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7-07-2015, 12:18

The Ptolemaic Context

There are other echoes of traditional Pharaonic imagery and attributes in Hellenistic poetry which engages more explicitly with the Ptolemaic court. Here too we can see Herodotos' view of Egypt as a vital intertext with which the poets of Alexandria interact. At the end of the Aitia's fourth and final book Kallimachos places the story of the astronomer Konon’s discovery among the stars of the lock of her hair dedicated by Berenike II, wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, in fulfilment of a vow she made to do so if he returned victorious from the Third Syrian War of 247-6 bc. The lock had been dedicated (according to Hyginus, Astronomica 2.24) in the temple of Aphrodite Arsinoe at Zephyrion but had disappeared by the following day. In the ‘‘Lock of Berenike’’ (Aitia fr. 110 Pf., augmented by Catullus’ translation/adaptation, Catullus 66) the lock itself speaks and describes Berenike's pain at her separation from the husband she has recently married:

Are new brides truly averse to Venus? Are the joys of parents frustrated by feigned tears shed in torrents as they step into the bedroom? By the gods, their lamentations are not sincere! My queen taught me as much with her many complaints, when her new husband was on his way to grim battles. (Catullus 66.15-20, tr. Nisetich)

The successful consummation of the marriage is clear here, and the lock laments that it was cut off before it could enjoy the perfumes put on it by a married woman, and that it is now separated from the queen, despite the honor of being among the stars:

I am not so delighted

With all that,

As I am grieved

That I shall never touch

That head again, from which I drank,

When she was still a maiden, many

A draught of ordinary oil

And tasted not of womanly perfumes. (Aitia fr. 110.75-8 Pf., tr. Nisetich)

It is not only the sexual potency of Ptolemy that the lock testifies to - it was also cut off because of his successful return from battle against Seleukos II. Both the king’s sexual potency (Selden 1998: 334-5, who cites (e. g.) the close association of Ramesses II and the ithyphallic fertility god Min) and the terms in which this enemy is described in the ‘‘Lock of Berenike’’ have clear Pharaonic precedents: Ptolemy has gone to ‘‘plunder the Assyrian country’’ (Catullus 66.12, tr. Nisetich) and has ‘‘captured Asia and added her to Egypt’s territories’’ (Catullus 66.36, tr. Nisetich), strongly recalling the traditional place of ‘‘Asiatics’’ among the ‘‘Nine Bows’’ who form the enemies of Pharaonic Egypt (Selden 1998: 331-4; Shaw 2000: 309-10). The ‘‘Lock of Berenike’’ also reverses several important aspects of Herodotos’ account (2.181) of the Pharaoh Amasis’ marriage to another Cyrenean woman (Berenike II was from Cyrene), Ladike (Selden 1998: 329-30). Amasis (unlike Ptolemy) is at first unable to consummate his marriage to his Cyrenean, and Ladike makes a vow not (as Berenike did) because of the existing sexual bond between them, but in order to bring one about: she promises to send a statue of Aphrodite to Cyrene if Amasis succeeds in having intercourse with her. He is then able to consummate the marriage, and Ladike keeps her vow, but his initial failure of sexual potency was a sign of his inadequacy as Pharaoh. The message of the ‘‘Lock of Berenike,’’ developed through engagement with Herodotos and the exploitation of traditional Egyptian motifs, is that Ptolemy III is the rightful Pharaoh and will fulfil the traditional functions of the Pharaoh in guaranteeing (and exemplifying) the military vigor of Egypt and defeating its enemies (Selden 1998: 348).

Egypt, of course, is not the only reference-point of Hellenistic poems with a more Ptolemaic coloring. As at the end of Book 4, at the beginning of Book 3 of the Aitia Kallimachos devotes a long section to Berenike II. The opening of the third book, known as the ‘‘Victory of Berenike,’’ celebrates her chariot-race victory at the Nemean Games. Hence this connects the Ptolemaic court with the traditions of Greek athletic and equestrian competition at the pan-Hellenic ‘‘crown’’ games (of which the most prestigious were the Olympics), and also the tradition of poetic celebration of these victories, as exemplified by the victory odes of Pindar and Bacchylides from the first half of the fifth century bc. The ‘‘Victory of Berenike’’ encapsulates many of the patterns we have seen above. It adapts the choral lyric victory odes of Archaic and early Classical Greece, but ‘‘translates’’ them into the typically Hellenistic metre of the elegiac couplet, and incorporates itself within a longer multi-book elegy. The opening of the poem also advertises both its connections and its difference from its literary antecedents:

A gift of thanks to Zeus and to Nemea is owing now... a song for the victory your horses won, bride, sacred blood of the Sibling Gods - for just now

From the land of Danaos

To Helen’s island, where Pallene’s seer

Shepherds his seals, came

The word of gold. (Aet. Suppl. Hell. 254.1-6)

The opening line here is reminiscent of a number of Pindaric openings (e. g. Ol. 10.3 where Pindar ‘‘owes’’ the victor a song, and Nem. 1.7 where the victor and Nemea urge Pindar to begin the victory-song), and the passage, in general, records the usual details of victor, event, place of victory, victor’s homeland, victor’s family/ father, etc. But here these details are couched in periphrases which the audience needs to decode: Berenike is ‘‘sacred blood of the Sibling Gods’’ (figuring her as the child of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, which she was not), and Alexandria is referred to through a reference to Pharos as ‘‘Helen’s island’’ where Proteus (here ‘‘Pallene’s seer’’) keeps his seals (alluding the visit of Menelaos and Helen to the Pharos of Od. 4, see §2 above). Part of what is achieved here is the characterization of the speaking voice as scholarly (Morrison 2007: 189-90), but the encoding of the information is also a sign that we are not dealing with poetry (and the attendant fame of the victor) disseminated principally through public performance and reperformance, but with poems which would be recited and read. It is also important to note that these periphrases are not impenetrable (contrast the obscurities of the Alexandra of ‘‘Lykophron’’): these allusions invite decoding by the audience, and, when decoded, act to make the audience feel ‘‘included’’ in the same group as the narrator and his patrons (cf. Schmitz 1999: 155-6, 165-70 on the prologue to the Aitia). One might speculate the allusions to Egyptian traditions we have seen in Apollonios and Kallimachos operate in a similar manner.

Hence, taken together, the beginning and end of the latter two books of the Aitia suggest an audience for early Ptolemaic poetry composed not just of Greeks but also Greek-speaking Egyptians such as Manetho (Selden 1998: 349), and also a close knowledge of native Egyptian traditions alongside central Greek texts (such as Homer, Pindar, and Herodotos) across the different elements of the audience. Even in the Greek poetry produced in the context of the Library and Museum Egypt thus played an important role, which in itself should make us suspicious of accounts of the early Ptolemaic Period which emphasize only division, separation, or hostility between the two cultures of Ptolemaic Egypt.

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The Ptolemaic Context