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Don't try this at home: Pliny's Salpe, Salpe's Paignia and magic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

James N. Davidson
James N. Davidson
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London
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Extract

There are two women called Salpe who are said to have written books in antiquity: one is described by Athenaeus (7.322a) as the name or pseudonym of a writer of ‘Paignia’ the other is cited by Pliny the Elder who calls her at one point Salpe obstetrix. Salpe is a rare name in antiquity—I know of no other examples—and few ancient books were ascribed to women. That two of these rare female writers should be called by the same name is something of a coincidence. That the name they shared was the very rare Salpe is a priori distinctly unlikely. It is much more plausible that they were one and the same.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , December 1995 , pp. 590 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1995

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References

1 Wilamowitz noted the coincidence, but found it no more than ‘spaβhaft’, suggesting Salpe was a fictitious name used as a nom de plume, although, in fact, Athenaeus' comments suggest there was only one work of Paignia ascribed to Salpe in antiquity, and that some considered the name to be a pseudonym of Mnaseas, and others of a Lesbian woman, von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, U., Hellenistische Dichtung I (Berlin, 1924), p. 83Google Scholar n. 2. It should perhaps be pointed out that the saupe, the fish from which she took her name, was usually considered an unattractive shit-eating animal, and the nickname was unlikely to have been coined for the sake of flattery, see Wilkins and Hill ad Archestratus F 28.

2 FGrHist 572 F 5. Jacoby (ad Alcimus, FGrHist 560 F 1) thought that the discussion of Salpe had been lifted by Athenaeus wholesale from Apollodorus' ten-volume commentary On Epicharmus. Nymphodorus' dates are discussed in Jacoby's introduction to the author, where he follows Laqueur in giving a floruit at the end of the third century, or in the last thirty or so years at any rate (p. 603). There is also a reference to Salpe in a passage ascribed by Athenaeus to Alcimus, a historian Jacoby dates to the early fourth century. If this is regarded as an original part of Alcimus' text, Salpe's dates can be pushed back much further, although Jacoby himself discounts this possibility and brackets the reference in his text of the fragment.

3 Both Wilamowitz (loc. cit.) and Jacoby (ad 560 F 1) seem unduly sceptical about the existence of Nymphodorus' Lesbian woman, although women are more highly represented among the erotic and medical/magic genres than elsewhere. Salpe would be in the good company of Lais, Elephantis and Philaenis, whose work was also suspected of having been written by a man.

4 Wilamowitz, loc. cit., Gulick ad Athenaeus 7.322a.

5 For Democritus' reputation as a magician, see the references in Betz, Hans Dieter (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Vol. 1, Texts (Chicago, 1986), p. 334Google Scholar, and Winkler, J. J., ‘The Constraints of Desire: Erotic Magical Spells’ in The Constraints of Desire, The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York, 1990), p. 80Google Scholar, with note.

6 Kotansky, Roy in Betz, Hans Dieter (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, p. 119Google Scholar, J. J. Winkler, loc. cit.