ABSTRACT
Rigor mortis is not a characteristic of late classical epic. If the health of the genre is at its strongest when it is most open to thematic and generic variety, then late epic is sound. The major forms survive. They evolve, however, to produce a bewildering tangle of related, but superficially dissimilar subgenres. The long mythological epic survives (Vian 1963: xxiii cites some lost examples), as does the long ecomiastic epic. Particularly popular was the shorter epic. The miniature epic (limited to approximately 1,400 lines) was not like the Alexandrian product: it varies from simple myth narrative, from the encomiastic, via the adventurous application of allegory, to the romantic work of Vandal Africa. There also developed a strong metaphrastic tradition (Herzog 1975) which, in the manner of Hellenistic writers such as Philo the Elder or Theodotus (see Chapter 4), turned biblical narrative into epic verse. Two of the most striking examples of late epic are the long, often ribald mythological hybrid, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, and the long ‘biographic’ epic, Venantius Fortunatus’ life of St Martin of Tours.
