#hellenistic literature

[jeannereames]

Hello Professor,

I know this isn’t your field of study, but I was wondering if you might have any pointers about the research and excavation of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. Lately, the newest study using AI technology (and may I say: finally something AI might actually be useful for!) has popped up again in popular media, and it made me curious about the current state of the art. If I remember correctly, most of what has been deciphered so far leans heavily toward philosophical material (as a dear historian friend of mine likes to joke: damn philosophy! lol), but a few years ago there were some intriguing tidbits about possible fragments related to Alexander’s generals during the Successor Wars (I don't know how much was "sensationalist headlines for the media" vs reality).

If I'm not mistaken, the Villa has only been partially excavated, and I’m not sure whether archaeologists believe that most of the surviving papyri have already been recovered or not, nor if there are any active excavations going on. (Also… IIRC, because Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed in such different ways, papyri would have been preserved only in the latter, which makes me wonder how much might still be hiding under the modern town — especially since a great part of ancient Herculaneum is still buried.)

And wouldn’t it be funny if a town claiming Heracles as its founder ended up helping us shed some light on a monarchy claiming descent from the same guy :D

Yeah, this is not something I’m that up on, but I hear bits. And I agree, THIS is precisely the sort of thing AI is good for. While it seems a number of the scrolls are philosophical, and specifically stoic, at least one seems to reference the era of the Successors, not ATG himself or earlier Macedon.

Guessing what this might be is hard to say. It could simply be more of what we’ve already go, although even a more complete copy of Diodoros, books 18-20 would be welcome, as 20 is very fragmentary, and the others (including 17, on ATG) have some frustrating lacunae.

Other possibilities include Dionysius of Halikarnassos, although again, we already have much of his. But it would be a real treat if it was, say, Poseidonios, or Hieronymos of Kardia—the source on which Diodoros seems to have (primarily) depended for books 18-20. Oh, how fantastic if we could find the original source in order to tell how much (and what) Diodoros may have changed or abbreviated. The names popping up make it seem too late to be Ephoros, alas, or Theopompos. It could be Polybius, although I think he might start too late for the names mentioned. (I’d have to go and look.)

Anyway, if this Roman villa kept a lot of Stoic literature, Poseidonios is a real possibility. He was lauded in antiquity as an excellent historian, as well as a Stoic philosopher and scholar. We’d all be jumping for joy if we found Poseidonios!!!

[nardialrose]

Its hexametric form aside, the most striking formal feature of the Metamorphoses is that, as its title announces, it strings together a vast number of more or less distinct tales, each of which features a metamorphosis — that is, a magical or supernatural transformation of some kind. In composing a poem of this type, Ovid was working within a tradition of metamorphic literature that had blossomed a few centuries earlier in Hellenistic culture. In terms of his apparent generic aspirations, Ovid’s main theme (and hence his title) is unequivocally — and shockingly — unorthodox: before him, ‘transformative change’ was a subject principally cultivated in Hellenistic catalogue poetry, which is about as un-epic in scope and conception as literature can get.

Nicander’s Heteroeumena (‘Changed Ones’), datable to the 2nd century BCE, is the earliest work dedicated to metamorphosis for which we have reliable attestations. The surviving fragments are scant, but valuable testimony is preserved in a prose compendium written by Antoninus Liberalis. The Heteroeumena was a poem in four or five books, written in dactylic hexameters, which narrated episodes of metamorphosis from disparate myths and legends, brought together in a single collection. An overarching concern was evidently to link tales of metamorphosis to the origin of local landmarks, religious rites or other cultural practices: Nicander’s stories were thus predominantly aetiological in orientation, very much like Callimachus’ Aetia. At the close of the Hellenistic period, Greek metamorphosis poetry evidently found its way to Rome, along with its authors. So, for example, Parthenius, the Greek tutor to Virgil, who came to Rome in 65 BCE, composed a Metamorphoses in elegiacs, about which we unfortunately know next to nothing.

-Gildenhard, I., & Zissos, A. (2016). 3. The Metamorphoses: A Literary Monstrum. In Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511-733. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Retrieved from https://books.openedition.org/obp/3613

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[lionofchaeronea]

Epitaph for a Beloved Dog

Anthologia Palatina 7.211 = Tymnes (3rd/2nd cent. BCE?)

The stone proclaims that it holds here The dog from Malta, swift of foot, Of his master Eumelus Most loyal protector.  They called him “Bull” While he still lived, but now the silent Roads of night possess his voice. Τῇδε τὸν ἐκ Μελίτης ἀργὸν κύνα φησὶν ὁ πέτρος     ἴσχειν, Εὐμήλου πιστότατον φύλακα. Ταῦρόν μιν καλέεσκον, ὅτ’ ἦν ἔτι· νῦν δὲ τὸ κείνου     φθέγμα σιωπηραὶ νυκτὸς ἔχουσιν ὁδοί.

La Gousse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1880