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BEHAGHEL'S CLUB
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2014
Extract
Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in jeux de mots in Greek poetry. It was especially the discovery of the ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic in Aratus' Phaenomena by J.-M. Jacques in 1960 that stimulated the desire for joining the elite club of those capable of detecting such encrypted messages. This period of intensive Rätselforschung recently found its culmination in the publication of C. Luz's monograph on linguistic games in Greek poetry, in which an impressive variety of these is discussed: acrostics, palindromes, anagrams, isopsephic poems, carmina figurata, and so forth. Yet even Luz's list is incomplete, and the present discussion aims to offer a brief supplement to her admirable book. I will discuss a playful device used by Greek poets which may not be as spectacular as acrostics but beats them in one hardly negligible respect – that a plausible new discovery may be easier to make in this field.
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References
1 Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos (Phén. 783–787)’, REA 62 (1960), 48–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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39 According to Bowie's (n. 37) highly attractive hypothesis, Vestinus used the title ‘Olympian’, which Hadrian adopted after his dedication of the Olympieion in Athens in 131/2, because the poem was composed on this occasion. In return for Hadrian's gift to Athens, numerous altars started to appear in the eastern empire. Vestinus' Altar would be another such charisterion.
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