Palladas and the Foundation of Constantinople - Fordham University

14 K E V I N W. WILKINSON
was erected in the hippodrome. This site was close enough to the sea to provide a plausible
fi t for the poem’s ‘prope litoris oram’, and we know from later testimonia that there was
indeed a large bronze Scylla on the spina of the city’s hippodrome. 63 As others have noted,
these lines are almost certainly based on a lost Greek original. 64 The lost model, therefore,
was included in the fourth-century Greek anthology that Alan Cameron has posited as
the sole source for the Latin imitations produced by Ausonius and the Bobbio poets. 65
Furthermore, the Greek original of this epigram was itself quite clearly a product of the
fourth century. This is proved by the apostrophe of an emperor (line 2), who seems to be
responsible for the placement of the statue. All of this has been noted by Cameron, who
quite naturally thought of ‘Constantine and his immediate successors who adorned [the
hippodrome] with the stolen statuary of the entire Graeco-Roman world’. 66 But there is
only one epigrammatist contained in the fourth-century anthology who was late enough
to have written the model — Palladas. The others are Hellenistic or early Roman; all
were long dead by the founding of Constantinople. 67 Moreover, as several other Palladan
epigrams are most plausibly situated in the Eastern capital during its early years, and as
he wrote elsewhere about the statuary that was being imported into the city, it appears
quite likely that he was responsible for the lost original of this epigram too. The only
alternative — always an unsatisfying one — is to posit an anonymous and otherwise
unattested poet. 68 This seems an unnecessary hypothesis when the timing, the locale, and
the subject matter are all appropriate to Palladas, who was also demonstrably included in
the anthology used by the Bobbio poets.
Since a number of Palladas’ epigrams refl ect conditions during the sole reign of
Constantine I (at which time the poet himself was apparently advanced in years), it is
perhaps likeliest that this is the apostrophized emperor of line 2. The Scylla, therefore,
was probably erected in the hippodrome very near the foundation of the city. 69 The law of
percentages might also be invoked in support of this judgement, for it was undoubtedly
Constantine who imported the majority of the city’s antique statuary. 70 It is possible,
however, even if there is no proof, that Palladas survived into the reign of Constantius
II, in which case the statue could have been imported in the late 330s or in the 340s. The
Greek original of this epigram almost certainly does not postdate the midway point of the
century. 71
63 cf. AP 11.270, 271, and presumably also 9.755, which provides no indication of date and is also anonymous.
On the statuary of the hippodrome, see S. Bassett, ‘The antiquities in the hippodrome of Constantinople’, DOP
45 (1991), 87–96 (90 and 91 for the Scylla); idem, op. cit. (n. 27), 227–30.
64 See Munari’s note in his edition of the Epigrammata Bobiensia, ad loc.: ‘Suspicor nostro epigrammati
Graecum exemplar subesse.’ See also Alan Cameron, The Greek Anthology: From Meleager to Planudes (1993),
94. A large block of Greek ecphrastic epigrams is missing from the Palatine Anthology between Books 9 and 10;
only some of these were preserved by Planudes. See A. S. F. Gow, The Greek Anthology: Sources and Ascriptions,
The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Supplementary Paper no. 9 (1958), 51–2.
65 Cameron, op. cit. (n. 64), 78–96.
66 ibid., 95.
67 Some have thought that Rufi nus, one of the poets represented in the lost anthology, may have been as late as
the fourth century; see especially D. L. Page, The Epigrams of Rufi nus (1978), 3–49. Alan Cameron (‘Strato and
Rufi nus’, CQ n.s. 32 (1982), 162–73), however, has proved that he was writing three centuries earlier than this.
And in any event all of his known epigrams are amatory.
68 As suggested by Alan Cameron, op. cit. (n. 64), 95.
69 Bassett (op. cit. (n. 27), 85, 230) has suggested that it might have been erected under Theodosius I or Arcadius.
This judgement is based, however, solely on the hippodrome scenes from the Column of Arcadius (where Scylla
is depicted). This evidence is capable of providing only a terminus ante quem.
70 Eusebius, at least, could say in the 330s that Constantinople was already fi lled with bronze statues that had
been imported from all over the Empire (VC 3.54.3).
71 Not only because of the dates for Palladas’ life proposed in Wilkinson, op. cit. (n. 2), but also because of
indications that the fourth-century anthology used by the Bobbio poets was already in existence by the early
stages of Ausonius’ career; see ibid., 41–2.