Alcman 58 and Simonides 37

Abstract

ALCMAN 58 (D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci ) = 38 Bergk; 36 Diehl. It is not Aphrodite, but wild Eros plays like a boy (or ‘like the boy he is’), coming down over the tips of the galingale flowers: don't touch them! There are no serious textual variants; Bentley's παῖς looks a certain supplement. The context in which the fragment is quoted (Hephaestion 13. 6, p. 42 Consbr.) is a discussion of the cretic; the lines are cited as a metrical example, without reference to their meaning. Meineke's comment on the passage was sensus non plane liquet , but it is tempting to go further, because this is the earliest extant reference to Eros at play, an idea that was to be interestingly influential in later poetry.