The ‘Gallus papyrus’: a new interpretation

Abstract

The elegiac lines inPQasrlbriminv. 78–3–11/1 (L/2), first edited and ascribed to Gallusby R. D. Anderson, P. J. Parsons and R. G. M. Nisbetin 1979, raise a number of major problems of interpretation yet to be resolved. As is now well known, the papyrus fragment contains nine fairly well-preserved lines: first a pentameter, followed by two quatrains each composed of two elegiac couplets; the two quatrains are carefully marked off from each other and from the lines which preceded and followed them by a pair of signs which have defied interpretation; another such sign can be seen to have marked a similar separation between groups of lines in the next column of the papyrus. One might think that the sets of lines thus marked off were quite separate epigrams, or perhaps excerpts from longer poems, for they are concerned with separate, indeed discrepant, topics – the naughtiness of Lycoris, the morale-boosting effects of Caesar's forthcoming successes, the love-poet's fearless stance before his critics – and they do not seem prima facie to follow logically after one another. However, various unmistakable verbal and thematic connections between them have rightly been pointed out by Nisbet. So what is this sequence of related verses and why is it set out in this way?