CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus Alan Cameron I. Didyme and Asclepiades tcpcp8aAJ.1cp1 ~tOUJ.lTl JlE auvflp7taaEv · roJ.lot, £:yro 8£ 'tllKOJ.lat roc; KllPO<; mxp 7tt>pl, KnAAo<; op&v. Ei 8£ JlEAatva, 'tl 'tOU'to; Kat avepaKE<;• &.A.A.' O'tE KEivouc; eaA.'I'roJ.LEv, A.nJ.17toua • roc; p68Eat KaA.uKEc;. 2 Didyme is not just a run-of-the-mill charmer who has led Asclepiades on and let him down. Unlike most of his erotic poems, there is no situation, just description. And the essence of the description is that she is black. In the ordinary way skin black as coal might be thought to suggest a negro: a Nubian, say, or Ethiopian. But (as our own use of the word illustrates) when applied to skin colouring, black is a very relative term, normally implying no more than skin significantly darker than the speaker's. Can the name help? Didyme is not an uncommon name, but it is above all an Egyptian name.3 Preisigke's Namenbuch (1922) cites well over one hundred undifferentiated examples of Didymos/Didyme;4 1 Despite a recent defence by B. Baldwin (Emerita 50 [1982] 145-49), P's 'tcp SaA.A.cp is surely incredible. Wilamowitz's 'troc:p8aAJ.lcp must be what the poet wrote. For the singular, found "unwelcome" by Gow and Page (HE II 120; cf W. Ludwig, Gnomon [1966] 23), there are two other examples in Asclepiades: Anth.Pal. 5.162.2 (d~ ovuxa) and 12.161.3 (Ka't' OJ.I.J.lll'tO~); cf too Agathias, Anth.PaL 5.282.3: OJ.I.J.ln o£ OeA.yuv ou MOt. 2 Anth.PaL 5.210=v Gow-Page: "Didyme has swept me off my feet with her eye. Alas! When I gaze upon her beauty I melt away like wax before the fire. If she is black, so what? So are the coals. But when we burn them, they glow like rosebuds." 3 "charaw!ristique de l'Egypte": L. Robert, Hellenica II (Paris 1946) 8. 4 No exact count possible, since he simply cites one hundred separate volumes in which the names are to be found (65 for dtOt>J.I.O~, 35 for dtOUJ.lf1). 287 CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 288 TWO MISTRESSES OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS Foraboschi's supplement at least another two hundred. 5 The Ptolemaic Prosopography lists 32 examples as far as it goes, 6 and of the thirteen learned Didymi listed in Pauly-Wissowa six at least are Alexandrian. One reason given for the frequency of the name (together with its Egyptian equivalent Hatre) is the frequency of twins in Egypt. 7 The Egyptians carefully distinguished themselves from their darker Nubian and Ethiopian neighbors in their art.8 But to the Greeks the Egyptians had always seemed dark-skinned. 9 A number of texts spell out the difference fairly precisely. For example, Achilles Tatius describes Nilotic pirates as "dark­ skinned, though not absolutely black like an Indian, but more like a half-caste Ethiopian, (J.lEAaVE<; ... 'tilv xpo(av, ou KCl'tCx 'tTtV aKpCl'tOV, a'AJ...: otoc; nv y€vot't0 v69oc; Ai9io'l').10 Particularly explicit is the description in the probably second-century Acts of Peter of a demonic female as "a pure Ethiopian, not Egyptian but completely black. , 11 Inside Egypt skin colour was naturally an important identifying characteristic, and personal descrip­ tions in official documents regularly specify whether an individual is dark- or light-skinned. 12 But most Greek texts 5 D. Foraboschi, Onomasticum alterum papyrologicum II.2 (Milan 1971) 93f. 6 L. de Meulemeester-Swinnen and H. Hauben, edd., Prosopographia Ptolemaica VII (Louvain 1975) 96£. 7 P. Perdrizet, Les terre cuites grecques d'Egypte (Nancy 1921) xix, 100; terra cotta representations of twins are common. On Hatre, K. R. W. Schmidt, GGA (1918) 108 no.2. 8 J. Vercoutter, L'image du Noir dans /'art occidental (Fribourg 1976) 33-88; F. M. Snowden, Jr, Before Color Prejudice (Harvard 1983) llff, 37-40, 73ff. 9 There is a very full collection of texts relating to ancient perceptions of difference in skin colour, intelligently interpreted, in Lloyd A. Thompson, Romans and Blacks (London 1989). Curiously enough (if I am not mistaken), he missed Asclepiades on Didyme. 10 Leucippe and Clitophon 3.9.2; the Nile pirates in Heliodorus 1.3.1 are simply ~iA.avec;. 11 in aspectu Ethiopissimam, neque Aegyptiam sed totam nigram: Actus Petri cum Simone 22, in R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha I (Leipzig 1891) 70. On the blackness of demons and the like see J. J. Winkler, ]HS 100 (1980) 160££; Thompson (supra n.9) 110-13. 12 J. Hasebroek, Das Signa/element in den Papyrusurkunden (=Papyrus­ institut Heidelberg, Schr. 3 [Berlin 1921]) 30, for a list of the items found: ~eA.i­ :x,pooc;, ~eA.anpooc;, A.etnc6:x,pooc;, E1tt1tt>ppoc;, {m61tt>ppoc;, 1tt>pp(llcftc;, £pu9piac;. Ac­ cording to Hasebroek, t.~e first, "honey-skinned," is the commonest, "die typische Hauptfarbe der Agypter." CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 ALAN CAMERON 289 simply call Egyptians "black" or "dark." Herodotus, for exam­ ple, uses JH:AayxpoE<; (2.104). To the Greek Ammianus (22.16.23) Aegyptii plurique subfusculi sunt et atrati. The Ps.­ Aristotelian Physiognomonica classifies the Egyptians together with the Ethiopians as a:yav J..lEACXVE<;, a sign (the writer alleges) of cowardice.13 In Aeschylus, the Dana1ds refer to themselves as J.U:Aav9£<; i)AtOK'tU7tOV yf.vo<;. 14 In the anonymous fragment xp6av SE: 'tllV oi)v TlAtO<; AUJ..l1t(I)V cpAoyl. aiyU7t'ttOOOEt ( Trag. Adesp. fr.161=TrGF II 60), "make Egyptian" means "make dark." To judge by the titles of numerous lost plays, Athenian audiences were fascinated by stories of Egypt, and it is likely that Egyptians were distinguished from Greeks on stage by appropriately painted masks, just as black and white com­ plexions are clearly differentiated in Greek vase painting.15 When we encounter a dark-skinned Didyme in a Hellenistic epigram, we have every right to expect an Egyptian. An Egyptian Didyme written of by Asclepiades would have flourished in the early decades of the third century, during the reign of the first two Ptolemies. Can we identify such a woman? It seems not to have been noticed that Ptolemy Philadelphus had a mistress called Didyme, "one of the native women" (J.d.av 'tWV E7ttxropirov yuvatx:rov ). The source is the Memoirs of the king's great-great-grandson, Ptolemy Euergetes 11. 16 In the mouth of a Ptolemaic king, very conscious of his Macedonian blood, "native" clearly means Egyptian. 13 §67=R. Foerster, ed., Scriptores physiognomonici I (Leipzig 1893) 72; the claim is repeated by Polemo, ib., p.244 §36, and by anon., II p.107. Ps.­ Aristotle weakens his case somewhat by adding that "excessively pale" people were also cowardly! 14 Suppl. 154f; cf 719f, 745££; J. Diggle, Euripides, Phaethon (Cambridge 1970) 79f. 15 According to Helen Bacon (Barbarians in Greek Tragedy [New Haven 1961] 26) Aeschylus drew a distinction between the "merely dark" Egyptians and the "truly black" Ethiopians; but see now the more comprehensive discussion in E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford 1989) 139-43. 16 Ath. 576E-F (=FGrHist 234F4). On Ptolemy's mistresses see too Polyb. 14.11.2 and (for Glauce the Citharode) D. B. Thompson, in L. F. Sandler, ed., Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann (New York 1964) 314-22; P.M. FRASER, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972: hereafter 'Fraser') II 818 n.165. Lady friends of the Ptolemies are collected in a section discreetly entitled •names de la Cour" in Prosopographia Ptolemaica IV (1968) nos. 14713-37; see too S. B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt (New York 1984) 53£. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 290 TWO MISTRESSES OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS Philadelphus' native mistress Didyme is bound to have appeared dark-skinned to Greek observers. Some may have been critical of such a liason. Intermarriage between Greeks and Egyptians was still frowned upon (Fraser [supra n.16] II 71), and though a mistress is not a wife, Euergetes clearly thought the point worth mentioning. A graceful defence such as Ascle­ piades' poem might have been appreciated by the royal lover. There is no reason to doubt that Asclepiades lived into the early part of Philadelphus' reign. If so, then so celebrated a poet, spoken of with awe by Theocritus and paid the compliment of imitation by Callimachus, is sure to have received an invitation to court. Didyme is the first on Euergetes' list, 17 which (since it is not alphabetical) may mean that she was the earliest. And where but at a Ptolemaic court is a Greek poet of the age likely to have come across a young black woman who was his social equal? The only other detail supplied by Euergetes is that Didyme was ~aA.' £U7tp£7t£CJta:tllV t'hv O'lftv. Now this would most naturally be taken to mean, quite simply, that she was very beautiful in appearance. But the phrase could also mean that she had very beautiful eyes, no doubt more conspicuous in a dark-skinned woman. 18 We might compare Damascius' description of the fifth-century Egyptian poet Pamprepius of Panopolis as ~tA.ac; t'hv xpoiav, doexffi'tc; tac; ownc;, where the plural perhaps suggests "with hideous eyes" rather than just "with a hideous face." 19 If so, the coincidence with Asclepiades' description ( tcpcp6aA.~cp ~tOU~ll ~£ auvftp7taaev) would be complete. Indeed, if Asclepiades' poem really does refer to the royal mistress, then it may well have been known to Euergetes, in part at least the source of his own description. 17 The complete list (in alphabetical order) is: Agathocleia (Pros. Ptol. VI no. 14713), Bilistiche (14717), Glauce (14718), Didyme (14719, not citing Asclepiades), Cleino (14726), Mnesis {14728), Myrtion {14729), Stratonice (14733). 18 The physical descriptions in Egyptian documents have a surpri~~n12ly rich vocabulary to characterize eyes: yA.amc6~. xaprnt<)~ bnxapoxo~. eUOcptJa~ ' .'Lt-0 'l.. ' ' ' ' R ' R 'Y KaKO'If\~ KOU\.U\j}Va"'t'-o~. 'U1tOOKVupo~. 'U1tOO'tpa..,o~. 'U1tOO'tpa..,atv1-,rov, not to men- tion several more mundane terms: Hasebroek (supra n.12) 33ff. 19 Suda s.v. llaJ.l1tpt1t\O~ (IV.14.37 Adler, misinterpreted by C. Zintzen, Damascii Vitae I sidori Reliquiae [Hildesheim 1967] 151 ). But Heliodorus' Nile bandits are J.lEAava~ ... tl}v xpotav Kal tl}v O'lftv aUXJ.lftPO'U~, where tl}v O'lf\V presumably refers to facial appearance in general, as e.g. with euxpe1tlt~ tl}v O'lftv in Dem. 40.27 and elsewhere. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 ALAN CAMERON 291 It should be observed that the poem need not be read as implying that Didyme is Asclepiades' own mistress or even the object of his active attentions. Nothing marks her out as the flirt, the reluctant virgin, the betrayer, or any other of the female types so memorably depicted in the rest of his erotic verse.20 He simply states that she has bewitched him with her gaze. The poem is a tribute to her beauty-and a defence of her dark skin. It would be a perfectly acceptable compliment to the mistress of another man-even a king. Furthermore, the poem could have been written either before or after Didyme's period as royal mistress. If the identification is accepted, two gains for the biography of Asclepiades result. First, although it is clear that Asclepiades exerted a determining influence on the course of the first generation of Alexandrian epigrammatists and had a personal as well as literary relationship with Posidippus and Hedylus, who undoubtedly worked in Alexandria, there is in fact no solid evidence to locate Asclepiades himself there. 21 The best Fraser could produce was two epigrams in which Asclepiades allegedly writes of Samos (his birthplace) as "somebody outside the island." Even this evidence (not pointing of course directly to Alexandria) must unfortunately be eliminated. One of the poems is by the much later Rufinus, 22 and in the other the reference to the women as Samian is only there because Samian women were proverbially lecherous. 23 The circumstantial evidence for treating Asclepiades as the founder of the Alexandrian epigram is probably good enough by itself. But if the Didyme poem really does celebrate a mistress of Philadelphus, we would at last have proof. Second, Asclepiades' dates. According to Fraser, he was born not later than ca 340. That is to say, he would have been ca 60 at 2° For this interpretation of "female types" in Asclepiades see my "Asclepiades's Girlfriends," in Helene P. Foley, ed., Reflexions of Women in Antiquity (London 1981) 275-302. 21 See the discussion in Fraser I 557f, and my Greek Anthology, forthcoming, Appendix V. 22 Anth.Pal. 5.43, with Fraser II 799 n.22, alleging that the "'style is un­ mistakably of the early third century." There is not the slightest reason to take the poem away from Rufinus: see Denys Page, The Epigrams of Rufinus (Cambridge 1978) 88f, with my review in Latomus 40 (1981) 394f. 23 Anth.Pal. 5.206; see Gow and Page, HE II 122, with my remarks (supra n.20) 281. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 292 TWO MISTRESSES OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS the accession of Philadelphus (283/2)-and perhaps a sep­ tuagenarian by the time he met Didyme. This early chronology rests entirely on the more than questionable assumption that he wrote Anth.Pal. 9.752. ElJ.lt M£~. 'tO "(AUJ.lJ.lCl aocpil~ XEPO~, EV 0. aJ.LE8ua'tq> y£yA.uJ.LJ.Lat · 'tEXVll~ o' i1 A. iS<><; aA.Nnpi'Jl. aA.A.a KAE01tcl'tP1l~ LEpov KpEap. EV yap avaaO'Jl~ XEtpl 8Eov vfwnv x:al J.LE8Uouaav £on. 24 The amethyst (a-J.L£8ua'to~) was supposed to protect against inebriation.25 The poem is ascribed to Asclepiades by Planudes; to Asclepiades or Antipater of Thessalonica in the Palatine Manuscript. In recent times no one but Cichorius seems to have paid any attention to the ascription to Antipater. By way of preface it should be observed that such alternative ascriptions normally arise when a copyist collates two exemplars and notices that their ascriptions differ. Thus the second is not necessarily less probable than the first. According to Fraser (I 557, II 795), the Cleopatra "cannot plausibly be identified with anybody except the daughter of Philip of Macedon, who was murdered in Sardis in 309 B.C., What he means, of course, is that if Asclepiades is the author, this Cleopatra is the only plausible candidate. Gow unaccoun­ tably remarks that "the second couplet raises some doubts, but the style is otherwise like Asclepiades' and unlike Antipater's, and, if it is by either, Asclepiades has much the stronger claim. " 26 The poem is in fact a rather silly, rhetorical ecphrasis on a gem. In both subject matter and style it is utterly unlike Asclepiades-or indeed any of his contemporaries. On the 24 I am Drunkenness, the work of a skilled hand, but I am carved in amethyst. The stone is foreign to the work. But I am the sacred possession of Cleopatra. On a queen's hand even the goddess of drunkenness should be sober. 25 In fact, this poem and its fellow Anth.Pal. 9.748 (cited below) constitute most of the evidence there is for this improbable belief, which Pliny dismisses as Magorum vanitas (HN 37.124): see too H. Lewy, Die semitischen Fremd­ worter im Griechischen (Berlin 1895) 58f; D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge 1981) 82. 26 Gow and Page, HE II 148f. The detailed recent discussion of Ginevra Galli Calderini, AttiAccPont N.s. 31 (1983) 266ff, reaches the same unaccep­ table conclusion. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 ALAN CAMERON 293 other hand it is entirely in the style and spirit of early imperial epigram. The closest parallel is 9.748, ascribed to Plato iunior, a poet certainly no earlier than the first century A.D. :27 a A.i6o~ £cr-r' aJ.L£6ucr-ro~. f.yro o' o 1t6-ra~ ~ t6vucro~ · " , , , " e , e , 28 Tl VTlq>EtV 1tEtO'Et 1..1. Tl l..l<; &o • Eix:c.Ov · 7tpt00~ a'A'Aa au 7t1tptc; yvrooEtat ov tEtOKE. 34 295 This time there can be little doubt. This labored and over­ ornate variation on Asclepiades' elegant and concise poem must be the work of Posidippus. 35 By the same token it is surely preferable to conclude that the Berenice poem too is by Asclepiades. The next question is, was Berenice alive when the poem was written? It is obviously relevant that Berenice was the first of a long line of Ptolemaic royal ladies to be identified with and worshipped as Aphrodite. Theocritus 17.34-50 seems to imply that this did not happen till after Berenice's death, by ca 280. Now Asclepiades may have coincidentally compared a statue of the living Berenice to Aphrodite without any reference to her subsequent divinization as Aphrodite. But the probability is surely against this. If so, then we would have further evidence for his presence in Alexandria in the 270s. Asclepiades may (like Callimachus) have lived to a ripe and active old age. But on balance we should probably consider the possibility that he was born a decade or so later than ca 340 and did not live much beyond ca 260. II. Bilistiche and Posidippus Philadelphus' "inclination to amours" (as his great-great­ grandson put it) was common knowledge. Theocritus (14.61) included [prottKo<; in a list of his virtues. Bearing this in mind, let us take a fresh look at Anth.Pal. 5.202, another of those epi­ grams so irritatingly ascribed to "Asclepiades or Posidippus": 34 If you were to grow golden wings above and if on your silvery shoulders were hung a quiver full of arrows, and if you were to stand beside Eros in all his splendor, never (by Hermes) would even Cypris know which was her son. 35 So Gow and Page, HE II 142; Galli Calderini (supra n.26) 27lff. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 296 TWO MISTRESSES OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS Tiopcpup£T)v J.Uicrnya Kat flvia crtya.A6Evta TIA.ayyrov Euimtoov 811Kev E7tt 7tpo8uprov, vtldtcracra KEAT)'tt tA.atvi8a ti)v 7tOAUXO.PJlOV Ex oat'JlV 'tpUJ.l9e'ic;: Ath. 621A=Sotades fr.t Powell). Sotades made a point of insulting kings: Lysimachus as well as Philadelphus, and (according to his son) "other kings in other cities too."' In due 47 M. Reinhold, History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity (=Colt. Latomus 116 [Brussels 1970]) 29-36. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 ALAN CAMERON 301 course he paid for his temerity, but not straightaway. 48 From a tantalizingly colorless reference in his Suda biography we learn that he wrote a poem "On Bilistiche. " 49 To judge from his record, the poem is not likely to have been flattering. What more tempting occasion to write a poem on Bilistiche than one or other of her Olympic chariot victories? ai.d 'tOtYto ~tO<; KOUpat<; )l0.£t, ai.£v aotOo'i<;, UJlVEtV a8avatou<;, UJlVEtV aya8&v KAEa avop&v. 50 So Theocritus a few years earlier (probably ca 275), the opening of his curious poem 17 offering to panegyrize Hiero the new king of Syracuse. 51 Both the king's name and Theocritus' frequent allusions to Pindar and Simonides recall the great age of the victory ode. And what victory more deserving an epinician than an Olympic chariot win? As Theocritus goes on to say, not only did the "man of Ceos" bring renown to men, 'ttJlU<; 8£ Kat WKEE<; f.A.A.a.xov Ymtot o'{ crqncrtv £~ tcp&v crtEcpavl)cp6pot ~A.8ov ayrovrov ( 46f). Callimach us was to write at least two epinicians for chariot victories: for Queen Berenice II at the Nemean games and for Sosibius at the Isthmian and Nemean. It is perfectly possible that a serious epinician was written for one or both of Bilistiche's victories. Her relationship with the king was not kept discreetly in the background. The anonymous Oxyrhynchus chronicle that records the quadriga victory of 268 styles her bluntly "Bilistiche the Macedonian ... 48 M. Launey's careful paper, "L'execution de Sotades et !'expedition de Patroklos dan lamer Egee (266 av. J.C.)," REA 47 (1945) 33-45, has shown that the execution of Sotades fell probably in 266, some eleven years after the insult to Ptolemy and Arsinoe. There is no good reason to believe that he spent all that time in prison or that it was for that insult alone that he was executed. It might have been an insult to Bilistiche that was the final straw. 49 Suda s.v. There is nothing to suggest that the affair with Bilistiche began before the death of Arsinoe in 268. 50 It is ever the task of Zeus' daughters, ever that of bards, to hymn the immortals and the glorious deeds of heroes. 51 See Cow's commentary and F. T. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court (= Mnemosyne Suppl. 55 [Leiden 1979]) Ch. 2. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 302 TWO MISTRESSES OF PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS hetaera of Ptolemy Philadelphus. " 52 This is the more striking in that (as we now know) Philadelphus' wife Arsinoe had been dead for only two months at that time, not two years as used to be thought. 53 And what could be more conspicuous than a temple of Bilistiche-Aphrodite? From a curious passage of Athenaeus we learn that her ancestry was discussed by "historians of Argos" (Ath. 596E=FGrHist 311Ft with Komm. p.54). For although her Macedonian origin seems well documented (Bilistiche, like Berenice, is a Macedonian name), she is said to have claimed descent from the Atreidae. Jacoby was worried by the ethnic "Argive" in this passage, and doubted the identification with Philadelphus' undoubtedly Macedonian mistress. 54 But she is styled E'tai.pa, and the 'Apyeia may be no more than an inference from the claim to descent from the Atreidae. This claim may be less startling than it seems, in view of the well­ known pretensions to Argive descent by the Macedonian royal house.55 Though certainly attested as early as the fifth century, this theme seems to have been comprehensively promoted by King Archelaus of Macedon (ca 413-399). It was at Archelaus' court that Euripides wrote his Archelaus, in which he may actually have invented a mythical character Archelaus, son of the Heraclid Temenus, who was exiled from Argos and founded the original Macedonian capital city of Aegae. 56 Ar­ chelaus' coinage also advertised this supposed Argive connec­ tion.57 It is later a common motif in the Alexandrian poets. 52 P.Oxy. XVII 2082=FGrHist 257aF6. The traces of ha\pa are faint, but no plausible alternative suggests itself. 53 Arsinoe died on 1 or 2 July 268 (as recently established by E. Grzybek, Du calendrier macedonien au calendrier ptolemaique [Basel 1990] 1 07-12}, and the Olympic Games were scheduled so that the third day of the festival coincided with the second or third full moon after the summer solstice. 54 he MaKt&>via~ 'til~ b\ 9aMGvat, 'tO IJ.EV ou 7tClAtvaypE'tOV a.08t y£vot't0 £pyov ... and Apollonius 2.444f: Aioovio11, 'to IJ.EV ou 7taA.tvaypE'tov ouo£ n llftxoc; , , , , EO't 07ttCJro ... Not only the same rare adjective in the same phrase and metrical position, and identical articulation throughout. The decisive point, as A. W. Bulloch has pointed out, is that "both have the most unusual feature of the normally proclitic ou separated from its adjective by the main caesura. " 62 There is no other example of this in Callimachus, notoriously the most fastidious and innovative of metricians, whereas it was apparently a refinement that did not trouble Apollonius. It 62 A]P 98 (1977) 121ff. CAMERON, ALAN, Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 31:3 (1990:Fall) p.287 ALAN CAMERON 305 follows that it must be Callimachus who is the borrower, adapting Apollonius' line to his own context-with good effect, as Bulloch has shown. The chronological implications now become serious. For since Pfeiffer and Eichgriin it has been generally accepted that the Argonautica draws heavily on Callimachus' Aetia. 63 This brings us back to the Plango/Philaenis epigram. If the relative sequence suggested above stands firm, then Aetia I-II, A r­ gonautica, and Callimachus Hymn 5 were all written before an epigram ascribed to Asclepiades or Posidippus and (as suggested here) datable to either 268 or 264. Does a terminus ante quem of 268/4 entail an implausibly early date for any of these works? Some scholars have been prepared to date the Argonautica as late as 250/240. 64 First, it has often been suspected that the Aetia prologue and the Hymn to Apollo allude to the Argonautica, and, on the traditional assumption that both date to ca 245, that has been held to support a similar date for the Argonautica. But the only serious reason for dating the Hymn to Apollo to 245 is its thematic similarity to the prologue. 65 But I hope to show in a forthcoming book that the Aetia prologue is not (as usually assumed) a separate poem prefixed to a hypothetical collected edition of Callimachus' works. It is what it appears to be, the prologue to the A etia itself, an integral part of Aetia I-II as originally published ca 270. And if the prologue dates from ca 270, so too (it might be argued) does the Hymn to Apollo. There is certainly no other reason to assign it so late a date. Second, it is generally agreed that Apollonius drew on Nymphis of Heraclea for his own account of that region in Book II. 66 The Apollonius scholia cite Nymphis often, 67 and on 2.729 directly claim that Apollonius took a detail from Book I of his On Heraclea. 68 According to Vian, this work "went down 63 A convenient summary in Fraser I 627-32. 64 Notably F. Vian, Apollonios de Rhodes, Argonautiques I (Paris 1974) xiii. 65 Fraser I 652; cf F. Williams, Hymn to Apollo (Oxford 1978) 2. 66 See the full analysis of this section in Vian (supra n.64) 156-63. 67 C. Wend ell, Scholia in A pol/onium Rhodium Vetera (Berlin 1935) 337 (index); the passages are all collected in FGrHist 432. 68 Nuj.Hptc; EV 'til> fltpl 'Hp(llcA.dac; a' Q)'fl 'A1toA.A.rovwc; rona: 't