Edwin D. Floyd (University of Pittsburgh)
Anthologia Palatina 15.40, a poem by the ninth century Homerist Cometas, was long ago commented on, perhaps by a contemporary, as being by a Thersites pretending to be an Achilles. More than a millennium later, Paton, Buffière, and Beckby (editors of bilingual editions in English, French, and German respectively) all pick up this comment in their own way. The Budé editor, Buffière, for example, combines mention of the anonymous epigram with the observation that Cometas is unlikely to get fame through his poem.
The setting for Buffière's comment is Cometas' reference to God's fame being demonstrated through the raising of Lazarus. The French translator's comment, therefore, even though it is clever enough, seems a bit incongruous - surely, Cometas was not in competition with God.
Yet, though it seems unfair to judge Cometas against the standard which Buffière implies, he may still seem to resemble Thersites in his gauche use of traditional language. At line 23, for example, the Homeric background to the mention of Jesus' "voice sweeter than honey" is Iliad 1.249. In that passage, the context is one of failure rather than success, inasmuch as Nestor is there unable to persuade Achilles and Agamemnon to desist from quarreling.
There is, however, more to it than woodenly reused Homeric models. As Beckby notes, line 41 of Cometas' poem draws on Hesiod, Works and Days, 8. A Hesiodic background is also important in connection with the comparison in line 23, for in addition to its sole Homeric occurrence at Iliad 1.249, the concept "sweet voice" occurs in Hesiod, Theogony 97. The setting for this passage is the bard's being inspired by the Muses, Apollo, and Zeus; such a divine-human interface, more than Nestor's attempt to mediate between Achilles and Agamemnon, is appropriate as background for Cometas' poem.
Like his use of Hesiod, Cometas' adaptation of Homeric material is also, on occasion, sophisticated. Line 14, for example, picks up a famous formula, dealing with the soul's "lamenting its fate", from Iliad 16.857 and 22.363. In Homer, there is a feminine singular participle gooôsa, referring to a warrior's psuchê Cometas, on the other hand, has a feminine plural gooôsai, referring to Martha and Mary, while psuchês is used adverbially, "with (all) their soul".
Besides displaying an almost Callimachean adroitness, Cometas' various adjustments in line 14 also have a substantive effect. His presentation gives us a sequence of (1) Lazarus' death, (2) his sisters' lamentation, (3) Jesus' revival of Lazarus, and (4) Jesus' subsequent fame. In contrast, then, to the finality implicit in the Homeric picture of a warrior, reduced to the lamentation of a tenuous psuchê, Cometas uses the same phraseology to prefigure a point which is just below the surface of the Byzantine poem, viz., the equation of Jesus' fame with his resurrection.