patient
gardener is able to hybridize an ἀχράς with foreign shoots (AP 9.4.3) and turn a tree ‘bearing plenty of
bastard fruits’ (νόθης ζείδωρος ὀπώρης, 9.4.1) into a fruitful (9.4.6) and fragrant ὄχνη (9.5 and 9.6). The
Meleagran passage has now been re-discussed by Kwapisz (also opting for retaining the originally
transmitted βρωτήν: 2018, ΧΧ), who sees metapoetic overtones in the craft of the cultivator and a
possible allusion to the achievement of poetic excellence. AP 9.706, by Antipater of Thessalonica, may be
added to the discussion; here, a disdainful poplar, who is threatened to have his bark stripped, petitions
some wayfarers not to let him be demolished: see vv. 3-4 µέµνεο, παρθένιός µοι ἔπι φλόος, οὐχ ἅπερ
ὠµαῖς ἀχράσιν ‘remember, the bark upon me is virginal, not as on the crude wild pear’. The epigram
. 2
The oxymoronic nature of the expression ἀχράς βρωτή ‘wild but edible’ in Meleager tells a lot
about the style of the Rhodian: seemingly impervious, indulging in technicisms, rife with lexical
rarities, yet penetrable through the tools of scholarship. 5 Meleager’s comment sounds like a
warning; reading Simias without the necessary precautions of doctrine can be a grueling
exercise; anybody who has read his technopaegnia – the Wings of Eros, the Axe of Epeius, and
the Egg in particular- will know the feeling.6 Indeed, these compositions, which visually take the
shape of the object represented in the text, seem to be designed to involve the reader in the
labouring process of composition: “lo here a new weft of a twittering mother, a Dorian
nightingale. Receive it with a good right will, for pure was the mother whose shrilly throes did
labour for it”.7
Poem as Object
The controlled metrical chaos of the carmen figuratum – involuntarily represented by the god
Chaos featuring in the Wings as the improbable father of an improbably bearded Eros8 - takes
several forms: a series of variations expanding and compressing over a choriambic base in the
Axe and in the Wings 9 and a polymetric symphony of dactlys, spondees, anapests, cretics,
paeons, choriambs, and bacchii in the Egg. The ‘new weft’ of the Dorian nightingale Simias is
laboured to the point of exhaustion, with lyric units that multiply tenfold developing into larger
sections under the creative impulse of Hermes, as he takes the egg from beneath the bird’s wings
and donates it to mortals. Votive vocabulary placed at the opening of both the Axe and Egg
(ὤπασ’ in 2 and δέξο in 5, respectively) seems to objectify the physical and mental strain being
offered (by Epeus to Athena, by the poet to the reader).
In the technopaegnia, as it has been observed, the poet recreates archaic epigraphic text through
the application of contemporary modalities.10 At first, the choice of metre seems to be dictated
purely by pictographic necessity, as the poet – led by shape rather than rhythm - feels free to
forego entirely the arrangement of lyric material into cola.11 However, as it emerges from Egg 9-
10, Simias, who has a precise colometric plan in mind, is suggesting to us the code to crack his
own ‘measures’.12 We can thus conceptualize a designated but spatially flexible area, whose
recalls the alder tree refusing to be eradicated by a lumbering rustic in Philitas fr. 8 L., on which see infra
p. XX.
5
Fränkel 1915, 10.
6
cf. Pappas 2013, 213-14 on destabilizing the audience in the act of reading as a side effect of the
labouring creation.
7
21.1-6 F. = 27.1-6 P. Κωτίλας / µατέρος / τῆ τόδ’ ἄτριον νέον / Δωρίας ἀηδόνος· / πρόφρων δὲ θυµῷ
δέξο· δὴ γὰρ ἁγνᾶς / λίγειά µιν κάµ’ ἶφι µατρὸς ὠδίς. (tr. J. Kwapisz)
8
But cf. Kwapisz 2013a, 91-92.
9
Danielewicz 1996, 48; Kwapisz 2013b, 162-63; differently West 1982, 151.
10
Krevans 1984, 186; Fantuzzi, in Fantuzzi – Hunter 2004, 40.
11
Wilamowitz 1906, 245-46; cf. id. 1921, 126.
12
ἄνωγε δ’ ἐκ µέτρου µονοβάµονος †µέγαν† πάροιθ’ ἀέξειν / ἀριθµὸν εἰς ἄκραν δεκάδ’ ἰχνίων κόσµον
νέµων τε ῥυθµόν (text as in Kwapisz 2013, 64). See Palumbo Stracca 2003, 574, 581; Di Gregorio 2008,
71-72; Kwapisz 2013, 15, who suggested that the invention of colometry and the accidental creation of
. 3
exact shape is ultimately determined by the text’s peculiar metrical articulation: the picture
seems tailored to suit the text, not vice versa.13 Simias’ pattern poems, probably the first of their
kind, may have been inspired by epigraphical practice without having been conceived to be
inscribed on actual objects on display14, i.e. a winged statue of Eros, the blades of an axe, the
surface of a (giant) egg. Whilst the technopaegnia were not created to come to physical fruition
or be approached from a multidimensional perspective, 15 ancient editors and modern readers
ultimately wished to picture them as written objects rather than poems on objects.
Simias’ Axe opens in fact with a typical dedicatory formula, which reveals that the object in
question is a δῶρον from Epeus to Athena; the votive offering appears to ‘speak’ through an
inscribed text.16 Eros himself, in typical epigrammatic language, explicitly asks us to make eye-
contact. 17 As we read through the text and interrogate its fruition, however, we realize that
Simias is probably communicating merely on a one-dimensional level. On paper, verses of
varying metrical length are arranged horizontally on the written surface, like the plumage of a
bird, in two strophes of six verses forming two mirroring wings.18 On a sculpted surface, the text
would run parallel to the body of Eros, from head to toe, and could only be read by rotating one’s
head rather awkwardly.19
new textual arrangements resulting in new shapes laid out on the writing medium led to the foundation of
visual poetry as a genre.
13
D’Alessandro 2011-12, 147 n. 38.
14
Palumbo Stracca 2003, 574.
15
Useful status quaestionis in Guichard 2006, 90-91, Pappas 2013, 203 n. 12, and Kwapisz 2013a, 11-12.
With his Axe, Simias, one might say, gives his own contribution to the burgeoning, chiefly epigrammatic
sub-genre of weapon dedication, inaugurated perhaps by Anyte in these very years: see Geoghegan 1979,
16 n. 5; cf. infra p. XX on ep. 26 Fr.
16
’Ανδροθέᾳ δῶρον ὁ Φωκεὺς κρατερᾶς µηδοσύνας ἦρα τίνων ’Αθάνᾳ / ὤπασ’ ’Επειὸς πέλεκυν, τῷ ποτε
πύργων θεοτεύκτων κατέρειψεν αἶπος, / τᾶµος, ἐπεὶ τὰν ἱερὰν κηρὶ πυρίπνῳ πόλιν ᾐθάλωσεν /
Δαρδανιδᾶν χρυσοβαϕεῖς τ’ ἐστυϕέλιξ’ ἐκ θεµέθλων ἄνακτας, / οὐκ ἐνάριθµος γεγαὼς ἐν προµάχοις
’Αχαιῶν, / ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ κρανᾶν ἰθαρᾶν νᾶµα κόµιζε δυσκλής· / νῦν δ’ ἐς ‘Οµήρειον ἔβα κέλευθον / σὰν
χάριν, ἁγνὰ πολύβουλε Παλλάς. / τρὶς µάκαρ ὃν σὺ θυµῷ / ἵλαος ἀµφιδερχθῇς· ὅδ’ ὄλβον ἀεὶ πνεῖ. Text
from Kwapisz 2013, 60; cf. p. 11 and 78 on votive language.
17
Λεῦσσέ µε τὸν Γᾶς τε βαθυστέρνου ἄνακτ’, ’Ακµονίδαν τ’ ἄλλυδις ἑδράσαντα, / µηδὲ τρέσῃς, εἰ τόσος
ὢν δάσκια βέβριθα λάχνᾳ γένεια· / τᾶµος ἐγὼ γὰρ γενόµαν, ἁνίκ’ ἔκραιν’ ’Ανάγκα, / πάντα δὲ γᾶς εἶκε
ϕραδαῖσι λυγραῖς / ἑρπετά, πάνθ’ ὅσ’ ἕρπει / δι’ αἴθρας. / Χάους τε, / οὔτι γε Κύπριδος παῖς, / ὠκυπέτας
δ’ ἁβρὸς Ἔρος καλεῦµαι· / οὔτι γὰρ ἔκρανα βίᾳ, πραϋνόῳ δὲ πειθοῖ· / εἶκε δέ µοι γαῖα, θαλάσσας τε
µυχοὶ χάλκεος οὐρανός τε· / τῶν δ' ἐγὼ ἐκνοσϕισάµαν ὠγύγιον σκᾶπτρον, ἔκρινον δὲ θεοῖς θέµιστας.
Text from Kwapisz 2013, 62. On on λεῦσσέ µε, see Pappas 2013, 210; cf. A.P. 9.157 = FGE 1450-51
ἔργα δ’ Ἔρωτος / λεύσσοµεν, of a picture of Eros gloating over the corpses of his victims; cf. A.P.
9.755.3-4 αὐτὴν ἄν τις Σκύλλαν ὀΐσσατο τηλόθι λεύσσων / ἑστάµεν, of a statue of Scylla; APl 52.1 ἴσως
µε λεύσσων, ξεῖνε, a statue of an athlete; APl. 151.1-2 ἀρχέτυπον Διδοῦς … λεύσσεις / εἰκόνα θεσπεσίῳ
κάλλεϊ λαµποµένην, a painting of Dido; Hermodorus APl. 170.3 = HE 1953 τὰν δ’ ἐν Κεκροπίδαις
δορυθαρσέα Παλλάδα λεύσσων, a statue of Athena at Athens. Kwapisz 2016, 163 comments on λεῦσσε
as a variation of εἶδον, a conventional incipit in riddle poems.
18
Kwapisz 2013a, 34 and 62 on the manuscript layout.
19
Fränkel 1915, 83; cf. Cameron 1995, 33-34.
. 4
Physical interaction is sublimated on paper. In two of the three figure poems, the Axe and Egg,
the poet goes in fact beyond the founding principle of figure poems, according to which the final
shape materializes only when the verses are read in sequence;20 instead, the reading process is
articulated by sequences of ‘antithetic’ verse pairs, traveling from the first verse to the last, from
the second to the second-to-last, and from the third to the third-to-last and so on, to make sense
of the content. 21 The uniqueness of Simias’ figure poems lies precisely in the challenging
relationship between the poet and the reader and the demanding expectations set by the former to
the latter. 22 This is a hyper-Hellenistic literary provocation, a poetic gasconade; the self-
conscious awareness of the difficulty and the demonstration – one could say exhibition – of the
uncompromising character of one’s poetry.
Polymetric Fabrications
The dexterity of the poet-faber in crafting his own artistic product (µιν κάµ’ in Egg 6) is
inextricably linked with his ability to create new paths of song through metre. 23 In his
interpretation and use of metre, Simias either takes upon himself the role of protos euretēs or that
of eclectic experimentalist who, in pure Hellenistic fashion, elevates a metrical rarity to
systematic, stichic application.24 Hephaestion in his Handbook of Metre comments on several of
his metrical idiosyncracies, including the Σιµιακόν, a hypercatalectic form of the greater
asclepiad.25 Hephasetion records two (!) further metrical structures under the name Σιµµίειον,
20
D’Alessandro (2011-12, 144) speaks of contravention of this principle. His otherwise attracting tri-
dimensional reading of the Axe as a single-bladed object, more suitable to a water-carrier or a carpenter,
rather than the double-bladed one used by warriors, seems incompatible with the bookish nature of the
poem postulated by D’Alessandro; the reader would need to imagine himself holding the object in his
hand and read each verse running from the edge of the blade to the handle, flipping the object horizontally
at the end of each verse. If this is the way the poem was conceived, Simias would sure be demanding too
much of his reader!
21
Hephaest. de poemat. prooem. 10, p. 61,19-62,6; de poemat. 4,6, p. 68,7-13 Consbruch. Passages are
discussed in Palumbo Stracca 2003, 571-73.
22
Luz 2010, 23 argued that this challenge consisted of ‘figuring out’ graphically (and ‘griphically’, one
could add) the final shape of the poem based on the poetic and metrical clues contained in the text itself,
which would initially be presented in a scrambled or prosaic layout.
23
Leo 1897, 66. For the metapoetic use of κάµνω see Call. Dian. 177 with Bing 1988, 83-88; cf. Pi. N.
9.3 ὕµνον πράσσετε.
24
Fantuzzi 1993, 62-66; Hunter 1996, 4-6.
25
p. 34.15-18 C. = Sim. fr. 12 F. = 16 P. τὸν στυγνὸν Μελανίππου φόνον (φονόν Wilamowitz,
inauditum?) αἱ πατροφόνων ἔριθοι; used already by Anacreon in combination with the glyconic, see PMG
376.2. On its (presumable or certain) stichic use see West 1982, 151. The ‘escorts of the parricides’ (cf.
Νείκης ἀνδροφόνοιο … ἔριθος, of Eris in fr. 21.2 Di M. of the contemporary Timo) are probably the
Erinyes, who [did not forget?] the homicide of Melanippus by Amphiaraus (Theb. fr. dub. 9 W. =
Pherecyd. fr. 109 D./97 F.) and, having pursued Oedipus, the parricide par excellence (cf. Pi. O. 2.41-42
Ἐρινύς / ἔπεφνε οἱ σὺν ἀλλαλοφονίαι γένος ἀρήϊον), now chase Amphiaraus’ son, the πατροφόνος
Alcmaon, who killed his own mother Eriphyle under the instigation of his father and was consequently
pursued by the Furies: Apollod. 3.6.2, 3.7.5. Differently Wilamowitz (1914, 102 n.) thought the Erinyes
were pursuing Tydeus, the actual murderer according to a different mythic tradition, possibly
Stesichorean (Cingano 1987, 96 and n. 20); but Tydeus was neither a πατροφόνος nor was he hunted by
the Erinyes, as he was already a dying man when he engaged in battle with Melanippus. If Simonides is
. 5
namely the catalectic form of the dactylic pentameter in disyllabum,26 and the catalectic variant
of the anapaestic trimeter, which was (first?) used stichically by Simias.27 A rather bold (and
exclusive, i.e. not mixed, as in drama, with other metres) use of cretics can be seen in his lyric
hymns. In the tetrameters of the Hymn to Doris, the undulating rhythm imposed by the cretic,
rapidly ascending and descending, mimics the movement of the waves, filtering the fluctuating
sound of the poet’s song as it reaches the goddess through the sea.28 In another hymnic incipit,
cretics are used to convey the solemnity of an address to either a high official or a king, who
receives the spear of war directly from Ares.29 In what seems to have been Hymn to Dionysus,
the poetic license offered by the resolution of the long syllables within the cretic is taken to the
extreme, as Simias crafts the entire poem in virtually holobrachic cretic tetrameters;30 here, foot
indeed behind Simias’ fragment, the Eriphyle may have been a source of inspiration to the Rhodian; a
fragment recovered from P.Oxy. 2618 fr. 1 = fr. 93 F. contains a dialogue, in which Adrastus tries to
dissuade Alcmaon from leaving a feast, presumably with a view to perpetrating the killing. I do not see
how Stesichorus’ Iliou Persis could come into play (Powell 1925, 114). For Stesichorus as the source of
the Axe see Finglass 2015, with n. 14 on his influence on Hellenistic poets.
26
p. 21.10-12 C. = Sim. fr. dub. 14 F. = 17 P. = Cadili 1995 no. 18 Χαῖρε ἄναξ ἕταρε ζαθέας µάκαρ ἥβας.
The verse, which may come from a Hymn to Heracles (he marries Hebe following his deification: see
West ad Hes. Th. 950, Di Gregorio 2010, 111), is not explicitly attributed to Simias by Hephaestion, but it
is likely to be by him: see Kwapisz 2013b, 161 n. 50. The metrical pattern is not uncommon in earlier
lyric: see Gentili – Lomiento 2003, 103-04.
27
p. 26.14-16 C. (cf. schol. B in Hephaest., p. 275.26-29 C.) = Sim. fr. 13 F. = 9 P. = Cadili 1995 no. 19
Ἱστία ἁγνά, ἀπ’ ἐϋξείνων µέσα τοίχων. Simias, however, seems to have replaced the first anapaest with a
dactyl, allowing hiatus after the first: see Fraenkel 1915, 49; van Ophuijsen 1987, 84.
28
p. 41.17-20 C. = Sim. fr. 9 F. = 13 P. = Cadili 1995 no. 20 Μᾶτερ ὦ πόντια (πότνια codd.) κλῦθι
νυµφᾶν ἁβρᾶν / Δῶρι, κυµοκτύπων (τ’ addidit Fränkel) ἤραν’ ἁλίων µυχῶν.
29
p. 41.22-23 C. = fr. 10 F. = 14 P. = Cadili 1995, no. 21 Σοὶ µὲν εὔιππος εὔπωλος ἐγχέσπαλος / δῶκεν
αἰχµὰν Ἐνυάλιος εὔσκοπον ἔχειν note the protracted alternation of the ō and ē sound accompanying the
cretic rhythm and imparting sharpness to it, while two resolutions in the second verse suddenly break the
uniformity of diction. Needless to point out is the evocative power at this chronological stage of the word
αἰχµάν, closely associated with the ideology of Hellenistic kingship and the rhetoric of the spear-won
land: see e.g. Theoc. 17.56-57, Lyc. 1228; Mehl 1980-81; Stewart 1993, 239-40; Barbantani 2007, 67-73.
This does not mean that, even if the addressee is someone from the Ptolemaic environment, the poem was
conceived at Alexandria; the cult of Alexander in Simias’ hometown, for example, probably developed
shortly after Alexander’s death or already in the monarch’s lifetime: Habicht 1970, 26-27; Wiemer 2002,
64.
30
p. 41.24-42.3 C. = 11 F. = fr. 15 P. (who unnecessarily amended the transmitted text: Di Gregorio
2008, 109) = Cadili 1995, no. 22 σέ ποτε Διὸς ἀνὰ πύµατα νεαρὲ κόρε νεβροχίτων. The line is taken by
Fränkel (1915, XX), Di Gregorio (2008, 109) and Kwapisz (2018, XX) to refer to a journey made by
Dionysus (cf. Philodamus) to the world’s farthest end, possibly India. It may be, however, that by πύµατα
‘nethermost’ (?) the poet alludes to the Underworld (cf. Luc. Trag. 295 π. Ταρτάρου βάθη, borrowed
possibly from Aeschyl. Pr. 1029), where Dionysus goes to bring his mother Semele back from the dead:
see Apollod. 3.5.3. Interestingly, the myth of his descent involves the handling of deer skin: see schol.
Lyc. 212, p. 99-100 S.; Maxwell-Stuart 1971. For an (apparently Etruscan) mythic tradition on Ariadne
being recovered by Dionysus in Hades before her ascent to the heavens, see Richardson 1979, 192-93.
The use of cretics would obviously be particularly appropriate for the Cretan princess Ariadne; the same
type of metre is used by Bacchylides to narrate Theseus’ Cretan adventure: see Maehler 2004, 17 on
Bacch. 17 (Dithyramb or Paean). For a similar use of πυµατός in Simias see ep. 24.4 F. = 20.4 P.
πυµάταν εἰς Ἀχέροντος ὁδόν.
. 6
division is set to match word division, with the number of syllables per metron gradually
increasing from one to four, creating a rhopalic line.31
We are fully, it would seem, within the realm of Lesepoesie. 32 Αnd yet there are several
examples of performance of Delphic songs in cretic-paeonic metre, including an invocation to
Dionysus.33 The employment of cretic-paeonic tetrameters (or pentameters) in two inscriptional
Delphic paeans with musical notation dated to the second half of the second century BC by the
poet Athenaeus and the Dionysiac technitēs Limenius (20-21 Pöhlmann-West = Furely-Bremer,
Greek Hymns, 2.6.1-2) shows that the cultic use of these metres continued throughout the
Hellenistic age. 34 Simias may have had an influence on Hermias, who composed stichic
sequences of cretics with resolution of the second long, presumably to be sung in public (SH
484), and may have been the same person who wrote a treatise On Gryneian Apollo describing
ritual practices at Apollinean and Dionysiac festivals (Athen. 4.149d-e).35 Shortly before Simias’
floruit, the Paean for Dionysus of Philodamus was also being performed at Delphi’s spring
festival (340/339), the Theoxenia, at a time when, following the reconstruction of the temple of
Apollo, the promotion of the cult of Dionysus was a clear priority for the Delphians.36 It is worth
noting that Simias’ Hymn to Hestia, entirely written – rather uniquely – in anapaestic catalectic
trimeters,37 was written around the same time as Aristonous’ hymn to the same goddess, which
celebrates Delphi as the central hearth of Greece.38 But there are many places other than Delphi
where Simias’ Hymn to Dionysus could have been performed (assuming it was); the popularity in
the fourth century of dithyrambic performances at local Dionysia, not only at Athens, but also in
Salamis, Eleusis, the Cyclades, and Iasos, is well attested. 39 A festival named Dionysia is
31
Kwapisz 2014, 618-19. The Egg as well may be said to have a ‘rhopalic’ structure, as the number of
metra increases one unit every two lines: see Kwapisz’s metrical reconstruction in 2013a, 41-42, differing
slightly from Fränkel 1915, 84 (based in turn on Wilamowitz 1906, 248-50) and Palumbo Stracca 2003,
585-86. On the rhopalic rhythm as characteristic of Simias’ poetic production, see now Kwapisz 2018,
XX, who persuasively argues that the (exceptionally frequent: fr. 1.10 F. = P., 7 F. = 4 P., 8.2 F. = 11.2
P.) use of monosyllabic word-end in Simias is purposely used to frustrate the rising flow of preceding
words.
32
West 1982, 145.
33
PMG 1031 θυµελικὰν ἴθι µάκαρ φιλοφρόνως εἰς ἔριν.
34
Rutherford 2001, 77-78; Gentili-Lomiento 2003, 227-28; Bowie 2015, 110-17; cf. also PMG 950 a-b
(cretic-paeonic verses for Apollo).
35
West 1982, 145 on performance. Lloyd-Jones and Parsons ad SH 484 aptly noted the similarities with
Simias’ frr. 13-14 P. On the identity of Hermias: it is uncertain, but seems plausible that he was the third-
century iambographer of Cyrion with the same name: Powell, CA, p. 237; Lloyd-Jones, SSH 484.
36
Furley-Bremer 2001, 125; LeVen 2014, 311-13; Bowie 2015, 106.
37
p. 26.14-16 C. = fr. 9 P. = 13 Fr. Ἱστία ἁγνά, ἀπ’ ἐυξείνων µέσα τοίχων. Leo 1897, 66 and Fränkel
1915, 49 point out the unequally distributed components within the anapaestic metron.
38
῾Ι]ερὰν ἱερῶν ἄνασσαν / Ἑστίαν [ὑ]µνήσοµεν, ἃ καὶ Ὄλυµπο[ν] / καὶ µυ[χὸν γ]αίας µεσόµφαλον αἰεὶ /
Πυθίαν [τε δ]άφναν κατέχουσα (text according to Furley – Bremer 2001, II, 38). One is left to wonder
whether the ‘hospitable walls’ of Simias may not have been those of the internal peribolos surrounding
the temple, which was successfully renovated possibly in those very years (334-333?) by two Delphian
architects, Agathon and Euainetos: see Hansen 1960, 432; Maass 1997, 92-94; or the rocky walls of Mt.
Parnassus protecting the city (cf. Pi. P. 6.9).
39
Pickard-Cambridge 19622, 57-58.
. 7
recorded as having taken place in 315 at Rhodes, Simias’ hometown,40 a place which enjoyed
friendly political relations with Alexander beginning in 332, when the city’s harbour was left at
the king’s disposal in his fight against Persia.41 The role of the king as paredros of the god may
have had an impact on poets writing Dionysiaca at that time.
It is in fact a comment on metre which anchors Simias chronologically to the second half of the
fourth century. According to Hephaestion, Philicus of Corcyra’s boastful self-appointment as
protos-euretes of choriambic hexameter poetry should be dismissed in light of Simias’ former,
albeit non-stichic, use of the same metre in the Axe and Wings.42 Philicus, a member of the tragic
Pleiad (T1, T3, T4 Kotlinska-Toma), is portrayed by Callisthenes as a Dionysian priest fronting
the ‘artists of Dionysus’ at the Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (T 6 K.-T.),43 an event
dated by most scholars in the early to mid-seventies to the third century BC. 44 The image
emerging from these sources is that of a senior religious leader appointed directly by the king,45
born between, say, 330-320. This is consistent with the information provided by Pliny (NH
35.106 = T 9 K.-T.), according to which Philicus was portrayed in a pensive, “Philitas-like” pose
in a painting by Protogenes of Caunos, which must have dated between 300-290, shortly before
the painter’s death. 46 If Hephaestion is right in assigning Simias priority over Philicus, the
interval between the two would be of at least one generation.47 A difference of twenty years
between Simias and Philicus would make the former a contemporary of Philitas, who became
40
Habicht 1970, 18-19; Buraselis 2012, 254. On the association of the technitai Dionysou at Rhodes in
the Early Hellenistic age see Le Guen 2001, I, 327-28.
41
Van Dessel, Hauben 1977; Berthold 1984, 34.
42
p. 30-31 C. = Philicus T 3 Kotlinska-Toma = Simias T b Fränkel Φίλικος δὲ ὁ Κερκυραῖος, εἷς ὢν τῆς
Πλειάδος, ἑξαµέτρῳ (scil. χοριαµβικῷ) συνέθηκεν ὅλον ποίηµα τῇ χθονίῃ µυστικὰ Δήµητρί τε καὶ
Φερσεφόνῃ καὶ Κλυµένῳ τὰ δῶρα. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ἀλαζονεύεται εὑρηκέναι Φίλικος λέγων καινογράφου
συνθέσεως τῆς Φιλίκου, γραµµατικοί, δῶρα φέρω πρὸς ὑµᾶς· ψεύδεται δέ· πρὸ γὰρ αὐτοῦ Σιµµίας ὁ
‘Ρόδιος ἐχρήσατο ἔν τε τῷ Πελέκει “’Ανδροθέᾳ κτλ”, κἀν ταῖς Πτέρυξιν “λεύσσετε κτλ”, πλὴν εἰ µὴ ἄρα
ὁ Φίλικος οὐχ ὡς πρῶτος εὑρηκὼς τὸ µέτρον λέγει, ἀλλ' ὡς πρῶτος τούτῳ τῷ µέτρῳ τὰ ὅλα ποιήµατα
γράψας.
43
For Philicus as priest, see T1 K.-T. = Suid. s.v. Φιλίσκος … τραγικὸς καὶ ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διονύσου ἐπὶ τοῦ
Φιλαδέλφου Πτολεµαίου γεγονώς (i.e. ἀκµάσας: see Rohde 1878/1879; Kotlisńka-Toma 2015, 71); T 6
K.T. = Callixinus Rhod. ap. Athen. 5.196a, 198b-c µεθ’ οὕς (scil. Σάτυρους) ἐπορεύετο Φιλίσκος ὁ
ποιητὴς ἱερεὺς ὤν Διονύσου καὶ πάντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται; possibly also T2 K.T. = fr.dub. 6
Provenzale = Inscriptions of Cos no. 218.5-6 Paton-Hicks = GVI 1729.5-6 καί σε πρὸς εὐσεβέων δόµον
ἄξεται ἐσθλὰ Φιλίσκος (the poet? see Kotlisńka-Toma 2015, 71) / δῶρα καὶ ἐν ζωοῖς κἀµ φθιµένοισι
τίνων.
44
Detailed status questionis in Provenzale 2007, 41-50; add Hölbl 1994, 36-7, 55, and Grainger 2010, 83,
both suggesting 274/5 BC.
45
Sistakou 2016, 83-84.
46
Reinach 1921, 366 n. 3. Pliny most probably refers to the tragedian of Corcyra, not his namesake from
Aegina: see Provenzale 2007, 60-64; Kotlisńka-Toma 2015, 71.
47
Fränkel 1915, 11: “cum Hephaestio omnia quae Simias scripserit antiquiora existimet omnibus Philici
scriptis, Simiam mortuum esse antequam Philicus scriber coeperit, aut certe Simiam aliquanto maiorem
natu fuisse quam Philicum, apparet. Nisi forte – quod fieri potuisse Pohlenz monet – Hephaestio (aut eius
auctor) sciebat quibus annis et Simiae technopaegnia et Philici carmen καινογράφου κτλ. composita
essent”
. 8
tutor to Ptolemy Philadelphus in his fourties.48 A date of birth for the Rhodian between 350-340
can therefore be reasonably assumed.
Excursions in Homeric diction
Whilst it is difficult not to think that it was Simias’ fondness for rarities and his wild pursuit of
polymetry that sparked Meleager’s blunt remark, his epigrams do not – curiously enough - seem
to deserve the mark of the wild pear. The inference, it must be noted, is made only on a very
limited number of them. 49 The scarcity of Simias’ epigrams available to us appears to be
imputable to Meleager himself, who may have carried out a drastic pruning of the material from
the Rhodian’s book of epigrams in the assembling of his Garland, perhaps on aesthetic
grounds.50 Authors like Philitas who shared with Simias the same penchant for hard philology
(‘philological perversion’, as Kwapisz aptly calls it) are curiously left out of the collection.51
The extant epigrams by Simias in the Greek Anthology are all paralleled by other Hellenistic
epigrams on the same themes, and it may well be that theme alone justified their inclusion. The
epigram on the locust (AP 7.193), possibly a caption for a miniature cage, where the singing
insect is placed in the custody of the singing human, the poet, formed a sub-group with other
epigrams of this type available at the time of Meleager.52 The epigram on the partridge (AP
7.203), which would later be grouped with other epigrams on the same theme by Agathias and a
student of his (204-06), seems strongly connected with Simias’ locust epigram, as Kwapisz has
recently demonstrated;53 they both belong to the type of the ‘musical animal’, they both have
strong metapoetic appeal (cf. Call. Aet. fr. 1.29–36 on the cicada and Alcman fr. 39 Davies = 91
Calame on the partridge), and they almost create a continuous narrative when read one after the
other;54 Simias’ captive partridge is dead and replaced in her master’s house by a more pleasant-
sounding locust. The partridge is humorously humanized; she ends her life by undertaking her
last journey to the Acheron, like ordinary humans and heroes. Beyond the facetious façade,
48
Spanoudakis 2002, 23; cf. Sbardella 2000, 8-9.
49
Maas 1927, 157 acknowledged the difference in style between the technopaignia and the epigrams,
which “bieten nichts dergleichen”, but deemed it very unlikely that Meleager’s apostrophe βρωτὴ ἀχράς
meant anything in particular.
50
Kwapisz 2018, XX.
51
For a comparable case, see the observations of Magnelli 2007a, 165 on Callimachus. The unusual
clarity and straightforwardness preserved by him in his epigrams (as compared to his more ambitious
elegiac and iambic poems, which contain learned allusions and abstruse vocabulary), may be the reason
he survived Meleager’s flower-culling.
52
Ep. 25 Fr. = 19 Pf. τάνδε κατ’ εὔδενδρον στείβων δρίος εἴρυσα χειρί / πτώσσουσαν βροµίας οἰνάδος ἐν
πετάλοις, / ὄφρα µοι εὐερκεῖ καναχὰν δόµῳ ἔνδοθι θείη / τερπνὰ δι’ ἀγλώσσου φθεγγοµένα στόµατος. On
ἀκρίδες, see A.P. VII 189-90, 192-98 (Aristodicus, Anyte/Leonidas, Mnasalcas, Meleager, Phaennus,
Leonidas); Geoghegan ad Anyte 11 and 20. On τέττιγες, see Leonidas A.P. 6.120 = HE LXXXIX; Anyte
A.P. 7.190 = HE XX = ep. 20 Geoghegan; Meleager A.P. 7.196 = HE XIII; and possibly Nicias, A.P.
7.200 = HE IV. Fränkel 1905, 102 notes the numerous imitations of v. 4 by later epigrammatists.
53
Ep. 24 Fr. = 20 P. οὐκέτ’ ἀν’ ὑλῆεν δρίος εὔσκιον, ἀγρότα πέρδιξ, / ἠχήεσσαν ἱεῖς γῆρυν ἀπὸ στόµατος,
/ θηρεύων βαλιοὺς συνοµήλικας ἐν νοµῷ ὕλης· / ᾤχεο γὰρ πυµάταν εἰς Ἀχέροντος ὁδόν.
54
To the point that P. LeVen (ap. Kwapisz 2018, XX) has suggested establishing a narrative link between
the two; the partridge, who may have been kept in the same cage, has now died and is being replaced by
the locust, which – unlike the partridge – is able to delight the poet with its voice.
. 9
however, the voyage of the hunting partridge to the Underworld becomes a journey into the
otherwordly land of Homeric language.
Sistakou argues that θηρεύων has the function of clarifying a scholarly debate on the meaning of
the Homeric hapax ἀγρότα: ‘hunting’ rather than ‘rustic’.55 Analogously, by placing ὑλῆεν and
εὔσκιον next to the Homeric glossa δρίος Simias would provide, here and in the locust epigram
(25.1 Fr. εὔδενδρον … δρίος) his own explanation of the meaning. This may well be true;
εὔδενδρον does vary the Homeric πολυανθέος in Od. 14.353 δ. π. ὕλης, and Simias may wish to
signal that a δρίος consists of trees rather than flowers and foliage, and that shadow is a
constitutive element of it. However, Hes. Op. 530 δρία βησσήεντα ‘woody copses’ already made
the meaning uncontroversial, cf. also schοl. Hom. Od. 14.353 δρίος· σύνδενδρον χωρίον,
δρυώδης καὶ σύσκιος τόπος. I believe Simias is taking us down a different (Homeric) route. By
leaving the original Homeric hiatus in v. 3 ἐν νοµῷ ὕλης, Simias is introducing a sophisticated
yet light-hearted allusion to Hom. Od. 10.159 κατήϊεν ἐκ νοµοῦ ὕλης, where a poor, high-horned
(ὑψίκερων, cf. ep. 26 fr. infra) stag, looking for a shady place that may shelter him from the sun
(δὴ γάρ µιν ἔχεν µένος ἠελίοιο, 160), comes unaware in the way of Odysseus (εἰς ὁδὸν αὐτὴν,
158), is slain by him and, like the partridge, dies (ἀπὸ δ’ ἔπτατο θυµός, 163). It then becomes
clear that εἰς Ἀχέροντος ὁδόν is playfully echoing Homer.56
Simias’ epigram on the horn (AP 6.113) may also owe its inclusion to its place within the
epigrammatic sub-unit centered on votive kerata.57 The horn served first as a hook for wreaths
and was later turned into a bow. 58 According to Sistakou, Simias, by using the Homeric
ἄγραυλος, would be engaging in a philological discussion on the meaning of the adjective, which
can be rendered either as ‘field-dwelling’ or ‘wild’, favouring, in typical Hellenistic fashion, the
second, marginal meaning: see schol. D Il. 17.521 ἀγραύλοιο· ἐν αὐλιζοµένου ἢ ὑπαιθρίου καὶ
ἀγρίου.59 This may be true, although the three adjectives in the scholion all belong to the same
semantic sphere. My view is that Simias is playing with the expectation of the reader, who
assumes ἀγραύλοιο in the first hemistich will qualify cattle in the second, in accordance with
Homeric usage, where the genitive is consistently accompanied by βοός (see e.g. Il. 24.81 ἥ τε
κατ’ ἀ. βοὸς κέρα, in the same metrical placement); βοός does occur, but not until v. 4, where it
explains (pace Sistakou) the meaning of the - this time notoriously- controversial Homeric
55
Sistakou 2007, 395, developing the analysis of Rengakos 1994, 32-33; see particularly Hesych. α 34
ἀγρόται· ἀγροῖκοι. ἢ θηρευταί.
56
Simias’ tongue-in-cheek humour is emphasized when we consider the yet-unnoticed punning contrast
with a lofty Pindaric passage, Pi. P. 11/21 Ἀχέροντος ἀκτὰν παρ’ εὔσκιον, where the ‘well-shadowed’
(Pindaric hapax) brink of the Acheron awaits Cassandra, struck down by Clytemnestra. Note also that
floral and arboreal vocabulary used in ep. 24.1, and 26.2 = AP VII 193 and 203 appear unaltered in
Theocritus’ description of the shady precinct arched by green foliage interwoven with green foliage in
7.8-9 εὔσκιον … / χλωροῖς πετάλοισι; thence, Andromachus (1st cent. AD), LXII 61-2 Heitsch κυάµοιο
τὸν εὔσκιον ἔτρεφεν ὕδωρ … πολλοῖς κρυπτόµενον πετάλοις.
57
Cf. Antipater 115, which is anterior to Meleager, and Sam(i)us AP 6.114 and 116, on which see Gow-
Page 1965, 509-10.
58
Ep. 26 Fr. = 18 P. πρόσθε µὲν ἀγραύλοιο δασύτριχος (Reiske, perhaps unnecessarily : διάτριχος cod.)
ἰξάλου αἰγός / δοιὰ κέρα (Fr. : δοιὸν ἐπὶ P : δοιὼ ἐπὶ Pl., cf. δια- supra), χλωροῖς ἐστεφόµαν πετάλοις· /
νῦν δέ µε Νικοµάχῳ κεραοξόος ἥρµοσε τέκτων, / ἐντανύσας ἕλικος καρτερὰ νεῦρα βοός.
59
Sistakou 2007, 394; cf. Hom. Il. 4.105-6 on Pandarus’ τόξον ἐΰξοον ἰξάλου αἰγὸς / ἀγρίου.
. 10
adjective ἕλιξ: ‘twisted’, said of horns, as opposed to ‘black’, a sense apparently endorsed by
Hellenistic poets.60
The epigram would seem to be epideictic in nature rather than dedicatory, but the lemma reports
the word ἀνάθηµα along with the name of the recipient, Nicomachus. This is, of course, a very
common name. However, we know of a Nicomachus, general of Pyrrhus, coming to the aid of
the Crotoniates during the king’s Sicilian campaign against Rome, and Pyrrhus’ anti-Trojan
propaganga has been connected with Simias’ Gorgo.61 The literary model for this epigram, as it
has been observed, is the Homeric passage on the bow of the archer Pandarus, Aeneas’
companion, killed by Diomedes in the Iliad.62 Thus, Simias’ bow may represent allusively a
spoil of war. If the archer is the Nicomachus in question, the poem would most likely be an
anathematikon commissioned by a prominent individual, possibly Nicomachus himself, to
accompany his weapon. Dedication of weapons and armour by rulers or distinguished members
of the royal elite was standard practice in the Hellenistic age; when read along these lines,
Simias’ poem becomes comparable with e.g. the epigram by Callimachus on the bow of
Echemmas (AP 6.121), possibly a high ranking Ptolemaic official; Anyte’s quatrain on the
javelin of the Cretan warrior Echecratidas (AP 6.123), and Nicias’ epigram on the spear and
warlike gear dedicated by two unidentified individuals to Athena and Artemis (AP 6.122 and
127).63
Lecturing Simias on Platonic Learning
Two epigrams on the tomb of Sophocles have been attributed to a Sim(m)ias by the lemmatist of
the Greek Anthology (A.P. VII 21-22). Scribe J (Constantine the Rhodian?), identifies this as
Simias of Thebes, adding the ethnic Θηβαίου to the lemmatist’s statement εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν
Σοφοκλέα Σιµµίου in A.P. VII 21. The lemma of the following epigram, A.P. VII 22, simply
states τοῦ αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν, with J specifying Σοφοκλέα τὸν Σοφίλλου.64 Simmias of Thebes
is, of course, the philosopher and close associate of Socrates mentioned in several Platonic
dialogues as well as Xenophon’s Memorabilia (1.2.48, 3.11.17). He was the author of twenty-
three Socratic dialogues (D.L. 2.124-25), but no epigrams other than these two have ever been
attributed to him, which makes Simias of Rhodes the poet meant in the original lemma.65
60
see schol. in Hom. Od. 1.92 g-h P., discussing εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς; Gow ad Theocr. 25.127, Hollis
ad Call. Hec. fr. 116.1. Interpretatio Homerica can be seen already in h.Merc. 192: see Vergados ad loc.;
Hainsworth ad Hom. Il. 9.466.
61
Canavero 2002, 161-64; see infra p. XX on Simias’ Gorgo.
62
Gow-Page 1965, 512.
63
Fantuzzi-Hunter 2004, 312-13; Cairns 2016, 211-12, expanding on the Macedonian/Ptolemaic
connotation of hunting. See, in addition, ‘Simonides’ LXI (probably early Hellenistic). Nicias VII G.-P.
clearly imitates Simias’ animal epigrams: see Fränkel 1915, 103-04.
64
‘C’, the so-called Corrector, added τὸν Ἀθηναῖον τὸν συγχρονίσαντα Εὐριπίδῃ to J’s manuscript lemma
in the Greek Anthology.
65
The epigrammatic pair has been considered the work of the Rhodian by Wilamowitz, Meineke, Bergk,
Stadtmüller, and Diehl; Fränkel, Powell were hesitant; only Sternbach rejected them, and probably for the
wrong reason of being written in Attic rather than Doric: see Gow-Page 1965, 513, effectively endorsing
Wilamowitz’s idea (1913, 226), who explains J’s note as an ‘untimely recollection from the Phaedo’.
. 11
AP VII 21 is pseudo-inscriptional and fairly conventional in theme and vocabulary;66 it addresses
Sophocles directly as a star of the Attic muse,67 projecting his poetry into a future of fame and
unending recognition. Eternal life (ὁ περισσός … αἰών) will be guaranteed by the success his
books (ἀθανάτοις) have and will continue to enjoy, making his intellect immortal (κόµην,
crowning the head), and thus counteracting the effects of time on the body, constrained in a tomb
(τύµβος ἔχει) and concealed by the soil (γῆς µέρος, with ὀλίγον contrasting with περισσός). The
image of the tomb is connected with the materiality of the columns of writing preserving the text
on the papyrus surface (ἐν σελίσιν).68 The epigram seems to have enjoyed a certain popularity, if
we consider that Leonidas (AP VII 19 = HE LVII, tomb of Alcman)69, Erucius (AP VII 36 =
GPh XI, tomb of Sophocles), Antipater of Thessalonica (AP IX 186 = GPh CIII, praise of
Aristophanes),70 and an unknown (local?) poet from second-century Sardinia71 all seem to have
known and imitated these verses. It is unlikely that Simias of Thebes’ fame as an epigrammatist
would have elicited this sort of response. In addition, the hapax Ἀχαρνίτης (for Ἀχαρνεύς in A.P.
IX 186.1), here said of the ivy, seems to be extracted by Stephanus of Byzantium (α 565, p. 315
B.), who happens to be the source of three other fragments of Simias (fr. 1.9-13 Fr./P., 4 Fr./8 P.,
6 Fr./10 P.72
The second poem, AP VII 22, was clearly written with the first in mind;73 the image of the
elaborate curls of the ivy (κισσέ, 1), which recall the sinuosity of the stretched horn in AP VI
113.3-4, remains; this time the plant juts forth its shoots all over the tomb (ὑπὲρ τύµβοιο …
ἐκπροχέων); the poet’s κόµη has become one with his floral ornament (χλοεροὺς … πλοκάµους),
which consecrated him star of the tragic Muse. The name of Sophocles is still prominently
placed in the opening line after the main caesura; the blooming imagery continues (τεθηλώς >
θάλλοι), fostering the sense of renewed burgeoning life following the poet’s death. The poem is
artfully built on alternating figures of sound; in odd verses (1, 3) plosive consonants π and β
sculpt the sound of the first hemistich, while voiceless coronal ρ and σ articulate the second; in
66
= ep. 22 Pf. τόν σε χοροῖς µέλψαντα Σοϕοκλέα, παῖδα Σοϕίλλου, / τὸν τραγικῆς Μούσης ἀστέρα
Κεκρόπιον, / πολλάκις ὃν θυµέλῃσι καὶ ἐν σκηνῇσι τεθηλὼς / βλαισὸς ’Αχαρνίτης κισσὸς ἔρεψε
κόµην, / τύµβος ἔχει καὶ γῆς ὀλίγον µέρος, ἀλλ’ ὁ περισσὸς / αἰὼν ἀθανάτοις δέρκεται ἐν σελίσιν.
67
cf. Alcaeus AP 7.1.8, similarly of Homer.
68
Ιt would be therefore legitimate to visualize the epigram copied on the initial sheet of an edition of
Sophocles: thus Kwapisz 2018, XX, who suggests A.P. VII 21 might have been composed to appear on a
private copy or, less likely, an ‘official’ edition of Sophocles’ plays such as the one by Alexander
Aetolus.
69
1-3 τὸν χαριέντ’ Ἀλκµᾶνα, τὸν ὑµνητῆρ’ ὑµεναίων / κύκνον, τὸν Μουσῶν ἄξια µελψάµενον, / τύµβος
ἔχει. Note the formulaic τ. ἔ., found in inscriptions dating from at least the third century BC (see e.g.
TAM V2 1326.1-2; cf. IG II2 13103.2, I Thess. I 92.2, from the fourth and early third century, where it is
supplied by the editors), which should not be used to establish any intertextual relationship between
Simias and Leonidas (see below), pace Geffcken 1896, 65; Fränkel 1915, 96.
70
Details in Fränkel 1915, 95-96.
71
GVI 2005.28-29 = Carm. epigr. Sard. 6.64-65 in Magnelli 2007b, 37-38.
72
Gow-Page 1965, 514.
73
= ep. 23 Fr. ’Ηρέµ’ ὑπὲρ τύµβοιο Σοϕοκλέος, ἠρέµα, κισσέ, / ἑρπύζοις χλοεροὺς ἐκπροχέων
πλοκάµους, / καὶ πέταλον πάντῃ θάλλοι ῥόδου ἥ τε ϕιλορρὼξ / ἄµπελος ὑγρὰ πέριξ κλήµατα χευαµένη, /
εἵνεκεν εὐµαθίης (codd. : εὐεπίης C) πινυτόϕρονος, ἣν ὁ µελιχρὸς / ἤσκηcεν Μουσῶν ἄµµιγα καὶ
Χαρίτων.
. 12
even ones, labial π alternates with velar κ/χ (2, 4). A further correspondence may be drawn
between ὁ περισσός and ὁ µελιχρός, closing the penultimate line of each epigram; περισσός
‘further’, ‘in excess’, placed next to αἰών in AP VII 21, cannot but mean ‘the time still to come’,
‘the ages after your death’, 74 but taken on its own the adjective has strong connotations of
knowledge management and cognition, and is used as term of praise for ‘subtle’, ‘acute’ in
Aristoteles.75
The theme of knowledge returns in the last two lines of the second epigram, where the Muses’
presence makes the sound of the couplet change, softened by the alliteration of nasal consonant µ
and ν insinuating into the previous labial/velar pattern. Sophocles, crowned by the gentle and
sinuous movement of the ivy, is praised for his εὐµαθία πινυτόφρων, ‘wise-hearted learning’. As
it has been observed, εὐµαθία ‘facility at’ or ‘propensity to learning’, which is extremely rare in
poetry, makes Sophocles look more like a Hellenistic philologos trapped in Timon’s cage of
knowledge than a master of tragic poetry. 76 Perhaps Simias’ εὐµαθία should not be taken as
‘interest in erudition’, but as the ability to express learning leading to wisdom. Simias would be
crowning Sophocles as the poet of tragic µάθησις, an apt definition, if we consider that ‘learning
the truth too late’ is a leading tragic theme, the inevitability of which the Sophoclean hero(ine)
has to face.77 By εὐµαθίη πινυτόφρων (= εὐµαθής φρόνησις), Simias here seems to imply that
Sophocles, by coming in contact with both the Muses (Μουσῶν ἄµµιγα), the source of wisdom,
and the Charites (καὶ Χαρίτων), the symbols of beauty, was able to make wisdom intelligible to
men. The term, however, is clearly susceptible to philological (mis)interpretation; and it
probably was in antiquity as well.
As Fantuzzi observes, Simias’ verses are most probably being alluded to by Callimachus in his
epigram on the mask of the yawning Dionysus, which starts with the same word, εὐµαθίην.78
Here, the god’s bored reaction to pupils reciting a piece of tragedy learnt by heart recreates
Callimachus’ own feeling towards the uninspiring contemporary tragic scene;79 the tragedy in
question is Euripides’ Bacchae, from which comes the mechanically repeated verse ‘ἱερὸς ὁ
πλόκαµος’.80 Simias’ name would be concealed behind that of the dedicator of the mask, Simus
son of Miccus, (i.e. the ‘little one’, but also ‘the one worth little’), and possibly the adjective
Samian, used of the temple of Διόνυσος Κεχηνώς on the island.81 But why is Simias targeted?
74
Gow-Page 1965, ibid.; Magnelli 2007b, 38 n. 10.
75
Top. 141 b 13 τὰ µὲν γὰρ τῆς τυχούσης τὰ δ’ ἀκριβοῦς περιττῆς διανοίας καταµαθεῖν ἐστίν: accurate
and superior understanding is necessary to grasp less intelligible forms and shapes. Ironically, in
Sophocles περισσός is used of unreasonable heroic grandiosity: see Knox 1964, 24-25.
76
Fantuzzi 2007, 482. The Corrector’s emendation εὐεπίης is evidently proposed out of bafflement; cf.
Meleager AP 12.257.8 = ΗΕ 4729 τέρµασιν εὐµαθίας = σοφίας, the learned work of collecting epigrams,
and Leonidas of Alexandria AP 6.325.4 = FGE 1879 σῆµα εὐµαθίας, evidence of poetic skill (both
passages cited in Fantuzzi 2007, 482 n. 14).
77
Knox 1964, 15 on anagnorisis in Electra, Oedipus the King, Ajax, and Prometheus; see also Easterling
ad Tr. 143 ἐκµάθοις and 711 τὴν µάθησιν ἄρνυµαι; Finglass ad El. 1032 µάθησις.
78
A.P. VI 310 = HE 1165-70 Εὐµαθίην ᾐτεῖτο διδοὺς ἐµὲ Σῖµος ὁ Μίκκου / ταῖς Μούσαις· αἱ δὲ Γλαῦκος
ὅκως ἔδοσαν / ἀντ' ὀλίγου µέγα δῶρον. ἐγὼ δ’ ἀνὰ τῇδε κεχηνώς / κεῖµαι τοῦ Σαµίου διπλόον ὁ τραγικός
/ παιδαρίων Διόνυσος ἐπήκοος· οἱ δὲ λέγουσιν / ‘ἱερὸς ὁ πλόκαµος’, τοὐµὸν ὄνειαρ ἐµοί.
79
Fantuzzi 2007, ibid.
80
E. Ba. 494, possibly recalling Simias’ χλοεροὺς … πλοκάµους
81
On which Euph. frr. 20-21 L.
. 13
Fantuzzi believes that Callimachus, from the heights of his Alexandrian doctrine, aims to teach
Simias a lesson on the meaning of εὐµαθία by pointing out that Simias’ lexical choice would be
more appropriate to a schoolboy than a great tragic poet. Indeed, Callimachus intends εὐµαθία in
the Platonic sense of ‘readiness in apprehending’, with no reference to the depth and quality of
someone’s knowledge.82
I think we can push this interpretation even further by arguing that Callimachus’ lesson is in fact
a lecture on Platonic learning.83 At the beginning of book six of the Republic, in preparation for
the discussion on true knowledge (episteme) as propaedeutic to good ruling, Socrates mentions to
Glaucon εὐµαθία as one of the qualities of the genuine philosopher, along with courage, high-
mindedness, and memory. 84 It has gone unnoticed that Callimachus’ epigram contains two
citations, almost verbatim, from the Republic: the proverbial ‘to tell my own dream’, i.e.
something one already knows (λέγουσιν … τοὐµὸν ὄνειαρ ἐµοί, 5-6), which is cited by
Glaucon’s brother Adeimantus in response to a remark by Socrates on freedom: τὸ ἐµόν γ’, ἔφη,
ἐµοὶ λέγεις ὄναρ (R. 563d); and Dionysus’ despondent comment ἐγὼ δ’ ἀνὰ τῆιδε κεχηνώς,
recalling Socrates’ remarks to Glaucon on the illusion of learning the essence of something
(ἐπιστήµην) by simply looking upward with one’s mouth wide open: ἐγὼ γὰρ … ἐάν τέ τις ἄνω
κεκηνώς … τῶν αἰσθητῶν τι ἐπιχειρῇ µανθάνειν (R. 529b).85 Whilst Simias’ poetic persona is
hidden behind Simos, Callimachus’ Glaucus, the Iliadic hero who exchanges with Diomede
golden armor for bronze, recalls Glaucon in the Republic, who receives true knowledge from
Socrates for simply serving as his interlocutor. In R. 474d, Glaucon and Socrates discuss
physiognomics, concluding that it is easy for judgement to be obfuscated by passion; someone
who is σιµός, for instance, will be excused for his snub nose and may be seen as attractive
(ἐπίχαρις) under the mere impulse of desire. All these elements seem to me to converge into
haughty criticism of ‘snub-nosed’ Simias as a poet. Paraphrasing Callimachus: ‘Simias has
received too much recognition for the kind of poetry he wrote. He showed εὐµαθία to impress his
readers, and they, like Glaucus, felt into his trap, calling charming (ἐπίχαρις) what has little
worth (µίκκος). And here I am, reading his epigrams on Sophocles, which I find terribly dull, for
I know already how they are going to end.’
Callimachus’ literary polemics should not be taken as marker of Simias’ instant and growing
popularity. Indeed, outside grammarians’ circles, he seems to have been known mostly as a
writer of epigrams and as the author of the technopaegnia. Simias’ epigrams travelled as far as
Rome, but only thanks to Meleager’s Garland, which reached the capital possibly via Archias,
early enough for Catullus to read and cite it.86 It is unclear whether Diogenes Laertius, who
82
cf. Pl. Chrm. 169E ἡ µὲν εὐµαθία ταχέως µανθάνειν; Arist. Rh. 1362b 24 ἔτι εὐφυΐα, µνήµη, εὐµάθεια,
ἀγχίνοια.
83
On Platonic “evocations” in Callimachus see Stephens ad Cer. 1; Acosta-Hughes – Stephens 2011, 23-
83.
84
490C: προσῆκον τούτοις (philosophers) ἀνδρεία, µεγαλοπρέπεια, εὐµάθεια, µνήµη; cf. infra 618 d on
εὐµαθίαι καὶ δυσµαθίαι, quickness of apprehension as opposed to dullness.
85
Socrates’ own approach to the study of the heavens is described in a similar way in Ar. Nub.172 ἄνω
κεχηνότος.
86
A probable allusion in Catullus 3.11 to Simias’ ep. 24.4 Fr. was spotted first by R. Ellis (1876, 8):
Lesbia’s sparrow enters Hades through an iter tenebricosum; Simias’ partridge travels εἰς Ἀχέροντος ὁδόν
Note that beloved animals, unlike humans, do not cross the Acheron in the Greek Anthology.
. 14
reports an anonymous epigram on Plato’s σωφροσύνη later attributed to Simias by the
Anthology’s Corrector, accessed his work directly.87 The Phoenix of Laevius (fr. 8 Blänsdorf)
may have been inspired by Simias’ Wings, which became part, along with the Axe and the Egg,
of a collection accessed by Julius Vestinus in ca. 132 AD.88 The same cannot be said of Simias’
lyric hymns and his hexameter works. Simias’ distinguished reputation among his younger
learned contemporaries89 and later generationsof grammarians90 did not prevent the gradual but
inexorable disappearance of his more arduous and ambitious poetic heritage, i.e. the
ethnographic Apollo, the supposedly epic Gorgo, the didactic Months, and his various lyric
hymns. The sources for these fragments are either Imperial and Byzantine grammarians,
lexicographers or metrical theorists (Hephaestion, Choeroboscus, Stephanus, Tzetzes), or authors
interested in, rather than Simias’ literary profile, specific lexical rarities (Clement of Alexandria,
Athenaeus and perhaps Plutarch), who must have consulted Simias on florilegia or metrical
handbooks rather than actual editions. The impression is that Simias’ poems stopped circulating,
87
AP 7.60 = Diogenes Laertius III 43 = ep. spurium 28c Fr: Σωφροσύνῃ προφέρων θνητῶν ἤθει τε δικαίῳ
/ ἐνθάδε κεῖται θεῖος Ἀριστοκλέης, / εἰ δέ τις ἐκ πάντων σοφίης µέγαν ἔσχεν ἔπαινον / οὗτος ἔχει πουλὺν
καὶ φθόνον οὐ φέρεται. It is introduced in P by the lemma εἰς Πλάτωνα, to which the corrector ‘C’ added
τὸν φιλόσοφον (i.e. not the comic poet) Σιµµίου. Is this the Rhodian or the Theban? Gow & Page thought
this to be the only epigram by ‘Simias’ reaching the Anthology via a source other than Meleager, and
rejected the ascription to the Rhodian on this basis. They did not consider, however, ep. dub. 28b Fr.,
which scholars are now inclined to assign to Simias: see Geoghegan 1979, 47 and Garulli 2014, 30. The
infraction (? cf. Fränkel 1915 on the use of τε) of the ‘Callimachean’ law of Tiedke-Mayer in A.P. 7.60.1
is perhaps not a critical argument against the attribution to the Rhodian, pace Wilamowitz 1913, 226 n. 1:
for analogous cases in Anyte, Hegesippus, and (possibly) Hedylus see Geffcken 1896, 142 n. 4. L. 4
φθόνον οὐ φέρεται has heavily Callimachean overtones, but this may simply be a coincidence.
Notopoulos (1942, 287) considered the epigram Alexandrian, but rejected the ascription to Simias of
Rhodes. I think the Rhodian is in fact likely to be the Simias contemplated – whether rightly or wrongly -
in C’s inscription; to C, Simias of Rhodes is the only epigrammatist with that name. C, who took the
portion of manuscript P in hand after it had been dealt with by J and collated it with an apograph of
Cephalas’ anthology made by Michael Chartophylax, never mentions the Theban in his notes. His
scholarly authority should not be dismissed; he is responsible for the correction of many attributions
(Gow-Page 1965, xxxvii-xxxviii; Cameron 1993, 108-16; Lauxtermann 2003, 84-85); he corrects P’s
lemma to AP 6.113 = Simias III G.-P. from ἀνάθηµα παρὰ Σιµίου to ἀνάθηµα παρὰ Νικοµάχου Σιµµίου
γραµµατικοῦ; he rightly rejects the lemma ἀνάθηµα τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ παρὰ Φιλίππου τοῦ αὐτοῦ (i.e. Σιµίου)
by P in A.P. 6.114 = Samius 6.114, deleting αὐτοῦ and reporting τοῦ Ἀµύντου Φιλίππου Θεσσαλονικέως:
for the chronological inconsistency that makes Simias of Rhodes an unlikely candidate for the attribution
see Gow-Page 1965, 509. My impression is that C, having reached VII 21, was unsure about the
ascription of the couplet to the Theban, checked Cephalas (via M. Chartophylax), and having found no
illuminating information, left J’s note as it was.
88
Kwapisz 2013, 30-31, 47-50.
89
Echoes of him can be seen in Callimachus: Del. 23 κεῖναι (islands) µὲν πύργοισι περισκεπέεσσιν
ἐρυµναί ~ Simias fr. 1.7-8 Fr. ἐλάταισι περιχλώρῃσιν ἐρυµνάς / νήσους (see Fränkel 1915, 19-20);
Hermesianax, fr. 1 L. µόνη δὲ οἱ ἐφλέγετο γλήν ~ Simias fr. 7 Fr. πολύλλιστος φλέγεται κράς
(Reitzenstein 1893, 135); on Anyte see supra n. XXX).
90
The teacher of Aristophanes of Byzantius, Dionysius Iambus, borrows the hexameter ending ἁλυκὴ ζάψ
(in SH 389) directly from Simias fr. 8.2 Fr. (Fränkel 1915, 46)
. 15
if not earlier, at the beginning of the Imperial age.91 Let us try to reconstruct the content of these
three soon-to-be-forgotten works.
The Apollo: Paradoxography into Poetry
Simias’ hexametric production is limited to one or two works. His Apollo constitutes one of the
earliest examples, along with the contemporary elegiac Periplus of Zenothemis 92 of
paradoxography in poetic form;93 here, Simias portrays the fabulous voyage on the wings of
Apollo of a character known through one of the stories of the Metamorphoses of Antoninus
Liberalis: the Babylonian Cleinis, who gives a detailed account of the lands visited on his flight
to the land of the Hyperboreans and back to his native city. This is, in essence, the first example
of a Hellenistic geographical catalogue, inspired in structure and narrative technique by the most
authoritative example of this type of text in verse, the Hesiodic account of the flight of Calais
and Zetes, who chased the Harpies over the Scythians and the Hyperboreans (fr. 150 M.-W. =
98 M.). 94 Style and vocabulary are somewhat reminiscent of Aristeas’ quasi-sciencefictional
Arimaspea,95 a work that Bolton considers to have been already lost in the early Hellenistic age,
but which Simias could have accessed through excerpts and paradoxographical collections, 96
along with works like Abaris’ Arrival of Apollo among the Hyperboreans and possibly Philo of
Heraclea’s Reply to Nymphis Concerning His Wonders; while little is known of either, the titles
suggest the same sort of narrative framework as Simias’ Apollo.97
To label the text ‘paradoxography’ alone does not do full justice to Simias’ preparatory
investigation into the geographical background of the north-eastern regions of the world; indeed,
he appears to be giving the precise geographical coordinates of these people, drawing data from
proto-scientific sources. Apollo brings Cleinis on his wings from the Upper North regions, where
the legendary land of the Hyperboreans is located (fr. 1.1-2), down to Scythia (‘the region of the
Massagetae’, 3-4), and the streams of a river he calls Κάµπασος. This at first looks like an
91
From P.Herc. 1428, fr. IV 2-4 = 18 Fr. = 9 (app.) P., Philodemus mentions Simias’ Hymn to Hestia, but
it is unclear whether he would have had direct access to the poem: see Ciampa 2006, 99. In Perale 2014, I
tried to show that the hexameter poem transmitted by the second-century papyrus Mich. III 139 (= SH
906) is not by Simias; cf. now Kwapisz 2018, XX.
92
On paradoxography and Hellenistic poetics see Krevans 2004, 175-76; Harder, XX, in this volume.
93
Fr. 1 Fränkell = 1 Powell (text as in Perale 2011a, 368-69, with small amendments): τηλυγέτων
δ’ἀφνειὸν ‘Υπερβορέων ἀνὰ δῆµον, / τοῖς δὴ καί ποτ’ ἄναξ ἥρως παρεδαίσατο Περσεύς· / ἔνθα δὲ
Μασσαγέται θούρων ἐπιβήτορες ἵππων / ναίουσιν τόξοισι πεποιθότες ὠκυβόλοισιν· / θεσπέσιόν τε περὶ
ῥόον ἤλυθον ἀενάοιο / Καµπάσου, εἰς ἅλα δῖαν ὃς ἀθάνατον φέρει ὕδωρ. / ἐκ δ’ ἱκόµην ἐλάταισι
περιχλωρῇσιν ἐρυµνὰς / νήσους ὑψικόµοισιν ἐπηρεφέας δονάκεσσιν. / ‘Ηµικύνων τ’ ἐνόησα γένος
περιώσιον ἀνδρῶν, / τοῖς ὤµων ἐφύπερθεν ἐϋστρεφέων κύνεος κράς / τέτραφε γαµφηλῆισι
περικρατέεσσιν ἐρυµνός. / Τῶν µέν θ’ ὥστε κυνῶν ὑλακὴ πέλει, οὐδέ τι τοίγε / ἄλλων ἀγνώσσουσι
βροτῶν ὀνοµάκλυτον αὐδήν.
94
Perale 2011a, 374-78, on Hesiod as model and the virtuosic use of hyperopsia, ‘the view from above’,
an artifice that would later be exploited by, among others, Lucian in his Icaromenippus.
95
Fränkel 1915, 34-35; Perale 2011a, 373.
96
Bolton 1962, 24-26, 31-32; Di Gregorio 2008, 70 n. 142.
97
Di Gregorio 2008, 60 n. 67.
. 16
unattested variant of Καµπύλινος, a river placed by Aelian in the region of the Issedones, the
tribe mentioned by Aristeas (fr. 1-3 Bolton) as the northern neighbours of the Scythians. 98
Cleinis, however, is going southwards, towards India, whereas the Issedonians are traditionally
north of the Messagetae. 99 With Simias, we are, instead, in the land of the Seres, between
southern Scythia and northern India; the Campasus must be the same river called Cambari by
Pliny and Ἄµβαστος by Ptolemy. 100 This is probably to be connected with the ethnonym
Σαµβαστός (Skt. Ambastha) in Punjab, mentioned by Diodorus in connection to a river along
which Alexander marched in the direction of the Ocean.101 This can be reconciled with Simias’
v. 6 Καµπάσου, εἰς ἅλα δῖαν ὃς ἀθάνατον φέρει ὕδωρ, which illuminates the poet-geographer’s
conception of the world; this river empties into the divine sea, which cannot but be the Ocean
surrounding the oecumene. 102 Apollo then gives a sudden twirl to the north: the prima facie
bizarre mention of islands fortified by fir-trees (7-8) placed in the heart of continental Asia finds
exact correspondence in passages of Herodotos and Strabo, who report the existence of inhabited
islands within the river marshes of Scythia.103 Then Apollo glides back south, drawing an ellipse,
which recalls the shape of the aerial path in Simias’ stylistic model, Hesiod’s Gēs Periodos (cf.
fr. 150.20 = 98.20 περὶ κύκλῳ).
By vv. 8ff., the two protagonists have reached the country of the Half-Dogs. Their mountainous
land is probably to be identified with the Paropamisos in Northern India, 104 if we take into
account the precise geographical coordinates for their settlement given in the Indica of Ctesias,
98
Bolton 1962, 70. The information seems to come, once again, from Ctesias: see Ael. NA 3.3-4 ὗν οὔτε
ἄγριον οὔτε ἥµερον ἐν Ἰνδοῖς γίνεσθαι λέγει Κτησίας. […] οἱ µύρµηκες οἱ Ἰνδικοὶ <οἱ> τὸν χρυσὸν
φυλάττοντες οὐκ ἂν διέλθοιεν τὸν καλούµενον Καµπύλινον ποταµόν. Ἰσσηδόνες δὲ τούτοις συνοικοῦντες
τοῖς µύρµηξι … καλοῦνταί τε καί εἰσιν.
99
The Issedones are located by the streams of a Scythian river according to Zenothemis, SH 855.2.
100
Plin. NH 6.55 primum eorum (i.e. the Seres) noscitur flumen Psitharas, proximum Cambari, tertium
Lanos, cf. Ptol. Geog. 7.3.2 µετὰ τὸ πρὸς Ἰνδικῇ τοῦ κόλπου ὅριον· Ἀσπίθαρα ποταµοῦ ἐκβολαί …
Ἀµβάστου ποταµοῦ ἐκβολαί. According to Pliny, these are regions all chacterized by the same favourable
climate enjoyed by the Hyperboreans. The Seres are renowned for the wood of their forests, cf. Simias’ v.
7 ἐλάταισι περιχλωρῇσιν ἐρυµνὰς.
101
Diod. 17.102.1-2 ‘Ο δ’ οὖν ’Αλέξανδρος τὴν µὲν στρατιὰν προσέταξεν παρὰ τὸν ποταµὸν
ἀντιπαράγειν ταῖς ναυσίν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸν διὰ τοῦ ποταµοῦ κατὰ τὸν ’Ωκεανὸν πλοῦν ποιούµενοc κατῆρεν
εἰς τὴν χώραν τῶν ὀνοµαζοµένων Σαµβαστῶν. οὗτοι δὲ τῷ τε πλήθει τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ ταῖς ἀρεταῖς
οὐδενὸς τῶν ’Ινδικῶν ἐθνῶν λείπονται. In Val.Fl. 5.593, 596 two warriors allied with Aeetes have the
oriental-sounding potamophoric names Campesus and Iaxartes.
102
cf. Hom. Il. 14.201 = 302 Ὠκεανόν τε θεῶν γένεσιν.
103
Hdt. 1.201-202 Τὸ δὲ ἔθνος (scil. the Massagetae): τοῦτο καὶ µέγα λέγεται εἶναι καὶ ἄλκιµον,
οἰκηµένον δὲ πρὸς ἠῶ τε καὶ ἡλίου ἀνατολάς, πέρην τοῦ ’Αράξεω ποταµοῦ, ἀντίον δὲ ’Ισσηδόνων
ἀνδρῶν. εἰσὶ δὲ οἵτινεϲ καὶ Σκυθικὸν λέγουσι τοῦτο τὸ ἔθνος εἶναι. ὁ δὲ ’Αράξης λέγεται καὶ µέζων καὶ
ἐλάσσων εἶναι τοῦ ῎Ιστρου. νήσους δὲ ἐν αὐτῷ Λέσβῳ µεγάθεα παραπλησίας συχνάς ϕασι εἶναι; cf. Str.
11.8.6 λέγεται δὲ καὶ δὲ τοιαῦτα περὶ τῶν Μασσαγετῶν, ὅτι κατοικοῦσιν οἱ µὲν ὄρη, τινὲς δ’ αὐτῶν πεδία,
οἱ δὲ ἕλη, ἃ ποιοῦσιν οἱ ποταµοί, οἱ δὲ τὰς ἐν τοῖς ἕλεσι νήσους. I do think the literary evidence is strong
enough to place the mythical ‘Islands of the Blessed’ in this region, pace Bridgman 2005, 58, 97.
104
Cf. the description of the area in Megasthenes, FGrHist 715 F6c; Perale 2011a, 378. Shafer (1964,
499-500), who identified Ctesias’ source as an early version of the Mahābhārata, proposed the mountains
in the north of the Kamyaka region, which are located further east.
. 17
whom Simias seems to rely on.105 As this mountain range was first crossed by Alexander in 330-
329 BC, it is difficult not to think that the king’s feat sparked the interest of contemporary
historians and ethnographers. 106 Some of these, including Demodamas, Patrocles, and
Deimachus wrote their travel accounts having served in the far east under Seleucus I and
Antiochus I.107 Megasthenes, who wrote Indica and may have been the source of Pliny’s account
of the Dog-Headed people (NH 7.22), was an associate of Sibyrtius, the governor of Arachosia
appointed by Alexander, and had first-hand knowledge of the region and probably the wider
Gange valley.108 The Alexander historians Cleitarchus (writing c. 285-280 BC) and Nearchus (c.
310 BC) both describe the arrival of the king at the mouth of the Indus.109 The former, who
probably did not join Alexander’s expedition, but lived at Alexandria under Ptolemy I and may
have worked at his court, is reported to have written specifically about Alexander’s Mallian
campaign, which was conducted in the same area as Simias’ Campasus.110 A (corrupted) name of
this river is in fact reported by Pliny, who may have found in the Scythika of Demodamas of
Miletus (FGrHist 428), the commander of Seleucus and Antiochus, who crossed the Iaxartes
around 300 BC and identified its course.111 Interestingly, Demodamas is said by Pliny to have to
set up altars to Apollo Didymaeus, eponym of the Milesian city, during the course of his
exploration to celebrate the Bactrian queen Apame, wife of Seleucus I, and thank her for earlier
support given to his people.112
105
Ctes. FGrHist 688 F 45.37 ap. Phot. Bibl. 72 (47b): ἐν τοῖσδε τοῖς ὄρεσί (source of the Hyparchus
river) ϕησιν ἀνθρώπους βιοτεύειν κυνὸς ἔχοντας κεϕαλήν· (cf. Simias fr. 1.10 κύνεος κράς) […] ϕωνὴν
δὲ διαλέγονται οὐδεµίαν ἀλλ’ ὠρύονται ὥσπερ κύνες, καὶ οὕτω συνιᾶσιν αὑτῶν τὴν ϕωνήν. ὀδόντας δὲ
µείζους ἔχουσι κυνός. (cf. 1.11 τέτραφε γαµφηλῆισι περικρατέεσσιν ἐρυµνός) […] οἰκοῦσι δὲ ἐν τοῖς
ὄρεσι µέχρι τοῦ ’Ινδοῦ ποταµοῦ […]. συνιᾶσι µὲν τὰ παρ’ ἐκείνων λεγόµενα, αὐτοὶ δὲ οὐ δύνανται
διαλέγεσθαι, ἀλλὰ τῇ ὠρυγῇ καὶ ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ τοῖς δακτύλοις σηµαίνουσιν ὥσπερ οἱ κωϕοὶ. (cf. 12-13
Τῶν µέν θ’ ὥστε κυνῶν ὑλακὴ πέλει, οὐδέ τι τοίγε / ἄλλων ἀγνώσσουσι βροτῶν ὀνοµάκλυτον αὐδήν).
106
Geus 2003, 242-43.
107
Austin 2001, 96-97.
108
Roller ad Megasth. BNJ 715 F 29; Roller 2016, 119-120.
109
Nearch. FGrHist 133 F 33; Clitarch. FGrHist 137 F 26; Prandi 1996, 60-65; Prandi 2012, 23-24.
110
Clitarch. FGr Hist 137 T8, F 24; Prandi 1996, 68, 80.
111
NH 6.49-50 Transcendit eum amnem (scil. Iaxartem) Demodamas, Seleuci et Antiochi regum dux,
quem maxime sequimur in his, arasque Apollini Didymaeo statuit. ultra sunt Scytharum populi […].
nobilia apud eos (scil. the Scythians) flumina Mandragaeum et Caspasus. Bolton (1962, 70) suggested,
quite persuasively, that *Campasus might have been erroneously corrected to Caspasus by Pliny or his
authority by analogy with Caspius, mentioned right after the passage in question at 6.52-53. As Caspasus
is nowehere else attested, it would be tempting to assume that the *Campasus and Pliny’s Cambari are, in
fact, the same river. I add that Mandragaeus appears to recall the Indian ethnonym Madrakas, which
occurs in the Mahābhārata: see Shafer 1954, 21; Eggermont 1993, 87-88. On Demodamas as possible
source of Pliny’s account of the two Scythian rivers and his identification of the Iaxartes, previously
thought by Alexander to be identical with that of the Tanais/Don, see Hennig 1937, 222-23.
112
IDidyma 480; Robert 1984. Babylon, homeland and starting point of Cleinis’ voyage, was also treated
extensively by Cleitarchus and other Alexander historians, who documented not only Alexander’s death,
but also his plan to open up a direct sea route from there to Alexandria: see D.S. 2.7.3 = Clitarch. FGrHist
137 T5, F 10; Prandi 1996, 133-36. The city’s luxuriant gardens, which featured in Curtius Rufus and the
paradographer Philo of Byzantium, but crucially not in Simias’ contemporary Berossus, were probably
built (or revamped) too late to satisfy the appetite for marvels of Simias’ readers: see Dalley 2013, 37-41.
For possible Seleucid ‘interferences’ in the corpus of Euphorion and Callimachus see recently Magnelli
2013, 188-90.
. 18
The tale of Simias’ Apollo has a similar ring; a traveler explores an unknown land and interacts
with the god, who becomes instrumental to his success (and the demise of others). It is, however,
like Callimachus’ hymns V and VI, first and foremost a tale of crime and punishment. The plot
(or at least part of it)113 is outlined in an excerpt from Antoninus Liberalis: several members of
Cleinis’ family are chastised by Apollo for recreating a sacred Hyperborean sacrifice of donkeys
in Babylonian territory; characters are eventualluy turned into birds by Apollo, Artemis, and
Poseidon. The genre of the poem is uncertain, and Kreuzung der Gattungen has been,
unsurprisingly and almost unavoidably, evoked. Fränkel thought of Apollo as a ‘refined’ kind of
aretalogy with an additional component of mirabilia, in which the god’s deeds would be reported
by Cleinis rather than the poet himself.114 Di Gregorio calls it a ‘hymn-epyllion’, a genre in
which Philitas’ Hermes would also reasonably fall. In Philitas’ poem, a narrative core on
Odysseus, Hermes’ protégé, may have been followed a hymnic invocation exhalting Hermes’
Odysseus-like qualities (shrewdness, penchant for travelling, etc.). 115 In Simias, however, the
narrative focus remains on the god throughout; Apollo, assuming Antoninus’ tale does reflect
Simias’ original plot, is the (co-)protagonist of the story and determines the fate of Cleinis and
his relatives.116
No other Simias fragment is attributed by his sources explicitly to the Apollo, although several
others may be said to belong, with various degrees of probability, to this work. A couplet on
Marsyas preparing himself to compete with Apollo in the aulos competition is quoted
anonymously by Plutarch, and ascribed to Simonides by Tzetzes. 117 But confusion between
Simonides and Simias (as well as Samius) is rife in manuscripts, which should make us wary of
accepting Tzetzes’s attribution.118 Indeed, the style is unquestionably Simias.119 The poet lingers
on the detail of Marsyas’ φορβεία, the halter placed round the player’s lips, with two stripes
going round the back and over the top of his head. 120 Its purpose was to hold the instrument in
113
Ant.Lib. 22 = Simias fr. 2 Fr. = 2. P.; cf. Bridgman 2005, 65; Perale 2011a, 371-72 n. 20, with a caveat
on the actual extent of the plot and the unreliability of the information provided by the marginal scholion
to Antoninus (ἱστορεῖ Βοῖος <Ὀρνιθογονίας> β´ καὶ Σιµµίας ὁ Ῥόδιος Ἀπόλλωνι).
114
Fränkel 1915, 33-34; cf. Cadili 1995, 102 n. 402.
115
Di Gregorio 2008, 78, 98, based on Sbardella 2000, 22-26; cf. Spanoudakis 2002, 134, who entertains
the possibility that Hermes in the poem may have escorted more than one hero. The same can, in
principle, be applied to other potential φοιβόληπτοι characters in Simias: cf. Fränkel 1915, 35-36 on
Abaris and Aristeas.
116
See however Perale 2011a, 371-72 n. 20 for an important caveat on the actual extent of the plot and
the unreliability of the information provided by the marginal scholion to Antoninus Liberalis in fr. 2 Fr./P.
ἱστορεῖ Βοῖος <Ὀρνιθογονίας> β´ καὶ Σιµµίας ὁ Ῥόδιος Ἀπόλλωνι.
117
fr. 5 Fränkel = 3 Powell Χρυσῷ δ’ αἰγλήεντι συνήρµοσεν (Plutarch, Τzetzes’ source: see Boas 1905,
98 : προσήρµοσεν Tzetzes) ἀµφιδασείας / κόρσας καὶ στόµα λάβρον ὀπισθοδέτοισιν ἱµᾶσιν.
118
See Fränkel’s apparatus to his fragment 7, Gow-Page’s apparatus to Samius I-II, Simias VII.
119
Fränkel 1915, 42; Di Gregorio 2008, 75-76.
120
West 1992, 89; Biles and Olson ad Ar. V. 581-82, with three vase scenes cited in their commentary.
The κόρσας are therefore the satyr’s shaggy temples, to which the top golden stripe is adjusted, not his
cheeks, as it is commonly translated. Plutarch’s συνήρµοσεν seems therefore a better reading; Marsyas is
fitting the stripes at once to the side of the forehead and the mouth. For metal applied to the mouthband
see Orth ad Alc.Com. fr. 20 ηὔλει δ’ ἐπίχαλκον τὸ στόµα λήκυθόν <τ’> ἔχων.
. 19
position and to take some of the strain off the player by supporting his cheeks, but Simias’
Marsyas, as it would appear from Plutarch, seems more preoccupied with curbing the deforming
effect of strenuous blowing.121 Marsyas’ attempt to hide —with the aid of a mouth-band— the
unsightliness of his already deformed satyr face is in fact vain, and the reuse of Homeric
language to fit a quasi-comical scene emphasizes this paradox; the στόµα λάβρον, in this sense,
is Simias’. The plural of κόρση for ‘hair’ is tragic (A. Cho. 282, cf. TrGF 248), and is never used
in epic, where κόρση (singular) always indicates the weak spot on the skull targeted to kill the
enemy in battle.122 Marsyas’ prospective painful death is thus indirectly suggested. The hapax
ὀπισθοδέτοισιν ‘bound behind’ is also lightheartedly threatening; Marsyas will be bound by
Apollo to a tree before being flayed alive by, interestingly, a Scythian.123 On a superficial level,
it qualifies a noun which is normally reserved for reins and animal lashes in early epic (LfrgE,
s.v. ἱµάς 2). On a closer look, Simias’ ὀπισθοδέτοισιν ἱµᾶσιν may be read as an allusion to Hom.
Il. 21.30 δῆσε δ’ ὀπίσσω χεῖρας ἐϋτµήτοισιν ἱµᾶσιν, where an enraged Achilles, taking a break
from killing Trojan soldiers, captures some young prisoners and ties their hands with thongs
before handing them off to some fellow Acheans stationed by the ships. The idea of subjugation
is thus reinforced; Marsyas, as all who transgress the god’s orders, cannot escape the wrath of
and punishment from Apollo, who incidentally has been indicated by some as the role model of
Achilles.124
A further fragment assigned by some to the same work centres on Niobe’s incestuous love for
Assaon, a story which also involve divine punishment and, possibly, transformation, with Niobe
petrified into a rock of Mt. Sipylus resembling her face.125 The myth tells Niobe, who enters into
contention with Leto about καλλιτεκνία (in Simias?) or πολυτεκνία (Hom. Il. 24.605-6), is
another victim of the wrath of Apollo (and Artemis). In Simias, Assaon reportedly kills her
children and Niobe commits suicide. However, no actual verses by Simias survive. The narrative
context is taken from the prose epithome of Parthenius and comes from the same codex that
transmitted Antoninus’ story of Cleinis. It is, again, a marginal notation that associates the tale of
Niobe as narrated by the mythographer with a poem by Simias (thought not necessarily the
Apollo). The overlap in content between the two is uncertain; the mythographer does not mention
Apollo and the rivalry between Niobe and Leto over καλλιτεκνία is not the direct cause of
Niobe’s death, as in Parthenius (and Simias?) she is petrified while falling off a cliff.126 As in the
121
Plu. De cohibenda ira 456B-C καὶ ὁ Μαρσύας, ὡς ἔοικε, φορβεῖᾳ τινι καὶ περιστοµίοις βίᾳ τοῦ
πνεύµατος τὸ ῥαγδαῖον ἐγκαθεῖρξε καὶ τοῦ προσώπου κατεκόσµησε καὶ ἀπέκρυψε τὴν ἀνωµαλίαν· χρυσῷ
κτλ.
122
Homer uses κρόταφοι of facial hair in Hom. Od. 11. 309; cf. Theoc. 11.9 ἄρτι γενειάσδων περὶ τὸ
στόµα τὼς κροτάφως τε; Overduin ad Nic. Th. 905.
123
[Hyg.] Fab. 165.5; cf. Plin. NH 35.66; Nonn. D. 19.317-22. One may guess that Apollo could have
mentioned this episode to Cleinis to intimidate him with threatening evidence of his powers (but cf. infra
p. X). Apollo would punish an infraction against a ‘Hyperborean’ aspect of his cult by utilizing a near-
Hyperborean attendant, a Scythian officer of classical Athenian fame, to enforce divine law. Whether this
is to be put in connexion with Cleinis’ exploration of Scythia is impossible to determine.
124
On Apollo as a model for Achilles in the Iliad, see Rabel 1990.
125
Lightfoot 1995, 542-44.
126
The marginal scholium has Ἱστορεῖ Χάνθος Λυδιακοῖς καὶ Νεάνθης β´ Σιµµίας ὁ Ῥόδιος. The fact that
Simias’ name is spelled Σιµίας in the Parthenius section and Σιµµίας in the Antoninus one suggests two
independent annotators. Xanthus certainly reported the incestuous story and the petrification of Niobe
. 20
case with fr. 2 Fr./P., we are at the mercy of a frustratingly brief marginal scholion, which does
not clarify what aspect of Niobe’s myth Simias was interested in.127 Assuming Apollo played a
role in the homonymous poem, as in Homer, punishing Niobe by killing her sons, we may
entertain the possibility that Simias’ poem had a complex narrative framework, consisting of a
succession of mythical paradeigmatic exempla involving the story of multiple divine
punishments, Cleinis and his family, Marsyas, and Niobe. This would make the Apollo a ‘curse
poem’, a catalogue of exemplary punishments centring on the theme of divine justice and
leading, possibly via a metamorphotic process, to salvation or destruction.128
The Gorgo(n): so much more than epic
Did Simias ever write an epic poem? According to a scholion to Euripides’ Andromache, the
Rhodian was concerned with the aftermath of the Trojan war, more specifically the enslavement
to Neoptolemus of Andromache and Aeneas; the extract that survives shows the latter embarking
on his captor’s ship.129 The apparent title of this poem is, rather puzzingly, The Gorgon. The
tradition that after her first husband dies Andromache becomes a slave to Neoptolemus, that she
is later wedded off to Helenus, and that the two relocate to Epirus is a well known one (Eur.
Andr. 12-17, 1245, Verg. Aen. 3.294-98). We also know that Helenus and Neoptolemus travelled
together by foot to Molossia, where the latter became king of the land (Apollod. Ep. 6.12-13). By
contrast, the story of Aeneas γέρας of Neoptolemus, which represents an unexpected turn of
events within the Aeneas-legend and has no parallels in Classical literature, would seem to be a
distinctively Hellenistic mythological innovation. The presence of the Trojan (with Odysseus) in
Epirus is already discussed in Hellanicus (FGrHist 4 F 84) and Damastes (FGrHist 5 F 3), but
the detail of Aeneas’ being taken as a prisoner of war is a rather un-epic (a male γέρας?)
variation. 130 The reference to the enslavement of Aeneas by Neoptolemus has been put in
connexion with the invasion of Italy in 280 BC by Pyrrhus of Epirus, the ‘new Neoptolemus’ and
distant successor of Helenus. 131 Whether Simias created anew a mythical variant to please
(Fränkel 1915, 53), probably in the form of an aition, but does not mention the jump from the Weeping
Rock on Mt. Sipylus.
127
Niobe is daughter of Dione, one of the Pleaides, whom Simias mentions in his Gorgo; see infra, p.
XX.
128
The so-called ‘tattoo poem’ (= P. Brux. Inv. E. 8934 + P. Sorb. Inv. 2254) was written in elegiacs, but
the Thrax and the Cup stealer by Euphorion are hexametric. The metre of Callimachus’ Ibis, Moero’s
Arae, and Euphorion’s Chiliades is unknown. For the genre, catalogic form and constructional techniques
of Arae in the Hellenistic times see Watson 1991, 79-166; Cameron 1995, 384-86; Magnelli 2002, 97-98;
Fantuzzi-Hunter 2004,160. On the connection between love and curse see part. Moero, CA 4 and
Euphorion fr. 24, 26 col. i L.
129
Simias fr. sp. 3 Fränkel = fr. 6 Powell = scholl. MO ad Eur. Andr. 12 Σιµίας ἐν τῆι Γοργόνι
Ἀνδροµάχην φησὶ καὶ Αἰνείαν γέρας δοθῆναι Νεοπτολέµωι λέγων οὕτως· ῞Εκτορος, ἥν τε οἱ αὐτῷ
ἀριστῆες Παναχαιῶν / δῶκαν ἔχειν ἐπίηρον ἀµειβόµενοι γέρας ἀνδρί, / αὐτόν τ’ ’Αγχίσαο κλυτὸν
γόνον ἱπποδάµοιο / Αἰνείαν ἐν νηυσὶν ἐβήσατο ποντοπόροισιν / ἐκ πάντων Δαναῶν ἀγέµεν γέρας
ἔξοχον ἄλλων.
130
West 2013, 220; Fowler 2013, 565 n. 141; Sammons 2017, 87.
131
Canavero 2002.
. 21
Pyrrhus132 or recovered a mythical relic from Hellanicus is impossible to determine. It is true,
however, that a growing interest in Roman history was sparked by the Pyrrhic war, covered in
the Histories of Simias’ contemporaries Hieronymus of Cardia and Timaeus of Tauromenion,
who is thought to have been Simias’ source for the construction of the wooden horse by
Epeus.133 Traces of the myth of Aeneas in Epirus resurface in Roman sources, where the oracle
of Dodona is associated, directly (Varro ap. Serv. in Verg. Aen. 3.256 and D.H. 1.51.1: Aeneas
and the ἀκµαιότατοι οf the Trojans go to the sanctuary of Zeus to consult the oracle) or indirectly
(Verg. Aen. 3.465-66: Helenus gives Aeneas the Dodonean cauldrons) with Aeneas’ journey to
Italy. Pyrrhus was a great patron of the city of Dodona.134 As the city is mentioned in one of
Simias’ fragments incertae sedis, 135 it would be tempting to conclude that the Rhodian was
interested in exploring, pehaps as part of a political agenda, the myth of Aeneas’ nostos.
However, the verses cited by the scholion have been rightly suspected. As it has been observed,
they “lack all the ingenuity and point we expect from Sim(m)ias”136 and are, more crucially,
attributed by Tzetzes to Lesches, the poet of the Little Iliad, as part of a longer portion of text on
the death of Astyanax and the enslavement of Andromache.137 The matter is complicated by the
presence of a further fragment from, apparently, the same work transmitted by Athenaeus, but
entitled Gorgo.138 Athenaeus’ Γοργώ looks difficilior than the scholiast’s Γοργών, which invites
further suspicion regarding its validity as a source. On the other hand, the testimony of Tzetzes is
also not free from problems; he cites eleven verses, five more than the scholion, but on
introducing the mythological context behind the lines he omits Astyanax and refers specifically
to the content of the last six, i.e. the ‘Simias’ section.139 As it has been convincingly shown, the
two sections reported by Tzetzes, the Astyanax section and the Aeneas one, are not consecutive
132
A possible parallel, as pointed out by Di Gregorio 2010, 104 n. 392, would be SH 960, which has been
interpreted by Barbantani 2001 as an elegiac (encomiastic or historical) poem on Neoptolemus’ nostos
from Troy, possibly a ktisis of the Thessalian city Elymia, written to celebrate Pyrrhus’campaign in
Thessaly in 286 BC.
133
Fränkel 1915, 60-61; Strodel 2002, 171-72, 266. Agathocles of Cizycus, probably a younger
contemporary of Simias, stresses the importance of Helenus’ prophecy in Aeneas’ journey, but has
Aeneas die in Phrygia: see FGrHist F472 F5a.
134
Parke 1967, 144-48; Dieterle 2007, 94-96.
135
Simias fr. 6 Fr. = 10 P. (Steph. Byz. s.v. Δωδώνη, p. 92 Billerbeck) Ζηνὸς ἕδος Κρονίδαο µάκαιρ’
ὑπεδέξατο Δωδώ. ‘Blessed Dodona, seat of Zeus son of Cronus, welcomed [him/them]’.
136
Griffin 1977, 151; along the same lines, Fränkel 1915, 18 and 38; Debiasi 2004, 181.
137
Il. Parv. fr. 21 Bernabé = Tz. in Lycophr. Alex. 1268 Λέσχης δ’ ὁ τὴν µικρὰν ’Ιλιάδα πεποιηκὼς
’Ανδροµάχην καὶ Αἰνείαν αἰχµαλώτους ϕησὶ δοθῆναι τῷ ’Αχιλέως υἱῷ Νεοπτολέµῳ καὶ ἀπαχθῆναι σὺν
αὐτῷ εἰς Φαρσαλίαν τὴν ’Αχιλέως πατρίδα (cf. id. in Lycophr. Alex. 1232, p. 352.26-34 Scheer). ϕησὶ δὲ
οὑτωσὶ: “αὐτὰρ ’Αχιλλῆος µεγαθύµου ϕαίδιµος υἱὸς / ‘Εκτορέην ἄλοχον κάταγεν κοΐλας ἐπὶ νῆας. /
παῖδα δ' ἑλὼν ἐκ κόλπου ἐυπλοκάµοιο τιθήνης / ῥῖψε ποδὸς τεταγὼν ἀπὸ πύργου, τὸν δὲ πεσόντα /
ἔλλαβε πορϕύρεος θάνατος καὶ µοῖρα κραταιή. / ἐκ δ’ ἕλετ’ ’Ανδροµάχην κτλ.”
138
Simias fr. 3 Fränkel = 7 Powell = Asclepiades Myrleanus ap. Athen. 11.491c ἡ δὲ τοῦ ὀνόµατος
ἐκτροπή, καθ’ ἣν αἱ Πλειάδες λέγονται Πέλειαι καὶ Πελειάδες. παρὰ πολλοῖς ἐστι τῶν ποιητῶν … καὶ
Σιµµίας δ’ ἐν τῇ Γοργοῖ φησιν: “Αἰθέρος ὠκεῖαι πρόπολοι πίλναντο Πέλειαι”.
139
Perale 2010, 505.
. 22
and appear to be the hands of two different poets.140 Whilst the lines on Astyanax appear much
more similar to a cento than a poem by Lesches, those assigned to Simias are so heavily
Homericizing that considering them the product of the same poet of the technopaegnia requires a
leap of faith.141 It does not mean that Simias did not touch indeed upon the subject of Aeneas’
captivity, but I suspect he may have done in quite different terms in a passage now lost. The
verse cited by Athenaeus has a completely different tone. It refers to the swift and nimble
movement – reminiscent of Hermes’ ‘dance of the fawns’ in the Egg - of the Pleiads,142 the
prophesying priestesses at Dodona. One of them, Electra, was the mother of Dardanus, Aeneas’
ancestor.143 Another, Dione, was venerated at Dodona from at least the second half of the fourth
century BC, when a temple in her honour was built next to the sanctuary of Zeus.144
But who was the Gorgo? Fränkel and Kwapisz favour the interpretation of Γοργώ as a variant
form of Γοργών (cf. already Hom. Il. 11.36, Hes. Th. 274 with West ad loc.), the Gorgon
Medusa.145 The idea that Gorgo was a female personal name goes back to the editions of Brunck
and Jacobs, who thought the Gorgo might have been, like Philitas’ Bittis in Hermesianax fr. 7.77
P., the girl loved by the poet.146 I wonder whether it would not be preferable to think of Gorgo in
the same terms as Callimachus’ Hecale, a mythically obscure and apparently tangential figure
who is provocatively elevated by the author to title-bearing character. In Antipater (of
Thessalonica)’s AP VII 9 309, Gorgo is an old woman who dies of shock while caught in a
thunderstorm. A papyrus fragment repeatedly associated with the Hecale, P.Oxy. 1794, preserves
a speech on the mutability of fortune by a poor old woman addressing an unidentified youth
within an urban setting.147 Could Simias’ Gorgo have hosted Aeneas as Hecale hosted Theseus in
Callimachus?
140
Canavero 2002, 152-53; Di Gregorio 2008, 103. See also the
141
cf. Fränkel (1915, 38), who calls lines 1-5 “paene Ὁµηρόκεντρα”; Perale 2010, 503 n. 18. It would be
tempting, in fact, to assign both sections of text to the two archaic Iliades Parvae presupposed in
Bernabé’s edition, the first belonging to the ‘so-called’ Ἰλιὰς Μικράς (frr. 28-31 B.), the second to
Lesches’ poem (ffr. 1-23 B.): for the existence of two archaic poems with the same name see Bernabé
1984; Kelly 2015, 328-29.
142
Αἰθέρος ὠκεῖαι (corr. Brunck : αἳ θέρος ὠ. cod. Athenaei : ὠ. θέρεος dub. Kaibel) πρόπολοι πίλναντο
Πέλειαι. Kwapisz (2018, XX) is probably right in defending Brunck’s emendation.
143
Electra is said to have left her astral position in the sky not to see the imminent fall of Troy: see schol.
D Hom. Il. 18.486; Perale 2010, 512-13.
144
Parke 1967, 45-47; Dieterle 2007, 69-71.
145
Fränkel 1915, 40: Perseus is, like Cleinis, a traveller and is mentioned in Simias fr. 1.2; Kwapisz: the
Pleiades would be moving from the sky in the form of doves to nurture baby Zeus, who appears to have
had the role of Gorgon-slayer in Musaeus, frr. 83-84 Bernabé.
146
Brunck 1776, 39; Jacobs 1798, 4. Spanoudakis (2003, 31-32) is rightly skeptical about the erotic
content of Philitas’ original elegy. It should be pointed out that whilst Hermesianax in his Leontion (fr. 3
L.) mentions the name of Philitas’ (77) and Antimachus’ (41) lovers, he omits Simias’. The theme of love
is central also in a tale –without parallels elsewhere - recounted in Plu. Amatorius 20 (766C), where a
wealthy Cretan girl called Gorgo is punished, presumably by Eros, for dismissing her humble lover
Asander.
147
The poem may have been Hellenistic, but is unlikely to be by Callimachus; its metrical laxity equally
excludes Simias: see Hollis 2009, 29-30.
. 23
By a suspicious coincidence, an elegiac quatrain from the Greek Anthology attributed to
Simonides or Simias by the Corrector (to Samius by Planudes) preserves the last words (in
Doric) of a girl named Gorgo dying in her mothers’ arms.148 Following Brunck and Jacobs’
intuition, Rohde proposed assigning the four verses to a homonymous elegy by the Rhodian.149
His suggestion would be appealing, if we did not have numerous other epigrams centred on the
last words of a dying person to a relative.150 Two of these, Anyte AP 6.646 = VII G.-P. and
‘Simonides’ AP 7.513 = LXXIV Page bear striking similarities with “Simias”;151 whilst all three
focus on the gesture of the filial embrace, followed by a pathetic exclamation in the first person
containing a recommendation to the dying person’s parent, pseudo-Simonides’ quatrain seems a
later trivialization of Anyte’s epigram. 152 Fränkel and Reitzenstein posit a dependence of
“Simias” on Anyte, which is hard to demonstrate;153 the two authors are probably contemporaries
and share many similarities in vocabulary and style.154 I limit myself to pointing out that an echo
of the “Simias” epigram (µοίρᾳ … σῷ πολιῷ γήραϊ καδεµόνα) may be found in the epitaph for
the philosopher Bias, which Diogenes Laertius claims as his own: AP VII 91.2 εἰς Ἀΐδην πολιῷ
γήραϊ νιφόµενον.155 If this is indeed a poetic recollection, it is more likely to have been triggered
by Simias’ authority rather than by the evanescent poetic profile of Samius or a pseudo-
Simonidean inscription. If we believe instead that the verses on Gorgo were inscribed on a relief-
sculpture later attributed to Simonides,156 the name of Simias in the Corrector’s note may be the
result of a confusion caused by the existence of an independent poem by Simias with the girl’s
name.
148
AP VII 647 = Simias ep. dub. 28a Fränkel = ep. dub. 21 Powell Σιµωνίδου οἱ δὲ Σιµµίου εἰς Γοργώ
τινα κόρην τελευτήσασαν C : Σαµίου Planudes: “῞Υστατα δὴ τάδ’ ἔειπε ϕίλαν ποτὶ µατέρα Γοργὼ /
δακρυόεσσα δέρας χερσὶν ἐϕαπτοµένα· / “Αὖθι µένοις παρὰ πατρί, τέκοις δ’ ἐπὶ λῴονι µοίρᾳ / ἄλλαν σῷ
πολιῷ γήραϊ καδεµόνα.”
149
Rohde 1914, 86-87 n. 1. I should like to draw the reader’s attention to the anonymous pentameter SH
1016, which constitutes an ideal continuation to Simias fr. 3 Fränkel = 7 Powell: Αἰθέρος ὠκεῖαι
πρόπολοι πίλναντο Πέλειαι / κοῦραι ἐλαφρὰ ποδῶν ἴχνι’ ἀειράµεναι.
150
Anyte AP 6.646 = VII G.-P., Leon. AP 6.648 = X G.-P., Philetas Samius AP 7.481.3-4, ‘Simonides’
AP 7.513 = LXXIV Page, Damag. AP 7.735 = X G.-P., Antip.Thess. AP 9.23 = LXXI G.-P., id. AP 9.96
= XXI G.-P., GVI 1685 (Egypt, II-III cent. AD, part of an altar)
151
Anyte AP 6.646 = VII G.-P.: Λοίσθια δὴ τάδε πατρὶ φίλῳ περὶ χεῖρε βαλοῦσα / εἶπ’ Ἐρατὼ χλωροῖς
δάκρυσι λειβοµένα, / Ὦ πάτερ, οὔ τοι ἔτ’ εἰµί, µέλας δ’ ἐµὸν ὄµµα καλύπτει / ἤδη ἀποφθιµένης κυάνεος
θάνατος. ‘Simonides’ AP 7.513: φῆ ποτε Πρωτόµαχος, πατρὸς περὶ χεῖρας ἔχοντος, / ἡνίκ’ ἀφ’ ἱµερτὴν
ἔπνεεν ἡλικίην, / “ὦ Τιµηνορίδη, παιδὸς φίλου οὔποτε λήσῃ / οὔτ’ ἀρετὴν ποθέων οὔτε σαοφροσύνην.”
152
Page 1981, 294.
153
Reitzenstein 1893; contra Page 1981, ibid.
154
Geoghegan assumes oἰονόµος (‘sheep-pasturing’ rather than ‘lonely’) in HE 673 is a coin by Anyte,
but the word appears also in Simias, ep.dub. 28b.4 Fr. in relation to mountain peaks; the Homeric hapax
ἀγρότης is used with the meaning ‘hunter’ (rather than ‘rustic’) in both Anyte HE 738 and Simias ep. 24.1
Fr.; the Homeric δάσκιον ὕλαν in Anyte HE 738 is modified by Simias (ep. 24.1 Fr.) into ὑλῆεν δρίος
εὔσκιον; the rare use of παῖς followed by the genitive of the patronymic occurs in both Anyte HE 746 and
Simias ep. 22.1 Fr.; both authors use χλωροῖς πετάλοις in the same metrical sedes (Anyte ΗΕ 735 =
Simias ep. 26.2 Fr.); both composed epitaphs for animals with the traditional incipit οὐκέτι ‘no longer
will you …’ (Anyte HE 704 and 708, Simias ep. 24.1 Fr.) and epigrams for singing insects (if Anyte XI
G.P. is on a cicada and not a cock).
155
But cf. already Eur. fr. 369.2 πολιῷ γήρᾳ.
156
Wilamowitz 1913, 226 n. 1.
. 24
Glossai: The Poet’s Arsenal of Words
Philitas and Simias seem at first to have a lot in common; both exhibit a distinctive philological
approach to poetry and are collectors of glossai (frr. 29-57 Spanoudakis, frr. 29-32 Fränkel).157 It
has been pointed out that unlike Philitas, Simias seems to be regarded by these sources first as a
γραµµατικός, and only secondarily as a poet, which could reflect a more widespread circulation
and, probably, more immediate success enjoyed by the poems of the Coan.158 Philitas is called
ποιητὴς ἅµα καὶ κριτικός by Strabo (14.2.19 = T 11 Spanoudakis), Simias γραµµατικός (14.2.13
= T b Fränkel); Philitas is defined γραµµατικὸς κριτικός by the Suda (φ 332, p. 723 A. = T 1
Sp.), Simias, once again, simply γραµµατικός.159 The terminology does differ slightly, but we
should be wary of extracting any particular significance from this distinction; Dettori argues that
the compiler of the Suda entry considered Philitas a grammarian, but conflated the term with
κριτικός, which he found in his sources, as if to suggest a specific kind of grammarian;160 since
at the time of Philitas, κριτικός simply meant ‘grammarian’, or ‘teacher of language and
literature’, the definition γραµµατικὸς κριτικός becomes tautological. 161 It is also generally
agreed that the term γραµµατικός supplanted κριτικός a designation for a ‘scholar’ already in the
early Hellenistic age,162 and that may well be the status assigned to Simias by Strabo and the
Suda.163
157
Maas (1927, 156) noted that “die Vereinigung von Grammatik und Poesie […] lange vor Philitas nicht
glaublich ist”.
158
Spanoudakis 2002, 50, 55-59.
159
Simias T a Fränkel = Suid. ϲ 431, p. 360 A., s.v. Σιµµίας Ῥόδιος· γραµµατικός. ἔγραψε Γλώσσας
βιβλία γ΄· ποιήµατα διάφορα βιβλία δ΄.
160
Cf. S.E. M. 1.248, where history is defined as a division of the science of grammar (µέρος
γραµµατικῆς).
161
Dettori 2000, 8 and n. 3; Spanoudakis 2002, 68 and nn. 82-83; both cite as a parallel Suid. ε 359, p.
213 A. = Hecat.Abd. FGrHist 264 T 1 ὃς ἐπεκλήθη καὶ κριτικὸς γραµµατικός, οἷα γραµµατικὴν ἔχων
παρασκευή.
162
Matthaios 2011, 65-67; Wouters and Swiggers 2015, 518. According to Clemens, Strom. 1.16.79.3, the
first to introduce the term γραµµατικός for κριτικός with reference to grammatical works was either
Antidorus of Cyme (first half of the third century BC, but the name is the result of emendation) or
Eratosthenes. The latter was also the first that claimed for himself the more ambitious title of philologus,
reflecting the wider application of his multi-faceted doctrine (Suetonius, De grammaticism, 10.4
multiplici variaque doctrina). In the incipit of Philicus’ Demeter (SH 677), the word γραµµατικοί
evidently means ‘philologists’, ‘scholars’, or, more specifically, ‘metricists’.
163
Strabo refers to Callimachus as ποιητὴς ἅµα καὶ περὶ γραµµατικὴν ἐσουδακώς (17.3.22), which seems
equipollent to Philitas’ profile as ποιητὴς ἅµα καὶ κριτικός. He calls γραµµατικοί scholars active in the
field of Homeric criticism (9.5.5), including Callimachus (1.2.37, possibly via Apollodorus?, 7.3.6),
Crates (14.5.16), and Demetrius of Scepsis (13.1.55), but κριτικοί scholars commenting on Athenian
interpolations in the Iliad in 9.1.10, i.e. entrusted with effectively the same task. For the usage of κριτικός
in the sense of ‘literary critic’ in Strabo and his contemporary Philodemus, see Janko 2000, 126-27. On
Crates of Mallus’s self-perception as κριτικός see Broggiato 2001, 249-50.
. 25
The three books of glossai attributed to him by the latter are a key aspect of his scholarly
profile.164 Of these only four fragments survive (frr. 29-31 Fränkel), barely enough to give us a
glimpse of the structure and scope of his work. Like Philitas’ Ataktoi, Simias’ glossai may be
accompanied by brief poetic citations shedding light on the obscurity of the words, 165 or
information on their regional uses.166 However, Simias’ collection must have been somewhat
different in scope and ambition from that of Philitas. 167 Simias seems to have proceeded
systematically by way of the ἓν ἀνθ’ ἑνός method, whereby a one-word interpretamentum
follows a strictly one-word lemma.168 Unlike in Philitas’ Ataktoi, where the glossai are generally
accompanied by fairly detailed information on local practices associated with them (e.g. 31 L.),
and even cases of homonymies (fr. 44 L.),169 Simias’ interpretamenta often do not clarify the
164
Based on the surviving fragments, assuming a metrical arrangement with 1 book = 1 papyrus roll
consisting of 1500 verses (this is the length of Eratosthenes’ Hermes, in P.Oxy. 3000), one could attempt
the following systematization: α´ containing the hexameter poems (epyllia?), i.e. the Apollo and, possibly,
the Gorgo (unless that was elegiac); β´, the Months (elegiac?); γ´, the lyric hymns in miscellaneous
metres (frr. 9-14 Fr.; if these were six in total, each would have to amount to ca. 250 verses); δ´, the
epigrams and, possibly, the three (?) technopaignia, which were included in the Greek Anthology, albeit
after Meleager (Gow-Page 1965, 511). Kwapisz 2013a, 37 tentatively suggests that fr. 11 F. = 15 P.
featured in the same book as the technopaignia, due to the ludic/cryptic nature of its metrical form. In
2013b, 163 he argued that the technopaignia may have featured in a book of παίγνια (his is how
Hephaestio calls the Egg: see n. 13 above, cf. the title of Philitas’ book of Riddles) containing poems
variorum metrorum.
165
Two anonymous citations in Philitas, fr. 12 D./42 L. and probably 22 D./52 L.; Anacreon (PMG 373.1-
2) in Simias fr. 30 Fr. = Athen. 11.472e Κάδος. Σιµµίας ποτήριον, παρατιθέµενος ᾽Ανακρέοντος
“ἠρίστησα µὲν ἰτρίου λεπτοῦ <µικρὸν> ἀποκλάς, / οἴνου δ’ ἐξέπιον κάδον. As the κάδος was a jar rather
than a cup, it looks like Simias did not understand Anacreon’s comically hyperbolic language: see
Wilamowitz 1913, 103 n. 1, Dettori 2000, 47, Meliadò 2008. Note that in fr. 29 Fr. (below, n. X), Hom.
Od. 18.299-300 is implied, but not cited, which would seem to suggest a somewhat unsystematic
approach (unless Athenaeus is shortening Simias’ original interpretamentum). In addition, as Dettori
points out (2000, 47 and n. 150), Simias does not seem to be interested in interpreting Anacreon, who is
simply and unilaterally used to determine the word’s range of application; this is something that the
Rhodian shares with early lexicographers like Zenodotus and Lycophron.
166
Compare e.g. fr. 9 D./39L., 14 D./44 L. with Simias fr. 32 Fr. = Athen. 7 327e-f ἔστι δὲ καὶ γένος
λίθου φάγρος· ἡ γὰρ ἀκόνη κατὰ Κρῆτας φάγρος, ὥς φασι Σιµίας.
167
Dettori 2000, 46-48. Spanoudakis (2002, 397) posits a reliance of the Rhodian on Philitas.
168
fr. 29 Fränkel = Athen. 15 677b-c Σιληνὸς δ’ ἐν ταῖς γλώσσαις φησίν· Ἴσθµιον· στέφανον. Φιλητᾶς
(fr. 13 Dettori = 41 Spanoudakis = 43 Lightfoot) δέ φησι· στέφανος ἤγουν ὁµωνυµία ἀµφοτέρωθι οἷον
τῆς κεφαλῆς καὶ τοῦ †πρώτου† κόσµου. […] Τιµαχίδας (fr. 28 Blinkenberg) δὲ καὶ Σιµµίας οἱ Ῥόδιοι
ἀποδιδόασιν ἓν ἀνθ’ ἑνός· ἴσθµιον· στέφανον; the glossa has been thought to come from Hom. Od.
18.299-300; Pisander brings Penelope an ἴσθµιον, which grammarians explain as an adjective qualifying
ὅρµον ‘necklace’ in 18.295, but which (anachronistically, see Spanoudakis 2002, 367 n. 20) Philitas
(followed by or following Simias?) interpreted as a garland. Philitas and Simias may have had in mind
one of those parsley-wreaths with which the victors at the Isthmian games were crowned, like the ones
mentioned in Pi. O. 13.33 πλόκοι σελίνων ἐν Ἰσθµιάδεσσι οr Aristoph. fr. 505 K.-A./Pellegrino Ἰσθµιακά
(cited in Athenaeus), cf. D.S. 16.79.4 Ἰσθµιακὸν στέφανον. The interpretamentum in Athenaeus is clearly
corrupt; he must have meant that the ἴσθµιον was an adornment both for the head and for the neck, cf.
Hesych. ι 29 ἴσθµιον· περιτραχήλιον κόσµηµα. The confusion appears to have been caused by the fact
that a necklace may also be a ‘wreathed’ object, see Hesych. υ 603; Pollux, Onomasticon 5.98.
169
Tosi 1994, 146-47.
. 26
glossai, but instead offers words belonging to same lexical sphere – though not necessarily
synonyms;170 the impression is that Simias’ collections of ‘related words’ functioned as lexical
aids and were set up specifically for poetic purposes.171
It is difficult to pinpoint the source and setting of Simias’ glossographical activity, which seems
hardly inscribable in the very early stages of the Alexandrian philological school (when he would
already have been a senior scholar). His approach might have been developed earlier within a
Peripatetic context, either at Athens with Theophrastus, who replaced Aristotle as head of the
Lyceum in 322, or, more likely, at Rhodes, his homecountry, where Eudemus founded a
Peripatetic school.172 J. Kwapisz has recently offered a persuasive ‘Aristotelian’ reading of the
adjective ὀνοµάκλυτον used (un-Homerically) by Simias to describe the Half-Dogs’ ability to
understand human language. 173 Aristotle’s interest in rare or unusual words, both poetic and
spoken locally in everyday language, has been put in connexion with the emergence of
dialectology as one of the primary interests of early Helleistic poet-scholars.174 However, at this
chronological stage the link between Aristotelian work on language and the developing
Alexandrian glossography, is still somewhat tenuous. Eudemus, a contemporary of Simias who
edited and systematized Aristotle’s works and authored a περὶ λέξεως, researched primarily
dialectic and, possibly rhetoric, but there is no evidence of any interest on his part in arcane
terms.175 The glossographical nature of Clearchus’ γλώτται (fr. 111-12 Wehrli) and Heraclides
Ponticus’ περὶ ὀνόµατων (fr. 17.7 Schütrumpf), also written in this period, has also been
legitimately questioned. 176 And yet, grammatical lexica focusing on dialectical forms and
expressions are later found in the work of third-century philologists such as Dionysius Iambos’
περὶ Διαλέκτων (Ath. VII 284b), Callimachus’ Ἐθνικαί ὀνοµασίαι (fr. 406 Pf.), and
Neoptolemus of Parion’s Φρύγιαι φωναί (Ach.Tat. Isag. Exc. 5, p. 36 M.).177 The Peripatetic
Neoptolemus, in particular, called γλωσσογράφος by Strabo (13.1.19), has been seen as the
170
Simias fr. 31 Fr. = Athen. 11 479c Σιµµίας δὲ ἀποδίδωσι τὴν κοτύλην (generic word for ‘cup’)·
ἄλεισον (= κύπελλον = δέπας, ‘goblet’: see Athen. 11 783a and 482e). Surely, we would have expected
the vox Homerica ἄλεισον to be the lemma, here; cf. schol. D in Hom. Il. 11.774 ἄλεισον· ἔκπωµα,
ποτήριον.
171
Cf. Spanoudakis 2002, 397-98 n. 61 on ἀκόνη in fr. 32 Fr.; Blum 1991, 111: “These collections were
intended as aids for the explanation of old poems, perhaps also as a source of information for new
authors”; similarly, at p. 136; cf. Kwapisz 2018, XX on δρίος possibly ‘glossed’ by Simias as σύσκιος
τόπος (“a particularly intricate case of filologia interna”). Fränkel 1915, 116-20 recorded 73 “glossai”
from his poems, which could, in principle, have featured in his three books of rare words.
172
Wehrli – Wöhrle – Zhmud 2004, 558.
173
Kwapisz 2018, XX.
174
Spanoudakis 2002, 386-87; Lightfoot 2009, 4-5 (‘although it is hard to prove that it was Philitas who
gave them that impetus’); Parsons 2011, 145-47. The employment of glossai in poetry is discussed
already in Aristotle’s Poetics, in the passage about the essence of a riddle; rare words are treated as a
subcategory of lexeis, and a moderate use of these is recommended to avoid obscurity and the excesses of
jargon: see Montanari 2012, 127-29. For dialectical peculiarities in Philitas, see frr. 32/34 (?), 34/36,
35/37, 37/39, 39/41, 40/42, 42/44, 44/46 L./Sp.
175
Matelli 2012a, 538-41.
176
Dettori 2000, 39-40 on the Glottai of Clearchus and they Peri onomaton of Heraclides Ponticus.
177
Tosi 1994, 147-48, Hatzimichali 2013, 76-77 on Callimachus; Degani 1995, 509-510, Tosi 2015, 631
on Dionysius Iambus and Neoptolemus.
. 27
figure that synthesizes the Aristotelian ideas on poetry with Alexandrian standards.178 Finally,
Praxiphanes, who continued the work of Eudemus at Rhodes after his death around 290, engaged
with Sophoclean exegesis (29A-C Matelli) and even with rare words (30A-B), although the
scope and application of his glossographic activity is not known.179 Praxiphanes, a ‘Telchine’
and one of the targets of Callimachus (fr. 1b.7-8 H., 460 Pf.), must have benefitted from the
lively scholarly culture characterizing the city in the second half of the fourth century and could
have met Simias at Rhodes. We obviously cannot tell whether he shared with the latter the same
poetic preferences and aesthetic judgments, but even if Simias is indeed alluded to in
Callimachus’ theatrical epigram, the Cyrenean’s criticism does not necessarily require Simias’
adherence to a particular school.
Simias at Rhodes
Simias’ scholarly stature is acknowledged by Strabo in his list of eminent Rhodians: ἄνδρες δ’
ἐγένοντο µνήµης ἄξιοι πολλοί … καὶ Πείσανδρος δ’ ὁ τὴν Ἡράκλειαν γράψας ποιητὴς Ῥόδιος,
καὶ Σιµµίας ὁ γραµµατικὸς καὶ Ἀρίστοκλῆς ὁ καθ’ ἡµᾶς.180 His connection with the city can be
retrieved from the shadows of his fragmentary corpus. In a past article, developing a suggestion
by C. De Stefani, I raised the possibility that Simias, like Posidippus with his epigram for
Carete’s Rhodian colossus (completed around 280 BC), composed a celebratory epigram in
honour of the Rhodians’ patron god, Helius.181 The only surviving fragment of Simias’ Months is
concerned with the Rhodian month of Hyacinthius, ‘the month that people call after the dead son
of Amyclas’, i.e. Hyacinth.182 Its genre must have been didactic, like Hesiod’s Works and Days,
its calendrical predecessor, although the above fragment suggests a marked aetiological character
which recalls Ovid’s Fasti.183 There is in fact good reason to believe that, unlike Callimachus’
Μηνῶν προσηγορίαι κατὰ ἔθνος καὶ πόλεις (fr. 412 Pf.), the work covered in catalogic form
exclusively the Rhodian calendar, or at least the monthly denominations of Doric-speaking
communities.184
178
Porter 1995, 102-108, 118-129, 133-37; Sistakou 2016, 35.
179
Matelli 2012b, 90, 211-15, 316; Novokhatko 2015, 56-57; Montana 2015, 73. For a fuller picture of
the works of Peripatetic authors on philology, literary history, and biography in the IV-III centuries see
Blum 1991, 47-52.
180
Str. 14.2.13 = T b Fränkel.
181
Simias fr. 7 Fr. = 4 P. Χρυσῷ τοι φαέθοντι πολύλλιστος φλέγεται κράς ‘With shiny gold your head
blazes, much prayed-for’: see Perale 2011b. Powell’s ascription to the Apollo is unfounded: cf. Di
Gregorio 2008, 98.
182
Simias fr. 4 F. = 8 P. ὅν ῥ’ Ἀµύκλαντος / παιδὸς ἄπο φθιµένου … λαοὶ κικλήσκουσιν.
183
Miller 1994, 174; Di Gregorio 2008, 112.
184
Fränkel 1915, 41. On the possible aetiological character of this work and its relationship with
Callimachus’ Μηνῶν προσηγορίαι see now Coward (forthcoming) and Kwapisz (forthcoming). The metre
of the fragment is unclear. Fränkel, who considers it hexametrical, divides the transmitted verse after
Ἀµύκλαντος and posits a lacuna after φθιµένου (which Bergk had filled in as λαοὶ <µετα>κικλήσκουσιν).
However, muta-cum-liquida is never applied to the ethnonym/toponym Ἀµυκλα- in hexameter poetry.
Meineke’s economical ὅν ῥ’ <ἀπ’> (add. Meineke) ᾽Αµύκλαντος παιδὸς ἀποφθιµένου / λαοὶ
κικλήσκουσιν restores an elegiac sequence, but introduces an unwelcome repetition: contrast Aesch. Fr.
402 R. ἀφ’ οὗ δὴ Ῥήγιον κικλήσκεται; Rhian. fr. 25.4-5 τοῦ δ’ ἄπο … λαοὶ µετεφηµίξαντο.
. 28
In a fragment that may have been from a ktisis of Rhodes (or Crete), Simias denies that the
malignant Telchines, whom he associates with Crete, were the founders of his native city.185 This
is usually associated with a verse ascribed to Simias by Clemens of Alexandra: ‘The salty sea-
water was mother (or ‘nurse’) to the Ignetai and the Telchines’, which seems to imply that the
sea gave birth to both Rhodes and Crete, as the Ignetai are said to be the mythical inhabitants of
the former.186 The fragment seems also to presuppose the myth of the Telchines being born out
of Thalatta, the sea,187 but the Ignetai, whose name is attested only in Imperial and Byzantine
grammarians, are never said to be the children of the Sea.188 A number of exegetical issues affect
the correct understanding of the verse; both the word for ‘mother’ and the name ‘Ignetai’, which
occur only in lexica, are restored by emendation.189 In addition, the second verse appears to be a
botched hexametric attempt, as it has no main caesura and shows a strong hiatus after ἔφυ, where
the υ is anomalously taken as short.190 I limit myself to pointing out that, taken as reported in
Fränkel and Powell’s editions, but articulated without verse-divisions, both the fragment from
the Months and the fragment on the Telchines scan as catalectic heptameters, a verse called
stesichorium by Servius:191 identity of metre and consonance of content (both fragments focusing
on Rhodes or at least Doric-speaking islands), if verified, would suggest Simias’ ‘ktisis’ may be
in fact a possible fragment of the Months.
However, Rhodes having special place in the poet’s heart does not preclude the possibility that
Simias travelled to other vibrant centres of knowledge, such as Athens or the courts of monarchs,
which served as magnets at the time for philosophers and scholars alike. At Alexandria, he could
have met Philitas, who acted as tutor of Ptolemy II between ca. 300 and the 290ies BC.192 The
185
Simias fr. 11 P. = 8 F. Ἀµµὰς / Ἰγνήτων καὶ (ἅµα σιγνητων και L : ἄµασιγνήτων καὶ V) Τελχίνων ἔφυ
ἡ ἁλυκὴ ζάψ; cf. Suet. De maled. 4 ῎Αλλοι δὲ τοὺς τὴν ‘Ρόδον οἰκοῦντας, ὅθεν καὶ Τελχινία ἡ νῆσος
ἐλέγετο. Τινὲς δέ, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Σιµµίας τοὺς τῆς Κρήτης οἰκήτορας; see Di Gregorio 2008, 115 for the
correct, I believe, interpretation of the fragment.
186
Di Gregorio 2008, 114 n. 477; add Hesych. ι 50 L. Ἴγνητες· οὕτως ὠνοµάζοντο οἱ µετὰ τοὺς Τελχῖνας
ἐποικήσαντες τὴν Ῥόδον.
187
D.S. 5.55.1 τὴν δὲ νῆσον τὴν ὀνοµαζοµένην Ῥόδον πρῶτοι κατῴκησαν οἱ προσαγορευόµενοι
Τελχῖνες· οὗτοι δ’ἦσαν υἱοὶ µὲν Θαλάττης, ὡς ὁ µῦθος παραδέδωκε; Suet. De maled. 4.92 T. Τελχῖνες·
[…] τούτους οἱ µὲν θαλάσσης παῖδας φασί.
188
Unless these are the six children of the ‘marine’ Halia (whose name may have been corrupted into the
vox nihili ἅµα σ- transmitted by L) and Poseidon mentioned in D.S. 5.55.4: Ποσειδῶνα δὲ ἀνδρωθέντα
ἐρασθῆναι Ἁλίας τῆς τῶν Τελχίνων ἀδελφῆς, καὶ µιχθέντα ταύτῃ γεννῆσαι παῖδας ἓξ µὲν ἄρρενας.
189
For the Arcado-Cypriot origin of the term see now Janko 2018, 193.
190
Emendation seems indeed required. A hexameter is restored by writing e.g. ἀµµὰ κασιγνήτων
Τελχίνων {ἔφυ} ἡ ἁλυκὴ ζάψ ‘the salty sea (was) mother to the Telchines, brothers (of the Rhodians)’.
Knox 1925, 192 proposed ἀµµὰς Τελχίνων τε καὶ Ἰγνήτων {ἔφυ ἡ} ἁ. ζ. I also wonder whether ἀµµά(ς), a
coaxing or endearing name, would not be out of place in such a poem: see EM, p. 84.22 ἀµµά· ἡ τροφὸς
καὶ ἡ µήτηρ κατὰ ὑποκόρισµα; cf. Hesych. α 3692 (from Diogenianus) ἀµµάς· ἡ τροφὸς Ἀρτέµιδος. καὶ ἡ
µήτηρ. καὶ ἡ Ῥέα. καὶ ἡ Δηµήτηρ. Other (somewhat unsatisfactory) hexametric solutions would be: ἀλλὰ
(λ + λ = µ) κασιγνήτων Τελχίνων {ἔφυ} ἡ ἁλυκὴ ζάψ or, alternatively, α<ἱ>µασίη γίνεται Τελχίνων ἡ
ἁλυκὴ ζάψ. For a full list of past emendations see Coward (forthcoming).
191
See Stesich. Tb 18 Ercoles; cf. Ibycus PMGF 288.3, where we have two main caesurae, as in Simias,
falling in the third and fourth foot.
192
Sbardella 2000, 14; Spanoudakis 2002, 23-24.
. 29
Peripatetic Demetrius of Phaleron may have hosted him in Athens in the period 317 to 307 BC,
before being exiled by the Poliorcetes, who two years later would besiege Simias’ city. Both
Demetriuses were the object of poetic attention. 193 At Athens, Simias could have become
acquainted with the developing work of Timaeus of Tauromenium, possible source of inspiration
for the incipit of his Axe. 194 Other notable Rhodians including the poet Antagoras and scholar
Hieronymus, probably younger than Simias, stayed at Pella, where prominent intellectuals like
Aratus, Timon of Phlius and Bion of Borysthenes enjoyed the patronage of Antigonus. 195 It
would be indeed tempting to associate glossography and literary sophistication with a patronage
context, but evidence for Simias in this sense remains inconclusive.
As I have tried to show, there seems little ground for supposing that Simias developed or refined
his poetic skills at Alexandria. It may be legitimate, however, to call him an Alexandrian ante
litteram. The obscurities and complexities of his poetry, the intricacies of his intertextual
allusions, the cult of the poetic past, the exhibition of erudition, his fascination for the uncanny,
and possibly also his interest in the ordinary and the un-heroic draws him nearer to Callimachus
and Apollonius than has been recognized. Callimachus, in particular, acknowledges – in his own
way – his presence in the literary debate of his time. It is certainly striking that most of the
imagery in the incipit of the Egg (poetry as offering, the poetics of purity, image of the
nightingale/poet, the metapoetic value of weaving, the portentous lightness of Hermes), other
than being anachronistically Callimachean, seem to point to an audience as restricted as that of
Philicus’ fellow grammarians. The ‘shrilly throes’ of labouring Simias reminds us that leptotēs,
to use the words of K. Spanoudakis on Philitas’ talking book shunning rustic hands, “had to fight
its way through”.196
Acosta-Hughes – Stephens 2011 = B. Acosta-Hughes, S.A. Stephens, Callimachus in

Context. From Plato to the Augustan Poets, Cambridge 2011
Austin 2001 = M. Austin, ‘War and Culture in the Seleucid Empire’, in T. Bekker-Nielsen, L.
Hannestad, War as a Cultural and Social Force. Essays on Warfare in Antiquity,
Copenhagen 2001, 90-103
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M. Perale, Simias of Rhodes. The Artsy Avantgardist, in M. Perale, J. Kwapisz, G. Taietti, B.

Cartlidge (eds.), A Handbook to Hellenistic Poetry Before Callimachus, Cambridge University

Provisional Draft. Not to be cited without the author’s permission.

Upload date: 3/8/2018

The Wild-but-edible One

Excursions in Homeric diction

Lecturing Simias on Platonic Learning

The Apollo: Paradoxography into Poetry

The Gorgo(n): so much more than epic

Acosta-Hughes – Stephens 2011 = B. Acosta-Hughes, S.A. Stephens, Callimachus in

Barbantani 2001 = S. Barbantani, ‘Aspetides: un antenato di Pirro d’Epiro? Analisi di SH fr.

Berthold 1984 = R.M. Berthold, Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age, Ithaca.

Boas 1905 = M. Boas, De epigrammatis simonideis, Groningae 1905

Boas 1907 = M. Boas, ‘Anyte und Simonides’, RhM 62 (190

Broggiato 2001 = M. Broggiato, Cratete di Mallo. I frammenti, La Spezia 2001

Cadili 1995 = L. Cadili, Ricerche sull’innografia ellenistica, Diss. Milan 1995

Cairns 2016 = F. Cairns, Hellenistic Epigram. Contexts of Exploration, Cambridge 2016

Cameron 1995 = A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics, Princeton 1995

D’Alessandro 2011-12 = P. D’Alessandro, ‘Carmina figurata, carmi antitetici e il Pelecus di

Degani 1995 = E. Degani, ‘La lessicografia’, in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza (eds.), Lo

Dettori 2000 = E. Dettori, Filita Grammatico. Testimonianze e frammenti, Rome 2000

Dieterle 2007 = M. Dieterle, Dodona. Religionsgeschichtliche und historische Untersuchungen

Di Gregorio 2008 = L. Di Gregorio, “Sui frammenti di Simia di Rhodio, poeta alessandrino”,

Ellis 1876 = R. Ellis, A Commentary on Catullus, Oxford 1876.

Fantuzzi – Hunter 2004 = M. Fantuzzi, R. Hunter, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic

Fränkel 1915 = H. Fränkel, De Simia Rhodio, Diss. Göttingen 1915

Geffcken 1896 = J. Geffcken, Leonidas von Tarent, Leipzig 1896.

poetiche nella Grecia antica, Milano 2003

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Jacobs 1798 = F. Jacobs, Animadversiones in Epigrammata Anthologiae Graecae, I 2, Leipzig

Janko 2000 = R. Janko, Philodemus. On Poems. Book I, Oxford 2000

Kotlińska-Toma 2015 = A. Kotlińska-Toma, Hellenistic Tragedy. Texts, Translations and a

Kwapisz 2013a = J. Kwapisz, The Greek Figure Poems, Leiden 2013

Kwapisz 2014 = J. Kwapisz, “Behaghel’s Club”, CQ 64, 2014,

Kwapisz 2016 = J. Kwapisz “When is Riddle an Epigram?”, in E. Sistakou and A. Rengakos

Kwapisz 2018 = J. Kwapisz, The Three Preoccupations of Simias’, in J. Kwapisz (ed.),

Le Guen 2001 = Les associations de technites Dionysiaques à l’époque hellénistique, I. Corpus

Lightfoot 2009 = J. Lightfoot, Hellenistic Collection: Philitas, Alexander of Aetolia,

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Maehler 2004 = H. Maehler, Bacchylides. A Selection, Cambridge 2004

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Matelli 2012a = E. Matelli, ‘Praxiphanes, who is he?’, in A. Martano, E. Matelli, D. Mirhady

Matelli 2012b = E. Matelli, Prassifane, Testimonianze e frammenti. Filosofia e grammatica in

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