The "Garland" of Philip Cameron, Alan Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1980; 21, 1; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 43 The Garland of Philip Alan Cameron THE GARLAND of Philip of Thessalonica is not extant in its original form, but the greater part of it was incorporated, with some rearrangement, in the mid-tenth century Palatine Anthology. The Garland has long been assigned to the brief reign of the emperor Gaius, more precisely to A.D. 40: the standard discus­ sions are those of Hillscher, Cichorius, and Gow and Page. 1 There are, however, a number of pointers to a date near the end of the reign of Claudius-if not under Nero. I. Antiphilus VI (Anth.Pal. 9.178) 'Q ' 'A \' - TT' , p' <;, '\ C 1Tapoc .f1€I\WV, vuv .n..aLcapoc a oooc E"LI.LL - " <;" , -,,/,.' , , ',,/,. , v(xcoc, LCOV 0 auxw 'f'€YYoc a7T afL'f'OT€pWV· "<;' f1 ' I ,,/,. , " TJOTJ C €VVVfL€vav fL€ v€a KaT€'f'WTLC€V aKTLC, .i:lAL€, Ka~ 7Tapa COV 4>I.yyoc €AafLY;€ NI.pwv· -" , - \ \ '''/'' '\ c\, "<;' l: 7TWC E"L7TW, TtvL fLal\I\OV o'f'E"LI\OfLaL; oc fL€V €O€Ls €V , l: (\' c\ r;,' "r;, , I r;, , €s aI\OC, oc 0 TJOTJ pvcaTO ouo/L€vav. I, Rhodes, once the Sun's island, am now Caesar's, and I boast of equal light from both. Just as my fire was dying a new radiance illumined me: 0 Sun, surpassing your light, Nero shone forth. How shall I say to whom lowe the more? The one revealed me from the sea, the other rescued me just as I was sinking. Despite a few dissentient voices, Hillscher was long thought to have proved that the Nero Caesar here so effusively thanked by the Rho­ dians was not the (future) emperor Nero but Tiberius Claudius Nero, 1 A. Hillscher, "Hominum literatorum Graecorum ante Tiberii mortem in urbe Roma commoratorum historia critica," Jahrb.f. class. Phil. Supp. 18 (1892) 416-17. C. Cichorius, Riimische Studien: historisches, epigraphisches, literaturgeschichtliches aus vier Jahrhunderten Roms (Stuttgart 1922) 416-17 [hereafter CICHORIUS]. A. s. F. Gow and D. L. Page, edd., The Greek Anthology: the Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams I-II (Cambridge 1968) [hereafter, COW AND PAGE], whose numbering and translations of Garland poems are given here. 43 44 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP the (future) emperor Tiberius. But since the discussion in K. Muller's edition of 19352 there can no longer be any doubt. It is true that Tiberius lived at Rhodes from 6 B.C. to A.D. 2. But he did not become Caesar till after his adoption by Augustus in A.D. 4, after which he dropped the names Claudius and Nero. The inexact nomenclature one might forgive a poet, but more important is the fact that there is no known way in which Tiberius could be said to have 'saved' Rhodes. Beyond question Antiphilus is alluding to the speech the young Nero made in 53 successfully urging the restoration to the Rhodians of the liberty Claudius had taken away from them in 44 (Tac. Ann. 12.53.2). A commemorative Rhodian coin "portrays Nero crowned with laurel and with the sun's rayed halo, inscribed Ka'icap atrrOKpCXTwp Nlpwv" (Gow and Page II 120, with a good summary of the debate). This explanation Gow and Page quite rightly accepted without demur-while continuing to uphold the traditional Gaian date for the Garland. They observed that the poem does not occur in a Philipp an alphabetical sequence and may therefore "have been taken into the Anthology from some other source; it must not be used as evidence that Philip's Garland was first published later than the principate of Gaius" (I xlviif; if. II 334 for another reference to the 'first' publication of the Garland). That is to say they offer two quite different lines of defence: either Antiphilus VI was never in the Garland at all or it was first added in a hypothetical 'second' edition later than A.D. 40. They did not develop either of these suggestions, and it must at once be said that both run into virtually insur­ mountable difficulties. There is almost always a simpler explanation than the second edition editors are so fond of postulating to account for textual variants and chronological problems.3 In this case the only reason is the apparent conflict between a poem that cannot have been written earlier than 53 and this alleged publication date of 40. The hypothesis of publication in 40 rests heavily on the identification of Philip's dedicatee Camillus with L. Arruntius Camillus Scriboni­ anus cos. 32, the unsuccessful rebel against Claudius who died in 42. 2 Die Epigramme des Antiphilos von Byzanz (Berlin 1935) 14-21; on Rhodes at this time see C. P. Jones, The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom (Cambridge [Mass.] 1978) 26f. 3 See the usually sensible discussion of the many suggested cases in H. Emonds, Zweite Aziflagen im Altertum (Bonn 1937). ALAN CAMERON 45 Yet if this is the Camillus of Philip's dedication (1.5), then the edition drawn on by the Anthology must be the first edition. For we may be sure that Philip would have eliminated an unsuccessful usurper from the preface to a second edition published in the 50's. So we should have to assume that the alphabetical sequences in the Anth.Pal. derived from the first edition while Antiphilus VI was a lone relic of the second. The alphabetical sequences yield 334 Philipp an poems; nearly 100 occur in short or broken sequences, and between 100 and 150 more by Philipp an authors in no very close connection with other Garland epigrams, some completely isolated (Cow and Page I xiif). Obviously it is possible that some of these isolated poems came from a source other than the Garland itself. But the implications of this possibility need to be further explored. Meleager's Garland contains work by some celebrated and influen­ tial poets-Asclepiades, Posidippus, Callimachus, Leonidas, and Meleager himself. The earlier poets at least certainly published their own collections,4 and some of their epigrams would doubtless have survived even if they had not been anthologized by Meleager. Philip's labours, by contrast, bestowed an unexpected and in many cases quite undeserved immortality on his poets. And while he no doubt used separate editions of such substantial earlier figures as Philodemus and Crinagoras, many of his smaller contributions by lesser, especially contemporary figures he must have collected himself from private sources. It is significant that so many of his poets are fellow-countrymen (Antipater and Epigonus from Thessalonica; Adaeus, Antiphanes, and Parmenio all described as Macedonians). Antiphilus came from Byzantium, he was clearly a contemporary of Philip's, and his epigrams show an unusually high number of links with Philip'S. We cannot safely assume that Antiphilus ever published a separate edition of his own poems. Ifhe did, it is scarcely likely that so slim a volume would have long continued to circulate alongside the ample selection included in the Garland. It is conceivable that a poem like VI might have been quoted by a biographer of Nero (e.g., Plutarch, whose Life ofNera is unfortunately lost), but on balance it seems most unlikely that Cephal as in the tenth century was able to find a poem by Antiphilus not included by Philip. 4 See the introduction to these poets in A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams II (Cambridge 1965). 46 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP About fifty epigrams are attributed to Antiphilus. Of these thirty occur in the main alphabetical sequences, five in shorter sequences, two more with a related poem by Philodemus at the end of Anth.Pal. 5, three in a disordered block of mostly Philipp an poems, another in a small group of mixed Philippan and Meleagrian poems (Gow and Page II 115-16 for the details). "The remainder" (they con­ clude) "are placed according to theme (7.141) or are quite isolated (9.71, 73, 156, 178, 192)." In fact, of these last five, 156 on Troy was clearly so placed to follow four poems by Agathias on Troy, while 192, on the Iliad and Odyssey, fits well enough in a long series on famous books (184-214). 9.71 and 73 do not occur in either an alphabetical or a clear-cut thematic sequence, but in a sequence which nonetheless contains a preponderance of Philippan poems (fourteen between 9.69 and 89). 9.178-none other than the poem on Nero and Rhodes-seems to be the only Antiphilan poem that is completely 'isolated'. Yet isolation from a Philippan context does not in itself constitute proof or even probability of non-Philippan origin. My own re­ searches have led me to a conclusion close to the suggestion made by Gow and Page (I xviii), that "the combination of order and disorder in the Palatine [manuscript] may suggest that Cephalas inherited a conglomerate anthology in which Philip's authors were represented by the more or less isolated epigrams and that he added the main alphabetical sequences from an independently surviving copy of the Garland." Elsewhere I shall give reasons to postulate just such an anthology compiled in the late fourth century,S an anthology which incorporated material from both the Garlands together with selections from the later collections of Diogenianus and Palladas. 1 have no doubt that many of the 'isolated' epigrams by Meleagrian and Philippan poets that we find in Anth.Pal. derive from some such secondary source. But this does not mean that they did not originally come from one or another of the Garlands. In the case (say) of so widely read and quoted a poet as Callimachus there is a definite possibility ofnon-Meleagrian origin for isolated epigrams. But for the obscure Antiphilus the chances are virtually negligible. Gow and Page were right to be cautious. But caution is not to be placed above probability, and it is surely more probable than not 5 In a forthcoming book The Greek Anthology:from Meleager to Planudes (Clarendon Press, Oxford) ch. 4. ALAN CAMERON 47 that Antiphilus VI was originally included in Philip's Garland. The only positive objection that can be brought is the hypothesis under discussion that the Garland was published thirteen years before Antiphilus VI was written. But a chronological hypothesis that has to eliminate on chronological grounds the only piece of evidence that can decisively refute it cannot be said to stand on a strong foundation. If another, unquestionably Philippan poem can be shown to postdate 40, there will be no case left to answer. We shall also see that there is an uncomfortably large number of poems which could as easily be judged Claudian or Neronian as Gaian or Tiberian, where the decision has been made solely on the basis of the Gaian hypothesis. II. Thallus II (Anth.Pal. 6.235) r EC1TEp{mc JLEya xapJLa Kat ~c{10tC 1TEpa'TECCtV, KaLcap, aVtKa'TWV EKYOVE r PWJLvAt8wv, aWEp{"lv YEVECtV cEo /LEA1TO/LEV, a/L1>i 8E fjWJLOLC Y"l8ocvvovc AOtfjac C1TEV8oJLEV a8ava'Totc. , , ,\ \ " \ Q' " "~ al\l\a cv 1Ta1T1TcpOtC E1TL jJ"lJLactv LXVOC EpEWWV , If.... \ \ 1\ "" EVXO/LEVOLC "l/LLV 1TOVI\V JLEI\OtC E1T E'TOC. Great joy to the farthest West and East, Caesar, descendant of Romulus' unconquerable sons, your heavenly birth we sing, and around the altars we pour glad libations to the immortals. Do you tread firm in your grandfather's steps, and be the subject of our prayers for many a year. Who is Caesar? The man who writes a poem for so specific an occasion as the emperor's birthday6 does not need to say which birthday, much less which emperor. He will flatter and exaggerate. But there are some things he must get right if he mentions them at all. And we are surely entitled to assume that he is at least equipped with the tact that his delicate task requires. Gow and Page eliminated one candidate on the grounds that he is not known to have been accorded divine honours in his lifetime. But there is nothing in the second couplet to suggest that the gods to whom the poet poured out his libations included Caesar. Nor (with Cichorius 357) can we safely infer any real or recent conquests from the first couplet. I suggest that there is only one firm indication 6 On the celebration of the emperor's birthday see W. Schmidt, RE 7 (1910) 1138f s.v. Y€VElJil.WC ~""Epa; S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford 1971) 209-12. 48 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP in the poem: you do not tell a man to follow in his grandfather's footsteps if his father's would have done as well. There must have been some important and obvious respect in which Caesar's father could not provide the necessary example. And if line 5 is compared with line 6 it will be clear that it is not grandfather's kingly qualities and achievements that Caesar is being exhorted to emulate, but his longevity. From this point of view it makes no difference whether we accept C's ",'-'VOLC ('abide with us') or (with Gow and Page) keep the "more exquisite" J-L€/..oLC ('be in our thoughts'). There is no implica­ tion that father had failed to live up to grandfather's standards; merely that he had not lived so long. Thallus' birthday wish is simply: "may you have as many happy returns as your grandfather." Now the only Julio-Claudian grandfathers who lived to any age at all were Augustus (77) and Tiberius (78). Given the semi-official nature of Thallus' poem we must certainly consider their legal as well as their biological grandchildren. For example, Gaius and Lucius, the sons of the elder Julia and Agrippa, were certainly Augustus' grandchildren, but it was not till he adopted them (in 17 B.C.) that they took the name Caesar. After then they were officially his sons, as illustrated by Antipater of Thessalonica's propempticon for Gaius' Parthian expedition of 1 B.C., 7Ta'Tp0wv a.pgaL (b' EVTOMwv, "rule in accord with your father's precepts" (9.297.4 )-and indeed by Ovid, writing of the same expedition (Ars.Am. 1.191), auspiciis animisque patris puer arma movebis. As for Germanicus, it is true that he was a (step)grandson of Augustus through his short-lived father Drusus, but he too became a Caesar only on his adoption (in B.C. 4) by Tiberius. Tiberius not only did not die young; he outlived Germanicus. In any age it would be tactless to exhort a man with a still living father in his 50's or early 60's to live as long as his grandfather; whatever the poet's intention, whichever genealogy he had in mind, the implication is there that the father's life may be shorter than the grandfather's. Who would have risked so ill-omened an interpretation when there was a living 'father' who was a notoriously suspicious and superstitious emperor much given to anxious study of his horoscope?7 It might be further objected against Gaius and Lucius (who both died before Augustus) that it would have been hardly less ill-omened 7 R. Syme, Tacitus II (Oxford 1958) 525. ALAN CAMERON 49 to hold up the longevity of the equally superstitious Augustus as exemplary during his lifetime, since it might be thought to suggest that he had lived long enough already. Nero, grandson of the short-lived Germanicus, can be eliminated without discussion. Caligula too, grandson of the equally short-lived Drusus, fails on his biological genealogy. But as Germanicus' son he was by adoption Tiberius' grandson. His correct and invariable official style was C. Caesar, Germanici filius, Tiberii Augusti nepos, divi Augusti pronepos. But even given a short-lived father and a long-lived grandfather there are problems with the identification of Thallus' Caesar with Gaius. Cichorius (356ff) weakly argued that it was Tiberius rather than Germanicus that the poet quoted as model because Germanicus, not having actually been emperor, was "not suitable." But Tiberius died hated by his people-above all by his grandson and successor. He was not deified by the new regime, and it was naturally and appropriately Germanicus whose memory was refurbished and whose example was held up before the new emperor and his people. To quote a minor but significant example, one of Gaius' earliest acts was to rename September Germanicus-evidently rejecting the proposal turned down by Tiberius himself that it should be called Tiberius.8 Who would have been so tactless as to refer Gaius to Tiberius rather than Germanicus as a model for anything? And why of all things should courtiers with a receptive young ruler to flatter have chosen to evoke the seemingly never-ending old age of his widely abominated predecessor, reviving all too fresh allegations better forgotten of the debaucheries and cruelties of Capri? In this context Thallus' poem could only seem, once more, ill-omened-if not deliberately and dangerously ironic. That leaves only Claudius. With a short-lived father (Drusus) and long-lived (step ) grandfather (Augustus), he fits our formal qualifica­ tions to perfection. And Augustus' footsteps would certainly be more auspicious than Tiberius'. Furthermore, all the other Caesars we have been considering were men in their twenties or thirties, an age when one does not usually worry about living to be 70 or 80 rather than 50 or 60. But in the case of a much older man such as Claudius, who had always enjoyed poor health and was already in his fifties B Weinstock (supra n.6) 154-55. 50 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP at his accession, Thallus' birthday wish would have been more understandable and appropriate. Furthermore, it so happens that Claudius' birthday fell on the first of August-the month named after his grandfather. Thallus must have known the date, and in the context it would not be surprising if it had prompted him to think of Augustus. It must of course be conceded that, strictly speaking, Claudius was not Augustus' grandson, nor (it seems) did he ever explicitly so style himself. He was however grandson of Augustus' wife Livia, and his father Drusus would certainly have been adopted if he had lived a little longer. It is difficult to doubt that poets and panegyrists blurred the distinction between grandson and stepgrandson. Indeed, it would have been hard for Greeks to be precise even if they had wished, for there does not seem to have been any single Greek word for stepgrandfather. How was one to evoke the relationship in brief compass-especially in a poem? Under the circumstances, it is not likely that any exception would have been taken to Augustus being described as Claudius' 7T(X1T1TOC. Not that Thallus quite says this in any case. Given that the plural 7T(X1T1TOt can designate grandparents of both sexes (see LS] s.v.), his vague references to 1TU1T1TcPOtC f3~fLucw, 'grandparental footsteps', could easily include Livia as well as Augustus-and no less appropriately, given her 87 years. There seems no reason to doubt the Palatine Corrector's claim (on Anth.Pal. 7.188) that Thallus was also called by the Roman name Antonius. Many Greeks of the Triumviral and J ulio-Claudian period are found with this name,9 evidently enfranchised by the triumvir Antony. Cichorius (356) made the attractive suggestion that Thallus owed his citizenship more precisely to Antony's daughter Antonia, wife of the elder Drusus. This would square nicely with his identification of Caesar as Drusus' grandson Gaius-though no less nicely if Caesar is Drusus' son Claudius. Antonia patronized other Greek men of letters. Crinagoras sent her poems and gifts (VII and XII: Gow and Page II 217, 221), though an epigram by Honestus of Corinth once thought to have been written in her honour has recently been shown to refer to Livia. 10 Perhaps Thallus is to be added to her salon. 9 A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship2 (Oxford 1973) 309-10. 10 See, rather than Gow and Page II 308-09, C. P. Jones, HSCP 74 (1968) 249-55, or, with a slightly different explanation, J. Nicols, Historia 24 (1975) 52-53. ALAN CAMERON 51 Four of Thallus' five extant epigrams occur In alphabetical sequences from Philip's Garland, and the fifth (7.188) "is the last of six epigrams by Garland-authors arranged according to theme" (Gow and Page II 410). Our poem for Caesar (6.235) is firmly embedded in the unbroken sequence 6.227-261. Thus there is no reason to doubt that it was included in Philip's Garland, in which case the Garland cannot have been published before the reign of Claudius. III. Philip II (Anth.Pal. 6.236) JI EJ1/3o,\a Xa'\KoY€VELa, c/n,\(J7T'\oa 7"EVXECI. V7JWV, 'A ~,\ I I () I f1K7"taKOV 1TO EfLOV KELfLE a fLap7"Vpta. ~vl8E CLfLf3,\EVEL K7Jp07"poa 8wpa fLE,\tCCWV ECfL0 f3ofLf37J7"fi KVKAoCE f3pdMfLEva. Kalcapoc EvvofLtYJC XPYJcrfjc X&ptc' o1TAa yap EX()pWV \ " , ~ I~ C '..l.. Kap1TOVC ELPYJVYJC aV7"EOWas E 7"pE'f'ELV. Bronze-jaw beaks, ships' voyage-loving armour, we lie here as witnesses to the war at Actium. Behold, the bees' wax-fed gifts are hived in us, weighted all round by a humming swarm. So good is the grace of Caesar's law and order; he has taught the enemy's arms to bear the fruits of peace instead. "Bees have made their nest among the beaks of ships dedicated in commemoration of acta vi an's victory at Actium" (Gow and Page II 331). Beaks from Antony's ships were dedicated both at Actium and in front of the temple of Divus Julius in Rome (Cass. Dio 51.1.3, 19.2). Philip VII attests a trip to Actium by the poet, and it may be doubted whether bees nested in the Forum of Rome. Now Gaius, through his grandmother Antonia, was the great­ grandson of Antony, and he cancelled the annual celebration of Actium. According to Dio (59.20.1-2), in 39 Gaius dismissed both consuls "because they had celebrated the victories of Augustus over Antony, as was customary; for, in order to invent some ground of complaint against them, he chose to pose as a descendant of Antony rather than of Augustus" (transl. E. Cary, LCL). It is true that Dio adds that Gaius "had announced beforehand to those with whom 52 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP he regularly shared his secrets, that whichever course the consuls followed they would certainly make a mistake, whether they offered sacrifices to celebrate Antony's overthrow or refrained from sacri­ ficing in honour of Augustus' victory"-that is to say, implying that it was less a question of hostility to Augustus than a willingness to use any pretext to cancel the Actian celebrations. But according to Suetonius (Calig. 23), Gaius claimed that his mother was the child of an incestuous union between Augustus and Julia and called Livia a 'she-Ulysses'.l1 More importantly, Suetonius confirms the cancellation of the annual commemoration of Actium, described as "calamitous to the Roman people." Cichorius (342) argued that it would have been tactless to refer to Antony as 'enemy' under Gaius. Gow and Page objected that "the force of this argument is much diminished if, as Cichorius himself maintained, Philip's Garland, including this epigram, was in fact published during the principate ofGaius" (II 331). But the argument itself loses none of its force because Cichorius inadvertently contra­ dicted himself. Whenever the poem was written, it remains im­ probable that Philip would have republished it under his own name in the very next year (on the conventional view) after Gaius' cancellation of the Actian celebrations. A referee has raised a further objection: "The point" (he argued) "is simply that no one wins a war in which citizen slays citizen. Therefore celebrations of it should be stopped (as Gaius did); the trophies of war decay and are taken over by the very symbols of peace (as in this poem)." The poem does not, however, refer just to trophies of war: it is the 'arms of enemies' (EX8pWV) that now house bees, and it is the 'just administration' (EVVOJLLTJ) of Caesar, Augustus' heir, that has 'taught' them to do so. If Philip's purpose had been to herald the new policy of Gaius, he would surely have approached his task in an altogether different way. As it is, Philip is clearly still operating within the traditional Augustan framework, drawing favorable attention to the trophies of Caesar's victory over his enemy. The point of the poem is merely that with the passage of time-and Caesar's just rule-the horrors of war recede before the arts of peace. 11 On Gaius' hostility towards Augustus and rehabilitation of Antony, see P. Ceau­ ~escu, Historia 22 (1973) 269-83. Less conspicuously, Claudius restored the commemora­ tion of Antony's birthday (Suet. Claud. 11.3). ALAN CAMERON 53 Philip II (Anth.Pal. 6.236) occurs in a solid Garland-sequence; indeed it directly follows Thallus II (6.235) just discussed. Did Philip perhaps so juxtapose them because in each poem 'Caesar' referred to the same emperor? Whether Philip wrote the poem under Claudius or (as Cichorius thought) under Tiberius, since the Garland is certainly not earlier than ca 40, we may surely presume that he did not publish or republish it in the Garland till after Gaius' death in 41. IV. Philip III (Anth.Pal. 6.240) A few poems later in the same sequence we find the following prayer that an (as usual) unnamed ruler be soon restored to health: Z ' 'A ~ e I e ' I YJvoc Kat YJTOVC YJpOCK01TE TOs on KOVPYJ, "A " e \ I '" ,'\ pTEf-LLC, YJ w\af-L0VC TOVC OpEWV E/\aXEC, VOVCOV T~V CTVYEP~V av8YJf-LEpOV EK ~aCtM70c EceAoTrXTov 1TEf-Lifiatc axptc 'Y 1TEP~OpEWV. , , • 'Q ~ , , \ Q I rfi '\ COt yap V1TEp f-'Wf-LWV aTf-LOV /\tf-'avoLO '¥t/\t1T1TOC , Ie \ \ e ~ I , I pES EL Ka/\/\L VTWV Ka1Tpov OpELOVOf-LOV. Archer and spyer of wild life, daughter of Zeus and Leto, Artemis, whose lot is cast in the mountains' dwelling places, dispatch this very day that hateful sickness away from the best of kings, as far as the Hyperboreans. For Philip will offer the smoke of frankincense above your altars, and will make splendid sacrifice of a mountain-roaming boar. Gow and Page, following Cichorius (347), argue "that the 'king' is Gaius, and that the epigram refers to the serious illness which afflicted him early in his reign (Oct. or Nov. A.D. 37) ... prayers and sacrifices were offered in many cities ... " (II 331). This is certainly a serious possibility, but it would be absurd to suppose that no other Julio­ Claudian emperor was ever ill. Augustus is perhaps too early for Philip, but Tiberius and Claudius are perfectly possible. Claudius was of a sickly disposition and a serious illness with vows offered is attested in 52/3 (Cass. Dio 61.33.9). The hunting imagery of the poem is puzzling. Artemis is not normally a healing goddess, nor indeed does she normally concern herself with men. If Reiske's AacPPLYJ (an epithet of Artemis) is 54 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP accepted for P's Aa{}p/7] in Leonidas Anth.Pal. 6.300.1,12 then it is likely that at a literary level Philip was influenced by this much imitated poem. Nevertheless there remains the implication that the sick ruler was under the special protection of Artemis or (in a Roman context) Diana. Now of all the Julio-Claudian emperors, the only one known to have had a particular interest in the cult of Diana is Claudius.13 We do not even need to suppose a serious illness. And a further possibility seems not to have been considered. The f3anAEvc may not be a Roman emperor at all. He could be one of the numerous client-kings who associated with Philip and his fellow poets: Herod Agrippa of J udaea, Polemo of Pontus, or Cotys of lesser Armenia, all of them appointed by Gaius but continuing well into Claudius' reign. It is quite possible that Philip, whose talents, as we shall see, were applied at Herod's court, is alluding to the notorious illness that carried him off so dramatically in 44 (Jos. AJ 19.346; Acts 12.23). V. Philip VI (Anth.Pal. 9.778) raLav T~V rpEp€KapTTOV, oC7]v eSWKE TTEpLX{}WV • \ '\ IT' {}' WKEavoc ILEyal\C{J naLcap' TTH 0ILEV7] V , Kat. yAavK~v ILE {}aAaccav cXTT7]KpL{3wcaTo KVTTpOC , f , I" t:. I KEpKLCLV LCTOTTOVOLC TTaVT aTToILasaILEV7]' Tf' ~" c ' , ., \{} 1" \ " naLcapL 0 EV£ ELVtf3uAE'iv C1TEVOWV 1TMYfLu /-tErw1Tlotov' " ~" """ \ , ~ " ~, UKporurov 0 EC YYJIl KI\LVUC UfLU KEVP01TOV U/-t/-tU ()YJpoc r~v roccYJv egE KVAtCE f3t YJV. The bull-chasing band of men from Thessaly, home of fine horses, armed against wild beasts with hands weaponless, brought their spur-smitten colts close to the bounding bulls, eager to fling a forehead-embrace about them. Inclining to the earth their clinch-hold at the top, but easily downward, they overthrew the brute's mighty strength. Beneath the tiresomely ornate style it is clear enough that Philip is describing the sport known as ruvpoKu()a.!f;tU. A horseman, tradi­ tionally from Thessaly, chases a bull until it is tired, then jumps off his horse, grabs the bull's horns, and attempts to force it to the ground. The sport was popular in the early empire, particularly in the East. 15 It was introduced at Rome by Julius Caesar (Pliny, HN 8.182), and next specifically mentioned under Claudius by Suetonius (Claud. 21): praeterea Thessalos equites, qui feros tauros per spatia circi agunt insiliuntque defessos et ad terram cornibus detrahunt. Now Suetonius does not list it at random under entertainments provided by Claudius. The chapter begins with the statement: spectacula quoque complura et magnifica edidit, non usitata modo ac solitis locis, sed et commenticia et ex antiquitate repetita, et ubi praeterea nemo ante eum. The list that follows, like the lists of other emperors' games in other lives, is detailed and obviously well informed. Suetonius wrote separate treatises on both Greek and Roman sports; it was a subject close to his heart on which he had collected much accurate informa­ tion. 16 So when he lists ruvpoKu()a.!f;LU among Claudius' more unusual spectacles, we are not justified in simply assuming from the passage of Pliny quoted above that they had been "common at Rome since Caesar" (Cichorius). The implication is that Philip was describing 15 Rather than the antiquated documentation in Gow and Page II 359, consult Louis Robert, Les gladiateurs dans ['Orient grec (Limoges 1940) 318-19. 16 See my Circus Factions (Oxford 1976) 58. ALAN CAMERON 57 something that had not been seen at Rome for some time before Claudius. Of course Philip might perfectly well have seen it in the East somewhere during his travels. LXV and LXVI on statues of a wrestler and a pancratiast show that he had some familiarity with the world of Greek festivals. 17 Nonetheless he evidently resided for a while in Rome, and it was presumably at Rome that he dedicated his Garland to Camillus. Thus there is a real possibility that Philip was directly inspired by a spectacle sponsored by Claudius. VII. Polemo, Cotys, Geminus, Antistius Two and perhaps three Philippan poems are ascribed to King Polemo. Two kings of Pontus come into the reckoning: the first reigned from the 30's B.C. to ca 8 B.C., the second from A.D. 38 to 64 (when he lost his throne) .18 Polemo I was the son of a rhetorician of Laodicea and so presumably an educated man, but if he was the poet it is not easy to see how Philip might have come by so tiny an fEuvre. But his grandson moved in court circles at Rome before re­ covering the family throne from Gaius in 38. Greek epigrams were clearly fashionable in these circles, and Philip might well have got to know Polemo, or at any rate someone who could pass on to him Pol­ emo's dabblings. But can we be confident that he wrote his trifles before he left for his kingdom-in time (that is) for a Garland pub­ lished in 40? Might he not, like Herod Agrippa and other well connected client-kings, have made periodic return visits to Rome? Might not poets like Philip have visited Polemo's own court, whether in Pon tus or (after 41) Cilicia? Antipater of Thessalonica XLVIII (Anth.Plan. 75) is addressed to a prince or king called Cotys: t/\ " , " ELKEI\OV, EVKT(U'rj fL'rjTEPOC EVTOKL'rj, 17 As shown by L. Robert in Entretiens Hardt 14 (Vandreuvres-Geneve 1968) 260f. 18 Cichorius 358-59; G. W. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford 1965) 53-54, 144; and A. A. Barrett, TAPA 107 (1977) 1-9, who has shown that there is serious doubt whether Po1emo II ever actually ruled the kingdom of Pontus assigned him by Gaius in 38 (in 41 Claudius seems to have assigned him Cilicia instead). The two poems securely attributed to Polemo call him simply 'King Polemo' (Gow and Page II 400). 58 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP , '11K' Q \ , , '\ 7TaVTa TOt EK It'lOLPEWV fJaCU\TJLa, 7TaVTa TE/\Eta T \ II ' 'll ~'" ,~, \ TJI\UEV" E7TotTJUTJC 0 EPYOV aOW07TOI\WV. ZEVC CKfj7TTpOV f3aclAEwv, JiPTJC DOpV, KaAAocvvTJv DE rF.. Af3" " ~, 'll' , TT' 'POL OC EXEL' 7Tapa COL 0 aupoa 7TaVTa, I\.OTV. Son of kings, the image of Zeus and Apollo and Ares, blest child for whom your mother prayed, all kingly gifts and all perfections have come to you by Fate's decree, and you are made the theme of poesy. Zeus has his royal sceptre, Ares his spear, and Phoebus his beauty; but in you, Cotys, all are united. According to Gow and Page (I 19; II 59), "it can hardly be doubted" that this is the Cotys who was king of Thrace between A.D. 12 and 19 and to whom Ovid addressed ex Ponto 2.9.19 Yet there is another candidate at least as promising, the Cotys, brother of Polemo, who was appointed by Gaius to the throne of lesser Armenia at the same time as his brother was restored to the throne of Pontus in 38 (Cass. Dio 59.12.2). Ovid salutes his Cotys as a man of culture and a fellow­ poet (1.51), while Antipater's Cotys is characterized as kingly, brave, and handsome, a fit subject for poets (€Pyov aotD07ToAwv). Uthe man had been a poet himself Antipater would surely have phrased his compliment differently. Inasmuch as the CKfj7TTpOV and DOpV of line 5 imply that Cotys is already in possession of his throne, if he is the later Cotys then the poem is presumably later than A.D. 38. Tullius Geminus, whom Gow and Page not unfairly characterize as "among the least gifted of Philip's authors" (II 295), is almost certainly (as Cichorius saw) to be identified with C. Terentius Tullius Geminus, cos. suff. 46 and legate of Moesia between 47 and 54.20 One of his epigrams (IV = Anth.Pal. 9.707) seems to imply a visit to (perhaps service in) Macedonia. He will have been in the neighborhood of thirty in A.D. 40. Antistius, author of four Philippan poems, was identified by Cichorius (360) with the adulterous Macedonian noble C. Antistius Vetus exiled by Tiberius for treason in 21 (Tac. Ann. 3.38). The Macedonian connection is in his favor, but Philip would hardly have associated himself with an exiled traitor, and Cichorius had to 19 See now R. Syme, History in Ovid (Oxford 1979) 81; and for the family tree, Bowersock (supra n.I8) 154. 20 A Stein, Die Legaten von Moesien (Dissertationes Pannonicae, SER. I no. II, Budapest 1940) 28. ALAN CAMERON 59 assume that the man was recalled from exile by Gaius in 37, "if he lived that long." Both Cichorius and Gow and Page (II 145) mention only to dismiss the possibility that the poet might have been the praetor Antistius Sosianus exiled in 62 for writing obscene poems about Nero (Tac. Ann. 14.48). Their only reason was that he would have been too young in 40, but if that now seems less fatal an objec­ tion, it is surely no negligible coincidence that the praetor was a poet and the epigrammatist wrote at least one obscene poem (Antistius IV = Anth.Plan. 243). Polemo, Cotys, Geminus, Antistius: none of the identifications here canvassed is certain and even so only one, Antistius Sosianus, is irreconcilable with a publication date of 40. But they are at least as plausible as any other identifications, they support each other, and collectively they do point to a Claudian rather than Gaian date. VIII. Philip LX and LXI (Anth.Pal. 11.321, 347) Both these epigrams are invectives against pedantic critics, disciples of Zenodotus, Callimachus, and Aristarchus, the sort of people "who delight in /Ltv and cc/>tv and inquire whether the Cyclops kept dogs" (LX 3-4) or "who was Proteus' father and who Pygmalion's" (LXI 4). "It is unlikely," wrote Gow and Page (II 362), following Cichorius (347f), "that a poet who sought favor at the Imperial court would have written in this manner on this subject in the time of Tiberius or Claudius." Tiberius indeed is credited with an enthusiasm for just such questions (quae mater Hecubae, quod Achilli nomen inter virgines juisset, Suet. Tib. 70). But Claudius was a more serious scholar, a student of language, a historian and Etruscologist. On the basis of what we know of his literary interests there seems no reason to believe that he might have felt himself a possible target of Philip's barbs. In any case, if the Garland included Antiphilus VI, it cannot have appeared long before Claudius' death and quite possibly not till after. This would have been just the moment to mock the late emperor's pedantry, as Seneca did in his Apocolocyntosis (5.4). Note too the disapproval in Ep. 88.37 (of A.D. 64) of this sort of investigation (de patria Homeri . .. de Aeneae matre vera . .. et alia quae erant dediscenda si scires). But the most relevant parallel, curiously missed by both Cichorius and Gow and Page, is Anth.Pal. 11.140 60 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP by Lucillius, another attack on 'Aristarcheans' (with line 2, TOLC (b' )4ptCTapxov ypap_fLaTOAtKpt4>tCtV, if. Philip LXI.2, Ot T' a.7T' )4PLCTrXPXOV CfjTEC aKavOoAoyot) : l' , ~ \ ' , ~..I.. '\ ' \ \' , , OLC ov CKWf'f'a I\EyEtv, ov 7TELV 'f'LI\OV, al\l\ avaKELVTat , N' \ II ' V7J7TVTtEVOf'EVOL ECTOpt KaL ptaf''tJ •.• Lucillius is known to have written under Nero (Anth.Pal. 9.572)-and in Rome (11.184).21 Indeed 11.132, another poem on pedantic grammarians, is actually addressed to Nero. Even so, this is hardly an argument from which any secure conclusions are to be drawn. Not only are there many other texts of varying dates that mock these futile grammatical quaestiones, 22 including two other undatable Garland-epigrams, Antipater of Thessalonica xx and Antiphanes IX. More important, these epigrams are not lampoons on individuals noted for their pedantry but attacks on whole schools of grammarians. The earliest, and the model for all the rest, is one that happened not to be included in the Anthology, by Herodicus the Crate tan :23 When Philip bids his Aristarcheans Xa{pOtTE (LXI. I), this is no more than a contemptuous dismissal. But Herodicus clearly has a real voyage in mind, across the broad back of the sea, and though part of the point of line 2 is the rare Homeric word for deer (affected by such poets as Callimachus and Apollonius), the accusation of cowardice is likewise real enough. Herodicus is referring to the flight of Aristarchus and his leading disciples from Alexandria in September 146 B.C., on the accession of the brutal Ptolemy Euergetes II and the murder of the legitimate heir to the throne, Aristarchus' pupil. 24 Herodicus, a member of the rival Pergamene 21 L. Robert, CRA] 1968, 280-88. 22 For a good selection see J. E. B. Mayor's note on Juvenal 7.234: Thirteen Satires of Juvenall4 (London 1889) 328-29. 23 Apud Ath. 5.222A; referred to by Cow and Page on Philip LX (II 362), but with no hint of its place in the tradition or of its contemporary relevance. 24 As pointed out by 1. During, Herodicus the Cratetan: a Study in Antiplatonic Tradition (Stockholm 1941) 5f. ALAN CAMERON 61 school founded by Crates, was naturally delighted at the discomfiture of the Aristarcheans. Their rivalry survived well into the reign of Tiberius,25 though there is no means of judging whether Philip's epigrams bear witness to its continuing vitality or are merely variations on a now traditional theme. Either way there is certainly nothing to suggest a date before the death ofGaius, and the Lucillian and Senecan parallels show that an early Neronian date is a real possi bili ty. XI. Conc! usion The arguments hitherto alleged to prove publication before the death of Gaius fall well short of conviction. At least two poems, Antiphilus VI and Thallus II, can be assigned to the reign of Claudius, and perhaps several more. Claudius is not usually thought of as a patron of poetry, but Seneca, Apoc. 12.3.29, refers to poetae novi who will lament his passing, among them perhaps Philip and his friends. And since Antiphilus VI was written hardly more than a year before Claudius' death, the Garland itself is more likely than not to have been assembled and published under Nero. It is no objection to this inference that there is no Garland poem unmistakably referable to Nero's reign. Epigrams that name or address reigning emperors normally (and naturally) refer only to 'Caesar'. It was only by a process of elimination that we identified Claudius in Thallus II, and four out of five of the references to Nero in Lucillius are simply to 'Caesar'. Antiphilus VI does unmistakably refer to Nero shortly before his accession, and it is perfectly possible that the 'Caesar' of Philip III, IV, or V or the anonymous Garland poem Anth.Pal. 7.626 is Nero-jus,t as the 'queen' of Antiphilus II could be Octavia. And if Philip does not thank Nero for his favour, as Lucillius does (9.572), no more does he thank or reveal personal familiarity with any other emperor. It is nonetheless probable that, like many other Greek men ofletters, Philip should have sought (and perhaps won) Nero's patronage with his book. It was to a private citizen, the 'noble Camillus', that he dedicated the Garland, and it is to Camillus that we now turn. L. Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, the unsuccessful rebel who 25 During (supra n,24) 9-11; R. Pfeiffer, History oj Classical Scholarship (Oxford 1968) 238f. 62 THE GARLAND OF PHILIP died in 42, is by no means the only possible candidate. His brother M. Furius Camillus, Arval brother in or after 38,26 need not have been compromised. Gow and Page found it "unlikely that Philip would have sought a patron in any member of this family after the revolt, at least during the principate of Claudius" (II xlix n.3). But there was no witch-hunt against the kin ofthe rebels. Thus the three most conspicuous names among Scribonianus' partisans: A. Caecina Paetus, whose daughter married Thrasea Paetus; L. Annius Vinicianus, whose two sons married daughters of Barea Soranus and Domitius Corbulo; and Q. Pomponius Secundus, whose brother, the consular dramatist P. Pomponius Secundus, was entrusted with the command of armies till at least A.D. 50.27 Scribonianus' homonymous son continued in honour till he was exiled in 52 for inquiring too closely into Claudius' horoscope (Tac. Ann. 12.52). There is clearly no reason why the Arval brother Camillus (if still alive) 28 or perhaps a son of his should not have seemed a perfectly safe patron to Philip in the early 50's, whether under Claudius or Nero. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY January, 1980 26 See E. J. Weinrib, HSGP 72 (1967) 264-65 n. 73; J. Scheid, us jreres arvales (Paris 1975) 171-87, perversely (and at some length) identifies L. Arruntius Camillus Scriboni­ anus with M. Furius Camillus. 27 R. Syme, Ten Studies in Tacitus (Oxford 1970) 99-100, and Roman Papers II (Oxford 1979) 821-22. 28 Weinrib (supra n.26) favored placing the fragment of the Acta fratr.arv. recording the cooption of M. Furius Camillus (GIL VI 2031) after rather than before 38, though unaware of the Claudian or Neronian Camillus attested by Philip's preface. I am grateful to Lin E. Welden for valuable references.