This book provides a new literary treatment of an often-overlooked collection of fragmentary poems from the third century B.C.E. Alexandrian poet Callimachus. Callimachus' Iambi form a collection of thirteen poems, which rework archaic Greek iambography and look forward to Roman satire and other genres, especially to such collections as Horace's Epodes. The poems are especially significant as examples of cultural memory since they are composed both as an act of commemorating earlier poetry and as a manipulation of traditional features of iambic poetry to refashion the iambic...

This colloquium volume celebrates a new Hellenistic epigram collection attributed to the 3rd-century BCE poet Posidippus, one of the most significant literary finds in recent memory. Included in this collection are an unusual variety of voices and perspectives: papyrological, art historical, archaeological, historical, literary and aesthetic. These texts are considered as individual poems and as collective artefact, an early poetry book. The volume should be of interest to readers of Greek and Latin epigram, students of the Hellenistic period, and all readers interested in the aesthetics of...

This latest volume from accomplished literary critic Franco Ferrari offers extraordinary new insight into the life and works of Sappho, one of the most individualistic and evocative poets of antiquity. Sapphos Gift: The Poet and Her Community presents the fragmentary papyrological evidence about the poems, and considers Sapphos iconography, the types of poems and their occasions, her audience, and milieu. Important for those new to Sappho, this volume also offers fresh readings that will be of interest to scholars who are well familiar with the poems. Reviews for this volume: "Ferrari...

Scholarly reception has bequeathed two Callimachuses: the Roman version is a poet of elegant non-heroic poetry (usually erotic elegy), represented by a handful of intertexts with a recurring set of images slender Muse, instructing divinity, small voice, pure waters; the Greek version emphasizes a learned scholar who includes literary criticism within his poetry, an encomiast of the Ptolemies, a poet of the book whose narratives are often understood as metapoetic. This study does not dismiss these Callimachuses, but situates them within a series of interlocking historical and intellectual...

Few figures from Greco-Roman antiquity have undergone as much reassessment in recent decades as Callimachus of Cyrene, who was active at the Alexandrian court of the Ptolemies during the early third century BC. Once perceived as a supreme example of ivory tower detachment and abstruse learning, Callimachus has now come to be understood as an artificer of the images of a powerful and vibrant court and as a poet second only to Homer in his later reception. For the modern audience, the fragmentation of his texts and the diffusion of source materials has often impeded understanding his poetic...

The first new Penguin Classics translation of the Argonautica since the 1950s
Now in a riveting new verse translation, Jason and the Argonauts (also known as the Argonautica) is the only surviving full account of Jason's voyage on the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece aided by the sorceress princess Medea. Written in the third century B.C., this epic story of one of the most beloved heroes of Greek mythology, with its combination of the fantastical and the real, its engagement with traditions of science, astronomy and medicine, winged heroes, and a magical...

A new, provocative treatment of the Alexandrian poet Callimachus and his reception, approaching his work from four varied yet complementary angles.