LOEB IS ALL YOU NEED -- COLLUTO -- Il ratto d'Elena -- Discovered by Cardinal BESSARION in Calabria -- Editio princeps: VENEZIA, 1505.

Speranza

According to the Suda, Coluthus, often Colluthus, of Lycopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid, was an epic poet writing in Greek, who flourished during the reign of Anastasius I (491-518).

The Suda adds that he was the author of a Calydoniaca in six books, doubtless an account of the Calydonian boar hunt, Persica, an account of the Persian wars, and Encomia, or laudatory poems.

These four books are all lost.

 

But his one poem in 394 hexameters, "Il ratto d'Elena", is still extant, having been discovered by Cardinal Bessarion in Calabria.

 

The poem, described in 1911 as "dull and tasteless, devoid of imagination, a poor imitation of Homer, and having little to recommend it except its harmonious versification, based upon the technical rules of Nonnus",  has been more recently evaluated as a "short and charming miniature epic".

 

It relates the history of Paris and Helen from the wedding of Peleo and Thetis down to the elopement and arrival at Troy.

 

The first printed edition was by Aldus Manutius, Venice, possibly in 1505.[3]

Early editions by John Daniel van Lennep (1747, the first critical edition, collating six mss.), G.F. Schafer (1825), E. Abel (1880) and W. Weinberger (Teubner, 1896), have been superseded by that of Enrico Livrea (1968).

The best manuscript of this difficult and corrupt text is the so-called Codex Mutinensis -- CODICE DI MODENA -- (Bibliothèque National suppl. graec. 388) which Hall, Companion to Classical Texts, p. 278, says "was never at Modena but was brought by the French in the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th century from somewhere in North Italy".

 

Notes

 

1.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Chisholm 1911, p. 748.
2.Jump up ^ Jasper Griffin, 2010, 'Greek Epic' in Catherine Bates, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Epic, p. 28.
3.Jump up ^ Mair 1928, p. suggested probably about 1521.
4.Jump up ^ Livrea, Colluto: il Ratto d'Elena (Bologna).

Critical text, introduction, critical apparatus, Italian translation, commentary and parallels.

 

References:

Griffin, Jasper (2010). "Greek Epic". In Bates, Catherine. The Cambridge Companion to the Epic. Cambridge University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-521-70736-7.
Mair, A. W. (1928). Oppian, Colluthus and Tryphiodorus, with an English translation. London/New York: William Heinemann/Putnam’s.

AttributionPublic Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Coluthus". Encyclopædia Britannica 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 748.

 

Online text 1: Colluthus, Rape of Helen translated by A.W. Mair, 1928 at Theoi Project
Online text 2: Colluthus, Rape of Helen translated by A.W. Mair, 1928 at Elfinspell
 

 

 

Categories: Late Antique writers
Byzantine poets