A commentary on select poems by Posidippus of Pella

• Main Author: Rishøj Christensen, Sanne
• Published: University of Oxford 2012
• Subjects: 881.009
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.560471

This thesis is an edition of and introduction and commentary to the text of a selection of Hellenistic Greek epigrams from the so-called Lithika (i.e. 'On Stones') by the Hellenistic poet, Posidippus of Pella, preserved in the first section of a third century BC Milan papyrus bookroll (P Mil Vogl VIII 309) first published in 2001. The thesis includes an introduction, Part 1, which discusses and contextualises the epigrams with other ancient Greek mineralogical literature (such as Theophrastus' On Stones) and also maps out the poetics of the poems. The main part of the thesis, the edition and commentary, Part 2, provides literary and archaeological notes on nine of the twenty (sometimes badly preserved) epigrams about precious stones: AB 3, AB 4, AB 5, AB 8, AB 11 ,AB 13 ,AB 14, AB 16 and AB 17. Tracings of the papyrus' readings and proposed supplements (not included in the editio princeps), which allow checking of the available spacing, are included for select epigrams as an appendix, and show that many supplements printed in the text of the two previous editions are unsubstantiated or wrong. The new text presented here thus furnishes those interested in Hellenistic epigram with a new foundation on which to base further discussion of the poetry.