eratosthenes' erigone: a reconstruction

8/10/2019 Eratosthenes' Erigone: A Reconstruction

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merican Philological ssociation

Eratosthenes' Erigone: A ReconstructionAuthor(s): Friedrich SolmsenSource: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 78 (1947),pp. 252-275Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283498 .Accessed: 22/12/2014 05:57

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Vol. lxxviii] Eratosthenes' rigone 253

we were to regard his authoritative osition n this field s havingsprung ntirely rom ictitious ttributions.

In the paper to which have referred asked what connectionmight e found between Eratosthenes' Platonic beliefs nd his studyof Katasterismoi, ut could not overcome certain difficulties hichcenter n the fact that in Katasterismoi t is not the soul which stransferred o the sky but rather person of such and such shapeor an animal or even an inanimate bject (e.g., the Lyre, the Crownof Ariadne, Argo, the Arrow).5 There seemedto be little hope thatthese difficulties ight be resolved nd that it would be possibletoestablish a closer and clearer connection between Eratosthenes'labors on Katasterismoi nd his belief n the celestial origin of thesoul.

And yet light finally omes from source to which one wouldnot readily turn. The Dionysiaca of Nonnus includes in its lastbook but one the story of Icarius, the peasant of Icaria to whomDionysus entrusted the task of introducing he vine to Attica.6In the pursuit of this mission Icarius is slain by his ungratefulcountrymen; Erigone, his daughter, decides not to survive herfather, nd the faithful og that has helped her to find her father'sbody dies from exhaustion under the tree on which Erigone hashanged herself. Father Zeus, however, takes pity on them andassigns to all three, man, maiden, and dog, a place among the con-stellations. This final episode is reported by Nonnus in verseswhich raise special problems nd require word of explanation.

Substantially he same story was treated by Eratosthenes n hisErigone, he ittle masterpiecewhichbecauseof ts flawless echniquereceives from Longinus" the dubious compliment f a &a ia-vTopaAwli?yrtop 7ro077,aTnop.7 Scholars who have given their attention tothe reconstruction f this poem8 are convinced that the Erigone

I Cf. my paper (cited in note 1) 204 f. and note 61.6 Dion. 47.34-264. Dionysus arrives from Thebes where he has brought about

the catastrophe of Pentheus (books 44-46). The boisterous welcome which theAthenians give the god (47.1-33) does not belong to the story of Icarius, the point ofwhich is that Dionysus' gift is something entirely unknown in

Attica. Nonnus hereuses the same colors which he has just applied to the Theban story (the words oube TLS7v 4X6peuros va' rT6XtV, verse 34, are also found 44.125; compare also 47.1 with 44.123).Cf. on 47.1-33 Paul Collart, Nonnos de Panopolis (Cairo, 1930) 257.

7 De subl. 33.5.8 See esp. Ernst Maass, Analecta Eratosthenica (Berlin, 1883) 59 ff.; cf. also Theodor

Bergk, Kleine Philologische Schriften, 2 (Halle, 1886) 202 ff.; Eduard Hiller, Eratos-thenis Carminum Reliquiae (Leipzig, 1872) 94 ff.; Knaack, loc. cit. (above, note 4) 387.

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254 Friedrich olmsen [1947

included the transformation f Icarius into the constellation ofBo6tes, the Ox-driver, ecause he had carried the wineskins on acart drawn by oxen, of Erigone herself nto the Maiden, and of thedog into Sirius. We shall see that there s truth as well as errorin this supposition.

It has been noted that the section of the Dionysiaca which treatsof Icarius and Erigone differs n tone and style from he bulk of theepic. For once Nonnus lays aside his thunder nd allows us fora while to breathe more quietly. It has even been suggested thatthis episode approximates the ethos of a Hellenistic poem.9 Anobvious explanation of this change of ethoswould be that Nonnuswhile composing this part of his epic was under the influence fEratosthenes' famous work. Yet for certain reasons some ofthem weighty scholars have hitherto een reluctant o draw thisconclusion. We shall consider hese reasons ater; what should besaid now is that none of the investigators as done justice to thepassage in which Nonnus describes the transplantation o the skyof Icarius, Erigone, nd the dog.'0

"Father Zeushad pity, nd he placedErigone n the companyof the stars near the Lion's back. The rustic maid holds n ear ofcorn; for he did not wishto carry he red grapeswhichhad beenher father's eath. And Zeus brought ld Icarios into the star-spangled ky to move beside his daughter, nd called him Bootes,the Plowman, hining right, nd touching heWainof the ArcadianBear. The Dog he made lso a fiery onstellation hasing he Hare,in that part where he starry mage of sea-faring rgo voyagesround hecircle f Olympos.

"Such is the fiction f the Achaian story, mingling s usualpersuasion ith falsehood; ut the truth s: Zeus our Lord on highjoined he oulof Erigonewith he tar of the heavenlyVirgin old-ing an ear of corn, nd near the heavenly og he placeda dog ikehim n shape, eirios f the utumn s they all him, nd the oul ofIcarios he combined with Bootes in the heavens. These are thegifts f Cronides o the vinelands f Attica, ffering ne honour oPallasand Dionysos ogether."

This is indeed a curious passage. Nonnus first ives us a story,

then declares this story to be untrue and proceeds to presentThe most recent edition of the fragments will be found in J. U. Powell, CollectaneaAlexandrina (Oxford, 1925) 64 ff.

9 Cf. Wilhelm Schmid and Otto Stahlin, Geschichte d. griech. Litteratur, ZweiterTeil, Zweite Halfte (Munich, 1924) 968.

10Dion. 47.246-264. I have used the translation of W. H. D. Rouse (LoebLibrary)



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another version s the "true story."" To be sure the rejection ofone version of a tale in favor of another would be far from uniquein Alexandrian or post-Alexandrian oetry;12 what makes this pas-sage so remarkable s that the first ersion s not characterized s a6&yosr a 07tA7,Unot introduced y a X&yovocr r aciLv,but is simply

set forth so that the unsuspecting reader would accept it asNonnus' own opinion until he reaches verse 256and learns to hissurprise hat what he has read in the last ten verses s a 1/6E3os.

As a Katasterismos, nly the first ersion 246-255) rings true;the second is very unusual: Zeus did turn the dog into Sirius,'3 yetat the same time assigned the souls ( ) of Icarius and Erigone toalready existing constellations. This is a very unorthodox tar-myth; yet while t is absurd s a KaL-aoTa7EpuoYiOshe conception e-comes ntelligible nd meaningful f we recognize t as the device bywhich Eratosthenes brought his own Platonic belief nto the Atticstory of Icarius and Erigone. He allowed the dog to become

11The words Kai ra j.dverXaae ,Iuos 'AXasKos71L0a'bareLOC8t'L eT,V'yKfpaS' Ta 0l'&-,rUVMoVTX. (256 ff.) do not allow an alternative interpretation. Maass, who failsto distinguish between the two versions, regards (op. cit. [above, note 8] 100) the words4Oci5a7rEci, as indicating that Nonnus is reporting a story current in his homeland,i.e. in Egypt. Surely Nonnus could not say more clearly than he does that he isdrawing on a Greek tradition (tq'0as in the meaning of 'usual,' 'wonted' is very commonin his epic). H. J. Rose (in the Notes to the Loeb Translation) comments on ourpassage as follows: "That the souls of the dead can turn into stars is a doctrine as oldat least as Aristophanes (Peace 832) and Nonnus uses it to reconcile two divergent setsof star-myths." If an author declares one version as Vt6ibos r 7rXcaaua nd goes on toreport TO &?TUrv/ov one would not normally call his procedure a "reconciliation" of con-flicting stories. The passage in Aristophanes says nothing about souls. (This im-portant difference s ignored or overlooked also by Paul Capelle, De luna, stellis, lacteoorbe animarum sedibus [Diss. Halle, 1917] 19 ff., 25.) On the passage cf. TAPhA 73[1942] 204 f.

12 Cf., e.g., Callim. H. in Jov. 4 ff., 60 ff. Propertius (4.2.1 ff.) rejects some aitiaof Vertumnus and expresses his preference for the last version which he tells (19,mendax fama. noces). Ovid Fasti (5.1 ff.) reports divergent aitia for the name ofMaia without indicating a preference. Either method - or both - may go backto Callimachus' Aetia. Needless to say, Nonnus too repudiates "lies" elsewhere inhis work (e.g. 41.118; with the phrasing of 47.256 f. compare 46.45).

13Verse 261 states this fact quite clearly (I do not understand why Rudolf Keydell,AC 1 [1932] 195, finds difficulties n this verse; the corruption, of which he makesovermuch,

does not extend beyond an epithet which has been satisfactorily emended).For further evidence that the dog of Icarius was, in Eratosthenes' poem, changed intoSirius see below, note 14. Evidently, Nonnus (or Eratosthenes) is thinking of Siriusas a single star. The K6'V of 260 (and 252) is the constellation Canis of which Siriusis a part (cf., e.g., Hyg. 2.35; 74.9 ff. Bunte). No reference is made to Canis Minor(llPOK6,V) although it may be readily admitted that 260 could describe the similaritybetween the two heavenly Canes. Yet it need not do so and any such interpretationwill become involved in difficulties when dealing with the immediately following verse.



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Sirius'4yet in the case of human beings nsisted that their psychaiwere assigned to the constellation with which they have an affinity.Thus the passage presents us with the solution of the problemwhich we formulated t the beginning f this paper. We cannotbe quite sure of what Eratosthenes id in his work on Katasterismoil5but may well believe that in that work he collected rather thancorrected opular tales about persons nd things hat were changedinto constellations. In his Erigone,however, e refused o acquiescein the popular version nd presented, nstead of t, a new and moreenlightened tory n which folklore, latonism, nd his own poeticimagination re curiously used and blended.

Of the passagesin Plato's Timaeus which nspired Eratosthenesone has been adduced by Rudolf Keydell in his comprehensiveanalysis of Nonnus:16 the demiurge voTI-Yas To' -rav &lvlXev gvxaso-Lap O.ovs -oZs aoTpots, EVE.LAE 6' Ka&T77hv -rpos Z'Kao-7-ov.l7 Another, per-haps equally important assage is found slightly ater in the samesection. KacL .'v ev' 7-0'v rpoo-71KOvTa xpOvov 3lo'VS, IraXlv d's Trv TOVu'VVVO6OVOpEVOIEL O'lK?10L0Va'rpov 3lOv evbalLOPoa Kal oVV'Ot kOl.18 It

Following Eratosthenes, Nonnus gives us in 260 the reason why the dog of Erigonewas placed close to the heavenly Dog. This reason is the dog's Etbos Uop47s. In thecase of human beings their etbos q2vXjs ould be important in determining their staror constellation.

14 Probably Fratosthenes did not take stock in the Pythagorean doctrine concern-ing transmigration of souls from human bodies into those of animals. In this point heappears to disagree with the Timaeus, in which Plato tries to make sense of this doc-trine (42c, 91E). For references n Ovid and Statius to Sirius as the dog of Icarius seeMaass, op. cit. (above, note 8) 87 ff. Maass rightly considers these references asechoes of Eratosthenes' poem and also stresses the fact that Sirius, although frequentlymentioned in poets earlier than Eratosthenes, is yet by none of them related to thestory of Icarius. However, since Maass does not believe that Nonnus in 47.257 ff.depends on the Erigone he regards the mention of Sirius in 259 ff. as a mistake ofNonnus who ought to have spoken of Canis Minor. I have already said that Maassfailed to distinguish the two versions which we find n 246-264.

15 See above, note 4. According to a statement in codex Venetus B (after schol. inII. 22.29) Eratosthenes gave EvTO7s EauVToUKaraXo'yols the orthodox version of Icarius'and Erigone's Katasterismos. KaraXoyot would be an acceptable title for Eratosthenes'work and I should be glad to credit this information. Yet so much spurious materialon Katasterismoi went under the name of Eratosthenes that statements of the kind

must be treated with extreme scepticism.Cf. Albert Rehm, Hermes 34 V1899) 267.

16 AC 1 (1932) 194.17 Tim. 41D. Compare this passage with Nonnus 47.257 ff.18 42B. The words KaIl avv?O@71re missing in FY and Stobaeus and should perhaps

be omitted (cf. F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology [London, 19371 144 n. 1). 2, vf0Oswould introduce an "astrological" motif which cannot be considered quite alien toPlato (see Phaedr. 252c ff., although there too the piesence of this motif has beenquestioned).



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should be noticed that both passagesoccur n the early cosmologicalsection of the Timaeus which provided the basis for Eratosthenes'own philosophic nd mathematical peculations hat were embodiedin his Platonicus and furnished he foundation of much of hismathematical, eographical, nd musicological hought.'9

Keydell's reference o the Timaeus s fundamentally ound. Hewas, however, mistaken n thinking hat Nonnus himself was in-fluenced y this dialogue. Neither Keydell nor any other studentof Nonnus has seriously attempted to prove that Nonnus wasfamiliar with the Timaeus, or that he was interested n Plato'scosmology, or theory of the soul or in any possible connectionbetween the souls and the stars. Whatever theories have been putforward bout Nonnus' Neoplatonic leanings or about his convic-tions regarding celestial home of the soul are founded entirelyupon our passage.20 Moreover Keydell explicitly dmits and itwould indeed be difficult o deny that Nonnus has a definiteinterest n Katasterismoi f the orthodox ype2' nd that the passageunder discussion s unique; and yet he insists that this unique andunorthodox dea must be "sein Eigentum." One would think hatif a poet has Platonic convictions r believes in the return f thesoul to the stars an epic of forty-eight ookswould offer im ampleopportunities orcoming forward with such views. Eratosthenes,on the other hand, was a Platonist, did study the Timaeus verycarefully, id believe n a celestial home of the souls, and did incor-porate Platonic motifs n his poems.22 The idea that Zeusassignedthe soul of Icarius to Bootes has no place in Nonnus' religious ut-look but forms n organic part of Eratosthenes' chemeof thought.The passage in Nonnus defines he fate of souls somewhat moreprecisely han lamblichus' report. It confirms ur conjecture hatthe "finer bodies" (Xew6Torepa oc4,uara) which, according to lam-blichus, Eratosthenes ssigned to the souls as their home,23re thestars.

19Cf. my paper cited in note 1.20 See esp. Viktor Stegemann, Astrologie und Universalgeschichte, tudien u. Inter-

pretationen zu den Dionysiaka (21roLXeia,Heft 9 [Leipzig, 1930]) 241, who adduceswhat he considers parallels in Neoplatonic vitae. In none of the passages which he citeshave I been able to find anything remotely parallel to our verses in Nonnus.

21 Loc. cit. (above, note 13) 195. Cf. Stegemann (above, note 20) 57 ff. nd passim.Only in one other passage (1.254) does Nonnus regard the HapOivosas Erigone (not,to be sure, as the home of her soul). Elsewhere he knows her as Dike (6.249; cf.41.213; see Stegemann 61).

22 For his Hermes see my paper (note 1) 211 ff.23 See note 1.



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258 Friedrrich olmsen [1947

It is tempting o think hat Eratosthenes himselfmentioned hepopular version and rejected t and that Nonnus corrects his firstversion ecause he found t in Eratosthenes et forth nd corrected.24All that I would assert s that f Eratosthenes orrected traditionalstory he must have done it in a more elegant fashion han Nonnus.However, as Nonnus' first ersion ncludes one or more echoes ofAratus25 nd as it is quite possible that Nonnus in presenting hisversion followedwhat one may call the mythological ulgata26 t isprobably wiser o resist he dea that he found n explicit orrectionof a popular tale embodied n the Erigone.

The passageon which we have concentrated oes not necessarilycreate presumption hat Nonnus followed ratosthenes' reatmentalso in other parts of the story. After ll, the only passage in whichwe have found him n the debt of Eratosthenes has every character-istic of an "afterthought"; f Nonnus derived the orthodox aTra-STTEpLLOS from nother ourcewould t not be reasonable o thinkthat this source rather han Eratosthenes was his principal model?Copies of Eratosthenes' poems must have been rarities t Nonnus'

time and although he clearly had a well stocked ibrary t his dis-24 Cf. note 15. Maass' efforts op. cit. [above, note 8] 124 ff.) to prove that the

Katasterismoi of Icarius and Erigone were unknown before Eratosthenes are not fullysuccessful although it stands to reason that the entire story was not widely known.Maass' view that Eratosthenes was the inventor of the Katasterismoi needs in anycase qualifications in the light of our results.

25 These echoes were noticed by Maass, op. cit. 101. However, only one of themcan be regarded as certain (Nonnus 47.251 f. depends on Arat. 92 f.), and Maassoverstated his case when he said omnia quae de Sirio attulit Nonnus) ex Arati carminedesumpsit.

26 Keydell, Gnomon 11 (1935) 601 discusses a number of instances in which Nonnus-and other poets of his time - rely primarily on the "Vulgartradition" but at thesame time use a poetic work to "enliven the narrative." Nonnus may well haverelied primarily on a mythological handbook. Maass, op. cit. 70 ff., gives a good sur-vey of the authors who tell the story of Icarius and Erigone. From this survey itappears that only Hyginus in his Astronomica relates Icarius' viticultural experiments;yet he too knows an alternative version which is close to the vulgata (see pp. 259 f.).Again, it seems quite evident that the mythographical tradition is unanimous in ignor-ing the peculiar Platonic turn which Eratosthenes had given to the transfiguration nthe sky of Icarius and Erigone; the common version is simply that Icarius becameB63otes, Erigone the Maiden. If we believe - as I think we may with confidencethat it was Eratosthenes who made the story popular it may surprise us that his mostcharacteristic innovation should have been generally abandoned. Yet it is after alleasy to understand that Hellenistic compilers of myths had no use for his Platonicsubtleties and that they brought the story down to the level of an ordinary Katasteris-mos. How incongruous and utterly out of keeping with the rest of his work it wouldbe if Hyginus, instead of telling us that Icarius and Erigone became transformedinto constellations, taught us that their "souls" were "joined" to these constellations.



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posal27 t is conceivable that he found a copy of the Erigone onlyafter he had worked out his own account of the story nd that hecontented himself with adding the postscript o the final episode.We should ndeed be compelled o take this view if we believed thatErnst Maass,28the only scholar who has given us an elaboratereconstruction f Eratosthenes' poem, had fully ucceeded n prov-ing his point, to wit that Nonnus' source for the story of Icariusand Erigone was a poem n which Eratosthenes' narrative had beenthoroughly remolded. Maass' arguments are acute; his theorythat Hyginus in his Astronomica29eproduces he principal eventsof Eratosthenes' poem s intrinsically lausible nd hardly nywhereopen to criticism.30 His treatment f Nonnus is however vitiatedby some oversights which will be presently iscussed, nd, in addi-tion, suffers rom an inadequate appreciation of Nonnus' owncreative power. Since recent monographs have shown the waytoward a juster appraisal of Nonnus' originality nd his poeticmethods,3' we may confidently ttribute to Nonnus himself ome

departures rom ratosthenes which Maass insisted n tracing backto his hypothetical ource.Maass observed correctly hat Hyginus' chapter on Erigone

embodies two different ersions of the story; as a matter of factHyginus himself s at pains to distinguish hem.32 In one Icarius

27 Cf. R. Keydell in RE s.v. "Nonnus" 914, on the extent of Nonnus' familiaritywith Hellenistic poetry. Serious consideration has of late been given to the possi-bility that Nonnus knew Roman poets (Virgil, Ovid, Claudianus); see Julius Braune,Nonnus und Ovid (Greifswald, 1935), and for a report on further tudies of the ques-tion, R. L. Lind in the Introduction to the Loeb Translation (p. xxiv note a.). Lindfails to mention the dissentient opinion of Paul Maass, ByzZ 35 (1935) 385.

28 Analecta Eratosthenica (see note 8) 96 ff., 102 ff.29 2.4 p. 34.24-36.21 Bunte. For the reconstructions of Maass and others see

above, note 8.30The intrinsic probability rests on the following considerations: (1) The account

includes a quotation from the Erigone (35.10). (2) Eratosthenes' poem was famousand although he did not "invent" the tale (cf. G. Knaack, RE s.v. "Eratosthenes"387, and esp. Rudolf Pfeiffer, Kallimachosstudien [Munich, 1922] 104 ff.) it may besaid with confidence that the subject was treated in no other work of comparable fame.(3) It was in all probability Eratosthenes who combined the Cean tradition aboutSirius and the need for appeasing him with the Attic story about Icarius and Erigone(Hyg. 37.12 ff.; see again Pfeiffer 110 ff.). (4) The unsophisticated characters andtheir simple way of life, the attachment of the girl to her father and of the dog to both,the aitia and katasterismoi are the stuff f which an Hellenistic epyllion would be made.

31See especially Paul Collart, Nonnos de Panopolis (Cairo, 1930); Rudolf Keydell,Hermes 62 (1927) 393 ff. nd AC 1 (1932) 173 ff.

32 Op. cit. (see note 8) 60 ff., 70 ff. See esp. Hyg. 35.12 f.; 19 f. Bunte.



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actually plants the vine which he received from the hands ofDionysus and only after he first arvest has been gathered does heset out to impart he wonderful ew gift o his countrymen. In theother version he immediately laces wineskins which he probablyreceived from he god) upon his cart and sets out on his mission.33Maass held that the former ersion was Eratosthenes'. In thishe was doubtless correct; for t is one of the few ndisputable factsabout his poem that in it a goat broke into the vines, wroughthavoc among them nd that the country L-oplef Icaria performeddances (choroi) around this goat which constitute the aition ofAttic tragedy.34 It is from this part of the poem that Hyginusactually uotes a verse: IKaptol OO6L1rpCTo irep' 7pa&yovCpX^oavro.35The planting f the vine, the destruction f some vines by the goat,and the origin of tragedy are closely connected parts of the sameepisode,and as Eratosthenes old the story f the goat it would notbe reasonable to doubt that in his poem Icarius actually plantedthe vine.

In Nonnus, Icarius does not bother bout viticulture. He evi-

dently gets from Dionysus a sufficient uantity of wine to be ableat once to distribute t among his neighbors. The neighbors mme-diately enjoy the new drink, experience the pleasant sensationsthat commonly ccompany t, yet after short whilewhen the winehas gone to their heads rush upon and kill Icarius.36 Events followupon one another n quick succession. There can be no doubt thatNonnus' account diverges considerably rom hat of Eratosthenes.At first lance the discrepancies may indeed suggest that he was

not familiar with the poem or ignored t - when he constructedthe plot of his own story.We would however make a serious mistake f we accepted this

conclusion; n fact we should be guilty f the same oversights whichas I have said vitiate Maass' examination of Nonnus. Why doesDionysus in Nonnus' poem decide on his arrival n Athens to enter

33 Hyg. 34.24 ff.; 35.12. It is with the second version that the other authoritiesfor the story of Icarius agree; see note 26. The scholium in Ov. Ibin 609 which mentions

Icarius' vinea is probably based on Hyginus (cf. Maass 60 n. 4).34 See the final section of this paper.3535.10 f. See frg. 22 Powell, XXXII Hiller. Hiller, op. cit. (note 8) 105 ff.,

reconstructed the text of this fragment from manuscripts of Hyginus whose readingsare not yet available. He rightly refers ibid. 106) to two passages in Callimachus -H. in J. 52, in Dian. 240 f. - which Eratosthenes appears to have imitated. Frg. 26Powell (XXXI Hiller) is likely to belong to the same section of the Erigone.

36 47.70-147.



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the house of Icarius? Because Icarius "excelled the other country-men n planting new sorts of trees."37 Shortly fterwards hen theold man has had his first aste of the new drink nd is in the rightstate of mind to become a convert to the service of Dionysus "theplant-loving od presented to him) shoots of vine in return orhishospitable table and taught him the art of making them grow, bybreaking nd ditching nd curving he shoots around the soil."38Forthwith carius imparts his new art to his countrymen, eachingthem olVo4brovs OvwrfKOILasLoVVaov. At the same time39 he offersthem many cups of sweet wine which, we know, prove his own un-doing. Nothing comes of the distribution f vines. The stage isset for n experiment n viticulture ut Nonnus doesnot report hedevelopments o which t leads; he does not entertain us with thestory f the goat.

Neither does Nonnus say that Icarius put the wineskins n anox-driven art and travelled with t across Attica. Thus it is clearthat he "follows" neither f the two versions which Hyginus em-bodied but also that he knew that version in which Icarius wasbidden to introduce the vine. This, we know, had been Eratos-thenes' story. Nonnus has telescoped this version but not elimi-nated every trace of those developments which he did not care toreport. We should not forget hat the god himself s the "hero" ofhis epic (which Aristotle would class with the epics written repteva40),nd that everything hat happened to Icarius or his daughter

to say nothing of his dog - constitutes n interruption f thestory which tells of Dionysus' triumphs. In the last books of theDionysiaca these triumphs onsist n his defeat of reactionaries ndteetotalers who oppose the new cult as well as in some erotic on-quests. The cultural nterests f the god fall somewhat short ofclassical standards and we can hardly blame Nonnus for his reluc-tance or inability to regard the creation of tragedy s another ofDionysus' glorious chievements.

37 Verses 35 f.38 Verses 66 ff-39 The logical sequence of events would seem to be that Icarius gave his friends

wine to drink and when they enjoyed it tried to induce them to take up vine-planting.What we read in Nonnus (70-75) is a kind of hysteron roteron, he result of his telescop-ing the story. He does not intend to come back to the planting, and the developmentswhich he is to report arise from the drinking in which the countrymen indulge; there-fore Nonnus puts their drinking second.

40 Poet. 8, 1451A.16 f.



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Nonnus has not the patience to deal with the details of vine-planting and grape-gathering.41 His epic is not written n theidyllic vein; we shall presently ee that he himself ntroduced ntothe story of Icarius and Erigone the episode in which the ghost ofthe slain old man appears to the girl in her dream. The ghost"stretched ut his hands and pointed out the wounds on the newlymangled imbs for her to see."42 Hardly a genre picture. And yetit is true that the story s told by Nonnus has preserved in partsat least - something of the ethos of a Hellenistic epyllion. Wehave pointed out that the episode of Dionysus' reception n the

home of Icarius includes the vine-motif hich must have played animportant art in Eratosthenes' poem. Here if anywhere Nonnusfollows the narrative of Erigone. He has preserved the paupermensa 6Xt'y1rpacrei) the Hellenistic motif o familiar o us fromCallimachus' Hecaleand from Ovid's story f Philemon nd Baucis.Icarius "entertained the lord of noble garden-vines t his frugalboard." Nor need we hesitate to attribute to Eratosthenes thecharming aux pas which Erigone commits when she tries to offer

the god of wine a drink f goat's milk. "But Dionysus checked herand handed to the kindly old man skins of curetrouble iquor. Hetook in his right hand and offered carius a cup of sweet fragrantwine as he greeted him with friendly ords."44 Later on, "the girlpoured no more milk but reached her father up after cup of wineuntil he was drunken."45 Far be it from us to question Nonnus'

41 Cf. H. J. Rose's note (see above, note 11) on 17.83 ff.42 47.155 f.

43 47.39. Cf. Plin. NH 22.86 (frg. XXVIII Hiller, 34 Powell); see also Paneg. inMess. 7 ff.; cf. Maass, op. cit. (note 8) 106. However, in the description of the cenaNonnus must have left out some of the details; for Pliny speaks of a vegetable whoseGreek name is TK6Xviuos = limonia). Eratosthenes seems also to have described howIcarius kindled the fire n his f3avvos (kitchen stove?; frg. XXVII Hiller, 24 Powell).

44 Verses 41 ff. At this juncture Icarius receives the wine-skins; later when he hasdrunk the wine the god presents him with vine shoots, and teaches him how to takecare of them. Icarius will need the wine skins (see verse 75) because he never comes tothe point of planting the vines. This is the reason why Nonnus here (41 ff.) followsthe vulgata in which Icarius was not bidden to plant vines but received wine skinswith which he could immediately start on his mission. If I am correct in thinking

that Nonnus took the vines from the Erigone and the wine skins from the vulgata wecan understand why in his account Icarius receives the wine skins before he has eventasted the wine. It would be more satisfactory that he should receive them after hehas enjoyed his drink, yet because it is at that stage that Dionysus gives him the vines,Nonnus decided to bring in the &TJKO in an earlier part of his narrative.

45 Verses 60 f. Of two fragments of Eratosthenes which relate to the drinkingand the effects of wine Powell includes only one (25 = XXIX Hiller) among the frag-ments of the Erigone. This is probably wise caution; see on the other fragment



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superlative raftsmanship n describing cenesof drunkenness r todeny that he had ample opportunity o employ nd become familiarwith the epic vocabulary for drunken evelry nd Dionysiac dances,and yet it is perhaps not fanciful o detect in the engaging versewhich shows us the old man as b6xpmos, ,Lf'XLK7OS, EpLacaVXsLxyosAXloTwv n echo ofEratosthenes' eater iction.46

Icarius is not the only character in Nonnus who entertainsDionysus at a frugal oard. In Book XVII, while eading his rovingbands across Asia Minor, Dionysus meets the mountain-dwellerBrongus who lives a solitary nd primitive ife n "a house that wasno house."47 Here too the god s made welcome t the 6-yrj pa7ri_Nl,again he is offered milk, gain he keeps his host from ffering im arepast though he does not refuse the milk in this instanceand again he presents him with a drink of wine, and in the end, toshow his gratitude for the hospitable reception, eaches him theart of vine-growing, iving him not indeed samples of vine butevdforpvv 0irW'p?fv, hich must mean grapes.48 This time Nonnusindicates his source as plainly s is possible n epic style. Brongus'conduct, he tells us, is an "imitation" of Molorchuswho entertainedHeracles when he set out to fight he Nemean lion.49 This storyhad been treated by Callimachus n his Aetia.50 How, then, re we(36 Powell, XXXIV Hiller) Wilamowitz, NGG 1894, 20. The case for frg. 25 (Kal#aOi'v Kp?7CTr rie'v,ova Te'y-yo6Mevos) s in fact considerably stronger; for it is an essentialpoint of the story that Icarius and later on his fellow countrymen drink &Kp7rTos, hemixing of wine with water being evidently unknown at this stage (cf. Nonn. 47.108).Incidentally, while it is typical of Eratosthenes' poetic manner to echo a verse ofAlcaeus (frg. 94 Diehl; I have no suggestion to offer bout the verse in Suidas s.v. re&y-ye)he would scarcely have done so had he not been familiar with medical theories whichcountenanced the view that drink goes - in part at least - into the lungs; cf. Plut.Conv. disp. 699A, Stoic. rep. 29. It is interesting to notice that Eratosthenes hereagain agrees with Plato's Timaeus (70c; cf. TAPhA 73 [1942] 192 ff.). On Plato'sview cf. F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology London, 1937) 284 note 1. Plato's notionwas rejected by so outstanding an authority as Erasistratus (Plut. Conv. disp. 698B)and was held up by Chrysippus as a warning example of what may happen if a philos-opher tries his hands at empirical science (Plut. Stoic. rep. 29, 1047B ff.). It is, how-ever, not quite certain that these two men had made known their opinions beforeEratosthenes wrote his poem.

46

47.63.47Dion. 17.37-42.48 Ibid. 42 ff.; see esp. 60, 43, 46, 48, 72 ff., 81 ff.49Verses 52 ff., 56.60 In the third book, as I assume Richard Reitzenstein has proved (I have not seen

his paper in Ind. Lect. Rostoch. 1890/91). Cf. Wilamowitz, SPAW 1914, 225; CarlRobert in Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythologie (Zweiter Band, 4th ed., Berlin, 1920-1928) 442. See also Ernst Maass, Hermes 24 (1889) 522 f.



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to explain the similarities etween the story of Brongus in BookXVII and that of Icarius in Book XLVII? Does Nonnus competewith himself? Or has he put some features f the Erigone nto thestory of Brongus which owed its fundamental nspiration o Calli-machus? In recommending ither of these explanations we wouldignore the fact that the poet Eratosthenes was a pupil of Calli-machus and that in describing he simple and friendly eception fDionysus in the home of Icarius he was traversing he same groundas his master had covered n the Hecale5' as well as in the story ofMolorchus. In a situation of this kind a Hellenistic poet would

be anxious to show his ingenuity y improving pon the phrasingof his precursor, y giving new turns to identical episodesand ges-tures as well as new meanings to old turns. We can see thatEratosthenes did proceed thus. When Dionysus prevents Erigonefrom offering im milk the gesture s the same as that by whichHeracles keeps Molorchus from laughtering orhim his only ram,52but the reason and significance f the gesture are new. Again inBook XVII Dionysus explains to Brongus that not milk but wine

dispels man's cares, while n Book XLVII he teaches Icarius that notthe corn of Demeter but "the wine-bearing rape is the healer ofhuman pain "53 Nonnus uses similar diction not entirely hisown, I believe54because the plots offered parallels." Theseparallels, we may reasonably assume, reflect he PiXosof Eratos-thenes who felt onfident hat he could kindle newsparks ven wherethe light of Callimachushad shone. If we believe that Callimachushad described how Molorchus was converted rommilk to wine we

see more clearly what was Eratosthenes' mbition when he workedon the episode in the home of Icarius. To be sure, hitherto t hasal Cf. the testimonia and frgs. 15-38 of this poem in Ida Kapp, Callimachi Hecalae

Fragmenta (Diss. Berl., 1915) 14 ff., 22 ff. In the Introduction Miss Kapp refersbriefly to Molorchus and concludes, apud Callimachum similitudinem aliquam interMolorchi et Hecalae hospitalitatem intercessisse (p. 10, note 27).

52 The most important testimonium for the story is Probus in Verg. Georg. 3.10;for a full list see Robert as cited in note 50. See Nonn. 17.48; 47.41. In the formerpassage Nonnus has suppressed the motif of the "only ram."

53 Compare 17.74-80 with 47.45-55.54 I do not venture an opinion about the words bito, yfpoV, rT6& &Xpov which are

found in 17.74 as well as 47.45. At 47.53-55 Dionysus' speech ends with a very neat"epigram" whose elegance suggests to me that Nonnus did not proceed too violentlywhen he adapted Eratosthenes' thought to a different metre. At 17.74-80 the an-tithesis between milk and wine is not brought out so well - Callimachus could cer-tainly do better. A reference to Ganymede is found in both passages; at 47.52 theintroduction of this motif is decidedly infelicitous since it interferes with the contrastbetween Demeter's gift and that of Dionysus. Nonnus likes to refer to Ganymede.



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not been supposed that Heracles ntroduced is host to the pleasuresof wine and viticulture; n fact the question what reward Heraclesgave Molorchus for his generous hospitality eems never to havebeen raised.55 Are we safe n basing our answer on Nonnus and onthe relation which we seem to perceive between his sources n twodifferent ooks? Fortunately we find upport elsewhere. Statiushas a reference o the sacra Cleonaeivineta Molorchi,56romwhichwe may infer hat Heracles did not in vain point out to Molorchusthe advantages of wine over milk and also that Callimachus'story ncluded not only the aition of the Nemean wreath but alsothat of vine-growing n the region f Cleonae.57

We return to the story of Icarius as told by Nonnus. Theepisodes which describe Icarius' dealings with his countrymen,their initial enthusiasm and later rather sudden change ofmood, and Icarius' own violent death agree substantially with theversion in Hyginus which Maass regards as a summary of theErigone,yet none of the details could with confidence e claimedfor

Eratosthenes.58In Nonnus t is the ghost of the slain Icarius who nforms rigoneof her father's ate.59 Collart and Keydell60 avecorrectly bservedthat this apparition nd the engthy peechof the "soul" to Erigonemust be Nonnus' own inventions; Nonnus uses this "Homeric"motif also in his story of Actaeon.6" It is also correct that the

56 See Wilamowitz, Robert, and Maass as cited in note 50, also J. Pley in RE s.v."Molorchus." [Correction: for another gift, see Pap. Oxyrh. 2169 (18.53).]

56Theb. 4.159. The passage although occasionally mentioned (e.g. by Robert)seems to have received little attention. Robert (see note 50) to be sure does say that

Molorchus when he entertained Heracles was a "Winzer" ("Bauer und Winzer").He derives this idea from a - rather dubious - etymology of his name. The reflec-tions of Callimachus' story in the mythographic literature give no support to Robert'sview. Note well the word sacra in Statius. [See, however, Pap. Oxyrh. 2169.]

57It stands to reason that materially, too, Molorchus' new occupation proved asuccess. Some details remain uncertain. I find no difficulty in supposing thatHeracles on his expedition against the Nemean lion carried an &OKo'Sof wine, but didhe have grapes as well? Brongus plays the Pan's pipe for his host (17.68 ff.) Molorchusmay well have done the same. For Dionysus people normally dance.

68 Verses 70-147. Eratosthenes probably took greater care to explain how theoriginal enthusiasm of the countrymen gave way to violent rage. Nonnus contentshimself with a very brief ndication of the reason for this change (118).

59Verses 148 ff.60 Collart, op. cit. (above, note 31) 258; Keydell, AC 1 (1932) 194.61 Dion. 5.412 ff. compare the anaphora of '-ypEO416 f. with 47.111 f.). Collart

(loc. cit.) also refers to 26.1 ff., which I should not consider as very closely parallel toour passage.



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larger part of the girl's ensuing lament is taken from work inwhich it formed part of a different ituation; for t expresses un-certainty bout her father's death rather than knowledge of hisdeath.62 That this work was Eratosthenes' poem would be prob-able even if this part of the lament did not include the question:"Is he (Icarius) teaching a neighbor o plant the young shoots ofhis fair vintage"?63

Why did Erigone in Eratosthenes eave her home and go insearch of her father? We may take it that he had stayed away fora long time; n fact Hyginus ays cumeumnon redire ideret.64 etHyginus tells us also - in the same account that Icarius' dog(which seems to have been his constant companion) returned oErigone. Canis vestem ius (scil. of Erigone) tenens entibus erducitad cadaver.65As the dog is at the end of the story turned intoSirius t is only ogical to assume that he had a function n the story.In all Alexandrian poem the dog could be certain to be handledwith sympathy nd care. Nonnus, however, had little use for theHellenistic pet; he eliminated the dog completely from the earlyand central pisodesof the story. To fill he gap he resorted o thegruesome ghost-motif. Only when he approaches the final stagedoes he realize that he needs the dog and allows him all of a suddento make his appearance in the story.66

The sentence n which this happens is followedby the descrip-tion of Erigone's suicide. When she has died Nonnus returns o thedog. The dog kept faithful atch under the tree on which Erigonehad hanged herself; he "chased panthers and lions" and finallypointed out "with mute gestures" (vevl'aaoL a0G6y-yoLot) Erigone'sbody to some passers-by who took it down and gave it burial.67In this burial the dog cooperated by digging up and scattering heearth with his feet. Details of this kind are characteristic ofAlexandrian poetry and anyone who reads these seventeen ines68will probably gree with me that the tone and spirit of the original

62 Cf. Keydell, loc. cit. (note 60) 194. Keydell makes clear that his observationapplies to verses 196-204, not to 193-195.

63 Verses 196-198.64 2.4; p. 36.4 Bunte.65 Ibid. 36.10.66 Verses 219 ff.67 Verses 229 ff.68 229-245. Eratosthenes was fond of dogs; in his 'AvTrepvVs a dog likewise helps

to detect a murder (see frg. 19 Powell; Bergk, op. cit. [above, note 8] 219).



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have not been entirely ost. The language is, of course, Nonnus'own;Eratosthenes ould not ay that he dog revGaMeq 3a'Ovver'fovrexv-,.ovoapo439and even the moving lines which speak of "theweight of sorrow" which the wayfarers carry under their heart"70give us only a faint mpression f Eratosthenes' gthos nd style.Evidently, he dog whom Nonnus so long ignored has finally omeinto his story with a vengeance, forcing he author to deal for awhilewith n uncongenial ubject and making he contrast betweenhis roaring tyle and the finesse f the original onception painfullyobvious.

A summary f those parts of Eratosthenes' poem which Nonnusdoes not faithfully eproduce will be in place. In presenting t werely argely and without misgivings on Maass' reconstructionwhich as we have already said rests primarily n the account inHyginus. Icarius undertook to introduce Dionysus' gift. Afterhe had planted his vines and they had grown n size, a goat brokeinto them and destroyed part of the vineyard. The goat wascaught presumably by Icarius -and made to expiate its sacri-lege. The details of this expiation must be reserved for the finalsection of this paper but it may even now be said that all of themredound n majorem acchi gloricam. After he first intage Icariusplaced the wineskins on his ox-cart and went about Attica (thismust have been recounted ince otherwise here would be no causefor the association of his psychewith Bootes). On this expeditionIcarius was accompaniedby his faithful og.72 He gave his country-men generous portions of his wine. We need not doubt that (asHyginus and Nonnus report)73 he peasants were at first elightedwith the new drink. Later, however, heir mood changed, becausewhen some of them had drunk too much and fallen nto a heavysleepthe others uspected carius ofpoisoning hem.74 They rushedupon Icarius and slew him. The dog returned o Erigone, whoforthwith ent in search of her father's body. The dog - as weknow, vestem ius tenens led her to the place where he murderers

69Verse 239.70 Verses 242 f.; Kat' tvvrs /LeOk7rwVr 7roKapLoVy O&YKOVAVII775 E&'S Ypyo'P ikOamros

&vP&paAteP4kL rapac.72 Cf. Hyg. 2.4; p. 36.6 ff.73 Cf. Nonn. 47.76 ff., 104ff.; ee also Hyg. 2.4; 35.14 f., a passage in which we

should probably incorporate he conjectures of Wilamowitz apud Robert, op. cit.(above, see note 4) 77.

74Cf. Hyg. 2.4; 35.17. For Nonnus see above, note 39.



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had thrown carius' body nto a ditch.75 There followed Erigone'ssuicide and the watching of the dog under the tree on which shehad hanged herself. In the end the dog too died, whether rom riefor exhaustion nd lack of food I do not know. Now "Zeus pitiedthem" and all three were transferred o the sky n the manner whichat the beginning f this paper we have shown to be characteristicof Eratosthenes.

The return f the souls to their celestial home might have pro-vided a good conclusion or he poem, yet there re strong rgumentswhich suggest that Eratosthenes' nterest n aitia led him to addtwo further tories. Erigone's death created among Attic girls anepidemic of suicides which did not subside until the Athenians nconformity ith an oracle created the "feast of swings" called

77XTtsr acdcpa in honor f Erigone.76 he other story takes usto the island of Ceos. There the murderers f Icarius had foundrefuge, he inhabitants making no attempt to call them to account.To punish the Ceans for this negligence, irius i.e. the dog ofIcarius, as soon as he had been changed nto the star turned hisscorching ays upon the island, destroying he crops and creatingdiseases among the people. When king Aristaeus approached hisfather Apollo for help he was bidden to make a special atonementfor the death of Icarius and also to ask Zeus to send coolingwinds(acLi-r'OaL) for spell of forty ays during which the scorching owerof Sirius s most destructive.77 A special priesthood was set up forthe purpose of appeasing Sirius. Since Hyginus includes bothstories n his account of carius, incealso the Attic "day" of Erigoneis mentioned n Callimachus Aetia,78 nd since references o thepriesthood re found n Callimachus as well as in Apollonius Rho-

75In Nonnus (47.141-147) the murderers bury Icarius. Hyginus (35.19) reportstwo versions; one agrees with Nonnus', the other says interfectum n puteum dejecerunt.This latter version belongs to the account which Maass regards as a reliable summaryof the Erigone.

76 Uti tabula interposita pendentes funibus se jactarent (Hyg. p. 37.6). Cf.Callim. frg. 8.3 Pfeiffer nd also Pfeiffer, Kallimachosstudien (see note 30) 102. Forthe feast see Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932) 118 ff.; M. P. Nilsson,SBAW 1930, 4.12 ff., and now especially Henry R. Immerwahr, TAPhA 77 (1946)254 ff. Curiously enough, Deubner (ibid. 119, note 2) thinks it possible that beforeEratosthenes the Athenians knew Erigone only as daughter of Aegisthus and that itwas Eratosthenes himself who made her the daughter of Icarius. This idea is unten-able since in the fragment of Callimachus (see above) which Deubner himself quoteson the preceding page Erigone is called 'IKaplov irats. Cf. again Pfeiffer, p. cit. 102 ff.

77 Hyg. 37.12. Cf. Pfeiffer, p. cit. 107 ff.78 See the two preceding notes.



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dius," it is most mprobable that Eratosthenes hould have failedto report these aitia; in fact we welcome Dr. Pfeiffer's rilliantconjecture80 hat Eratosthenes created a link between the Ceanand the Attic story by (a) inventing he motif hat the murderersfled o Ceos and thus brought he wrath of the faithful og upon thisisland and (b) by assigning o the dog of Icarius the name Mairaunder which Sirius had already been known.

It is easy enough to recognize the characteristic nterests ofEratosthenes n the details of the story. Eratosthenes s a Calli-machean with a difference.81 As Callimachus' Hecale had de-scribed he reception f Theseus in the small hut of the old woman,so in the Erigone Dionysus is welcomed to the oX7y- parf,r1 ofIcarius. The Hellenistic delight in pictures of simple life musthave pervaded the story to a much greater extent than we areable to realize Nonnus had no mercy on such features. Again,as Callimachus had dug up forgotten tories in out-of-the-waycorners f the Greek world, so Eratosthenes brings to light a talewhich had been unknown or little known before his days.

Yet his is an Attic story gathered right next to the highways ofGreek cultural ife nd it is one which throws ight on the growth fcivilized human existence and on the origin of one of the greatgenres f Greek poetry, lthough t goes without aying that besidesincluding hese major subjects the material bristled with detail ofthe kind that would make an antiquarian and folklorist appy.Another poem of Eratosthenes, his Hermes, ffers nteresting aral-lels to some of the motifs n the Erigone.'3 While the Hermes

celebrates his god as the nventor f the yre, he Erigone deals withDionysus' contribution o human civilization. The conclusion ofthe Erigone reflects s we already knew its author's interest nKatasterismoi84 s well as his Platonic belief n the celestial natureand home of our souls. Again, the Hermesprovides parallels, incein addition to testifying o the poet's study of music and geographythis poem also incorporates ome of his speculations n the Platonictheory f ogos nd analogia.

79Call. frg. 9; p. 34.33 ff. Pfeiffer; Argon. 2.520 ff.80 Op. cit. (above, note 30) 112.81 TAPhA 73 (1942) 211-213.83See my paper in TAPhA 73 (1942) 198 ff., 207 f., 211 ff.84 Maass (op. cit. [above, note 8] 91 f., 108 ff suggests that two more Katasterismoi

were included in the Erigone, that of Icarius' xpa-rtp and of Dionysus himself asHporp&yatos. His arguments leave me unconvinced.



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We have mentioned but not yet discussed the aition of Attictragedy. The passage in Hyginus85 n which we rely for he recon-struction of this phase of the Erigone is unfortunately omewhatconfused, yet we need not hesitate to agree with Maass88thatEratosthenes, long with the aition of tragedy et forth he originof a less literary Attic tradition, he &OKCXLaoxr/Lo's,i.e the custom ofjumping across wine-skins filled with air. This merry exercisetook place inter pocula.87 The &OKQLused for the first YKcAcT/Ioswere made of the skin of the goat which had broken nto the newly-planted vines. The goat itself s killed "executed" may be the

right word to atone for he sacrilege nd devastation which t haswrought. This gives us still another aition: non aliam ob culpamBaccho caper omnibus aris caeditur, says Virgil n the Georgics.88The culpa is the damage which the goat does to the vines; thesacrifice f the goat to Bacchus has grown nto a common custom.

It will be well to put here the entire passage of the Georgics:non aliam ob culpam Bacchocaper omnibus riscaeditur t veteres neunt roscaeniaudipraemiaque ngeniis agoset compita ircumThesidaeposuere, tque inter ocula aetimollibus n pratis nctos aluereper utres.

Here we have (1) the sacrifice f the goat to Bacchus, (2) the per-formance f and the rewards or ragicplays, and (3) the &LOKWXLaUfO'oS.Maass had every ustification n finding he same three tems n thereport f Hyginus. To question his results would be tantamount omaintaining hat Eratosthenes had never come under the influenceof Callimachus and had no interest n aitia.

Fortunately, ne line relating to the origin of tragedy s pre-served rom heErigone:IKripLot. roOc irpGrov rept' rpa&yov 'pxiaavro.89

86 Hyg. 2.4; 35.7 ff. Icarium irato animo tulisse eumque (i.e. hircum) interfecisseet ex pelle eius utrem fecisse ac vento plenum praeligasse et in medium projecissesuosque sodales circum eum saltare coegisse. Itaque Eratosthenes ait. . . . Theverse of Eratosthenes which follows is copied on p. 260. It refers to a saltatio circahircum, not circa utrem. Hyginus' eum is obscure and misleading. Moreover, heought to have mentioned the saltatio circa hircum before the animal is killed. Cf.

Maass as cited in the following note.86 Op. Cit. (above, note 8) 60 ff., 14.87 On this kind of merriment cf. Deubner, op. cit. (above, note 76) 135. See esp.

Suidas s.v. 60-KWXtLioa' (at 1.385.9 Adler a reference to the goat seems to me to havedropped out of the MSS).

88 2.380 f.89 Powell (frg. 22) and Hiller (frg. XXXII) read 'IKapLoT, a locative which is

vouched for by Steph. Byz. s.v. 'IKapla.



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carmine ui tragico ilem ertavit b hircummox tiam grestis atyros udavit....92

He could not indicate more clearly that tragedy, ar from riginat-ing out of the satyr-play, preceded it and owes its name to thepraemium. Tibullus knows the same story. Speaking of the firstrustic performer f chori he reports:

huicdatus a pleno,memorabile unus, vilidux pecoris, urtas uxerat hircus pes.93

Varro's view is preserved n the grammarian iomedes: tragodia, utquidam, a i-paiyw t WAq-icta est quoniam olim actoribus tragicisTpa,yos, d est hircus, raemium antus proponebatur ui Liberalibusdie festo Libero patri ob hoc ipsum immolabatur, uia, ut Varroait, depascunt vitem.94 To this array of Roman authors we mayadd two Greek testimonia. The so-calledMarmor arium95 ecordsthat when Thespis produced his plays the prize was a goat and theepigram in which Dioscurides at the end of the third centurycelebrates Thespis' achievements96 efers o a goat and a basket offigs s the rewards for which he contended.

If we wish to assess the strength f this tradition nd the degreeof its diffusion e must not, of course, simply "count heads." Inview of what has been said before, Eratosthenes and Virgil mayhave the value of onlyonewitness; or t is quite possible althoughI shouldnot consider t certain that Virgil eproduces heErigone.

92 Verses 220 f. For an alternative approach see 277, peruncti faecibus ora, whichpresupposes the notion that the original name of tragedy was rpvy7Yb1asee, e.g., Athen.2.40B).

932.1.57 f. The MSS have another hircus for which I have adopted - not withouthesitation - Waardenburg's curtas; I follow him also in reading opes for oves. I mustrefer the reader to the apparatus of Lenz's last edition (Leipzig, 1938) from which itwill be seen that we can elicit auxerat from the MSS. It will be made clear later (note101) why I do not accept the conjectures of Maass, Robert, and Knaack which establisha closer agreement with the Erigone.

94 See GLK 1.487.12 (Varro frg. 304 in Funaioli's Gramm. Rom. Fragm.). Al-though Varro's authority is invoked only for the last part of the sentence the parallelstatement about comedy (ibid. 488.5 ff.) makes it probable that the entire passage isderived from one of his scholarly works. In fact it is possible that the alternativeexplanations of the name "tragedy" which Diomedes presents at 487.23 ff. and 30 ff.were taken from the same work. See also below note 99.

95Ep. 43 (the year is between 536/5 and 532/1). Cf. Felix Jacoby, Das MarmorParium (Berlin, 1904) 172.

96A.P. 7.410.3. The thought of the passage is quite clear although the wordaOXov which occurs twice in it may have to be expunged in one place. The basket offigs which is commonly associated with comedy does not require comment here.



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On the other hand, the Marmor arium takes us into a period whichpreceded Eratosthenes' activities. The chronicle was set up in264/3; its author derived his knowledge oncerning he chronologyof Attic drama from monograph f a man versed n the methodsof iterary nvestigation.97 Although Alexandrian" ources houldperhaps not be ruled out a limine the probability s in favor of aPeripatetic rather han of an Alexandrian uthority. Of Varro theopposite is true. While a Peripatetic source is not altogether n-conceivablehe is more ikely to owe his wisdom to an Alexandrian

or at least post-Peripatetic writer. Moreover, his source wascertainly a treatise, not a poem: who would think of Varro asdistilling is information rom he Erigone? In fact, Varro's testi-mony98 ives us a measure of the extent to which the opinio com-munis of Hellenistic cholars greed with Eratosthenes or Eratos-thenes with the opinio communis. The sacrifice of the goat toDionysus was used to bolster up the non-Aristotelian heory on-cerning he name and origin of tragedy. That Dioscurides, whomust have been in close contact with the scholars and poets inAlexandria99 and who lived at the same time as Eratosthenes-refers o the goat as prize need not astonish us at all.

The verses of Tibullus form part of a "song" which celebratesthe di ruris by showing how many phases of civilized ife have theirorigin n the rura. The poem (2.1) - which hould never be called"bucolic" - owesits inspiration o the Georgics nd vies with Virgilby demonstrating hat the rura are not only a source of happinessbut also the place of origin or ivilization 100t presents, n fact, nalternative o the Epicurean approach to civilization which,we maytake it, had become popular through he fifth ook of Lucretiuseven though heanti-Epicurean endency s lessobviousand perhapsalso less conscious n Tibullus than in Virgil. My personal mpres-sion is that Tibullus is as doctus s any of the Augustan poets butmakes less show of his doctrina. Thus I should not deny that hemay have read the Erigone,yet since no particular eature f the pas-

97 Cf. Jacoby, loc. cit. (note 96) XVII; see also his comments to FGrH 239 (page 668).Jacoby mentions Aristoxenus' work 7rep' rpaywa 7roW5ovs a possible source.

98 See besides GLK 1.487.12, also De re r. 1.2.19. Evidently Varro explains theorigin of Greek tragedy. He does not this time construct an analogous developmentof Roman tragedy.

99Cf. on Dioscurides, Max Pohlenz, NGG 1926, 304 ff. esp. 308.100Tib. 2.1.37 ff.; Verg. Georg. 2.490 ff.



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sage points to this poem,10" e may best regard his statement asrepresenting what the educated Roman of his time knew aboutthe beginnings f tragedy.

Finally, the passage in the Ars poetica forms part - moreprecisely, he introduction of a poetic theory about the satyr-play which according o the author of this theory hould constitutea genos meson between tragedy and comedy.'02 Here we have areflection ot of Hellenistic scholarship but of post-Aristotelianpoetics.'03 It is all the more significant hat the Greek authorwhose views Horace accepts it may well have been Neoptolemusof Parion concurswith the views about the origin f tragedy whichwere held by Hellenistic cholars.

The chief nterest f this theory o the modern cholar ies notin its explanation of the name "tragedy" but rather n the under-lying conviction that tragedy did not grow out of the satyr-playbut preceded t. If we nevertheless ecide to stick with Aristotle- at least to the extent f using his statements s a starting ointit is yet fair to recognize hat his authority s counterbalanced bythat of many generations f well-informed nd highly competentscholars.104 We may have the right to say ets Eiut ubpLot, yet the/.VpLOL are in this case far from ontemptible.

101 have mentioned in note 93 that the last four words of Tib. 2.1.58 present adifficult extual problem. v If we decide to read vites roserat ille (hircus) novas as Maass,Robert, and Knaack suggest (Hermes 18 [18831 342, 480) our statement that thepassage in Tibullus includes no specific feature of the Erigone would no longer be true.Yet the proponents of this conjecture assume somewhat rashly that whoever speaksof the praemium of tragedy must have the Erigone in mind. Actually, as we see, thepraemium is known independently of, and more widely than, Eratosthenes' poem.

102 Verses 220-250.103The most fruitful and convincing discussion of the passage is in my opinion

that of Kurt Latte, Hermes 60 (1925) 1 ff. Latte relates the passage to the renewalof the satyr-play in Alexandria and proves that the problems discussed in this sectionof the Ars poetica were acute at the time when Neoptolemus of Parion (Horace'ssource for the eminentissima praecepta, according to Porphyrio) wrote. Thus we needno longer indulge in speculations about a desire for a revival of the satyr-play on thepart of the Augustans - or of Augustus himself. The commentaries of Otto Immisch(Horazens Epistel ueber die Dichtkunst, Philologus, Supplem. 24.3 [Leipzig, 1932] 139 ff.)and of Augusto Rostagni (Arte Poetica di Orazio [Turin, 1930] 64 ff.) do not derive asmuch benefit as would be desirable from Latte's observations.

104 This is recognized by Pohlenz, loc. cit. (note 100) 303 ff., whereas A. W. Pickard-Cambridge (Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy [Oxford, 1927]) although he mentions- in a different ontext - some of the testimonia which we have discussed, does notseem to me to do full justice to the non-Aristotelian - or anti-Aristotelian - tradi-tion. And yet, his own theory regarding the origins of tragedy agrees in essentialpoints with this tradition and might conceivably have derived support from it.



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Vol. lxxviii)] Eratosthenes' rigone 275

That Eratosthenes ccepted the current heory of the origin oftragedy nd that he related t to a piece of Attic folklore s no moresurprising han that he is seen to share the poetic taste and torival the erudition and the display of erudition of his Alexan-drian contemporaries.'05 What is startling s that he introduceda touch of the Timaeus nto his genre-picture.Pohlenz (ibid. 311 ff.) puts forward a very elaborate theory as to the reasons whyAristotle's doctrine was abandoned. The theory is attractive yet Pohlenz is perhapstoo positive in ruling out other possibilities. "An eine Vermehrung des didaskalischenMaterials ist nicht zu denken" (ibid.). Why should it be inconceivable that thePeripatetics - or the Alexandrians - discovered new material that threw light on thehistory of the satyr-play, especially on the date of its official recognition as the fourthplay? I should even consider it possible that the material in question was known toAristotle and that he disregarded it for reasons either good or bad.

105The motif of the goat which breaks into the vines is found in an epigram ofLeonidas of Tarentum (AP 9.99). The epigram also includes a reference to thesacrifice of the goat at a later time. Here, however, the motif is "tunattached"; noplace is indicated, and no tradition is discernible.

eratosthenes' erigone: a reconstruction

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