Hellenistic poets of the third and second centuries BC were concerned with the need both to mark their continuity with the classical past and to demonstrate their independence from it. In this revised and expanded translation of Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto, Greek poetry of the third and second centuries BC and its reception and influence at Rome are explored allowing both sides of this literary practice to be appreciated. Genres as diverse as epic and epigram are considered from a historical perspective, in the full range of their deep-level structures, providing a different perspective on the poetry and its influence at Rome. Some of the most famous poetry of the age such as Callimachus' Aitia and Apollonius' Argonautica is examined. In addition, full attention is paid to the poetry of encomium, in particular the newly published epigrams of Posidippus, and Hellenistic poetics, notably Philodemus.

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Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn

Tradition and innovation in Hellenistic poetry

iv' ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS' ' viii' INTRODUCTION 1 PART I: COMMUNITY AND COMMUNITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9 1.1$$$$$COMMUNITY$ 9$ 1.1.1''COMMUNITY'AND'LOCALITY' 9' 1.1.2''COMMUNITY'AND'SOCIETY' 13' 1.1.3''COMMUNITY'AND'MEMORY' 19' 1.1.4''COMMUNITY'AND'HISTORY' 38' ' 1.2$$$$$LOCAL$HISTORIES$ 42' 1.2.1''SOME'DEFINITIONS' 42' 1.2.2''SNAPSHOTS'OF'LOCAL'HISTORY' 47' ' 1.3$$$$$LOCAL$HISTORY$AS$COMMUNITY$AUTOBIOGRAPHY$ 113' PART II: GREEK LOCAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 123 2.1$$$$$τοπικὴ ἱστορία$ 123 2.1.1''LOCAL'HISTORIOGRAPHY'IN'GREECE:'AN'INDIGENOUS'FORM' 123' 2.1.2''THE'RECEPTION'AND'STUDY'OF'GREEK'LOCAL'HISTORIOGRAPHY' 140' ' 2.2$$$$CASE$STUDIES$ 173$ $ $ 2.2.1''GREEK'LOCALITIES' 173' ' 2.2.2'''Σαμίων Ὧροι 177 2.2.2.1$A$BRIEF$HISTORY$OF$SAMOS' 178' 2.2.2.2$LOCAL$HISTORIANS$OF$SAMOS' 190' $$$$$$$A)$TO$THE$END$OF$THE$FOURTH$CENTURY$ 195' $$$$$$$B)$DOURIS$OF$SAMOS$ 212' 2.2.2.3$$THE$SOURCES$OF$SAMIAN$LOCAL$HISTORIOGRAPHY' 224' $$$$$$$A)$THE$HERAION' 227' $$$$$$$B)$PROVERBS' 237' ' '

The Autobiographical Community: Local Historiography in Classical and Hellenistic Greece

Playing the Tyrant: The Representation of Tyranny in Fifth-Century Athenian Tragedy

The two central themes of Fasti are twice (1.1, 4.11) linked in this way. The association, which at once gives the poem the appearance of having a literary ancestry in the aetiological tradition, might have seemed inevitable: any verse narrative account of a festival is very likely to contain an αἲтιоν of it. Callimachus' hymns illustrate this assertion, and there are clearly defined hymnic elements in Fasti to bear out the comparison, for example the listing of Venus' ⋯αεтαί and Πρáξεις at 4.91ff. and the instructions to the devotees of Pales at 4.731–48. 4 To state the obvious fact that the poem combines Roman antiquities with Alexandrian aetiology, a blending of which more straightforward examples are to be found in the fourth book of Propertius, is only a prelude to establishing what Ovid really achieves in Fasti. Traditional elements are, as I hope to show, cunningly exploited to create ‘counter–effects’ and to subject the material to the constantly varying and wide–ranging influences of the poet's literary background. Though the notion of causa is central to Fasti, the poem is much more than an amalgam of such influences as the aetiological prose works of Varro and (possibly) Verrius Flaccus with the aetiological poetics of Propertius 4.5 These sources combined to provide material for the foundation of the finished structure, which was to be the creative manipulation of these antiquarian and literary stimuli directed at providing a vehicle for the regular themes of the Ovidian persona.

Causation And The Authority Of The Poet In Ovid's Fasti

Aktaion's own hounds devoured him, convinced by Artemis that he was a deer. This grim reversal, the great hunter who dies like a hunted beast, was the strongest element of the mythic tradition associated with the Boiotian hero and inspired numerous scenes in Greek art. Aktaion's Offense, on the other hand, received little iconographic attention before the imperial era, and Greek literature accounted for Artemis' hostility in a variety of ways. The chronology of the extant sources suggests a neat sequence of misdeeds, and the resulting succession of versions is the object of a well-established scholarly consensus. The information which survives is actually too scant and too fragmentary to bear so straightforward a reading, but a critical approach can suggest the outlines of more plausible, if less neat, picture.

Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn

Citations

Tradition and innovation in Hellenistic poetry

The Autobiographical Community: Local Historiography in Classical and Hellenistic Greece

Playing the Tyrant: The Representation of Tyranny in Fifth-Century Athenian Tragedy

Causation And The Authority Of The Poet In Ovid's Fasti

Aktaion and a lost ‘Bath of Artemis’*

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History of classical scholarship from the beginnings to the end of the Hellenistic age

The fragmentary Latin poets