Alcaeus of Mytilene - Scholars, Fragments and Sources

Scholars, Fragments and Sources

The story of Alcaeus is partly the story of the scholars who rescued his work from oblivion. His verses have not come down to us through a manuscript tradition - generations of scribes copying an author's collected works, such as delivered intact into the modern age four entire books of Pindar's odes - but haphazardly, in quotes from ancient scholars and commentators whose own works have chanced to survive, and in the tattered remnants of papyri uncovered from an ancient rubbish pile at Oxyrhynchus and other locations in Egypt: sources that modern scholars have studied and correlated exhaustively, adding little by little to the world's store of poetic fragments.

Ancient scholars quoted Alcaeus in support of various arguments. Thus for example Heraclitus 'The Allegorist' quoted fr.326 and part of fr.6, about ships in a storm, in his study on Homer's use of allegory. The hymn to Hermes, fr308(b), was quoted by Hephaestion (grammarian) and both he and Libanius, the rhetorician, quoted the first two lines of fr.350, celebrating the return from Babylon of Alcaeus' brother. The rest of fr.350 was paraphrased in prose by the historian/geographer Strabo. Many fragments were supplied in quotes by Athenaeus, principally on the subject of wine-drinking, but fr.333, "wine, window into a man", was quoted much later by the Byzantine grammarian, John Tzetzes.

The first 'modern' publication of Alcaeus' verses appeared in a Greek and Latin edition of fragments collected from the canonic nine lyrical poets by Michael Neander, published at Basle in 1556. This was followed by another edition of the nine poets, collected by Henricus Stephanus and published in Paris in 1560. Fulvius Ursinus compiled a fuller collection of Alcaic fragments, including a commentary, which was published at Antwerp in 1568. The first separate edition of Alcaeus was by Christian David Jani and it was published at Halle in 1780. The next separate edition was by August Matthiae, Leipzig 1827.

Some of the fragments quoted by ancient scholars were able to be integrated by scholars in the nineteenth century. Thus for example two separate quotes by Athenaeus were united by Theodor Bergk to form fr.362. Three separate sources were combined to form fr.350, as mentioned above, including a prose paraphrase from Strabo that first needed to be restored to its original meter, a synthesis achieved by the united efforts of Otto Hoffmann, Karl Otfried Muller and Franz Heinrich Ludolf Ahrens. The discovery of the Oxyrhynchus papyri towards the end of the nineteenth century dramatically increased the scope of scholarly research. In fact, eight important fragments have now been compiled from papyri - fr.s 9, 38A, 42, 45, 34, 129, 130 and most recently S262. These fragments typically feature lacunae or gaps that scholars fill with 'educated guesses', including for example a "brilliant supplement" by Maurice Bowra in fr.34, a hymn to the Dioscuri that includes a description of St Elmo's fire in the ship's rigging. Working with only eight letters (πρό...τρ...ντες or pro...tr...ntes), Bowra conjured up a phrase that brilliantly develops the meaning and the euphony of the poem (πρότον' ὀντρέχοντες or proton' ontrechontes), describing luminescence "running along the forestays". Bowra's ability to single out important information is legendary and it is demonstrated in an anecdote about his days at Oxford. He and some colleagues had stripped naked for a swim in the river when they were surprised by a party of ladies out for a stroll. Bowra's colleagues made haste to cover their private parts; Bowra merely covered his head. Asked about this afterwards, the scholar observed: "I don't know about you, Gentlemen, but in Oxford I at least am known by my face."