Abstract

Who is the author of this poem and what is its historical context? Gow and Page are convinced that the author is Crinagoras. Manuscript authority, in the person of the so-called ‘corrector’, supports the attribution. Yet, at first sight at least, the attribution of this poem to Crinagoras raises something of a problem. It does so because the poem evidently relates to what seems to be a contemporary marriage linking the royal families of Egypt and Libya respectively: if the author is indeed Crinagoras, what marriage can this be? Only one such marriage is available: as Gow and Page accurately observe, ‘It is generally agreed that this epigram refers to the marriage of Cleopatra Selene and Juba II’.