The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: a Method of Approach

This book is the first full-scale commentary on the epigrams ascribed to Theocritus since Gow’s commented edition of 1950 and the first to methodically approach epigram as a literary genre attempting to bridge the gap between epigraphy and philological studies. The introductory chapters trace the history of the various epigrammatic genres and typologies within which the Theocritean epigrams can be inserted, focusing on both the literary and epigraphic conventions followed and respected by the epigrammatists. The commentary discusses in detail the text (recently established by Gallavotti, with some slight variations), with an emphasis on the dual contribution of literary and epigraphic evidence for a correct understanding of the questions related to content and the linguistic problems presented by the poems. The final chapters deal with the question of the authenticity of the epigrams and try to reconstruct how and when they were collected in the ‘book’ transmitted by the bucolic manuscripts and then entered the anthology.