From Homer to John Eugenicus: The Long Journey of Riddles through Greek and Byzantine Literatures
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Abstracts
L’étude du jeu et des jouets en Grèce moderne a longtemps été caractérisée par une approche défendant une continuité culturelle entre la culture grecque antique et moderne élaborée dans le contexte politique et idéologique associé à la création de l’État-nation grec moderne en 1830. Toute discussion sur la transmission, la continuité et le changement en ce qui concerne le jeu, les jeux et les jouets doit donc prendre en compte non seulement les problèmes méthodologiques concernant le matériel de la Grèce antique, mais aussi les biais particuliers de la majorité des sources sur les formes « traditionnelles » du jeu et du jouet du xixe siècle à nos jours. En se fondant sur la théorie de la performance et les récents développements théoriques des études sur la culture matérielle, ce chapitre aborde des questions méthodologiques découlant de l’étude d’un large éventail de littérature sur les jeux, le jeu et les jouets « traditionnels » en Grèce moderne.
The study of play, games and toys in modern Greece has been characterized for many years by a classicist approach fostering a doctrine of cultural continuity between ancient and modern Greek culture which was formed in the particular political and ideological context that led to the establishment of the modern Greek Nation state in 1830. Any discussion on transmission, continuity and change regarding play, games and toys should therefore take into account not only the methodological issues concerning the ancient Greek material but also the particular biases of the majority of sources on “traditional” forms of play and plaything from the 19th century to the present. Drawing on performance theory and recent theoretical developments in material culture studies this chapter discusses methodological questions arising from the study of a broad range of literature on “traditional” games, play and toys in modern Greece.
Full text
Introduction
1Say the words “Greek riddles”, and you immediately think of Oedipus and the Sphinx. The long journey of riddles in Greek literature (and beyond) began in the remote land of myth, when the heirs of Labdacus, Cadmus’ grandson, started to fight about Thebes’ regal throne.
2But the first quotation of the text of this famous aenigma is not that old: Oedipus was known to Homer, who mentions him both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, but does not make any allusion to the riddle of the Sphinx.1 As for the latter, the monster is listed in Hesiod’s Theogony as one of Echidna’s daughters; its definition as “the ruin for Cadmus’ sons” might be a hint at the story of the riddle, but the poet does say anything more than this.2
3The dangerous riddle of the Sphinx was well known to Pindar, who mentions “the riddle of the virgin with the dangerous jaws”;3 the three tragic poets knew the story as well, of course, because they often allude to the riddle.4 But the complete text of the riddle is quoted only in the didaskaliai of Sophocles’ King Oedipus and Euripides’ Phoenician Women, assembled by the Alexandrian philologists after the work of Aristotle and his school:
There is a thing on earth that has two feet, and four, and three, with just one voice. Of all creatures that move on earth, that fly in the air or that swim in the sea, it is the only one that changes its nature. But when, in order to move faster, it walks on most feet, then the swiftness of its legs is at its weakest.5
4In Euripides’ hypothesis we read Oedipus’ solution as well:
O Muse of the dead, endowed with evil wings, listen to the voice that unveils our riddle, even if you don’t want to. The creature you have described is man: when he is young and comes out of his mother’s womb, he creeps on earth, without speaking, walking on four feet; when he is old and the head is heavy on his shoulders, bent by his age, he leans against a stick, his own third foot.6
5Other versions of the text are quoted in more recent sources, among which there are two works that are very important for the transmission of this peculiar genre: the first one is Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists, where, in the tenth book, we find an interesting conversation on riddles, one of the favorite pastimes for banqueters. Here is the beginning of the section:
As Ulpian was on the verge of adding further remarks to the above, Aemilianus said: It is time, my friends, for us to take up the question of riddles (griphoi), allowing us a break, even if a brief one, from our cups, although (we will) not (pursue the matter) in the style of the play by Callias of Athens entitled The Literal Tragedy. Instead, let us first consider what the definition of a riddle is, and what riddles Cleoboulina of Lindus posed in her Obscure Sayings —for our friend Diotimus of Olympene discusses them at considerable length— and also what reference the comic poets make to them, and how individuals who failed to solve them were punished. Larensius responded: Clearchus of Soli offers the following definition: A griphos is a facetious question that requires one to use a process of intellectual inquiry to discover what is being referred to, and that is articulated with an eye to a reward or a punishment. In his On Riddles, on the other hand, the same Clearchus claims that there are seven types of riddles. First are those that involve an individual letter, for example when we are asked to come up with words that begin with alpha, such as the name of a fish or a plant, or similarly if (the riddle-poser) specifies that the word is to contain a particular letter, or not contain it, as in the case of what are referred to as asigmatic riddles. This is why Pindar composed a song directed against sigma, posing a riddle, as it were, within a lyric poem. Next, riddles are posed syllabically, for example when we are asked to come up with some word used in poetry that begins with ba-, such as basileus (“king”), or with words that end with -nax, like Callianax, or that begin with leōn (“lion”), for example Leonides, or alternatively that end with it, for example Thrasyleon. Next (are riddles that) involve specific nouns, for example when we are asked to come up with simple or compound bisyllabic nouns whose form appears to be tragic or the opposite, colloquial; or with names that have no divine element in them, for example Cleonymus, or that contain a divine name, for example Dionysius, and in the latter case either the name of one god or of more than one, for example Hermaphroditus; or with names that begin with Zeus, for example, Diocles, or with Hermes, for example, Hermodorus; or perhaps with one that ends in -nikos. Anyone who failed to respond as requested drank the contents of the cup.7
6The second one is the fourteenth book of the Palatine Anthology, the collection of Greek epigrams assembled by Constantine Cephalas at the beginning of the 10th century ce:
There is a thing on earth two-footed, and four-footed, and three-footed, whose name is one, and it changes its nature alone of all creatures that move creeping on earth or in the air and sea. But when it moves supported on most feet, the swiftness of its legs is at its weakest.8
7We will come back later to Constantine and his wonderful epigrammatic anthology. Before the years of the so-called “Macedonian Renaissance”, that gave a new start to the success of the literary riddle during the last centuries of Byzantine literature, the story of this peculiar poetic genre starts and flourishes in Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and imperial Greek literature.9
1. Ancient neck-riddles
8This survey starts by commenting another riddle that, like the one we have just mentioned, belongs to the category of the so-called “neck-riddles”, because death is the penalty that falls upon those who are not able to solve them —as death was the end of the Theban citizens, that were devoured by the Sphinx, according by Apollodorus.10 This riddle involves Homer. When he was told by some fishermen (or, according to another version, by some young boys) that what they had caught, they did not have, but what they had not caught, they were bringing with them, the poet died, because he had not been capable to understand what was the mysterious thing hinted at by the fishermen or the boys. Thanks to most of the biographies of the poet, and to another epigram of the Palatine Anthology, we learn that the solution is nothing but the lice the fishermen or the boys were trying to catch in their dirty clothes. The first mention of the riddle is much older than these sources. The conundrum is alluded to by Heraclitus, who lived between the 6th and 5th centuries bce, when he says that
Regarding the knowledge of the things that are evident, men are deceived exactly like it happened to Homer, who, although he was the wisest of all humans, was deceived by the boys who were killing lice when they told him “we left what we saw and caught, we bring what we did not see and did not catch”.11
2. The riddles of Cleobulus of Lindos and his daughter Cleobulina
9Cleobulus of Lindos, one of the Seven Wise Men, who lived more or less in the same years, is credited to have composed, among his poems, some riddles as well. One of these riddles is known to us thanks to Diogenes Laertius, the biographer of the Greek philosophers (who explicitly attributes it to him), and to the Palatine Anthology as well (where it has no author): it is the riddle of the year, also attested in other literatures:
There is one father and twelve children. Each of these has twice thirty children of different aspect; some of them we see to be white and the others black, and though immortal, they all perish.12
10The first two lines of the riddle are quoted by the Suda as well, who attributes it to Cleobulina, Cleobulus’ daughter, a quite shadowy figure who is explicitly connected with the creation of riddles by Plutarch. In the Symposium of the Seven Wise Men, he tells us that her real name was Eumetis, endowed with a ‘wise intelligence’, and quotes two of her riddles, the one of the Phrygian flute and the one of the cupping-glass;13 the second one had been associated to Cleobulina by Aristoteles as well, in his famous chapters on metaphor, the first rhetorical discussion of riddles we possess.14
11Here is the Plutarchean passage where a celebrated physician, Cleodorus, criticizes Cleobulina’s riddle:
“But what difference is there,” said Cleodorus, “between things like this and Eumetis’s riddles? Perhaps it is not unbecoming for her to amuse herself and to weave these as other girls weave girdles and hair-nets, and to propound them to women, but the idea that men of sense should take them at all seriously is ridiculous”. Eumetis, to judge by her appearance, would have liked to give him an answer, but restrained herself with all modesty, and her face was covered with blushes. But Aesop, as though he would take her part, said, “Is it not then even more ridiculous not to be able to solve these? Take, for instance, the one which she propounded to us a few minutes before dinner: “Sooth I have seen a man with fire fasten bronze on another”. Could you tell me what this is?” “No,” said Cleodorus, “and I don’t want to be told, either.” “Yet it is a fact,” said Aesop, “that nobody knows this more perfectly than you, or does it better, either; and if you deny this, I have cupping-glasses to testify to it.” At this Cleodorus laughed; for of all the physicians of his time he was most given to the use of cupping-glasses, and it was largely owing to him that this form of treatment has come to have such repute.15
12In this dialogue we meet another character whose ability in the creation of riddles was well known: Aesop, the brilliant slave celebrated for his Fables, was able not only to write but also to solve riddles; in Aesop’s Novel, the story of his life, he solves a conundrum that is very similar to the riddle of the year:
There is one temple and one column; over the column, there are twelve towns; each town is covered by thirty beams; over each beam, there are two running women.16
3. Riddles and rhetorics
13After Aristoteles, riddles are seen as one of the figures of speech, a trope very close to metaphor, and therefore discussed in most rhetorical treatises since the Hellenistic age. Tryphon, a teacher who lived in Alexandria in the 1st century CE, in his work On tropes, distinguishes six different kind of conundrums: riddles based on likeness, on unlikeness (i.e. opposition), on circumstances, on history, on homonymy, and on linguistic peculiarities. He defines the genre as:
A riddle is a sentence intentionally written so as to be not clear, a statement that hides its meaning by leaving the readers in the impossibility and in the incapability of understanding it.17
14Other rhetorical works, such are the treatises by Gregory of Corinth, Cocondrios, and George Choiroboskos,18 belong to the Macedonian Renaissance (10th and 11th cent.), as well as the collection of Constantine Cephalas, that has come down to us through the manuscript of the Palatine Anthology, written around the middle of the 10th century. Another, smaller collection, the Planudean Anthology, was put together in 1301 by Maximus Planudes.19 There is of course no proof that the diffusion of Cephalas’ anthology, after the editorial work of Constantine the Rhodian, induced some Byzantine poets to start to write riddles.20 It is a fact, though, that since the end of the 10th century we find some poetical riddles among the compositions of significant authors such as John Mauropous, John Geometres (or Kyriotes), Christopher Mitylenaeus, and Michael Psellus.
4. Byzantine riddles
15If John Mauropous limited himself to the composition of just one riddle and John Geometres to the composition of two, Christopher Mitylenaeus wrote six (or seven) conundrums in dodecasyllables. John Mauropous, metropolitan of Euchaita, wrote a “riddle on the ship, as if said by someone else”, followed by a poem dedicated “to the person who presented the same riddle in other words and as another riddle”;21 John Geometres wrote a “riddle on salt” (in a quite odd meter structure —two dactylic pentameters) and another conundrum whose solution is still under dispute;22 among the poems of Christopher Mitylenaeus there are some smart riddles.
16Here is one:
If you catch me, I flee from you, even if I have been caught;
you see me fleeing, but you are not able to hold me fast.
And if, in your eagerness of holding me fast, you choke me tight,
I flee from your fist and leave it empty.23
17The title of the riddle (“The snow”) is its solution; the same can be said of the other five (“The Scale”, “The Rainbow”, “The Hours”, “The Tent” and “The Organ”) or six riddles (if the poem whose title is “The Sponge” belongs to this category).24
18Many manuscripts attribute to Michael Psellus (11th cent.) a longer collection of eighteen riddles, although, according to Leendert Gerrit Westerink, its most recent editor, just the first three conundrums, written in political verse and dedicated to Michael VII Ducas’ brother, Constantine, seem to have been really composed by him.25
19In fact, three riddles can be found in the fourteenth book of the Palatine Anthology as well;26 the most famous is probably the first one:
I am the black child of a white father;
a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven.
I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me,
And at once on my birth I am dissolved into air.27
20The solution is “The Smoke”.28
21Likewise, three conundrums are present in Christopher’ collection as well,29 while Psellus’ riddle 14 is exactly the same riddle on the ship composed by John Mauropous:
They have invented a walking animal that sails,
that has life inside although it is lifeless,
that has breath inside although it is breathless,
that creeps, goes and uses wings.
Listen, be amazed and give a solution !30
22Other authors whose name is connected with Byzantine riddles are more difficult to identify and to date: if we know who Theodor Prodromus was and when he lived (12th cent.), we ignore who was the Basilius Megalomytes under whose name the manuscripts have handed down us a collection of almost fifty multifarious riddles, that are either new (in the sense that they are never attested elsewhere) or, more often, different (longer or shorter) versions of other riddles known from other sources.31
23One of the smartest is the following:
I have a neck and I do not have a head,
I have four legs and I am without feet,
I am a breathing corpse, but I have no bones.32
24The solution of this riddle, based on the connection of the (seemingly) impossible things mentioned in the first three lines of the poem (one neck, no head; four legs, no feet; life vs. death), is “The Wineskin”. The “breathing corpse” is clearly a metaphor, because the breath of this mysterious object is not a real one (it is not the first, the immediate breath we think of, that is the breath of a living animal), but it is the simple air that is inside a wineskin (a probable hint at the most famous wineskin of classical mythology, the bag in which Aeolus bottled up the winds, as Homer says in Odyssey 10). Once we understand that this “breathing corpse” is a metaphor, we can solve the riddle, because everything suddenly becomes clear: first the neck and the heads, then the legs and the feet, finally the missing bones.
25Similar identification problems apply for another interesting collection attributed to a poet called either Eustathius or Eumathius Macrembolites, whose identification with the author of the novel The story of Hysmines and Hysminias is discussed since Isidorus Hilberg’s edition.33
26The high-profile authorship of some riddles has always been under dispute. Who knows if this riddle, attributed by one manuscript to the emperor Julian, was really composed by him?
There is a tree inside the palaces,
whose root both lives and talks to its fruits.
But in a single moment it grows in a strange way,
and then it falls, and it is harvest from its roots.34
27It is known as the riddle of “The Acrobat” (in Greek, κοντοπαίκτης, the “performer who plays with a pole on his head”).
28And who knows if the small group of three riddles often transmitted under the name of Manuel Moschopoulos was really the work of the pupil of Maximus Planudes who was one of the most brilliant scholars of the so-called Palaeologan Renaissance?35 Is it sure that the emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos was the author of the very difficult riddle preserved by a Viennese manuscript?36 And what about Euthymios Tornikios, the rhetorician who was famous for the monodies for the death of his father Demetrios, the head of the department of the Public Post, to whom the Baroccianus Gr. 76, a 15th century manuscript, attributes eight riddles both in prose and in verse?37
29Another mysterious poet who is credited with the composition of seven riddles is a certain Theodorus Aulicalamus:38 five of these riddles have been published by Jean-François Boissonade, the French scholar whose Anecdota Graeca mark, in a certain sense, the starting point of the modern story of Byzantine riddles.39
30The first riddle in this small collection still baffles the scholars, who are not sure about its real solution:
Even if am not alive, I have two heads;
my nature belongs both to the sea and to the land.
If you cut my head, made up of a double sign,
you change neither my name, nor my nature.40
31According to J.-F. Boissonade, its first editor, the riddle is a kind of charade that plays on the very name of the author (Αὐλικάλαμος), a compound made of αὐλός (the flute, the musical instrument usually made out of the hollow bone of an animal) and κάλαμος (the reed, the plant that grows along the banks of rivers and lakes). Its last editor, the Serbian scholar Čelica Milovanović, thinks that the correct solution is ψάμμος, the grain of sand, a word that is also attested in the form ἄμμος (that is, without the double letter ψ).41
Conclusion: Greek and Latin riddles in the Renaissance
32Before J.-F. Boissonade, Greek and Latin riddles had been published by some Renaissance scholars who had taken them mostly from Athenaeus —as it is known, the content of the Palatine manuscript became (indirectly) known at the end of the 18th century, when Brunck published his Analecta veterum poetarum Graecorum in three volumes, but was not integrally published before Jacobs’ monumental edition in the 19th century.
33In 1539 the Italian humanist Lilio (or Giglio) Gregorio Giraldi, born in 1471 in Ferrara, published in Basel a Libellus in quo aenigmata pleraque antiquorum explicantur; the first item of the collection is Cleobulos’ riddle of the year, followed by another famous conundrum by the 4th century tragedian Theodectes, probably from his lost Oedipus, quoted by Athenaeus, by Homer’s lice and, of course, Oedipus’ Sphinx.42
34At the end of the 16th century, Konrad Rittershausen, a professor of law who was also a classical literatures enthusiast, born in 1560 in Braunschweig, published at the end of his own edition of Phaedrus’Fables an appendix whose title was Fabellae & Aenigmata veterum poetarum, Graecorum & Latinorum, where he published and translated (into Latin) the same Greek riddles collected by Giraldi together with the hundred Latin aenigmata by Symposius.43
35These editions enjoyed a fairly good circulation, because they happen to be quoted even by scholars who were not particularly fond of this poetic genre: one example is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who consulted and mentioned both works when he was working on the edition of the four Greek Rätsel he had found in one of the manuscripts belonging to the duke of Braunschweig, whose library, located in the castle of Wolfenbüttel, had been entrusted to the same Lessing.44
36After J.-F. Boissonade, the enigmatic production of the Greek and Byzantine poets found a first (but unsatisfactory) arrangement in another appendix, the third book of Didot’s edition of the Palatine Anthology, due to Édouard Cougny, published in 1870.45
37It is a pity that Spyridon Lambros, the Greek scholar who published the catalogue of the manuscripts of the Mount Athos, did not succeed in completing the task he had wished to fulfill, namely the publication of a modern, philologically accurate edition of the Greek riddles. What is left is just a few articles that give us the transcription of other unedited riddles, such as those transmitted in a manuscript of the Dionysiou Monastery, among which there is a selection attributed to John Eugenikos, brother of the more famous Mark.46
38John Eugenikos was active in the first half of the 15th century; a strong opponent, as his brother, to the union of the two churches (catholic and orthodox), he died in exile in the Peloponnese, a few years after the fall of Constantinople.47
39The manuscript that has preserved its riddles does not bear any solution. I have suggested one for the following conundrum:
Something swells within the inmost parts, unlovely, / growing in married couples, and in virgins, / that acquires substance from a seed, but apart from all insemination, / born with pleasure, born without pain. / In most cases there is no delivery, but there is a place from which this is born, / this infant lacking a voice, uninitiated to the mysteries of speech, / without feet or hands or eyes or ears, / tell me, you detective of all sorts of words, tell me what this is.48
40The riddle is purposefully ambiguous: it seems to point toward a possible, likely solution (the act of childbearing), but, at the same time, it explicitly denies it (how could a child be born from a virgin? how could a child be born without being delivered?).
41The solution is more simple —and much more prosaic. If we look at the only word in the riddle that has just one, and only one meaning (ἔγκατα, that is ‘intestines’), then the unpleasant (ἀκαλλές) thing that, after having grown in the intestines out of some particular seeds (I would suggest beans), is delivered (in a very peculiar kind of delivery indeed) ‘with pleasure’, that is ‘uninitiated to the mysteries of speech’ (although it gives out a quite identifiable sound), and that it does not have a body (because it is lacking in feet, and in hands, and in eyes, and in ears), is the fart.49
42Scattered in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century manuscripts there are other more recent Greek riddles, written either in modern Demotic Greek, or in a language that tried to emulate classical Greek, such as the thirteen riddles composed by Nicholas Mavrocordatos, Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia, at the beginning of the 18th century.50
43Most of them are no more than the umpteenth variation of a classical riddles. One example is the following conundrum:
I do not have a life of my own, but I give birth to many different lives;
my womb is pregnant with beautiful appearances only,
lifeless lives and short-lived breaths,
being an unbreakable and ephemeral mother.51
44Do you think you can guess it? Maybe one of the more classical versions might help, such as one of the two that are present in the fourteenth book of the Palatine Anthology:
If you look at me, I look at you too. You look with eyes,
but I not with eyes, for I have no eyes.
And if you like, I speak without a voice, for you have
a voice, but I only have lips that open in vain.52
45The solution of both riddles is “The Mirror” —a topic that is frequent both in Latin literature, and in modern Greek folklore.53
46But this is another literature —and another story.
Footnotes
1 Homer, Iliad, 23.677-680 and Odyssey, 11.271-280.
2 Hesiod, Theogony, 326-327. On the Sphinx and its name, see Katz (2005).
3 Pindar, fr. 177d Snell; the fragment is quoted by Priscian (De metris Terentianis, 3.427 Keil), who does not specify the work where the line comes from.
4 In Sophocles’ King Oedipus, the protagonist is invoked by the chorus as the one who has released Thebes from the “tribute of the cruel singer” (v. 36); Creon mentions the “ambiguous song” of the Sphinx (v. 130), while Oedipus calls it a “singing hound” and says that its riddle was not easy to solve (v. 391-394). In Euripides’ Phoenician women, Jocasta briefly tells the story of the riddle (v. 48-54). The same story is told with many details (and a strong poetical flavor) in the third stasimon (v. 1019-1066), and, more shortly, in Antigone’s solo aria (v. 1504-1507) at the end of the play; the riddle is also mentioned in the exodus by Oedipus (v. 1728-1731 and 1758-1761). Although the play is lost (we have just three fragments), there is no reason to suppose that the story of the riddle was not mentioned at all in Aeschylus’ satyr drama The Sphinx; for a possible illustration of a scene of this play, see a 470/460 BCE vase now in the Martin-von-Wagner Museum of Würzburg [LIMC 7, 1 (1994) 8 no 72]. As for Theodectes’ Oedipus, see Monda (2000), discussed also infra, n. 42.
5 Sophocles, King Oedipus, hypothesis ll. 19-24 (in Pearson’s edition); see also Euripides, Phoenician Women, hypothesis ll. 19-24 (in Murray’s edition).
6 Euripides, Phoenician Women, hypothesis ll. 25-31 (my translation).
7 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 10.448b-e (trans. S. Douglas Olson, Loeb). The main source of this interesting section is the lost treatise On riddles, written by the peripatetic philosopher Clearchus of Soli between the 4th and the 3rd cent. BCE; see Wehrli (1948). In its longest fragment (fr. 86 Wehrli, quoted in the citation), Clearchus discusses three different categories of riddles. Oedipus’ riddle is quoted at the end of the section (456b); Athenaeus states that he has taken it from Asclepiades of Tragilus’ Tragodoumena (FGrHist 12F7a). On the possibility that during the Hellenistic age there were some collections of riddles, see Kwapisz (2013).
8 Palatine Anthology, 14.64 (trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb). The riddle is preceded by an epigram (Palatine Anthology, 14.63) ascribed to a certain Mesomedes (a poet and musician born in Crete, a friend of the emperor Hadrian) that describes the Sphinx; the conundrum of the Sphinx is then followed by a couple of epigrams that allude to Homer’s death (Palatine Anthology, 14.65 and 66) and by the oracle given to Oedipus’ father (Palatine Anthology, 14.67). On the controversial origin of this book, see Cameron (1993) and Maltomini (2008); on the fascinating story of the manuscript, see Beta (2017a).
9 On the history of this quite peculiar genre, see Ohlert (1886) and the many contributions of Schultz (1909), (1912-1913), (1914); on the use of riddles in Byzantium, see Beta (2018) and (2020).
10 Apollodorus, The Library, 3.5.8. On these two riddles, see Beta (2016); on neck-riddles in other literatures, see also STahl (2016)
11 Heraclitus 56 D.-K. (my translation). The other witnesses are [Plutarch], Vita Homeri 4; Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, 321 ss.; Palatine Anthology, 9.448. Cf. also the Latin version by Symphosius/ Symposius 30 (Est nova nostrarum cunctis captura ferarum: / ut si quid capias, hoc tu tibi ferre recuses, / et quod non capis, tecum tamen ipse reportes); his collection of riddles has been edited by Bergamin (2005), and Leary (2014). On this fragment, see Ellis (2020).
12 Palatine Anthology, 14.101 (trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb): Εἷς ὁ πατήρ, παῖδες δυοκαίδεκα· τῶν δὲ ἑκάστῳ / παῖδες <δὶς> τριάκοντα διάνδιχα εἶδος ἔχουσαι· / αἱ μὲν λευκαὶ ἔασιν ἰδεῖν, αἱ δ’ αὖτε μέλαιναι· / ἀθάνατοι δέ τ’ ἐοῦσαι ἀποφθινύθουσιν ἅπασαι. See also Diogenes Laertius 1.90 and Stobaeus, Anthology, 1.99.15. On the fortune of this riddle in some Eastern literatures, see West (2007), p. 370-372.
13 Plutarch, Symposium of the Seven Wise Men, 150EF (the riddle of the Phrygian flute) and 154BC (the riddle of the cupping-glass); on the riddle of the Phrygian flute, see the detailed explanation given by Fabbro (2008). Cleobulina’s riddles were edited by West (1992); for a thorough discussion about Cleobulina/Eumetis, see Matelli (1997).
14 Aristotle, Poetics, 1458a29 ss. and Rhetorics, 1405b1 ss.; see also Demetrius, On the Style, 102. The riddle of the cupping-glass is quoted also by Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 10.452b.
15 Plutarch, Symposium of the Seven Wise Men, 154BC (trans. F. C. Babbitt, Loeb). On this passage, see also Beta (2009); for a more recent version of this article see Beta (2012), in the proceedings of an Italian conference on riddles, edited by Monda (2012).
16 Aesop’s Novel, 120 (my translation): Ἔστιν ναός τις καὶ στῦλος εἷς, καὶ ἐπάνω τοῦ στύλου πόλεις δεκαδύο, καὶ τούτων ἐκάστη τριάκοντα δοκοῖς ἐστεγασμένη, καὶ μίαν ἑκάστην αὐτῶν πετριτρέχουσι γυναῖκες δύο. On the relationship between Aesop and the wise man Ahiqar, sage chancellor of the Assyrian kings, see Hausrath (1918) and Luzzatto (1992) and (1994).
17 Tryphon, On Tropes, 4 (3.193 Spengel) (my translation): Αἴνιγμά ἐστι φράσις ἐπιτετηδευμένη κακοσχόλως εἰς ἀσάφειαν ἀποκρύπτουσα τὸ νοούμενον, ἢ ἀδύνατόν τι καὶ ἀμήχανον παριστάνουσα.
18 Gregory of Corinth, On Tropes, 23 (Spengel 3.224-225), Cocondrius, On Tropes, 11 (3.236 Spengel), George Choiroboskos, On Poetical Tropes, 20 (Spengel 3.253); see also the anonymous treatise On Poetical Tropes, 4 (3.209 Spengel).
19 On this second anthology, whose main witness is Marcianus Gr. 481, see Cameron (1993), p. 76- 77. It is probable that Cephalas’ original collection contained other riddles not attested in the Palatine manuscript, such as Penelope’s riddle, a conundrum (falsely) attributed to the emperor Julian, quoted in an earlier, smaller Planudean anthology, whose only witness is Laurentianus Gr. 32.16 (see Cameron (1993), p. 202-216).
20 The identification of the poet Constantine the Rhodian as the editor that corrected the Palatine manuscript (the hand known as J since Preisendanz), proposed by Cameron (1993), p. 289-328, has been accepted by most scholars [excepted Orsini (2000)].
21 Poems 60 and 61, see Bernard and Livanos (2018).
22 For the salt riddle, see Van Opstall (2008), p. 391-394; for a discussion on the second riddle, see the extensive bibliography in Lauxtermann (2003), p. 302, n. 20.
23 Christopher Mitylenaeus, Poems, 47 (my translation): Κρατεῖς με καὶ φεύγω σε κεκρατημένη, / φεύγουσαν ἀθρεῖς καὶ κατασχεῖν οὐ σθένεις. / Κἂν γοῦν ἀπρὶξ σφίγξῃς με κατέχειν θέλων, / κενὴν λιποῦσα φεύξομαι σὴν παλάμην.
24 Christopher Mitylenaeus, Poems, 21 (“The Scale”), 35 (“The Rainbow”), 56 (“The Hours”), 71 (“The Tent”), 111 (“The Organ”), and 137 (“The Sponge”). The standard edition of Christopher’s poems, after the superseded Rocchi (1887), and Kurtz (1903), is De Groote (2012); for an English translation, see Bernard and Livanos (2018).
25 See Westerink (1992). Questions of attributions are a big problem for the editors of Byzantine riddles, see Beta (2014), p. 214.
26 Michael Psellus 4-6, corresponding to Palatine Anthology, 14.5, 58, and 35. Aubreton (1969) wrongly conjectured that the natural consequence of the presence of three epigrams of the Palatine Anthology inside a collection of riddles attributed to Psellus were the necessary postponement of the date of the Palatine manuscript one century later that the common opinion (a supposition criticized by Cameron (1970).
27 Michael Psellus, 4, corresponding to Palatine Anthology, 14.5 (trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb): Εἰμὶ πατρὸς λευκοῖο μέλαν τέκος / ἄπτερος ὄρνις, / ἄχρι καὶ οὐρανίων ἱπτάμενος νεφέων· / κούραις δ’ ἁπτομένῃσιν ἀπενθέα δάκρυα τίκτω· / εὐθὺ δὲ γεννηθεὶς λύομαι εἰς ἀνέμους. Symphosius/ Symposius composed a Latin version of this riddle (7: Sunt mihi, sunt lacrimae, sed non est causa doloris. / Est iter ad caelum sed me gravis impedit aër, / et qui me genuit, sine me non nascitur ipse).
28 In the third line, the anonymous poet plays on the double meaning of the word κόρα / κούρα, that means both “pupils” and “girl”.
29 Michael Psellus 11, 15, and 18, corresponding to Christopher 71 (“The Tent”), 21 (“The Scale”), and 56 (“The Hours”).
30 John Mauropous, Poems, 60 (my translation): Ζώόν τι πεζόν, ἀλλὰ εὑρέθη· / ἔμψυχον ἀλλʼ ἄψυχον, ἔμπνουν ἀλλʼ ἄπνουν· / ἕρπον βαδίζον καὶ πτεροῖς κεχρημένον· / ἄκουε καὶ θαύμαζε καὶ δίδου λύσιν.
31 For the only riddle composed by Prodromus (“The Cloud Riddle”), see Zagklas (2014); for Basilius, see Boissonade (1831) (infra, n. 39). Under Basilius’ name we find three riddles (nos 6, 21, and 25) also ascribed to Psellus (nos 13, 8, and 9).
32 Basilius Megalomytes, 13: Ἔχω τραχηλόν, καὶ κεφαλὴν οὐκ ἔχω· / τετρασκελής τίς εἰμι καὶ ποδῶν δίχα, / ἔμπνους τε νεκρός, ἀλλὰ χωρὶς ὀστέων. On this riddle, see Capra (2013).
33 See Hilberg (1876), and this despite the excellent edition of the riddles published by Treu (1893). The first section of this collection, divided by Treu into five sections, has been transmitted together with the poetical answers written by Manuel Holobolus. On the identification of this poet, see Treu (1896).
34 See STernbach (1900): Ἔστι τι δένδρον τῶν ἀνακτόρων μέσον, / οὗ ῥίζα καὶ ζῇ καὶ λαλεῖ καρποῖς ἅμα. / Ὥρᾳ δὲ μιᾷ καὶ φυτεύεται ξένως, / καὶ πάλιν πίπτει καὶ τρυγᾶται ῥιζόθεν. The riddle is also part of Basilius Megalomytes’ collection (n. 8); see Ohlert (1886), p. 150, and Schultz (1909), p. 51-52.
35 In Milovanović’s collection (see infra, n. 45): nos 57’, 190, and 202; see Lambros (1913), p. 444.
36 For this riddle, copied by the scribe who wrote the Vindobonensis Theologicus Graecus 203, see Lambros (1913), p. 445.
37 For these riddles, see Papadopoulos-Kerameus (1913), p. 204-206.
38 On the identity of this poet, see Diethart (1971).
39 Here, in the third volume of the Anecdota Graeca, Boissonade (1831) published (p. 429-436) the eighteen riddles of Michael Psellus (transmitted by the Parisinus Gr. 968), together with a prose riddle (written in a footnote) on the shadow; plus a selection of forty-three riddles of Basilius Megalomytes (p. 437-452), found in that same manuscript but also in the Parisinus Gr. 1630; plus five riddles of Aulicalamus (p. 453-454), transmitted by another Parisian codex (Parisinus Gr. 2991A); plus an anonymous riddle (p. 455), taken from a fourth Parisian manuscript (Parisinus Gr. 2599).
40 Aulicalamus, 1 Boissonade: Δίκορσός εἰμι, καίπερ ἀψυχουμένη, / ἐνάλιός τε καὶ γεηρὰ τὴν φύσιν. / Ἂν γοῦν τέμῃς μου διπλοσύνθετον κάραν, / ἤμειψας οὐ τὴν κλῆσιν, οὐδὲ τὴν φύσιν.
41 On the pros and cons of the collection of Milovanović, see infra, n. 45. For the less common form ἄμμος, see for instance Plato, Phedon 110a.
42 The book was reprinted in 1551 (apud Ioannem Oporinum) with the title Lilii Gregorij Gyraldi ferrariensis Libelli duo, in quorum altero Aenigmata plerique antiquorum, in altero Pythagorae Symbola, non paulo quam hactenus ab aliis, clarius faciliusque sunt explicata: numquam antea in lucem editi, Basel, 1551. For Theodectes’ riddle and its relationship with his lost tragedy, see Monda (2000).
43 Phaedri, Aug. Liberti, Fabularum Aesopiarum libri V, nuper à P. Pithoeo V. C. primum editi, et iam emendati atque illustrati notis a Cunrado Rittershusio I.C. professore Norico, Plantin, Ludguni Batavorum 1598. Among the Greek poems there are also the five riddles first published in 1556 by Henri Estienne, who had the chance to read the Palatine manuscript when one of its owners, John Clement, was in Louvain; see Cameron (1993), p. 179-182, and Beta (2019), p. 61-68. The same appendix was then reprinted in 1610 at the end of Johannes van Meurs’ edition of Phaedrus’ Fables. The first edition of Symposius’ riddles had been published in Paris by Ioachim Perionius in 1533 and in 1537 (Symphosii veteris poetae elegantissimi erudita iuxta ac argute et festiva Aenigmata, nunc primum et inventa ex excusa).
44 On these riddles, preserved in the Gudianus Gr. 77, ff. 413v-415v, and briefly discussed by Lessing in the second volume of his Zur Geschichte und Litteratur, aus den Schätzen der herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel, Braunschweig (1773), p. 419-446 (his interest had been aroused by another enigmatic composition, the so-called problema bovinum attributed to Archimedes), see Beta (2022, in press).
45 See Cougny (1890). On the faults of this collection, that is nonetheless still the standard reference edition for Greek riddles, see Zanandrea (1987-1989). There is a fuller collection of Byzantine riddles, edited in 1986 by Čelica Milovanović; but the fact that the Greek texts are preceded by an introduction, endowed with a translation and followed by a commentary in Serbian makes this book less useful than it deserved.
46 The riddles present in this manuscript (Athos Dionysiou 347) were published by Lambros (1885), and (posthumous) by Lambros (1923).
47 John’s riddles are witnessed in another manuscript as well, the Parisinus Suppl. Gr. 1188, presumably written by John’s very hand [see Zanandrea (1987-1989), p. 149], around the portrait of a Byzantine emperor [probably John VIII Palaeologos, according to Astruc and Concasty (1960), p. 358].
48 John Eugenikos, 195 Milovanović: Ἔμβρυόν ἐστιν ἀκαλλές, ἐν μέσοις τοῖς ἐγκάτοις, / ὃ τοῖς ἐν γάμῳ φύεται, καὶ τοῖς ἐν παρθενίᾳ, / σπέρματι συνιστάμενον, δίχα γονῆς ἁπάσης, / γινόμενον σὺν ἡδονῇ γενόμενον ἀπόνως. / Πλειστάκις οὐ μαιεύεται, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν οὗ καὶ τοῦτο, / ἄφθογγον δὲ καὶ λαλιᾶς ἀμύητον τὸ βρέφος, / ἄνευ ποδῶν τε καὶ χειρῶν καὶ ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ ὤτων, / φάσκε παντοίων λόγων ἰχνευτά, τί τοῦτο φάσκε.
49 For a more detailed analysis of this riddle, see Beta (2017b).
50 See Papadopoulos-Kerameus (1909), p. 575-578.
51 Nicholas Mavrocordatos, 2: Ψυχῆς ἀμοιρῶ, ποικίλας ψυχὰς φύω, / κύω δ’ ἐκ γαστρὸς ἀκμὴν παγκάλους μορφάς, / ψυχὰς ἀψύχους καὶ πνοὰς ἐφημέρους, / ἄθραυστος οὖσα καὶ ἐφήμερος μήτηρ.
52 Palatine Anthology, 14.56 (trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb): Ἂν μ’ ἐσίδῃς, καὶ ἐγὼ σέ. Σὺ μὲν βλεφάροισι δέδορκας, / ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ οὐ βλεφάροις· οὐ γὰρ ἔχω βλέφαρα. / Ἂν δ’ ἐθέλῃς, λαλέω φωνῆς δίχα· σοὶ γὰρ ὑπάρχει / φωνή, ἐμοὶ δὲ μάτην χείλε’ ἀνοιγόμενα.
53 The other Greek riddle on the mirror is Palatine Anthology, 14.108. The Latin riddles are Symphosius/Symposius 69 (Nulla mihi certa est, nulla est peregrina figura, / fulgor inest intus radianti luce coruscus, / qui nihil ostendit nisi si quid viderit ante) and Aenigmata Tullii 29 (Uterum si mihi praelucens texerit umbra / proprios volenti devota porrigo vultus. / Talis ego mater vivos non genero natos, / sed petenti vanas diffundo visu figuras. / Exiguos licet mentita profero fetus, / sed de vero suas videnti dirigo formas). On this collection, assembled between the 7th and the 8th cent., see Farina (2020). On popular Greek riddles, see Koukoules (1948), vol. 2, p. 64-86; for the success of riddles in European literatures, see De Filippis (1948), (1953), and (1967).
Author
beta@unisi.it
University of Siena
Professeur de philologie classique à l’université de Sienne. Ses recherches concernent en particulier le théâtre ancien et sa fortune (surtout la comédie grecque), les épigrammes et les énigmes. Parmi ses dernières publications, Il labirinto della parola. Enigmi, oracoli e sogni nella cultura antica (Torino 2016) et Io, un manoscritto : l’Antologia Palatina si racconta (Roma 2019), traduit en français par Les Belles Lettres (Moi, un manuscrit. Autobiographie de l’Anthologie Palatine). Il a publié des devinettes byzantines inédites (« “You possess me, you bring me with you, I am a part of you” : a new Byzantine riddle in the Pal.gr. 116 », BZ 107, 2014, 37-50 ; « An Enigmatic Literature. Interpreting an Unedited Collection of Byzantine Riddles in a Manuscript of Cardinal Bessarion », DOP 68, 2014, 211-40 ; « A Challenge to the Reader. The Twelve Byzantine Riddles of Pal.gr. 356 », JÖB 66, 2016, 11-32). Il a traduit en italien l’Antigone de Sophocle (Milano 2020) et Lysistrata d’Aristophane (Milano 2020).
Only the text can be used under the OpenEdition Books License license. Other elements (illustrations, attached files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
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