Miniaturization of Earlier Poetry in Greek Epigrams

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.

Pásztori múzsa a nagyvárosban

The title of my paper refers to a remark of Charles Witke, who specifies Juvenal’s Satire 3 in his monograph of Latin Satire as the eclogue of the urban poor. The interlocutor (who is also the main speaker in this case) of the satire says farewell to a friend before leaving his home for good, just like Meliboeus in Vergil’s First Eclogue. Both dialogues take place in natural environment, so to say, in a locus amoenus, however the setting of the satire is somewhat different from the traditional bucolic scenes. In my paper, I present the aforementioned bucolic features of the beginning and closure of Satire 3, after a brief summary of the other Juvenalian Satires showing the influence of bucolic poetry.

The Date of the Bucolic Poet Martius Valerius

ABSTRACTThe collection of four Latin bucolics ascribed to one Martius Valerius was only published in the twentieth century; they have been widely considered as twelfth-century compositions. Picking up on suggestions proposed by François Dolbeau, this study presents evidence that Martius drew directly on the bucolics of Theocritus, and that his poems are late antique, not medieval, literary productions, probably written in the sixth century. Such a conclusion will require a revision of the history of post-Virgilian Latin bucolic poetry.

Epopeia e poesia bucólica no Idílio XI de Teócrito

This paper discusses the relation between bucolic and epic poetry. Both genres shared the same meter – hexameter – and Theocritus was considered a poet influenced by Homer and belonging to epic tradition. In some sense it is possible to find bucolic elements in epic poetry, not only in similes in which there are shepherds in a variety of situations, but also in characters such as Polyphemus. Through the analysis of Polyphemus’ pastoral way of life in Odyssey a link is created between Theocritus’ idylls and Homeric narrative in order to distinguish bucolic poetry as a kind of epic poetry.