Palladas

2025-08-31T16:17:44Z

2804:214:82EE:3AF6:1:2:379D:B613: /* Date */Unmade wrong edition. I believe now that the author was not referring to Aesop, the poet, but to Aesopus, historian. Both have wiki pages. I don't know how to fix the link

{{Short description|Greek poet}}
'''Palladas''' ({{langx|grc|Παλλαδᾶς}}; fl. 4th century AD) was a [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] poet, who lived in [[Alexandria]], [[Egypt (Roman province)|Egypt]].

== Life ==
All that is known about Palladas has been deduced from his 151 [[epigram]]s preserved in the ''[[Greek Anthology]]'' (''Anthologia graeca''); another twenty-three appear in that collection under his name, but his authorship is suspect. His poems describe the [[persona]] of a [[Paganism|pagan]] schoolteacher resigned to life in a [[Christianity|Christian]] city, and bitter about his quarrelsome wife.

== Works ==
One of the epigrams attributed to him on the authority of [[Maximus Planudes]] is a [[eulogy]] on the celebrated [[Hypatia]], daughter of [[Theon of Alexandria]], whose death took place in 415. Another was, according to a ''scholium'' in the Palatine Manuscript (the most important source for our knowledge of Greek epigram), written in the reign of the joint emperors [[Valentinian I|Valentinian]] and [[Valens]] (364–375). A third epigram on the destruction of [[Beirut]] (''Anth. Gr.'' 9.27) suggests an alternative chronology dating Palladas' activity to the age of [[Constantine the Great]].<ref>"Palladas and the Age of Constantine'", ''[[Journal of Roman Studies]]'', '''99''' (2009), pp. 36–60.</ref> It is based on his edition of a [[papyrus]] [[codex]] that arrived from a private collection to the [[Beinecke Library]] at [[Yale University]] in 1996.<ref>Kevin W. Wilkinson, ''New Epigrams of Palladas: A Fragmentary Papyrus Codex (P.CtYBR inv. 4000)'' (Durham, NC: The American Society of Papyrologists, 2012). {{ISBN|978-0-9799758-5-1}} See the review by Lucia Floridi, [https://cj.camws.org/sites/default/files/reviews/2014.04.07%20Floridi%20on%20Wilkinson.pdf CJ-Online 2014.04.07].</ref> Some of his arguments in favor of this new chronology have, however, been called into question.<ref>Cf. reviews by R. Ast, in [http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-02-23.html BMCR 2014.02.23], and J. Dijkstra, in ''[[Phoenix (classics journal)|Phoenix]]'', '''68''' (2014), 370–373, with Wilkinson's response in "More Evidence for the Date of Palladas" ''[[Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik]]'', '''196''' (2015), 67–71, and "ΠΡΥΤΑΝΙΣ and Cognates in Documentary Papyri and Greek Literature" ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'', '''196''' (2015), 88–93; see, most recently, A. Cameron, "The Date of Palladas" ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'', '''198''' (2016), 49–52.</ref>[[File:Plan of Alexandria c 30 BC Otto Puchstein 1890s EN.svg|thumb|Plan of Alexandria, c. 30 BC]]An anonymous epigram (''Anth. Gr.'' 9.380) speaks of Palladas as having a high poetical reputation. However, [[Isaac Casaubon]] dismisses him in two contemptuous words as ''versificator insulsissimus'' ("a most coarse poet"). [[John William Mackail]] concurs with Casaubon, writing that "this is true of a great part of his work, and would perhaps be true of it all but for the savage indignation which kindles his verse, not into the flame of poetry, but to a dull red heat."

There is little direct allusion in his epigrams to the struggle against the onslaught of Christianity. One epigram speaks obscurely of the destruction of the "idols" of Alexandria popular in the [[Patriarch of Alexandria|archiepiscopate]] of [[Theophilus I of Alexandria|Theophilus]] in 389; another in even more enigmatic language (''Anth. Gr.'' 10.90) seems to be a bitter attack on the doctrine of the [[Resurrection]]; and a scornful couplet against the swarms of Egyptian monks might have been written by a Reformer of the 16th century. For the most part his sympathy with the Greco-Roman pagan tradition is only betrayed in his despondency over all things. But it is in his criticism of life that the power of Palladas lies; with a remorselessness like that of [[Jonathan Swift]] he tears the coverings from human frailty and holds it up in its meanness and misery. The lines on the ''Descent of Man'' (''Anth. Gr.'' 10.45), fall as heavily on the [[Neo-Platonism|Neo-Platonic]] martyr as on the Christian persecutor, and remain even now among the most mordant and crushing sarcasms ever passed upon mankind.

=== ''A Question of Gender'' ===
{{Verse translation|{{lang|grc|Γραμματικοῦ θυγάτηρ ἔτεκεν φιλότητι μιγεῖσα<br>παιδίον ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν, οὐδέτερον.}}|The dominie's daughter eloped with a suitor,<br>And the baby was masculine, feminine, neuter.<ref>Bowra, C. M.; Higham, T. F., eds. (1938). [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.113492/page/n749/mode/2up?view=theater ''The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation'']. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 655.</ref>|italicsoff=y|attr2=Translated by Sir William Marris}}

This translation omits the epigram's explicit reference to the role of grammar and thus grammatical gender in thought. Compare: "A grammarian’s daughter made love and then bore/A masculine and feminine and neuter child."<ref>[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1453629335 Harold Anthony Lloyd, ''The Complete Palladas''.]</ref>

The epigram's reference to the generative role of grammar underscores how the epigram is "likely quite dark: [the daughter] gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) and at least one of them died thus giving the three declensions."<ref>[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1453629335 Harold Anthony Lloyd, ''The Complete Palladas''.]</ref>

=== Tabliope ===
Tabliope ({{lang|grc|Ταβλιόπη}}) is a made-up name of a "[[Muse]]" that is a comic invention of [[Palladas]], appearing in his [[epigram]] found in book 11 (''Humorous and convivial'' - ''Scoptic'' - Σκωπτικά) of ''[[Anthologia Palatina]]''.<ref>''[[Anthologia Palatina]]'', 11. 373</ref> The name ''Tabliope'' is made up from the word τάβλα ''tabla'' > ''tavla'' (Modern Greek τάβλι ''tavli'' "[[backgammon]]"), derived from [[Latin language|Latin]] ''[[Wiktionary:tabula|"tabula"]]'', and the segment -ιόπη as in the name of the [[Muse]] [[Calliope]] ("Τάβλ"α + Καλλ"ιόπη" = "Ταβλιόπη"). The epigram, intended to make fun of an avid [[backgammon]] player, reads:
<blockquote>Πάντων μουσοπόλων ἠ Καλλιόπη θεός ἐστιν • Ἠ σή Καλλιόπη Ταβλιόπη λέγεται.</blockquote>

"Calliope is the goddess of all adherents of the [[Muse]]s [i. e. arts]; but ''your'' Calliope is called Tabliope."

Some modern sources refer to Tabliope as the [[goddess]] of the gamble ([[game]]s of [[risk]] and random [[Randomness|chance]]).<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ENkkk8-fhjAC Osborne, Robin (ed.) Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society. Cambridge 2004, p. 201]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=60y7fnXqq7sC&dq=%22Tabliope%22+gambling&pg=PA321 Avant, G. Rodney. A Mythological Reference]. Bloomington, Indiana, 2005. - p. 321</ref>

== Date ==
Mackail groups Palladas to the same period with [[Aesopus (poet)|Aesopus]] and [[Glycon (poet)|Glycon]], each the author of a single epigram in the ''Greek Anthology''. All three belong to the age of the [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]] translators, when infinite pains were taken to rewrite well-known poems or passages in different metres, by turning [[Homer]] into [[elegiac]]s or [[Iamb (foot)|iambics]], and recasting pieces of [[Euripides]] or [[Menander]] as epigrams.

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
*K. W. Wilkinson, "Palladas and the Age of Constantine", ''The Journal of Roman Studies'', '''99''' (2009), 36–60.
*John William Mackail, ''[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2378 Select epigrams from the Greek Anthology]''
*[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1453629335 Harold Anthony Lloyd, ''The Complete Palladas''] (complete verse translation of all the epigrams)
* "Palladas", William Smith, ed., ''[[Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]]'', vol. 3, p. [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ACL3129.0003.001/102?rgn=full+text;view=image 94.]
==External links==
* {{wikisourcelang-inline|el|Παλλαδάς|Παλλαδᾶς}}

{{Authority control}}
[[Category:4th-century Greek poets]]
[[Category:Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology]]
[[Category:Christianity in the Roman Empire]]
[[Category:Roman-era Alexandrians]]
[[Category:Year of birth unknown]]
[[Category:Year of death unknown]]
[[Category:Late-Roman-era pagans]]
[[Category:Ancient Greeks in Egypt]]

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Palladas