Palladas

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Palladas ( ancient Greek Παλλαδᾶς ) was a late ancient Greek epigrammatist in Alexandria . The dating of his lifetime is controversial in research. For a long time it was believed that he lived around 400. In 2009, however, Kevin Wilkinson has argued that Palladas lived in the time of Constantine the Great († 337). This was contradicted by Alan Cameron , who would like to set the creative period at least two to three decades higher, around 350/360, if not to stick to the date around 390.

Only what is known of his life is what can be deduced from his epigrams, about 160 of which have come down to us in the Anthologia Palatina . Accordingly, he was a pagan , grammarian (i.e. teacher) and, at least according to the research opinion before Wilkinson (who assumes a wrong assignment), an enthusiastic admirer of the pagan philosopher Hypatia, who was murdered in 415 :

May I see you, hear you, I pay homage on my knees,
the star house in front of my eyes, where the virgin lives.
Because your actions and the art
with which you speak point to heaven , sublime Hypatia,
you shining star of ingenious science!

In Alexandria by the late fourth century, clashes between pagans and Christians had broken out. In 391 Emperor Theodosius I had the pagan cult practice forbidden formally; shortly afterwards the serapeum in Alexandria was destroyed after pagans had murdered Christians there. Palladas (if one accepts the assignment) accordingly commented on the powerlessness of the old gods with bitter mockery. However, even before Wilkinson it was doubted that the poem refers to the philosopher Hypatia or that it was written by Palladas at all.

When the Tychaion, the temple of Tyche , embodiment of happiness, had been converted into a pub: And you, happiness, bear, you changeable, mockery in the future; because you couldn't keep your own happiness. Those who once had a temple became a tapwife in old age, and you now pour a warm drink for mortals. Or about Eros , whose cult image had been melted down: the blacksmith turned Eros into a frying pan. And not without reason: it can also heat up red-hot.

Other objects in his poetry were complaints about his profession and his quarrelsome wife, which grew to the point of misogyny .

His poems seem to have found widespread circulation, one was found on a latrine wall in Ephesus , another on a saint's grave on the island of Megiste . Judgments about him in modern times are divided. Isaac Casaubon disliked him. Prosper Mérimée , however, set a misogynistic epigram by Palladas ( Πᾶσα γυνὴ χόλος ἐστίν ) as the motto for his novella Carmen .

Kevin Wilkinson has examined the entire tradition of Palladas in several studies and came to a conclusion that deviated greatly from the earlier research. According to this, Palladas lived in the time of Constantine in the early 4th century. In the late antique tradition, however, parts of the older poems of Palladas were taken over, not a rare procedure, and in some cases incorrectly attributed in research. In 2013 Wilkinson published a fragmentary papyrus codex that contains Greek epigrams ascribed to Palladas. The handwriting and the style point to the early 4th century for Wilkinson. In addition to his analyzes, in 2015 he came up with a dating of at least epigram 11,378 of the Anthologia Palatina between the years 331 and 363, preferably at the beginning of the period. In contrast, Luca Benelli stuck to the classic dating around 390 and doubted whether the papyrus P.CtYBR inv. 4000 even contained an epigram of Pallada.

expenditure

  • The epigrams handed down in the Greek anthology are included in their editions .
  • Kevin Wilkinson (Ed.): New Epigrams of Palladas: A Fragmentary Papyrus Codex. Durham (NC) 2013.

literature

Overview display
  • Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé: Palladas d'Alexandrie. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Volume 5/1, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2012, ISBN 978-2-271-07335-8 , pp. 91-108
Investigations
  • Kevin Wilkinson: Palladas and the Age of Constantine. In: Journal of Roman Studies 99, 2009, pp. 36–60.
  • Kevin Wilkinson: Some Neologisms in the Epigrams of Palladas. In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 50, 2010, pp. 295–308 ( online )
  • Wolfgang Zerwes: Palladas of Alexandria. A contribution to the history of Greek epigram poetry. Dissertation Tübingen 1957, DNB 480732337 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Kevin Wilkinson: Palladas and the Age of Constantine . In: Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009), pp. 36–60; Timothy D. Barnes among others accepts this .
  2. ^ Alan Cameron : The Date of Palladas. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 198, 2016, pp. 49-52; in detail the same: Palladas. New Poems, New Date? In: the same: Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2016, pp. 91-112.
  3. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 9,400
  4. ↑ Kevin Wilkinson: Palladas and the Age of Constantine . In: Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009), pp. 36–60, here p. 38.
  5. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 9,183, verses 1-4
  6. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 9,773
  7. ↑ The Epigram of Palladas: Anthologia Palatina 10.87. - The graffito (with a different second verse): IEph 465,2 ; Rudolf Weißhäupl: Ephesian latrine inscriptions. In: Annual books of the Austrian Archaeological Institute. Supplement. Volume 5, 1902, p. 34 ( digitized version ); Christoph Börker , Reinhold Merkelbach (ed.): The inscriptions from Ephesus. Part 2 (= inscriptions of Greek cities from Asia Minor . Volume 12). Habelt, Bonn 1979, No. 465.2 ; Gianfranco Agosti: Per un studio dei rapporti fra epigrafia e letteratura nella tarda antichità. In: Lucio Cristante e Tommaso Mazzoli (ed.): Il calamo della memoria VI. Riuso di testi e mestiere letterario nella tarda antichità. Edizioni Università di Trieste, Triest 2015, pp. 13–33, here p. 21 f. ( PDF ).
  8. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 10.58; Reinhold Merkelbach, Josef Stauber (ed.): Stone pigrams from the Greek East. Volume 4: The South Coast of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine. Saur, München / Leipzig 2002, p. 62, No. 17/12/02; Discussion of the inscription at Valentina Garulli: Byblos lainee. Epigrafia, letteratura, epitafio. Pàtron, Bologna 2012, pp. 102-107.
  9. ↑ Anthologia Palatina 11,381.
  10. ↑ Kevin Wilkinson: Palladas and the Age of Constantine . In: Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009), pp. 36–60, here pp. 59f.
  11. ↑ P.CtYBR inv. 4000, owned by Kniecke Library, Yale University.
  12. ↑ Kevin W. Wilkinson: More Evidence for the Date of Palladas. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. Volume 196, 2015, pp. 67-71. 331 and 363 to AP 11,378.
  13. ↑ Luca Benelli: Osservazioni sul P. Ct. YBR Inv. 4000 e sulla sua attribuzione a Pallada di Alessandria. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. Volume 193, 2015, pp. 53-63.
personal data
SURNAME Palladas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek poet
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd century or 4th century
DATE OF DEATH 4th century or 5th century