The Hellenistic Epyllion and Its Descendants

Abstract

In a volume dedicated to the Greek literature of late antiquity and the early Byzantine period it may seem strange to start this contribution from Alexandria in the third century BC. Yet many have sensed a certain community of spirit between Alexandria and Constantinople, and my purpose here is to trace one of the most interesting continuities. The Hellenistic ‘miniature epic’ or ‘epyllion’1 is defined by the Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edition, p. 550) as a narrative poem of up to c. 600 hexameters, usually about an episode from the life of a mythological hero or heroine. Some have questioned the very existence of this genre-either in Greek, or in Latin, or in both languages.2 Everyone knows that the ancients did not use the term in the way that is familiar from modern scholarship, but (in my opinion) it remains useful and does describe a genuine type of poem. We shall here follow the history of the epyllion from the third century BC, as it goes underground for long periods and finally re-emerges c. AD 500 in the Constantinople of the emperor Anastasius. It is a history of strange transformations and combinations with a wide range of other literary genres. We shall alight in most of the intervening centuries, including the third century AD, which seems relatively barren in poetic terms. I will deal with Latin as well as Greek;3 at different times the one language, and then the other, seizes the initiative.