Cadili ————— Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 62 (2022) 18–22 Article copyright held by the author(s) and made available under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Second Strophe of Philodamus of Scarphea’s Paean to Dionysus: A Further Note Luca Cadili Δὴ τότε βακχίαζε µὲν (9) χθὼ[ν µεγαλώνυµος] | τε Κάδ- 15 (9/10) µου Μινυᾶν τε κόλπ̣[ος Εὔ- (10) βο]ιά τ̣ε | καλλίκαρπος· (10/11) — Εὐοῖ ὦ ἰὸ Β[άκχ᾿, ὦ ἰὲ] Παιάν — | (11) πᾶσα δ᾿ ὑµνοβρυὴς χορευ- (12) εν̣� [Δελφῶ]ν ἱερὰ | µάκαιρα χώρα. 20 (12/13) And then the far-famed land of Cadmus and the Minyans’ bay were driven in frenzied exultation, along with Euboea, bestower of beautiful fruits; – euhoe, iò Bacchus, iè Paean – with loud-resounding hymns, the whole Delphians’ holy and blessed country danced. HILODAMUS’ Paean to Dionysus offers an important, if not unique, piece of evidence bearing witness to the changes Greek sacred poetry and the religious beliefs of the Hellenic people underwent in the fourth century B.C. Un- fortunately, both the bad state of preservation of its text and, especially, the loss of the fragments of the stone on which the poem was carved often hamper its full appreciation.1 1 On this topic see L. Cadili, “Poetry and the Stonecutter: Two Notes on the Second Strophe of Philodamus of Scarphea’s Paean to Dionysus,” ZPE 213 (2020) 18–19. P LUCA CADILI 19 ————— Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 62 (2022) 18–22 The above-quoted lines are taken from the second strophe of the poem, in which we are given a picture of the joyful welcome Dionysus receives from the Greek people during his travel to Delphi, where his brother, Apollo, and the wor- shippers are awaiting his arrival.2 At the end of line 9 (= verse 15) Henri Weil, the scholar to whom we owe the editio princeps of the paean, proposed to restore an epithet, µεγα- λώνυµος, linking it with the preceding word (χθὼ[ν µεγαλώνυµος] τε Κάδµου, (Thebes) “the far-famed land of Cadmus”).3 This supplement has been accepted into the text by all the following editors of the poem.4 Yet it failed to convince Ernst Diehl 2 Cf. E. L. Bowie, “Time and Place, Narrative and Speech in Philicus, Philodamus and Limenius,” in A. Faulkner et al. (eds.), Hymnic Narrative and the Narratology of Greek Hymns (Leiden 2015) 106–110. All the supplements incorporated in the text printed above stem from the editio princeps of the paean, except, in line 10 (verse 16–17), Εὔβο]ια, which has been proposed by Wilhelm Vollgraff. Cf. H. Weil, “Un péan delphique à Dionysos,” BCH 19 (1895) 402 (= H. Weil, Études de littérature et de rythmique grecques [Paris 1902] 38), and W. Vollgraff, “Le péan delphique à Dionysos,” BCH 48 (1924) 112–113. For the first word of line 9 (verse 14) (δή), and the dotting of lost and doubtful letters see instead Cadili, ZPE 213 (2002) 18 and n.4. 3 Weil, BCH 19 (1895) 402 (= Études 38). Verse 15, like the preceding and the following lines, is an anaclastic choriambic dimeter (‒⏑⏑‒⏑‒⏑‒). The paean is monostrophic and consists entirely of Aeolic cola. 4 A. Fairbanks, A Study of the Greek Paean (Ithaca 1900) 141; H. W. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets (London 1900) 525; Vollgraff, BCH 48 (1924) 110; J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925) 166; R. Vallois, “Les strophes mutilées du péan de Philodamos,” BCH 55 (1931) 357; F. Sokołowski, “Kult Dionysosa w Delfach,” Archiwum Towarzystwa naukowego we Lwovie 1.8.2 (1936) 286; B. L. Rainer, Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus: A Literary Expression of Delphic Propaganda (diss. Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1975) 260; A. Stewart, “Dionysos at Delphi: The Pediments of the Sixth Temple of Apollo and Religious Reform in the Age of Alexander,” in B. Barr-Scharrar et al. (eds.), Macedonia and Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times (Washing- ton 1982) 216; L. Käppel, Paian. Studien zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Berlin 1992) 375 (Pai. 39), and P. Leven, “Philodamus of Scarpheia,” in D. Sider (ed.), Hellenistic Poetry: A Selection (Ann Arbor 2017) 473 (no. 38). 20 PHILODAMUS’ PAEAN TO DIONYSUS ————— Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 62 (2022) 18–22 entirely. In the first edition of his Anthologia lyrica Graeca, Diehl endorsed Weil’s conjecture without any apparent hesitation. But when he edited this anthology anew, though he did not remove the word from the text of the paean, he accompanied it in the critical apparatus with the following remark: “µεγαλώνυ- µος: priores, sed aptiora µεγάλη, λιπαρά.”5 Diehl’s criticism is indeed not unfounded: in classical Greek poetry there is only one instance where a town is styled µεγαλώνυµος, and this comes from a poem written during the Imperial Age, Dionysius’ Periegesis (µεγαλώνυµος Σέλγη, 860; cf. 542). This usage is instead well attested in Christian authors.6 In archaic and classical Greek poetry µεγαλώνυµος is in fact one of the epithets poets attached to the name of gods or heroes.7 Nonetheless, if we consider the phrasing of the passage, there are good reasons for thinking that the lost word in line 9 (verse 15) was an adjective. The whole sentence essentially consists of word sequences constructed out of various noun-epithet com- binations. In line 10 (verses 16–17) the noun Εὔβο]ια is sided by an adjective (καλλίκαρπος), and in lines 12–13 “the country of the Delphians” ([Δελφῶ]ν χώρα) is said to be “holy” and “blessed” (ἱερὰ µάκαιρα) “amid the loud-resounding hymns” 5 E. Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca II.6 (Leipzig 1942) 120–121 (cf. Anthologia Lyrica Graeca II.6 (Leipzig 1925) 253). This observation ends in a generic reference to Pindar. The passages here alluded to are probably Pind. Pyth. 2.3 (λιπαραὶ Θῆβαι; cf. Ol. 13.110, 14.3–4), and Pyth. 4.48–49 (µεγάλη Λακεδαίµων), on which see B. K. Braswell, A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin 1988) 129. Diehl’s doubts are shared also by William D. Furley and Jan Bremer (Greek Hymns: Selected Cult Songs from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period II [Tübingen 2001] 65). 6 See for example Con. Eph. ACO I 1.1, 121.12 (Coll. Vat. 31); I 1.3, 37.11 (Coll. Vat. 96); 81.6–7 (Coll. Vat. 118.13 = Cyr. Apol. Thds., PG 76.465B); I 1.5, 8.35 (Coll. Vat. 143.3); I 1.7, 158.10 (Coll. Athen. 120.2); Greg. Naz. Or. 5 (= Contra Julianum II ) , PG 35.684C. 7 Sapph. fr.44Aa.3 Voigt (= Alc. fr.304.3 L.-P.; cf. G. Liberman, Alcée. Fragments I [Paris 1999] xciv); Soph. Ant. 148; Ar. Nub. 569, Vesp. 1519, Thesm. 315. See also PGM 4.1020, 57.19; Hymn.Orph. 12.10, 23.3, 32.3, 36.2. LUCA CADILI 21 ————— Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 62 (2022) 18–22 (ὑµνοβρυής). It is therefore very probable that this compo- sitional principle was observed also in the second verse of the strophe. We propose then to restore the beginning of the passage as follows (v. 14–17 [lines 9–11]): Δὴ τότε βακχίαζε µὲν (9) χθὼ[ν πολυήρατος] | τε Κάδ- 15 (9/10) µου Μινυᾶν τε κόλπ̣[ος Εὔ- (10) βο]ιά τ̣ε | καλλίκαρπος. (10/11) The epithet πολυήρατος is actually found beside the name of Thebes in Od. 11.275, πολυήρατος Θήβη, “much loved Thebes.”8 If Homer is really the source of this line of the paean, we would be presented here with an instance of one of the most characteristic features of Philodamus’ art: his fondness for stylistic experiments. On the one hand, in Greek tragic poetry Κάδµου χθών, the periphrasis indicating Thebes, is never com- pleted with an adjective;9 on the other hand, πολυήρατος is never attested in extant Greek tragic poetry, being instead quite frequent in Homer and early epic poems, and not wholly unknown also to lyric poets.10 Philodamus would thus have grafted a non-tragic word into a typically tragic wording. On 8 According to Weil’s plates (BCH 19 [1895], pls. xvi–xvii), which show the original arrangement of the paean on the stone, the number of letters to a line varied from eight (lines 42, 83, 92 = verses 65, 130, 143) to thirty-six letters (line 6 = verses 8–10). The still legible letters in line 9 are twenty, plus the letter that completes the first word of verse 15 (χθώ[ν). Since πολυήρατος is a ten-letter word, this line would not exceed the length of the longest one. 9 Eur. Supp. 282, 400, 523. Cf. Soph. Ant. 1162; Eur. Tro. 243 (Καδµεία χθών); Aesch. Sept. 1015; Eur. Supp. 587 (Καδµείων χθών). See also Eur. fr. 223.84 Kannicht; HF 217, 754, 1389 (γαῖα Κάδµου). 10 See for Homer and early epic poets LfgrE 20 (2004) 1390.1–20 (J. N. O’Sullivan), and N. J. Richardson, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford 1974) 262. The word occurs only once in both Pindar (fr.52n[a].10 Maehler) and Bacchylides (19.9–10), and is also found in a lyric parody in Aristophanes’ Clouds (569). Cf. further Sol. fr.4.21 W.2 (= 3.21 G.-Pr.2). 22 PHILODAMUS’ PAEAN TO DIONYSUS ————— Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 62 (2022) 18–22 this occasion, the poet’s attempt at improving the language and style the poetic tradition has bequeathed to him would not be unsuccessful: this manipulation of the poetic diction would have no bearing on the style of the beginning of the passage, for the insertion of the adjective between the two elements of the periphrasis grants soundness and elegance to the phrasing. The Paean to Dionysus indeed provides many examples of this peculiar kind of poetic innovation. Although Philodamus is not always successful in his attempts and cannot then be considered as a highly refined poet, his poem certainly does not lack originality.11 November, 2021 Luca Cadili ISIS ‘STEIN’ Gavirate (VA), Italy luca.cadili@gmail.com 11 I wish to express my sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewer for his insightful and stimulating comments on the final draft of this paper. The author takes full responsibility for the remaining errors and inconsistencies.