Epilogue

Fr. 112 Harder (= 112 Pf., = 112 Mass.) P.Oxy. 1011 fol. II
   verso, 1-10 [image], Trismegistos 59415

P.Oxy. 7.1011 is a papyrus codex that contains the end of the Aetia and the beginning of the Iambi. The last five lines of the Aetia recall the opening (frag 2): "When a swarm of Muses met the shepherd Hesiod, grazing his flocks by the footprint of the fiery horse," see 112.5-6, "to whom the Muses told many stories as he tended his sheep by the footprint of the fiery horse." This is generally taken to have been the Epilogue to the collected four books of Aetia, and to have functioned as an introduction to the Iambi, which in the codex immediately follows. At the time Callimachus wrote, of course, these lines could only have stood at the end of a roll, and thus could only have signaled a change in poetic interests. Only with the later introduction of the codex could the lines have served as a transition between two different generic collections. Moreover, the whole of the Aetia must have belonged to the end of Callimachus’ very long career (about 245 BC), while the Iambi are likely to have been written earlier.

line 2: Platt's conjecture of μαῖα δ’ ἀνάσσης ("nurse of my mistress") is very attractive, especially when coupled with the fact that Κυρήνη | μαῖα occurs in a funerary epigram of Eratosthenes of Cyrene composed by Dionysius of Cyzicus (AP 7.78.3). This is discussed in Massimilla 2010.2.514.

Bibliography

Knox, P. 1985. “The Epilogue to the Aetia.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 26:59-65.

———. 1993. “The Epilogue to the Aetia: An Epilogue.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 96:175-78.

Massimilla, Giulio (ed.). 2010. Callimaco. Aitia: libri terzo e quarto. Pisa/Roma: Fabrizio Serra.