Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry

This volume contains the papers of the ‘Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry 8: Nature and Science’ (Groningen 2006). During the workshop a first draft of the papers was commented on by an international group of specialists in the field of Hellenistic poetry. This volume deals with the interaction between ‘nature and science’ and Hellenistic poetry, particularly the ways in which poets were inspired and stimulated by the results of science and incorporated them into their work. In the Hellenistic period the fields of nature and science on the one hand and scholarship and poetry on the other hand touch and overlap to a large extent and the boundaries between science and poetry were not as straight and clear as they are today. The articles in this volume refine the general picture somewhat further. They focus on various authors and topics, e.g. Aratus, Nicander and Callimachus, medicine, astronomy, and geography. The volume is part of a series. Every two years a ‘Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry’ takes place at the University of Groningen, the papers of which are published in the series ‘Hellenistica Groningana’.