Choerilus of Samos

A revised version of this paper is forthcoming as two separate chapters: 'Early Hellenistic Epic' and 'Moero of Byzantium' in M. Perale, J. Kwapisz, G. Taietti & B. Cartlidge (eds.) Hellenistic Poetry Before Callimachus. Cambridge (CUP).

Perhaps more than any other genre, the fragmentary scraps and testimonia of early Hellenistic epic provide ample opportunity for conflicting interpretation and debate. Once considered widespread and the direct target of Callimachus' disdain in the Aetia prologue (Ziegler, Das hellenistische Epos, 1966, Leipzig), the genre's very existence was called into question twenty years ago by Alan Cameron, who famously argued that "relatively little large scale epic was in fact written during the Hellenistic age" and "little or none in the century or so before Callimachus published Aetia I-II" (Callimachus and his Critics, 1995, Princeton: 266). The extremes of Cameron's polemic, however, conceal the fact that we do have evidence for the existence of a number of early Hellenistic epics, even if their scope and scale are ultimately an issue of pure conjecture.

In this paper, I propose to reassess this evidence, outlining discernible developments in the epic genre and highlighting potential precursors of the famous Hellenistic aesthetic. I shall begin with Antimachus of Colophon and Choerilus of Samos, late classical proponents of mythological and historical epic respectively, whose fragments already display many similarities with 'Callimachean' poetry. I shall then turn to early Hellenistic encomiastic epic, reassessing what we know of the 'Alexander poets' beyond the scathing verdict of literary history, while also comparing other early hexameter encomia by Aratus and (potentially) Hermodotus. The bulk of the paper, however, will focus on early Hellenistic historical and mythological epic, including the works of Hegemon of Alexandria Troas, Diotimus, Antagoras and Moero, exploring how these poets both follow on from Antimachus and Choerilus, and foreshadow what we later find in Apollonius Rhodius and Rhianus. Despite the scarcity of our evidence, early Hellenistic epic, I argue, appears to have been an important stage of transition in the development of the epic genre, and many of its proponents already display archetypally 'Callimachean' interests in aetiology, paradoxography and Homeric scholarship.