The passage on the elegiac meter in Marius Plotius Sacerdos’ metrical treatise (Ars 3, 3 = GL VI, 509-510 Keil) stands out among other accounts of the origins of elegy because it includes two unexpected figures, Pythagoras and a certain Ortuges, as possible inventors of the genre. Of the two, Ortuges is completely unknown to students of ancient literature, and Pythagoras is not normally associated with elegiac poetry. The article suggests that the phrase alii Pythagoram, alii Ortugen comes from a learned gloss that was interpolated into the text, replacing a much more conventional figure, Callinus of Ephesus: a reader of the treatise had noted some data pertaining to Ephesus (its alternative name, Ortygia, and one of its earlier tyrants, Pythagoras of Ephesus, a namesake of Pythagoras of Samos the philosopher). In a mangled form this note was incorporated into Sacerdos’ text by a later scribe.
