Greek Erotic Epigram

Abstract Despite its small size, epigram attracted some of the best poetic talents of antiquity, exerting a strong influence on Latin literature and continuing to inspire poetic creativity till our days. During the last decades research on epigram flourished to an unprecedented degree. This book draws on and engages with this renewed scholarly interest in the briefest of the ancient Greek genres. By shifting focus away from a particular poet, collection, and the epigrammatic production of a specific historical period, it explores diachronically erotic epigram from various interpretative angles, treating the surviving material as an organic whole. Four motifs drive diachronic research encompassing a wide chronological span from the Hellenistic up until the early Byzantine era: the lamp, sea and nautical imagery, the beloved’s comparison to Aphrodite, and Eros and the Erotes. By analysing how these motifs were shaped and adapted over the centuries, the book illustrates the epigrammatists’ changing attitudes towards the material inherited from earlier poetic tradition, and leads to a deeper appreciation of the narrative techniques adopted by them as well as of the inner dynamics of poetic imitation and competition. Moreover, the scrutiny of the motifs within wider literary and historical backgrounds reveals the influence exerted by different cultural and sociopolitical environments on the epigrammatists’ work over the course of centuries. The book offers a model for the type of diachronic research that can be applied to other epigrammatic subgenres and other motifs, and to Latin epigram.