Callimachus' Aetia, written in Alexandria in the third century BC, was an important and influential poem which inspired many later Greek and Latin poets. Papyrus finds show that it was widely read until late antiquity and perhaps well into the Byzantine period. Eventually the work was lost, but thanks to many quotations by ancient authors and substantial papyrus finds a considerable part of it has now been recovered. The aim of the present volumes is to make the Aetia newly accessible to readers. Volume 1 (9780198144915) comprises an introduction dealing with matters such as the work's composition, contents, date, literary aspects, and its function in the cultural and historical context of third-century BC Alexandria, and a text of all the fragments of the Aetia with a translation and critical apparatus; while Volume 2 (9780198144922) presents a detailed commentary, including introductions to the separate aetiological stories.-

A striking feature of Ovid's literary career derives from the processes of revision to which he subjects the works and collections that make up his oeuvre. From the epigram prefacing the Amores, to the editorial notices built into the book-frames of the Epistulae Ex Ponto, Ovid repeatedly invites us to consider the transformative horizons that these editorial interventions open up for his individual works, and which also affect the shape of his career and authorial identity. Francesca K. A. Martelli plots the vicissitudes of Ovid's distinctive career-long habit, considering how it transforms the relationship between text, oeuvre and authorial voice, and how it relates to the revisory practices at work in the wider cultural and political matrix of Ovid's day. This fascinating study will be of great interest to students and scholars of classical literature, and to any literary critic interested in revision as a mode of authorial self-fashioning.

"This volume contains a wide range of articles. It provides a survey of current developments in research on one of the most influential authors of Hellenistic poetry and reflects the large amount of scholarly interest in Callimachus during the last decade. In the papers there is a particular focus on issues of metapoetics, intertextuality, fictional orality, the impact of poetic collections and the function of Callimachus' poetry in Ptolemaic Alexandria as well as an interest in the reception of Callimachus' poetry among Roman poets."--BOOK JACKET.

Greek and Roman stories of origin, or aetia, provide a fascinating window onto ancient conceptions of time. Aetia pervade ancient literature at all its stages, and connect the past with the present by telling us which aspects of the past survive "even now" or "ever since then". Yet, while the standard aetiological formulae remain surprisingly stable over time, the understanding of time that lies behind stories of origin undergoes profound changes. By studying a broad range of texts and by closely examining select stories of origin from archaic Greece, Hellenistic Greece, Augustan Rome, and early Christian literature, Time in Ancient Stories of Origin traces the changing forms of stories of origin and the underlying changing attitudes to time: to the interaction of the time of gods and men, to historical time, to change and continuity, as well as to a time beyond the present one. Walter provides a model of how to analyse the temporal construction of aetia, by combining close attention to detail with a view towards the larger temporal agenda of each work. In the process, new insights are provided both into some of the best-known aetiological works of antiquity (e.g. by Hesiod, Callimachus, Vergil, Ovid) and lesser-known works (e.g. Ephorus, Prudentius, Orosius). This volume shows that aetia do not merely convey factual information about the continuity of the past, but implicate the present in ever new complex messages about time.

Scholarly reception has bequeathed two Callimachuses: the Roman version is a poet of elegant non-heroic poetry (usually erotic elegy), represented by a handful of intertexts with a recurring set of images - slender Muse, instructing divinity, small voice, pure waters; the Greek version emphasizes a learned scholar who includes literary criticism within his poetry, an encomiast of the Ptolemies, a poet of the book whose narratives are often understood as metapoetic. This study aims to situate these Callimachuses within a series of interlocking historical and intellectual contexts in order better to understand how they arose. In this narrative of his poetics and poetic reception four main sources of creative opportunism are identified: Callimachus' reactions to philosophers and literary critics as arbiters of poetic authority, the potential of the text as a venue for performance, awareness of Alexandria as a new place, and finally, his attraction for Roman poets.