Epigrams by Meleager

First transcribed: First century b.c.e. (English translation, 1890)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Meleager is one of the few surviving voices in Greek literature from the early first century b.c.e. This century, so rich for Roman literature, was perhaps the scantiest of all the classical period for Greek literature. Our sense of dearth is intensified by the kind of literature that survived. Ancient Greek literature at no time produced seriously realistic writing, and when the mythical core vanished, the remains took the form of history, philosophy, or artificial styles such as New Comedy, Romance, and Epigram. Ironically, in this unsettled century, when the details of daily life would have been so fascinating, the chief creative writer transmitted some 130 epigrams consisting chiefly of picturesque variations on standard themes and topics of earlier epigrammatic love poets. The incongruity is made all the keener by the fact that Meleager’s home until manhood was Gadara in Syria, the town in which Jesus was to cast devils into swine. The juxtaposition is startling.

Meleager’s work might be taken for somewhat less the hothouse orchid if his earlier efforts were preserved. His earliest writings were satirical dialogues in prose, modeled on the writings of Menippus, the famous Cynic philosopher and teacher at Gadara. Something of their character may be sensed from the later dialogues of Lucian. The subject of one is reported as a comparison of pease porridge with lentil soup. These were lost, however, and Meleager’s literary heritage now consists of the epigrams found in the great collection known as The Greek Anthology (c. 90-80 b.c.e.). His epigrams and those of others he imitated may be found in this volume.

The last of Meleager’s literary productions was one of the early entries of that anthology: His Stephanos (usually translated as Garland, also c. 90-80 b.c.e.) is a collection of epigrams of some fifty poets, himself included, with a famous verse preface that compares each poet to that flower that most suggests his poetic character. Later anthologists included Garland in larger gatherings; the final collection (apart from the additions derived from Planudes) was made in the tenth century. The poetically significant sections of that collection are the love poems, dedicatory inscriptions, epitaphs, and declamatory, moralizing, convivial, and satiric epigrams. Only about twenty of Meleager’s epigrams, however, are to be found outside the love poems.

There is a tendency in the anthology, even within the major sections, to arrange poems on the same theme in a sequence. This tendency provides the most important clue for the appreciation of Meleager. The innocent reader on first encounter is likely to ascribe to Meleager both a hectic variety of erotic liaisons and a continuous intensity of emotion reflected in the extravagant language, both of which in fact distract the reader from the true poetic center of most of the epigrams. The poems are best approached as exercises in various types, attempts at overbidding previous treatments of a topic—overbidding in wit, imagery, and rhetoric. To illustrate, here is an epigram by the earlier poet Asclepiades:

Let this that is left of my soul, whatever it be, let this at least, ye Loves, have rest for heaven’s sake. Or else no longer shoot me with arrows but with thunderbolts, and make me utterly into ashes and cinders. Yea! yea! strike me, ye Loves; for withered away as I am by distress, I would have from you, If I may aught, this little gift.

Meleager takes up the notion of the incinerated lover and exploits it in various ways. For example:

I am down; set thy foot on my neck, fierce demon. I know thee, yea by the gods, yea heavy art thou to bear: I know, too, thy fiery arrows. But if thou set thy torch to my heart, thou shalt no longer burn it; already it is all ash. If I perish, Cleobulus (for cast, nigh all of me, into the flame of lads’ love, I lie, a burnt remnant, in the ashes), I pray thee make the urn drunk with wine ere thou lay it in earth, writing thereon, “Love’s gift to Death.”

The practice of poetry-as-one-upmanship comes all the more naturally to Meleager in that he was part of the wave of rhetorical fashion known as the Asianic. Meleager was a Syrian, but race or culture has nothing to do with Asianism, which is a name for a development within classical literature. The Asianic style sought for something like the Baroque: extravagance in diction and imagery, special tricks and effects in word arrangements. Most of this is hard to illustrate outside the original Greek, but the use of repetition and fancy compounds in the following may give some of the flavor: “Tears, the last gift of my love, even down through the earth I send to thee in Hades, Heliodora—tears ill to shed, and on thy much-wept tomb I pour them in memory of longing, in memory of affection.” The witty side of Meleager’s Asianism brings him close at times to the Metaphysicals’ conceits: “Love-loving Asclepias, with her clear blue eyes, like summer seas, persuadeth all to make the love-voyage.”

None of the foregoing is meant to deny the existence of genuine emotion in Meleager’s poetry. The point is that, where emotion is found, it emerges from, launches, or sets on fire the already existing framework of artificial craft, and artifice is inseparable from the result. In various ways, of course, the same can be said of all poetry, but this pattern is so dominant in Meleager (and other epigrammatists) that it needs special emphasis as a defining characteristic.

There is a mystical, almost medieval strain in Meleager’s love poetry. Meleager at times approaches a religious quality: More than the other epigrammatists, he expresses the total subjection, abasement, and humiliation of the lover, much as the courtly lover of the Middle Ages conceived himself as the abject servant of his lady. For example: “The goddess, queen of the Desires, gave me to thee, Theocles; Love, the soft-sandalled, laid me low for thee to tread on.”

Along with the intermittent intensity of his passion, however, there is an element of coyness and sentimentality that pervades Meleager as well as most of the other love epigrammatists of TheGreek Anthology. This element is absent from the love poetry of the great lyric age of Greece (c. 700-500 b.c.e.). Perhaps it is possible to account for the change by the fact that the great lyric age’s love poetry was written when Eros was integrated within or demonically opposed to a genuine religious framework. For most educated people of Meleager’s time there was no serious religion but rather philosophy.

One other notable feature of Meleager’s love poetry, at least for contemporary readers, is the characteristic type of the beloved. Meleager’s loved ones fall exclusively into two classes: hetaerae (professional female entertainers or courtesans) and boys in their early teens. Since these two classes account for practically all extant ancient Greek love poetry (Sappho is the exception), this phenomenon needs no special discussion in connection with Meleager.

One should not overemphasize Meleager as a love poet, nor should one be concerned with seeking out those poems that embody “genuine passion,” as if these must necessarily be his best. Sheer flights of linguistic dexterity and brilliant variations of traditional themes can produce fine epigrams. Perhaps the most memorable characteristic of Meleager is an outgrowth of this side of his poetry; his bursts of wit often have an element of playfulness and tender humor. In one poem he sends forth a gnat on the dangerous Herculean mission of rousing Heliodora from the side of her current lover to bring her back: The reward will be Hercules’ club and lion skin. In another he asks the dew-drunk cicada to strum in antiphon with Pan’s piping at high noon and lull him to sleep. An epitaph he writes for himself makes fun of his own garrulity. In all this one can see a survival of the Meleager who wrote on pease porridge and lentil soup.

Meleager’s oeuvre is a curious mixture of the complex and the trivial, the passionate and the sophisticated. Connoisseurs of the short lyric will be immensely rewarded by reading Meleager’s epigrams.

Bibliography

Cameron, Alan. The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Superb analysis of the texts, composition, and sources of Meleager’s poetry. Traces the literary history of the work as it has been preserved through the centuries.

Clack, Jerry. Meleager: The Poems. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1992. An excellent introduction to the Epigrams. In addition to the poems themselves, Clack provides an introduction, a lengthy commentary, and an explanation about the sources for the epigrams.

Gow, A. S. F., and D. L. Page. The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Comprehensive scholarly assessment of Meleager’s work. An introduction provides information on dating, influences, and content, the arrangement of texts in Garland, and an analysis of several poems. The commentary section explicates individual works and includes extensive information on variants.

Gutzwiller, Kathryn J. Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Gutzwiller’s study includes information about Meleager’s anthology, and she devotes the final chapters to a reconstruction of that collection.

Jay, Peter. Introduction to The Poems of Meleager, by Meleager. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Brief sketch of the poet’s life; concentrates on efforts to assemble the collection of epigrams that are included in Garland. Notes the influence of the philosophical movement of Cynicism on Meleager’s poetry.

Webster, T. B. L. Hellenistic Poetry and Art. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964. Discusses the love epigrams that Meleager included in Garland. Cites numerous examples of the poet’s techniques for presenting amorous themes.

Wright, F. A. A History of Later Greek Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951. Brief summary of the poet’s literary achievements. Discusses the various women who inspired Meleager’s work and the principles he employed in selecting works for inclusion in Garland.