BMCR 2009.05.14: Sens on Lapini, Capitoli su Posidippo. Hellenica, 25

Walter Lapini, Capitoli su Posidippo. Hellenica, 25.  Alessandria:
Edizioni dell'Orso, 2007.  Pp. xvii, 493.  ISBN 978-88-7694-993-7.
EUR 60.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Alexander Sens, Georgetown University ([email protected])
Word count:  1608 words
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This volume comes as a useful contribution to the still burgeoning
literature on the epigrams of Posidippus, and especially the 'new'
poems published in 2001 as P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309. Although it is
formally divided into two halves--the first containing lengthier
studies of individual poems or groups of poems, the second a series of
briefer observations on individual passages--the primary focus of the
entire volume is the constitution of the text of the poems from the
Milan papyrus as well as those preserved in the Greek Anthology and by
other sources. I should say up front that I am thanked by Lapini for
providing him with an early draft of my forthcoming commentary on
Asclepiades or Posidippus AP 5.209 (*128 Austin-Bastianini).

The volume covers a great deal of ground. The Milan papyrus is
organized in sections, each preceded by a generic label. Poems from
each of these groups receive close attention, as do epigrams known
prior to the publication of the papyrus. In the first half of the book,
Lapini devotes chapters to the conclusion of the lithika; to a series
of poems from the oionoskopika; to the poem on Arion's dolphin from the
anathematika (here, Lapini defends a reconstruction he proposed at ZPE
143 (2003)); to one of the epitymbia (51 A-B); to an epigram from the
andriantopoiika (67 A-B); to the so-called Seal of Posidippus (118
A-B); and to an epigram preserved by Athenaeus. There is also a
stimulating discussion of possible references to Aphrodite Zephyritis
in the extant poems. The second half of the book contains chapters on
each of the sections of the Milan Posidippus, as well as on poems from
the "old" corpus; in this half of the book, Lapini offers briefer
critical and exegetical suggestions on a range of epigrams.

Although Lapini's interests are broad, the bulk of his attention is
devoted to correcting and supplementing the text of Posidippus as it
has been preserved on the Milan papyrus, in the manuscripts that
constitute the Greek Anthology, and in the secondary tradition.

There are, indeed, many passages of the Milan papyrus (and of the "old"
Posidippus) where the text is largely intact but manifestly corrupt and
thus in need of editorial intervention. There are others in which the
point is obscure, the language seemingly awkward, or the letters
surrounding a lacuna hard to explain. The extent to which these also
warrant correction is a very tricky question, to which different
scholars are likely to have different answers. In several places,
Lapini argues for retaining the transmitted text by repunctuating or
reinterpreting, but in general his approach is interventive, and the
volume brims with suggestions, some of them attractive, for improving
the text that has been transmitted to us. Lapini often rethinks
problematic or lacunose passages in interesting ways, as for example in
his discussion of relationship of the fly and the miniature statue of a
chariot in 67 A-B (pp. 98-107), or his suggestion of <greek>
[E)]KNEI=N</greek> rather than <greek>[O)]KNEI=N</greek> (edd. prr.) in
110 A-B (pp. 157-9). For some other passages I am sometimes less
convinced, in large part because I have a slightly different threshold
for editorial intervention and adopt a more conservative attitude,
colored by the fact that many passages that seemed manifestly corrupt
to earlier generations of scholars have been shown to be perfectly
sound and comprehensible in the light of a better understanding of
Hellenistic intertextual and narrative strategies.

Lapini is quite comprehensive in his collection of primary and
secondary material (the bibliography comes in just shy of a hundred
pages), and the volume offers a useful collection of information from
which all scholars working on Posidippus will benefit. There are also
moments when one feels things have gone somewhat too far. Thus, for
example, Lapini rightly observes that not every passage in which the
poet seems to be engaging in play with a speaking name is actually a
literary game, and to illustrate the point, he accumulates almost two
full pages (42-3) of modern examples of real works of modern
scholarship in which the relationship between the name of the author
and the subject matter might appear too good to be true. Similarly, I
am not sure that it is necessary to give a complete enumeration of the
various but often very similar translations of the phrase
<greek>QALA/TTHS</greek>  | <greek>YAU/OYSAN</greek>  at *128. 5-6 (pp.
166-8) to make the point that the phrase is a difficult one, as
Gow-Page and others observed; a more synthetic summary of various
approaches would have sufficed.

The volume is too rich in detail for me to offer a thorough accounting
of the places where I agree and disagree with the author, and I
restrict myself to a few exempli gratia observations on specific
passages. It is in the nature of a book review that I here focus on
places in which I differ from the author, but that fact should not
obscure my regard for the volume as a whole.

p. 145 n. 22 (on 120.1): for the confusion of <greek>NAI/</greek> and
<greek>KAI/</greek>, add Asclep. 17.4 Gow-Page (<greek>KAI\</greek>
apogr. : <greek>NAI\</greek>), though <greek>KAI\ PERI\</greek> still
seems to me more likely as a correction of the faulty text transmitted
by Athenaeus. <greek>KAI\ SU\</greek> at Anyte 10 Gow-Page (ap. Poll.
v. 48), though not line initial, may offer an interesting comparandum,
since <greek>KAI\</greek> there may be understood to locate the dead
dog to whom it is addressed in a broader tradition of funerary epigram.

pp. 165-91: Lapini makes the attractive suggestion that *128 A-B
(ascribed alternatively to Asclepiades in the Greek Anthology), in
which a narrative addressed to Aphrodite tells the story of the
initiation of reciprocal love after Cleandrus sees Nico swimming off
shore, may evoke the dual roles of Aphrodite Zephyritis as protector of
those at sea and as guarantor of conjugal love. I remain unpersuaded,
however, that editorial intervention is needed in *128.6. In defense of
my own interpretation: Lapini's objections seem not to take into
account the fundamental compression of epigrammatic narrative and other
literary features of the poem.

p. 203 (on 17.3 A-B): It seems risky to eliminate the rare word
<greek>A)NTH/EIS</greek> by emending <greek>A)NTH/ENTA</greek> to
<greek>A)NTH/[S]ONTA</greek>. As Lapini observes, the adjective has the
sense 'hostile" in its only other attestation (Pi. P. 9.93), but
Hellenistic poets often use adjectives in new ways, and there is no
reason it cannot mean 'opposing' or the like here.

p. 210 (on 21.1 A-B): I would like greater clarity on what it means to
set sail for "the whole voyage" in this context, whether the papyrus
has <greek>PA/NTA PLE/ON</greek> or <greek>PA/NTA PLO/ON</greek>.
Aristid. 17.249 is a less useful parallel than one would like, since
there the broader context makes it transparent what expedition is
intended.

p. 289 (on 86.4 A-B): The suggestion <greek>KAI\ E)[S E(/TERA</greek>
(i.e. "on other occasions") is contextually attractive, though one
wishes for comparable expressions for victories at athletic
competitions.

p. 290 (on 87.3): It is not clear to me why one should wish to attempt
to avoid the accumulation of relative pronouns in the first place. In
the absence of more compelling grounds for altering it, the text as
transmitted can stand.

p. 297-9  (on 93 A-B): Lapini argues for retaining <greek>
YUXRO\N</greek> rather than emending to <greek>YUXROU=</greek>, and to
do so, punctuates <greek>W)/|XETO GA/R</greek> as a self-standing
parenthesis. On its own, "(for he died)" seems completely banal as an
explanatory parenthesis, however, and the point of the digression seems
more likely to be that the honorand died while sailing in the middle of
winter. That correption of <greek>-OU</greek> is not otherwise attested
in the second hemistich of the pentameter in the corpus, is hardly
fatal.

p. 306 (on 93.2 A-B): Whereas <greek>H)E/LION  W(/RAN</greek> may
easily be used in both a literal sense of a blind man recovering his
sight and a metaphorical one of someone being born, it is less obvious
that one can use the expression "see heavy Hades" metaphorically to
mean "go blind," and Lapini's <greek>DI\S M[OU=NOS KAI\ DI\S BARU\]N
EI)=D' A)I/DHN</greek> seems less satisfactory than edd. pr.'s
<greek>DI\S M[OU=NOS BLE/YAS TO\]N ...</greek> or the like..

p. 309 on 104 A-B: The opening expression <greek> STH=QI
TETARP[OME/NOS</greek> combines two ideas common in addresses to
passersby: the request that they stop to learn the information on the
tomb, and that they rejoice (i.e. <greek> XAI=RE</greek>
(<greek>XAI/RETE</greek>)). The phrase as a whole stands in opposition
to the third verse of the epigram (i.e. if [you can't stay but must]
move on) and I am not convinced that it should be split into two
clauses by a raised stop.

p. 315 (on 125.1 A-B = AP 5.186.1): Lapini's <greek>PIQANW=S ...
DAKRU/OUSA</greek> seems to me a more prosaic correction of the
transmitted text than Reiske and Bothe's widely accepted
<greek>PIQANOI=S ...DAKRU/OISI</greek>; although it cannot be excluded
absolutely on those grounds, it seems less attractive to me.

p. 324 (on 121.1 A-B): What seems awkward to one may seem striking and
meaningful to another: in my view, it is inadvisable to repunctuate or
emend away the striking expression <greek>DA/KRUA KAI\ KW=MOI, TI/ M'
E)GEI/RETE ...</greek> . I am not persuaded by Lapini's suggestion that
the first three words might be taken as a complete sentence meaning
"Even komoi (may be the cause of) tears," especially given how
unsurprising such a claim would be in the epigrammatic tradition.  The
phrase as a whole captures the range of a lover's experience, from
revelry to tears.

Such disagreements are inevitable in a work of this scope, and only
illustrate the richness of this provocative and wide-ranging volume,
which will be of great interest to all students of Posidippus, and of
Hellenistic poetry in general.