An apposite epigram appears in the Milan roll, from the section subtitled οἰωνοσκοπικά, ‘divination from bird signs’, similarly advertising the divinatory services of one Damon (AB 34):

One wonders whether this epigram is to be read as serving a purely practical purpose, similar to the advertisement of Kres from Saqqara given above. Or is the panoramic view, for example, provided by the vantage point described in the epigram of Posidippus on Damon designed to complement artfully the far-sightedness of Zeus’ prophecies that it advertises? Both epigrams are localized by their respective texts by deictic pronouns (τάδε in the epigram of Kres, and ἐκ τούτου τοῦ κολωνοῦ in Posidippus AB 34), and individuated by objectively naming a professional practitioner. Both have an ostensibly practical purpose—and in that sense are occasional—unambitiously monumentalizing, perhaps, within the circumscribed contexts of their respective advertizers’ lives and occupations. In both we are briefly allowed a private glimpse into the business life of a private diviner, at once mundane and mysterious, practical and portentous.

Of course drawing attention to such sub-literary and occasional aspects of the poems is hardly tantamount to proving that they were actually set up for display in the manner of the epigram of Kres at Saqqara, or even composed expressly for such a purpose. But the deictic function of the pronoun is sufficient to establish at least the fiction of its display or purpose and so its occasionality. And while I do think that many (perhaps as many as half) of the new epigrams could have been plausibly inscribed in some medium or context (and it is hard to think how some, e.g. AB 61, could have been destined for any other use), even in the one instance where this appears certainly to have been the case, transmission of the poem can be seen to have occurred by scribal means: i.e. through copying from a manuscript rather than from the monumentally inscribed version.

So let us turn to Posidippus, at least insofar as he was known on papyrus before the Milan roll came to light, and an epigram independently attested in connection with its inscription on a monument. It derives from the same location at Saqqara, where in the Memphite Serapeum a large archive of papers comprising a temple archive (one them bearing a pair of epigrams by Posidippus) were recovered by archaeologists in the late nineteenth century.

The first epigram (AB 115) addresses Proteus, tutelary Greek divinity of Pharos Island in the harbor at Alexandria, and tells of a dedication there by Sostratus of Cnidos, one of the King’s wealthy φίλοι. It contrasts Egypt, with its flat plains, and the mountain peaks that serve as watch towers for sailors in the Greek islands like Cnidos, praising Sostratus for installing in the harbor at Alexandria such a look-out as would be a guiding Savior to sailors approaching the harbor from a distance at sea. The second epigram (AB 116) describes the construction and dedication of a temple of Aphrodite (soon to be identified with Arsinoe) by the Ptolemaic admiral Callicrates of Samos at Cape Zephyrium and invites young Greek women to choral performances at her festival there.

Both epigrams interestingly showcase Ptolemaic Egypt (Alexandria, Cape Zephyrium), its famous building projects (the lighthouse in the harbor in Alexandria, the temple of Aphrodite), and its famous personalities (Sostratus, Arsinoe, Callicrates). In the first, the capital of Ptolemy’s realm is advertised as visible from afar, by a beacon of light that shines throughout the Greek world, as visibly as the mountain-peaks of the Greek isles. The second connects the northern shore of Egypt with the rest of the Greek world as an equally enviable place: Libya rich in sheep, Italy. In both the gaze of sailors converges from without upon a land that is as safe as it is Greek. The focus is on safety (lighthouse, harbor, breakwater), on cult (sea-god Proteus on Pharos island and Aphrodite’s temple at Cape Zeuphyrium), on Ptolemaic celebrity (Sostratus, Queen Arsinoe, Callicrates), and finally and most importantly on Greekness: Egypt is not a barbarian land, nor is it a mere Macedonian possession; it is a civilized, cultured, and celebrated place, peopled by Ptolemaic Greeks.

In this respect the pair of epigrams AB 115–116 forms a piece with the new epigrams by Posidippus of the Milan roll. Egypt attracts celebrities from the entire Greek world (Cnidos, Samos). Greeks are mentioned twice: prominently in AB 115.1 and again in 116.8 nearer the end of the poem, thus forming a ring. Thus I argue that the epigrams are paired, both here on the papyrus in a manner of a mini-anthology, and in composition, as evidenced by the framing references to (i) Greekness and Sostratus at the beginning of AB 115 and (ii) to Greekness and Callicrates at the end of AB 116. However in this case the physical separation of the two monuments precludes that they were ever actually paired in an inscribed monumental context, for the two monuments in question were hundreds of miles apart. Rather, they must have originally been paired in a book.

When U. Wilcken read this in 1920, he could hardly believe his eyes! He concluded that Ptolemaus could have visited Alexandria in his youth. D. J. Thompson proposed that the ‘great tower’ was ‘perhaps indeed the Pharos.’ Bing carries his argument one step further to propose that the dreamer identifies with the statue, and that the beautiful face is that of Zeus Soter on top of the Pharos. He suggests further that Ptolemaus, because of his ‘particular interest in the statue’, transcribed the poem. In fact the statue on top of the lighthouse on Pharos island in the harbor at Alexandria seems to have been fairly well known as a famous monument. It is, for example, apostrophized by Callimachus in a fragmentary poem (fr. 400 Pfeiffer):

Side by side with this goes the attention paid to the number of lines contained in a given poem. Not only did a stichometric count figure in the entries in Callimachus’ Pinakes, but we also find them in the totals of many literary books on papyrus. They are also of interest to the scribe of the Milan roll of Posidippus’ epigrams, who gives marginal totals for the poems he copies. Ptolemaus did not give a count for the number of lines in the pair of epigrams of Posidippus that he copied, but he does give a stichometric total for all the passages he has copied into his anthology at the end of the roll.

Finally, and also as an afterthought, Ptolemaus returned to the pair of epigrams after copying them, divided the two at the margin by the short horizontal line of punctuation known as the παραγραφός, and penned the word ἄλλο in the center of the column between the line ending AB 115 and the one beginning AB 116. The uniquely early thematic subheadings of dividing the sections in the Milan roll immediately come to mind as a graphic comparison. But in fact this use of ἄλλο is familiar to us from the later anthologies of Greek epigrams, where it designates a succession of epigrams on the same theme or by the same author or both. We are thus entitled to assume Posidippus’ authorship of AB 116 as well as that of AB 115, and that the epigrams were meant to stand as a pair. What is more, they are made to look by the writer as though they had the same graphic arrangement as a professionally produced book of poems, by a single author.

We are thus entitled to bring the epigrams of Posidippus on papyri previously known before the discovery of the Milan roll into conjunction with the new epigrams of Posidippus from that book. The pair of epigrams informally copied by Ptolemaus can be seen to derive from a professionally produced collection like the Milan roll. As such, it comprises a subset, and can be seen in itself as a kind of mini-anthology of Posidippus. The two epigrams of Ptolemaus’ collection appear neither in the Milan roll (where we might have expected them among the other poems given under the heading Anathematika), nor in the Palatine Anthology or related later anthologies, though the existence of at least one of them is noted by a perihegetical writer, and the second has a close parallel in the Milan roll with AB 119 which purports to be inscribed on the same monument. They were copied by standard scribal techniques from a collection that was either more exhaustive of the poet’s œuvre than either of these, or at any rate contained additional material (and the lack of overlap between the three can hardly be said to point to the existence of a single authoritative edition on which all three are drawing). This together with the circumstances of copying might point in a sub-literary direction, or at least lead to doubts about authorial composition of any one of these particular collections. They were copied as a pair, as indicated by the connecting subtitle ἄλλο—thus constituting a mini-Posidippus anthology incorporated in a larger personal anthology. They came equipped in their source with titles (the latest book-technology of the day), including the use of the incipit as a title, as employed in Callimachus’ Pinakes. Thus they show signs of derivation not from monument or memory but from state of the art book production. At the same time their selection for this particular anthology, as in the case of many poems in the Milan roll, seems to have been guided by geographical and political considerations.