De “magna muliere” in Callimachi Aetiorum prologo nonnulla disputantur

The well-known passage of the prologue of Callimachus’ Aitia (fr. 1, 9-12 Pf. = Hard.) in which Philitas and Mimnermus are praised has puzzled scholars for almost a century: it is not clear, in fact, whether the poet is comparing their short poems to long works by themselves or by other authors, such as Antimachus or Apollonius. The latter’s Argonautica are possibly the work which was referred to by a noun in the lacuna at the beginning of v. 10 (perhaps νηῦν/ναῦν, or even δρῦν); as to the former, the “big lady” of v. 12 is likely to be his Smyrneis, to which the other short elegies are opposed, which were evoked by a metaphoric expression now lost in the lacuna. After Bastianini, who dismissed Rostagni’s old reading αἱ κατὰ λεπτόν as palaeographically impossible and read αἱ μεγάλ(αι) with μεγα written above in the London scholium, the supplement αἱ μέγα λ[αραί / ἀδόνες] (ἀδόνες already suggested by Casanova), i.e. “the very sweet-voiced nightingales”, is proposed.