The editors of the new fragment of Gallus draw attention to line 6, ‘fecerunt carmina Musae’. They say ‘“fecerunt” is unusual in such a context, and to a Roman reader would inevitably suggest ; the Muses of Gallus provided craftsmanship as well as inspiration’. It is possible to be more precise: cf. Euphorion fr. 118 Powell.

Euphorion SH 417 deserves to be better known. A curiosity in itself—an apparent poetic reference to number theory—it is also, potentially, one of our earliest references to Euclidean material. On the authority of a late commentator on Aristotle, Euphorion, a mid-third-century b.c. Euboean poet who was also active in Athens and Antioch, is said to have mentioned perfect numbers—i.e. numbers which equal the total of all their factors, including 1 . It is a pity that the context in (...) Euphorion does not survive, and that the line is only preserved, and indeed interpreted, by so late a source. But the wording of the fragment—if Westerink's restoration of its various corruptions is plausible—would strongly suggest a reference to the notion of perfect number. The fragment has been known since Westerink published it in 1960, and was included both in Van Groningen's edition of Euphorion in 1977 and in Supplementum Hellenisticum . But its implications have still not been discussed, and when David Fowler came to gather the evidence for references to Euclidean material in and after the third century b.c. in The Mathematics of Plato's Academy, his attention, unsurprisingly, was not drawn to it. Euphorion has had a bad press, as a poet of rebarbatively obscure myth and intractable vocabulary; yet he holds some interest, and we may be missing more insights into the intellectual life of the Hellenistic period which the perverse intelligence and baneful wit of the fragments display. (shrink)

Euphorion SH 417 deserves to be better known. A curiosity in itself—an apparent poetic reference to number theory—it is also, potentially, one of our earliest references to Euclidean material. On the authority of a late commentator on Aristotle, Euphorion, a mid-third-century b.c. Euboean poet who was also active in Athens and Antioch, is said to have mentioned perfect numbers—i.e. numbers which equal the total of all their factors, including 1. It is a pity that the context in (...) class='Hi'>Euphorion does not survive, and that the line is only preserved, and indeed interpreted, by so late a source. But the wording of the fragment—if Westerink's restoration of its various corruptions is plausible—would strongly suggest a reference to the notion of perfect number. The fragment has been known since Westerink published it in 1960, and was included both in Van Groningen's edition of Euphorion in 1977 and in Supplementum Hellenisticum. But its implications have still not been discussed, and when David Fowler came to gather the evidence for references to Euclidean material in and after the third century b.c. in The Mathematics of Plato's Academy, his attention, unsurprisingly, was not drawn to it. Euphorion has had a bad press, as a poet of rebarbatively obscure myth and intractable vocabulary; yet he holds some interest, and we may be missing more insights into the intellectual life of the Hellenistic period which the perverse intelligence and baneful wit of the fragments display. (shrink)

Nonnus, as well as being soaked in Homer and, no doubt, earlier epics on his particular theme , had a great affection for the Hellenistic master—above all Callimachus, Apollonius, Theocritus, and Euphorion. For this reason he can provide valuable help towards the study of fragments and new papyri. Pfeiffer, in his edition of the Callimachus fragments, is of course fully alive to this point, and regularly quotes Nonnus. From the other side there is a useful collection of parallels in (...) Keydell's Dtonysiaca and the new Nonnus lexicon will be invaluable, though not a complete substitute for actually reading the poem because imitation need not involve more than a small amount of verbal reminiscence. (shrink)

The comparison between Prop. 2, 34, 91-92 and Virg. ecl. 10, 18 allows to argue that Gallus treated Adonis in his love elegy and that he used this character as an exemplum, in the same way of his future followers, in particular Propertius and Ovid. It is possible that he imitated Euphor. fr. 43 Pow., and for this reason we can try to reconstruct his relationship with the models and his freedom in in adapting them to the new elegiac poetry.