The Missing Half: A Joke in Call. 4 Gow-Page (=41 Pfeiffer)Author(s): Alexander SensSource: Hermes, Vol. 130, No. 3 (3rd Qtr., 2002), pp. 378-379Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477517Accessed: 27/07/2009 17:08

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THE MISSING HALF: A JOKE IN CALL. 4 GOW-PAGE (=41 PFEIFFER)

TltO ?ED WUX11 ETt TO IEVEOV, "1gtU 6 0DUK ol6 sI ' " Epo; sit' 'A8i&1;q ijiaa,lLv 6(pav'; t1TV . qO ?tT ln pnpam, n^ a v?;.

The elision at the end of the opening hexameter of this well-known epigram is remarkable and has been explained either as a reference to an ancient Homeric zetema I or as an attempt to produce a particular phonetic effect2. I would like to suggest a third possibility. The elision is iconic: like the speaker's bipartite soul, the disyllabic oi&a is missing one of its halves. The unusual treatment of o0&a thus amounts to a grammatical joke, to which the pun on 'Ai&j; (i.e. "he who makes unseen") and the placement of &(pavg; at the end of the succeeding pentameter may call attention. The point would be especially clear to a reader of an epigram, for whom &Oavg; would sit immediately below a word of which one syllable was itself adpav?;3. Moreover, the use of elision throughout the couplet shows a consonance of form and content: the first half of the hexameter, on the part of the soul still breathing (and thus present), contains no elisions, while the remainder of the couplet contains three other examples beside o16(a)4. The choice of the word that undergoes the unusual elision may also be thought to be appropriate to the content and thus to increase the point: the incompleteness of the speaker's knowledge about his soul's whereabouts is reflected in the "incomplete" state of the verb meaning "I know"5. It hardly needs to be said that a joke (whatever its precise

A.S.F. Gow-D. PAGE, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, Cambridge 1965, ii. 158-9, followed by P. PAGONARI-ANTONIOU, KAAAIMAXOY EIirPAMMATA, Athens 1997, 283, argue that Callimachus had in mind the dispute reflected in Choeroboscus on Hephaestion pp. 225.19-226.13 CONSBRUCH, which shows that some ancient critics sought to explain Ziv / at H. Il. 8.206 (adduced by U. VON WILAMOWITZ-MOELLENDORFF, Hellenistische Dichtung, Berlin 1924, i. 174), and apparently & / at Od. 10. 1 I I, as the product of elision.

2 E. LIVREA, "Per l'esegesi di due epigrammi callimachei (8 e 41 Pf.)," Philologus 140 (1996) 70, argues that "si spieghera stilisticamente con la volonta di riprodurre un discorso franto ed insolito"; WILAMOWIrz, lOc. cit. (n. I) suggests that the elision is eased by the speaker's pausing after realizing, with the second iijtov, that he does not know where the other half of his soul is.

3 For the importance of visible effects in Hellenistic verse, cf. P. BING, The Well-Read Muse, Gottingen 1988, 15.

4 HAYDEN PELLICCIA suggests to me that a further iconic joke might even be operative. The opening couplet of Callimachus' epigram plays on two ancient views of the W4UXf: one that associates it with breath and breathing (?nrt nvvov; cf. Pi. Crat. 399d-400a; Arist. de An. 405b28-

9); the other that sees it as the physical entity traveling off to Hades after death (Ai1; r papstae; cf., e.g., H. 11. 7.330). Might then the elision at line end suggest that the narrator, who has just said in the first clause that part of his soul is still breathing, has (appropriately) run out of "breath" at the end of the line end, precisely at the point at which he remarks on the absence of the other half? If so, the hiatus at Sapph. fr. 31.9 yXdaaa caye is perhaps a comparable example of an unusual metrical practice for iconic effect; note also the otherwise unCallimachean hiatus il iin- in v. 4.

5 Against this, it may be noted that oi&a also experiences elision in v. 6, where the speaker is asserting knowledge rather than ignorance. The elision there, however, need not prevent seeing the elision of oi&a at the end of v. 1, where the elision is marked rather than unmarked (as in v. 6), as specially significant.

Hermes, 130. Band, Heft 3 (2002) C) Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart

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nature) playing on the relationship of form and meaning would be fittingly Calli- machean. One might compare, for example, the use of an otherwise un Callimachean verse shape to capture the content of h. 4. 31 1 yvagnrLtv ?6058oq aKioX kapupivOou /, which FRANKEL famously called "ein krummer Vers fur das 'krumme' Labyrinth"6.

Georgetown University ALEXANDER SENS

6 H. FRANKEL, Wege und Formen frnhgriechischen Denkens, Munich 1968, 130 n. 4. 1 am grateful to PETER BING, HAYDEN PELLICCIA and RICHARD THOMAS for comments on a draft of this note.