The Missing Half: A Joke in Call.

4 Gow-Page (=41 Pfeiffer)

Author(s): Alexander Sens
Source: Hermes, Vol. 130, No. 3 (3rd Qtr., 2002), pp. 378-379
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477517
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THE MISSINGHALF:A JOKEIN CALL. 4

GOW-PAGE(=41 PFEIFFER)
TltO

?ED WUX11 ETt TO IEVEOV, "1gtU

' ".Epo;
sit' 'A8i&1;q
ijiaa,lLv
ln
?tT
qO
pnpam, n^

sI
t1TV

0DUK ol6
a6(pav';
v?;.

The elision at the end of the opening hexameterof this well-knownepigramis

andhasbeenexplainedeitheras a referenceto anancientHomericzetemaI or
remarkable
as an attempt to produce a particularphonetic effect2. I would like to suggest a third
possibility. The elision is iconic: like the speaker's bipartite soul, the disyllabic oi&a is
missing one of its halves. The unusual treatmentof o0&athus amounts to a grammatical
joke, to which the pun on 'Ai&j; (i.e. "he who makes unseen") and the placement of
&(pavg; at the end of the succeeding pentameter may call attention. The point would be
especially clear to a reader of an epigram, for whom &Oavg; would sit immediately
below a word of which one syllable was itself adpav?;3.Moreover, the use of elision
throughout the couplet shows a consonance of form and content: the first half of the
hexameter, on the part of the soul still breathing(and thus present), contains no elisions,
while the remainder of the couplet contains three other examples beside o16(a)4. The
choice of the word that undergoes the unusual elision may also be thought to be
appropriate to the content and thus to increase the point: the incompleteness of the
speaker's knowledge about his soul's whereabouts is reflected in the "incomplete"state
of the verb meaning "I know"5.It hardly needs to be said that a joke (whatever its precise
A.S.F. Gow-D. PAGE, The Greek Anthology:Hellenistic Epigrams,Cambridge1965,
EIirPAMMATA,Athens1997,
KAAAIMAXOY
ii. 158-9, followedby P. PAGONARI-ANTONIOU,
283, arguethatCallimachushad in mindthe disputereflectedin Choeroboscuson Hephaestion
pp. 225.19-226.13 CONSBRUCH,which shows thatsome ancientcriticssoughtto explainZiv / at
Hellenistische Dichtung,Berlin
H. Il. 8.206 (adducedby U. VON WILAMOWITZ-MOELLENDORFF,
1924, i. 174),andapparently& / at Od. 10.1 I I, as the productof elision.
2 E. LIVREA,"Perl'esegesidi dueepigrammicallimachei(8 e 41 Pf.),"Philologus140(1996)
70, arguesthat "si spiegherastilisticamentecon la volontadi riprodurreun discorsofrantoed
lOc.cit. (n. I) suggeststhatthe elision is eased by the speaker'spausing
insolito";WILAMOWIrz,
afterrealizing,with the secondiijtov, thathe does not knowwherethe otherhalf of his soul is.
3 Forthe importance
of visibleeffects in Hellenisticverse,cf. P. BING,TheWell-ReadMuse,
Gottingen1988, 15.
4 HAYDENPELLICCIA
suggeststo me thata furthericonicjoke mighteven be operative.The
one that
opening couplet of Callimachus'epigramplays on two ancientviews of the W4UXf:
associatesit withbreathandbreathing(?nrtnvvov;cf. Pi. Crat. 399d-400a;Arist.de An. 405b289); the otherthatsees it as the physicalentitytravelingoff to Hadesafterdeath(Ai1;r papstae;
who hasjust said
cf., e.g., H. 11.7.330). Mightthentheelision at line endsuggestthatthe narrator,
at
runout of "breath"
in the firstclausethatpartof his soul is still breathing,has (appropriately)
theendof the line end, preciselyat thepointat whichhe remarkson theabsenceof theotherhalf?
If so, the hiatusat Sapph.fr. 31.9 yXdaaa cayeis perhapsa comparableexampleof an unusual
hiatus il iin- in v. 4.
metricalpracticefor iconic effect;note also the otherwiseunCallimachean
5 Againstthis, it maybe notedthatoi&aalso experienceselision in v. 6, wherethe speakeris
assertingknowledgeratherthanignorance.The elision there,however,need not preventseeing
theelision of oi&aat theendof v. 1, wheretheelision is markedratherthanunmarked(as in v. 6),
as specially significant.

Hermes,130. Band,Heft 3 (2002)

C)FranzSteinerVerlagWiesbadenGmbH,Sitz Stuttgart

Miszelle

379

nature) playing on the relationship of form and meaning would be fittingly Callimachean. One might compare, for example, the use of an otherwise un Callimachean
verse shape to capture the content of h. 4. 31 1 yvagnrLtv?6058oq
aKioX kapupivOou /,
which FRANKELfamously called "ein krummerVers fur das 'krumme' Labyrinth"6.

GeorgetownUniversity

ALEXANDER SENS

H. FRANKEL,Wege und Formen frnhgriechischen Denkens, Munich 1968, 130 n. 4. 1 am

gratefulto PETER BING, HAYDENPELLICCIAand RICHARDTHOMASfor commentson a draftof this

note.