Callimachus' Aetia, written in Alexandria in the third century BC, was an important and influential poem which inspired many later Greek and Latin poets. Papyrus finds show that it was widely read until late antiquity and perhaps well into the Byzantine period. Eventually the work was lost, but thanks to many quotations by ancient authors and substantial papyrus finds a considerable part of it has now been recovered. The aim of the present volumes is to make the Aetia newly accessible to readers. Volume 1 (9780198144915) comprises an introduction dealing with matters such as the work's composition, contents, date, literary aspects, and its function in the cultural and historical context of third-century BC Alexandria, and a text of all the fragments of the Aetia with a translation and critical apparatus; while Volume 2 (9780198144922) presents a detailed commentary, including introductions to the separate aetiological stories.-

A striking feature of Ovid's literary career derives from the processes of revision to which he subjects the works and collections that make up his oeuvre. From the epigram prefacing the Amores, to the editorial notices built into the book-frames of the Epistulae Ex Ponto, Ovid repeatedly invites us to consider the transformative horizons that these editorial interventions open up for his individual works, and which also affect the shape of his career and authorial identity. Francesca K. A. Martelli plots the vicissitudes of Ovid's distinctive career-long habit, considering how it transforms the relationship between text, oeuvre and authorial voice, and how it relates to the revisory practices at work in the wider cultural and political matrix of Ovid's day. This fascinating study will be of great interest to students and scholars of classical literature, and to any literary critic interested in revision as a mode of authorial self-fashioning.

Offering unparalleled scope, A Companion to Hellenistic Literature in 30 newly commissioned essays explores the social and intellectual contexts of literature production in the Hellenistic period, and examines the relationship between Hellenistic and earlier literature. Provides a wide ranging critical examination of Hellenistic literature, including the works of well-respected poets alongside lesser-known historical, philosophical, and scientific prose of the period Explores how the indigenous literatures of Hellenized lands influenced Greek literature and how Greek literature influenced Jewish, Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Roman literary works

"This is a collection of free translations from the ancient Greek poet Callimachus, whose surviving work includes the Aitia, a narrative elegy; the Iambi, short poems on occasional themes; and the Hecale, a small-scale epic. The poet and critic Stephanie Burt has written contemporary adaptations of what she calls "Callimachus's lyric, epigrammatic, and narrative genius for our times." These are not literal translations for students of Greek, but instead free translations intended to bring poetry of classical antiquity into modern verse. Considered a major poet in Greek and European readings but not yet in English, Callimachus is remembered for a few sayings, among them 'mega biblion, mega kakon': a big, or long, or great book (an epic, for example) is a great evil, or a big, bad thing. Burt's intention is to make Callimachus' 'miniaturist, irony-loving, anti-macho sensibility' more accessible to Anglophone readers, with the advantage that Callimachus 'speaks without centuries of great English poets who have already adapted him'"--

Greek and Roman stories of origin, or aetia, provide a fascinating window onto ancient conceptions of time. Aetia pervade ancient literature at all its stages, and connect the past with the present by telling us which aspects of the past survive "even now" or "ever since then". Yet, while the standard aetiological formulae remain surprisingly stable over time, the understanding of time that lies behind stories of origin undergoes profound changes. By studying a broad range of texts and by closely examining select stories of origin from archaic Greece, Hellenistic Greece, Augustan Rome, and early Christian literature, Time in Ancient Stories of Origin traces the changing forms of stories of origin and the underlying changing attitudes to time: to the interaction of the time of gods and men, to historical time, to change and continuity, as well as to a time beyond the present one. Walter provides a model of how to analyse the temporal construction of aetia, by combining close attention to detail with a view towards the larger temporal agenda of each work. In the process, new insights are provided both into some of the best-known aetiological works of antiquity (e.g. by Hesiod, Callimachus, Vergil, Ovid) and lesser-known works (e.g. Ephorus, Prudentius, Orosius). This volume shows that aetia do not merely convey factual information about the continuity of the past, but implicate the present in ever new complex messages about time.

"This volume contains a wide range of articles. It provides a survey of current developments in research on one of the most influential authors of Hellenistic poetry and reflects the large amount of scholarly interest in Callimachus during the last decade. In the papers there is a particular focus on issues of metapoetics, intertextuality, fictional orality, the impact of poetic collections and the function of Callimachus' poetry in Ptolemaic Alexandria as well as an interest in the reception of Callimachus' poetry among Roman poets."--BOOK JACKET.

This study investigates the reception of Ovidian heroines in "Metamorphoses" commentaries written between 1100 and 1618 on the Continent in England. Medieval and early modern clerical readings of the feminine in Ovid reflect greater heterogeneity than is commonly alleged.

This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius’ epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius’ Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

A central, much-studied feature of the poetry of 3rd cent. BCE Alexandria is the artistic treatment of the cultural past, the reception of earlier Greek poetry and artwork in the artistic creations of a new, Greco-Egyptian world deracinated both geographically and temporally from the heroes and models of Archaic and Classical Greece. Benjamin Acosta-Hughes has devoted a 30+ year professional scholarly career to the study of this reception, one of both imitation and variation, which took place concurrently with the massive collection and categorization of earlier Greek literature in the work of the scholars gathered under royal patronage at the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria, a truly revolutionary new effort of cultural memorialization. The poets of this period, among them Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius and Posidippus, vied in their efforts to compose works that at once celebrated their poetic heritage and at the same time marked their own poetry as original artistic creation and as critical commentary upon their earlier models. This collection will be of interest not only for readers of Archaic and Hellenistic poetry, but also for readers interested in the later reception of the Alexandrians at Rome.