A Riddling Recipe?

This article provides a detailed interpretation and suggests a literary background for the brief (26 verses) elegiac recipe against colic (SH 690), written by Philo of Tarsus in the first century AD. Although on one level it is a serious pharmacological prescription, on another level it is also a literary piece, concerned with a marked tone of voice, Homeric play, and general display of paideia. Particularly its play of substituting certain ingredients with mythological riddles is striking. Its appeal to both doctors and men of culture fits the intellectual pattern of the culture of the Second Sophistic. As a poetic hybrid it also plays on different genres inherited from the previous Hellenistic era. Moreover, it constitutes a telling example of the late subgenre of elegiac pharmacology, in an era in which elegiac had all but vanished from Greek literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]