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THE POETICS OF LATER GREEK ECPHRASIS: CHRISTODORUS COPTUS, THE PALATINE ANTHOLOGY AND THE PERIOCHAE OF NONNUS’ DIONYSIACA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2019

Fran Middleton
Fran Middleton*
Affiliation:
Murray Edwards College, [email protected]
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Extract

There is increasing interest in what might be thought ‘special’ about late antique poetry. Two volumes of recent years have focused on Latin poetry of this time, Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity edited by Scott McGill and Joseph Pucci (2016) as well as The Poetics of Late Latin Literature edited by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato (2017), while it has become increasingly acceptable to remark on late antiquity as a cultural period in its own right, rather than a point of transition between high antiquity and the middle ages. Greek poetry of late antiquity has yet to receive the level of attention offered to Latin literature of this time, and so it is to help answer the question of what may be thought special about late antique Greek poetry that I here discuss the poetics of later Greek ecphrasis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 216 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Ramus 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful for the many comments I have received on this paper, which initially took a very different form. I was first inspired to work on the Nonnus periochae by the Dionysiaca reading group hosted in Cambridge by the Imperial Greek Epic project in 2014/15, and I received particularly important suggestions from Emily Kneebone and Max Leventhal, who suggested AP 9.385 might be of interest. Simon Goldhill's early comments encouraged me to think about ecphrasis and so turn to Christodorus, while Richard Hunter's later remarks allowed me to make better sense of how the piece should be framed. I am especially grateful to the editors and reviewers here at Ramus for suggesting some important final touches.

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