The Laurel and the Olive : : Collected Essays on Archaic and Hellenistic Poetry / / Benjamin Acosta-Hughes.

• VerfasserIn: Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2024]; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2024
• Language: English
• Series: Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes , 152
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XIX, 598 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Contents -- Part I: Discourses of Present and Past -- 1 “Rosy-Armed Dawn”: A New Text and an Old Reading -- 2 Unwilling Farewell and Complex Allusion (Sappho, Callimachus and Aeneid 6.458) -- 3 Callimachus, Hipponax and the Persona of the Iambographer -- 4 In the Glassy Stream: Some further Thoughts on Callimachus and Pindar -- 5 The Prefigured Muse: Rethinking a Few Assumptions on Hellenistic Poetics -- 6 The Cicada’s Song: Plato in the Aetia -- 7 Poets in Dialogue -- 8 Bucolic Singers of the Short Song: Lyric and Elegiac Resonances in Theocritus’ Bucolic Idylls -- 9 Aesthetics and Recall: Callimachus Frs. 226–9 Pf. Reconsidered -- 10 The Wandering Tendril: An Essay on Hellenistic Metapoetics -- 11 Ovid and Callimachus: Rewriting the Master -- 12 Reflections: Two Letters, and Two Poets -- 13 A Gift of Callimachus -- 14 Composing the Masters: An Essay on Nonnus and Hellenistic Poetry -- 15 Implications of Ecphrasis: Two Homeric Objects, Two Hellenistic Poets, One Common Alexandrian Poetic -- 16 From a Small Beginning: Of Sibling and Poetic Order in Callimachus -- Part II: The Aesthetics of Alexandria -- 17 The Goddess Playing with Gold: On the Cult of Arsinoe-Aphrodite in Image and Text -- 18 In Helen’s Image: Visualizing a Queen. Representations of Arsinoe II -- 19 Those who Ascend to Heaven: Apotheosis in Rome and Alexandria -- 20 A Lost Pavane for a Dead Princess: Call. Fr. 228 Pf. -- 21 Gems for a Princess: Female Figures in the Posidippus Papyrus -- 22 That I be your Plaything: The Cult of Arsinoe-Aphrodite in Image and Text -- 23 The Dioscuri in Alexandrian Poetry: Character and Symbolic Role -- 24 Reconfiguring Myth: Heracles in Alexandria -- 25 The Homeric Shore of Alexandria: A Narrative of a Culture in Motion -- 26 The Italian Landscape in Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes -- 27 Miniaturizing the Huge: Hercules on a Small Scale (Theocritus Idylls 13 and 24) -- 28 “Nor when a Man Goes to Dionysus’ Holy Contests” (Theocritus 17.112): Outlines of Theatrical Performance in Theocritus -- 29 Among the Cicadas: Theocritus and His Contemporaries -- Part III: The Poetics of Desire -- 30 Love and the Hunter: Callimachus and Platonic Paideia -- 31 A Little-Studied Dialogue: Responses to Plato in Callimachean Epigram -- 32 On the Threshold of Time: The Short Spring of Male Beauty and the Epyllion -- 33 The Breast of Antinous: The Male Body as Erotic Object in Hellenistic Image and Text -- 34 Callimachus on the Death of a Friend: A Short Study of Callimachean Epigram -- 35 There Falls a Lone Tear: Longing for a Vanished Love — Tracing an Erotic Motif from Homer to Horace -- 36 I Alone Had an Untimely Love: The Ephebic ‘Epyllia’ of Dionysiaka 10–11 -- 37 The Poem Remembers: Conceptualization of Memory in the Poetry of Callimachus and Cavafy -- General Bibliography -- Figures -- General Index -- Index Locorum