Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
It would be depressingly easy, and not very instructive, to document the neglect of ‘later’ Greek poetry in books that claim to offer accessible introductions to ancient literature; that it is still possible to do so from books written very recently, when the whole notion of ‘the classical canon’ has come under increasingly strenuous examination and the study of ‘later antiquity’ has properly come into its own, might seem more depressing still, though it also sheds light on how the academy views its task of disseminating trends in research more broadly. In any case, any such catalogue of neglect would be widely (and perhaps rightly) regarded as a rhetorical move of self-justification of a kind very familiar in academic discourse; after all, it took years of voluminous writing about the ancient novel before scholars in that field abandoned the ritual complaint about the ‘neglect’ of this literature (the torch has perhaps been handed on to the study of early Christian narrative).
1. ‘Signs of Life? New Contexts for Later Greek Hexameter Poetry’, Faculty of Classics, Cambridge (19–21 April 2007 Google ScholarPubMed).
2. For Dionysius Periegetes see REA 106 (2004) 177–261Google Scholar, for Nonnus Hopkinson (1994c), and for Quintus Baumbach and Bär (2007b); there is a forthcoming volume edited by J.-L. Fournet on Dioscorus of Aphrodito. Collections and surveys which range over more than one author include Keydell (1931 and 1941), Alsina (1972), Trypanis (1981) 365–413, Whitby (1994), Winkler and Williams (1982), Gigli Piccardi (2003) 7–101, Paschalis (2005b) and Johnson (2006). Forthcoming work on the poetry of this period includes Miguélez Cavero (2008) and Shorrock (2009). Hopkinson (1994d) provides an excellent introduction to the themes and questions raised in a number of Greek poets in the Imperial period.
3. Cf. Russell (1990), Swain, Harrison and Eisner (2007).
4. Page (1943).
5. Heitsch (1963–4).
6. Cf. Agosti (2002a) 51. A list of literary papyri by author, genre, title, attribution, location and inventory number can be found at the following website: http://promethee.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal (accessed 04.2008).
7. See,e.g., Alsina (1972) 149, Vian (1963) xxiii, Trypanis (1981) 369–73.
8. See Bowie (1990) 66–70.
9. Vian (1987) 46.
10. See Ma (2007).
11. Cf. Potter (2004) 184–96.
12. For episodes within Nonnus’ Dionysiaca composed as epyllia see D’Ippolito (1964), Vian (1986)335.
13. There are two entries in the Suda on Triphiodorus (τ 1111 and τ 1112), which are usually taken to refer to the same poet; for Triphiodorus’ lost works see Dubielzig (1996) 11–15.
14. Cf. Suda ϰ 1951, Alan Cameron (1965) 481.
15. Suda σ 877; Livrea (1999) suggests that Soterichus may be the author of P.Oxy. 4352.
16. See Alan Cameron (1965) 481 on Christodorus’ Isaurica in six books on Anastasius’ victory against the Isaurians in 497 and the empress Eudocia’s epic on the Persian wars of her husband Theodosius II in 421.
17. See Livrea (1978), MacCoull (1981), Steinriick (1999).
18. The Triphiodorus papyrus (P.Oxy. 2946) established that poet as a precursor of Nonnus and has been an important stimulus to re-assessment of the relative chronology of mythological poetry between the third and fifth centuries; cf. Alan Cameron (1970) 478–82.
19. Cf., e.g., Livrea (1978) 23–31 for Olympiodorus of Thebes as a possible author of the Blemyomachia; Keydell (1934) suggested that Colluthus may be the author of the hexameter fragment Mertens-Pack3 1835 (PSI 7.845).
20. For Dioscorus see Fournet (1999); for Pamprepius Livrea (1979), with the cautionary summary of McCail (1978) 38f.
21. See Zumbo (1997), Furley (2007).
22. Livrea (1973); against the attribution of these works to Dionysius Periegetes cf. Bowie (1990)79.
23. Cf.Lightfoot(2007).
24. Hurst, Reverdin and Rudhardt (1984); see Agosti (2002b) for the importance of the poems in this collection in the literary-historical context of late antiquity.
25. Agosti (2003a) 100 adduces Dracontius as another example of a poet composing in both Christian and pagan themes; for the readers and audience of Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and Paraphrase see ibid. 95–102. On other Christian poets using the hexameter see, e.g., Fournet (2003b) on the fifth-century lawyer and hexameter poet Theodoras.
26. See Agosti in Agosti and Gonnelli (1995) 356f., where, as examples for this transition, he mentions Marianus of Eleutheropolis (under Anastasius I), who paraphrased hexameter poets in iambics, and George of Pisidia (under Heracleius), who used dodecasyllables for his historical poems and the Hexameron.
27. For a concise account cf. Hopkinson (1994a), Schubert (2007).
28. Cf., for example, P.Oxy. 4352, fr. 5.II. 18-39, which begin with Capitoline Zeus’ crowning of Diocletian, having taken pity on men; for such poetry in general cf. Viljamaa (1968).
29. Cf., e.g., Bertone (2000), Hadjittofi (2007).
30. There is helpful guidance in the articles ‘Nonno’ and ‘Trifiodoro’ of D’lppolito, G. in Encyclopedia Virgiliana (Rome 1984–1991Google Scholar). For Quintus see now Gartner (2005).
31. See Agosti (2002b) 74–76 for the emergence of Christian poetry in classical metre.
32. See, e.g., Hose (2004), with the review by Amato, E. in Plekos 7 (2005), 155–60Google Scholar (www.ple-kos.uni-muenchen.de/2005/rhose.pdf), and Agosti (2005b).
33. Cf., e.g., Aelius Theon, Progym. 70.26–9: ‘practising the exercises is very necessary not only for those who intend to act as orators, but also if anyone among poets or speech-writers or any others wishes to wield the power of words’.
34. For an overview cf. Kennedy (1983) 54–73, and see also Part I of Carvounis (2005).
35. Fundamental accounts in Morgan (1998) and Cribiore (2001).
36. Cf. Hopkinson (1994a) 3–6.
37. On ethopoeae in the Imperial period see the essays in Amato and Schamp (2005), especially Agosti (2005b) 36–38.
38. Cf. Fournet (1992) 261 f.
39. Cf. Agosti (2005b) 59.
40. Hunter (2004c) 238.
