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Late Antiquity has unified what in the past were disparate disciplinary, chronological, and geographical areas of study. Welcoming a wide array of methodological approaches, this book series provides a venue for the finest new scholarship on the period, ranging from the later Roman Empire to the Byzantine, Sassanid, early Islamic, and early Carolingian worlds.
The Arabic Hermes
From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science
Kevin van Bladel
Two Romes
Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity
Edited by Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly
Disciplining Christians
Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters
Jennifer V. Ebbeler
History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East
Edited by Philip Wood
Explaining the Cosmos
Creation and Cultural Interaction in Late-Antique Gaza
Michael W. Champion
Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity
Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate in Late Antiquity
Michael Bland Simmons
The Poetics of Late Antique Literature
Edited by Jaś Elsner and Jesus Hernandez-Lobato
Rome’s Holy Mountain
The Capitoline Hill in Late Antiquity
Jason Moralee
The Homeric Centos
Homer and the Bible Interwoven
Anna Lefteratou
The Homeric Centos
Homer and the Bible Interwoven
ANNA LEFTERATOU
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lefteratou, Anna, 1980– author.
Title: The Homeric centos : Homer and the Bible interwoven / Anna Lefteratou. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] | Series: Oxford studies in late antiquity series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022060579 (print) | LCCN 2022060580 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197666555 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780197666579 (epub) | ISBN 9780197666586
Subjects: LCSH: Eudocia, Empress, consort of Theodosius II, Emperor of the East, –460. Homerocentones. | Classical literature—Influence. | Homer—Influence. | Christian literature—Influence. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PA3972.E86 L44 2022 (print) | LCC PA3972.E86 (ebook) | DDC 883/.01—dc23/eng/20230320
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060579
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060580
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197666555.001.0001
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
3.
Acknowledgments
This book-length project was generously funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG/ Temporary Positions for Primary Investigators and warmly hosted by the Classics Department at Heidelberg University from 2016 to 2019. What began as an investigation of the “Classical Past and the Christian Future of Late Antique Christian Poetry, GZ: LE 3709/1–1” led to a much-needed monograph on the Homeric Centos. Michele Cutino and the GIRPAM group at the Faculté de Théologie Catholique/Strasbourg provided a stimulating environment for the final phase of the project. Like all journeys, this one was full of detours, hardships, surprises, separations, and reunions. Some people I must thank individually as this project would not have been possible without them. I am extremely indebted to Gianfranco Agosti, who has been enormously supportive of this project from its conception to the end, and who provided me—a newcomer to Late Antiquity in 2010—with a warm welcome. The study follows in his footsteps and would never have come to fruition without his year-long work on the poetry of the same era. I am also deeply thankful to Ewen Bowie, a teacher, mentor, friend, and meticulous reader of one of the earlier drafts of this book. I can merely hope that this one is an improvement over the first manuscript on the novels. I am also enormously grateful to Fotini Hadjittofi, Eftychia Stavrianopoulou, Helen van Noorden, Athanassios Vergados, and Anke Walter for their useful feedback, advice, and encouragement during various phases of the project. The completion of the manuscript would not have been possible without the support and proficiency of Irina Oryshkevich, who patiently “unpicked” my non-native prose and “rewove” it into idiomatic English while challenging me to think deeper about my argument. Needless to say, all remaining inaccuracies are my own. I have also had the pleasure to discuss Eudocia with Fran Middleton, who kindly shared with me a draft of her own excellent forthcoming monograph. My gratitude also extends to the engaged audiences at the Heidelberg Forschungskolloquium, the Cambridge Classics, and PWiP Seminars, and in Strasbourg, particularly to Claire Jackson, Thomas KuhnTreichel, Lea Nicolai, and Arianna Rotondo. Last but not least, I would like to thank Stefan Vranka, the editor of this series, for his support and patience during difficult times as well as the OUP reviewers for their helpful and extremely constructive feedback.
Parts of Chapters 1, 2, and 3 have been published previously as separate shorter articles: “Stitching with Homer. Contextualizing the Homeric Centos
within the Quotation Habit in the Imperial and Later Periods,” Byzantion 2019, 89: 331–58; “The Lament of the Virgin in the I Homeric Centos: An Early Threnos,” in The Genres of Late Antique Christian Poetry, ed. F. Hadjittofi and A. Lefteratou (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 275–92; “Deux chemins d’apprentissage: le didactisme dans les Centons homériques,” in Poésie, bible et théologie de l’Antiquité tardive au Moyen Âge (IVème-XVème s.), ed. M. Cutino (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 201–20. Meanwhile, three new books on Eudocia have appeared: an Italian translation of the centos with commentary by Rocco Schembra, Centoni Omerici: il Vangelo secondo Eudocia (Alessandria: dell’Orso, 2020); Brian Sower, In Her Own Words: The Life and Poetry of Aelia Eudocia (Cambridge, MA: Centre of Hellenic Studies/HUP, 2020); and Karl Olav Sandnes’ Jesus the Epic Hero (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2022) that tackles the poem from a theological perspective. Although library closures during the pandemic made it difficult to consult the first in a timely manner, I did have access to B. Sower’s book, which is almost identical to his 2008 dissertation without updated materials. I saw K. O. Sandnes’ manuscript too late in the editing process. While the research for this project was conducted mainly in Heidelberg, the manuscript was completed several years later, 871 km to its northwest, across the channel, in post-Brexit Cambridge. The text was polished between two residential moves and many hours of home-schooling in a third language. I dedicate this book on our tenth (plus one) anniversary to my partner Oleg Brandt, who has spent the past couple of years helping with parenting, listening patiently to all I had to say about Late Antiquity and Eudocia, and learning how to bake a lemon drizzle cake.
Abbreviations
For classical authors, see Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD4); for biblical authors, see mainly The SBL Handbook of Style2 by the Society of Biblical Literature and G. W. H. Lampe, occasionally adapted; for repeated authors, editions, and translations, see below. The translations of the Homerocentones is mine; other translations unless otherwise stated are also mine.
AAPil. Apocrypha Acta Pilati recensio A and B; Tischendorf, C. ed. 19872. Evangelia Apokrypha. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag; English translation by Schneemelcher, W. New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and Related Writings, vol. 1. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press; French translation by Bovon, F. & Geoltrain, P. 1997. Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard.
ACO Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum; Schwartz, E. & Straub, J. ed. 1914. Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, Berlin, Leipzig: de Gruyter.
ad Il. [Scholia, commentaries, etc.] on the Iliad
ad Od [Scholia, commentaries, etc.] on the Odyssey
AP Anthologia Palatina
Bas. Hex. Basilii Caesariensi Homiliae in Hexaemeron; Giet, S. ed. 1968. Basile de Césarée, Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron (SC 26). Paris: du Cerf.
C Contra
CCSG Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca
Chr. Pat. Christus Patiens; Tuilier, A. ed. 1969. Grégoire de Nazianze. La passion du Christ (SC 149), Paris: du Cerf.
CN Ausonii Cento/Carmen nuptialis; Green, R. ed. 1991. Ausonius. The Works of Ausonius. Oxford: Clarendon.
Comm. Commentary
CPr Cento Probae; text and English translation by Schottenius-Cullhed, S. 2016. Proba the Prophet. The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba. Leiden: Brill.
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
Cypr. Eudociae Augustae, De Sancto Cypriano, Ludwich, A. ed. 1897. Eudociae Augustae, Procli Lycii, Claudiani carminum Graecorum reliquiae, Leipzig: Teubner; see also the Italian translation by Bevegni, C. 2006. Eudocia Augusta: Storia di San Cipriano. Milano: Adelphi (with the additional verses).
Cyr. Alex. In Jo Commentary in John’s Gospel; Pusey, P. E. ed. 1872. Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini, in S. Joannis Evangelium. Oxford: Clarendon; English translation by Maxwell, D. R. & Elowsky, J. C. 2013. Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on John. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.
x Abbreviations
DIR De Imperatoribus Romanis (online) https://roman-emperors.sites.luc. edu / Leiden: Brill.
DJG Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels; Green, J. B., Brown, J. K. & Perrin N. ed. 2013. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Downers Grove, IL: IVP.
ELQ
Iuvenci Evangeliorum Libri Quattor; Marold, K. ed. 1866. C. Vettii Aquilini Iuvenci libre evangeliorum IIII. Leipzig: Teunber.
Ephr. Syr. Ephraem Syrus (in the CSCO series).
Eustath. ad Il. Eustathius ad Iliadem; van der Valk, M. ed. 1971–1987. Eustathii archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes, vols. 1–4, Leiden: Brill.
Eustath. ad Od. Eustathius ad Odysseam; Stallbaum G. ed. 1970. Eustathii archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, 2 vols. Leipzig: Weigel / Hildesheim: Olms.
Greg. Naz. Arc. Gregorii Nazianzeni, Poemata Arcana; text, commentary, and English translation by Moreschini, C. & Sykes, D. ed. 1997. Poemata Arcana by St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Oxford: Clarendon. h (Mythological and Christian) hymns.
HC Homerocentones; Schembra, R. ed. 2007. Homerocentones (CCSG) 62. Turnhout: Brepols.
I HC the first edition of Homeric Centos in Schembra 2007. See also the Italian translation and commentary by Schembra, R. ed. 2006. La prima redazione dei centoni omerici: traduzione e commento. Alessandria: dell’ Orso; Usher, M. D. ed. 1999. Homerocentones Eudociae Augustae. Lipsia: Teubner.
II HC the second edition of Homeric Centos in Schembra 2007. See also the Italian translation and commentary by Schembra, R. 2007b.
La seconda redazione dei centoni omerici: traduzione e commento
Alessandria: dell’ Orso; cf. also the French edition, translation, and commentary by Rey, A.-L. ed. 1998. Centons homériques. Paris: du Cerf.
HC a , HC b , HC c the three shorter editions of Homeric Centos in Schembra 2007.
HE Historia Ecclesiastica
Hes. Op. Hesiodi Opera et Dies; West, M. L. ed. 1976. Hesiod Works and Days. Edited with prolegomena and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon.
Hes. Theog. Hesiodi Theogonia; West, M. L. ed. 1966. Hesiod. Theogony. Edited with prolegomena and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon.
Hom. Homiliae (homiletic works).
Hom. Il. Homer, Iliad; Allen, T. W. ed. 1931. Homeri Ilias, vols. 2–3, Oxford: Clarendon; English translation by Lattimore, R. 20113 The Iliad of Homer. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Hom. Od. Homer, Odyssey; von der Mühll, P. ed. 1962. Homeri Odyssea, Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn; English translation by Lattimore, R. 20072
The Odyssey of Homer2. New York: Harper.
Abbreviations xi
Lampe Lampe, G. W. H. 1961. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon.
LSJ Liddell, H. F. & Scott, R. 19969. A Greek–English Lexicon. Revised and augmented throughout by H. S. Jones. Edited with Revised Supplement. Oxford: Clarendon.
Met. Pss. Ps.-Apollinarii, Metaphrasis Psalmorum; Faulkner, A. ed. 2020b. Metaphrasis Psalmorum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nonn. Par. Nonnus’ Paraphrasis; Scheindler, A. ed. 1881. Nonni Panopolitani
Paraphrasis S. Evangelii Ioannei. Lipsia: Teubner; English translation by Hadjittofi, F. forthcoming. ‘Nonnus of Panopolis: Paraphrase of the Gospel According to John’ in Collected Imperial Greek Epics, vol. 3, Kneebone E. & Avlamis P. ed. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.
NT New Testament; Nestle, E. & Aland, K. 196328. Novum Testamentum Graece. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; English translation follows NRSV = New Revised Standard Version English translation of the Old and New Testaments (Mt = Matthew, Mk = Mark, Lk = Luke, Jo = John).
OCD4 Hornblower, S., Spawforth, A., & Eidinow, E. 2012. Oxford Classical Dictionary Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Or. Sib. Oracula Sibyllina. For Books 1–2 see Lightfoot, J. L. ed. 2007. The Sibylline oracles: with introduction, translation, and commentary of the First and Second Books. Oxford: Oxford University Press; for Books 3–14 see Geffcken, J. ed. 1902. Die Oracula Sibyllina. Leipzig, Berlin: De Gruyter.
Orig. C. Cels. Origenes, Contra Celsum; Borret, M. ed. 1967–1976. Origène Contre Celse. 4 vols (SC 132, 136, 147, 150, 227). Paris: du Cerf.
PG Patrologia Graeca Cursus Completus. Series Graeca, 162 vols., Minge, J. P. ed. Paris 1857–1886.
Procl. Proclus Diadochus.
Procl. Const. Proclus’ of Constantinople, homilies, text and English translation by Constas, N. 2003. Proclus of Constantinople and the cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity. Leiden: Brill.
TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, online http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/. Irvine, CA.
Vis.D Visio Dorothei in Bodmer Papyrus 29; Kessels, A. H. M. & Van Der Horst, P. W. ed. 1987. “The Vision of Dorotheus (Pap. Bodmer 29): edited with introduction”. Vigiliae Christianae 41 (4): 313–59.
Unweaving Crossweave Poems
Patchwork Poetry
One of the best known “centos” of modern poetry lies undoubtedly at the end of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, 1922. At the work’s majestic apocalyptic closure, we read “What the Thunder said” followed by a series of literary fragments from which Eliot’s own poetry and aesthetics are crafted:
What the thunder said:
I sat upon the shore (423)
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins (430)
Why then I’ll fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
J. Weston, From Ritual to Romance, p. 38 ibid. ch. “The Fisher King” Is 38:1: “Thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live” Children’s nursery rhyme, My Fair Lady Dante, Purgatorio 26, 148 Pervigilium Veneris, 90 G. de Nerval, El Desdichado, 2
T. Kyd, The Spanish tragedie, Act 4 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad ibid.
The modern term for this kind of composition is “collage,” that is, a poem that composes from lines drawn from other poems, with or without interpolations, to make one’s “own.”1 Ultimately, both one’s “own” and the “borrowed” lines matter. Eliot’s command of his models, for example, is as important as the program of The Waste Land’s “interpolated” line 430, which summarizes the literary and aesthetic agenda of this allusive and highly reflexive work constructed out of fragments and ruins. These are expressed in the revelatory tone of the Upanishad, which, fused with both Isaiah and Dante’s Purgatorio, grant the poem its overarching sacred and apocalyptic character, while merging it with secular narratives, such as those of Nerval and Kyd, and even a child’s nursery rhyme. Deconstructed here is traditional religion, but not the quest for the spiritual. The poem reuses lines of texts that are emblematic of their mytho-religious and apocalyptic potential and plays with the reader’s intertextual and cultural expectations. Although not all of the poem’s parallel texts are immediately recognizable, the apocalyptic and prophetic tone
is nonetheless stark, not least because the quotes from the Bible and Dante’s Purgatorio belong to the classics of Western apocalyptic imagery and literature. Additionally, the lines drawn from Nerval and Kyd, even if not instantly discernible to all readers, nonetheless align the narrator of the poem (430) with legendary medieval figures and are bound together by the poem’s well-known nursery rhyme (426).
However, such cut-up techniques are used not only to recall grand themes. Excerption and reuse have usually thrived in parody. Compare, for example, the pastiche technique of T. S. Eliot’s finale to Thunder in the following short poem
What the Camel Said, 1948 entitled Pastitsio by Giorgos Seferis, the influential translator of The Waste Land into Modern Greek:
(contra, i.e., revisiting Eliot’s: shore) (echoes of erotic poetry—cf. apple)
N. Lapathiotis, Τα Σαββατόβραδα 1922 (contra: swallow—both birds are black) Anthologia Palatina 7.309
A. Melachrinos, Έξαρση ΙΙ.
ο μπαγάσας.
Evlendirelim. Nerede bulalim. Suradam buradan bulalim. Tamam Tamam Tamam (10)
I. Venezis, Aιολική γη, (Turkish) (Turkish “all is fine”; contra: Shantih)
By stitching together lines from other works, Seferis’ poem not only imitates Eliot’s technique in The Waste Land, but also parodies the poem by transposing it into a lighter, humorous register. Here Thunder does not speak; we no longer encounter a shore and a fallen Fisher King, but rather, in the Turkish refrain, a lazy camel driver in the aftermath of the 1922 catastrophe in Asia Minor. Seferis’ manner of appropriating the text resembles Eliot’s, but he uses it to parodic effect: subverting the lines of Lapathiotis’ elegy (which hint at the “loosening” of heartache) he endows them with sharp sexual connotations. At the same time, however, he relies on the line in Venezis’ novel to deepen the poem’s tone of the poem and allude to a popular theme in Greek literature, that of “lost homelands.”2 This nostalgia for a greater past combined with the pettiness of the present echo the stylistic differences not only between Seferis and his Greek models, but also between his Pastitsio and Eliot’s finale.
These two poems serve as examples of the ways in which authoritative religious and secular narratives are revisited and intertextual appropriations— at the level of thematic or literal quotation—prompts specific audience responses. On the one hand, Eliot’s poem shows that a detailed knowledge of
all intertexts is not a prerequisite for comprehending his poem’s medieval and apocalyptic under- and overtones. Lines from the Bible or Dante undoubtedly reveal something of The Waste Land’s poetic vision and serve as an overarching umbrella for the lesser known echoes in the poem. By contrast, the exoticism of the citations in Romance languages (427–429, Italian, Latin, French), the English archaisms (431), and the oracular tone of Sanskrit contribute to the revelatory texture of the base hypotexts.3 On the other hand, Seferis’ subversion of Eliot’s finale shows that the technique of verbatim quotation or “pastiche” can also be used to parodic ends. It also implies that intertextual appropriation differs from verbatim quotation. In his poem, Seferis does not quote a single line from The Waste Land. Instead, he transfers the text to another tonality,4 though The Waste Land remains the reader’s chief hypotext. The two poems prove that the technique can be used either in a part of a larger composition, as in the case of Eliot, or in a shorter work whose entirety it, as in that of Seferis, thereby indicating that the margin between technique and genre is narrower than commonly thought. They also reveal that the reader plays a crucial rule in identifying and generating meaning in poems constructed out of poetic fragments. Most importantly, the reclamation of key, culturally loaded hypertexts, such as the Bible, the Upanishads, or Dante by Eliot, and of Eliot along with Ilias Venezis by Seferis, are of primary importance to our understanding of both the religious/spiritual and worldly concerns of these poems. What traditional religion cannot offer to Eliot’s deconstructed and increasingly secularized world, Eliot’s poetry cannot offer to Seferis’ description either of the universe after the 1922 Destruction of Smyrna in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the Second World War.
The intertextual appropriation of culturally and religiously loaded texts, verbatim quotation, intergeneric dialogue, and audience response are all features important to the literary analysis presented in this book, which, in fact, is an unprecedented attempt to contextualize the First Edition of Homeric Centos (hereafter, I HC), a biblical epic in Homeric hexameter, within the cultural milieu of Late Antiquity and with a regard for its intellectual, literary, and religious aspects. Today, what today we call centos—κέντρωνες, or κέντρα—are poems, typically, though not exclusively Christian in content, which are composed with a technique that flourished from the third to the seventeenth century that evoked stitching, weaving, and needlework.5 Their authors draw lines chiefly from Virgil (in the Latin-speaking world) or from Homer (in the Greek-speaking world) to compose new poems, both secular and Christian, which are known as Virgilian and Homeric centos, respectively. Homeric Centos, the focus of this analysis, “are poems made up entirely of verses lifted verbatim, with, occasionally, only slight modification, from the Iliad and Odyssey.”6 Virgilian centos are ones with lines copied verbatim from the Aeneid, Georgics or Eclogues. Homeric
Cento refers to multilayered poems that are woven together with at least two interlinked strands: the “wrap,” the biblical theme of the poem, and the “weft,” the Homeric material reused to centonize the Bible, produce a composite textus, a Homerokentron
The Approach of this Book
Today, more than thirty-three years since the publication of Michael Roberts’s magisterial 1989 Jeweled Style, the number of studies on late antique poetry, both Christian and secular, has exploded. Although most of these have focused primarily on the Latin authors,7 some have also been devoted to the Greek ones, especially their chief representative, Nonnus of Panopolis.8 The time is thus ripe for re-contextualizing the first edition of Homeric Centos within the framework of Late Antiquity and re-evaluating it with an eye for the biblical poetry of that period.9 The present study aspires to examine the first and longest edition of the Homeric centos, which date roughly to the first half of the fifth century, to peel back the layers of its thick textual fabric and contextualize it within the literary and religious milieu of Late Antiquity. By unpicking and unweaving the poem’s Homeric and biblical strands,10 the present reading will show that the Homerocentones amount to a biblical poem representative of the late antique reception of Homer and biblical exegesis, and one which, intriguingly, reveals a distinct female focus.
To achieve its goals, the study combines traditional philological approaches11 with intertextual and narratological methodologies,12 taking into account gender13 and historico-cultural dimensions,14 which have been routinely examined in studies of late antique poetry but less so in cento poetry, especially the Homerocentones. The analysis it offered opts for a holistic reading of the I HC and opens new areas of study. On the one hand, in addition to Homer, namely the Iliad, the Odyssey, the book looks at the reception of Homer in Late Antiquity, both in and outside the classroom, and considers other important non-Homeric classical intertexts in the I HC, the most prominent of which being didactic poetry and drama. For this reason, each Homeric line is examined within its broader late antique context. On the other hand, the analysis goes beyond the biblical canon to examine the reception of the Old and the New Testaments in two consecutive chapters and surveys the impact of Christian exegesis of select passages, of the apocryphal literature, and visual/material culture (as per Roberts’ analysis) on the poem. It thus attempts to understand the challenges of versifying the Old as opposed to the New Testament, the differences in the poetic reception of the two Testaments, and the impact of the earlier Christian and the fifth-century dogmatic debates on the I HC.15 Moreover, the approach followed here examines the select passages with respect to Homer and the Bible not only
intertextually but also intratextually,16 thus illustrating both the poem’s seamless approach to its topic and its overarching poetic design. Finally, the present study considers from an intertextual and mainly gendered narratological perspective a selection of similar excerpts from the two major editions of the Homeric centos, the I HC and the II HC, and demonstrates the many possibilities that the Homeric text provided to those wishing to refashion biblical extracts which, in fact, is pivotal to our understanding of the exegetical and poetic aspirations of the I HC as well as its gendered focus and its possible attribution to the Empress Eudocia (401–460 CE).
Although the book draws on all the methodologies mentioned above, each of its chapters resort to those best suited to its focus on a particular topic, such as the reception of Homer, the depiction of women, or the intertextual and exegetical issues entangled in the transposition of the Old and the New Testaments into Homeric hexameter. Thus Chapter 1 (“Homerocentones Biblici”), for example, shows why the poem is no less Homeric than it is biblical, discusses the scholarship bias that has led to the I HC’s classification with Homeric rather than with biblical poetry, and scrutinizes arguments regarding its Homeric and biblical intertextuality. Shown here is how the I HC, albeit representing the conventional practice of Homeric reuse, goes beyond the classroom to echo the rhetorical and highbrow reception of the epics, but also displays a distinctive taste for particular books that were not part of the canon. Insofar as biblical is concerned, this chapter contextualizes one of the poem’s prefaces, the so-called Apologia by Eudocia, within the context of both late antique biblical verse—above and beyond the short-lived Edict of Julian17 and the gradual Christianization of pagan culture.18 In doing so, it argues that unlike other stark programmatic statements that expand on Christian motivation, the Apologia balances between Homeric style with biblical themes. Chapter 2 (“Mulierum virtutes”) discusses the female perspective of the poem by comparing the I HC to the II HC and providing indepth studies of their eminent female characters. Women, both idealized and not, it argues, are part of a re-oriented late antique religious and cultural focalization. While the first part of the chapter demonstrates the importance of women in the I HC vis-à-vis II HC, the second part examines the influence of Marian literature in general as well as its impact on elite women in the court of Theodosius II. In its conclusion, Chapter 2 revisits the poem’s Eudocian authorship. Chapter 3 (“De fructu lignorum”) focuses on two illustrative Old Testament topics in the Book of Genesis, the Creation and the Fall, and explores the exegetic and generic stance of the poem’s opening. The argument here is that that the poem begins in the didactic revelatory tone of the kind found in other hexametric revisions of Genesis, such as the Sibylline Oracles and Gregory’s dogmatic poems, that are part of a longer didactic Christian reception of Genesis. The didactic tone Old Testament subsides but is typologically revisited in the prelude to the Savior’s
incarnation, which, at the Homeric level is marked by a programmatic reuse of the two now interlaced Homeric proems: that of the Iliad’s for the Fall, and of the Odyssey’s for Christ’s soteriological agenda. Chapter 4 (“Crucifixus pro nobis”) tackles a New Testament theme, the narration of Christ’s passion. Its aim is to show how Homer was reworked to take into account the new Christian meaning of κλέος (“renown”) and heroism, as well as to illustrate the Christological stance of the I HC in a period marked by heated conflicts over dogma. Select allusions to Nonnus’ Paraphrasis of St. John’s Gospel, wherever relevant, indicate the difference in the I HC’s exegetical and aesthetic agenda and probably reveal a slight inclination toward a two-natures Christology.19 Finally, the study’s substantial conclusion (“Reweaving”) ravels together the various strands of the Homerocentones analyzed in the book and evaluates the poem within the cultural milieu of the first half of the fifth century.
1 Homerocentones biblici
centones apud grammaticos vocari solent, qui de carminibus Homer seu Vergilii, ad propria opera more centonario ex multis hinc inde compositis in unum sarciunt corpus, ad facultatem cuiusque materiae.
According to the grammarians, centos should be called [the poems] that in cento manner borrow [lines] from the poems of Homer or Virgil into their own and from many they stich them together into a single body, depending on the aptitude of the material.
Isidore, Etymologies, 1.39
With The Method of Eloquence Hermogenes instructs you, | what is collage and simultaneously what parody looks like | and states that both of these make orations sweeter. | Learn then what is a collage and also what is parody. | If you draw something from elsewhere and mix it in your speeches, | whether in prose, whether in verse, you should call this a collage. . . . As is the ingenious verse in Homeric Centos, | “he [Jesus] took on his left-hand Paul; and Peter [stone, ἑτέρηφι
Ιl. 16.734] on his right” Tzetzes, Chiliades 8.196, 94–100, 110–111.
In the sixth century, Isidore of Seville was acquainted with the definition of cento as a poetic patchwork of various strands from Homer or Virgil into a single poetic work (ex multis . . . in unum sarciunt) in the manner of cento (more centonario). In the twelfth century the erudite Ioannes Tzetzes could even distinguish
between collage and parody:1 parody he says is about tweaking the content, pastiche is about reuse. Although both are about reclaiming, the content, the effect is different. This is also what we observed in the earlier reuse of prior models in Eliot’s The Waste Land and Seferis’ revision in his Pastitsio. In paraphrasing the Hermogenic corpus Tzetzes uses examples from Oppian alongside the Homeric Centos, which shows his familiarity with a long tradition of reclaiming and rewriting. The definition of cento in Isidore’s sixth-century explanation, comes long after its first specimens first appeared, and Tzetzes’ theoretical underpinning even later. With the exception of Ausonius᾽ programmatic theorization of cento in his Carmen Nuptialis that will be discussed below, ancient grammarians while aware of what more centonario / κέντρωνος δίκη meant, they seldomly felt the need to provide a precise classification of it. Cento as a technique was part of the ancient audience’s culture of excerption, quotation, and reuse which applied both on the reception of Homer and of the Bible. It pointed to a closer yet not entirely different appropriation mode of culturally important works into new works and evolved around the same principles of imitatio, aemulatio, and variation, name creative imitation, competitive emulation, and inventive variation, of the classics.2 This chapter traces the evolution of Homeric centos into Biblical centos and examines the ancient audiences’, as opposed to that of the early modern editors’, reception of secular and Christian centos (Section 1.1), the techniques of excerpting and reusing Homer in the Empire (Section 1.2), and the apologetic motivation of the centonists within the context of classicizing Christian poetic production (Section 1.3) in Greek and Latin.
1.1 Ancient Centos
Those who have been working on the Homeric Centos since the turn of the millennium are fortunate to have at their disposal a well-established text far more complete than the earlier Teubneriana of the I HC in the Iviron 4464 manuscript used by Mark Usher and the still useful edition of the II HC in the Paris. suppl. gr. 388 manuscript edited by André-Louis Rey.3 It was Rocco Schembra who took on the Herculean task of meticulously editing all the available versions of the Homeric Centos: a long version referred to in Schembra as the first (Conscriptio Prima, I HC, 2354 lines); and a shorter one referred to as the second (Conscriptio Secunda II HC, 1948 lines); and three very short versions: Conscriptio A (HCa, 622 lines), Conscriptio B (HCb, 653 lines), and Conscriptio Γ (HCc, 738 lines).4 He has thus made available for further study a difficult and elusive text that had hitherto been poorly edited.5 Rey published the II HC in Paris. suppl. gr. 388 with a French translation as well as useful, albeit brief notes. The 1999 Teubner edition by Usher6 is based on Stephanus’ 1578 edition as well as a single manuscript from
the monastery of Iviron from Mt. Athos (Iviron 4464) that transmits only 1455 of the 2354 lines of the I HC in Schembra.7
Our modern perception of centos as a liminal category, both as excerption technique and also genre, emerge from their fate in the Byzantine and early modern transmission. The compilers of the Byzantine manuscripts edit the centos with the help of a variety of texts, which impacted their reception as either Homeric appendices or Christian poems. In Byzantine manuscripts they are inserted among a collection of epigrams (A),8 presented on their own (C, H), or combined with other works, both Christian (e.g., Psellos, Theodoret in X), and pagan (N, Ps.-Phocylides, Batrachomyomachia), and almost always together with the Homeric citations from which they are derived (A, M). The editio princeps of the I HC was published by Aldus Manutius in Venice between 1501 and 1504, thirty years after the first 1488 edition of Homer by Demetrius Chalcocondyles, and around the same time as the Aldine Homer of 1505. This testifies to the general humanist interest in classical antiquity, but surprisingly, as Rocco Schembra notes, Aldus Manutius published the I HC as an independent and autonomous work alongside other Christian poems, not as an appendix to the Homeric epics.9 These editions probably reflect influence of early modern Christian humanism.10 Thus, editors of the seicento printed the Homerocentones mainly alongside Christian works, such as Proba’s Cento and Nonnus’ Paraphrasis. 11 In the next century, the rise of scientific reasoning, the religious debates, and philological practice especially with respect to the Homeric Question, probably contributed to the “Homericization” of the Centos.12 Accordingly, from the 1617 Jacob Stoer edition onward,13 the Homerocentones were published as appendices to Homeric epics. In modern times, the 1999 edition of the I HC, which is the current Teubner, is Usher’s revision of Henricus Stephanus’ edition of 1578. The II HC has not been in the limelight. Edited in 1897 by Arthur Ludwich after an earlier version of 1893, it included only Eudocia’s works cum testimoniis14 as well as the fragmentary Blemyomachia 15. This overview of these early editions shows just how difficult it is to classify them as either Homeric or biblical poems. By contrast, for an ancient audience, centos were a malleable material, evocative of centuries of Homeric excerption and reuse practice, or even plagiarism, still firmly embedded in late antique poetics.16
1.1.1 The Matrix of Centos
The following is not an exhaustive analysis of the origins and development of cento poetry, nor does it aspire to analyze its elusive ancient or modern definitions, which have been treated excellently elsewhere.17 This concise summary focuses on the reception of centos from the ancient reader’s perspective.18
Rather than drawing up a history of ancient centos or offering a new definition, it will highlight their multifaceted characteristics, which, though not classified, would have been familiar to their late antique audiences, which would have reacted both positively and negatively to these experimental compositions. Ancient centos vary extremely in terms of both their themes and lengths, as well as their manner of engaging with their models.
Size-Contextualization: This can be compact, extending to a mere 131 lines, as in the case of the Carmen nuptialis, or long(er), like the I HC, which exceeds 2354 lines. Their size reflects on their contextualization. Centos may appear as stand-alone compositions, as in the examples above, or be embedded in prose works (i.e., prosimetrum), such as Petronius’ Satyricon 132, where they are 9 lines long, or in Dio Chrysostom’s Alexandrian Oration 32.82–84, where they are 38 lines long.19
Technique: Centos may be composed entirely out of borrowed verses or they may include interpolated verses by the author;20 they may be constructed from non-consecutive lines but occasionally quote three or more consecutive verses from the same passage;21 they—especially those labeled as Homeric, Virgilian, or Euripidean—may consist of lines borrowed from a single author, or may draw on various authors, such as the cento described in Lucian’s Symposium (17), which incorporated Homeric, Pindaric, Anacreontic, and Hesiodic verses!22 If drawn from the same author they usually allude to a variety of works by this author and not a single poem.
Themes-Genre: These can be mythological or Christian—parodic, as in the case of Ausonius’ Carmen nuptialis, subversive but serious, as in that of Hosidius Geta’s Medea or Alcesta, but also Christian such as Proba’s Cento or the Homerocentones. Although the centos usually allude to the genre from which they derive their lines because of their theme, their generic stance is not solely epic, narrowly conceived. The source of the borrowed lines also had an impact on their generic appeal, as in the case of the didactic Georgics, for example, which “constitute a leading reminiscence” in the recasting of Genesis in Proba’s Cento 23 Similarly, the “dramatic” parts of the Aeneid and especially the tragically fashioned Dido underscore Hosidius’ dramatic and dialogic cento Medea. 24 Indeed, the Aeneid was by intention an “intergeneric pyrotechnic.”25 By contrast, Homeric centos draw lines only from the archaic Homeric epic, which, at first sight, appears a less promising and versatile source. Despite the lack of versatility of the Homeric intertext, its reuse in the I HC shows that it could be adapted to a generic and multifarious reworking of epic poetry, as we shall see in the didactic and dramatic echoes in it.
The surviving Christian centos are slightly more homogenous than their counterparts inspired by mythology. They tend to be poetic transpositions of biblical texts into both prose and meter rather than “invented” poems,26 while they
are not paraphraseis of specific texts either, as for example Nonnus’ Paraphrasis of St John’s Gospel or the Metaphrasis of the Psalms attributed to Apollinaris of Laodicea. Proba’s Virgilian Cento, for example, recounts Genesis and the canonical Gospels; the I HC, in turn, is comprised of translations in verse of parts of Genesis and important passages from the canonical and apocryphal gospels. Christian centos are classicizing poems that belong to the burgeoning genre of classicizing poetry that often (but not solely) drew on biblical texts.27 The content of biblical centos varies: both Proba’s Cento and the I HC include narrations of the Fall, the plan for Salvation, and the incarnation, ministry, passion, and Resurrection of Jesus, while other editions of the Homeric Centos omit Genesis and diverge significantly in the choice of and length of passages, especially with respect to Jesus’ miracles they chose to narrate. We know that by the fifth century, epic poetry—including centos—was composed in writing28 and performed orally.29 The lack of book sections and the emphasis on self-contained episodes in the Homeric Centos based on Gospel pericopes, highlighted for example by typical introductory lines about the coming of dawn or the arrival of another suppliant, as we shall see in Section 1.2.1.3, also betray the late antique taste for shorter epyllion-like sections even within larger epic compositions that could be performed in different time frames.30 Late Antiquity is famous for its penchant for variation, ποικιλία, which, prima facie, may seem antithetical to the formularity of Homeric epics, especially since the author of the I HC was probably a near contemporary of Nonnus, whose magnum opus, the Dionysiaca, is the epitome of poikilia. 31 Yet as I will show below, even when reusing the standard Homeric constituents, such as Homeric verses and type scenes, these poems are not archaic but late antique poetic compositions. This is because of their peculiar relation to their source inspiration texts, Homer and the Bible. The transposition of a biblical story into cento poetry simply added to the layers of intertextuality inherent in the technique. The cento poem thus stands in dialogue with both the texts (Homer or Virgil) that offer it verses for re-composition and their ancient reception, as well as its theme text (the Bible) and its exegesis. Albeit a transposition, the recomposed cento poem is, in fact, a new poem, endowed with its own intertextual affiliations and poetic and aesthetic aspirations.32 This complex intertextual entanglement and the interplay between tradition, imitation, and innovation lie at the core of cento poetics and are typical of late antique poetry in general, and of cento poetry in particular.
In a seminal article, Klaus Thraede coined the useful terms Usurpation and Kontrastimitation to denote modes of adapting a verse into a new context. In the case of Usurpation, reused lines are adapted to fit a new Christian context without highlighting that adaptation. In that of Kontrastimitation, the “original” line or set of lines are used to emphasize the disparity between themselves and the new content, and often to suggest the superiority of the Christian vis-à-vis
the pagan reading.33 The perception of these nuances, however, required a more or less close knowledge of the original text.34 These texts were crafted from the currency of Graeco-Roman paideia35 and addressed to those who shared it. While adaptations, deployed either as imitationes and/or as aemulationes, are found throughout ancient literature of various periods and diverse genres, Late Antiquity provided fertile ground for the consolidation of this extreme technique of literary reuse and appropriation.36 Such self-conscious and highlighted interchange between old and new illustrates the “cumulative aesthetic” of Late Antiquity that also dominated material culture.37 According to Jaś Elsner this cumulative aesthetic consisted of “a kind of creative syncretism of collected fragments . . . an ‘aesthetics of discontinuity’ or ‘dissonant echoing’ in which the different fragments are synthesized in a dense and textured play of repetition and variation: not only do the seams show, but they are positively advertised.”38 The Arch of Constantine is probably the most expressive imperial monument constructed out of architectural re-semanticized spolia evidence either of continuity and/or discontinuity—in a new context. The repurposing of pagan temples and their transformation into churches is another: for example, the Temple of Aphrodite in Aphrodisias was thoroughly disassembled and all its materials reassembled to build the new Christian basilica. Similarly, with its Kontrastimitation and Usurpation of classical and biblical narratives, the late antique cento too participates in the self-conscious adaptation of the past to new ends.39
At the intertextual level, and when seams do show, while being fully aware that more nuanced terms have been proposed to differentiate between the levels of allusive engagement,40 I have opted against inventing a new metalanguage specifically adapted to the needs centonic compositions. Certainly, lines drawn verbatim from an original have a closer intertextual relationship with their “source.” However, overemphasizing the debt of the Homerocentones to Homer risks reading the poem as a compilation of Homeric formulae and downplay the centos’ biblical and late antique context. For example, Usher wrote his 1998 monograph in a time when the Parryan paradigm was still reverberating in Homeric studies: formulae were an important ingredient of archaic oral composition and the focal point of scholarly analysis.41 Academic interest recently has moved beyond formularity and oral composition, even in Homeric studies,42 and centers instead on the conscious citation and repetition of earlier text. On the other hand, the toolkit of intertextuality, especially when applied from its application on Latin literature with its strong emulative tint, may prove less detailed for the study of centos and partially assert their mythological rather than biblical models.43 The amalgamation of a highly literary culture, the constrains of oral performance, and above all the intercultural and interreligious dialogue detected in Christian epic verse in Late Antiquity encourage holistic approaches
to this kind of poetry. Taking, for example, a departure from Ausonius’ or Proba’s centonic compositions, with their abundance of self-reflexive material that I discuss below, may bias the expectations of a reader of Homeric centos. I have tried instead to read the Homerocentones as a classicizing Homeric-inspired poem, similar to Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica and Nonnus’ Dionysiaca. It may be that some centos invite more precise metalanguage than others, in particular when these include more nuanced para- and meta-textual remarks.44 However, not all centos are equally articulate about their authors or compositional technique. Furthermore, the plurality of centonic themes and excerption techniques discussed above advise against a strict categorization. Centos are a flexible category and addressing them as a specific field of late antique poetry may underplay their contribution to the larger corpus of late epic poetry.
This study is based on the hypothesis that an ancient audience would have read/heard a cento and a non-cento poem alike, aware of the more demanding intertextual intricacies but nonetheless familiar with similar decoding interand intra-textual approaches. While acknowledging the more theoretical scholarly contributions, I will instead use the more standard terminology in classics for denoting intertextual relations so as not to prioritize the relationship of the hypotext (Homer) with the hypertext (I HC) to the detriment of other possible models. For exact references to specific verses and passages, I use the term “allusion”; for less concrete but still text-based reminiscences, I use the term “intertext”; broader evocations of other texts and themes I label “echoes” or “reminiscences”; for references that allude to genre as well, I use the term “intergeneric”; for formulae-related textual reminiscences, I use the term “interformularity”; while for allusions within the same text I use the term “intratextuality.”45 I also retain the terms Usurpation and Kontrastimitation proposed by Kurt Thraede to illustrate the relationship of the hypertext, while acknowledging the cento poem’s less than binary relation with its hypotext, as argued by Aaron Pelttari.
Should a comprehensive definition of the cento technique be necessary, then the following may serve as a preliminary definition. Cento is a late antique technique for composing chiefly literary/artistic works or poems out of phrases/lines borrowed verbatim from one or more earlier “model” poems, sometimes with the addition of consecutive or interpolating lines of the author’s own composition. The range of possible combinations and the reuse of the cento material to serve a variety of ends (depending on length, theme, source material, and intended genre, differences in quotation practice), suggest an intertextual complexity that is characteristic of the cumulative poetics of Late Antiquity and illustrate the taste for challenging, multi-layered and open-ended texts among readers of the time. Christian centos adapt prose texts from the biblical canon and beyond (including apocryphal narratives and biblical prose commentaries)
to the cento technique by borrowing lines from earlier, non-Christian highbrow poetry. The cultural milieu of Late Antiquity thus encouraged a reading of Christian Homeric centos through the lens of literary spoliation: these poems are full of archaic and historically and culturally loaded verses that have been detached from their original sources, which are nevertheless recognizable in the new whole, thereby reflecting the tradition of the classicizing Christian poetry of the period. As we shall see, late antique testimony on centos lays particular stress on the multi-layered readings that cento poems enable.
1.1.2 Ancient Audiences
Ancient audiences were well acquainted with the ideas of verbatim quotation, direct borrowing, and reuse. Recent scholarship on the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite shows that the poem—formulaic as it may be—revisits lines of the Iliad.46 Furthermore, quotation thrives in satire and comic revision: Aristophanes puts together lines that he draws from famous dramatists and mixes with his own,47 while the Satyricon includes a poem constructed out of Virgilian lines48 that are interpolated into the prose narrative. Working in a more serious vein, Chariton of Aphrodisias combines two lines describing Helen and Penelope in his own description of Callirhoe as the faithful yet fatefully beautiful heroine of his novel.49 These techniques of re-appropriation paved the way for subsequent antique centos, though the theorization of the cento technique did not occur until much later. This early evidence of its use nonetheless illustrates the response anticipated from the audience: Aristophanes’ spectators, for example, were expected to grasp these allusions (at least in terms of style and meter), even if they were unable to pinpoint the exact source of the quote. The ability to do so would become easier from the Hellenistic era onward due to the systematization of the Graeco-Roman educational system, which encouraged the re-use of classical literature and poetry, in particular (e.g., excerpts from Homer, Euripides, and Menander), in the writing, arguing, performance, and discussion of complex philosophical, moral, political, or aesthetic issues. Yet though the school system encouraged the memorization, copying, and quotation of canonical poems, there was no technical term for a poetic composition of this kind. All the same, the audience’s acquaintance with the aforementioned quoting techniques indicates that ancient hearers and readers knew at least their Homer or Virgil by heart.50
The terms later used to designate the procedure of extracting a Homeric line and reusing it in another epic are κέντρον, κέντρων, or cento. The Greek noun τὸ κέντρον means anything with a pointy edge (e.g., a goad, spear, sting, instrument of torture, pin, or needle); the masculine noun ‘ὁ κέντρων᾽, used in the common Byzantine phrase κέντρωνος δίκην or in Latin “more centonario” (“composed in
the manner of a cento”), denotes something or someone bearing the marks of the κέντρον. This could be an animal, a human (slave), or a patchwork of elements, often composed of textiles, such as rags, or even a poetic compilation. The Latin cento is first used by Plautus in his Epidicus 455 as a literary metaphor for a patchwork and is part of a longer tradition that metapoetically associates weaving with poetry. Beginning with Penelope’s and Helen’s famous looms, and continuing with the Ps.-Aristotelean Peplos, a prose work that brings together heroic epitaphs,51 and the quilt imagery of Clement’s Stromateis (“Patchwork”)52 and Optatian’s textile artwork, and even Theodoret’s dialogue Eranistes, alluding precisely to its mix-match nature, centos have long been associated with fabric, with textus and texere, a metaphor used both by male and female poets.53
It is late in the second century that centonic poems begin to be more widely attested. Irenaeus of Lyon, for example, writes a short cento on the twelfth labor of Hercules by reusing several Homeric lines to exemplify the misunderstandings that emerge from the pastiche quotation of the Bible by—in his view “heretical”— exegetes.54 Tertullian, in turn, turns to a (mythological) cento to illustrate the way in which exegetes of the Bible misinterpret its contents.55 Although Irenaeus and Tertullian seem to use the cento as an analogue for misuse and misreading,56 by the late fourth and early fifth century, Jerome appears to be disturbed by the fact that biblical misinterpretation resembles centonic pastiche and that some exegetes are interpolating Virgilian or Homeric lines to support their interpretation. Even Virgil and Homer, if deployed accordingly could be considered as evoking a Christian message. This, he claims, runs the risk, especially in the understanding of the uneducated masses who are incapable of recognizing the degree of textual reuse, manipulation, and distortion that is inevitable in this kind of literary practice.57 Jerome’s argument is more subtle than that of his predecessors in that it differentiates between technique (pastiche), content (intended Christian meaning/exegesis), and misinterpretation (secular poetry used for exegesis).58
Another characteristic approach is that of the historian Socrates, who, in discussing Julian’s School Edict in June 362, reports that the Emperor has found worthy opponents in the two Apollinarii, father and son,59 as their work offers evidence of the reverse phenomenon, namely, the stylistic classicization of Christian poetry, and insists that training in classical paideia ought to be used for similar apologetic ends.60 Sozomen, probably writing after Socrates in the mid-fifth century, by which time Christian poetry had already been more successfully classicized, seems more open to the form.61 Although neither author mentions cento poems in his history, both refer to revisions of biblical texts in hexameter, among other meters, while Sozomen reports that Apollinaris, emulating Homer’s rhapsodies, transposed the Ἑβραϊκὴν ἀρχαιολογίαν62 into 24 books. Socrates’ critique is in a vein similar to Jerome’s, a warning against excess. Sozomen, by contrast, betrays a fondness for these virtuoso revisions, and, interestingly, comments on the readerly
habitus and subsequent expectations: as he points out, people are used to reading heroic epic in hexameter, but not the Acts in the guise of Platonic dialogues.63 In sum, what all these theologians and historians seem to worry about is the danger (though, for some, like Sozomen, this means the excitement) that arises from the aesthetic reclamation and re- or misinterpretation of earlier poetry by the average (more or less, incompetent) reader due to their limited deductive abilities.64
In fact, the complexities of such a kind of poetry, as Aaron Pelttari wonderfully highlights, are typical of the versatility and intelligence expected by late antique audiences, which were challenged by these open, fluid texts. As the cento was theorized only later, its aims and techniques in an earlier period can be deduced solely from the poems themselves, with Ausonius as the chief example. The famous passage in his Preface to Carmen nuptialis defines the cento as a ludic, witty, and unserious work, written as a pastime, and ridicules as inept the poet who draws more than two consecutive lines from the “source” poem. One may recall here Seferis’ parodytransposition of Eliot’s poem to a “lighter” tonality. This much-quoted definition of the cento, elegant as it is, does not hold true for all late antique centos or even those by Ausonius, most probably because the two-line limit was already a challenge.65 It is particularly inapplicable to Christian centos, which include programmatic prefaces and proems that, as we shall see, contain information on the style, aesthetics, and ideological motives of classicizing poetry, but show less concern for Ausonian duos. Sozomen’s testimony, however, demonstrates the popularity of classicizing poetry in the fifth century as well as its highly experimental quality, of which centos are probably among the most adventurous specimens. Certainly Christians may have known of earlier biblical hexametric poetry, such as that of the Hellenistc Jewish poets Theodotus and Philo cited in Eusebius Evangelical Preparation 9.22 nad 37. But cento was more daring. Isidore of Seville defines the cento in the seventh century and shows an awareness of the difficulties of adapting Homer and Virgil.66 In the eighth century, the grammarian Heliodorus defines the noun “ὁ κέντρων” as a song-patchwork (ἑρραμένην ᾠδήν) associated to a wrap (περιβόλαιον) in his scholia on the first-century Dionysius Thrax, offering as an example his own six-line Homeric cento—a poem on Echo’s alleged words to Pan when fleeing. According to this commentator, cento is related, but not identical to the rhapsody, which he uses as an overarching term for poetic compositions that involve making wholes out of parts.67 A later scholiast on Aristophanes’ Clouds defines “κέντρων” as a rag used for saddling donkeys, a meaning also found in the tenth-century Suda lexicon.68 In the second half of the twelfth century, Eustathius goes so far as to formulate a fascinating anachronism; noticing the formulaic character of Homeric poetry, the erudite bishop—perhaps to the surprise of the modern, but not ancient Homeric scholar—concludes that it is like a textile, stitched together from various lines by talented seamstresses—rhapsodes and centonists alike—who have “woven” the various threads together (ῥάπτω + ᾠδή) into a poetic whole.69
As centos were popular throughout the Middle Ages (even the sister and namesake of Eudocia, the sister of Empress Zoë Porphyrogenita, is credited with writing one) and beyond, Eustathius’ observations are important for the modern scholar, primarily for their information on the practice of Homeric centos in his time.70 Although he claims that centos did not exist in Homer’s era (τὰ ὕστερον Ὁμηρόκεντρα), he emphasizes the continuity between the archaic bard and the cento poet. Surprisingly, Eustathius does not even mention the Christian content of centos, which was presumably unproblematic in his own time, as opposed for the poem’s modern editors. For Eustathius writing in a period of early Humanism the biblical poems are part of an ongoing and seamless rhapsodic tradition with a “Homeric” touch that adds to their stylistic appeal, thus coming a long way since Irenaeus’ earlier denigration. Homer is part of the scholar’s paideia, and centos happen to be one of its seams.
1.2 Homeric Centos
When a cento poet was faced with the task of transposing the Bible into Homeric hexameter, they were backed by a long tradition of Homeric reception.71 Far from randomly stitching together “relevant” Homeric lines “from memory,” the selection of suitable lines for centos required a long process of reading, painstaking memorization,72 excerption, quotation, and commentary (on) the poet, traces of which can be found in both pagan and Christian texts from the Imperial era onward.73 Although not all lines used in Homeric centos are drawn from prominent passages, most of those used to frame the re-composed Gospel would arguably have been recognizable to the readers of the time due to the importance of Homer to the elites and their shared paideia. Studying with a grammatikos, their children would have learned to read and copy Homeric “maxims,” that is, lines with gnomic and didactic content.74 They would also have consulted a plethora of dictionaries, glossaries, anthologies, and mythographical handbooks that facilitated the reading/teaching and memorization of the epics. Some lines, such as several gnomae, 75 would also have been available in other media and used in non-Homer-related contexts, such as proverbs, for example. Others were granted a second life after being counted among models for rhetorical genres in the progymnasmata, demonstrating, as Rafaella Cribiore suggests, the entanglement of poetry and rhetorical prose and the importance of Homer to high and late imperial declamation.76 In short, thorough knowledge of Homeric and Homericizing language and style, shared between the poet and his/her audience, enabled the deciphering and appreciation of the “new” cento poem.
One of the most characteristic examples of this kind, undeservedly omitted from most discussions of Christian centos, is Dio’s speech to the Alexandrians,
