Chapter 4
Patronage

Patronage of cultural projects by kings and tyrants was an established tradition in the ancient Greek world.^[1] In Hellenistic Alexandria, the Ptolemies added their own innovations to the patronage system by establishing official institutions—a museum and library—in which sponsored scholars worked, ate common meals, and earned royal stipends.^[2] The generosity of Ptolemaic patronage attracted poets, scientists, and scholars, particularly from areas under Ptolemaic influence, such as Samos, Cyrene, and Cos,^[3] but also from elsewhere (e.g., Demetrius of Phaleron, fugitive Athenian dictator and peripatetic philosopher).^[4] Theocritus, although attracted for a time by the splendors of Alexandria and its court, seems to have avoided attaching himself directly to the Ptolemaic institutions.^[5] Timon of Phlius, a philosopher-poet and another outsider, mocks those living within the bounds of the museum:

        (Ath. 1.22d)

Many ruminate in multiethnic Egypt—
cloistered bookish men who quarrel endlessly
in the birdcage of the Muses.

The identities of the royal rotors suggest the Ptolemaic family's ongoing desire to attain cultural competence and authority. Thus, to tutor young Ptolemy II and not improbably his sister Arsinoe II as

well,^[6] the royal court retained in turn Philitas of Cos, poet and scholar; Straton of Lampsacus, philosopher and scientist; Zenodotus of Ephesus, scholar and chief librarian.^[7] The frequent appointment of the same man as royal tutor and chief librarian (e.g., Zenodotus and Apollonius Rhodius)^[8] illustrates the Ptolemies' program of merging courtly and cultural institutions.

An additional factor in the cultural life at Alexandria was the presence of strong women at court. Arsinoe II, an important patron during Theocritus's time, followed her influential mother, Berenice, as well as a tradition of visible and combative Macedonian royal women (e.g., Cynane, Adea-Eurydice, and Olympias)^[9] Berenice's intelligence and passion had attracted Ptolemy I, who set aside his second wife Eurydice to marry her.^[10] Anecdotes attest to Berenice's power at court: when Pyrrhus came as hostage to Egypt, noting Berenice's great influence and intelligence, he concentrated on winning her favor (Plut. Pyrrh . 4). She may well have participated in the selection of royal tutors for the children, and she may also have ensured that Arsinoe II have the same opportunities as Ptolemy II to acquire cultural competence.^[11]

Unlike her brother Ptolemy II, Arsinoe II spent a great deal of time living abroad, apart from her family, where she acquired sources of wealth (for example, her elderly husband Lysimachus gave her his prize city of Heraclea)^[12] and learned to use her money to advantage. At Samothrace, an international cult center, she dedicated a magnificent rotunda to the "Great Gods" at Samothrace,^[13] and Frazer has recently proposed that Arsinoe may be "the effective patron" also of Ptolemy II's Propylon at Samothrace.^[14] Also, when as Lysimachus's widow she had to escape assassins at Arsinoea (Ephesus) through disguise as a maidservant, she nonetheless had the presence of mind (and understanding of power) to choose to flee to Cassandreia, where Lysimachus had been proclaimed a god,^[15] and there to use her wealth to hire soldiers^[16] and to sponsor a lavish festival (Just. 24.3). Arsinoe finally returned, an experienced woman of the world, to Alexandria, and her brother Ptolemy II set aside his wife Arsinoe I, her stepdaughter, to marry her.

Alexandrian poets attest to Arsinoe II's high visibility in the cultural world and at court:^[17] Theocritus's Idyll 15 celebrates her sponsorship of the worship of Aphrodite and Adonis,^[18] and Idyll 22 may reflect her interest in the Dioskouroi, deities comparable to the savior gods at Samothrace.^[19] Arsinoe's presence was recognized in other areas as well: Ptolemy II took her to the Suez on an inspection of defences in 274/273,^[20] and the Decree of Chremonides gives credit to Arsinoe for influencing

Ptolemy II's policy of liberating Greek dry-states.^[21] Thus, while the public political life of Greek men was diminishing, royal women at the Ptolemaic court were becoming visibly influential, as shown by Berenice and her daughter Arsinoe.

Royal patronage and the establishment of royal institutions of knowledge heightened the separation between ordinary persons and the literati. Unlike in fifth-century Athens, the creative artist in Alexandria did not have to rely on popular support and public visibility: instead Alexandrian literati, mostly Greek outlanders with ties just to the court, constituted a court-sponsored enclave. Timon's satiric verse, cited above, emphasizes the diversity of the world from which the Alexandrian scholarly community turns^[22] —an Alexandria made up of a mixed population of natives, settlers, and itinerants: Egyptians, Jews, slaves of various ethnicities, as well as diverse Greeks (both citizens and noncitizens).^[23]

Topics that arise in considering works created in such an environment include the influence of court patronage on the direction and shape of literary works and on the tone of literary voices. By establishing institutions of culture and by acquiring and cataloguing books, the Ptolemies seem to have been moving toward a position of regulating knowledge and high culture. Alexandrian poets, however, writing in the context of a library where texts were being separated by such criteria as genre and verse form and contained within an institution of knowledge, showed an unruly tendency to mix genres and create verse not easy to classify.^[24]

What kind of cultural experiences did the Ptolemies make available to persons outside the institutions? To live in Alexandria was to be made constantly aware of the Ptolemies and their power: visible evidence included streets named after Arsinoe II, and such architectural sights as new and impressive temples (e.g., of the Theoi Soteres, Ptolemy I and Berenice) and the splendid royal palaces.^[25] The Ptolemies also sponsored spectacular, public events, such as Ptolemy II's Pompe (Grand Procession)^[26] and Arsinoe II's Adonia. Also, Ptolemy II declared his parents gods, and then Ptolemy II and Arsinoe H themselves became proclaimed gods,^[27] which enabled ordinary persons (outside the court) to approach the royals less directly, e.g., through dedicatory offerings.^[28] But the pervasive self-display of the Ptolemies also emphasized the diminishment of public political life for Greek males, even as Arsinoe's prominence (both before and after death) helped set a new standard of public visibility, at least at the highest levels, for Greek women.

In Idylls 14 and 15, Theocritus took advantage of the forum of urban mimes to project praise of Arsinoe and Ptolemy, patrons of high culture

and public spectacles, into the mouths of fictive characters. This chapter shows how these two poems approach Alexandria's court (and the issue of patronage) from the margins, from the positions of outsiders. Further, Theocritus highlights gender and gender relations in his urban mimes that approach the royal patrons: Idyll 14, which includes praise of Ptolemy, features two male friends; Idyll 15, which spotlights the Adonia, a female-defined festival sponsored by Arsinoe, features two female friends. Many scholars have seen praise of the court as the most important element in the poems. But, as shown in previous chapters, these two poems open up the discourse to include other than courtly perspectives on issues of gender relations, ethnicity, and mobility. This chapter focuses on how these two poems handle the topic of patronage.

Ptolemy

Idyll 14 features the male-dominated world of unruly symposiasts and mercenary soldiers, and it ends with an encomium of Ptolemy. Earlier we considered Idyll 14's handling of gender and mobility issues in its representation of Aeschinas's experiences as sympotic host and as jilted lover. Now our attention is directed to how in this poem Theocritus approaches the issue of patronage. Seeking to escape his lovesick state, Aeschinas resolves to go abroad and become a mercenary soldier. Through Thyonichus's endorsement of Aeschinas's decision, Theocritus directs the poem toward Ptolemy, Egypt's king and patron of arts:^[29]

        (58-59)

But if you're so inclined, then, as to go abroad,
Ptolemy's the best paymaster for a free man.

An encomium of Ptolemy follows, motivated by Aeschinas's query about Ptolemy's other qualities (60). For some readers the encomium represents the purpose of the poem; others regard it as a digression.^[30] The encomium's function becomes clearer when we relate it to Idyll 14's central thematic concern with sympotic culture.

Gow notes that "it may be remarked that the panegyric which follows, though it answers Aeschinas's question, does not provide much

information likely to profit him when he enlists as a private soldier."^[31] But the information could profit Aeschinas as symposium host, for the qualities Thyonichus praises in Ptolemy coincide with those approved in the male sympotic culture: cultural sophistication, erotic discernment, and generosity:^[32]

        (61-65)

Kindly, a lover of culture, amorous, exceedingly pleasant;
knowing who loves him and, even more, who doesn't;
giving generously to many, and when asked not refusing;
a model of kingship—but you shouldn't always be asking,
Aeschinas.

The repetition of the word ("pleasant," used at 17 to describe the symposium and at 61 to describe Ptolemy) suggests a link between Ptolemy's character and sympotic values. Further, Ptolemy's particular virtues offer a contrast to Aeschinas's unhappy experience as symposium host. Aeschinas's most obvious problem was that, unlike Ptolemy, he did not know who loved him and who did not (62). Because he could not recognize signs of affection and disaffection, the revelation of Cynisca's disloyalty shocked him and caused a major disruption at the symposium.^[33]

Hasty and immoderate in his desires (10-11), quick to anger and violent (34-35), Aeschinas needs a new role model. On Idyll 14's scale of manhood, which includes an ascetic philosopher and an overpassionate lover, Ptolemy represents a complex and temperate mean. Aeschinas's prolonged lovesick response to Cynisca's abandonment of him two months earlier demonstrates his obsessive tendency to limit himself to a single plane of being: the marginalized activity of love had become central and overwhelmed his ability to engage in other business.^[34] Thyonichus's Ptolemy, on the other hand, has the capacity to play many roles: an army paymaster, a lover , a generous and cultured leader, a man of discerning kindness .

Through Thyonichus's praise of Ptolemy, Theocritus also approaches the issue of the relationship between patron and poet. Like the fictive Aeschinas, Theocritus too came to Ptolemy's Egypt from abroad (Syra-

cuse), with questions about Ptolemy. He too would have been reassured by reports of generous patronage. Thyonichus's praise of Ptolemy does not actively exhort, but instead describes him with qualifies appreciated by poets seeking patronage: kindly discernment, love of culture, generosity.^[35] By having Thyonichus also include the quality of (amorousness), Theocritus can flatter Ptolemy by showing confidence in his sophistication and tolerance. Further, Ptolemy's notable fondness for mistresses might have encouraged the expectation that he would welcome a good poem on the theme of heterosexual love and sympotic culture.^[36] ports on the many statues in Alexandria of Ptolemy's cupbearer Cleino, holding a drinking-horn, and the houses named after Ptolemy's girlfriends (the actress Myrtion and the flute girls Mnesis and Potheine) further attest to Ptolemy's enjoyment of heterosexual sympotic entertainments.^[37]

Thyonichus underscores Aeschinas's need to change by including in his praise of Ptolemy's generosity an exhortation to Aeschinas to limit his desires:

        (63-65)

Giving generously to many, and when asked not refusing,
he is a model of kingship—but you shouldn't always be asking,
Aeschinas.

Thyonichus's recommendation to Aeschinas represents a projection of what Aeschinas might do given his character: Aeschinas will want too much, as he does in love.^[38] Still, within the fiction of Idyll 14, the advice Thyonichus gives Aeschinas not to make too many requests of Ptolemy is strange: as a lowly mercenary, Aeschinas will not be in a position to ask Ptolemy for favors. Yet Thyonichus's advice presupposes an egalitarian social world in which such requests might be made. And it may also represent Theocritus's ironic self-admonition hot to make too many requests of his patron.

Although Ptolemy's power was autocratic, the fiction of more democratic social (and political) freedoms continued to appeal to Greeks in the Hellenistic world.^[39] Insofar as traditional sympotic culture valued reciprocity and egalitarianism (guests drank equal amounts and participated equally in contests), the symposium theme allows the poet to assume a stance of equality with Ptolemy. But by putting the praise in

Thyonichus's mouth, Theocritus can both ironize the praise and flatter Ptolemy by displaying confidence in his appreciation of wit and irony.^[40] Friendship traditionally played a central role in a poet's representation of his relationship with his patron, as shown, for example, by Pindar's artful approaches to his patrons. So too in Idyll 14, Thyonichus notes that Ptolemy knows his friends (62), and the poem displays Theocritus's worthiness to be counted a friend (sophisticated, witty, able to create poetry that can both flatter and amuse). Thus the focus of Idyll 14 on the symposium, with its tradition of social quality, enables the poet to approach a patron-king by projecting the theme of friendship from Aeschinas and Thyonichus's privatized fictive world to the public and historical realm of Ptolemy's Egypt.^[41]

Idyll 15 also embeds the issue of royal patronage within the fictive world of a mime, and here too recreational activities, in this case an Adonis festival sponsored by Arsinoe, offer a forum for exploring and reflecting the ideology of the hegemony. Later in this chapter we see how Idyll 15's representation of Arsinoe's Adonia approaches the issue of Arsinoe's patronage. Here we focus on Idyll 15's praise of Ptolemy. The following incident illustrates Theocritus's strategy of using the vantage of marginalized fictive characters to present wry defenses of the autocracy that also suggest questions about it. On leaving the insular world of her house, Praxinoa expresses consternation at the crowded, unruly public streets (44-45) and then praises Ptolemy:

        (46-50)

You have accomplished many good deeds, Ptolemy,
since your father took his place among the immortals; no evildoer
sneaks up to someone on the street, Egyptian style, and hurts him,
doing tricks that men forged from deceit used to play,
each rascal as bad as the other, wicked pranksters, curse them all.

Praxinoa's description of Ptolemy's accomplishments also reflects a linkage between cultural prejudice and fear, for Praxinoa makes the crowded streets seem less threatening by focusing, with a colonialist's xenophobia, on the disappearance of Egyptian ruffians. Thus, by showing how Praxinoa transforms Ptolemy's public identity into something she can

understand and value, Theocritus wryly explores a kings place in an ordinary person's private world.

Ptolemy's deification of his parents posed a tactical problem for Greeks: how could one recognize mortal rulers as potentially gods?^[42] By embedding notice of the deification of Ptolemy's father in Praxinoa's self-interested assessment of Ptolemy's achievements, the poet can suggest a secular point of reference—Ptolemy is a potential god for us insofar as he makes the streets safe. The Ptolemies were trying to create an imperial myth; Idyll 15 shows how subjects could enable themselves (through fictions) to give qualified, "conditional assent."^[43] So too in Thyonichus's remarks at the end of Idyll 14, Theocritus explores how ordinary persons (and poets) can try to humanize, and hence comprehend, the autocratic hegemony by evaluating it in the context of private concerns, e.g., love and money.^[44]

But Praxinoa's valorization of the king's law-and-order campaign is immediately mediated by the threatening appearance of the king's horses:

        (51-53)

Sweetest Gorgo, what will become of us? Warhorses,
the kings cavalry. Dear man, don't trample me.
The chestnut horse has reared up; look how fierce he is.

Danger emanates from the hegemonic system that guarantees order: Ptolemy dears the streets of Egyptian ruffians only to fill them with fierce horses. Phonetic similarities reinforce the interchangeability of the threats presented by the Egyptian ruffian (, 48) and by the king's horse (, 54). The juxtaposition of Praxinoa's gratitude for the king's law-and-order campaign with her fright at the sudden appearance of the king's horses suggests the ambiguous nature of autocracy and also underscores the instability of Alexandria's streets—a realm in which a king, characterized by ("good deeds," 46), can transmute into ("evildoer," 47), childs play (42) become thievery (49-50), and childhood fears (40, 58)^[45] materialize as king's horses (51-52).

A brief consideration of Theocritus's Idyll 10, a rustic mime, may suggest additional subtleties in Theocritus's approaches to Ptolemy.^[46] In a recent article, Cameron connects Ptolemy II's mistress named Didyme,

a native Egyptian (Ath. 13.576e-f) and thus probably dark skinned, with the Didyme praised in an epigram by Asclepiades:^[47]

        (Ep . 5.3-4 Gow and Page [ =  A.P . 5.210.3-4])

If she is black, so what? So are the coals.
But when we bum them, they glow like rosebuds.
        (trans. Cameron, "Two Mistresses," 287 n. 2)

Similarly Theocritus's Idyll 10, in which a reaper expresses love for the dusky flute girl Bombyca, may be more oriented toward the Ptolemaic court than previously thought:^[48]

        (26-27)

Charming Bombyca, all call thee the Syrian,
lean and sun-scorched, and I alone, honey-hued.
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:83)

Perhaps too Bucaeus's longing to erect golden statues of himself and Bombyca in simple attire reflects Ptolemy's own predilection for amorous self-display:

        (32-35)

Would I had such wealth as Croesus, in the tales, once owned.
Then should we both stand in gold as offerings to Aphrodite—
thou with thy pipes, and a rosebud or an apple,
and I with raiment new and new shoes of Amyclae on either foot.
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:83)

Throughout Alexandria, Ptolemy set up statues representing his cupbearer Cleino dressed in a simple tunic and holding a drinking cup, a tool of her trade (like Bombyca's pipes).^[49] Further, Ptolemy, a comparative Croesus in wealth,^[50] was renowned for setting up golden statues,^[51] as Idyll 10's Bucaeus wishes he could, and the Ptolemies too would dedicate such statues to Aphrodite: Berenice, Ptolemy's mother, was placed after death in Aphrodite's temple as a patroness of lovers

(Theoc. Id . 17.50-52), and Arsinoe II cultivated the connection with Aphrodite.^[52]

Other elements might also associate Idyll 10 with Ptolemy. First, evidence attests to Ptolemy's special fondness for flute girls (like Bombyca): he honored two such girls by naming fine houses for them (Ath. 13.576f). In Idyll 10, Theocritus underscores Bombyca's occupation by naming her for a flute ^[53] Second, the name of Bombyca's "master,"^[54] Polybotas (Id . 10.15), also refers to a giant associated with Cos^[55] (where Ptolemy was born). Third, Milon's description of Bucaeus's inactivity (Id . 10.5-6) seems to contrast pointedly with another Alexandrian poet's description of Ptolemy's propensity for action (Callim. Hymn 1):^[56]

        (87-88)^[57]

At evening he accomplishes that whereon he thinks in the morning;
at evening the greatest things, but the lesser as soon as he thinks on them.
        (trans. Mair, "Callimachus," 45, rev.)

Theocritus's Idyll 10 begins with Milon mocking Bucaeus's failure to reach such a standard:

        (5-6)

What will you be like in the evening, or afternoon even,
if now at the start you can't get your teeth into your row?
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:81)

This suggestion of Ptolemaic undertones in Theocritus's Idyll 10 is, of course, highly speculative, since we do not know the dates of Ptolemy's relationships with his various mistresses nor of his public monuments honoring them, and we do not know the date of Theocritus's Idyll 10 nor its place of writing. But if Idyll 10 is somehow linked with Ptolemy's relations with his mistresses (and written when Arsinoe II was still alive), then the poem can illustrate a clever strategy for approaching a bipartite royal house, for by discreetly distancing his fictive characters, Theocritus could perhaps avoid offending the queen, an important patron, while still amusing the king.

Arsinoe

Since large cities such as Alexandria included many Greek local interest groups, public productions had to become more inclusive for greater impact and appeal.^[58] Some Greeks advocated withdrawal from the civic community (e.g., Epicureans and Cynics);^[59] others looked to magic, astrology, and mysteries for private spiritual guidance. Traditionally in the Greek world, foreign and mystery cults, philosophical cults, witchcraft, and enthusiastic rites offered alternative sources of power and control for those whose access to official power was limited. In the Hellenistic age of kingdoms governed by autocratic hegemonies, such alternatives rose in general popularity, especially in multiethnic Egypt, a center for magic and traditionally regarded by Greeks as a source of mystery cults.^[60] The Ptolemies, usurpers of royal power (like the rest of Alexander the Great's successors), sought to legitimize their power by associating themselves with various gods, including Dionysus and Aphrodite.^[61] By cultivating the association with Dionysus and Aphrodite, gods traditionally linked with popular cult worship that transcended spatial and class boundaries, the Ptolemies could not only promote their personal ascendancy (and the official hegemony),^[62] but also expand their popular appeal among displaced Greeks.

Ptolemy II advertised his family's linkage with Dionysus in a magnificent procession described by Callixeinus (Ath. 5.197e-201e). A central spectacle was Dionysus's triumphant return from India (200d-201c), which emphasized the link with Alexander and thus also supported Ptolemaic imperialism.^[63] The official Ptolemaic cultural program was in evidence, for the entire Dionysiac artists' guild, a professional association sponsored by Ptolemy,^[64] walked in the procession (198b-c). But countercultural figures were also on show: men dressed as satyrs and sileni (197e-198b; 199a-b; 200e), Dionysian priests and priestesses, and women dressed as bacchantes (198e). By bringing such cult figures into the public light, by incorporating, e.g., bacchantes holding snakes and daggers into a court-sponsored parade, the Ptolemies could also move toward defusing potentially subversive cult activities.

Aphrodite's attractive features for the Ptolemies may have included her dose connection with Cyprus, an important Ptolemaic external possession,^[65] as well as her association with passionate love in marriage.^[66] Theocritus's Idylls 15 and 17 show that after Arsinoe and Ptolemy's mar-

riage, Aphrodite played a crucial role in the official mythology of the Ptolemies: both poems assume the marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsihoe II and both poems credit Aphrodite with immortalizing Berenice, their mother. Further, Idyll 17 describes Berenice sharing temple honors with Aphrodite (50-52), and Idyll 15 highlights Arsinoc's sponsorship of a public Adonia in Aphrodite's honor (23-24, 109-11). The court's official project of identifying Ptolemaic women with Aphrodite, as well as the court patronage of poets, makes political concerns a vital factor in the reception of poetry written in Ptolemaic Alexandria and featuring Aphrodite.^[67]

Although, as Gutzwiller has recently emphasized, celebrations of Aphrodite as patroness of married life would have offered clear benefits for the Ptolemaic court,^[68] Arsinoe II's choice to promote her association with Aphrodite through an Adonia, traditionally a private, countercultural women's festival linked with prostitution and extramarital love, seems a bit odd:^[69] for instance, the Adonia's focus on relations between a powerful, self-willed female (Aphrodite) and a subordinated, younger male (Adonis) might have reinforced attitudes of cynicism toward a court featuring the marriage of Arsinoe and her brother Ptolemy, eight years younger and sickly.^[70] Further, in a world that separated wives and mistresses, the linkage of an Adonia with the deification of Berenice, Arsinoe's mother, might have seemed to highlight an awkwardness in Berenice's history, for Berenice broke up Ptolemy I's marriage to her aunt by having an extramarital love affair with him.^[71]

The evidence for Arsinoe's patronage of a public Adonia is Theocritus's Idyll 15. Idyll 15's Adonis hymn is also our most important witness for celebration of the Adonia in the Hellenistic age.^[72] Almost all the other Hellenistic poems extant that include the Adonis theme highlight countercultural, even salacious, aspects of Adonis worship.^[73] Thus Idyll 15's representation of Arsinoe's Adonia offers an unusual vantage on Arsinoe as an important sponsor of Alexandrian cultural life and on Arsinoe's cultural program. This section explores how Theocritus's Idyll 15 handles the tricky subject of Arsinoe's public Adonia, suggests ideological implications of Ptolemaic court sponsorship of a public Adonia, and then briefly contrasts Callimachus's and Theocritus's approaches to the incestuous Ptolemaic marriage.

A crucial and unresolved issue is the tone of Idyll 15's Adonis hymn: whether it is parody or not. Our judgment of the hymns tone affects our understanding of Idyll 15's poetic orientation to the court. Does Idyll 15's representation of an Adonis hymn reinforce or question the hegemony's

ideology? Does it offer alternative values? The standard approach has been to criticize the hymn, if not for dwelling on vulgar elements of luxury, then for general ineptitude (e.g., Helmbold, Gow, Griffiths, Dover, Wells).^[74] The only audiences that could applaud such a hymn, it has been suggested, would be those whose "thoughts and tastes, like those of Gorgo and Praxinoa, existed only as strings of cliches."^[75] Recently the hymn has found admirers, too (e.g., Bulloch, Zanker, Hutchinson).^[76] But the issue of tone remains undecided (e.g., Goldhill).^[77] The following discussion proposes ways in which aspects of the hymn most commonly perceived as ineptitudes are instead conscious refinements contributing to the overall effectiveness of a strikingly unconventional hymn. I then question the hymns so-called vulgar insistence on luxury and focus on a more interesting aspect of the hymn that has been overlooked, an aspect that contributes significantly to the overall design and tone of the hymn when considered in the cultural context of a public Adonia sponsored by Arsinoe II in the palace grounds.

A brief review of the position of the hymn in the overall structure of the poem may be helpful here. Idyll 15, a mimetic poem in dialogue form, presents two Syracusan women's experiences as they go from Praxinoa's house through the crowded streets of Alexandria to the Ptolemaic palace to attend an Adonis celebration. At the palace, they view a ceremonial display and listen to an Adonis hymn sung by a female hymnist (the Argive woman's daughter). The length of the hymn (almost a third of the poem) underscores its climactic importance, and the hymn, along with the women's praise of the tapestries, provides the details of the Adonia display: tapestries; green bowers decorated with Erotes; a central tableau featuring models of Adonis and Aphrodite lying on a couch with coverlets; and offerings displayed by the couch, many probably provided by Arsinoe (e.g., silver baskets, not wicker or terracotta), but including foodstuffs typical of private offerings.

I propose the following question as central to an appreciation of the hymns tone: what would the reading of this hymn be like if embedded in the cultural context of a public celebration of an Adonia? Certainly the Adonis hymn of Idyll 15 develops in an unusual manner. It had to: Idyll 15 commemorates a public Adonia sponsored by Arsinoe at the center of the state. Yet traditionally the Adonia was a private, countercultural festival celebrated principally by women and not incorporated in state rituals.^[78] Writers of old and new comedy represent it as a counter-cultural festival of sensuality, providing occasion for mistresses, courtesans, prostitutes, and wives to consort with selected "Adonis substi-

rates,"^[79] and for women to disrupt state affairs with unruly and indecent behavior (as on the eve of the Sicilian expedition).^[80]

Problems arise for a poet interested in presenting a public Adonia and still maintaining the goodwill of the court. How can one celebrate the bringing of such a ceremony into the public realm? What can one say? A conventional hymn includes a narration of the genealogy, the exploits, and the powers of the gods.^[81] But what can a hymnist say about Adonis: that he was the child of an incestuous union between Myrrha and her father? Such a topic might be sensitive to an Arsinoe who married her full brother and whose worship came to coincide with that of Aphrodite, Adonis's lover.^[82] Or should the hymnist tell the story of how Adonis was born from a tree after Myrrha changed form to escape the wrath of her father, who was trying to murder her?^[83] Ptolemy Ceraunus and Arsinoe could both attest to the high rate of kinship murders among the dynasts. The one line we have extant from Sotades' poem entitled "Adonis" suggests that other Hellenistic poets too were not unaware of the tactical difficulties of handling the topic of Adonis in a courtly environment: ; ("Which of the narratives of old [on Adonis] are you willing to hear?" fr. 3 Powell, Coll. Alex .).^[84] Sotades' query, a sly varient of the aporia motif (I have many things I could say, but nothing my audience wants to hear), seems to address an implied audience that includes a Ptolemiac court invested in Arsinoe's Adonia and uneasy about its reception.

Theocritus evades the issue of Adonis's past history. Instead of starting with Adonis's genealogy, Idyll 15's Adonis hymn describes how the Hours convey Adonis from Acheron to Aphrodite for this current celebration. Theocritus does not present a conventional hymnic narrative of the exploits of the gods involved and risk emphasizing aspects of the story of Adonis and Aphrodite unflattering to the Ptolemaic house. For example, the hymn does not say that Adonis was loved by a powerful older woman; nor does it say that two goddesses vied for his love (Arsinoe II displaced her own stepdaughter to become Ptolemy's wife). Other parallels might be more dangerous: the hymn does not describe how Adonis was killed by a boar (a failed initiation into manhood), nor that he was born from sensual myrrh and later hidden away in limp, impotent lettuce.^[85] Instead of describing Adonis's exploits or powers, his credentials justifying a celebration, the hymn elaborates the Characteristics of the Hours, Adonis's escorts to the celebration. Rather than linger over a narrative of what Aphrodite and Adonis do together (a sensitive enterprise at best), the hymn first describes where they do it: the setting,

the offerings, the atmosphere, the seductive mood, the ambiance. The hymn discretely concentrates on the mechanics of the ritual occasion and the ceremonial display sponsored by Arsinoe rather than the traditional hymnic motifs.

The challenge was to write a public hymn that celebrated the Adonia and did not cause embarrassment to the royal court. The artistry of the hymn has to do with the tact of evading controversial points of Adonis's story. Theocritus uses the technique of hymnic evasion repeatedly in his poems: Griffiths examines the evasive strategy used in Idyll 16 ill praising Hieron, the still unproven new leader of Syracuse (to paraphrase, "when you do something praiseworthy, then I will praise you"; see especially 73-75).^[86] Similarly in Idyll 15's hymn, a strategy of evasion is a tactful way to handle diplomatic problems that arise, and variations on hymnic techniques divert attention from the ambiguities of Adonis's traditional status as a countercultural hero. But because the hymns use of the tactic of evasion has been overlooked, the artistry of the hymn has not been recognized.

The two main points on which scholars fault the hymn are, first, the hymns effusive exclamation on the couch carved with a representation of Ganymede, and second, the circular, unstructured catalogue of heroes found at the end of the hymn.^[87] But if placed in the context of a tactic of evasion, these "ineptitudes" must be understood differently. First, the effusive quality of the apostrophe to the couch's luxurious materials highlights the magnificence of the display and deflects attention from the hymns evasion of disconcerting aspects of Adonis's story:

        (123-24)

O ebony, o gold, o eagles of ivory white
conveying the cupbearing boy to Zeus.

Thus the hymnist represents herself as so powerfully affected by the luxurious display that she cannot help but dwell on its material aspects. This artfully effusive exclamation also intervenes between the couch, with its representation of Ganymede, and Adonis's story, for Ganymede, like Adonis, is snatched before he reaches manhood; trapped now forever in a stage of gender doubt, he too is victim of the erotic caprice of gods. The chiastic structure of line 124 mimetically signifies Ganymede's transposition and Zeus's new centrality in Ganymede's world, and the Erotes

suspended above the couch (120-22) reinforce the symbolic constellation of sexual impulses and ambiguities.^[88]

A keynote of the hymn is love, tactfully modulated and wryly reflecting back on the preoccupations evident in the fictive audiences everyday lives.^[89] The hymn begins by highlighting (love) in describing Aphrodite's relations to her cult sites, ("Mistress who cherishes Golgi and Idalium," 100),^[90] and the hymn ends by underscoring as Adonis's characteristic quality, for the adjective frames the final couplet:

        (143-44)

Be gracious, dear Adonis, in the new year too. Now your coming
has brought us women joy. When you return, we will welcome you with love.

Further, the ending of Praxinoa's description of the tapestries' Adonis figure anticipates the hymns emphasis on :

        (86)

Thrice-loved Adonis, loved even in Acheron.

Repetitions of words underscore changes in mood as the women move from the safe mimetic space of home through crowded streets to Adonis's enclave at court: what is innocent when a boy does it at home (, "play," 42) and sinister when ruffians do it in the streets ( "[tricks] they used to play," 49) becomes sensually elevated when Aphrodite does it among the gods (, "playing with gold," 101).^[91]

The hymns tact in representing the sensuality of Adonis contrasts with the Syracusan women's blunt appraisals of their husbands. For example, the hymns elevated description of Adonis as ("rosy-armed," 128) and ("eighteen or nineteen years old, the bridegroom," 129) recalls Praxinoa's deflating epic characterization of her husband as ("our thirteen-cubit hero," 17). Also, the description of Adonis's incipient sexuality, ("reddish down still lies upon his lip," 130), recalls the name of Praxinoa's child: ("little spark of fire").^[92] Thus, through phonetic and thematic echoes, the poet underscores the complicated response that a sexually ambiguous

Adonis can evoke in a largely female audience of an Adonia and also emphasizes the contrast between the romance evoked through a festival display and the fictive Syracusan housewives' everyday life.

The hymns tact is also evident in the mythological excursus at the hymns end, the negative catalogue of heroes that comes full circle, for how can the hymn praise Adonis further? He is young and his kisses are not rough (129-30). This minimalist description of Aphrodite and Adonis's embrace forestalls charges of self-indulgent eroticism. What else can the hymn say? Since the hymn cannot praise Adonis for manly heroic deeds (he did not conquer the boar; he did not live to reach manhood),^[93] it praises him instead for surpassing exemplars of who he is not:

        (136-42)

Dear Adonis, you travel both here and to Acheron;
this you alone can do among demigods, so they say. Agamemnon
did not undergo this, nor mighty Ajax, a hero of great wrath,
nor Hector, the eldest of Hecuba's twenty sons,
nor Patrokles, nor Pyrrhus when he returned from Troy,
nor still earlier the Lapiths and Deukalion's clan,
nor the house of Pelops and the Pelasgian nobles of Argos.

But even this seemingly disordered list of manly heroes is mediated for the predominantly female audience of the Adonia. The leading Trojan warrior Hector is identified as the eldest of Hecuba's twenty sons. Further, the list of warrior-heroes highlights other youthful and vulnerable male figures: Patrokles (Achilles' surrogate, who cries like a girl) and Achilles' son Pyrrhus.^[94] By calling Achilles' son Pyrrhus (flame-haired) not Neoptolemus (new warrior),^[95] the poet recalls Praxinoa's son Zopyrion (little spark of fire) and Adonis (, "with reddish down," 130). Again, through the free play of phonetic and thematic echoes, the poet can suggest a mother's subjective response to her aesthetic experience—the flow of Praxinoa's associations which connect her young son Zopyrion, Adonis, a vulnerable and beautiful youth, and Pyrrhus, a young warrior from Troy.^[96]

The mention of Hecuba, queen of a besieged city, who lost husband

and sons to war, whose husband's friend betrayed her by murdering her only remaining boy-child,^[97] might also draw in Arsinoe herself, the Adonia's sponsor and Theocritus's patron, a queen who lost her first husband in war, who had to flee a city no longer safe for her, whose half-brother/husband Ceraunus betrayed her by having two of her three sons murdered,^[98] and who as queen of Egypt had left to her only an eldest son (cf. doomed Hector, "eldest of Hecuba's sons," Id . 15.139). How much of Arsinoe's history was known in Alexandria (and by whom) can only be a matter of conjecture, but Arsinoe's parallels with Hecuba, even if fortuitous on the poet's part, might have added another level to Idyll 15's reception at court. Further, Adonis is not an ambitious warrior-king like Agamemnon; he does not sacrifice himself for honor like Ajax. But in the context of a female-defined Adonia, in front of an internal audience of mothers and wives (the Syracusan women), a catalogue that devalues old-fashioned individualistic, death-dealing heroism in favor of Adonis (brought back to life through a females love) is certainly not out of place.

The individually named warriors featured in Idyll 15's catalogue all fought at Troy, but Achilles himself is notably missing as is Diomedes. Since in Idyll 17 Theocritus associates both Achilles and Diomedes with Ptolemy (55),^[99] perhaps their omission in Idyll 15 is a tactical move on the poet's part: Ptolemy, a famous lover but not so dearly accomplished as a warrior,^[100] and younger than his sister-wife by eight years, might not have appreciated the implications of a virile Achilles' subordination to a feminized Adonis dominated by a powerful female. But the identifies of other warriors on the list—Agamemnon (leader of the Greek forces), Ajax (best of the Achaeans after Achilles), Hector (best of the Trojan warriors, killed by Achilles), Patrokles (Achilles' best friend), Pyrrhus (Achilles' son)—seem to emphasize the omission of Achilles. Thus the poet exploits the opportunity available in the Adonia to contrast different ideologies of life and of aesthetics, for the catalogues suppression of warrior-heroes also corresponds to Alexandrian poetry's resistance to old-fashioned martial epic (and its mode of praising kings and heroes).^[101]

Thus far, in looking at the Adonis hymn, we have seen artistic (and political) sense where critics often see feminine failings.^[102] The "feminine failings" argument falls down even more when we turn to a closer consideration of the hymns descriptions of the offerings and setting, and thus to a consideration of the second charge against the hymn, the charge of vulgarity: that "the rococo flamboyance of the festival epitomizes bad taste."^[103]

The hymn, along with the women's praise of the tapestries, describes an Adonis display that includes the following luxurious items: silver baskets and golden perfume containers (113-14); fruits and cakes (112, 115-18); a carved couch of ebony, gold, and ivory (123-24); soft purple coverlets (125-27); embroidered tapestries (78-86); and green bowers with figures of Erotes overhead (119-22). The charge that this display is inordinately lavish forms a cornerstone of claims that the hymn lacks aesthetic balance. Yet luxurious display was expected in offerings to gods: generosity to the gods, as exemplified in magnificent displays and shows, was traditionally regarded as important to the welfare of the state and the glory of a ruler,^[104] and luxus particularly characterizes festivals of Dionysus and Aphrodite, gods favored by the Ptolemies. Literary representations of other celebrations sponsored by royal persons typically include similar objects and settings,^[105] and the Ptolemies were, in any case, known for splendid displays of wealth.^[106] Further, in Idyll 15 the hymns emphasis on the material abundance of the festivities helps deflect attention from Adonis's weak credentials as a hero for the Ptolemaic hegemony.

More notable than emphasis on luxury in the fictive hymnist's description of an Adonia display is the unusual attention given to the contributions of common persons (the makers of cakes and coverlets) to the ceremonial display.^[107] The traditional reading has tried to explain away the attention to cakes—for example, the magisterial Gow understands the final item to be meats not shaped cakes (otherwise the display ends on an indecorous note, he explains).^[108] Most translators and scholars follow Gow's lead and assume meats are part of the display.^[109] But in the context of Arsinoe's court, we can read the attention to these items with a different eye.

There are two passages to consider—the passage describing the offerings (112-18) and the passage describing the setting for the tableau (119-27)—and they are structurally very similar. Both passages start with standard lists of botanical and luxury items appropriate to the occasion and end by focusing on the creation of ceremonial objects. The seven-line description of the offerings displayed by the couch ends with four lines describing the shaped cakes:

^[110]
        (112-18)

By him are all the seasonal fruits that grow on trees,
beside him delicate gardens kept in silver baskets,
and golden vessels of Syrian perfume,
and cakes, all that women work on kneading-tray,
mixing colors of every hue with white flour,
and cakes made of sweet honey and in smooth oil,
all shaped like creatures that fly and creep, here they are beside him.

After three lines describing fruits, gardens in baskets, and flasks of perfume, the last four lines describe only one kind of offering, cakes; and rather than simply describing what they look like in the display, the singer gives a detailed description of how they are made: who makes them (, "women," 115), what tools they use (, "kneading-tray," 115), how they combine ingredients (, "by mixing," 116), and what ingredients they mix (, "colors of every hue," 116; , "white flour," 116; , "sweet honey," 117; and , "smooth oil," 117). Notice how affectionately Theocritus has the singer describe making cakes. Must we assume, as some readers do, that "the rococo flamboyance of the festival epitomizes bad taste, and therefore Theocritus can share a laugh with his patron by memorializing the masses' susceptibility to such vulgarity in his own impeccably refined verse"?^[111] A comparison of the description of the offerings with the description of the setting for the tableau enables us to interpret the attention to shaped cakes differently.

The description of the setting for the tableau has a similar structure:

        (119-27)^[112]

And green bowers laden with tender dill
have been built; and boyish Loves flutter overhead,
like nightingales that flutter on the tree

from branch to branch testing their fledgling wings.
O ebony, o gold, o eagles of ivory white
conveying to Zeus, son of Cronos, the cupbearing boy.
Purple coverlets above, softer than sleep.
Miletus will say and the shepherd who herds sheep in Samos,
"The couch covered for the fair Adonis is our work."

The order of naming the materials that make up the offerings and the setting is parallel in the two passages. The description of the offerings (112-18) starts with botanical substances (fruits, 112), moves through costly materials (silver baskets, golden vessels, and Syrian perfume, 114), and ends with objects linked with their makers (a four-line description of the cakes that women make, 115-18). The description of the setting (119-27) starts with botanical substances (green bowers and tender dill, 120), moves through costly materials (ebony, gold, and ivory, 124), and ends with objects linked with their makers (a description of the coverlets that "Miletus" and a Samian shepherd make, 125-27). Thus, there is a structural similarity between the passages describing the ceremonial offerings (112-18) and the setting for the tableau (119-27), and they both highlight the descriptions of objects linked with their makers.

But what is the thematic value of such descriptions? By focusing on transitory and collaborative arts (e.g., shaped cakes), the hymnist can reinforce the transitory nature of the Adonia: its fragile gardens and ephemeral hero. So too the emphasis on how carefully the cakes are crafted suggests an analogy to the hymnist's craft in composing a hymn, as well as to the poet's own craft.^[113] But why then highlight a Samian shepherds contribution rather than that of a craftperson such as a wool-worker or carpenter? A reference to Samos and Miletus, recent acquisitions of the Ptolemaic kingdom,^[114] would compliment the royal house. But why include the hypothetical response of the lowliest member of the production chain?

I would like to suggest another possibility than the usual proposal of ineptitude on the hymnist's part, a mocking amplification of trivial details. Instead I propose that the unusual emphasis in the hymn on the production of cakes and coverlets may have to do with the public nature of the Adonia represented in the poem. A problem in composing a hymn for a public celebration of the Adonia is, how could it speak to the traditional audience members of the Adonia (mostly housewives and prostitutes) and make them feel welcome in a public festival enacted on the palace grounds? A description of how cakes are made and a mention of a shepherds contribution to the making of coverlets might represent a

suitable rhetorical strategy to draw in less elite audience members, those who normally feel excluded from the glittering palace society of Alexandria.^[115] By suggesting that a hypothetical shepherd (were he to attend such an Adonia)^[116] might be most moved by coverlets he helped make, Idyll 15's hymn raises the issue of how private experiences might enhance the appreciation of ceremonial displays. So too women sensitive to the qualifies of woven materials in daily life (Id . 15.18-20, 34-38) can linger over figured ceremonial tapestries (78-86); a woman responsible for preparing food at home (147-48) can praise a hymn featuring a description of women making cakes. Most dramatically, the hymnist of Idyll 15 urges women audience members to participate in the next day's ritual lament (132-35), and in the last line of the poem, Gorgo herself joins the song, when she gives the final hymnic closure to both the Adonis song and Idyll 15 itself: ," ("Farewell, beloved Adonis, and may your return find us happy"; 149).

But if there is a case to be made for the possibility that in this poem at least, under the self-protective ironical aegis of a modernist woman hymnist and two housewives, Theocritus is denying the cloistered limitations of the Alexandrian academy and suggesting that the aesthetic experience might yet have an active, public, and liberating effect in the world, such a case would be strengthened were it grounded in cultural context. The emergence of the Adonia as a public festival in Hellenistic Alexandria seems to provide such a context, for in Idyll 15, the Adonia is described as a public festival, sponsored by Arsinoe II, and inclusive rather than exclusive, its audience including both men and women, commoner and royal in a communal celebration.

I am going to be more speculative here and suggest a few reasons for the Alexandrian court's public celebration of the traditionally private Adonis festival. The Ptolemies were trying to establish a Greek way of life in Egypt:^[117] the Greeks had a code of law separate from the Egyptians,^[118] and Koinè was the basic language of state. Alexandria's museum and libraries attracted the Greek intellectual elite to the Ptolemaic court, and freeborn male Greeks could reinforce their ethnic identity in the gymnasia. But Greeks of lower status had more difficulty maintaining a strong Greek identity and community, and a public Adonia, traditionally a festival important to women, might draw more marginal figures to the palace grounds.^[119] But whatever social program might lie beyond the fiction of the poem, the Greek population presented in Idyll 15 reflects Alexandria's Greek population in its multiplicity: each separately might exhibit local pride,^[120] but the hymn shows how together they can form a

ceremonial community. Thus, when Praxinoa and the hymnist describe the collaborative productions of anonymous men and women artisans, the inclusive spirit of their descriptions underscores the inclusive spirit of Arsinoe's Adonia, as Theocritus represents it in Idyll 15. Also, by showing how the aesthetic and the political can merge in Idyll 15, the poet explores how Alexandrian poetry and art, generally characterized by an aesthetic philosophy of "art for art's sake," can still assume a public role.

Also, a public celebration of the Adonia had the potential for broad appeal in multiethnic Alexandria, insofar as the relationship of Aphrodite and Adonis shared traits with those of Phoenician Astarte and Tammuz, Phrygian Cybele and Attis, Sumerian Inanna and Dumuzi,^[121] and Egyptian Isis and Osiris.^[122] The tendency toward syncretism of gods in the Hellenistic age may also have increased the appeal of Dionysus and Aphrodite for the Ptolemies: the Greek Dionysus was easily identified with the Egyptian Osiris (the chthonic Sarapis),^[123] and in Memphis, funerary rites of the bull Apis were associated with Dionysiac mysteries.^[124] So too Aphrodite was early identified with the Phoenician Astarte and the Egyptian Isis.^[125] But any inclusiveness suggested in Theocritus's representation of an Adonia would not extend beyond the Greek community, for Idyll 15's Praxinoa specifically bars Egyptians and projects her discriminatory impulse into the court itself (47-48).^[126]

In sponsoring a public Adonia, Arsinoe officially recognized and authorized the most marginalized women's activities and made these activities part of the public forum. The Adonia's celebration at court brought ordinary women into the palace grounds and encouraged women to enter the public realm to attend the festival. In the context of a hegemony that included a powerful female, Theocritus's celebration of Arsinoe's Adonia shows women claiming the right to speech in the public realm, e.g., Praxinoa's retort to the bystander. Arsinoe's Adonia made available an official forum in which women artists, such as Idyll 15's female hymnist, could perform (at court) for an audience that featured women. Cratinus, an early Attic comic poet, in his play The Herdsmen had dismissed the aesthetic demands of representing an Adonis ode: he mocks another poet's incompetence by asserting that he gave a chorus to a man Cratinus himself would not hire to produce a choral ode even for an Adonia (Ath. 14.638f). But in Idyll 15's Alexandria, a woman patron has taken charge of producing a public Adonia and has authorized an Argive woman's daughter to sing. Theocritus's subtle shaping of women's interests in the hymnist's song and throughout Idyll 15

distances him from the (male) tradition of ridiculing the Adonia for loose morals and shrill behavior (e.g., Ar. Lys . 387-98; Men. Sam . 38-50; Dioscorides Ep . 3 and 4 Gow and Page [= A.P . 5.53, 5.193]). Instead Idyll 15 shows that "the need for authenticity and creativity do[es] not belong only to the advanced, the educated, or the elite. These forces are played out in different forms for women in differing circumstances, but they are necessities for all."^[127]

In Idyll 15, Theocritus appropriates a woman hymnist's voice to address a female patron. Theocritus's identification of the hymnist as an Argive woman's daughter advances the celebratory tone of a poem commemorating a festival sponsored by a Ptolemaic queen in her mother's honor. In addition, the woman hymnist's connection with Argos through her mother may reflect the Ptolemies' own claim to a connection with Alexander through the Argead dynasty of Macedonia.^[128] The mother's importance in establishing the connection of the hymnist and Argos also illustrates Theocritus's thematic concern with the motifs of motherhood and legitimation.^[129] In this context, Gorgo's praise of the hymnist does not seem aesthetically ignorant.^[130] Insofar as Theocritus's Adonis hymn is addressed to women (Id . 15.143) and focuses on women's concerns, a woman like Gorgo might be able to judge its effectiveness and art better than at least the kind of man the bystander represents.

Theocritus's thematic interest in women's song is apparent elsewhere in his poetry. In Idyll 24, Teiresias assures Alcmene that Greek women will sing of her by name as they work yam and that Argive women will honor her (76-78). Idyll 18 presents a chorus of women celebrating Helen's marriage, and they praise Helen's skill at playing the lyre and performing hymns of Artemis and Athena (32-37). In Idyll 2, Theocritus shapes Simaetha's incantation and self-narration through refrains and hymnic invocations, queries, and closures. Also, Idyll 4. includes mention of the songs of Glauce, most likely a reference to a famous Hellenistic female poet.^[131] Women also frequently appear in Theocritus's poems as audiences, both for male performances (e.g., Id . 1.34-38, Id . 2.112-39, Id . 3, Id . 4.35-37, etc.) and for female achievements (e.g., Idyll 28's poet-narrator describes how Theugenis will gain fame among housewives for her skilled use of a distaff [22]; Idyll 26 ends by praising the Cadmean women as "honored by many heroines" [36]).

The nonstandard voices presented by Theocritus and other Alexandrian poets (the voices of, e.g., ordinary housewives, herdsmen, and pimps) challenge traditional patriarchal values by giving access to a multiplicity of alternative, deviant worlds (e.g., Herod. Mime 6's women,

who describe dildoes as works of art).^[132] But Arsinoe's Adonia offered Theocritus a special, court-sponsored excuse to explore a public suspension of traditional patriarchal values: to look at how carnivals, even those connected with courts, can offer forums for inverting hierarchies (e.g., male over female), dissolving boundaries (e.g., insider vs. outsider), and deconstructing assumptions of power (e.g., the bystander's over the Syracusan women). But Idyll 15 also shows how festivals can enable a hegemony to reset social boundaries to encompass and contain what used to be marginal (women immigrants).

In addition to favoring Aphrodite and Adonis, Arsinoe paid special attention to deities who offered salvation at sea: she sponsored Samothracian deities^[133] and probably the Dioskouroi as well.^[134] (Arsinoe, who twice escaped assassination by fleeing in ships—from Arsinoea [Ephesus] to Macedonia and from Cassandreia to Samothrace—and who made successful voyages to and from Egypt, probably felt a special thankfulness to saviors at sea.) Arsinoe's patronage of saviors at sea reinforces our perception that the choice of sponsoring an Adonia was perhaps deliberately iconoclastic (a breaking of the boundary between private and public), for Arsinoe could have honored Aphrodite as patroness of sea travel, e.g., Aphrodite Euploia (of a fair voyage) or Aphrodite Pontia (of the sea),^[135] instead of as patroness of illicit love. Since Berenice and her husband Ptolemy I were called Theoi Soteres (Savior Gods),^[136] a celebration of Aphrodite as savior at sea might have also suited the occasion of Berenice's deification. But Arsinoe sponsored the Adonia instead, traditionally a countercultural, female festival celebrating the passionate relations of a strong woman and a subordinated younger male.

Arsinoe's sponsorship of a public Adonia, traditionally a private festival celebrating an extramarital affair, may also be part of an ongoing dialogue with a Ptolemy notoriously (amorous), as Theocritus remarks in Idyll 14 (61), and perhaps openly unfaithful. Ptolemy certainly advanced such a dialogue, even if only after Arsinoe's death, by publicly flaunting his mistresses and bestowing Arsinoe's attributes and honors on them. Ptolemy set up public statues of his mistress Cleino, wearing only a tunic, but holding the drinking cup he had ordered made to be a special attribute of Arsinoe on her statues (Polyb. 14.11; Ath. 10.425e-f, 11.497b-e). For his mistress Bilistiche, Ptolemy dedicated temples and shrines of Bilistiche-Aphrodite (Plut. Mor . 753e), which recalled those of Arsinoe-Aphrodite.^[137] Ptolemy also named fine houses in Alexandria for his girlfriends and set up a great monument near the sea

at Ephesus in honor of his mistress Stratonice (Ath. 13.576f). Thus as Bouché-Leclercq remarks: "Arsinoé n'était pas oubliée. Elle servait d'original pour les copies."^[138]

Although we do not know the strategies whereby Arsinoe exerted her patronage, the focus on gender dynamics in many of Theocritus's poems seems to reflect attention to Arsinoe's authority in Alexandrian cultural life. Thus Arsinoe's sponsorship of the Adonia in Alexandria could itself be a statement of power. In any case, Theocritus's Idyll 15 moves away from a patriarchal state, with its male-dominated streets, toward a realm controlled by Arsinoe and Aphrodite.

The historical Arsinoe, having returned home a sorrowing mother, a troubled refugee, moved from the private realm into Alexandria's public forum through political influence, marriage, and cultural patronage. In Idyll 15, by moving fictive women out of the private sphere into the center of the Ptolemaic state, the poet draws attention to the innovation of Arsinoe's public Adonia and the vital public presence of women at court. Through representations of powerful (and threatening) women (e.g., Idyll 1's Aphrodite, Idyll 26's bacchantes),^[139] Theocritus can suggest disconcerting aspects of a strong woman's position at court for Greek men used to political dominance. But by projecting himself into a female's subjective consciousness, as he does in two of the urban mimes (Idylls 2 and 15), Theocritus makes female sensibilities public and thus also part of the public discourse.

A brief reconsideration of the gender dynamics of Idyll 17, a hymnic encomium of Ptolemy, underscores Theocritus's attention to the powerful female presence within the Ptolemaic court. In this poem, which celebrates Ptolemy's achievements in the Syrian war (86-90), Thaocritus also emphasizes the Power of the Ptolemaic women at court. For Alexander's usurping successors and their self-legitimizing dynasties, a wife's loyalty was crucial. Idyll 17 highlights male anxieties concerning a wife's Power in determining the legitimacy of her children (43-44). Written at a time in which traditional boundaries between public and private, men and women, Political and domestic were becoming more fluid, Idyll 17 draws attention to the importance of motherhood and marriage in the Ptolemaic discourse. By bringing private (female) life into the public (male) realm and by emphasizing the significance of the private realm to the public self, the poem suggests the weakness of an ideology that polarizes private and public, and it shows a Ptolemaic court of shared power, a hegemony constituted not as a patriarchal monologue but rather as a dialogue between male and female.

Let us now examine how Theocritus uses the motif of the relations of Hera and Zeus to approach the theme of Ptolemy and Arsinoe's (incestuous) relations. In Idyll 17, the motif of Hera and Zeus's wedding is directly compared with Ptolemy and Arsinoe's:

        (128-34)

He and his noble wife [Ptolemy and Arsinoe], than whom none better
clasps in her arms a husband in his halls,
loving with all her heart her brother and her spouse.
After this fashion was accomplished the sacred bridal also
of the immortals whom Queen Rhea bore to rule Olympus;
and single is the couch that Iris, virgin still, her hands made
pure with perfumes, strews for the sleep of Zeus and Hera.
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:139)

Gow proposes that "the comparison of the Ptolemies to Zeus and Hera seems both blasphemous and sycophantic."^[140] But the analogy seems to have been popular from the marriages start: thus the famous story of a rhapsode who evidently started his song at Ptolemy and Arsinoe's wedding with a reference to Zeus and Hera (; Zeus called to Hera, his wife and sister"; Plut. Mor . 756e-f).^[141] Further, the Ptolemies themselves may have encouraged this analogy.^[142] More importantly for our discussion, Idyll 17's passage on Zeus and Hera, with its highlight on how Rhea bore them to be joint rulers of Olympus (132), intensifies Idyll 17's thematic focus on the mother's importance in determining dynastic succession and on hegemonic power that is shared between male and female.

Callimachus's representations of Hera's relations with Zeus also seem suggestive of male-female relations at the Ptolemaic court and thus provide a useful comparison with Theocritus's approach to Arsinoe and Ptolemy's sibling marriage.^[143] Many scholars see in Callimachus's Hymn 1 (to Zeus) an implicit comparison between Zeus's and Ptolemy II's accession to the throne.^[144] Hera does not appear in Hymn 1, which is generally dated before Ptolemy II's marriage to Arsinoe,^[145] but she does appear in Hymns 3 (to Artemis) and 4 (to Delos). Hymn 4 is

typically dated to Philadelphus's reign and generally after Arsinoe and Ptolemy's marriage;^[146]Hymn 3 offers less scope for dating.^[147] The discussion that follows is necessarily highly speculative, since the dating of all three of these hymns is problematic, but let us consider whether in the context of a court defined by a brother-sister marriage, Callimachus's hymnic references to Hera and Zeus's marital relations might seem wryly polysemous (especially to the members of Callimachus's courtly audience who were already feeling distanced by the incest of the Ptolemaic marriage).^[148]

Hymns 3 and 4, which highlight Hera's oppositional position to Zeus, raise the issue of the difficulties of balancing male and female power at the hegemonic level, an issue most pertinent to the Ptolemaic court. Thus in Hymn 4, a jealous and vindictive Hera curses Zeus's mistresses:

        (240-43)

So now, O shameful creatures of Zeus, may ye all wed
in secret and bring forth in darkness, not even where the poor
mill-women bring forth in difficult labour, but where the seals
of the sea bring forth, amid the desolate rocks.
        (trans. Mair, "Callimachus," 105)

Hera's relations with Zeus are mostly unfruitful (Ares was their only son together); in Hymn 3, Callimachus's Zeus boasts to young Artemis sitting on his knees that he has other sources for children:

        (29-31)

When goddesses bear me children like this,
little need I heed the wrath of jealous Hera.
        (trans. Mair, "Callimachus," 63)

An analogy seems possible here with the Ptolemies' relationship, for Arsinoc reportedly did not bear Ptolemy children,^[149] and Ptolemy was famous for his many mistresses.^[150]Hymn 4's Hera presents the criterion through which a female might attain favor in her court:^[151]

        (247-48)

Howbeit I honour her exceedingly for that she did not
desecrate my bed, but instead of Zeus preferred the sea.
        (trans. Mair, "Callimachus," 105)

Hymn 3's description of the happy city, with its focus on kinship factionalism within well-established homes, also may seem suggestive of Ptolemaic family history:

        (133-35)

Nor does faction wound their race—faction which ravages
even well-established houses: but brother's wife
and husband's sister set their chairs around one board.
        (trans. Mair,"Callimachus," 71)

Arsinoe II had much experience of complicated kinship factionalism between women in well-established houses. In her first husband Lysimachus's house, her interests conflicted with those of her husband's son Agathocles and his wife, her half-sister Lysandra: the conflict ended with Agathocles' execution, his widow's self-exile, and Lysimachus's death in battle.^[152] At her brother Ptolemy's court, Arsinoe II's interests conflicted with those of Ptolemy's wife Arsinoe I, Lysimachus's daughter and hence Arsinoe II's step-daughter.^[153] This conflict ended with Arsinoe I's exile and Arsinoe II's marriage to her brother. At the Ptolemaic table, peace between kinswomen seems to have come only when brother's wife and husband's sister (, Callim. Hymn 3.135) were one and the same—Arsinoe II herself. Thus Callimachus's representations of relations between Zeus and Hera, as well as other marriage themes, raise issues that might have seemed relevant also to the Ptolemaic court, whose marital discourse also included incest and extramarital affairs.^[154]

A major difference between Callimachus's and Theocritus's approach to the theme of heterosexual relations is that Theocritus sometimes suggests the possibility, however ironized, of mutual love—e.g., Id . 15.128 (Aphrodite and Adonis); Id . 18.52-53, 54-55 (Helen and Menelaus);^[155]Id . 17.38-40 (Ptolemy and Berenice); Id . 17.42 (an anonymous loving married couple).^[156] In Callimachus's poetry, on the other hand, the most prominent (and repeating) examples of the marital loyalty theme are

Zeus's infidelities and Hera's powerful expressions of anger against his helpless, young mistresses (e.g., Leto in Hymn 4).^[157] In Herodas's poetry, too, passionate love for one's spouse is not a theme: even Mime 1's Metriche, who refuses to cuckold her husband, refuses not for love but to preserve her husband's reputation (77).^[158]

Although Idyll 17's representation of Hera and Zeus's relations, unlike most of Callimachus's representations, seems to reinforce the theme of passionate, married love (with emphasis here on Arsinoe's love for Ptolemy),^[159] Theocritus also offers a more ironic view of the divine incestuous marriage in a remark of Idyll 15's Praxinoa: , ("Women know all things, even how Zeus married Hera"; 64). Here, through the voice of a low-status Syracusan immigrant woman, Theocritus underscores the liberty of private speech (and poetry) to make Zeus and Hera's incestuous marriage (and perhaps by analogy the Ptolemies') into town talk.^[160]

As Griffiths has shown, Theocritus's poetry focuses on gods and heroes favored by the Ptolemaic court, e.g., Idylls 1 and 25 feature Aphrodite; Idylls 13 and 24, Heracles; Idyll 26, Dionysus; Idyll 18, Helen; Idyll 22, the Dioskouroi; Idyll 17, Zeus, the deified Alexander, Heracles, Aphrodite, and Hera.^[161] But reservations about hegemonic power also seem to emerge in aspects the poet emphasizes from their stories.^[162] For example, in Idyll 26, bacchantes, incited through Dionysus, tear a king limb from limb. Although featured in the procession of Ptolemy described by Callixeinus, Dionysus is conspicuously absent from Idyll 17, Theocritus's encomium of Ptolemy.^[163] Also, in Idyll 13, love distracts an unhappy Heracles from his heroic business.

In Herodas's Mime 1, through an old bawds review of the famous attractions of Alexandria, the poet seems to highlight the importance of Arsinoe at court. The list of attractions begins and ends with females and even the brother-sister sharing of power is mentioned before the king by himself:^[164]

        (26-35)

Egypt is the very home of the goddess; for all
that exists and is produced in the world is in Egypt:
wealth, wrestling grounds, might, peace, renown,
shows, philosophers, money, young men,
the domain of the   [the brother-sister gods],^[165]  the king a good one,
the museum, wine, all good things one can desire,
women more in number—I swear by Kore wife of Hades—
than the sky boasts of stars,
and in charms like the goddesses who went on a time to Paris
to have their beauty judged—I pray they may not hear me.
        (trans. Knox, in Headlam and Knox,  Herodas , 5)

Headlam suggests that the (goddess) of the first line of this passage refers to Aphrodite, since the poem's theme is love, but could also refer to Arsinoe, who was identified with Aphrodite but was also herself called (goddess), even before her death.^[166]

Hellenistic poetry attests Arsinoe's prominent position in the cultural life of Alexandria. But the Alexandrian poets approached the theme of the power relations between Ptolemy and Arsinoe in complex and sophisticated ways, often by placing praise in low voices, but also possibly through veiled analogies to such figures as Aphrodite and Adonis, Zeus and Hera, and Helen and Menelaus.^[167] Thus, for instance, through representations of Hera's relations with Zeus, Callimachus seems to approach the difficult theme of the relations of Arsinoe and Ptolemy with some degree of cynicism. Arthur's apt description of the Hera featured in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo seems to suit Callimachus's Hera (and perhaps Arsinoe II as well): "Hera appears as a powerful and formidable foe to Zeus, conscious of her own prerogatives, jealous of their usurpation by Zeus, and altogether capable of retaliation."^[168] Theocritus, on the other hand, in Idyll 17 uses the marriage of Zeus and Hera to highlight the theme of shared hegemonic power. In Idyll 15, Theocritus emphasizes Arsinoe's power in the Ptolemaic court by focusing on her patronage of a public Adonia, which brings women's discourse and women's arts into the public realm, and also by emphasizing parallels between Arsinoe and Aphrodite.

In the case of the royal hegemony at Alexandria, the official voice was not exclusively male. Arsinoe's female voice made itself heard as well, through, for example, the sponsorship of a public Adonia, traditionally a private, women's festival celebrating the relations of a dominant female with a younger, subordinate male, now brought by Arsinoe into the public discourse. A juxtaposition of Theocritus's Idylls 14 and 15 high-

lights gendered differences between male and female patronage: Idyll 14, which includes an encomium of Ptolemy, features two male friends and the male-defined world of the symposium; Idyll 15, which highlights Arsinoe's patronage, features two female friends and the female-defined world of the Adonia. Both poems also feature the theme of relations of power between males and females. The dialogue form, favored by Theocritus in many of his poems, was especially useful for testing and challenging official monologues. In Alexandria under the Ptolemies, Arsinoe's forceful presence at court introduced diversity of voice and gender difference. Thus in a cultural environment defined by two royal voices — Arsinoe's and Ptolemy's—Alexandrian poets, not least Theocritus, wrote poems drawing attention not only to the heteroglossia offered by little, nonelite voices (e.g., the voices of immigrant housewives in Idyll 15), in contrast to the dominant hegemony, but also to the dialogue of male and female, Ptolemy and Arsinoe, within the official hegemony itself.