Parthenius - Complete Works of Parthenius

The Complete Works of

PARTHENIUS

(fl. 1 st century BC)

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Delphi Classics 2021

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The Complete Works of

PARTHENIUS OF NICAEA

By Delphi Classics, 2021

Complete Works of Parthenius

First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2021.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 80170 009 2

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Ancient ruins at Nicaea, northwestern Anatolia, primarily known as the site of the First and Second Councils of Nicaea Parthenius birthplace

znik Walls at Istanbul Gate, Nicaea

Translated by S. Gaselee, 1916, Loeb Classical Library

Parthenius of Nicaea was a Greek grammarian and poet that flourished in the first century AD. According to the Suda, he was the son of Heraclides and Eudora, while Hermippus of Berytus claims that his mothers name was Tetha. We know very little of Parthenius life and career. He was taken prisoner by Helvius Cinna in the Mithridatic Wars and carried to Rome in 72 BC. He subsequently visited Neapolis, where he reportedly taught Greek to the future epic poet Virgil, as recorded by Macrobius. He is believed to have lived until the accession of Tiberius in 14 AD.

Sometimes described as the last of the Alexandrians, Parthenius was a writer of elegies, especially dirges, and of short epic poems. His sole surviving work, the (Love Romances), was set out, as Parthenius states in his preface, in the shortest possible form and dedicated to the poet Cornelius Gallus, as a storehouse from which to draw material. It is a collection of thirty-six epitomes of mythological love stories, all of which have tragic or sentimental endings. Parthenius is one of the few ancient writers whose work survives in only one manuscript, called Palatinus Heidelbergensis graecus 398 (P), which was likely written in the mid-ninth century.

It contains a diverse mixture of geography, excerpts from Hesychius of Alexandria, paradoxography, epistolography and mythology. As the author usually quotes his authorities, these tales are valuable in providing information on the Alexandrian poets and grammarians whose works are now lost. Parthenius was famous to the literary world of the ancients as one of the regular Alexandrine school of poets, though pedantic and obscure, often opting for the less well known legends of mythology. Yet, these mini-epic tales would play an important part in the development of the love story especially the tragic love story in the course of Western literature.

Apollo and Daphne, a marble sculpture by Bernini, c. 1625 Daphnes tragic love story is one of the thirty-six romances narrated by Parthenius.

CONTENTS

Classical depiction of Oenone holding pan pipes; detail from a sarcophagus, Palazzo Altemps, Rome, c. AD 140 another subject of Parthenius romances, Oenone was the first wife of Paris of Troy, whom he abandoned for Helen of Sparta.

A third century Roman mosaic of Virgil, Parthenius esteemed pupil, seated between Clio and Melpomene, Hadrumetum, Tunisia

I THOUGHT, my dear Cornelius Gallus, that to you above all men there would be something particularly agreeable in this collection of romances of love, and I have put them together and set them out in the shortest possible form. The stories, as they are found in the poets who treat this class of subject, are not usually related with sufficient simplicity; I hope that, in the way I have treated them, you will have the summary of each: and you will thus have at hand a storehouse from which to draw material, as may seem best to you, for either epic or elegiac verse. I am sure that you will not think the worse of them because they have not that polish of which you are yourself such a master: I have only put them together as aids to memory, and that is the sole purpose for which they are meant to be of service to you.

From the Lyrcus of Nicaenetus of Apollonius Rhodius

When Io, daughter of King Inachus of Argos, had been captured by brigands, her father Inachus sent several men to search for her and attempt to find her. One of these was Lyrcus the son of Phoroneus, who covered a vast deal of land and sea without finding the girl, and finally renounced the toilsome quest: but he was too much afraid of Inachus to return to Argos, and went instead to Caunus, where he married Hilebia, daughter of King Aegialus, who, as the story goes, had fallen in love with Lyrcus as soon as she saw him, and by her instant prayers had persuaded her father to betroth her to him; he gave him as dowry a good share of the realm and of the rest of the regal attributes, and accepted him as his son-in-law. So a considerable period of time passed, but Lyrcus and his wife had no children: and accordingly he made a journey to the oracle at Didyma, he was entertained by Staphylus, the son of Dionysus, who received him in the most friendly manner and enticed him to much drinking of wine, and then, when his senses were dulled with drunkenness, united him with his own daughter Hemithea, having had previous intimation of what the sentence of the oracle had been, and desiring to have descendants born to her: but actually a bitter strife arose between Rhoeo and Hemithea, the two daughters of Staphylus, as to which should have the guest, for a great desire for him had arisen in the breasts of both of them. On the next morning Lyrcus discovered the trap that his host had laid for him, when he saw Hemithea by his side: he was exceedingly angry, and upbraided Staphylus violently for his treacherous conduct; but finally, seeing that there was nothing to be done, he took off his belt and gave it to the girl, bidding her to keep it until their future offspring had come to mans estate, so that he might possess a token by which he might be recognized, if he should ever come to his father at Caunus: and so he sailed away home. Aegialus, however, when he heard the whole story about the oracle and about Hemithea, banished him from his country; and there was then a war of great length between the partisans of Lyrcus and those of Aegialus: Hilebia was on the side of the former, for she refused to repudiate her husband. In after years the son of Lyrcus and Hemithea, whose name was Basilus, came, when he was a grown man, to the Caunian land; and Lyrcus, now an old man, recognized him as his son, and made him ruler over his peoples.