Polyeideia

In this important new study of Callimachus' enigmatic Iambi, Acosta-Hughes displays a range of talents which qualify him as a true modern interpreter of this difficult Hellenistic poet. Functioning by turns as historian, commentator, and critic, Acosta-Hughes gives readers of Callimachus a fresh perspective on both the archaic models for the Iambs and the novel ways Callimachus deploys and organizes his reactions to his predecessors. Especially noteworthy (and something which distinguishes this study from earlier work on the Iambi) is the focus on groups of related poems, allowing the author to explore different facets of the Iambic tradition in some detail. This book does for Callimachus' Iambs what Hunter's 'Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry' did for the Idylls.-Nita Krevans, University of MinnesotaAcosta-Hughes, in this newest appraisal, has bypassed the initial handicap posed by the physical state of the Iambi through substantial exploration of the tradition of Callimachus' motives (the story of their uses, meanings, and contexts). As a result, our knowledge of the poems as whole entities is much improved. Acosta-Hughes organizes the units of his book not poem by poem but thematically. The output is splendid: it is indeed as if Callimachus had paved the way for his implied reader to read the Iambs diagonally. Acosta-Hughes's dispositio manages to 'regulate' Callimachus' polyeideia by pointing out the main interests underlying the Iambs and providing them with coherence and self-referentiality. At the same time it also highlights the fact that Callimachus shares the 'strong' interests of his iambic verses with his declared model Hipponax, far more than has been usually assumed. Rediscovery, no less than renovation, proves once again to be the key issue underlying even the most unconventional Hellenistic poetry.-Marco Fantuzzi is the author (with Richard Hunter) of Muse e Modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad AugustoLong neglected by modern critics, The Book of Iambs is a central text in Callimachus' sweet competition (fr. 202.45 Pf.) with the Hellenic past. This patient and brilliant exercise in reconstruction offers many new insights on the fragments and explains the importance of the work in Graeco-Roman literary history. -Alessandro Barchiesi, author of The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse