Topics and Models of School Exercises on Papyri and Ostraca from the Hellenistic Period: P.Berol. inv. 12318[*]

1. P.Berol. inv. 12318 (Pack² 2603: LDAB 6919 is actually an ostracon of quite regular format although somewhat pentagonal, measuring 20 x 16 cm. It comes from a large vessel and is practically complete although it consists of three pieces put together. It contains 23 lines of text carefully distributed over the writing surface, and only the last three letters of the first line cannot be read because the upper right-hand corner is broken off. The writing is in book-hand, not cursive, but the letters are separated and reveal an expert hand.[1] Its editor, E. Kühn,[2] attributes it to the early Ptolemaic period, specifically the third century B.C., to judge above all by the form of certain letters such as the τ and the very small ο, and to the same hand that wrote another ostracon from Berlin, P.Berol. inv.12319 (Pack² 1567, LDAB 3864), published three years earlier by Wilamowitz.[3] Both ostraca supposedly came from the same site, a German excavation in Philadelphia, in the Fayûm.

In 1925, another three literary ostraca (P.Berol. inv. 12310, 12311, 12309) were added to the collection from the same source – a corner of the basement of a house in Philadelphia, where they were mixed up with documentary ostraca on the agricultural administration of a large landed estate – published by P. Viereck.[4] These were two small anthologies of literary passages (Pack² 1498, 1697: LDAB 1058; Pack² 1575: LDAB 6926) plus a burlesque and obscene epitaph about someone named Kleitorios (Pack² 1771: LDAB 4013). The first two at least were also considered to be related to school and as such were collected with the other two testimonia in the repertories of school texts.[5]

Since P.Berol. inv.12319 contains a compilation of literary passages in a sententious tone in iambic trimeters, plus two in prose, and has been classified by Wilamowitz as a school writing exercise done by a pupil, Kühn feels that P.Berol. inv. 12318 must have come from a school to judge by both the writing and the contents:[6]

As far as the content is concerned, Kühn thinks it is an exercise something like our composition exercise (Aufsatz), pertaining to a school context in which different teaching levels were in the hands of one teacher, as could have been the case in many places of the Egyptian χώρα, and that its purpose was to give a moral lesson, a purpose for which school exercises were generally meant for to a greater or lesser extent, and the educational proposals of the theoreticians, from Plato (Prot. 325e–326a) to Quintilian (Inst. or. I 1, 35), had it as their final aim. Specifically, Kühn imagines a theme such as "Honor thy father and thy mother," which, under the form γονεῖς τείμα, was repeated several times by a student following the teacher's example, on a wooden tablet recorded by Ziebarth.[7] As to the author of the exercise, Kühn shows great hesitation: in the first place, although this is probable, the text cannot be assigned to a school with certainty; nor can he say with certainty that it was composed by a student and not a teacher, either as an example or else as a dictation, and not as a simple writing exercise (the hand seems too correct for that), but rather because of its contents; it could have been meant to serve as a reading text given the lack of school books on the market; the idea that it is a dictation would be supported by the mistake ψητοῦντες (l. 12) instead of ζητοῦντες.[8]

2. However, regarding the contents of this text we believe that it is possible to argue that it is more than a mere composition of moral instruction referring to the theme of honoring one's parents. To begin with, we know of other maxims with contents closer to the text than that of the simple γονεῖς τείμα. Among other possible sources of the theory of the progymnasmata or preliminary exercises in rhetoric, a framework which we believe provides a possible key to the definition of the text concerning us here, we find examples such as "Undeserved success becomes a source of delirium for fools," provided by Hermogenes, the rhetorician of the second and third centuries, as an example of a declarative sentence;[9] or else "Wealth can also make men benevolent,"[10] somewhat the opposite of the former and quoted by Hermogenes as an example of a simple sentence; or, better yet, the example of Menander quoted by Theon, the first century rhetorician, as an example of epiphoneme – an epilogal type of sentence of the diégema, frequent in the theater – present in his Dardanos and his Xenologos:[11] "son of a poor man, reared/ not in accordance with his resources, was ashamed to see/ the little that his father had, since his good education/ immediately bore ... its beautiful fruit."[12]

As to the Aufsatz itself, we believe it has to do with the progymnasma known as γνώμη (sententia), specifically with the somewhat advanced phase of its propedeutics called ἐξεργασία or "elaboration."[13] This, according to Hermogenes' theory,[14] the oldest one of which we have evidence regarding the gnome, "goes through the following sections: a brief encomium to the one who created it ..., simple statement, cause, contrary argument, reasoning, simile, example and issuing a judgment." As an example he proposes the sentence "A man who is a counselor will not sleep through the night,"[15] whose exergasía he proposes to write according to the steps set down in the following text:

For his part, Aphthonius, the fourth century rhetorician and disciple of Libanius, although in debt to Hermogenes' theory, replaces his arguments of reasoning and issuing of a judgment[16] with those of "testimony of the ancients and a brief epilogue"[17] (the first of these actually leads to another example) and unlike Hermogenes, offers a complete elaboration of Theognis' sententia "He who flees poverty, Cyrnus, should cast himself into the sea, and from steep cliffs,"[18] without pointing out, however, the topoi of argumentation, as would be the case with our ostracon:[19]

3. If we look closely at the composition contained in our ostracon we find, if not all, at least those topoi of argumentation that we might be able to call essential in the elaboration of a gnome according to Hermogenes' and Aphthonius' theories,[20] elaboration that by the way adopts the same outline in the amplifying of the related progymnasma, the chreia, both exercises figuring among the former, and certainly the most used, of the list of progymnasmata. The outline is: paraphrase (πρῶτον ὅτι τὸμ μὲν ἐν ταῖς ὑπε̣ρ̣̣̣̣̣[ο]χαῖς ... οἰκεῖοι καὶ συνήθεις), cause (λαθεῖμ μὲγ γὰρ ... ἐκφανῆ γίνεσθαι πᾶσιν), contrary argument (ἐν τιμῇ δ᾿ ἄγων αὐτοὺς τῆι δικαίαι ... δόξαν ἀρετῆς), judgment (ἔτι δὲ καὶ μικρόψυχον ἔμοιγε ἀεὶ φαίνεται ... ὅταν εὐτυχήσωσιν), exhortation (αὐτὸγ γὰρ ἡγεμόνα χρὴ τῆς εὐγενείας εἶναι ... εὔνοιαν ἐκ τῆς φύσεως μὴ ἀποστερεῖν).

The order of the arguments is the same one followed in elaborating both gnome and chreia, although the full compositional pattern of these includes simile and example between the contrary argument and the judgment, and the eulogy of the author precedes the paraphrase. The components that are missing here are perhaps the least essential ones, those most linked to the ornamental aspect of rhetoric: the praise of the author appeals mainly to the argument of authority, the simile appeals rather to adornment, and the example appeals to the erudite element to a great extent.[21] Moreover, presumably in this and in any other progymnasmata, and in rhetorical exercises in general, the theoretical model is one thing and the concrete realizations, which have no reason to always follow the outline proposed point by point, are quite another; certainly in this case the very limitations of the writing medium can be a good pretext for not following it so closely and for possibly dispensing with the most subsidiary components. In any case, Aphthonius himself, both in the outline of how to elaborate on a gnome and in that concerning the chreia,[22] adds the "testimony of the ancients" to the argument of the example and replaces (in his formulation) "judgment" and "exhortation" with "a brief epilogue;" in the chreia instance he gives, he reduces the example and testimony of the ancient components to a single testimony by Demosthenes.[23] It thus seems that the theoretical model itself was subject to a certain amount of flexibility.

A more notable absence, and also a more problematic one for demonstrating that what we truly have is the elaboration of a sententia (rather than a chreia, given the directly exhortative nature of the paraphrase), is undoubtedly its heading. It gives the impression that the author of the text preferred to replace the sententia itself with its paraphrase, being satisfied with the lesson contained in its elaboration. Moreover, the expression πρῶτον ὅτι "the first thing is that," which precedes the supposed paraphrase, calling attention to its message, somehow replaces the sententia strictly speaking.

4. After referring to argumentation and its principles and procedures, Theon, in his broad and illustrative introduction to his progymnasmata, broaches the question of their composition and style.[24] There he urges rhetoricians to teach their students to avoid anything that could lead to a defective composition, such as a metrical or rhythmic style; to be careful with expositive decorum by resorting to circumlocutions when necessary; and to look for clarity and vividness of elocution so that what is expounded will register in the mind of the listener. Thus, although these stylistic recommendations are not very detailed, certainly clarity and vividness are not lacking in our text, which is likewise shaped by the type of syntactic and stylistic structures that usually characterize the progymnasmatic exercise of elaboration, to judge by the samples set out, as it happens, by Aphthonius. On the one hand, abstract, impersonal and generalizing syntactic constructions, based on predicative participles and impersonal verbs of need (χρή ..., δεῖ), of the type: τὸμ μὲν ... χρὴ ... εἶναι ..., ὑπολαμβάνοντα τοῦτο εἶναι ... (paraphrase: cf. Aphth. 26, 21–23 R. ὁ ... συζῶν ..., ὡς ἄμεινον ... παρελθεῖν ἢ ... κτήσασθαι; 23, 25 R. Ὁ ... ἐρῶν ...); λαθεῖμ μὲγ γὰρ ... ἔστιν ... καὶ ἅμα φιλεῖ ... συναύξεσθαι (cause: cf. Aphth. 26, 25 R. Ὁ γὰρ πενίᾳ συζῶν ...; 24 R. Οἱ γὰρ ... ἐρῶντες ...); ἐν τιμῇ δ᾿ ἄγων ... περιποιήσαιτ᾿ ἂν ... (contrary argument: cf. Aphth. 26, 28 R. οὐ μὴν οἱ πενίας ἀπηλλαγμένοι ...; 24, 21s. R. Εἰ δέ τις ... φοβούμενος ..., ἀποδράσει ... ἀποστραφείη ...); μικρόψυχον ἔμοιγε ἀεὶ φαίνεται ... (judgment: cf. Aphth. 27, 27 R. Διὸ θαυμάσαι τὸν (Εὐριπίδην) με δεῖ ... εἰπόντα ...; 24, 13 R. Διὸ θαυμάσαι τὸν (Ἡσίοδον) με δεῖ ... εἰπόντα ...); ... αὐτὸγ γὰρ ἡγεμόνα χρὴ ... εἶναι καὶ ... λαβεῖν, εἰ δὲ μή ... μὴ ἀποστερεῖν (exhortation: cf. Aphth. 27, 30 R. Ὥστε πῶς ἔνεστι ... θαυμάσαι (τὸν Θέογνιν ... περὶ τῆς ... φιλοσοφήσαντα) ...; 25, 4 R. Πρὸς ἃ δεῖ ... (Ἰσοκράτην) θαυμάζειν ... (περὶ τῆς ... φιλοσοφήσαντα); on the other hand the typical sentences designed in the form of parisa, antitheta, isocola and homoeoteleuta, and adorned with lexical pairs more sonorous than necessary, which make up the rhetorical lexis at least since Gorgias: ὅσον ἂν ἦι μείζων, τοσούτωι...κοινότερον...καὶ ἐπιμελέστερον...; κἂμ πάνυ τινὲς...ἄδοξοι καὶ εὐτελεῖς; ...τοῦτο καλὸν...καὶ ζηλωτόν; ...καὶ γονεῖς καὶ ἀδελφοὶ καὶ...οἰκεῖοι καὶ συνήθεις; /(λαθεῖμ μὲγ γὰρ)...οὔτε ἐκ τίνων πέφυκεν οὔδ'ὅπως βεβίωκεν οὔτε ποίοις τισὶν χρῆται.../ (ἐν τιμῇ δ'ἄγων)...ἀποκρυπτόμενοι καὶ ἀποποιούμενοι...; αὐτὸγ γὰρ ἡγεμόνα χρὴ τῆς εὐγενείας εἶναι...ἢ προυπάρχουσαν παρ'ἑτέρων λαβεῖν, /(εἰ δὲ μή) τὴν ὀφειλομένην εὔνοιαν...μὴ ἀποστερεῖν (cf. Aphth. 26, 22 s.;[25] 23, 25 s. R.[26]).

5. Another interesting aspect of the text is that, although it is written in scriptio continua, as is usual in these cases, and without diacritical marks (but with crasis and elision), in some places there are small, almost imperceptible spaces left blank or else a paragraphos under the beginning of certain lines. The former have been interpreted by the editor (who points them out using a vertical stroke) as indicators of a syntactic pause (Satzpausen), and the latter as markers of a break in the meaning or the end of a clause (Sinneseinschnitt, Satzschluss); they follow one another in those cases in which the break in meaning does not coincide with the end of a line (16, 22). One might wonder, however, why, for example, the consecutive clause l. 14 (ὥστε ...) is preceded by a pause mark whereas the temporal clause in l. 19 (ὅταν ...) is not, or why the appositional participial clause ὑπολαμβάνοντα (l. 6) or the conditional clause εἰ (l. 7) also lack this mark in a relatively long syntactic period in which the only syntactical pause marked is that which precedes the concessive clause κἄμ (l. 4). This leads us to think that these marks, instead of pointing out the syntactic articulation of the composition in itself, actually highlight its compositional and argumentative outline. Specifically, the paragraphoi would serve to delimit each of the components developing the absent sententia (paraphrase: l. 1–9; cause: l. 10–14; contrary argument: l. 15–16; judgment: l. 16–19; and exhortation: l. 20–23), or else each of the elements of these components when they comprise more than one, as in the case of the cause (l. 10 λαθεῖμ μὲγ γὰρ ...; l. 13 καὶ ἅμα ...) and exhortation (l. 20 αὐτὸγ γὰρ ἡγεμόνα χρὴ ... εἶναι ...; l. 22 εἰ δὲ μή ... μὴ ἀποστερεῖν); the blank spaces without paragraphos would be trying to mark the separation between successive arguments within one same structural component.

That this may be so and that the text not only is aimed at transmitting a moral lesson but also reveals the mechanism of its construction, undoubtedly so that it could serve as a model, does not mean that it may not have been written by a student with a certain level of skill from a teacher's dictation, as Kühn proposes,[27] no doubt in order to be able to make the level of composition tally with the hand of P.Berol. inv. 12319, considered to be written by a student, albeit an expert one, and with a formal carelessness that is easier to explain if it was taken in dictation, as in taking ψητοῦντες (l. 12, a root that does not exist in Greek) for ζητοῦντες. Moreover, we can also point out some other errors, also of the phonetic type although less indicative of a dictation, such as certain assimilations at the point of articulation between contiguous phonemes (τὸμ μὲν l. 1, κἂμ πάνυ l. 4, λαθεῖμ μὲγ γὰρ l. 10, αὐτὸγ γὰρ l. 20), which take place precisely in contact with enclitic particles or in proclitics and at the beginning of a paragraph, where we can imagine that the words involved were pronounced close together, and not in the middle of the paragraph or before non-enclitic particles (οἰκείων καὶ l. 4, τίνων πέφυκεν l. 10/11, προυπάρχουσαν παρ᾿ ἑτέρων l. 22),[28] or like the omission of πως l. 13, superscript. In any case it cannot be excluded that these may be mistakes of copying originating in the process of "inner dictation" from a model. On the other hand, the student seems to have taken the greatest care in respecting the main writing features of the exercise, to wit, the marks separating the elements of the composition which could only be known with such accuracy by the person who wrote it or had thought about it for a time.

It is possible, then, that the same teacher who on this occasion dictated an exercise developing a sententia as a model for his beginning rhetoric students had also dictated on other occasions the series of gnomae on P.Berol. inv.12319 and on the other two ostraca of the Kleitorios archive which have small anthologies of similar contents, perhaps as a model for themes for practicing the gnome and other progymnasmata. This could include the elaboration that concerns us here, which does not have a written heading, perhaps because it was well-known or because it was included in a selection of gnomae such as the ones just mentioned. Moreover, precisely the first sententia of P.Berol. inv.12319,[29] that of Pseudo-Epicharmus (PCG I 248) which says: "The sensible man is ...; and the proof that this is so is that when estate, house, power, money, force, and beauty come by chance to a non-sensible man, they become ridiculous," cannot be far from the absent heading of the development exercise we are dealing with here.[30] As to its specific objective, at the least we can relate it to a certain passage of Theon's introduction to the progymnasmata concerning the students' practicing and imitating with refutations and confirmations drawn up by the teacher as well as through their arrangement of the principles of argumentation.[31] What he says about the argumentations and refutations can clearly be extrapolated to the elaboration, which he says must be practiced, just like the reply, before the former, but when the student "already has some mastery."[32]

6. Apart from the absence of a heading and the incompleteness of the compositional outline, one particular stumbling block for considering this text as an exercise in elaborating on a gnome, is the fact that it is attributed to a date as early as the third century BC, whereas the first textbook of progymnasmatic theory that we know of, that by Theon, is attributed to the first century AD.[33] However, the fact that we do not know of its specific study until the first century does not mean that it was not practiced earlier. Theon himself, in his introduction,[34] refers to the existence of other authors of progymnasmata that came before him and also to exercises that were already "traditional" besides those he invented; among the latter we would find, according to a certain modern author,[35] the elaboration exercise, which Lausberg, on the contrary, identifies with the expolitio de eadem re of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (first century BC).[36]

Much more recently, Laurent Pernot has provided a large dossier of data relating to the progymnasmata from before Theon's time, attributing the origin of some of their traits to the classical age and their gradual development to the Hellenistic period.[37] Finally, two papyrus additional testimonia have been attributed to the third and second centuries B.C., respectively, and classified as Aufsatzbücher. One of them, P.Mil.Vogl. III 123 (MP³ 2525), is supposed to contain a compilation of embryonic enkomion exercises done by a teacher in order to teach the rules of this progymnasma;[38] the other, P.Hamb. II 129 (MP³ 2115), is a collection of fictional letters made for teaching ethopoiía in epistolary form.[39] Therefore, if our interpretation is correct, P.Berol. inv. 12318 can be added to those cited as a new testimonium of a progymnasmatic school exercise from the Hellenistic period: this would be another good reason why it does not include certain more external components of the elaboration which, perhaps because they were too general, in that age had not yet become a systematic part of this exercise.[40] At the same time the presence in the Hellenistic period of progymnasmata with as great a capacity of literary influence as the ones named, suggests the possibility of considering as scholastic the particular configuration of some Greek literature not only from the Graeco-Roman period, as has recently begun to be done, but from the Hellenistic period itself.[41]

Notes

• *

  This work forms part of the Research Projects HUM2004R04110 of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and SA049A05 of the Regional Government of Castile and Leon.

1. Cribiore 1996, no. 233 of the catalogue, characterizes it as "fluent and regular with some cursive elements, like the literary hands of the period. A teacher or an older student."

2. Kühn 1921. Cf. also Aegyptus 3 (1922) 87–88.

3. Wilamowitz 1918, 742.

4. Viereck 1925.

5. Zalateo (241, 250 [=261], 127), Debut (380, 213, 207) and Cribiore 1996 (233, 234, 235, 236), who attributes the four ostraca to the third century BC and to one and the same hand. This legacy has been classified as "Kleitorios archive" (in "honor" of the ridiculed character, who serves as a kind of nexus between the two groups of texts) by Clarysse 1983, 48 and the literary ostraca, rather than school texts strictly speaking, were considered by van Minnen 1998, 144 to be copies made by an administrator for the enlightenment or enjoyment of his apprentices in the craft. The painstaking attention to formal presentation patent in the text now being analyzed, however, does not seem to support this interpretation. Cf. also Mertens 1976, no. 4 "Conseils moraux."

6. The text here reproduced is that fixed by Kühn, who gives also its German translation (the only one known to us before ours).

7. Ziebarth 1913², no. 18.

8. As suggested by Schubart: Kühn 1921.

9. D. I 23 τὸ γὰρ εὖ πράττειν παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἀφορμὴ τοῦ κακῶς φρονεῖν τοῖς ἀνοήτοις γίνεται, Hermog. 9 Rabe. Our ostracon is defined by Pack² as "Precepts addressed to men in high place."

10. Men. fr. 19 Kock III 9 δύναται τὸ πλουτεῖν καὶ φιλανθρώπους ποιεῖν, Hermog. 9, 10 R.

11. Men. fr. 294 Körte (354 Kock) Ἀνδρὸς πένητος υἱός, ἐκτεθραμμένος/ οὐκ ἐξ ὑπαρχόντων, ὁρῶν ᾐσχύνετο/ τὸν πατέρα μίκρ᾿ ἔχοντα ̇παιδευθεὶς γὰρ εὖ/ τὸν καρπὸν εὐθὺς ἀπεδίδου <χάριτος> καλόν, Theo 91, 20 Spengel.

12. On the other hand, in the Corpus Paremiographorum Graecorum (Leutsch-Schneidewin, eds.) we have found: Γονέων δὲ ἀμελῶν οὐκ ἄνθρωπος ξύμβουλος νοῦν ἔχων ποτὲ γένοιτ᾿ ἂν οὐδεὶς οὐδενὶ (Pl. Lg. 930e) Ap. V 58^a, Arsen. XV 24: Stob. Flor. 79, 34; Γεννητόρων ἕκατι κατθανεῖν καλόν./ αὐτὸς τραφεὶς δὲ τῶν φυτευσάντων ὕπο,/ καλῶς τὸν αὐτὸν ἔρανον αὐτοῖσιν νέμοις, Ap. 30^a.

13. Cf. Theo 65, 24–26 Sp.

14. Hermog. 9–10 R.

15. Hom. Il. II 24 οὐ χρὴ παννύχιον εὕδειν βουληφόρον ἄνδρα.

16. Hermog. 8, 8 R.

17. Aphth. 8, 6 Rabe

18. Thgn.175.

19. Aphth. 8, 19 ... 10, 7 R.

20. Hermog. 7, 10–18, 13 R.; Aphth. 4, 12–7, 6 R. Theon omits the sententia from his progymnasmata, referring to it in his explanation of the chreia.

21. Cf. Lausberg 1967, 426; 422, 425, 843; 410.

22. Aphth. 4, 12–15; 8, 3–6 R.

23. Aphth. 6, 7–12 R.

24. Theo 71–72 Sp.

25. ... ὡς ἄμεινον τοῦ βίου προαπελθεῖν ἢ τὸν ἥλιον αἰσχύνης κτήσαθαι μάρτυρα; (Ὁ γὰρ πενίᾳ συζῶν ...) ἐν παισὶν ὢν ἀρετὴν οὐκ ἀσκεῖ, προίων δὲ εἰς ἄνδρας πάντα πράξει τὰ χαλεπώτατα .../(οἱ πενίας ἀπηλλαγμένοι ...) παῖδες τε γὰρ ὄντες ἀσκοῦσι τὰ κάλλιστα, καὶ προιόντες εἰς ἄνδρας πάντα δρῶσι περιφανῶς ...

26. (Ὁ παιδείας ... ἐρῶν) πόνων μὲν ἄρχεται, πόνων δὲ ὅμως τελευτόντων εἰς ὄνησιν; (οἱ γὰρ παιδείας ἐρῶντες) ... παρ᾿ οἷς καὶ τὸ προσελθεῖν φοβερὸν καὶ τὸ διαλιπεῖν ἀμαθέστατον ...; εἰ δέ τις ταῦτα φοβούμενος φεύγει μὲν τοὺς διδασκάλους, ἀποδράσει δὲ τοὺς πατέρας, τοὺς δὲ παιδαγωγοὺς ἀποστραφείη, παντελῶς τῶν λόγων ἐστέρηται καὶ μετὰ τοῦ δέους τοὺς λόγους ἀφήρῃται ...

27. Kühn 1921, 102.

28. Cf. Mayser 1970, 203–206.

29. Cf. πρῶτον ὅτι at the beginning of P.Berol. inv. 12318.

30. And although a little more so, it does not differ much from the third gnome (PCG VIII 1029) "The touchstone of gold and silver seems to be fire, according to the experts; silver and gold are of man."

31. Theo 70–71 Sp. "... the teacher himself must also compose some refutations and confirmations in the most elegant way and have the youngsters recite them so that, modeled according to their method, they will be able to imitate them. Once they have acquired the ability to write them, they should be taught how to arrange the principles of argumentation and arguments". Cf. also Quint. Inst. or. II 4, 12: Non numquam hoc quoque erit utile totas ipsum dictare materias, quas et imitetur puer et interim tanquam suas amet.

32. Theo 65, 23–26 Sp.

33. Heath 2002–2003 has tried to situate it in the fourth century.

34. Theo 59 Sp.

35. Reichel 1909, 37.

36. Lausberg 1967, 830s., 842, 875. The example of the development of a sententia provided by Rh. ad Her. 4, 44, 57 as an example of expolitio de eadem re has seven parts that comprise all those of the progymnasma gnome with the exception of the eulogy of the author, Lausberg 1967, 842: cf. supra § 3.

37. Pernot 1993, 1, 57s. Cf. also Patillon-Bolognesi 1997, VIII–XVI; Fernández Delgado 2007, 276.

38. Pernot 1993, 1, 44. Cf. Pordomingo 2007.

39. Stramaglia 2003, 228, cf. also 225 with n. 37; Stramaglia 1996, 108 s.

40. Cf. supra § 3.

41. Cf. Guichard 2007, where the possibility of a rhetorical-scholastic influence on Posidippus himself, in accordance with our proposal, could be added to the dilemma open between the assignment of this epigram to a cynical influence on Posidippus or to a rhetorical-scholastic influence on a poet of the Graeco-Roman period. Ureña 1995 thinks that the cook-monologues included in the Guéraud-Jouguet school papyrus (from the fourth to third centuries BC) served both as a text for reading and copying, and as a model for preparation of the progymnasma ethopoiía. Further the presence of gnome's exergasia as a tool for characterization in the novel of Achilles Tatius has now been shown by De Temmeman 2007.

Works Cited

Plate I

P.Berol. inv. 12318(reproduced from Cribiore 1996, Pl. XXIV, 233)