Introductory: Contexts and their Loss

Abstract

Hellenistic epigrams are mainly brief pieces of four to eight lines, and the view is sometimes expressed that epigram is ‘a minor form’. But ‘minor’ as individual epigrams may seem, they are often conceptually more dense than any other ancient poetic form; and in aggregate the surviving epigrammatic corpus of the Hellenistic period alone reaches an epic length that testifies to its cultural, intellectual and social importance: the epigrams in Gow and Page's Hellenistic Epigrams total 4749 lines. The definition of ‘Hellenistic’ adopted in the present monograph extends the Hellenistic period to around the middle of the first century BC, and thus embraces portions of their Garland of Philip too, so adding substantial numbers of lines. Moreover, the extant Hellenistic epigrams are a small fraction of the production of the age. A Vienna papyrus probably of the last quarter of the third century BC contains 226 epigram incipits; of these only one can be recognised as a surviving item, Asclepiades AP 12.46 = 15 HE . Similarly P.Oxy. LIV no. 3724, of the “later first century” (65), “mentions about 175 epigrams”, of which “only 31 have been identified elsewhere.” (66). In other, smaller, ancient lists of epigram incipits and epigrams the proportion of items already known varies. P.Oxy. LIV no.3724 suggests that the overall survival rate of Hellenistic epigrams is between 10% and 20%, but it may give an overhigh impression since of the 112 Posidippan epigrams of P.Mil.Vogl. VIII.309 only two were previously known. Equally significantly, some classes of epigrams ( lithika , oionoskopika , andriantopoiika , and iamatika ) found in considerable numbers in P.Mil.Vogl. VIII.309, are either absent from or poorly represented in the Palatine and Planudean Anthologies . But P.Mil.Vogl. VIII.309 is notably deficient in the erotic, sympotic and scoptic types which are well exemplified in the Anthologies ; in contrast the epigram incipits of P.Oxy. LIV no.3724 show “a clear preponderance of erotic (including homosexual) and sympotic themes” (67). These signs of the preferences of anthologisers imply even larger losses in some epigrammatic types. Overall the literary epigrammatic production of antiquity from the eighth century BC on, of which a substantial proportion will have been Hellenistic, probably amounted (at the very least) to twenty times the bulk of the Greek Anthology .