some notes on gallus

our principal source of information about cornelius gallus is suetonius [see his life of augustus -- section 66 -- on pp 80-81 of your penguin edition of suetonius], but vergil [a contemporary and friend] also mentions him in his tenth eclogue [lines 72-73] in very fond terms.

quintilian also refers to him several times, one of these as a reference to that vergil passage.in some ways the most interesting reference in quintilian is in book ten [10.1.93] where he says elegia quoque graecos prouocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans maxime uidetur auctor tibullus. sunt qui propertium malint. ouidius utroque lasciuior, sicut durior gallus. this means something like: 'in the field of elegy as well we challenge the greeks [for supremacy]. in my opinion the most refined and elegant elegist by far is tibullus. there are those who prefer propertius. ovid is more lasciuus than either, just as gallus is more durus.'

the problem in translation is: what does lasciuior mean? it is the origin, obviously, of our word 'lascivious,' and that might influence us unduly. the latin word can have a positive sense -- 'playful, sportive, frolicsome, frisky' -- but it can also have that negative sense of 'wanton' or 'lewd.' quintilian was a fairly proper old-fashioned guy, so he may have meant that. BUT 'lasciuus' can have yet another meaning -- specifically with reference to literary style: 'luxuriant' or 'overly ornamented.' because the word gets used this way in stylistic contexts, my first reflex would be to go for that third meaning. but then i asked myself: 'is ovid's elegy more luxuriant or heavily ornamented than that of tibullus or propertius?' and i don't really think it is.

let's set that aside for a moment, and think about durior. gallus is said to be durior ['more durus'] than either tibullus or propertius. what might that mean? durus means, first and foremost, 'hard' as opposed to 'soft.' by extension this can mean 'harsh' [in terms of flavor or sound] or, of people, it could mean: rough [i.e. uncultivated]; obstinate; or disagreeable.

this may seem as though it's not much help! but for one thing, it shows you one of the vital differences between latin and modern english: we have a truly gigantic lexicon, and thus can speak with great precision when naming and labeling things. in latin, where the lexicon is smaller, each word may have to do double or triple [or more] duty. hence this problem.

if there's a solution, i think it may lie in the fact that ovid and gallus are set up here in analogy:

ouidius : gallus :: lasciuior : durior

so it's just possible [not necessarily true] that the two ideas are opposites in some way. i.e. ovid is to one extreme [beyond propertius and tibullus]; gallus is to the other extreme.

if that is indeed the case, i'm inclined to read this as saying that ovid is 'more playful' than either tibullus or propertius; and in that case, quintilian might be saying that gallus is 'more severe' than either. [note that this is not the way durior is usually translated here; but i think it makes the most sense, based on the context and the semantic range of each word.] also, quintilian is in an antithetical mood in this paragraph: 'i like tibullus best, though some prefer propertius.' if i'm right, this durior/lasciuior antithesis is just carrying out the motif.

anyway. back to the question that was raised in class today: the main textual references to gallus seem to be in suetonius, vergil, and quintilian. [oh, and ovid, who refers to gallus and his lady 'lycoris' in amores 1.15.

~~~~~ · ~~~~~
for those of you who are still eager to see the ipsissima uerba of this gallus fragment [or three fragments -- some think they may be from three distinct poems; either way they may be referred to as i, ii, and iii], here's a text to have a squint at:



the papyrus scrap was found at qasr ibrim, on the banks of the nile in what we now call egypt, but which the ancients thought of as nubia. qasr ibrim has been a great source of ancient papyri, many of which have been published, though i am sure there are plenty more yet unpublished, and probably many many more still undiscovered. our papyrus was not published until 1979 -- the year i began graduate school at chapel hill -- and i can still remember the excitement surrounding its appearance. it does not refer to the oldest extant text written in latin, of course -- we can read quite a few authors who were born before gallus -- but this papyrus is the oldest extant document written in latin. that is saying something.

those of you who read some latin will recognize that the orthography on the papyrus is not what you learnt in latin 101: quom for cum, spolieis for spoliis, deiuitiora for diuitiora. that may just represent the lack of standardized spelling in those days; but it may also reflect the way some of these words were actually pronounced in the place where the document was penned. that could be very valuable information, which our modern editors actually efface by standardizing and homogenizing everything.

you will also note that the meter is clearly elegiac couplets, but [due to physical damage to the papyrus] the middle of part i is missing, as are the beginnings of three of the four lines of part iii. this is where the art [science? alchemy?] of the textual scholar comes in: she must think long and hard about everything she knows about latin literature and culture, about papyrology, about this particular author, about the rules of scansion, etc etc etc, and then propose some conjectural supplements to the papyrus -- i.e., essentially saying, 'there's a hole in the document, but this is my best guess as to what gallus actually wrote there.' a square bracket at one end of the line or the other indicates that the papyrus is missing there. dots are usually used to show missing or illegible letters -- one dot per letter, typically, to help the reader do some more guessing. it helps, that is, to know just how big the gap is.

text i -- a single line -- is obviously the pentameter of an elegiac couplet. so there is at least one full line missing here, before text i begins. the editor has supplied the 'ia' of nequitia, which if correct must be ablative singular. that would make sense, because of the ablative tua at the end of the line.] assuming that supplement as correct, the scansion of the pentameter line tells you that whatever else is missing, in the middle, must be of one long syllable, and be a syllable of a word that ends with a short 'a' [which is the next letter on the papyrus, i.e. just before the vocative Lycori.

there are plenty of other conundrums in our little fragment here, but this is getting pretty technical, so i'll offer you a [very tentative] translation:



note that i have read eris for erit in text ii. it doesn't make grammatical sense otherwise. it's possible that the copyist didn't read latin very well; or [more likely] that he just got distracted while he was writing, and made a slip of the pen here.

text iii is in the worst shape. we can really only guess at what it's about. c[ar]mina sems to have a worm hole in it, but that's pretty easy; there's no other word it could really be. where we are most at sea is in the third and fourth lines of text iii. what is going on here? there were two famous men in roman history named cato -- cato the elder, from the time of the punic wars, and cato the younger, a contemporary of cicero and julius caesar. gallus would have been about 24 when cato died in 46 BCE, so they may well have known each other before gallus went off to become governor [praefectus] of egypt [this was not until much later -- 28 BCE]. both were noted for their stern moral standards, though gallus may well be speaking here of literary standards. at a guess, i would posit that this cato is the younger. but please be aware that 'cato' is [probably] nominative, and thus not likely to refer to the direct object of 'i do not fear.' something very substantial is missing at the beginnings of those lines.