Laudator Temporis Acti

Greek Anthology 11.353 (by Palladas; tr. W.R. Paton, with his note):

Hermolycus' daughter slept with a great ape and she gave birth to many little ape-Hermeses. If Zeus, transformed into a swan, got him from Leda Helen, Castor, and Pollux, with Hermione at least a crow lay, and, poor woman, she gave birth to a Hermes-crowd of horrible demons.<sup>2

2</sup> The epigram seems very confused. Is Hermione the same as Hermolycus' daughter, and how did she manage to have such a variety of husbands?

Ἑρμολύκου θυγάτηρ μεγάλῳ παρέλεκτο πιθήκῳ·
    ἡ δ᾽ ἔτεκεν πολλοὺς Ἑρμοπιθηκιάδας.
εἰ δ᾽ Ἑλένην ὁ Ζεὺς καὶ Κάστορα καὶ Πολυδεύκην
    ἐκ Λήδης ἔτεκεν, κύκνον ἀμειψάμενος,
Ἑρμιόνῃ γε Κόραξ παρελέξατο· ἡ δὲ τάλαινα
    φρικτῶν δαιμονίων ἑρμαγέλην ἔτεκεν.

Paton's translation is awkward. I would revise it slightly as follows:

Hermolycus' daughter slept with a great ape and she gave birth to many little ape-Hermeses. If Zeus, transformed into a swan, begat Helen, Castor, and Pollux from Leda, with Hermione at least a crow lay, and, poor woman, she gave birth to a Hermes-crowd of horrible demons.

This epigram seems to have attracted little notice among scholars. Some subsidia interpretationis follow.

Jean François Boissonade ap. Friedrich Dübner, Epigrammatum Anthologia Palatina, Vol. II (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1888), p. 388:

CCCLIII. In Plan. ἄδηλον. — In quandam deformium liberorum matrem. — 1. «Hermolyci filia Hermione deformi viro concumbebat; nam sic est πιθήκῳ capiendum; conf. ad ep. 196. — 2. Nomen tanquam ex avi et patris nomine compositum. — 5. Dixerat cum simia rem habuisse; nunc cum corvo dicit, non nitide; nec Ἑρμαγέλη exspectatur post Ἑρμοπιθηκιάδας: ut crediderim esse confusa duo epigrammata, quorum prius primo disticho includatur. — 6. Ἑρμαγέλη, grex quem pascat Mercurius larvarum praeses.» B. Omnia integra, neque ea lance expendendus Palladas.

In other words, Boissonade thought there were two separate epigrams (lines 1-2 and 3-6), not one.

Alfred Franke, De Pallada Epigrammatographo (Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1899), p. 82:

Constat inter omnes horum saeculorum, quae commemoravi, poetas in primis Nonnum et eius sectatores maxime valuisse novis verbis fictis. In Palladae quoque epp. multa invenimus nova verba haud parva cum sagacitate ficta aut parodiae aut annominationis causa. De nominibus propriis certis de causis fictis iam supra dixiiuus, addimus hoc loco alia: ... praeterea Ἑρμοπιθηκιάδης et ἑρμαγέλη comice fingit secundum Ἑρμόλυκος ep. XI. 353.

Id., pp. 83-84 (footnotes omitted):

Particulas quoque, quae saeculis Ch. n. sequentibus in dies rarescebant, apud Palladam perraras esse observamus. Ex eis particulis, quas Blass in Novo Testamento non iam exstare explicavit, perpaucae in epp. Palladae reperiuntur ... γὲ coniunctum legitur et apud Parthenium et reliquos eroticos plane desideratur, semel inveni in Palladae ep. XI. 353, 5., quo loco cum etiam propter sententiarum conexum suspicionem moveat, fortasse rectius in δὲ mutandum est.

Georg Luck, "Palladas: Christian or Pagan?" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958) 455-471 (at 467, with note on p. 470):

His eloquence is, indeed, the eloquence of the manager of a freak show⁷⁰; he does not have to appeal to moral standards in order to attract his public.

⁷⁰ Cf. Anth. Pal. 11.353.

Heather White, "Eight Convivial and Satirical Epigrams," Minerva. Revista de filología clásica 11 (1997) 67-71 (at 70):

In this epigram Hermolycus' daughter (i.e. Hermione) is said to have slept with an ape and produced ugly children. For the fact that apes were considered ugly cf. A.P. XI, 196. The poet then states that if Zeus transformed himself into a swan in order to produce beautiful children, then Hermione must have slept with a crow in order to produce her children. For the comparison between the beautiful white swan and the ugly black crow cf. Callimachus fr. 260,56 ff.

Of course Hermolycus' daughter didn't literally sleep with an ape and produce offspring. On the first line πιθήκῳ probably refers to "a despicable or ugly person": see Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (Leiden: Brill, 1995),p. 1663, where this passage is not cited, however. I wonder if perhaps Πίθηκος could be a name or nickname here. Pithecium is a proper name in Plautus, Truculentus 477.

Wulf D. Hund, "Racist King Kong Fantasies: From Shakespeare's Monster to Stalin's Ape-Man," in Wulf D. Hund et al., edd., Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class, and Race (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2015), pp. 43-73 (at 45-46, with mention of Palladas in n. 8):

Aware of the Spanish atrocities in America and the Portuguese slave trading in Africa, Bodin opposes slavery.⁷ But at the same time he is equipped with the racist knowledge of his era. On the one side it is traditional, peopled by devils and witches. Satan appears as ›God's ape‹ and seduces sinners full of carnal desire. Unsurprisingly, in this ambience women mix with apes. Respective evidence dates back to the eleventh century. The cardinal and Doctor of the Church Peter Damian has already told the story about the spouse of a count from Liguria whose playmate was a monkey as lecherous as herself. Thus the atrocity happened: »com [sic, read cum] femina fera concubuit« — the woman copulated with the animal.⁸ After that the monkey, looking on the husband as a rival, mangled him with claws and teeth. On top of that, a child arose from this liaison that was described not as a bestial but as an infernal monstrosity.<sup>9

7</sup> Cf. Henry Heller: Bodin on Slavery and Primitive Accumulation; Claudia Opitz-Belakhal: Das Universum des Jean Bodin, pp. 86-89.

⁸ Petrus Damianus: Opera, p. 143; cf. Alfred Adam: Der Teufel als Affe Gottes; Horst W. Janson: Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, p. 268; Samuel G. Armistead, James T. Monroe, Joseph H. Silverman: Was Calixto's Grandmother a Nymphomaniac Mamlūk Princess?, refer to similar motifs in Fernando de Rojas' ›La Celestina‹ and the ›Arabian Nights‹. The Greek Anthology records an earlier epigram of Palladas who asserted: »Hermolycus' daughter slept with a great ape and she gave birth to many little ape-Hermeses« (XI, 353, p. 237).

⁹ At that time the ape's immortal soul presumably had disappeared which on the way from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas definitely got lost (see Richard Sorabji: Animal Minds and Human Morals, pp. 201 f.). Admittedly an ape may have had the right to court proceedings, but »medieval animals fared badly when facing trial« (Jan Bondeson: Animals on Trial, p. 135).

Could the consort of Hermolycus' daughter be an Aethiops? If so, then the note of Lindsay Watson and Patricia Watson on Juvenal 6.599-600 may be relevant:

The Roman matrona who gave birth to an Aethiops was a theme in declamation (Balsdon 1979: 218). Martial jests upon the topic (6.39.6-9); Plin. HN 7.51, Arist. Gen. an. 722a10-11 and Plut. De sera 563a report the procreative results ...

Balsdon 1979 = J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Duckworth, 1979), where most of the relevant information is in n. 29 (p. 294). To the references adduced by the Watsons add Claudian, The War Against Gildo 1.188-193.