ABSTRACT
Since Plato’s references are quite brief, we must carefully identify the situations in which they arise and analyze how they work in the context of the passages where they feature, before we reach any conclusions or hypotheses about Plato’s position on the subject or about the Greek attitude in the early fourth century. A the Symposium is the first text after the Archaic period to mention this kind of relation between women, and that Plato is the only Classical author to have broken the silence, this chapter deserves serious attention. The golden age of the epigram began in Asclepiades’ day and lasted through the first century bce, and it was such a success that it became the characteristic form of Hellenistic poetry. As Cameron states, during the Hellenistic period the epigram was “the new sympotic genre of the age.” Asclepiades of Samos’ work belongs to this humorous, playful, yet erudite trend.
