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Blemmye Poem
#1
I stumbled upon a reference to a poetic work called the Blemmyomachia supposedly by Pisander of Panopolis. Can anyone here point me in the direction of an available translation? Or the provenance of the work? There is no reference in the search I have done here except to Blemmye using north African elephants. Any help regarding this would be appreciated.
Francis Hagan

The Barcarii
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#2
Fascinating. I found a short summary of the work in English here:

[url:2qt0krbg]http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/armies/dba63.html[/url]

The poem appears to have been originally attributed to Olympiodorus of Thebes and published as P.Berol. 5003 = FHN III 326, E. Livrea, Anonymi fortasse Olympiodori Thebani Blemyomachia. P.Berol. 5003 (Meisenheim, 1978). New fragments of the work appear to have been published by L.S.B. MacCoull, ‘Fragments from the Monastery of Phoebammon’, in Pap.Congr. XVI (Chicago, 1981) 491-8, and M. Steinrück, ‘Neues zur Blemyomachie’, ZPE 126 (1999) 99-114. On the author of the poem, see E. Livrea, Studia Hellenistica, 2 vols (Florence, 1991) 2.357-79 (‘Chi è l’autore della Blemyomachia?’, 19761).

The work appears to be dated to the early 5th century AD based inter alia on the idenification of the Roman general "Germanus" with a Roman general whom the Emperor Theodosius II sent on campaign against the Vandals in 441. Cf. PLRE II s.v. ‘Germanus’ 3; Kirwan, Studies, Ch. XXV at 80-1. In Hist.Mon. 1.2 Festugière = FHN III 307, written c. 400, the monk John of Lykopolis predicts the victory of a Roman general over the ‘Ethiopians’ attacking Syene.

All of this is taken from: RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN. RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTERS. ON THE SOUTHERN EGYPTIAN FRONTIER. IN LATE ANTIQUITY. (AD 298 – 642) available online at www. dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/theology/2005.

If you read German, I am pretty sure that the epic " Die Zeit der Soldatenkaiser Krise und Transformation des Römischen Reiches im 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (235-284) Herausgegeben von Johne, Klaus-Peter. Urheber (sonst.): Hartmann, Udo / Gerhardt, Thomas" has something on this poem.
Regards,


Jens Horstkotte
Munich, Germany
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#3
Further to my last post, the ZPE paper with new fragments is available online here.

[url:2mstz4gw]http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/index.html[/url]

Earlier German editions (Greek with a short German summary) are avaible here:

[url:2mstz4gw]http://www.archive.org/details/epischeundelegis00schuuoft[/url]

and here

[url:2mstz4gw]http://www.archive.org/details/griechischedich00bcgoog[/url]

My greek is very bad but based on the summaries, this is very gory stuff mostly dealing with the color of the entrails bulging out when people are ripped open by other people's spears.
Regards,


Jens Horstkotte
Munich, Germany
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#4
jho

thanks for that - alas, my German is only slightly worse than my late Latin which is to say non-existent! But the dissertation in the first post is valuable reading so thanks for that. The DBM post I had already stumbled over and found the silver skulls mentioned a fascinating piece of period detail. Again, thanks for the referencing! Laudes.
Francis Hagan

The Barcarii
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