ABSTRACT
The history of the interpretation of Call. h. Apoll. 105–113 begins with the scholium to line 106: έγkαλεî διά τούτων τοὺςs σκώπτοντας αὺτόòν μη δύνασϑαι ποιησαι μέγα ποίημα, oϑεv ηναγκάσϑη ποιήσαι την ‘Eκάλην. To the significance of this statement and the question of what prompted it we shall return, but it is sufficient to note here that according to the scholiast, Phthonos and Momos in the epilogue of this hymn refer to alleged critics who were mocking Kallimachos for his inability, real or imagined, to compose a long poem. Interpreters of Kallimachos have never moved far from this view; and the efforts of modern criticism, which began with Isaac Voss, have been largely directed toward refining the interpretation of the scholiast. Voss, in 1684, annotating Catullus 115.2, found occasion to comment on Call. A. Apoll. 106: ponto nempe comparabat Apollonii Rhodii magnum poema, quale volebat credi suum quod scripserat Argonauticon, alludens simul ad nomen Ponti Euxini, qui 2 velut opens argumentum constituit. 1 Thus πόντοs in Gall. h. Apoll. 106 is in Voss's view an allusion to Argon. 1.2 in which Kallimachos supposes Apollonios to have announced in the word πόντοιο the “theme” of his Argonautica; and although the πόντοs Εύξεινοs can in no sense be taken as the theme of Apollonios's epic, and although Kallimachos could not with any poetic gain or show of elegance have so referred to that poem, this mode of interpretation laid under its spell succeeding generations of scholars. For if the supposed verbal play on πόντος seem riddling enough, many more since Voss's day have been moved to enrich our history of the period with lore more enigmatic still. Μ. T, Smiley, as late as 1917, approved Voss's guess and accepted h. Apoll. 105–113 as an attack on Apollonios's Argonautica. 2 He went on (after Linde) to explain Argon. 3.932, in which a crow chides the seer Mopsos in language conventionally similar to that of h. Apoll. 106: άκλείης oδe μάντις oς ουδ’ όσα παδ∈ς íσασιν / oìδε νόω ϕράσσασϑαι as Apollonios's counterattack inserted into the second autograph of the poem obscurely alluded to in the scholia. 3 In this way, h. Apoll. became (for Smiley) the official organ of a conspiracy that drove the young pupil of Kallimachos and unfortunate author of the Argonautica into voluntary exile at Rhodes, there to await his opportunity for revenge in the covert allusion of Argon. 3.932f. H. J. Rose was at length able to thank E. A. Barber for a subtle refinement of Voss's and Smiley's guesses : Pontos is the father of the Telchines 3pilloried for their ignorance in the prologue to the Aitia. This relationship, Rose thought, explained the recalcitrant ού8' of h. Apoll. 105, since o ὺδ’ here, Rose assumes (and perhaps rightly), should have the full sense that it has in Argon. 3.932, although on his showing the line is in truth profoundly alienated from its context, contradicting in anticipation the point of lines 108–112. 4
