Phoenix’s Daughter (Anacreontea 54w) Volume 10 - Issue 5

Francoise Létoublon*

• Department of Greek Language and Literature, University of Grenoble Alpes, France

Received: April 26, 2025;   Published: May 08, 2025

Corresponding author: Francoise Létoublon, Department of Greek Language and Literature, University of Grenoble Alpes, France

DOI: 10.32474/JAAS.2025.10.000348

 

Abstract PDF

Abstract

Among the Anacreontea [1], recognising that the short poem 54 is not at all a chef d’oeuvre, I would like to show that it still may be interesting to look at such minor works so that we may understand better the whole cultural context and traditon from which they come. This poem is a particularly convincing illustration of Simonides’ definition of poetry and painting compared to each other, [2] and it is a kind of model for studying the strong relation existing in Antiquity since the Archaic period between poetry, art and art description. We will try to study the poetic genre and tradition it belongs to and the cultural context around it

Introduction

This short poem of 10 verses was once thought as Anacreon’ work since Henri Estienne’s first publication in 1554, which remained influential in the XVII and XVIIIth centuries [3]. It is now published among the Anacreontea as poem 54. It shows us a description of an image —it is impossible to say if the poet is thinking of a painting or of a sculpture— with a mythological subject easy to identify as the “Rape of Europa,” though the heroine’s proper name is not explicitly uttered. We will try to show that this omission is probably intended, in the idea that the reader will be pushed to ask himself who she is, and thus to silently solve this enigma, relying on her/his mythological culture.

We will study the poem and compare it as well to other pieces in literature that may be related to it, for instance possible sources, and to works of art that might provide examples that the poet may or might have seen. This study will allow to open a window on the reciprocal relations between art and literature —their relations may even turn to competition, which the Italian tradition called paragone [4] — and of both to ideology. Those relations imply some hypotheses on the period from which the poem may stem or to which it may belong.

The poem [5]

Anacreontea 54W tr. P.A. Rosenmeyer (1992: 251)

Ὁ ταῦρος οὗτος ὦ παῖ This bull here, my boy,

δοκεῖ τις εἶναί μοι Ζεύς, seems to me to be an image of Zeus,

φέρει γὰρ ἀμφὶ νώτοις for he carries on his back

Σιδωνίαν γυναῖκα. the Sidonian woman;6

περᾶι δὲ πόντον εὐρὺν, he traverses the wide sea,

τέμνει δὲ κῦμα χηλαῖς. And cuts the waves with his hoofs.

Οὐκ ἂν δὲ ταῦρος ἄλλος No other bull,

ἐξ ἀγέλης ἐλασθεὶς driven away from the herd,

ἔπλευσε τὴν θἀλασσαν, would float across the ocean,

εἰ μὴ μόνον ἐκεῖνος. If he were not that one alone.

Let us first note the main characteristics of the style and poetic diction.

The first verse shows the subject of the poem, not a bull but “the” bull, determined with the article Ὁ ταῦρος and the deictic demonstrative οὗτος, frequent in such ecphrastic pieces [7]. As E. J. Bakker (1999: 6) showed for Homeric language, οὗτος is a “second-person demonstrative”, or implies a “hearer-oriented deixis” that situates its referent in relation to the addressee rather than the speaker, in contrast with the first-person demonstrative ὅδε. The poetic language-habits of our poet seem very close to this use. The use of ἐκεῖνος in the end of the poem —as its very last word actually– might then refer to “this famous god”, the highest of Greek pantheon, with a laudative value. The poetic ego who is speaking has taken for himself the identification of the bull as Zeus, as the first-person pronoun μοι in verse 2 indicates, but at the end of the poem, he uses the most remote of the demonstratives, perhaps because the bull seems to be going away from the here and now of the situation.

The use of the vocative ὦ παῖ then introduces a fictive addressee [8], a young child, a boy rather than a girl [9]. A paederastic interpretation is possible, though not absolutely explicit [10]. By itself, the vocative implies an imaginary dialogue, where the speaker is either a master or an erastes, and the addressee either a young pupil, a slave or else the beloved (eromenos). Both of the characters are supposed to look together at the piece of art described. Thus, the poem itself in this implicit dialogue opening looks like the answer to a question posed by the addressee before the first line.

In verse 2, δοκεῖ τις εἶναί μοι implies the subjective impression of the poet who is looking at an image, but does not convey more information on his or her person: we know neither the name nor the genre of the poet, though the traditional attribution to Anacreon implies the interpretation of a poem composed by a male poet, as said in the former remark.

Then φέρει γὰρ introduces in verse 3 the explanation of this subjective impression, as is usual in a good amount of ecphrastic poems: in his edition, Martin West quotes a parallel in Philostratus which may refer both to the apostrophe and to the explicative sentence [11].

As West also remarked, πόντον εὐρὺν and τέμνει δὲ κῦμα remind us Homeric formulas, but it is necessary to be more accurate: for πόντον εὐρὺν, Homer actually uses the same syntactic association, in a different formula, εὐρέα πόντον (see Il. 9/72), whereas εὐρύν and πόντον themselves occur together, but in a larger context of two different verses, for instance Od. 5.303-304.

Where εὐρύν qualifies οὐρανόν in a very frequent formula, and

πόντον stands without any qualification). Therefore, although one cannot consider

εὐρύν π όντον a proper Homeric formula, it has a rather Homeric tone. For

τέμνει δὲ κῦμα, it is actually more close to Od. 13.88 5 κύματ᾽ ἔταμνεν (scil. νηῦς). Those phrases might count as poetic variations on traditional formulas or expressions.

The core of the poem is surely in verse 4 Σιδωνίαν γυναῖκα, referring to the or a (no article) “Sidonian woman”, without her proper name: more or less in the middle of the poem, this periphrasis reminds at first sight the Homeric epithets for heroes and gods, such as those magistrally studied by Milman Parry in his Parisian thesis [12], for instance πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς, πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς, ἀργυρόπους Θέτις or βαρύκτυπος Ζεύς.

Let us note that in Homer, those formulas seem to characterize the heroes as individuals and they are not normally enigmas, whether the proper name is explicit or not [13]. Here, the formulaic association of an ethnic adjective with the common name γυναῖκα entirely stays instead of the proper name, leading the reader (and first the pai addressed in verse 1) to ask himself: who is this Sidonian woman travelling on a bull’s back? This use might therefore be compared to the Hellenistic taste for enigmatic expressions, the best example known to us being the Alexandra by Lycophron: this poem is very largely staged as a long epic suite of enigmas, beginning with the title itself [14]: we will come back to this point later. It may also be noted that the epigrammatic genre the poem seems close to most often entails a pun, sometimes coming from an enigma.

We consider Σιδωνίαν γυναῖκα as a kind of Homeric formula for the association of an ethnic epithet with a name, taking the place of a proper name. But this formula does not actually occur in Homer where, concerning the same heroine, we find rather Φοίνικος κούρη, as will be seen further (Il. 14.321, schol. to Il. 5.629, see also Hes. Cat. 141.7, Bacch. Dith. 3.31-2) [15]. We suggest that the poet plays here with the various possibilities his reader is waiting for, and substitutes a kind of “new formula” instead of the traditional one, as do often poets like Sappho, or Apollonios Rhodios, to refer only to some well-known examples.

The question of the identity of the woman comes to mind first, but the reader may also ask why this woman seems immediately recognized as Sidonian or Phoenician: we may suppose that Phoenician women’s clothes were different enough in Antiquity from Greek ones for an immediate identification at first look, though the images we know do not show peculiarities in Europe’s wearings.

Thus far, we looked at the peculiar poem for itself, with specific elements of comparison to other Greek texts. We have now to analyse the type of the description and the works known in Greek art that may have given a point of departure for the poem – of course, the poet may have imagined on his own an image he did not actually see: the ekphrasis in Greek literary tradition developed greatly in the Hellenistic period and later developed even further in the movement called the ‘Second Sophistic’ [16].

The Ekphrasis

The woman on the bull is seen in movement, maybe from behind [17]. The vision is both dynamic and paradoxical, since this animal is not usually seen with women on his back, even less swimming in the sea.

The poem presents the description as if the bull was seen first, then only the woman on his back. Anyway, she is the element that leads to identify the bull as Zeus: a bull on the sea with a woman on his back cannot be a normal bull, but Zeus as a bull, as said in the last four verses with the negative hypothesis introduced by οὐκ ἄν with the aorist ἔπλευσε, the usual form for indicating the unreal in Greek.

The pun in the poem resides of course in this paradox of a bull swimming in the wide sea: we may infer from this explicitely mentioned detail that in Antiquity, the images showing this scene implied the same paradox, as a visual paradox, even when the sea is not formally depicted. It may be noted, however, that in later representations such as mosaics in the Roman empire, the paradox is frequently shown through a marine thiasos of Naiads, Nereids and sea- animals such as dolphins, fishes etc. [18].

A lot of representations are in fact known in Greek art of a bull with a woman on its back that the specialists identify as the Rape of Europa by Zeus, though some of them might also be taken as an Artemis Tauropolos, when neither the sea nor any reference to Zeus (like an eagle) point to Europa [19]. In Greek art, the most ancient representation clearly identified as the Rape of Europa is a metope of the temple of Selinuns, a Greek Dorian colony in Sicily. The group is seen walking rather than swimming in the sea, it is not very dynamic, but the girl already grasps the horn as she will often do later. The paintings on vases show more movement, as when the girl takes one horn of the bull as if she were “driving” him.

The opening of the brilliant Greek novel usually called Leucippe and Cleitophon, under the name of Achilleus Tatius, stylistically far away from our short poem, develops the ecphrasis and this peculiar paradox of a feeble girl driving a bull, i.e. an animal who is a constant image of strength and power:

And Eros was leading the bull: Eros, a tiny child, with wings spread, quiver dangling, torch in hand. He had turned to look at Zeus with a sly smile, as if in mockery that he had, for Love’s sake, become a bull. […] and I exclaimed: “To think that a child can have such power over heaven and sea.” (L. & C. 1.2.2, transl. J. J. Winkler 1989).

As well the novel as the poem are playing on the contrast between stereotypes and paradoxes.

The literary genre

As said above, the poem was transmitted as Anacreon’s oeuvre, and traditionally edited among his poetry. Since it is no longer believed to be such, it is now edited with the other “Anacreontea”, which means more or less “in the manner of Anacreon”. Nethertheless, it is very close in style and content to the Epigrammatic genre: [20] among the poems of the Greek Anthology, numerous epigrams are considered ‘ekphrastic epigrams’, theoretically first poems inscribed on the stone as the commentary of a statue, or on a painting. The case of such an inscription close to the artistic oeuvre on which it comments is actually exceptional, and the success of literary ekphrasis helped the development of ekphrastic epigrams without the corresponding material representation [21]. This sub-genre is the best example of the increasing “culture of viewing” that developed in the Hellenistic period, as S. Goldhill brilliantly demonstrated [22].

Among the ekphrastic epigrams, Gutzwiller (1999: 6) distinguishes three main categories with sub-types: Praise of Artistic Subject, Praise of Art (provoking a cognitive reaction of puzzlement or an emotional reaction, either of pity - fear or of erotic desire), and Ekphrastic Self-reflection in the most subtle examples, especially the last poem quoted, by Meleager.

Our poem could correspond to Gutzwiller’s second type, Praise of Art, aiming at provoking at first puzzlement, then probably erotic desire – the bull might be interpreted an ambiguous symbol of manly wealth dominated by a gracious young girl. Noticeably, the example chosen by this author for puzzlement in the second type [23], AP 16.275 = Posid. 19 HE consists entirely of a dialogue, and the example she gives for amazement, AP 16.96, beginning with a triple question, is said to be “imitating Homer” [24]. The numerous examples of erotic desire she quotes (AP 16.145, 146, 182= Leonidas 23 HE: Gutzwiller 2002: 101-4) are certainly more convincing than our poem, but it is a question of literary quality rather than the intended idea. Most of the sixth century BCE Anacreon’s poems were consisting in erotic and sympotic poems, not far from epigrams, some of them considered epigrams. The epigrams composed from the Archaic period to Classical times were mostly funerary or erotic inscriptions [25], and those that were collected in the Greek Anthology do not pretend to cover the whole range of the genre [26]. Some authors even discovered and analyzed epigrams as “writings before the letter” in the Homeric epics [27]. A fortiori the ekphrasis of the bull wearing a woman on his back, certainly not by Anacreon but dating much later, in the Hellenistic or even Roman period, may imitate the ekphrastic epigrams flourishing at that time.

The similarity of Helen’s orally composed epigrams in the Iliad that David Elmer (2005: 10) compared with a real epigram like CEG 429, might be extended to our poem with its dialogic tone: [28] Helen’s epigrams respond to Priam’s questions —formulated with demonstrative ὅδε—, with an οὗτος referring to him as the center of the deixis [29]. The Anacreontic poem 64 does the same, but with an absence of the questioning ὅδε. In the Panamues inscription, with ὅδε, “deixis serves to indicate the contiguity of object and text” (Elmer 2005: 13). In our example, where the contiguity no longer exists, οὗτος refers either to the imaginary addressee or to the detachment observed between the text of the poem and the image pointed to.

The ideological background

In literature the first mentions of the Phoenician girl on a bull occur before the Classical period only with a fragment from Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women, and a fragment from Aischylus’ Kares. Hesiod mentions her using the periphrasis ‘Phoinix’s daughter’ already found in Homer [30]. Bacchylides’ Dithyramb puts this formula in Theseus’ words addressing Minos as the son of Phoinix’s daughter. The Aeschylean fragment refers to her father without naming him, gives the names of her three sons (Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon) and implies that several women were raped from Europe to Asia and reversely, and it is meant as an explanation of how the Persian wars began, as Herodotus tells in the beginning of his history [31].

The fact that Hesiod and Bacchylides use the same formula as Homer certainly implies that they were thinking of the same heroine, though we cannot assure that Zeus’ metamorphosis as a bull crossing the sea is known in the epics.

In the Iliad, the Lycian hero Sarpedon plays an important role as a Trojan ally, and the main representative of the famous ‘Heroic code’ [32], but whereas he is later known as Europa’s son, we cannot absolutely surely identify his mother as Europa in Homer: in Il. 14.322-3 (Catalogue of Zeus’ Loves), she is called without her proper name by the formulaΦοίνικος κούρη(ς) already mentioned, and Sarpedon is not mentioned with her sons Minos and Rhadamanth:

οὐδ᾽ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλείτοιο

ἣ τέκε μοι Μίνων τε καὶ ἀντίθεον ῾Ραδάμανθυν

Zeus does not here mention Sarpedon, though this son is elsewhere very dear to his heart in the Iliad; however, the scholion to Il. 5.629 [33] gives Europa as his mother and tells the story of the girl raped on a bull’s back, as does the scholion to Il. 14.321 [34]. Though some people nethertheless do think that Sarpedon’s mother is for Homer Laodameia since Apollodorus’ Library mentions this genealogy [35], this is not consistent with the Homeric evidence [36].

The scholia to the Iliad clearly think of the link between Europa and Sarpedon. If we trust only the explicit evidence in the Iliad, we have to conclude that Sarpedon’s mother is probably the Phoenician princess, but the poet does not name her, or speaks as if he did not know her name. Zeus mentions “Phoinix’s daughter”, which fits well with Hesiodic and classical testimonies. It could be the reason why the Anacreontic poet imitates this Homeric formula with a variation in the words.

In the plastic arts, we might follow the wanderings of Europa from Selinuns in Sicily back to Beirut and Cairo as the travels of a bull: this image seems to progress through the whole Mediterranean world up from the Archaic period to the late Roman Empire, with interesting changes in style (the girl seems to wear fewer and fewer garments…) and in artistical techniques (from low-relief sculpture to vase-painting, terra cotta, wall-painting, mosaic) with an astonishingly large span of those pictures in time as as well in space.

More specifically, the detailed study of the theme in both literature and art reveals a great increase of the representations in the Hellenistic period, and it discloses a very intriguing fact: there is absolutely no link between the heroine raped by Zeus as a bull and the region or continent called Europe prior to this same Hellenistic period, which means that until then, the homonymy is merely a coincidence. The epyllion by Moschos called Europeia is the first text that establish a link between them [37], in the second century BC:[38] it begins with the night spent by the girl before the rape, and her dream of being torn between two mothers [39]. Her mother by birth is Asia, the other is called in the text ἀντιπέρην ‘the opposite’, and we may guess that she has no proper name because she will receive it from her adoptive daughter. In the dream anyhow, Europeia chooses the adoptive mother and accepts the voyage. The poem ends with a less clear testimony of this ideological meaning that links the girl called Europa or Europeia to the continent Europe, but from the borrowing made by the Latin poet Horace, that won a much greater celebrity than Moschos, deplacing the pun from Europe to Rome [40], we may infer that the innovation felt by the Romans in Moschos consisted precisely in this link, a little artificially established in the Hellenistic period between a mythological heroine moving from Near East to Occident and the name of our continent [41].

We met some evidence that this coincidence has been exploited for political aims: Philip II of Macedonia (Alexander’s father) tried to promote a policy of Greek and more largely European union against Asia, and especially Persia, as the historian Theopompos, the closest to Philip’s time, testifies: ὡς Θεόπομπος ἐν τῷ Φιλίππου ἐγκωμίῳ, ὅτι εἰ Φίλιππος βουληθείη τοῖς α ὐτοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασιν ἐμμεῖναι, καὶ τῆς Εὐρώπης πάσης βασιλεύσει (Jacoby, FgrH II B, 115.255 and 256 = Aelius Theon, Progymn. 110).

More anecdotally we learn through Athenaeus’ Deipnosphistae that Philip had a daughter named Europa [42]. Several authors say that he received the title of “greatest king of Europe” [43]. History shows that Philip, murdered at Aegae in 336 BC, did not actually succeed in his aim of conquering Asia, but his son Alexander did, and an anecdote told by Plutarch might prove a kind of competition between father and son on this theme: in his youth, Alexander mocked his father’s “European” ambitions in these ironic terms, assimilating them to his sexual intemperance and drunkenness: Οὗτος μέντοι, εἶπεν, ἄνδρες, εἰς Ἀσίαν ἐξ Εὐρώπης παρεσκευάζετο διαβαίνειν, ὃς ἐπὶ κλίνην ἀπὸ κλίνης διαβαίνων ἀνατέτραπται (Al. 9.8-11). Alexander apparently later adopted his father’s in tentions: after the Granikos victory, he graved a triumph inscription claiming he had defeated Barbarians of Asia with the Hellenes [44]. And some paragraphs later in the same text, Alexander got the title of “Asia’s king”[45].

The poet Moschos wrote his epyllion in the framework of the Alexandrian ideological and highly literate atmosphere under Ptolemaic power: not surprisingly he expressed in a poetical and symbolic manner the ideology elaborated a century before by Isocrates and other intellectuals around Philip and Alexander [46]. It might even be suggested that Alexander discussed those ideological problems with his master Aristotle.

Coming back to our little poem, West’s notes refer to Philostrates’ Imagines and some Homeric traces in Moschos.

We think it is worth exploring yet another parallel with Moschos in more depth, the ekphrasis of Europa’s basket, 37-62 [47].

First, we read the History of the object, built upon Homeric models: in Moschos’ epyllion, the basket had been made by Hephaistos, as in Homer’s Iliad Hephaistos creates Agamemnon’s scepter, 2.101, Nestor’s shield, 8.192-5, Hera’s room, Il. 14.166-7, Apollo’s aigis, 15.306-310, Hephaistos’ house, 18.370-1, the tripods he is working on when Thetis arrives at his home, 18.373-9, Achilles’ new armour, 19.382-3, and the lophos of his helmet, ib. 383-4 [48]; The main model of Europa’s basket is of course Helen’s basket in the Odyssey [49], in a precious metal as in Moschos, though this material does not seem to be very practical for gathering flowers. After the mention of the artist who did the work, the canonical order of Homeric descriptions gives the list of the successive owners, as is shown in the typical instance of Agamemnon’s scepter (Il. 2.100- 109) [50]; Merion’s helmet given to Odysseus for his spy mission in Doloneia comes from Autolycos (Il. 10.267), whereas Odysseus’ bow (Od. 8.225-6, 21.31-8) belonged once to Eurytos [51]. Thus Europa’s basket was first Libye’s property as a wedding gift ( ὅτ᾽ ἐς λέχος Ἐννοσιγαίου / ἤιεν), then Telephassa’s who gave it to her daughter Europa. Moschos took the Homeric model in the purest style, joining the fabrication by the divine craftman to the history of the owners as in the Iliadic case of Agamemnon’s scepter.

Moschos utilized the Homeric model in the purest style, joining the fabrication by the divine craftsman to the history of the owners, as in the Iliadic case of Agamemnon’s scepter. The ekphrasis in Moschos is very closely woven into the epyllion, whereas the short Anacreontic poem is an ekphrasis by itself, without any frame.

A family story: Europa and Io, from Moschos back to Lycophron, Theocritus and Palaiphatos?

We have already looked at the proper ekphrasis in the epyllion for an initial comparison to the Anacreontic poem. We now turn the attention to the close relation between Europa who uses the basket for gathering flowers in the tradition of Kore with her companions in the beginning of Homeric Hymn 3 to Demeter. Several details are striking: in Moschos’ ekphrasis, Io appears as a cow, thus evoking the form of Zeus as a bull in poem 54. Both animals are swimming in the sea, and the poet evokes their feet (Mosch. 46 πόδεσσιν ἐφ᾽ ἁλμυρὰ βαῖνε κέλευθα // Anacr. 54.6 τέμνει δὲ κῦμα χηλαῖς) as if they could be seen in both of the pictures.

Both texts insist on the identity of the seducer, Zeus in both cases: Anacr. 54.2 δοκεῖ τις εἶναί μοι Ζεύς recalls Moschos 50 ἐν δ᾽ ἦν Ζεὺς Κρονἰδης έπαφώμενος ἠρέμα χερσὶ [52].

As Hopkinson’s commentary of Moschos remarks, we know that a family link existed between Europa and Io [53]. They both had intercourse and conceived at least one male child from the same divine lover, and thus gave birth to a lineage. The younger heroine inherited an object from one of her grandmothers that represented another ancestor stemming from the other side: thus, the image of a cow on the sea foreshadows her own fate.

The “subversive spirit” seen by P. A. Rosenmeyer in poem 54 does not clearly appear in the poem in my opinion; it might be due to the imagination of the modern interpreter. But some other features noted in the poem through a comparison to other texts and particularly Moschos might enable us to link the poem to some strong tendencies known in the Hellenistic period: the comparison between Theocritus’ Syrinx 10… Τυρίας τ᾽ ἐξελάσην and Anacr. 54.8 ἐξ ἀγέλης ἐλασθεὶς and above all a passage in Lycophron’s Alexandra which also mysteriously links Europa and Io alluded to in the periphrasis τὴν βοῶπιν ταυροπάρθενον κόρην, [54] with the idea taken from Herodotus of the war between Asia and Europe being due to the rape of Io. This idea might be explained by a rationalistic view that was expressed in the same period by Palaiphatos, in the intellectual circles around Philip, Aristoteles, and Alexander: Palaiphatos, Peri Apiston 15

Φασίν Εὐρωπην τὴν Φοἰνικος ἐπὶ ταύρου ὀχουμένην διὰ τῆς θαλάσσας ἐκ Τύρου εἰς Κρήτην ἀφικέσθαι. ἐμοὶ δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἂν ταῦρος οὺθ᾽ ἵππος δοκεῖ τοσοῦτον πέλαγος διανύσαι [δύνασθαι], οὔτε κόρη ἐπὶ ταῦρον ἄγριον ἀναβῆναι. ὅ τε Ζεύς, εἰ ἐβούλετο Εὐρώπην εἰς Κρήτην ἐλθεῖν, εὑρεῖν ἂν α ὐτῇ ἑτέραν πορείαν καλλίονα. Τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς ἐχει ὧδε. ἀνὴρ Κνώσιος ὀνόματι Ταῦρος ἐπολέμει τὴν Τυρίαν χώραν.

Τελευτῶν οὖν ἐκ Τύρου ἥρπασεν ἄλλας τε πολλὰς κόρας καὶ δὴ καὶ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως θυγατέρα Εὐρωπην. ἔλεγον οὖν οἱ ἄνθρωποι « Εὐρώπην τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως Ταῦρος ἔχων ᾤχετο.» τούτων γεγονέναι προσανεπλάσθη ὁ μῦθος.

They say that Europa, the daughter of Phoenix, was carried across the sea on the back of a bull from Tyre to Crete. But in my opinion neither a bull nor a horse would traverse so great an expanse of open water, nor would a girl climb upon the back of a wild bull. As for Zeus – if he wanted Europa to go to Crete, he would have found a better way for her to travel.

Here is the truth. There was a man from Cnossus by the name of Taurus who was making war on the territory of Tyre. He ended up by carrying off from Tyre quite a number of girls, including the king’s daughter, Europa. So people said: “Bull have gone off with Europa, the king’s daughter.” It was from this that the myth was fashioned (Tr. Stern).

There are in fact some troubling resemblances between the Anacreontic poem and Palaiphatos’ prose: note particularly in prose ἐμοὶ δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἂν ταῦρος οὺθ᾽ ἵππος δοκεῖ τοσοῦτον π έλαγος διανύσαι and in the poem δοκεῖ τις εἶναί μοι Ζεύς, and then Οὐκ ἂν δὲ ταῦρος … ἔπλευσε τὴν θἀλασσαν. If we may say now that the poem’s style is somehow clumsy, could not this awkwardness come from an attempt to transpose a rational prose into a poetic description of some imagined work of art?

This hypothesis seems consistent with the texts quoted here, and with the influence that Herodotus may have had in the Hellenistic period.

In addition, beside the parallel with Philostrates’ Imagines quoted by West, we could provide another one from the same text:

Philostr. Imag. 1.12.1 ΒΟΣΠΟΡΟΣ

Τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ ὄχθῃ γύναια παραβοῶσι, παρακαλεῖν δὲ καὶ τοῦς ἵππους ἐοἰκασι μὴ ῥῖψαι τὰ παιδία μηδὲ ἀποπτύσαι τὸν ψαλινὸν, ἑλεῖν δὲ καὶ συμπατῆσαι τὰ θηρία, οἱ δὲ ἀκούοντες οἶμαι καὶ ποιοῦσι ταῦτα. Θηράσαντας δὲ αὐτοὺς καὶ δαῖτα ᾑρηκὀτας διαπορθμεύει ναῦς ἀπὸ τῆς Εὐρώπης ἐς τὴν Ἀσίαν σταδίους μάλιστά π ου τέτταρας - τουτὶ γὰρ ἐν μέσῳ τοῖν ἐθνοῖν - καὶ αὐτερέται πλέουσιν.

The women on the bank] are shouting, and they seem to urge the horses not to throw their young riders nor yet to spurn the bit, but to catch the game and trample it underfoot; and they, I think, hear and do as they are bidden. And when the youths have finished the hunt and have eaten their meal, a boat carries them across from Europe to Asia (tr. Arthur Fairbanks, Loeb, 1931).

This ekphrasis actually shows neither Io nor Europa, but the crossing of the Bosporos – reminding us of the etymology the Prometheus mentioned above played upon.

To conclude, though this poem pretends to describe a work of art, it is not itself a good one, and anyway not worth counting among Anacreon’s works, or even among the best of the Anacreontea. For all its drawbacks, it is nethertheless interesting to analyze how it can be part of a large Hellenistic context. We cannot date it more accurately [55], but the author may have known Lycophron’s Alexandra, Moschos’ Europeia, and more surprisingly perhaps, Palaiphatos’ Peri Apiston, with its Herodotean background. Did the author have in mind any specific work of art? We cannot answer this question more than for Moschos’ oeuvre as a whole, or Europa’s basket specifically.

To come back to Simonides’ aphorism, if Greek poetry often tries to challenge painting, both poetry and painting like the description of the unbelievable, such as a bull raping a girl and swimming in the sea. The loves of the gods are a huge repertory for such stories, that is one of the reasons why they have met such a success, up to now.

In Hellenistic times, poetry was not a matter of originality, but rather an art of variation [56]. The reader took pleasure in recognizing the skill in variation rather than reading something never heard before [57-64]. However, variation is not by itself a means for reaching poetic quality.

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