A Companion to Hellenistic Literature

James J. Clauss is Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Best of the Argonauts: The Redefinition of the Epic Hero in Book 1 of Apollonius' Argonautica (1993) and the co-editor of Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art (with S. I. Johnston, 1997). Martine Cuypers is Lecturer in Greek at Trinity College Dublin. She is the co-editor of Beginning from Apollo: Studies in Apollonius and the Argonautic Tradition (with M. A. Harder, 2005).

List of Maps viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Preface xiv

Acknowledgments xvi

Abbreviations xvii

1 Introduction 1
James J. Clauss and Martine Cuypers

Part I Contexts 15

2 From Alexander to Augustus 17
Andrew Erskine

3 Literature and the Kings 30
Rolf Strootman

4 Ptolemaic Alexandria 46
Susan Stephens

5 Education 62
Jessica Wissmann

Part II Poetry 79

6 The Prefigured Muse: Rethinking a Few Assumptions on Hellenistic Poetics 81
Benjamin Acosta-Hughes

7 Callimachus’ Aetia 92
Annette Harder

8 Hellenistic Elegy: Out from Under the Shadow of Callimachus 106
Jackie Murray

9 Epigram 117
Jon S. Bruss

10 Apollonius’ Argonautica 136
Adolf Köhnken

11 Narrative Hexameter Poetry 151
Annemarie Ambühl

12 Hymns and Encomia 166
Anthony W. Bulloch

13 Sung Poetry: The Case of Inscribed Paeans 181
Marco Fantuzzi

14 Aratus 197
Katharina Volk

15 Nicander 211
Enrico Magnelli

16 The Bucolic Fiction of Theocritus 224
Mark Payne

17 Idyll 6 and the Development of Bucolic after Theocritus 238
J. D. Reed

18 Iambos and Parody 251
Ruth Scodel

19 Herodas and the Mime 267
Elena Esposito

20 Menander’s Comedy 282
Susan Lape

21 Hellenistic Tragedy and Lycophron’s Alexandra 297
Alexander Sens

Part III Prose 315

22 Historiography, Rhetoric, and Science: Rethinking a Few Assumptions on Hellenistic Prose 317
Martine Cuypers

23 Literary Criticism 337
Kathryn J. Gutzwiller

24 Philosophy after Aristotle 366
Stephen A. White

25 From Polybius to Dionysius: The Decline and Fall of Hellenistic Historiography 384
Alain M. Gowing

26 Prose Fiction 395
Tim Whitmarsh

Part IV Neighbors 413

27 Jewish Literature 415
Erich S. Gruen

28 Egyptian Literature 429
Jacco Dieleman and Ian S. Moyer

29 Literature in Western Asia 448
Silke Knippschild

30 From the Head of Zeus: The Beginnings of Roman Literature 463
James J. Clauss

Bibliography 479

Index 535