On Coming After

Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception

Richard Hunter

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9783110204414
• eBook ISBN: 9783110210309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Literature

This book gathers together many of the principal essays of Richard Hunter, whose work has been fundamental in the modern re-evaluation of Greek literature after Alexander and its reception at Rome and elsewhere. At the heart of Hunter's work lies the high poetry of Ptolemaic Alexandria (Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of Rhodes) and the narrative literature of later antiquity ('the ancient novel'), but comedy, mime, didactic poetry and ancient literary criticism all fall within the scope of these studies. Principal recurrent themes are the uses and recreation of the past, the modes of poetic allusion, the moral purposes of literature, the intellectual context for ancient poetry, and the interaction of poetry and criticism. What emerges is not a literature shackled to the past and cowed by an 'anxiety of influence', but an energetic and constantly experimental engagement with both past and present.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• On Coming After
• 1. Apollo and the Argonauts:Two notes on Ap. Rhod. 2, 669 –719
• 2. Medea’s flight: the fourth Book of the Argonautica
• 3. ‘Short on heroics’: Jason in the Argonautica
• 4. Winged Callimachus
• 5. Bulls and Boxers in Apollonius and Vergil
• 6. Greek and Non-Greek in the Argonautica of Apollonius
• 7. Callimachus and Heraclitus
• 8. Writing the God: Form and Meaning in Callimachus, Hymn to Athena
• 9. Written in the Stars: Poetry and Philosophy in the Phainomena of Aratus
• 10. The Presentation of Herodas’ Mimiamboi
• 11. Callimachean Echoes in Catullus 65
• 12. Plautus and Herodas
• 13. Bion and Theocritus: a note on Lament for Adonisv. 55
• 14. Mime and mimesis: Theocritus, Idyll 15
• 15. The Divine and Human Map of the Argonautica
• 16. Callimachus swings (frr. 178 and 43 Pf.)
• 17. Before and after epic: Theocritus (?), Idyll 25
• 18. (B)ionic man: Callimachus’ iambic programme
• 19. The Poet Unleaved. Simonides and Callimachus
• 20. The Poetics of Narrative in the Argonautica
• 21. Virgil and Theocritus: A Note on the Reception of the Encomium to Ptolemy Philadelphus
• 22. The Sense of an Author: Theocritus and [Theocritus]
• 23. Imaginary Gods? Poetic theology in the Hymns of Callimachus
• 24. Theocritus and the Style of Cultural Change
• 25. Notes on the Lithika of Poseidippos
• 26. The Hesiodic Catalogue and Hellenistic Poetry
• 27. The prologue of the Periodos to Nicomedes (‘Pseudo-Scymnus’)
• 28. Sweet nothings – Callimachus fr. 1.9 –12 revisited
• 29. The Reputation of Callimachus
• 30. Hesiod, Callimachus, and the invention of morality
• Frontmatter
• Contents
• 31. The Comic Chorus in the fourth century
• 32. Philemon, Plautus and the Trinummus
• 33. The Aulularia of Plautus and its Greek original
• 34. Middle Comedy and the Amphitruo of Plautus
• 35. ‘Acting down’: the ideology of Hellenistic performance
• 36. Showing and telling: notes from the boundary
• 37. Generic consciousness in the Orphic Argonautica?
• 38. Aspects of technique and style in the Periegesis of Dionysius
• 39. The Periegesis of Dionysius and the traditions of Hellenistic poetry
• 40. History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton
• 41. Longus and Plato
• 42. Growing up in the ancient novels: a response
• 43. The Aithiopika of Heliodorus: beyond interpretation?
• 44. ‘Philip the Philosopher’ on the Aithiopika of Heliodorus
• 45. Plato’s Symposium and the traditions of ancient fiction
• 46. Isis and the Language of Aesop
• 47. The curious incident …: polypragmosyne and the ancient novel
• Backmatter