ABSTRACT
Discontinuity, change, innovation: These are the terms which most scholars in this century have stressed - one-sidedly, perhaps - in characterizing Hellenistic poetry. In Callimachus and His Critics, Alan Cameron attacks the widespread notion that Hellenistic poets were confined to an ivory tower, writing only for an elite circle of readers, remote from the general public. In The Symposium, Cameron spreads a truly dazzling array of texts testifying to the continuing vitality of the symposium, and for its importance in Hellenistic times as a locus of poetry. The chapter focuses on the epigram, a genre which for many scholars has embodied pure “book-poetry”, but which for Cameron is a further instance of performance poetry tied to a certain social setting. Just as Cameron attempts to undercut the idea of a Hellenistic book-culture, so too he denies that poetry of earlier ages had a more oral, improvisational character.
