Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

THE NEW DIRECTION IN POETRY
reason to suppose that Catulus felt any aversion to old-fashioned epic: his
circle included a certain Furius, a writer of such poetry, Annals.
Callimachus' poetry was brought to Rome by Parthenius of Nicaea, a zealous
Callimachean; and arrived there with all the charm and force of novelty. Not
that Callimachus had been altogether unknown in Rome; rather that Parthenius
introduced him to some young and aspiring poets there, and made him an active
part of their education. According to the biographical notice in the Suda,
Pardienius was taken prisoner when the Romans defeated Mithridates, becoming
the property or prize of Cinna (not furdier identified); and was later freed
because of his learning, 6i& TrafSEucriv. Therefore Parthenius arrived in Rome
sometime after 73 B.C., the year the Romans captured Nicaea; possibly not
until about 65 B.C., when Mithridates was finally defeated. It may be that
literary young men in Rome were minded to read Callimachus without
prompting; but then the suddenness and intensity of their interest would
be difficult to explain; and it is doubtful whether a Cinna or a Calvus or a
Catullus could have begun to appreciate Callimachus without a Parthenius at
his elbow.
Cinna laboured for nine years to be as obscure as Euphorion, and succeeded
brilliantly: his Ztnyrna required an exegetical commentary. 1 Catullus greeted
the publication of Cinna's epyllion with an enthusiasm truly Callimachean (95):
Zmyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem
quam coepta est nonamque edita post hiemem,
milia cum interea quingenta Hortensius uno
Zmyrna cauas Satrachi penitus mittetur ad undas,
Zmyrnam cana diu saecula peruoluent.
At Volusi Annales Paduam morientur ad ipsam
et laxas scombris saepe dabunt tunicas.
My Cinna s Zmyrna is finally out, nine summers and nine winters after it was conceived,
while in the meantime Hortensius. . .five hundred thousand. . .in one. . .
Zmyrna will be sent all the way to the Satrachus' curled waves, grey centuries will
long peruse Zmyrna. But Volusius' Annals will perish at Padua itself, and often
supply loose wraps for mackerel.
The technique of the poem is minute. There are, or were, eight lines, divided
into two sections of four, each section beginning with the name of Cinna's
poem. In the second section two rivers are mentioned, the Satrachus and the Po
(Padua was a mouth of the Po, Latin Padus): Satrachi stands immediately before
the caesura, or pause, of the first hexameter, Paduam immediately after that of
the second, and both hexameters close with similar phrases: mittetur ad undas,
1 By the grammarian Crassicius: Suet. Gramm. i8, with an ingenious parody of Catullus 70.
184
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