Miniaturization of Earlier Poetry in Greek Epigrams

Abstract

Chapter 6 offers a diachronic study of Hellenistic epigram with a focus on the issues of thematic and generic variety and on the reception and ‘miniaturization’ of earlier poetic genres—particularly of small-scale poetry such as elegy, bucolic poetry and various kinds of erotic poetry, but also of didactic poetry—in Hellenistic epigram. The chapter finds that, although these developments are more obvious in later epigrammatists, their seeds can be found in Callimachus and other poets of his generation. The earlier generations still carried out their thematic and generic experiments largely within the framework of funeral, dedicatory, or ecphrastic and the new subgenre of erotic epigram, while later epigrammatists grew bolder and explored the possibilities of ‘miniaturization’ much further.