Dionysius of Alexandria’s Oikoumenes Periegesis is a geographical poem in 1187 hexameters and was probably written in the 130s CE (Ilyushechkina 2010). It contains a description of the ocean and the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Thematically modeled upon the tradition of periplus-literature, the poem works in different poetic traditions from the Homeric Catalog of Ships to the Hellenistic poetry of Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes (Lightfoot 2014, 6–13). With its many intertextual references and geopoetic aspects, the Oikoumenes Periegesis fulfils the criteria of formal didactic poetry. The poem was broadly received in antiquity: it was part of the school curriculum, commentated on by Eustathius and translated into Latin by Avianus and Priscianus. The journey has a hymnic ending which stresses the Callimachean tradition (see Bowie 1990, 72) and makes the reader reflect upon its generic status.
Apart from the extant poems, three fragments of the monumental Iatrica (On Medicine; forty-two books) of Marcellus of Side (second century CE) are transmitted, and we have a prose paraphrasis of a poem Ornithiaka or Ixeutika (On Birds; see Garzya 1957), which is ascribed to Dionysius of Alexandria in the vita Chisiana (see Colonna 1957); another Ixeutika by Oppian (either 2 or 5 books) is lost.
31.3 MELIC POETRY
Although only few examples of melic poetry, that is monodic and choral songs composed for musical performances in the tradition of archaic Greek lyric, have been transmitted from the period of the Second Sophistic, continuous production and widespread recitation of almost all established subgenres of melic poetry in private, sympotic, and public contexts is attested (see Bowie 1990, 83–90; Heitsch 1963, 1:23–50). Three places of presentation were especially relevant for viva voce performance:
(1)Melic poetry was frequently used for the self-presentation of the emperor and his circle at the royal court. Tiberius is said to have composed Greek poetry (see Sueton. Tib. 70: “fecit et Graeca poemata imitatus . . . Parthenium”) and Hadrian wrote numerous poetic works (see Cassius Dio 69.3.1; SHA iHadr. 14.8–9, 25.10), including epigrams, epicedia, encomia, and mocking poems (see Fein 1994, 47–60). Court poets were employed in order to enhance the emperor’s reputation, to encode and reinforce the ethical values of the court, and to recall glorious deeds of the past. At Hadrian’s court, for instance, Aelius Paion, “a melic poet and rhapsode of the divine ruler Hadrian” (μελοποιὸςκαì ῥαφῳδὸςθεοῦ Ἁδριανοῦ, IK 11 Ephesus 22 Z 3f.), composed lyrical poetry (see Robert 1980,17), and the Cretan poet and citharode Mesomedes (second century CE), a former slave and freedman of Hadrian (see Whitmarsh 2004 on the poetics of patronage), is the author of a number of shorter poems in various lyric meters (see West 1982, 172–173) from different genres (see Heitsch 1963, 24–32): encomia on the emperor, hymns, love poetry, and epigrams (Anth. Pal. 14.63: On the Sphinx, and Anth. Plan. 16.323: On the Invention of Glass). Marcellus of Side was engaged by Herodes Atticus to write a poem for his dead wife, Regilla, which was inscribed on her cenotaph (IG 14.1389). The poem is a mixture of hymn, sepulchral epitaph, and epigram, and might have been orally performed (see Davies and Pomeroy 2012, 14).
(2)Melic poetry in its monodic forms is performed primarily in sympotic contexts. The most prominent extant example of sympotic poetry—especially of the skolia (“drinking songs”), with topics like wine, love, and song—in the Second Sophistic are the Carmina Anacreontea, a collection of sixty short poems in creative reception of Anacreon`s poetry, preserved in the Anthologia Palatina (cod. Paris. Suppl. gr. 384, siglum P). Although the exact dating of the poems, composed between the first century BCE and the sixth century CE, is problematic, most poems of the first half of the collection probably date back to early imperial period (Baumbach and Dümmler 2014, 3–4; Rosenmeyer 1992, 115–145; West 1993, xvi–xviii). With its programmatic call for mimesis (see Most 2014), the collection tries to engage its recipients in the process of constantly reenacting Anacreon and thus hints at both the ongoing attraction of archaic Greek lyric and the playful ways of its creative reception in the Second Sophistic. Likewise, the lost “lyrical songs” (λυρικοὶ νόμοι) of the sophist Hippodromus of Larissa (second to third centuries CE) seem to have been modeled upon archaic or classical tradition (Philostrat, VS 620).
(3)Melic poetry was frequently presented at festivals, where specific public or religious demands and traditions guaranteed a continuing production of traditional melic subgenres like hymns, threnoi, encomia, epicedia, or epinicia. In the imperial period, the popularity of festivals, whose number had increased from Archaic to Hellenistic times (Chaniotis 1995, 162–163), was high, and in many cities throughout the Roman Empire old festivals were reorganized and enriched by musical and poetic contests, as can be seen from honorific decrees (see Spawforth 1989 and van Nijf 2001, 307–312). Depending on the importance of the festival, the presentation of poetry could be highly prestigious; therefore these occasions attracted single wandering poets (see Hunter and Rutherford 2009, 8–9), as well as artists, who were organized in specific associations (see Aneziri 2009, 227–229). Specific traditions of melic poetry can be traced back to local cults of poets, like the cult of Archilochus in Paros, which were still celebrated in the period of the Second Sophistic (see Clay 2004); the art of poetic mimesis of older melic traditions is frequently attested in inscriptions on the winner of the musical contest, such as the victory of Aurelios Hierocles at the Great Didymeia “in the style of Timotheus” (τιμοθεαστής, IDidyma 181; also see Prauscello 2009). Performances of dithyrambs by technitai of Dionysus are likely to have taken place in the traditional choral form, as well as the citharodic (see Bélis 1995). Similarly, the paean to Asclepius by Diophantus of Sphettus (IG 2:4514, 167/8 CE) and an inscribed hymn to Antinous, written in apokrota and paroemiacs, could have been sung by a choir or by the citharode alone (see Bowie 1990, 84–85). For examples of epithalamia and encomia from the second and third centuries CE, see Miguélez Cavero 2008, 43–45 (encomia) and 39–40 (epithalamia).
Hymns were the most popular form of melic poetry. Many cities had their own choruses of “hymn-singers” (ὑμνήσαντες) who performed at religious festivals (see Furley and Bremer 2001, 1:24–25; Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 279–321). Private hymns, especially magical hymns, are also attested (see Preisendanz 1973–1974, 2:237ff.). The collection of the eighty-seven hexametrical Orphic Hymns (second to fourth centuries CE) were composed for a local community in Asia Minor. The short anapaestic fragment of a Gnostic Naassene-hymn on the fate of the soul in the world (second century CE), which is quoted by Hippolytus in his Refutation of All Heresies (5.7.2–9), was probably used liturgically. Similarly, the Odes of Solomon (early second century CE) show hymnic characteristics and were most likely composed for liturgical use. Hymns or hymnic prayers are frequently attested for the early Christian societies (Deichgräber 1967; Lattke 1991). In a letter to the emperor Trajan (Ep. 10.96.7) Pliny refers to Christians who praise Jesus Christ in a choral song “as if he were a god” and hymns on Christ are preserved in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians and in Clement of Alexandria’s Paidagogós (ca. 190 CE).
31.4 EPIGRAM
The tradition of literary and inscribed epigrams continued in the Second Sophistic. Inscribed epigrams, which can be found in all parts of the Greek-speaking world (see Merkelbach and Stauber 1998–2002), fulfilled an important cultural function in preserving both the private memory of the individual (grave, dedicatory, and honorific epigrams) and the collective memory of a group or city. They are mostly anonymous, often formulaic, and sometimes written in dialect. A number of epigrams have been preserved in form of graffiti, that is spontaneous (poetic) creations, which are mostly scratched by the poet him- or herself. A good example is the Memnon-colossus near Thebes in Egypt, where 107 Greek and Latin graffiti have been inscribed since 20 BCE (Bernand and Bernand 1960). Among them we find four epigrams of the aristocratic Julia Balbilla, who accompanied Hadrian on his visit in Egypt in 130 CE. The epigrams commemorate the visits of the statue, h
onor Hadrian and his wife, and are gifts of the poet to the hero Memnon (Bowie 1990, 61–63).
Literary epigram belonged to the standard repertoire of established poets and is often characterized by allusiveness. Our most important source, the Anthologia Palatina, contains verses from all established subgenres and incorporates epigram-books from Hellenistic and early imperial times like the Garland of Philip (first century CE; see Cameron 1993, 33–43). We also find the collection of homoerotic epigrams (Musa paidike) of Strato of Sardis (first to second centuries CE) in the twelfth book of the Anthologia Palatina (see Höschele 2010, 230–271) and thirty-seven epigrams on heterosexual love of Rufinus, who dates to either the second or fourth century CE (Page 1978), in the fifth book. As a new epigrammatic subgenre (Nisbet 2003), the satirical or scoptic epigram, which was mainly inspired by New Comedy in its focus on character types and professions, flourished at the hands of Lucillius and Nicarchus (both first century CE), followed by Ammianus, Pollianus, Diogenianus, and Lucianus (all second century CE; for the dating of Cerealius, see Schulte 2009, 43–45). This new epigrammatic subgenre is characterized by a variety of forms, from short poems containing simple jokes to longer epigrams with anecdotes and dramatized action (see Schatzmann 2012, 30–32 on Nicarchus). The popularity of this new form can be seen from the fact that even emperors like Trajan (Anth. Pal. 11.418) and Hadrian (Anth. Pal. 9.139) composed scoptic epigrams.
31.5 DRAMA
Although no drama has been preserved from the period of Second Sophistic and only the names of five comic poets and a few verses of two tragedies (a Medea by Pompeius Macer, TGF 1.180, and an untitled tragedy by Serapion, TGF 1.185—both first century CE) are transmitted, a considerable number of new tragedies and comedies must have been composed, at least through the second century CE (see Heldmann 2000, 185–188). Dramatic festivals, which had spread over the whole Greek-speaking world in the Hellenistic period (see Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 264–288), continued (Fugmann 1988) and technitai-associations are well attested, which organized these festivals. Dramatic performances by traveling citharodes like Themison of Miletus (second century CE; see Heldmann 2000, 200–203), in which choral song probably did not play an important role (cf. Dion of Prusa 19.5), are mentioned by Philostratus (VS 534, 541, 616) and Suetonius (Ner. 21), and the composition of dramas, especially tragedies, is attested for many well-educated Greeks and Romans. Pliny claims to have composed a Greek tragedy at the age of fourteen (Ep. 7.4.2), and Tacitus talks about the composition of tragedies as a common activity (Dial. 3.3–4). Sophists are commonly attested as authors of tragedies. According to the Suda, the sophist Philostratus wrote forty-three tragedies and fourteen comedies, all lost. Likewise the sophist Isagoras (second century CE) was a composer of tragedies (also see the list of tragedians in Thorburn 2005, 599ff.), and Scopelian is said to have devoted himself to all kinds of poetry, especially to tragedy (see Philostr. VS 518). The composition of dramas by the sophists and the educated elite was primarily used for practicing style in close reception of the classical tradition, and it is in this context that Nicagoras calls tragedy “the mother of sophists” (Philostr. VS 620). The presentation of their works probably took place at symposia (see SHA iHadr. 26.4) or within private circles. A very popular dramatic form in the period of Second Sophistic was the mime; as the adaptation of Euripides’s Iphigenia in Tauris from the second century CE (POxy. 413) shows, these mimes were often composed in creative reception of classical drama and used different meters.
31.6 FABLE
Although the genre of fable in its poetic form can be traced back to Hesiod and Archilochus, the first fable books occur in early imperial period. Phaedrus (first century CE) wrote five books of Fabulae Aesopiae in Latin iambic senarii, and the Greek poet Babrius (second century CE) put some 200 fables of the Corpus Aesopicum into choriambic meter in the Hellenistic tradition (Perry 1965, xlvii–lxxiii). In his versification, which he himself refers to as “Aesopic Mythiambics” (μυθίαμβοιΑἰσώπειοι, prolog. 2.7–8), Babrius often extends the narration of the plot and inserts dialogue in order to work out the psychological aspects. His fables were extremely successful and widely read at schools.
FURTHER READING
Poetry was not in focus when scholarly interest in the Second Sophistic manifested itself, and the first good overviews on the topic were presented by Bowie (1990 and 1991). Bowie’s work provides short introductions to exemplary works from epic to epigram and gives general insight into the literary innovations of the poetry of that period. Ever since, scholarly focus has been on hexametrical poetry (see Carvounis and Hunter 2008), and especially Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica has seen a number of new approaches taking into account the backdrop of the Second Sophistic (Baumbach and Bär 2007). For a concise analysis of the composition and history of the Greek epigrams preserved in the Anthologia Palatina, see Cameron 1993; the rise and popularity of scoptic epigram is profoundly discussed by Nisbet 2003. For the scanty transmission of drama, see Heldmann 2000. A good insight into the Sitz im Leben of Greek poetry, which had been performed by festivals in Roman East, is given by van Nijf 2001.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, G. 1993. The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire. London and New York.
Aneziri, S. 2009. “World Travellers: The Associations of Artists of Dionysus.” In Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture: Travel, Locality and Pan-Hellenism, edited by R. Hunter and I. Rutherford, 217–236. Cambridge.
Bär, S. 2007. “Quintus Smyrnaeus und die Tradition des epischen Musenanrufs.” In Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic, edited by M. Baumbach and S. Bär, 29–64. Berlin and New York.
Bär, S. 2009. Quintus Smyrnaeus: Posthomerica 1: Die Wiedergeburt des Epos aus dem Geiste der Amazonomachie. Mit einem Kommentar zu den Versen 1–219. Göttingen.
Bartley, A. N. 2003. Stories from the Mountains, Stories from the Sea: The Digressions and Similes of Oppian’s “Halieutica” and the “Cynegetica”. Göttingen.
Baumbach, M., and S. Bär. 2007. “An Introduction to Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica.” In Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic, edited by M. Baumbach and S. Bär, 1–26. Berlin and New York.
Baumbach, M., and N. Dümmler, eds. 2014. Imitate Anacreon! Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea. Berlin and Boston.
Bélis, A. 1995. “Cithares, citharistes, citharôdes en Grèce.” Comptes rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 139: 1025–1065.
Benaissa, A. 2013. “New Readings in Dionysius’ Bassarica.” Arch. Pap. 59: 280–297.
Bernand, A., and É. Bernand. 1960. Les inscriptions grecques et latines du Colosse de Memnon. Paris.
Bowie, E. L. 1974. “Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic.” In Studies in Ancient Society, edited by M. I. Finley, 166–209. London and Boston. Revised reprint from P&P 46 (1970): 3–41.
Bowie, E. L. 1989. “Greek Sophists and Greek Poetry in the Second Sophistic.” ANRW 2.33.1: 209–258.
Bowie, E. L. 1990. “Greek Poetry in the Antonine Age.” In Antonine Literature, edited by D. A. Russell, 53–90. Oxford.
Bremmer, J. N. 1993. “The Vision of Dorotheus.” In Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays, edited by J. den Boeft and A. Hilhorst, 253–261. Leiden.
Brioso, M. 1996. “Los proemios en la épica griega de época imperial.” In Las letras griegas bajo el imperio, edited by M. Brioso and F. J. González Ponce, 55–134. Zaragoza.
Cameron, A. 1993. The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes. Oxford.
Carvounis, K., and R. Hunter, eds. 2008. “Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry.” Special issue, Ramus 37.
Chaniotis, A. 1995. “Sich selbst feiern? Städtische Feste des Hellenismus im Spannungsfeld von Religion und Politik.” In Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im Hellenismus, edited by M. Wörrle and P. Zanker, 147–172. Munich.
Clay, D. 2004. Archilochos Heros: The
Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis. Cambridge, MA, and London.
Colonna, A. 1957. Dionysii Periegetae Vita Chisiana. Rome.
Costanza, S. 1991. “Motivi callimachei nel proemio dei Cynegetica di Oppiano d'Apamea”, In Studi di Filologia Classica in onore di Giusto Monaco. I Letteratura greca, 479–489. Palermo.
Cribiore, R. 2001. Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Princeton, NJ.
Davies, M. 1989. The Epic Cycle. Bristol.
Davies, M., and S. B. Pomeroy. 2012. “Marcellus of Side’s Epitaph on Regilla (IG XIV 1389).” Prometheus 38: 3–34.
Deichgräber, R. 1967. Gotteshymnus und Christushymnus in der frühen Christenheit: Untersuchungen zu Form, Sprache und Stil der frühchristlichen Hymnen. Göttingen.
D’Ippolito, G. 1976. Trifiodoro e Virgilio: Il proemio della “Presa di Ilio” e l’esordio del libro secondo dell “Eneide”. Palermo.
The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic Page 80
