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In this paper I analyse the motif of drinking cold water in the poems of Leonidas of Tarentum, showing the relation of his epigrams to the works of Anyte and of other Hellenistic poets, focusing on metaphorical and programmatic meaning. Epigrams 16 and 18 GP of Anyte are interpreted as opening poems of a collection. The famous metaphor of drinking from the sacred fountain, instead of a polluted river, comes from Callimachus Hymn 2, 108-112, which is similar to the opposition in Leonidas' 86 GP. The ecphrasis of a cup represents poetic work in Theocritus Idyll 1. By comparing these texts, I argue that epigrams of Leonidas are related not only with Anyte's poems, but also with the works of other Hellenistic authors and the drinking motif should be read metaphorically, as referring to poetic activity, not as a simple bucolic scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hellenistic epigrammatist Leonidas of Tarentum inherited the representation of workers which was shaped by archaic and classical greek culture and poetry, especially by Homer. This representation included clearly distinct and separated categories of workers and a specific status of the worker in the oikos and in society. However, as this epigrammatist reshapes literary traditions by representing humble characters as a class of individuals, he creates a new representation of a community of workers. This paper will focus on two aspects of this representation, which are distinct from their Homeric model but allow the epigrammatist to allude to it: the presence in Leonidas of allusions to networks of persons who practise the same profession and the fact these networks are part of a larger community of workers, which transcends traditional, professional and/or gender boundaries.

This paper offers an analysis of references to landscapes in Leonidas' epigrams. A comparison with Demetrius' paragraphs on enargeia enables us to shed light on the stylistics of his votive epigrams. Leonidas developed a series of strategies that encouraged his readers to visualize the landscapes in which the votive offerings that he describes supposedly took place ; one of these techniques consists in referring to an internal viewer. By studying these techniques, we also gain a better understanding of the reasons for which Roman readers of Leonidas' epigrams admired his poems and quoted them : specific emphasis is given to Propertius' translation of AP 9.337 and to the painted inscriptions discovered in the Casa degli Epigrammi (Pompeii) and in Suasa.

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The author claims that the excessive employment of the term λλεεππττóóςς for characterizing Aratus' poetry and for denoting its conformity to the aesthetic ideal of Hellenistic poetry, as defined by Callimachus' poetic standards, stems from a misinterpretation, both by the later biographical tradition and the modern scholarship, of a number of poetic sources. λλεεππττοολλóóγγοοςς, in king Ptolemy's epigram ( SH 712), λλεεππττὴ φφρροοννττííςς in Leonidas' epigram ( AP 9.25), λλεεππττή in an acrostich of the Phaenomena, the title Tὰ κκααττὰ λλεεππττóóνν of an Aratean poetic collection, all mean quite different things, and are unrelated to Callimachus' Mοοῦσσαα λλεεππττααλλέηη. The reception in contemporary Alexandria court circles of the poetry of Aratus, the official encomiast of Antigonus Gonatas, archenemy of the Ptolemies, was not favourable. A black mark in the poet's record must have been a pun on his name (ἄρρρρηηττοοςς -- Ἄρρηηττοοςς), which he impiously inserted in the hymnic Phaenomena proem which praised Zeus. Theocritus, Id. 17.1 -- 4, criticized him indirectly, but Leonidas, AP 9.25, exonerated him from the blasphemy. This incident prompted the cancellation of the Jovian proem and the composition of a series of alternative proems to the Phaenomena. Callimachus' Ep. 27 is not a praise of Aratus, as was hitherto believed, but a mortifying criticism of Aratus' didactic epic. It is written in a bi-level satiric style hidden behind an innocent faççade, used also in Ep. 13, an epigram against Posidippus of Pella. It blames Aratus not for imitating Hesiod, but for imitating the worst verses of Hesiod's Works and Days. It also reverses Aratus' pun (Ἀρρήττοουυ ἀγγρρυυππννííηηςς -- ἀρρρρήττοουυ ἀγγρρυυππννííηηςς), in order to stress the bookish and laborious character of the Phaenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]