Matro of Pitane fr. 1 Symposium Atticum = SH 534 (Ath. 4. 12 [134d–137c]), 18–21

Abstract

Matro of Pitane’s cento of Homeric verses, The Attic Dinner Party contains a puzzling episode in which the narrator throws sea-urchins, which he has apparently already eaten, among the feet of the slaves, where they clatter “where waves were washing the beach”. The slaves then draw out the spines “from the head”. Following Elena Ermolaeva’s comparison of Matro’s lines to the Unswept Floor mosaic, I suggest that his banquet took place in a normal dining room rather than on a beach or in a room with a window facing one. The floor of this room, being a pebble mosaic, could aptly be called a beach from which the slaves were washing the detritus of the meal, a procedure (as we know from Olynthus) the dining rooms of private houses were expressly designed to facilitate. This interpretation entails reading *λύματ᾽… κλύζεσκον for the manuscripts’ κύματ᾽… κλύζεσκε). The scribal alteration I postulate has the effect — unique in this poem, and therefore suspect — of reproducing an entire Homeric line unaltered. Lastly, the phrase “from the head” does not refer to whence the slaves are pulling the sea-urchin’s spines (for that will be from their own feet), but to where they came from in the first place: a sea-urchin’s head.