Variations on Simplicity

Abstract

Chapter 7 examines the intricate ways in which Philodemus, Crinagoras, and Antipater of Thessalonica engage with the poetry of Callimachus and Leonidas of Tarentum. The chapter finds that the three epigrammatists of Philip’s Garland use these two Hellenistic predecessors as positive or negative models of poetic values and ethical outlooks, upon which they define their own authorial self-representations as Greek poets operating in the social world of Roman Italy. Using techniques of imitation and variation, these authors blend Callimachean and Leonidean models to distil a poetics and ethics defined by the ideal of simplicity (litotes). As this ideal is thematized by successive generations of epigrammatists, it became a part of the generic tissue of epigram.