1. Recent collections of papers illustrate the crucial attention now being paid to gender issues in classical studies: Helene P. Foley, ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1981); Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983); John Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan, eds., Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds. Before Sexuality The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., Women's History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Amy Richlin, ed. Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Nancy Sotkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin, eds, Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York: Routledge, 1993); Léonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler, and Maria Wyke, eds., Women in Ancient Societies: ''An Illusion of the Night, " (New York: Routledge, 1994). On the vital topics of ethnicity and class, see, e.g., Koen Goudriaan, Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1988); Per Bilde et al., eds., Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen, 1987).

2. For a useful introduction to the area of postcolonial studies, see Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). On patronage in ancient Greece and Rome, see Barbara K. Gold, Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 15-37. For a useful collection of papers on issues in Renaissance patronage, see Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel, eds, Patronage in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). On the tension between private patronage and public taste, see Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

3. Important recent books on the subject of aesthetic evaluation include Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1979); and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternavive Perspectives for Critical Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

4. Since Theocritus, unlike the other two major Alexandrian poets of his day, Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius, has left no evidence of employment at the library, this support may be less compelling in his case.

5. See Frederick T. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch: The Emancipated Woman in Theocritus," in Foley, Reflections of Women , 247-73; Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), esp. 67-82; Kathryn J. Gutzwiller and Ann Norris Michelini, "Women and Other Strangers: Feminist Perspectives in Classical Literature," in (En) Gendering Knowledge: Feminists in Academe , ed. Joan E. Hartman and Ellen Messer-Davidow (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 72-75; Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, ''Callimachus' Lock of Berenice : Fantasy, Romance, and Propaganda,'' American Journal of Philology 113 (1992), 359-85.

6. See, e.g., Graham Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and Its Audience (London and Wolfeboro, N.H.: Croom Helm, 1987), esp. 19-22. On the trend toward mobility see, e.g., Paul McKechnie Outsiders in the Greek Cities in the Fourth Century BC (London and New York: Routledge, 1989).

7. Matthew Arnold, "Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment," in Essays in Criticism (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865), 174-99; Wahib Atallah, Adonis dans la littérature et l'art grecs (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1966), 105-35; Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 597-98; John J. Winkler, "The Constraints of Eros," in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion , ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 228; Ross Shepard Kramer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 31-35.

8. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1:65; Green, Alexander to Actium , 169-70; R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture: A Handbook (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 82.

9. Charles Seltman, Women in Antiquity (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1956), 153-55; Carl Schneider, Kulturgeschichte des Hellenismus (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1967), 1:107; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , esp. 71, 73, 93-94, 161, 164; Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 247-73.

10. Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 26-27; Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , esp. 42-47; Green, Alexander to Actium , 246-47.

11. E.g., Stanley M. Burstein, "Arsinoe II Philadelphos: A Revisionist View," in Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Heritage , ed. W. Lindsay Adams and Eugene N. Borza (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), 202 (with n. 26: "There is no reason to doubt the historicity of this event").

12. See also Joan B. Burton, "The Function of the Symposium Theme in Theocritus' Idyll 14" Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 33 (1992), 227-45.

13. E.g., T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969); Charles Segal, Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral: Essays on Theocritus and Virgil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); David M. Halperin, Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); Kathryn J. Gutwiller, Theocritus' Pastoral. Analogies: The Formation of a Genre (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).

14. On Arsinoe's career before marrying Ptolemy II, see, e.g., Grace Harriet Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens: A Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1932), 111-16; Gabriella Longega, Arsinoë II (Rome: «L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 1968), 13-67, 127-31; Burstein, "Arsinoe H," 198-200.

15. On the marriage between Lysimachus and Arsinoe, see, e.g., Paus. 1.10.3.

16. On the marital machinations between Ceraunus and Arsinoe, see Just. Epit . 24.2-3.

17. On Arsinoe's career after returning to Egypt, see Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , 116-30; Longega, Arsinoë II , 69-124, 131-34; Burstein, "Arsinoe II," 200-212. Hans Hauben, "Arsinoé II et la politique extérieure de l'Égypte," in Egypt and the Hallenitric World , Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 24-26 May 1982, ed. E. van't Dack, P. van Dessel, and W. van Gucht, Studia Hellenistica, no. 27 (Louvain, 1983), 99-127, argues that Arsinoe's tenure as queen of Egypt was a period of profound changes politically and militarily, and he addresses the revisionist devaluation of Arsinoe's influence, as represented by, e.g., Burstein's judicious approach. But although the question of Arsinoe's political and military influence remains unresolved, there is general consensus on the importance of her cultural influence: ''The extraordinary honors she enjoyed before and after her death are sufficient evidence of the prominent and popular role she played in the life of Egypt and its empire during her brother's reign'' (Burstein, "Arsinoe II," 202).

18. See Elizabeth D. Carney, "The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt," La parola del passato 42 (1987), 427-28 (with n. 18), who cautions that the scholia (on Theoc. Id . 17.128) credit Ptolemy alone with exiling his first wife.

19. Thus Arsinoe becomes called the second, since she was the second Arsinoe married to Ptolemy II; his first wife, Lysimachus's daughter, was also named Arsinoe and is sometimes referred to as Arsinoe I (I do not use her name to avoid confusion in the narration). All references to "Arsinoe" in the text should be taken to mean Arsinoe II.

20. On how the Ptolemies' practice of brother-sister marriage might have reassured Egyptian subjects, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:217; Carney, "Reappearance of Sibling Marriage," esp. 431-35.

21. P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , 1:217; see also 2:366 n. 223. For a linkage of the title Philadelphos with Egyptian beliefs, see Ludwig Koenen, "DieAdaptation ägyptischer Königsideologie am Ptolemäerhof," in van't Dack, van Dessel, and van Gucht, Egypt , esp. 157-61; idem, "The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure," in Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World , ed. Anthony W. Bulloch et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 61-62.

22. Cf. Ulrich Kahrstedt, "Frauen auf antiken Münzen," Klio 10 (1910), 261ff., who argues that coinage emphasizes the disparity in power between Ptolemaic kings and queens, since dead deified queens could appear on gold and silver coins, while living queens had to settle for copper. But if Arsinoe was deified during her lifetime, coins showing the royal siblings on the obverse, with adelphon inscribed above, and their parents Ptolemy I and Berenice on the reverse, with the inscription theon , could have been issued during Arsinoe's lifetime to celebrate the deification of the royal siblings—e.g., the golden octadrachm illustrated as 293a in J. J. Pollitt, Artin the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 272. For the view that such coins could have been issued during Arsinoe's lifetime, see Longega, Arsinoë II , 111; Dorothy Burr Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience: Aspects of the Ruler-Cult (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 56 n. 3. This view is strengthened by the recent redating of Arsinoe's death to 268. On the redating, see Erhard Grzybek, "La mort d'Arsinoé II Philadelphe," in Du calendrier macédonien au calendrier ptolémaïque: Problèmes de chronologie hellénistique (Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt, 1990), 103-12; see also Koenen, "Ptolemaic King," 51-52, esp. n. 61. After Arsinoe and Ptolemy II, Ptolemaic kings and queens customarily became deified during their lifetimes (P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , 1:219).

23. On the historical and cultural significance of Arsinoe and Ptolemy's sibling marriage, see Carney, "Reappearance of Sibling Marriage," 424-35. For discussion of the political implications of poetic references to deifies, see Frederick T. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979).

24. Ath. 14.620f-621a = Sotades 1 Powell, Coll. Alex . (see discussion in P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:117-18 and 2:210 nn. 203-5). Cf. Theocritus's Id. 7 in which a king imprisons a poet in a coffer (and Id . 13 in which Hylas meets a watery fate). For the dating of Sotades' execution to 266, see Marcel Launey, "L'exécution de Sotadès et l'expédition de Patroklos dans h mer Égée (266 av. J.C.)," Revue des études anciennes 47 (1945), 33-45. For the suggestion that an unflattering poem on Ptolemy II's mistress Bilistiche may have been "the final straw," see Alan Cameron, "Two Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989), 301 n. 48 (cf. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:118, 2:206).

25. See, e.g., Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 142-46; Barbara Hughes Fowler, The Hellenistic Aesthetic (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), esp. 137-38; Green, Alexander to Actium , esp. 100; R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture , 79-83. On the Knidian Aphrodite, see, e.g., Pliny HN 36.20-22; for a convenient collection of ancient writings on the Knidian Aphrodite, see J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents , 2d ed. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 84-88.

26. On Hellenistic marriage contracts, see Claire Préaux, "Le statut de la femme à l'époque hellénistique, principalement en Égypte," in La Femme , Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour l'histoire comparative des institutions, vol. 11 (Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie encyclopédique, 1919), 1:147-64; Claude Vatin, Recherches sur le mariage et la condition de la femme mariée à l'époque hellénistique (Parts: Éditions E. de Boccard, 1970), 163-80; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , esp. 83-98 (for further references, with useful commentary, see 194 n. 4).

27. See Sarah B. Pomeroy, "Technikai kai Mousikai: The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Age," American Journal of Ancient History 2 ( 1977), 51-68; Susan Guettel Cole, "Could Greek Women Read and Write?" in Foley, Reflections of Women , 219-45.

28. On women philosophers in the Hellenistic period, see, e.g., Bernard Frischer, The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), 61-62; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 61-71; Jane McIntosh Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), 101-8. See also Richard Hawley, "The Problem of Women Philosophers in Ancient Greece," ch. 4 in Archer, Fischler, and Wyke, Women in Ancient Societies , 70-87.

29. See, e.g., Pomeroy, Goddesses , 136-39. For an epigram that seems to represent a response to a female singer's public recital (Gow and Pages suggestion), see Dioscorides Ep . 2 Gow and Page (= A.P . 5.138) in A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams , 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 2:237. On Hellenistic women poets in general, see Snyder, Woman and the Lyre , 64-98.

30. Idylls 2 and 15 are Theocritus's only mimetic poems presented through female characters. On the functions of women's friendships in a patriarchal society, see, e.g., Robinette Kennedy, "Women's Friendships on Crete: A Psychological Perspective," in Gender and Power in Rural Greece , ed. Jill Dubisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 121-38.

31 Seltman, Women in Antiquity , 155.

32. See Griffiths, "Home before Lunch; esp. 247-48.

33. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 256.

34. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 256 (cf. 258: "What The Syracusan Women establishes above all is that nature has picked its housewives well, even as it has picked its queens'), followed by Kraemer, Her Share , 33-34. At its most extreme, this approach can result in a characterization of Alexandrian poets as "toadies" (see Green, Alexander to Actium , esp. 182 on Callimachus; cf. review by Jasper Griffin, "Decadence Revisited," The New York Review of Books 38.9 [1990], 57-62).

35. Ernst-Richard Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst: Zur Geschichtlichkeit der alexandrinischen Poesie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1986).

36. E.g., in regard to the encomium of Ptolemy in Theocritus's Idyll 14, Schwinge assumes Ptolemy would not notice the playful ambiguity of the poet's use of the epithet (amorous), in view of Ptolemy's notorious philandering ( Künstlichkeit von Kunst 61); and Schwinge considers the second half of Ptolemy's description as (knowing who loves him and, even more, who doesn't; Id . 14.62) "rashly" self-referential of Theocritus's own relations with Ptolemy (65). See also Graham Zanker, "Current Trends in the Study of Hellenic Myth in Early Third-Century Alexandrian Poetry: The Case of Theocritus," Antike und Abendland 35 (1989), 88-91.

37. Green, Alexander to Actium , 241. Syme characterizes Augustan poetry similarly and perhaps draws on Timon's unflattering description of the Alexandrian poets to disassociate Catullus from the Augustan poets: "Catullus, however, could not have been domesticated, tamely to chant the regeneration of high society, the reiterated nuptials of Julia or the frugal virtues of upstarts enriched by the Civil Wars" (Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution [1939; reprint, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1960], 461).

38. Green, Alexander to Actium , 246. So too Giuseppe Giangrande, "Interpretation of Herodas," Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 15 (1973), 92-94: "In sum: we must not forget that both Herodas and Theocritus skilfully make their characters say very silly and ridiculous things" (94). A greater and corollary danger of the "elitist" construct is that it can preclude readers from finding any pleasure in the poems: thus Greens summary judgment of the fictive women of Herod. Mime 4 and Theoc. Id . 15 contributes to his assessment of Herodas's poetry in general: "It is all very Hellenistic, and ultimately very depressing'' (Green, Alexander to Actium , 246).

39. E.g., Halperin, Before Pastoral , 180: "The lovelorn teenager of Idyll 2, the mercenaries of Idyll 14, or the Syracusan housewives of Idyll 15, sketched with a wealth of telling and veristic detail, would have aroused in Theocritus and his colleagues a social response hardly differentiated from that evoked by the countrymen of the pastoral Idylls; both groups are sufficiently distant from the poet's own social environment to facilitate a sense of aesthetic detachment, yet neither is excessively exotic" (so too Halperin's remarks following Peter Levi, "People in a Landscape: Theokritos," in Hellenistic History and Culture , ed. Peter Green [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993], 135-36). See also Gary B. Miles, "Characterization and the Ideal of Innocence in Theocritus' Idylls," Ramus 6 (1977), 156: "The settings of the two Idylls [ Idylls 1 and 15] may be quite different, but the mentality of the characters [ Idyll 1's goatherd and Idyll 15's Gorgo] is the same."

40. Hellenistic women poets—e.g., Glauce, mentioned in Theoc. Id . 4.31; Anyte, who, like Theocritus, wrote in Doric; Nossis, an older poet—might have felt an especially keen interest in Theocritus's attempts to represent women's experiences.

1. For a brief overview of the varied patterns of Hellenistic Greek settlements see, e.g., Simon Price, "The History of the Hellenistic Period," ch. 13 in The Oxford History of the Classical World , ed. John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 321-23. On the large number of cities founded by the Seleucids, see, e.g., Susan Sherwin-White and Amélie Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 143.

2. On the attractions of Ptolemaic Egypt for Greeks, see, e.g., Koenen, "Ptolemaic King," 29-30; on advantages of being considered Greek in Ptolemaic Egypt, see ibid., 35-36.

3. On how Ai Khanum, a Greek city founded in central Asia during Alexander's campaigns, maintained its Greek identity, see, e.g., Paul Bernard, "An Ancient Greek City in Central Asia," Scientific American 247 (Jan. 1982), 148-59; Green, Alexander to Actium , 332-34; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis , esp. 178-79; F. W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World , rev. ed. (1992; reissue, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 60-62.

4. On mobility and colonization during the archaic period see, e.g., Andrew Robert Burn, The Lyric Age of Greece (London: E. Arnold, 1960); John Boardman, The Greeks Overceas: Their Early Colonies and Trade , rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980); Oswyn Murray, Early Greece , 2d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 102-23.

5. For a discussion of Herodotus's account of city relocations in response to the coming of the Persians, see Nancy H. Demand, Urban Relocation in Archaic and Classical Greece: Flight and Consolidation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 34-44. See also O. Murray, Early Greece , 260: "One long term consequence of the pressure of the Persians from 546 onwards was the increased emigration westwards of Ionian communities and individuals."

6. On economic effects of the Peloponnesian war, see, e.g., Simon Hornblower, The Greek World, 479-323 BC , reprint, with corrections (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), esp. 162, 170-76 (with references): "In the fourth century, by contrast [with the archaic period], mercenary service has ceased to be the near monopoly of the places just mentioned [e.g., Krete, Arkadia, Karia], because economic problems had now hit the great states of Old Greece as well" (162). Further, on the linkage of "the material debilitation of the old city-states" with the "Greek exodus to Sicily in the 340s," see Hornblower, Greek World , 241; Moses I. Finley, Ancient Sicily , rev. ed. (London: Book Club Associates, by arrangement with Chatto and Windus, 1979), 95. On the increase in political exiles during the fourth century, see McKechnie, Outsiders , esp. 23-29.

7. On Theocritus's connection with Syracuse, see, e.g., A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus , 2d ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), esp. 1:xv-xviii (with citations from Suidas and the scholia); Kenneth J. Dover, Theocritus: Select Poems (Basingstoke and London: MacMillan Education, 1971), xix; Green, Alexander to Actium , 240.

8. Thuc. 6.3.2 is our source for the traditional date of the foundation of Syracuse; for discussion, see A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. J. Dover, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 4: 198-210; J. B. Bury and Russell Meiggs, A History of Greece: To the Death of Alexander the Great , 4th ed. (New York: St. Martin's, 1975), 522 n. 8 (with references).

9. Gelon destroyed the city of Camarina and moved its population to Syracuse, where they were enfranchised. Also, he moved people from Megara and Euboea (Sicilian cities) to Syracuse, where he enfranchised the rich and sold the poor as slaves for export (Hdt. 7.156). Gelon also enfranchised large numbers of mercenaries (Diod. Sic. 11.71.3). For discussion, see, e.g., T. J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks: The History of Sicily and South Italy from the Foundation of the Greek Colonies to 480 B.C . (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 415-18; Demand, Urban Relocation , 46-50.

10. Hieron moved the populations of Naxos and Catana to Leontini, refounded Catana as Aetna, and repopulated Naxos and Aetna with selected settlers from the Peloponnesus and Syracuse (Diod. Sic. 11.49.1-3).

11. An ancient tradition of thought links the rise of the art of rhetoric in Syracuse with the land disputes that resulted from the population shifts of this time (Arist. ap . Cic. Brut . 46; for discussion, see Finley, Ancient Sicily , 61; Demand, Urban Relocation , 53).

12. See, e.g., Diod. Sic. 13.111.3-6, 14.15; for discussion, see Demand, Urban Relocation , 98-106 (with references).

13. See Plut. Tim . 1, 22, 23, 35. For discussion of Timoleon's restoration of order, see, e.g., Finley, Ancient Sicily , esp. 98-99; Hornblower, Greek World , 241. See also R. J. A. Talbert, Timoleon and the Revival of Greek Sicily: 344-317 B.C . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974).

14. On Agathocles, see, e.g., Diod. Sic. 19.1-21.17 (select passages); Just. 22.1-23.2; Finley, Ancient Sicily , 101-76; Édouard Will, Histoirepolitique dumonde hellénistique ( 323-30 av. J.-C. ), 2d ed., 2 vols. (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1979-82), 1:114-20; K. Meister, "Agathocles," ch. 10 in The Hellenistie World , vol. 7.1 of The Cambridge Ancient History , ed. F. W. Walbank, A. E. Astin, M. W. Frederiksen, and R. M. Ogilvie, 2d ed. (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 384-411; Green, Alexander to Actium , 220-24.

15. For discussion of date, see Meister, "Agathocles," 405 n. 19 (with references).

16. Diod. Sic. 22. 13ff; Polyb. 1.8.3-9.8; Just. 23.4.; for discussion of date, see Gow, Theocritus 2:305-7.

17. On Theocritus's relations with Hieron, see Gow, Theocritus 1:xvii, xxv, 2: 305-7; Dover, Theocritus , xxi-xxii.

18. See Victor Magnien, "Le Syracusain littéaire et l'Idylle XV de Théocrite," Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris 21 (1920), 49-85, 112-58.

19. On the genre of the mime, see Hermann Reich, Der Mimus: Ein litterar-entwickelungsgeschichtlicher Versuch (Berlin: Weidmann, 1903); I. C. Cunningham, Herodas: Mimiambi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 3-17; Winfried Albert, Das mimetische Gedicht in der Antike: Geschichte und Typologie von den Anfängen his in die augusteische Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988), with an overview of scholarship, 3-19. On the Latin tradition of mime, see, e.g., R. Elaine Fantham, "Mime: The Missing Link in Roman Literary History," Classical World 82 (1989), 153-63 (with annotated bibliography).

20. Plato reportedly kept a copy of Sophron's mimes under his pillow and imitated Sophron's style of representing character (Diog. Laert. 3.18). Duffs too notes Plato's fondness for Sophron (Ath. 11.504b), and Aristotle links Sophron's mimes with the Socratic dialogues ( Poet . 1447b9-11).

21. For discussion of evidence, see, e.g., Gow, Theocritus 2:33-35, 265-66 (with references).

22. Arist. Poet . 1459b31-1460a5.

23. For discussion, see G. O. Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 200: "We may surely suppose that in these poems [ Idylls 2, 14, 15], and to a lesser degree in others, the associations with a lowly form of literature on the one hand, and on the other the dignity which must still attach to the hexameter, will enhance the interplay of the base and sordid with the grand and intense. Similarly, the dramatic framework was at the least not the standard one in hexameter verse: this will have sharpened the exploitation of narrative levels." It should be noted, of course, that Theocritus uses dactylic hexameter in most of his poems, whether mimes or not. Scholars generally agree that the interplay of the genres epic and mime adds special piquancy to Theocritus's poetry: see, e.g., W. Kroll, "Die Kreuzung der Gattungen," in Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1924), esp. 204-5; J. Van Sickle, "Epic and Bucolic (Theocritus, Id . VII; Virgil, Ecl . I)," Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 19 (1975), esp. 50-56; but cf. Halperin, Before Pastoral , esp. 207-9.

24. See, e.g., the remark of a fictive "common man' at Theoc. Id . 16.20: ("Who would listen to another? Homer is enough for all"; trans. Gow, Theocrims 1:123). For evidence of Hellenistic rulers' taste for Homer, see, e.g., Ath. 5.207c-d (Hieron II had the whole story of Homer's Iliad represented in mosaic flooring on his ship the Syracusia ); Ael. VH 13.22 (Ptolemy IV had a shrine built for Homer). The Ptolemies sponsored new scholarship on Homer (on the work of Zenodotus, first head of Alexandria's library, see Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968], 105-17). Alexander the Great offered a model for his successors: on campaign, he reportedly kept a copy of Homer's Iliad under his pillow (Plut. Alex . 8), and through his mother, he claimed a genealogical link with Achilles (Plut. Alex . 2). On how literary papyri show evidence of Homer's popularity in the Ptolemaic period, see Colin H. Roberts, "Literature and Society in the Papyri," Museum Helveticum 10 (1953), 267-68. See also C. O. Brink, "Ennius and the Hellenistic Worship of Homer," American Journal of Philology 93 (1972), 547-52.

25. Themes of mobility and ethnicity are, of course, pervasive throughout Greek literature, e.g., Horn. Od ., Ap. Rhod. Argon . Athenian drama too explores social problems related to mobility and ethnic difference, e.g., Aesch. Supp . (Egyptian women seek sanctuary in Argos), Eur. Med . (a woman from non-Greek Colchis seeks justice in Corinth), Eur. IT (a Greek woman resettled as a priestess among the non-Greek Taurians finds a way home to Greece). Greek lyric poems also often explore themes of mobility and colonialism (notably Pindar's odes; also, e.g., Archilochus's poems). On Greek narratives of colonization, see Carol Dougherty, "Linguistic Colonialism in Aeschylus' Aetnaeae ," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 32 (1991), 119-32; idem, The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece (New York and Oxford: Oxford University I'ess, 1993), with special attention to Pind. Pyth . l, 5, 9; Pind. Ol . 7; Bacchyl. Ode 11; Aesch. Aetnaeae .

26. Cf. the description of Alexandria at the start of book 5 in Achilles Tatius's Greek novel Clitophon and Leucippe .

27. On how Theocritus exploits the contrast between the safety of the house and the danger of the street, see below. On the opposition between house and street, see also Jill Dubisch, "Culture Enters through the Kitchen: Women, Food, and Social Boundaries in Rural Greece," in Gender and Power in Rural Greece , ed. Dubisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 200.

28. On liminal encounters, see Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage , trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982). See also Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols Are Connected: An Introduction to the Use of Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthropology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), esp. 33-35, 77-79.

29. On the road motifs association with encounters, see esp. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays , ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 243-45; on the motif of meetings, see 97-99.

30. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination , 243.

31. On the threshold motif, see esp. Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination , 248-50.

32. The scholia identify the men as troops because of their military cloaks. Gow, Theocritus 2:268 n. 6, proposes that these men are dressed in their holiday best to go to the racetrack. Monteil follows the scholia and suggests that the troops are part of the celebration (Pierre Monteil, Théocrite: Idylles (II, V, VII, XI, XV) [Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968], 147).

33. So too later, when Praxinoa encounters horses on the road, she exclaims (51-52). Gow, Theocritus 2:281-82 n. 51, citing the Byzantine scholar Photius, identifies the horses as racehorses "on their way to the hippodrome" (Monteil, Théocrite , 154, and Dover, Theocritus 204, agree). But whether Praxinoa sees them as warhorses or racehorses, she warns "the horse bites" as she leaves her child home (40).

34. Name-calling strategies are also used in direct confrontations of power; verbal duels regularly occur on battlefields, in boardrooms, and on urban street corners. Chapter z includes a discussion of Idyll 15's encounter between the bystander and Praxinoa in terms of verbal strategies of aggression familiar from meetings of warriors in the Homeric epics: the bystander employs the same strategies of dehumanization that the Syracusan women have been using throughout the poem, for his insults turn them metaphorically into birds. Thus too, Gorgo's description of men as "boots" seems not dissimilar to monolithic descriptions of women as "skirts": the aim is not to denote specific kinds of males or females, but rather to emphasize difference from oneself.

35. William Blake's poem "London" is a modem example of the continued power of the motif of walking through city streets to evoke a crowded city and imbue it with a mood of urban alienation.

36. For example, unlike Theocritus's Syracusan women, who as resident aliens are trying to make a place for themselves in cosmopolitan Alexandria, Juvenal's Umbricius, a reactionary Roman, is abandoning multicultural Rome. One factor affecting these poets' representations is the issue of patronage. Chapter 4 (on patronage) will discuss in more detail how Theocritus's poetry relates to the Ptolemaic court. But for now, I just want to point out that, like Idyll 15's Syracusan women, Theocritus himself was trying to find a place in Alexandria: his poetry was written in part within a context of patronage by Alexandria's Ptolemaic court (e.g., Id . 17). Juvenal's poetry, however, situates itself outside the court.

37. For a detailed discussion of the gender dynamics of this verbal interaction, see chapter 2.

38. On the important topic of the relations between Greeks and Egyptians in Egypt, see, e.g., Alan K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs: 332 BC-AD 642: From Alexander to the Arab Conquest (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), esp. 121-64; Naphtali Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt: Case Studies in the Social History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Willy Peremans, "Les Lagides, les élites indigènes et la monarchie bicéphale," in Le système palatial en Orient, en Grèce et à Rome , Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg, 19-22 juin 1985, ed. E. Lévy, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 327-43; Roger S. Bagnall, "Greeks and Egyptians: Ethnicity, Status, and Culture," in Cleopatra's Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies , catalog of an exhibition held at the Brooklyn Museum (New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1988), 21-27; Goudriaan, Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt ; Alan E. Samuel, The Shifting Sands of History: Interpretations of Ptolemaic Egypt (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989), esp. 35-49 (ch. 3: "Two Solitudes"); Koenen, "Ptolemaic King'' (for a useful survey of scholarship, see 25-26 n. 2).

39. This is the only mention of Egyptians in Theocritus's extant poetry. Cf. Callimachus's literary tendency to insult others through ethnocentric analogies; for discussion, see Green, Alexander to Actium , 172, 201, who cites Hymn 2.108-9's linkage of literary rivals with the Euphrates, described as carrying filth in its waters, and the Ibis poem (fr. 381-82), unfortunately lost, which evidently associated a rival with the ibis, a bird native to Egypt and even worshipped there, but with foul habits. On the later denigration of Egyptians as "others" by both Jews and opponents of Jews, see Koen Goudriaan, "Ethnical Strategies in Graeco-Roman Egypt," in Bilde et al., Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt , esp. 86-89.

40. On Callimachus's special interest in aitia , see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria esp. 1:514, 2:774-76.

41 The phrase occurs four times in the Odyssey and two times in the Iliad , always in the context of prophecies coming true: Od . 2.176, Od . 5.302, Od . 13.178, Od . 18.271, Il . 2.330, and Il . 14.48. On the old woman's Homeric language, see Magnien, "Syracusain littéraire," 128; Axel E.-A. Horstmann, Ironie und Humor bei Theokrit (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1976), 32.

42. But see Anna Lydia Motto and John R. Clark, "Idyllic Slumming 'Midst Urban Hordes: The Satiric Epos in Theocritus and Swift," TheClassical Bulletin 47 (1971), 41.

43. See, e.g., Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 41-42; R. W. Garson, "An Aspect of Theocritean Humor," Classical Philology 68 (1973), 296; Heather White, "Two Textual Problems in Theocritus' Idyll XV,'' ch. 8 in Essays in Hellenistic Poetry (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1980), esp. 63-64.

44. For a seminal study of Homeric type scenes, see Walter Mend, Die typischen Scenen bei Homer (Berlin: Weidmann, 1933), which includes the arrival scene, expandable into a visit (28, 35). Idyll 7's journey features the motif of the encounter; the more elaborated context of Idyll 15's journey includes more of these type-scenes. But both poems show how mythic paradigms (and poetry) can help shape the contingencies of everyday life.

45. E.g., at Od . 7.18 Odysseus, when about to enter the city of the Phaeacians, meets Athena (in the guise of a Phaeacian girl fetching water); at Il . 24.348 Priam, when heading for Achilles' hut, meets Hermes (in the guise of Achilles' squire); and at Od . 10.276 Odysseus, when approaching Circe's house, meets Hermes in disguise. See Vladímir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale , trans. Lawrence Scott, 2d ed., rev. and ed. Louis A. Wagner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), a seminal study of the folktale, which describes the standard shape of encounters with mythic helpers (84).

46. I am adding "comments on infrequency of visits" to Arend's list of elements in Typischen Scenen , since it seems to become pervasive in later literary representations of reception scenes. Although Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 116, interprets Praxinoa's remark in Idyll 15 on the. infrequency of Gorgo's visits ( , 2) as a sign of mental stress, the conventional nature of her remark is underscored by Thyonichus's similar remark in Idyll 14, on greeting Aeschinas ( , 2).

47. Calypsos paradigmatic reception of Hermes includes all these elements ( Od . 5.85-104). Hephaestus's and Charis's receptions of Thefts include greeting, gearing, and remark on the infrequency of visits ( Il . 18.380-90, 421-25), as do Cephalus's reception of Socrates (Pl. Resp . 328c) and Aphrodite's reception of Athena and Hera (Ap. Rhod. Argon . 3.47-54).

48. For an example of how boy and dog can represent an Odyssean journey for a reader, see John D. Niles, "Patterning in the Wandering of Odysseus," Ramus 7 (1978), 57. Other dogs whose appearances have epic resonance include "old Argus" in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922; rev. ed., corr. and reset, New York: Random House, 1961), 90, where Bloom recalls his father's dying wish for his dog; and the artificial watchdog at the doors to Trimalchio's house in Petronius's Satyricom (29), which recalls the gold and silver dogs guarding Alcinous's palace in Od . 7.91-93.

49. E.g., Gorgo's exhortation to Praxinoa's son ( Id . 15.13), ("Cheer up, Zopyrion, sweet child; she doesn't mean papa"), which recalls two memorable Homeric exhortations to children. First, it recalls Eumaeus's and Penelope's greetings to Telemachus when he returns home ( Od . 16.23 = 17.41): ("you have come, Telemachus, sweet light; . . ."). (The adjective appears as a vocative in only these two instances in the Homeric epics.) Second, it recalls Zeus's address to Athena ( Il . 8.39 = 22.183): (''cheer up, Tritogeneia, dear child; . . ."). (The imperative appears in only these two instances in the Homeric epics.)

50. Thompson's comprehensive index of folk-motifs includes the headings "old woman as prophet" (M301.2) and "wise woman as helper' (N828) (Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romance, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends , rev. and enl. ed., 6 vols. [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-58], 5:47, 136). Narrators in epic tales commonly sum up encounters with helpers by describing the helper's departure—e.g., Menelaus on his encounters with Eidothea and Proteus ( , Od . 4.425=570).

51. Gow, Theocritus 2:283 n. 66, excuses the use here of the epic word : "It is prevailingly epic and seems in Praxinoa's mouth a considerable concession to the metre employed by her creator, unless . . . used colloquially." Cf. G. J. de Vries, "Theocritea," Mnemosyne , 4th ser., 20 (Leiden, 1967), 438. Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 33, agrees with Gow: "Ein solches Wort ist in Praxinoas Mund sicher nicht." Yet the use here of the word contributes to the general elevation of tone of the door-sighting, which is reinforced by Gorgo's use of the elevated verb (cf. the ceremonial uses of the verb at 23 and 84). Further, the use of the term reinforces the Homeric tone here: appears regularly in the Homeric epics, whereas the term does not. In fact, only other appearance in Theocritus's poems is in the epic context of Id . 22.7 ( Hymnto the Dioskouroi )

52. Paradigmatic mythic paired helpers in which the female precedes the male include Circe and Teiresias in Od . 10, Eidothea and Proteus in Od . 5, and Hecate and Helios in the Hom. H. Dem . See Cora A. Sowa, Traditional Theme and the Homeric Hymns (Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1094), 223. Cf. A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 165. S. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature 5:135, includes under the heading "old person as helper" (N825) the subheading "succession of helpers on quest" (H1235).

53. See, e.g., V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre ; and van Gennep, Rites of Passage . For a useful discussion of the metaphor of passage (in the context of surrealism), see Mary Ann Caws, A Metapoetics of the Passage: Architextures in Surrealism and After (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England, 1981).

54. can mean locked in or out: probably in this case the bridegroom jokingly ushers his bride inside the bedroom. See discussion in Dover, Theocritus , 205-6; and Gow, Theocritus 2:285-86 n. 77.

55. For further exploration of this topic, see J. Hillis Miller, The Linguistic Moment: From Wordsworth to Stevens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

56. See Gow, Theocritus 2:50 n. 70: "It is sometimes hard to be sure how far they [ethnics] are names and how far descriptive adjectives; here the disposition of the words points to the latter."

57. On Cos's famous medical schools (and the mobility of doctors), see, e.g., P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , esp. 1:343-46; G. E. R. Lloyd, ed. and intro., Hippocratic Writings , trans. J. Chadwick, W. N. Mann, I. M. Lonie, and E. T. Withington, enl. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 14-16; Susan M. Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos: An Historical Study from the Dorian Settlement to the Imperial Period (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978), 256-89.

58. On Ptolemy's use of Cos as headquarters, see Diod. Sic. 20.27; Édouard Will, "The Succession to Alexander," ch. 2 in Walbank et al., Hellenistic World , 54 On Cos's connections with Ptolemaic Egypt, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemic Alexandria , esp. 1:307, 343-46, 2:462 n. 11; Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos , 82-137.

59. See Ulrich yon Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, "Aratos von Kos," Nachrichten von der k. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse (1894.), 183-84; Gow, Theocritus 2:55 n. 115; Dover, Theocritus , 96-97.

60. So Walter Headlam and A. D. Knox, eds., Herodas: The Mimes and Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 17-18 (on Herod. 1.11); Gow, Theocritus 2:62 (on Theoc. 2.160) concurs. For discussion, see Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos , 106 n. 122.

61. For a more detailed discussion of the gender issues raised through Idyll 2's threshold and road motifs, see chapter 2.

62. On the linkage between Herodas's poems and the genre of mime (and on the connection with Sophron's prose mimes), see, e.g., Cunningham, Herodas , 3-17; R. G. Ussher, "The Mimiamboi of Herodas," Hermathena 129 (1980), 66-67. For a detailed discussion of differences in tone between Herodas's Mime 4. and Theocritus's Idyll 15, both poems featuring women viewing works of art, see chapter 3.

63. On Herodas's use of Hipponax's meter and dialect, see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , esp. xxviii; Cunningham, Herodas , esp. 12-15. Most scholars believe that Herodas thus oriented his poetry toward an exclusive, educated audience—e.g., W. Geoffrey Arnott, "Herodas and the Kitchen Sink," Greece and Rome , 2d ser., 18 (1971), 123; Cunningham, Herodas , 16; Giuseppe Mastromarco, The Public of Herondas (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1984.), 95; Neil Hopkinson, ed., A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 233. But the question of Herodas's ancient audience remains problematic (see, e.g., Green, Alexander to Actium , 246: "I cannot share the confidence of most modem scholars that Herodas was catering to select littßrateurs , capable of picking up the most recondite allusions, rather than to the popular audience that enjoyed a lowbrow mime. At the very least I suspect there was something in Herodas for both categories to enjoy").

64. Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry , 236, stresses the greater mixture of tone and style in Theocritus's (and Callimachus's) poetry.

65. On dating Herodas, see I. C. Cunningham, "Herodas 4," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 16 (1966), 117-18; idem, Herodas , 2; P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 2:876-78 n. 30; Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos , 94-95 n. 60.

66. Cunningham supports an identification of Metriche as a hetaira (I. C. Cunningham, "Herodas 1.26ff.," Classical Review 15 [1965], 7 n. 1; idem, Herodas , 57). But as Konstan observes, "there is no explicit support for this assumption in the text" (David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.], 166 n. 64).

67. Giangrande, "Interpretation of Herodas," 82-84, points out that "the inhabitants of Greece regarded Egypt as a Greek [settlement]" (83) in his argument supporting Crusius's preference for the reading rather than the second hands in Herod. 2.2.

68. Stems densely mythic reading of Herodas's Mime 1 takes as its point of departure this epiphany motif (Jacob Stern, "Herodas' Mimiamb 1," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 22 [1981], 161-65).

69. Compare the beginning of Pl. Resp . with Lys. 22 ( Against Eratosthenes ). On the status of merles in Athens, see L. B. Carter, The Quiet Athenian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 126-28.

70. So too Herod. 2.28-30. On the adoption of Greek names by non-Greeks, see, e.g., Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 85 n. 38 (Herod. Mime 2). On social implications of the use of dual names (one Greek and one Egyptian) in Egypt, see Bagnall, "Greeks and Egyptians," esp. 22-24, with references.

71. On the general topic of relations between Greeks and non-Greeks, see, e.g., Marie-Françoise Baslez, L'étranger dans la Grèce antique (Paris: Société d'édition «Les belles lettres,» 1984). See also Claude Vatin, Citoyens et non-citoyens dans le monde grec (Paris: Société d'édition d'enseignement supérieur, 1984), On cosmopolitanism's effect on social categories in the Hellenistic period, see too Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves , trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 61-63.

72. On the function of the gymnasim in the Hellenistic period, see, e.g., Claire Préaux, Le monde hellénistique: La Grèce et l'Orient de la mort d'Alexandre à la conquête romaine de la Grèce (323-146 av. J.-C.) , 2d ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1987-88), 2:562-65; Adalberto Giovannini, "Greek Cities and Greek Commonwealth," in Bulloch et al., Images and Ideologies , 270-73: "the gymnasium was really felt by the Greeks to be a symbol of their cultural superiority, a symbol they were not ready to share" (273). See also Peter Bing, The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Helleniaic Poets (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988), 75 n. 41.

73. For important recent work on the symposium, see esp. Oswyn Murray, ed., Sympotica: A Symposium on the Syrnposion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); William J. Slater, ed., Dining in a Classical Context (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). See also Oswyn Murray, "Symposion and Männerbund," in Concilium Eirene 16, ed. P. Oliva and A. Frolikóvá (Prague, 1982), 47-52.

74. The regulations of Mytilene's statesman Pittacus against drunkenness illustrate the disjunction between the sympotic community and the democratic statesman: the penalty was double for a crime committed while drunk (Arist. Pol . 1274b19-23 and Eth. Nic . 113b30-33; Diog. Laert. 1.76). The repeated lyric exhortations to drink written by Pittacus's aristocratic detractor Alcaeus oppose the political values that would challenge aristocratic claim to hybristic (sympotic) license.

75. See, e.g., Oswyn Murray, "The Affair of the Mysteries: Democracy and the Drinking Group," in Murray, Sympotica , 149-61; idem, "The Greek Symposion in History," in Tria corda: Scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano , ed. E. Gabba (Como: Edizioni New Press, 1983), 269-70.

76. For Aristotle's and Xenocrates' treatises on sympotic manners, see Ath. 5.186b; for Aristotle's treatise on drunkenness, see Ath. 11.464C, 496f. Plato's dialogues, too, include discussions of wines social functions (notably Prt . 347e-348a; Symp . 176c-e; Leg . 1.645d-e, 2.671b-674c). Also, Theophrastus's Characters repeatedly mocks undesirable sympotic behavior. On wines role in social life, see too Ath. 10.419b-448a (with attention to wines role in violcnce at, e.g., 421a-b and 443c-d). Cf. Xenophanes' well-ordered symposium (1 West).

77. For examples of drunken violence at Philip's and Alexander's symposia, see Plut. Alex . 9 and 50-51. For examples of luxurious display and ostentation at Philip's and Alexander's symposia, see Dem. 19.192-95; Plut. Alex . 54; and Ath. 4.146c, 12.537e-540a. For examples of extravagant Hellenistic royal symposia, see, e.g., Ath. 5.195d, 5.196b, 12.540a-c. See also Eugene N. Borza, "The Symposium at Alexander's Court," in Archaia Makedonia, III: Anakoinoseis kata to Trito Diethnes Symposio , Thessalonike, 21-25 septemvriou 1977 (Thessaloniki, 1983), 45-55.

78. Oswyn Murray, "Symposium and Genre in the Poetry of Horace," Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985), 44. On the Hellenistic epigram, see Giuseppe Giangrande's fundamental article, "Sympotic Literature and Epigram," in L'épigramme grecque (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1968), 91-177.

79. Portions of this section (and of "Ptolemy" in chapter 4) appear in Burton, "Function," which also includes an overview of the history of the Greek symposium.

80. Francis Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1972), 172-73, briefly discusses Idyll 14's symposium setting in connection with the "symptoms of love" genre within which he is classifying the poem.

81. On mercenaries, see, e.g., McKechnie, Outsiders , 79-100. (See also his discussion of prostitutes, 152-54.)

82. On nonelite symposia, see Ezio Pellizer, "Outlines of a Morphology of Sympotic Entertainment," trans. Catherine McLaughlin, in O. Murray, Sympotica , 181: "probably the use of the symposion was not limited to aristocratic or tyrannical circles (therefore élites), but must have been practised also in wider strata of society such as the mercantile, artisan, or peasant classes."

83. Dover, Theocritus 189. See Gow, Theocritus 2:252 n. 21. The theme of physical violence against women at symposia was traditionally popular among makers of sympotic vessels (see, e.g., Robert F. Sutton Jr., "Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery," in Richlin, Pornography and Representation , 11-12).

84. See, e.g., Préaux, "Statut de la femme"; Vatin, Recherches sur le mariage ; Pomeroy, Goddesses , esp. 125-31, 128-39; J. K. Davies, "Cultural, Social, and Economic Features of the Hellenistic World," in Walbank et al., Hellenistic World , 311-13.

85. The aristocratic Hipparchia, Cynic Crates' wife, reportedly attended symposia with her husband (Diog. Laert. 6.97-98). Also, during the archaic period, Pythagorean philosophical societies admitted women (Diog. Laert. 8.41); later the Cynics and the Epicureans admitted women to their philosophical cults as well. Women admitted to philosophical societies might presumably have dined with men. Further, Aspasia, when she lived with Pericles, hosted intellectual gatherings attended by Athenian women with their husbands (see, e.g., Plut. Per . 24). If she had experience as a hetaira and as an importer of hetairai (Ar. Ach . 524-29; Ath. 13.569f), she would have been familiar with sympotic customs and might well have modeled her gatherings on them. Also, two women are specifically mentioned among Plato's disciples, and they may well have attended philosophical symposia, especially since one of them, Axiothea of Phlius, reportedly dressed in men's clothing (Diog. Laert. 3.46).

86. Cameron too submits that "we need not automatically assume that any woman present at a symposium was a hetaira," and he rites Idyll 14's Gynisca as an example (Alan Cameron, "Asclepiades' Girl Friends," in Foley, Reflections of Women , 277: "there is no question of the depth and sincerity of her passion for Lykos").

87. Cf. the unclear social status of Id . 2's Simaetha and of the rustic characters in the bucolic poems.

88. See, e.g., O. Murray, "Greek Symposion in History," 268-69.

89. Love toasts with unmixed wine are customary. See, e.g., Theoc. Id . 2.151-52; Callim. Epigrams 5 and 8; Meleager Epigrams 42 and 43 (numeration from Gow and Page).

90. It is interesting to note that Aeschinas's "we four" here excludes Cynisca.

91. M. L. West, ed., Delectus ex Iambis et Elegis Graecis (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 85-86 (fr. 6) = Ath. 10.432d-433b.

92. Tyrtaeus 10.31-32 West: ("Let each man, firmly planting himself, stand fast on both feet upon the earth"); Archil. 114.4 West: ("firmly planted on his feet, full of heart").

93. See Ewen Bowie, " Miles Ludens ? The Problem of Martial Exhortation in Early Greek Elegy," in O. Murray, Sympotica , 221-29.

94. See the numerous Hellenistic epigrams, particularly the fictive tomb and statue inscriptions, that focus on archaic poets. For example, on Anacreon, see the following epigrams: Theoc. 15, Leonidas of Tarentum 31 and 90, Dioscorides 19, Antip. Sid. 16 and 17 (all numeration taken from Gow and Page).

95. The strong association of the carpe diem theme with the sympotic world continues in Roman poetry (cf. Hor. Epod . 13.3-6). On Horace's handling of the carpe diem theme, see Gregson Davis, "Modes of Consolation: Convivium and carpe diem, " ch. 3 in Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 145-88.

96. Aeschinas's fellow celebrants included a soldier and a horse trainer, Aeschinas himself later resolves to become a mercenary, and his friend Thyonichus displays knowledge about soldiering opportunities. Ancient anecdotes highlight the issue of wine's value for a soldier: wine can hearten soldiers in battle (Ath. 10.429a, 433b-c, 442c), and drinking parties can offer tests of "military skills' (e.g., Philip's drunken sword-attack on Alexander, Plut. Alex . 9). See Oswyn Murray, "War and the Symposium," in Dining in a Classical Context , ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), esp. 83-87.

97. Cf. the enclaved dinner parties popular among philosophers (Ath. 5.186a-b). Thus, for example, Epicures restricts a party to Democritean philosophers (Ath. 5.187b). So to Antipater later hosted a party at which all guests had to discuss sophism (Ath. 5.186c).

98. Simaetha only learns of her lover's defection through hearsay: a flute player's mother reports on Delphis's behavior at a symposium (14.5-54).

99. On "star-groups," see V. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre , 69, 72; idem, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1986), esp. 45-46.

100. These gender issues are discussed in more detail in chapter 2.

101. On "what Freud called the inflation of the love-object" in Idyll 3, see Charles Isenberg and David Konstan, "Pastoral Desire: The Third Idyll of Theocritus," DalhousieReview 64. (1984), 306.

102. For thematic connections between Idyll 7's Philinus and Idyll 2's Philinus, with attention to the komos theme, see Gilbert Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals: A Poetry Book (Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 1967), esp. 99-100; Charles Segal "Running after Philinus (Theocritus, Idyll 2.114ff.)," Estudios clásicos 26 (1984), 347-50.

103. On the appropriation of Greek customs by ambitious non-Greeks, see Green, Alexanderto Actium , 315-16.

104. On the motif of the komos in Hellenistic epigrams, see Sonya Lida Tarán, The Art of Variation in the Hellenistic Epigram (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979), 52-114. For references to Greek (and Latin) literature featuring the komos theme, see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 82-84. (on Herod. Mime 2.34.-37). For discussion of the komos theme in Greek literature (with a focus on the paraclausithyron , the song sung during knomos at the beloved's door), see Frank O. Copley, ExclususAmator: A Study in Latin Love Poetry , American Philological Association Monograph Series, no. 17 (Baltimore, 1956), 1-27.

105. On Mime 2's komos , see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 82-84 (on 34.-37). See also Ussher, "Mimiamboi of Herodas," 72:13-14.

106. The transcendent nature of the appeal to pride in the city goes beyond the Athenian Ariston's argument against Conon for committing drunken battery: ; ("Is it to the advantage of each one of you that a man be permitted to indulge in battery and outrage, or that he be not permitted?"; trans. A. T. Murray in Demosthenes: Private Orations , vol. 3, Orations L-LIX (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), 161; Dem. 54..43 O.C.T .). On the commonplace courtroom strategy of linking a legal case with a city-state's freedom, see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 78 n. 25-27, with references. On Cos's autonomy, as implied by Herodas's Mime 2, see Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos , 94-95.

107. Scholars generally reserve such praise for Rhodes, "the one Greek power that preserved complete and genuine independence in Hellenistic times" (Green, Alexander to Actium , 378).

108. For the displaced Themistocles too, ostracized from Athens, making his home in Asia, symposia and festivals functioned as reminders of home: he founded a festival of Pitchers (the Anthesteria's second day), celebrated a Panathenaea, and held symposia (although he reportedly lamented that his friends could hardly fill a triclinium [Ath. 12.533e]). See too At. Ach ., in which the displaced farmer Dicaiopolis celebrates his return to his farm With an Anthesteria (960) and a Country Dionysia. Thus Aristophanes awakens in his audience, secluded behind city walls, nostalgia for a time when war did not disrupt festivals associated with the countryside.

109. On the cultural and social functions of carnival, see Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World , trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), esp. 196-277.

110. On this aspect of Cleisthenes' reforms, see Robin Osborne, Demos: The Discovery of Classical Attika (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 189; Ellen Meiksins Wood, Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy (1988; reprint, with corrections, London and New York: Verso, 1989), esp. 101-8. For a seminal discussion of city and country in ancient Greece, see Sally C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 130-35.

111. See R. Scodel, "Wine, Water, and the Anthesteria in Callimachus Fr. 178 Pf.," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 39 (1980), 37-40. See also Walter Burkert, Greek Religion , trans. John Raffan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 237-42.

112. On the intellectual symposium in the Hellenistic age, see Oswyn Murray, "Aristeas and Ptolemaic Kingship," Journal of Theological Studies , n.s., 18 (1967), esp. 346-47; idem, "Greek Symposion in History," 270-71.

113. Although later Ptolemy IV reportedly founded a flagon-bearing festival, which Athenaeus likens to the Anthesteria, Arsinoe HI (Ptolemy IV's wife) called the festival "a shabby get-together," according to Eratosthenes in his Arsinoe treatise (Ath. 7.276b-c). On Eratosthenes' Erigone and the Anthesteria, see also T. B. L. Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art (London: Methuen, 1964), 136-38.

114. For discussion of the linkage between mobility and friendship (in Athens), see Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks , esp. 234: "Increased spatial and social mobility in any society tends to weaken status-based obligations, such as those attached to particular positions in a kinship system, and replace them with more flexible ties based on similarity of interests and compatibility of personality."

115. See the reference in an early Hellenistic marriage contract (311/310 B.C. : P. Elephantine 1) to "those representing Demetria" (trans. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 86; for discussion, see 91-92).

116. For example, on social functions of ancient mystery cults, see Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), esp. 30-65 (ch. 2: "Organizations and Identities").

117. On the rise of Dionysiac guilds, see esp. Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, "The Artists of Dionysus," ch. 7 in The Dramatic Festivals of Athens , 2d ed., rev. John Gould and D. M. Lewis, reissue, with supplement and corrections (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 279-323.

118. On the topic of friendship in ancient philosophy, see, e.g., Jean-Claude Fraisse, Philia: La notion d'amitié dans la philosophie antique: Essai sur un problème perdu et retrouvé (Paris: Philosophique J. Vrin, 1974). On the importance of reciprocity in Aristotle's notion of friendship, see Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another , trans. Kathleen Blarney (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), esp. 183-88. On the Epicurean ideal of friendship, see, e.g., David K. O'Connor, "The Invulnerable Pleasures of Epicurean Friendship," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 31 (1990), 165-86.

119. On Simaetha's social status, see Gow, Theocritus 2:33; see also Dover, Theocritus , 95-96: "Perhaps we are meant to imagine that Simaitha's father was abroad, that her mother was dead, and that no officious uncle was to hand; and perhaps situations of this kind were sufficiently familiar to Theokritos to need no explanation" (96).

120. Cf. Ov. Ars Am . 1.729-38. Cairns, Generic Composition , 171-73, proposes the generic category "Symptoms of Love" as a key to Idyll 14. Jacob Stems article, "Theocritus' Idyll 14.," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975), 51-58, expands on Cairns's approach by showing how Idyll 14 tests love conventions against reality.

121. Much attention was being paid during the Hellenistic period to women's talk and women's communities. Herodas's mimes, especially 1, 4, and 6, represent women talking among themselves. Apollonius Rhodius's Argonautica features women's communities (Medea and her sister Chalciope at Colchis; Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena in Olympus; the Lemnian women). Callimachus's Hymns 5 and 6 represent women's communal religious ceremonies, and Hymn 5 also explores the friendship between Athena and one of her attendants, the nymph Chariclo, Teiresias's mother.

122. Cf. Callim. Ep . 16, an epitaph for Crethis, which suggests an immigrant community of Samian women among whom Crethis was a star speaker ( , 1).

123. On literary and social functions of talk, see Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

1. On the linkage of soldiery with citizenship, see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), esp. 126-27.

2. For a judicious discussion of ways Greek males could continue to live political lives in Hellenistic Greek cities, see Albrecht Dihle, "Response," in Bulloch et al., Images and Ideologies , part 4, "Self-identity in Politics and Religion," esp. 287-90.

3. Idyll 7 takes men out of the city into the country to participate in a private ceremony; Idyll 15 takes women out of the suburbs into the city center to view a public festival. By showing women becoming more publicly visible and men retreating into the private sphere, these poems can suggest the social changes gender roles are undergoing in the Hellenistic age.

4. On the granting of honorary citizenship to the itinerant poet Aristodama of Smyrna, see IG 9.2.62 (for discussion, see Pomeroy, Goddesses , esp. 126-31). On the rise in female euergetism, esp. from the second century B.C. on, see Riet Van Bremen, "Woman and Wealth," in Cameron and Kuhrt, Images of Women , 223-42. See also Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, "Ancient Greek Women and Art: The Material Evidence," American Journal of Archaeology , 2d ser., 91 (1987), esp. 4-05-9.

5. See esp. P. Elephantine 1 (311/310 B.C. ), which ends with the statement: "This contract shall be valid in every respect, wherever Heraclides may produce it against Demetria, or Demetria and those helping Demetria to exact payment may produce it against Heraclides, as though the contract had been made in that place" (trans. Pomeroy, Goddesses , 128). The full text (English translation) and a discussion of this contract can be found in Pomeroy, Goddesses , 127-29; idem, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 86-98.

6. Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 29-33. On the traditional Egyptian belief in equality of the sexes, see Jean Vercoutter, "La femme en Egypte ancienne," in Préhistoire et antiquité , vol. 1 of Histoire mondiale de la femme , ed. Pierre Grimal (Paris: Nouvelle librairie de France, 1965), 119; Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, La femme au temps des pharaohs (Paris: Stock/ Laurence Pernoud, 1986), 170-71.

7. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 173; see also David M. Schaps, Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece (1979; reprint, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 96-97.

8. The sympotic toasting ritual is pivotal in revealing differences between Idyll 2's and Idyll 14's male symposiasts. Idyll 2's toasting ritual, as reported to Simaetha, revealed Delphis's autonomy of her, his complete involvement in a promiscuous sympotic community (from which she is excluded). Idyll 14's sympotic toasting ritual separated Aeschinas from the sympotic community and re-veiled his obsession with Cynisca.

9. Idyll 2, more than the other two urban mimes, has a tradition of readers sensitive to important gender issues—e.g., Steven F. Walker, Theocritus (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980), 95-98; Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," esp. 260-68; Charles Segal, "Space, Time, and Imagination in Theocritus' Second Idyll," Classical Antiquity 4 (1985), 103-19.

10. For a useful introduction to this interpretative strategy, see Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Empire Writes Back , 174-77. See also, for example, Spivak, In Other Worlds , 141-68 (ch. 14: "A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: A Woman's Text from the Third World").

11. On earth-centered religion as a source of power for native peoples against colonizers, see Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 234.

12. See Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), esp. 54-55.

13. The name Delphis may itself suggest androgyny: Delphis occurs as a girl's name at Diog. Laert. 8.88. On sexual ambiguity in Theocritus's representations of Simaetha and Delphis, see also Walker, Theocritus , 97-98; Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 266; Segal, "Space, Time, and Imagination," 110.

14. Included among the meanings of in Liddell and Scott's lexicon are "light, easy to understand," "light in moving, nimble," and "light-minded, fickle" (Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon , 9th ed., with supplement [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968]).

15. Simaetha was quick to respond to Delphis after she committed herself, but she regrets this in retrospect (138-40).

16. See Segal, ''Space, Time, and Imagination," 105-6.

17. See, e.g., Burkert, Greek Religion , 151-52.

18. Theocritus emphasizes the crucial moment of Delphis's crossing the threshold, and the crossing of sexual boundaries implied in that act, by having the sentence cross stanzas as well (the sentence breaks at 104 and continues in 106 after the refrain).

19. Cf. Callim. Ep . 25.6.

20. The distinction between maiden and wife which Delphis disregards at the end of his seduction speech (the critical element for Delphis is that Eros causes both to leave their bed-chambers) is crucial in a Greek female's life-sequence, but Delphis's actions have denied Simaetha both these identifies.

21. At the time of the symposium, Aeschinas's blame was directed principally against Cynisca, whom he accosted as ("bane of my life," 36), but Aeschinas's retrospective description of the Thessalian singing "My Wolf" as ("a wicked wit," 31) shows that Aeschinas now views himself as a victim of his guests' games too.

22. Line 47's anaphora, phonetic repetitions ( , and ), and syllabic balance (especially in the second dame) reflect Aeschinas's compulsive linkage of Lycus, nighttime, and an accessible Cynisca.

23. E.g., Ph.-E. Legrand, Étude sur Théocrite , Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, no. 79 (Paris, 1898), 138.

24. E.g., Stern, "Theocritus' Idyll 14," 56-57; Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 114-15. For a seminal discussion of Theocritus's me of incongruous images, see Garson, "An Aspect of Theocritean Humor."

25. Cf. Euripides' Medea , where the nurse mixes the image of a bull with that of a lioness with cubs to describe Medea (187-88). In Theocritus's Idyll 26, the narrator uses the fierce, feminine image of a lioness with cubs to describe Agave as she roars over her son's head (21): Agave is the lioness who destroys her own cub.

26. On instances of this proverb elsewhere in Greek literature, see Knox's note on Herodas's Mime 2.62 (in Headlam and Knox, Herodas ).

27. On the bull fable, see Gow, Theocritus 2:256 n. 43.

28. See Marcel Detienne, Dionysos Slain , trans. Mireille Muellner and Leonard Muellner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), esp. 25-26. Examples of persons who escape to the woods include Atalanta, Artemis and her nymphs, Hippolytus, and Melanion (Ar. Lys . 781-96).

29. See P. M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), esp. 63-68, 72-76.

30. On the wolf as savage outsider, see Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths , 77 and 92-94 (Lycaon).

31. See, e.g., the 500 B.C. red-figure alabastron from Athens, Kerameikos 2713, depicting a man offering a courtship gift of a hare to a woman sitting in a chair and spinning (pictured in Alain Schnapp, "Eros the Hunter," in A City of Images: Iconography and Society in Ancient Greece , by Claude Bérard et al., trans. Deborah Lyons [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989], 82-83 [figs. 112-13, with discussion, 82: ''The woman spinning in this modest pose is a hetaira who, by identifying herself with the wife, adds greater worth and distinction to her seduction"]). See also the Adolphseck 41 pelike (= ARV 566,6), depicting on one side, a man offering a purse to a standing woman with a workbasket, and on the other, a man with a walking stick offering a purse to a seated woman (pictured in Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens [New York: Harper and Row, 1985], 228 [plates 205-6], with discussion, 224: "If my reading is correct, the pelike juxtaposes a man with his wife and the same man with a hetaera"; but cf. Martin F. Kilmer, Greek Erotica [London: Duck-worth, 1993], 166-67: "It may also be that, for the purposes of such scenes as this, things were deliberately left ambiguous: the viewer could think of these as courting scenes taking place between free Athenians, or business transactions between prostitute and client; or there may have been other interpretations"). See also Makron's cup (Toledo, Ohio, 72.55), depicting on the outside band, men soliciting women, and on the tondo, a woman making offerings at an altar (pictured in Keuls, Reign of the Phallus , 167 [the outside band: plates 141-42], with discussion, 167-68; 227 [the tondo: plate 204], with discussion of the juxtaposition of tondo and outside band, 223-24). On difficulties distinguishing the status of women depicted on erotic Greek vases, see Kilmer, Greek Erotica , 159-67. For a discussion of Greek epigrams linking weavers and hetairai (as well as weaving and love), see Tarán, Art of Variation , 115-31.

32. On the blurring of female social categories, see Jasper Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life (1985; reprint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 27-28. On Roman wives acting as courtesans, see R. O. A. M. Lyne, The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Horace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 13-16. On the inclusion of respectable women at Roman symposia, see O. Murray, "Symposium and Genre," 48-49.

33. For discussion of Cat. 68's use of the marriage motif and the Laodamia story in redescribing his relationship with the unfaithful Lesbia, see, e.g., Lyne, Latin Love Poets , 56-60. On Tib. 1.5.21-34, see Lyne, Latin Love Poets , 160-63.

34. Gow, Theocritus 2:253 n. 33.

35. For an evocative discussion of how attention to the literary echoes of Sappho and Homer can enhance the reader's experience of Theocritus's Idyll 2, see Charles Segal, "Underreading and Intertextuality: Sappho, Simaetha, and Odysseus in Theocritus' Second Idyll," Arethusa 17 (1984), 201-9.

36. In both cases, the tears initiate a process of physical violence leading to the loss of the subordinated partner: Cynisca's tears prompt Aeschinas to assail her with his fists, and she leaves the symposium (and his life); Patroclus's tears prompt Achilles to send him into battle, where Patroclus is killed.

37. Gow, Theocritus 1:107. I use the translation "brazen" here for euphony's sake, with the understanding that, as Dover, Theocritus 195 n. 53, points out, " and its derivatives are not used metaphorically in the sense of English 'brazen.'" He suggests as possible meanings here "sunburnt'' or "whom you could get for a bronze coin." ("Brazen," of course, can also mean "brass-colored.")

38. Thwarted lovers elsewhere in Theocritus's poems try other cures for disappointed love—for example, song (e.g., Ids . 10, 11) and suicide (e.g., Ids . 2, 3).

39. See Gow, Theocritus 2:249 n. 8. See also Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 183 ( Mime 4.20). Gow also notes Archidamus's daughter (see in addition to Plut. Ages . 20; Paus. 3.8.1; 6.1.6; A.P . 13.16).

40. Cf. Lucian's later use of the name in the meaning "Little Cynic" for characters in the satiric dialogues Zeus Elenchomenos ("Zeus Refuted") and Kataplous ("The Voyage Down").

41. On the sexual symbolism of the snake, see, e.g., Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults , 106.

42. Praxinoa is expressing a Callimachean sentiment, insofar as pigs can represent mud and filth; cf. the literary values expressed at the dose of Callim. Hymn 2 (when Apollo rejects what he describes as the filthy Assyrian river, full of refuse, in favor of the pure stream, 108-12). Callimachus also scorns the crowded road, Ep . 28.1-2.

43. The adjective (wretched) often connotes compassion. See, e.g., Odysseus's self-description at Od . 5.299: .

44. By using significant names that are not uncommon, Theocritus can reinforce characterizations without unduly interrupting the narrative. On the use of significant names in Homer's Odyssey , see, e.g., Norman Austin, "Name Magic in the Odyssey," California Studies in Classical Antiquity 5 (1972), 1-19.

45. On Herodas's use of appropriate names, see J. C. Austin, "The Significant Name in Herondas," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 53 (1922), 16-17. On realistic portraiture, see, e.g., John Onians, Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age: The Greek World View, 350-50 BC (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), esp. 38-50; Christine M. Havelock, Hellenistic Art , 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), esp. 141-47; Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , esp. 19-23.

46. Praxinoa's name links (business) and (mind). The verb can mean " achieve, manage affairs, do business." (These definitions are all taken from Liddell and Scott, Lexicon .)

47. The name is also used to denote the Gorgon, a legendary female monster (e.g., Medusa), whose gaze turns men to stone. For discussion of the Gorgon, see, e.g., lean-Pierre Vernant, "Death in the Eyes: Gorgo, Figure of the Other," ch. 6 in Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays , ed. Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 111-38.

48. If Theocritus were a fan of puns, one could imagine Praxinoa's abuse of Eunoa underscoring the households lack of well-being, for a synergy of the names Praxinoa and Eunoa produces happiness: (a definition endorsed by Aristotle in Eth. Nic . 1095219-20).

49. This practice, popular among philosophers seeking hidden meanings in Homer's epics, was criticized in Plato's Republic , but gained momentum during the Hellenistic period, especially among Stoics and philosophers interpreting scripture (see David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992]).

50. See P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:241-43.

51. The surprise of Idyll 15's hostile encounter between the bystander and the women might be intensified by the expectable literary motif that women who go to festivals are often seduced (e.g., in Eur. Ion , new comedy in general, and Theocritus's Idyll 2). The Adonia in particular is a favorite literary occasion for seductions (e.g., Men. Sam . 41; cf. Theoc. Idyll 24.50, Theophr. Char . 2.4, Ar. Lys .). Before meeting the hostile bystander, Praxinoa thinks of erotic proverbs (the first concerning Hera and Zero; the second, an anonymous bridegroom) after each encounter on the road to the Adonia. Some audience members might even expect that a seductive encounter would be the main concern of the poem. In Idyll 2, for example, the festival is not described, but simply provides an occasion for Simaetha to fall in love with Delphis. A hostile encounter between men and women at a festival, however, is not necessarily incongruous. An exchange of abusive insults is a traditional feature of such festivals as Demeter's at Pellene (Paus. 7.27.10) and Apollo's at Anaphe (Ap. Rhod. Argon . 4.1726). Apollodorus (1.5.1) attributes the traditional jesting at the festival of the Thesmophoria to the incident of Demeter's arrival at the home of Celeus, when Iambe jests to make her smile ( Hom. H. Dem . 202-4). In Idyll 15, Praxinoa's invocations of (89) (possibly Demeter) and (94) (whom the scholia identify as Persephone) in reply to insults from a man perhaps recall a ritual of abusive exchanges between men and women, typical of Demeter's festival (for the scholia, see C. Wendel, Scholia in Theocritum Vetera; Scholia in Technopaegnia Scripta [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1914], 313).

52. E.g., Arist. Pol . 1259a-1260b. Cf. Arist. Poet . 1454a22-24 on gender and decorum. The patriarchal tradition's exclusivity, represented by Aristotle, was already being challenged in the fourth century B.C. when Epicureans and Cynics began to allow women and slaves to participate in the philosophical experience.

53. White argues that Praxinoa is describing the Adonis statue rather than an Adonis figure on the tapestries (Heather White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" Museum Philologum Londiniense 4 (1981), 199-203; so too Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , 57 n. 27). In this discussion, I follow Gow and Dover, who consider that Praxinoa is here describing an Adonis figure represented on the tapestries (A. S. F. Gow, "The Adoniazusae of Theocritus," Journal of Hellenic Studies 58 [1938], 198-99; idem, Theocritus 2:265, 288 n. 84f.; Dover, Theocritus , 206).

54. Cf. young Theseus who, dressed in a long tunic and with hair plaited, on his arrival in Athens was mocked by builders, who called him a gift ripe for marriage (Paus. 1.19.1).

55. Praxinoa is emphasizing a central aspect of Adonis's myth. See Ov. Met . 10.519-739 for a detailed version of the story of Adonis's disappointed manhood.

56. Later in this chapter, I discuss the issue of the homoerotic gaze implicit in Theocritus's representation of Praxinoa's response to Adonis. The main issue under consideration here is what a male bystander might find transgressive in Praxinoa's speech.

57. On the problematic issue of the bystander's use of Doric, see, e.g.: Hermann Fritzsche, Theokrits Gedichte , 3d ed., rev. by Eduard Hiller (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1881), 187; W. C. Helmbold, "Theocritus 15.87-88," Classical Philology 46 (1951), 116; Gow, Theocritus 2:290 n. 88; Monteil, Théocrite , 160; Dover, Theocritus , 207; Gianfranco Fabiano, "Fluctuation in Theocritus' Style," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 12 (1971), 521-22; Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 37; C. J. Ruijgh, "Le dorien de Théocrite: Dialecte cyrénien d'Alexandrie et d'Égypte," Mnemosyne , 4th sec., 37 (1984), 79; Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 164-65.

58. The exclamation is used primarily by women: cf. Herodas 1.85 and 4.20. Melitodes may well be Persephone, a goddess associated with Syracusan women, according to the scholia to line 14 (Wendel, Scholia , 307).

59. Monteil, Théocrite , 160, instead suggests that the exclamation serves to confirm the bystander's characterization of her speech: "Ce monosyllabe très ouvert fournit au reproche une justification immédiate."

60. Gow, Theocritus 2:291 n. 95.

61. Dover, Theocritus , 208 n. 95.

62. Praxinoa's use of Bellerophon in this context seems to recall a memorable incident in Homer's Iliad , book 6 (144-211), when Glaucus, challenged by Diomedes for his identity on the battlefield, defiantly claims Bellerophon as heroic ancestor (for this suggestion, see also Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 38 n. 94).

63. As Winkler explains, "To participate even passively in the public arena the minority must be bilingual; the majority feels no such need to learn the minority's language" (John J. Winkler, "Double Consciousness in Sappho's Lyrics," in The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece [New York: Routledge, 1990], 174-76 [quote taken from 174-75]). See also Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), esp. 10: "Subordinates . . . know much more about the dominants than vice versa."

64. For the tale of Proetus's wife and young Bellerophon, see, e.g., Hom. Il . 6.160-70.

65. On variation as a stylistic trait of Theocritus's poetry, see, e.g., Fabiano, "Fluctuation in Theocritus' Style," 517-37: "As for Theocritus, I am inclined to think that variation of the level of style, which appears not only in the pastoral but in almost every idyll, is one of the main agents of poetic unification" (537).

66. Cf. how Catullus puts down Egnatius in Poem 39.

67. Callim. Hymn 2.108-9.

68. On genre and style fluctuation, see, e.g., Fabiano, "Fluctuation in Theocritus' Style"; Legrand, Étude sur Théocrite , 413-20; Ludwig Deubner, "Ein Stilprinzip hellenistischer Dichtkunst," Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur und für Pädagogik 47 (1921), 361-78.

69. See Pomeroy, "Technikai kai Mousikai," 52-53 and 64 n. 9; idem, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , esp. 60, 62 (plate 7), 71-72.

70. See, e.g., P. Elephantine 1 (an early Hellenistic marriage contract, dated to 311/310 B.C. , available in translation in Pomeroy, Goddesses , 127-28; idem, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 86-87).

71. This theme might have seemed uncomfortably familiar to audience members at the Medea 's first performance (431) who had witnessed the passing of Pericles' citizenship law of 451/450, which required that a mother of Athenian citizens be an Athenian herself and thus encouraged Athenian men to discard alien wives (Arist. Ath. Pol . 26.4; for discussion of Pericles' law, see, e.g., A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens , vol. 1, The Family and Property [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968], 25-29; Pomeroy, Goddesses , 66-70).

72. On the unusual placement of Hecate at Medea's hearth, see Denys L. Page, ed., Euripides: Medea (1938; reprint with corrections, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 102 n. 397.

73. For a discussion of Simaetha's spell as "therapeutic self-expression," see Hugh Parry, "Magic and the Songstress: Theocritus Idyll 2," Illinois Classical Studies 13 (1988), 43-55.

74. So, e.g., Anacreon fr. 356, 383, 409 P.M.G .; Ath. 11.475c-f. For other citations, in addition to Ath., see Gow, Theocritus 2:36 n. 2, who notes that Simaetha's "is probably for the libation (43)."

75. On the identification of this bronze rhomb with the magic wheel of the refrain, see Heather White, "Spells and Enchantment in Theocritus' Idyll II," ch. 2 in Studies in Theocritus and Other Hellenistic Poets (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1979), 30-34.

76. Idyll 14 also highlights the theme of the dash between heterosexual love and the masculinized world of the gymnasium and the symposium: Aeschinas's obsession with Cynisca caused him to abandon the sympotic life.

77. Probably a love-potion (Gow, Theocritus 2:46 n. 58).

78. The association of the name Delphis with Delphi and hence Apollo also heightens the impression of class difference from Simaetha (whose name means snub-nosed; on Simaetha's name, see Dover, Theocritus , 95). Also, Simaetha saw Delphis on her way to Artemis's festival, and she compares his shine to that of the moon, with whom Artemis was often identified.

79. For this version of the Actaeon story, see Callim. Hymn 5.107-16; see also, e.g., Ov. Met . 3.138-252.

80. Simaetha was attracted by Delphis's gleaming athleticism, as shown by the full spectrum of "shiny, oily" words she uses in association with his athletic activities: ("the palaestra shiny with oil," 51), ("his shining breast," 79), ("shiny-skinned Delphis,'' 102), ("his Doric oil-flask," 156). Delphis's invocation of Hephaestus Liparaios (''of [shiny] Lipara," 133) may also reinforce this association.

81. Frederick T. Griffiths, "Poetry as Pharmakon in Theocritus' Idyll 2," in Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox , ed. Glen W. Bowersock, Walter Burkert, and Michael C. J. Putnam (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), 87-88. On Simaetha's subjective use of the adjective , see also Fabiano, "Fluctuations in Theocritus' Style," 523; Segal, "Space, Time, and Imagination," 110.

82. Artemis's identification with Selene, the Moon goddess (Dover, Theocritus , 101) may add another dimension to this reading, insofar as Simaetha invokes Selene and Hecate (also identified with Artemis, Id . 2.33) to help her resolve the crisis of identity she is experiencing because of Delphis. As shown above, the goddess Artemis seems central to Simaetha's recovery of herself.

83. On Egypt's tradition of magic, see, e.g., Siegfried Morenz, Ägyptische Religion (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960), esp. 27-28; John Baines, "Society, Morality, and Religious Practice," in Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice , ed. Byron E. Sharer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 164-72 ("Magic and Divination"). On the influence of Egypt's magic on Greeks, see, e.g., Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. 65-67.

84. For discussion (with references), see chapter 4, where I examine Idyll 15's representation of Arsinoe's Adonia.

85. E.g., Lysias's Euphiletus, in his self-defense for murdering Eratosthenes, traces Eratosthenes' passion for Euphiletus's wife to his seeing her attending a funeral (Lys. 1.8). Also, for an important reminder of the public nature of many of Greek women's religious roles, see Helene P. Foley, "The 'Female Intruder' Reconsidered: Women in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae," Classical Philology 77 (1982), esp. 1-5.

86. The movement of Idyll 15's women from a private house through Alexandria's streets to an Adonis festival (traditionally a women's festival) enables Theocritus to explore an unusually full spectrum of female-male encounters and relations, both hostile and sympathetic: between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, men and women strangers, a king and subject women, a goddess and a youth.

87. On the significance of Mise's descent for Mime 1's plot, see Stern, "Herodas' Mimiamb 1," 161-65.

88. On the snake-burning as a scapegoat ritual, see Gow, Theocritus 2:430 n. 91; Jacob Stern, "Theocritus' Idyll 24.," American Journal of Philology 95 (1974), 357.

89. Cf. Callim. Hymn 2, which represents a male ceremony of Apollo.

90. Although Idyll 26 ends with the poet-narrator ostensibly disassociating himself from Pentheus, the poem begins with a detailed description of the women's ritual activities (1-9), which puts both audience and poet-narrator in Pentheus's position as intruders. In Euripides' Bacchae , Pentheus spies on less ritually veiled activities than in Idyll 26, e.g., bacchantes singing bacchic songs and repairing their wands (1054-57; see too the messenger's report at 680-711). For a summary of scholarship comparing Euripides' Bacchae and Theocritus's Idyll 26, see K. J. McKay, "Theokritos' Bacchantes Re-examined," Antichthon 1 (1967), esp. 16-20.

91. The end of Idyll 26 absolves Agave and her sisters of blame (37-38). This is not a typical move: traditionally in Greek literature women who kill their children suffer retribution (see, e.g., Jeffrey Henderson, "Older Women in Attic Old Comedy; Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 117 [1987], 112). But in Theocritus's Idyll 26, Pentheus's mother and her sisters are absolved of his murder through Dionysus. A possible subtext here is that in a world of autocratic hegemonies, powerful and well-connected royal women (e.g., Olympias, herself a bacchant of Dionysus; Arsinoe II) could commit terrible (kinship) crimes with impunity: thus Olympias had Philip Arrhidaios (her stepson) executed and forced his wife Eurydice to commit suicide (Diod. 19.11; see Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , 41-42; Elizabeth D. Carney, "Olympias; Ancient society 18 [1987], 59).

92. Cf. Theocritus's representation of a public Adonia, sponsored by Arsinoe, and open to a public, mixed audience. In chapter 4, I discuss the poetic challenges involved in commemorating a public, official celebration of a traditionally private, countercultural festival.

93. By having the celebrant-narrator use the image of ("a wax doll in the sun"; trans. A. W. Mair, "Callimachus" [1921], in Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams; Lycophron; Aratus , trans. A. W. and G. R. Mair, 2d ed. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955], 131; 91) to describe Erysichthon as he wastes away, the poet highlights Erysichthon's feminized position in subjugation to Demeter: through hunger, Demeter transforms Erysichthon from a fierce leader of men to a subordinate. Also, the celebrant's use of the imagery of a lioness and a hunter repositions Erysichthon as fierce but hunted (hence feminized) when he replies to Demeter's warning: ("with a look more fierce than that wherewith a lioness looks on the hunter on the hills of Tmarus—a lioness with new-born cubs"; trans. Mair, ''Callimachus," 129; 50-52).

94. Idyll 17's inclusion of matrilineal identifications in a male-centered poem (an encomium of Ptolemy) underscores Theocritus's thematic emphasis on the importance of women in this poem (as elsewhere). On the prevalence of matrilineal identifications among women, see Marilyn Skinner, "Greek Women and the Metronymic: A Note on an Epigram by Nossis," The Ancient History Bulletin 1 (1987), 39-42.

95. Cf. Skinners evaluation of Nossis Ep . 8 Gow and Page (= A.P . 6.353) which, by emphasizing the resemblance of a daughter to her mother, "implicitly repudiates the very structures of patriarchy by transforming the evidential basis for claims of paternity into a proof of the mother's vital role in the reproductive proems" (Marilyn B. Skinner, "Nossis Thelyglossos : The Private Text and the Public Book," in Pomeroy, Women's History , 28, 30 [quote taken from 30]).

96. For pre-Callimachean literary passages, see, e.g., Eur. Hipp . 161-69, Phoen . 355. On the risks of childbirth, see, e.g., Pomeroy, Goddesses , 84-85; Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Life: From Conception to Old Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 65-80. In Sparta, at least by c . 500 B.C. , women who died in childbirth joined men who died in battle in being granted the exceptional honor of having their names inscribed on tombstones; the women either by Lycurgan law (Plut. Lyc . 27.2, if read with Latte's emendation) or by " de facto exemption by c . 500 . . . from the Spartan prohibition on named tombstones" (Paul Cartledge, "Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?" Classical Quarterly , n.s., 31 [1981], 95; see n. 72 on Latte's emendation).

97. See also Callim. Hymn 3.20-22; Aetia 3, fr. 79 (Diana Lucina); Eur. Iph. Taur . 1464-67 (an aition for the dedication to Artemis at Brauron of woven garments of women who died in childbirth). Cf. Callim. Hymn 3's aition for Artemis's role as goddess of childbirth: in contrast, she gave her own mother no pain either in childbirth or pregnancy (22-25).

98. In the fourth century and Hellenistic period, however, mothers seem to have taken more significant roles in arranging marriages: documents attest that mothers and fathers together, even mothers alone, were giving away brides (Xen. Oec . 7.11; P. Elephantine 1, dated 311/310 B.C. ; for discussion of P. Elephantine 1 and other Hellenistic examples, see Pomeroy, Goddesses , 126-30; idem, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 86-87, and esp. 90). For the suggestion that a seducers mother might promote a seduction, see Lysias 1.20, where Euphiletus relates a report that his wife, when attending a Thesmophoria, went off to the temple with the mother of Eratosthenes, his wife's seducer.

99. In the Odyssy 's typical cyclopean family, a mother is more subordinated: (Each male rules over his children and his wives," Hom. Od . 9.114-15 O.C.T .). For Hellenistic representations of the cyclopes as mature monsters, see, e.g., Callimachus's Hymn 3.46-86, esp. 51-56 (e.g., ; "the terrible monsters like unto the crags of Ossa"; trans. Mair, "Callimachus; 65; 51-52). Cf. Theoc. Id . 7's mature Polyphemus, ("who pelted ships with mountains"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:67; 152), whom Simichidas invokes in a wine appraisal as a drunken shepherd dancing among his pens (153).

100. The poet intensifies the horror of Pentheus's dismemberment by having Autonoa answer Pentheus's question and thus show that she recognizes him as human if not as her nephew (18-19).

101. For another Hellenistic example of a strong, independent mother, see Ap. Rhod. Argon . 4.866-79. By having Peleus recall, when the long-absent Thetis suddenly appears, how Thetis abandoned the family, how she threw a shrieking baby Achilles to the ground when Peleus interrupted her nightly routine of placing the baby in the fire, Apollonius draws attention to the theme of strong, independent (and volatile) mothers and the dangers they offer their families. (This theme is not without resonance in a story that features Medea.)

102. The exact situation in Id . 15.77 is uncertain (see Gow, Theocritus 2: 285-86 n. 77). For the meaning of as "bride," cf. Theoc. Id . 18.15. But the male involved at Id . 15.77 need not be the bridegroom (although Praxinoa's use of the phrase might be more pointed in the context of an Adonia if a bridegroom and bride were intended).

103. Cf. Dover, Theocritus , 206, who suggests that Theocritus may just be "satirizing the unthinking use of clichés."

104. On how this identification offers a female take on heroism by suggesting its great cost to Hecabe (the loss of Hector), and on the Adonis hymn in general, see chapter 4.

105. J. C. Austin, "Significant Name in Herondas," 16, explains the name Lampriskos as emphasizing vigor: " , suggesting vigorous action with reference to the flogging scene." I would like to suggest another possibility: that the name Lampriskos could also signify "a dim light," thus indicating a dull schoolteacher.

106. See Xen. Oec . 7.12 (Ischomachus's advice to his wife that they will jointly plan how to train the children and thus be rewarded with good support in old age). Cf. Ar. Nub ., in which class differences between husband and wife lead to the father taking sole charge of their son's education.

107. On elderly Greek parents' dependency on their children, see, e.g., W. K. Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), 25, 116-18; Garland, Greek Way of Life , 261-62. For evidence of Athenian legislation requiring children to care for parents, see, e.g., Dem. 24.107 and Diog. Laert 1.55 (both cited in Lacey).

108. For useful discussions of Herodas's Mime 5, with attention to irony and social issues, see David Konstan, "The Tyrant Goddess: Herodas's Fifth Mime," Classical Antiquity 8 (1989), 267-82; idem, Sexual Symmetry , 164-66.

109. Sparta differed from the Greek norm by including such practices as wife-sharing (for a convenient summary of the evidence, see D. M. MacDowell, Spartan Law [Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986], 82-88; for an explanation of Spartan marriage practices, see Stephen Hodkinson, "Inheritance, Marriage, and Demography: Perspectives upon the Success and Decline of Classical Sparta," in Classical Sparta: Techniques behind Her Success , ed. Anton Powell [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989], esp. 90-93).

110. For evidence of this male attitude toward female slaves in the fifth and fourth centuries, with special attention to Athens, see Roger Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 138-43. For discussion of Mime 5's inversions of normative values, see Konstan, "Tyrant Goddess'; idem, Sexual Symmetry , esp. 165.

111. For speculation on possible divine identifies for , see Head-lam and Knox, Herodas , 263-64 n. 77. The expression can also refer to a queen or princess, however (thus, e.g., Eur. Med . 957), and the Hellenistic age was full of powerful queens (who were also often identified with goddesses) by whom one could swear. In any case, in the context of the poem, Bitinna's oath by an unnamed female tyrant has important thematic implications (on the role of the "tyrant goddess" in Herod. Mime 5, see Konstan, "Tyrant Goddess," 277, 280, 282).

112. On "the absence of male heads of household" in Mime 5, see Konstan, "Tyrant Goddess," 269; idem, Sexual Symmetry , 163, 165-66.

113. See, e.g., Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 89-90.

114. On the thematic focus on human helplessness before the gods in Callimachus's Hymns 5 and 6, see Anthony W. Bulloch, "The Future of a Hellenistic Illusion: Some Observations on Callimachus and Religion," Museum Helveticum 41 (1984), esp. 225-28. As Bulloch remarks on the fate of Chariclo (and her son Teiresias) in Hymn 5, "now we find that they [the gods] can be randomly and unpredictably violent, even to the closest friends, and scarcely even acknowledge the friendship" (228).

115. On Callimachus's emphasis on "die Frau als Mutter" (especially sorrowing mother), see Konrat Ziegler's important article, "Kallimachos und die Frauen," in Die Antike 13 (1937), 23-24: "Dieser Dichter weiß etwas yon Mutterliebe und Mutterleid" (24).

116. Ziegler, "Kallimachos und die Frauen," 24.

117. E.g., Polyphemus's mother in Idyll 11, whom he blames for not fostering his courtship of Galatea although she sees him wasting away for love (67-69). But note Ep . 20 Gow, attributed to Theocritus, which represents an inscription for a Thracian nurse's tomb monument set up by her male nursling (cf. Callimachus's Ep . 50). On the authenticity of the epigrams attributed to Theocritus, see Gow, Theocritus 2:527: "It can hardly be said that there is objective evidence against the authenticity of any of these 22 epigrams." See also Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:525-27. But cf. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:575 and 2:819 n. 175. On the manuscript tradition, see R. J. Smutny, The Text History of the Epigrams of Theocritus , University of California Publications in Classical Philology, vol. 15, no. 2 (Berkeley, 1955).

118. E.g., Idyll 15's housewives' fantasy relationship with Adonis.

119. E.g., in Idyll 6, Damoetas's Polyphemus credits old Cotyttaris with showing him how to ward off the evil eye.

120. On a more prosaic level, in Idyll 11 Polyphemus claims that his mother will suffer when he tells her of his head- and footaches, but his report that she disregarded his earlier symptoms of lovesickness belies his expectations of her suffering now (67-71). Cf. Idyll 10, in which Milon mockingly suggests to lovesick Bucaeus to tell his mother his troubles.

121. Elaborations of Aphrodite's sorrow become dominant in later versions of the Adonis story: see, e.g., Bion 1 ("Lament for Adonis"), esp. 19-24, 40-62; Ov. Met . 10.722-27.

122. The only other gods to speak in Theocritus's poetry are Hermes ( Id . 1.77-78) and Priapus ( Id . l.82-91). Note that all these gods with speaking parts appear in Thyrsis's song in Idyll 1. Also note that Aphrodite elicits a response from Daphnis while the others do not.

123. For discussion of Aphrodite's linkage with Arsinoe, in the context of Ptolemaic state ideology, see chapter 4.

124. Cf. Theoc. Ep . 4 (the statue of Priapus with a phallus dedicated to Aphrodite's works).

125. Segal aptly describes the water nymphs' feelings for Hylas as "maternal, enclosing love": "They treat him as a mother treats a child" (Charles Segal, "Death by Water: A Narrative Pattern in Theocritus," in Segal, Poetry and Myth , 58).

126. Griffiths characterizes Idyll 15's Aphrodite as "dignified, loving, almost maternal" (Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 125).

127. Cypris is mentioned at Hymn 4.21 (an island patronized by Cypris), Hymn 4.308 (Cypris's statue), Hymn 5.21 (Cypris's constant combing of her hair in contrast to Athena's modesty). Two epigrams feature Aphrodite as recipient of offerings: Ep . 5 (a nautilus shell), Ep . 38 (a hetaira's dedication). Elsewhere Aphrodite receives mention as patron of Eryx ( Aet . 2, fr. 43.53), creator of orators ( Aet . 3, fr. 82.2-3), mistress of Adonis ( Iambus 3, fr. 193.37); Lyricus 227 includes Aphrodite in an epiphany of gods (also Apollo and the Erotes) at a sympotic night-festival. The Lock of Berenice features Cypris and Aphrodite Zephyritis ( Aet . 4, fr. 110.56-57, 64), and Iambus 10, fr. 200a (four lines) describes the cult of Aphrodite of Mount Castnion.

128. Apollonius Rhodius, like Theocritus and unlike Callimachus, privileges female erotic subjectivity, and the art of his psychological portraiture has received much well-deserved attention (see, e.g., Anthony W. Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," ch. 18 in Greek Literature , vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of Classical Literature , eel P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox [Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985], esp. 591-93).

129. This theme, of course, corresponds to the relations of great goddesses and their consorts, e.g., Astarte and Tammuz, Cybele and Attis, Inanna and Dumuzi, Isis and Osiris. See Charles Segal, "Adonis and Aphrodite: Theocritus, Idyll 3.48," in Segal, Poetry and Myth , esp. 63-70. On links between Daphnis and the male consorts Dumuzi, Tammuz, and Adonis (among others), see William Berg, Early Virgil (London: Athlone Press, University of London, 1974), 17-20, 197 n. 28; on Daphnis and Dumuzi in particular, see Halperin, Before Pastoral , esp. 112-14; Jasper Griffin, "Theocritus, the Iliad , and the East," American Journal of Philology 113 (1992), 203.

130. By having Idyll 3's goatherd rite among his role models Adonis and Endymion, Theocritus highlights the basic story pattern of love linked with death, and also draws attention to the amorous pretensions of a goatherd who aspires to the models of Adonis and Endymion.

131. Hera honors her for preferring the sea to Zeus ( Hymn 4.247-48).

132. In Callimachus's poems, mothers can also be chaste: Teiresias's mother Chariclo belongs to Artemis's band ( Hymn 5).

133. Whereas Theocritus typically domesticates and diminishes male monsters appearing in poems that feature their relations with women (e.g., Idyll 24's Heracles and Idyll 6's and 11's Polyphemus), Callimachus magnifies his cyclopes and thus emphasizes their frightening effects on females, e.g. Hymn 3.64-65: ("On those [Cyclopes] not even the daughters of the Blessed look without shuddering, though long past childhood's years"; trans. Mair, "Callimachus," 65). In the context of Hymn 3, the cowardly, general female response contrasts with Artemis's precocious boldness: when just three, she sat on the cyclops Brontes' knees and tore hair from his breast for sport (72-79).

134. The maiden chorus suggest that Menclaus should have left Helen at her mother's side last night (13), praise Helen's potential for motherhood (21), promise they will think the next day of Helen as "tender lambs long for their mother's teat" (41-42), and pray that Helen and Menelaus will have sons (51).

135. The poem begins and ends with powerful, maternal women. The poem opens with Ino, Autonoa, and Agave (two of Pentheus's aunts and his mother, 1), then moves to Semele (Dionysus's mother and another of Pentheus's aunts) and Dionysus (6). The poem doses with a hymnic envoi that moves from Dionysus (through his father Zeus, included in a relative clause, 33-34) back to Semele and her sisters (35-38).

136. Mother and young similes: Id . 2.108-9, 3.15-16, 12.4, 13.12-13, 14.32-33, 14.39-40, 18.41-42, and 26.20-21. Father and young simile: Id . 13.8. It should be noted here that patrilineal descriptions are more common than matrilineal, but they appear with greatest frequency in epic narratives featuring male, heroic action and in court poetry emphasizing family dynasties: Idylls 15, 17, 18, 22, and 24.

137. Male seers appear in Theocritus's extant poems only twice, both times in heroic contexts: in Idyll 6, Damoetas assumes the voice of a cyclops, who rejects a seer's prophesy, a motif that enables Theocritus to allude ironically to the Homeric story of the cyclops's blinding ( Od . 9.509). In Idyll 24, Alcmene, Heracles' mother, consults the seer Teiresias about the meaning of the snake incident.

138. A patriarchal world typically disregards its old women; Hellenistic art and literature was making them visible and part of the public discourse. Thus, for example, Callimachus's Hecale features an old woman who gives hospitality to Theseus, a young hero on a quest, and in Herodas's Mime 1 an old bawd comes to visit (and solicit) a young married woman.

139. For discussion, see chapter 4.

140. Martin Robertson, A History of Greek Art , 2 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 1:388-89; R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture , 65. See, e.g., the beardless, effeminate Dionysus represented on an Attic red-figure pelike, c . 340, from the British Museum E 424 (illustration available in Thomas H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece: A Handbook [London: Thames and Hudson, 1990], 52, no. 49) and the fourth-century representation of a fleshy, beardless adolescent Hermes on a carved column from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (illustration available in Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture I: The Styes of ca. 331-200 B.C . [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990], plate 5).

141. For important cautions concerning extrapolating dates and artists from Roman copies of fourth-century or Hellenistic art, such as the girlishly plump Apollo Sauroktonos (lizard-slayer), commonly attributed to Praxiteles, and the Pothos (the yearning one), commonly attributed to Skopas, see Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture , esp. 87, 91.

142. See, e.g., O. Murray, "Symposion und Männerbund," 50.

143. Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 69-73 (with illustrations from vase paintings); 79-80 (with several examples from fourth-century and Hellenistic literature, e.g., Rhianus's Ep . 3 Gow and Page [= A.P . 12.93], on the charms of various boys, starting with Theodorus's ["plump ripeness of flesh and virgin bloom of limbs"; trans. W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology , 5 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916-18), 4:329, rev.; 3-4]).

144. On Hellenistic sculptures of hermaphrodites, see Robertson, History of Greek Art , esp. 1:551-52; Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , esp. 149; Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture , 328-30; R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture , esp. 133-34, 156. On hermaphrodites in Greek vase-paintings, see Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 72. On the hermaphrodite in general, see Marie Delcourt, Hermaphrodite: Mythes et rites de la bisexualité dans l'antiquité classique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958); idem, Hermaphroditea: Recherches sur l'être double promoteur de la fertilité dans le monde classique (Brussels: Latomus, 1996). All the above have plates showing hermaphrodites in Greek art.

145. See Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 54-55 (with references). See too, e.g., Ar. Nub . 964-66, 973-76.

146. Segal, "Death by Water; 60.

147. For Sappho, like Theocritus, Aphrodite is the major deity.

148. For Greek and Latin examples of the use of "down" imagery in descriptions of young males, see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 38 n. 52. On youth as valued in eromenoi , see David M. Halperin, "The Democratic Body: Prostitution and Citizehship in Classical Athens," ch. 5 in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990), 90. For ancient references on "the sexual appeal of youthfulness to women," see 182 n. 21.

149. This is probably not Asclepiades of Samos. For discussion of author-ship, see Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:150, who also note the ironic use of down imagery here: "Adolescence is less admired by this lover than by other Greeks" (2:150 n. 46.1).

150. In attributing this fragment to Callim. Hecale , scholars often conjecture that the speaker is Hecale as she views young Theseus (see, e.g., A. S. Hollis, Callimachus: Hecale [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], 184). Cf. Theocritus's presentation of Simaetha recalling her first view of Delphis and his companion, which, like Callim. Hecale fr. 274, includes a comparison to helichryse: ("Their beards were more golden than helichryse," Id . 2.78).

151. On the homoerotic appeal of youth, see Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 85-86.

152. Dover suggests that representations of Ganymede (and Tithonos) can serve as touch-stones for Greek male beauty ( Greek Homosexuality , 6). Thus, e.g., Dioscorides Ep . 10 Gow and Page (= A.P 12.37.3-4): ("His thighs were much more honey-sweet than Ganymede's," trans. Barbara Hughes Fowler, Hellenistic Poetry: An Anthology [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990], 289). On the motif of Ganymede in pederastic Greek epigrams, see Tarán, Art of Variation , 7-51. On Ganymede's appearances in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, see Leonard Barkan, Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).

153. On the hermaphroditism of Erotes, see Delcourt, Hermaphroditea , 54-59 ("Éros androgyne"); Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 72 (and figures RS 12 and RS 20).

154. Although this Theocritus need not be the Hellenistic poet from Syracuse (on the uncertainty, see Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:161, on Ep . 6 = Callim. Ep . 52), Callimachus and Theocritus do seem to engage in poetic dialogue elsewhere; e.g., Callim. Ep . 46 may well be a witty response to Theoc. Id . 11 (for discussion, see Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," 573).

155. For an example of a direct comparison of an eromenos to Ganymede, see Alcaeus of Messene Ep . 9 Gow and Page (= A.P . 12.64). This epigram, a prayer to Zeus for Peithenor to win an Olympic victory, refers to Peithenor as Aphrodite's second son and requests that Zeus not seize Peithenor instead of Ganymede. For references to other Hellenistic epigrams comparing eromenoi to Ganymede, see Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:14 (on Alcaeus Ep . 9).

156. Idyll 15's Adonia includes both men and women in its audience, as shown by the bystander's presence. Theocritus's Idyll 15 emphasizes how the celebration of Adonis's reunion with Aphrodite, the Adonia, can offer married women a safe fantasy of erotic autonomy. Several of Herodas's mimes also suggest the possibility of freedom from the sexual tyranny of husbands: through a slave-boy in Mime 5, dildoes in Mime 6, a lover (although rejected) in Mime 1. Cf. Mastromarco, Public of Herondas , 93-94.

157. Gow, Theocritus 2:301 n. 129, remarks that the adjective (rosy-armed), used by the hymnist to describe Adonis at line 128, "is not used elsewhere of a male person." On Adonis's immaturity and effeminancy, see also Marcel Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology , trans. J. Lloyd (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1977), esp. 102, 122.

158. On Atalanta's nakedness, see William S. Anderson, Ovid's Metamorphoses: Books 6-10 [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972], 523 n. 578-82: "Atalanta, like the usual athlete of ancient times, was running naked."

159. For discussion of Ovid's version of Adonis's story (and the linkage of Adonis and Atalanta), see Detienne, Dionysos Slain , 26-52.

160. On the hare as a love-gift for both men and women, see Schnapp, "Eros the Hunter," 71-87.

161. See Pl. Leg . 633b; Detienne, Dionysos Slain , 24-25; Schnapp, "Eros the Hunter," 72.

162. Ovid describes this flower as short lived (737-39). Interestingly, the anemone has both male and female parts (although perhaps not recognized as such in ancient times).

163. On the Greek eroticism of death, see, e.g., Emily Vermeule, "On the Wings of Morning: The Pornography of Death," in Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 145-77: "It was a formal principle of Greek myth and literature that love and death were two aspects of the same power, as in the myth of Persephone or Helen of Troy" (159). See too Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Feminine Figures of Death," in Vernant, Mortals and Immortals , 95-110. On the eroticism of death in Latin poetry, see Jasper Griffin, ''Love and Death," ch. 7 in Latin Poets , 142-62. Cf. the fashion for representations of beautiful, dying women in art and literature of the late nineteenth century (see, e.g., Brain Dijkstra, "The Cult of Invalidism; Ophelia and Folly; Dead Ladies and the Fetish of Sleep," ch. 2 in Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture [New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], 25-63).

164. Similarly, Dioscorides Ep . 3 Gow and Page (= A.P . 5.53).

165. The erastes hopes that he and his eromenos might experience such a reciprocity of love that their memory too might transcend death ( Id . 12.10-11).

166. For this point, see also Ziegler, "Kallimachos," 36.

167. Cf. Callim. Iambus , 12, fr. 202.69, where the poet-narrator seems to be describing either Apollo (or himself) as still youthful and beardless: . For the suggestion that the description belongs to Apollo, see Rudolf Pfeiffer, Callimachus , 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949-53), 1:203-4 nn. 54ff.; to the poet-narrator, see Dawson, who translates "while my cheeks and chin are smooth and free of hair" (Christopher M. Dawson, "The Iambi of Callimachus: A Hellenistic Poet's Experimental Laboratory," Yale Classical Studies 11 [1950], 115). C. A. Trypanis, "Callimachus" in Callimachus: Aetia, Iambi, Lyric Poems, Hecale, Minor Epic and Elegiac Poems, and Other Fragments; Musaeus: Herv and Leander (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), follows Dawson.

168. R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture , 65, with illustrations 75, 76. For cautions on dating, see Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture , esp. 87 (as noted above).

169. On the homoerotic motif here, see Frederick Williams, Callimachus: Hymn to Apollo: A Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 49-50 n. 49.

170. For the linkage between poetic and homoerotic amatory standards, see also Callim. Ep . 28. On the reference to homosexual courtship in Iambus 3, see, e.g., C. M. Dawson, ''Iambi of Callimachus," 38-39: since Euthydemus's defection, Callimachus "might as well live a eunuch's life" (quote taken from 39); P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:739-40, 2:1040-41 n. 203. Callim. Ep . 32 (= A.P . 12.148) addresses a complaint of avarice to an eromenos . On the issue of payment for homosexual relations, see Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 106-9; on prices charged, see Halperin, "Democratic Body," 107-12.

171. On the representation of female figures according to male standards of beauty in the archaic and early classical age, see Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 70-73.

172. On the close similarities between Theoc. Id . 18.22-32 and Callim. Hymn 5.23-28, see Anthony W. Bullock, Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 131-40.

173. On the nuptial aspects of this simile, see J. M. Bremer, "Full Moon and Marriage in Apollonius' Argonautica," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 37 (1087), 423-26, who points out that the change in perceived application of the simile from Medea to Jason enables the reader to "experience the sentiments of the man and the woman very economically: in one and the same simile" (426).

1. Pliny HN 35.84-85: "vulgum diligentiorem iudicem quam se praeferens." According to Pliny, Apelles appraised the reliability of a viewer's response by occupation: when a shoemaker criticized painted sandals, Apelles repainted them, but Apelles disregarded that same shoemaker's remarks when he presumed to criticize more than just painted sandals. Another incident also shows Apelles' egalitarianism: when Alexander criticized Apelles' portrait, a horse was brought in, who neighed in response to the painted horse; Apelles thereupon declared the horse to have shown more artistic taste than Alexander (Ael. VH 2.3).

2. This red-figure krater is displayed in the New York Metropolitan Museum; a photograph is available in Robertson, History of Greek Art 2: plate 152a.

3. The painting is displayed in the Naples Museum; a photograph is available in Robertson, History of Greek Art 2: plate 187a. See too the Alexander mosaic, which shows a fallen Persian soldier whose frightened face is reflected in a shield (also in the Naples Museum, and in Robertson, History of Greek Art 2: plate 155). For Hellenistic descriptions of reflections, see, e.g., Ap. Rhod. Argon . 1.742-46 (Cytherea reflected in Ares' shield, as represented on Jason's purple cloak); Callim. Aet . 3, fr. 75.10-11 (the sacrificial knife reflected in the lustral water, as seen by the oxen).

4. Cf. W. H. Auden's poem "The Shield of Achilles," which highlights Thetis's subjective response as she gazes on the shield. The son never sees the shield; instead the mother views it in dismay. On Hellenistic representations of optical effects, see B. H. Fowler, Hellenistic Aesthetic , 17, 112-13.

5. See also Eva Keuls, "Plato on Painting," American Journal of Philology 95 (1974): 100-27.

6. E.g., Homer's description of Achilles' shield ( Il . 18.478-608). For an excellent introduction to the ecphrastic tradition, see esp. Paul Friedländer, "Einleitung: Über die Beschreibung von Kunstwerken in der antiken Literatur," in Johannes yon Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius: Kunstbeschreibungen Justinianischer Zeit (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1912), 1-103. On the linkage of visual art and poetry in the Hellenistic period, see Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art , 156-77; see also Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 39-112. For a recent and important introduction to Hellenistic ekphrasis , see Simon Goldhill, "The Naive and Knowing Eye: Ecphrasis and the Culture of Viewing in the Hellenistic World," in Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture , ed. Goldhill and Robin Osborne (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 197-223 (which includes a needed survey of ecphrastic Hellenistic epigrams, a brief and evocative discussion of ekphrasis in Theoc. Id . 15, a comparative glance at Herod. Mime 4, and much emphasis on "poetic self-reflexivity" and irony). On ekphrasis in the Renaissance, with attention to the reception of ancient ekphrases , see Svetlana Leontief Alpers, " Ekphrasis and Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari's Lives,'' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 23 (1960), 190-215. On the modem tradition of poetry on works of visual art, with emphasis on the importance of Auden's ''Musée des Beaux Arts," see Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 115-18; see also James A. W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 135-89.

7. Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 10.

8. Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 40. See also Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 249: "the housewife's failure of imagination."

9. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 251. See also Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 41: "[the women] ignorant alike of art and of life"; Walker, Theocritus , 94: "the vulgarity of their artistic tastes." So too Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 202; Dover, Theocritus , 209.

10. Epigrams illustrate the ongoing interest in realism—e.g., thirty extant epigrams praise the realism of Myron's statue of a cow (Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:63-64). On the Hellenistic taste for realism, see, e.g., Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , esp. 141-47; Zanker, Realism and Alexandrian Poetry , esp. 42-46.

11. Useful articles on aesthetic issues raised in Mime 4 include Salomo Luria, "Herondas' Kampf für die Veristische Kunst," in Miscellanea di Studi Alessandrini, in memoria di Augusto Rostagni (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1963), 394-415; Thomas Gelzer, "Mimus und Kunsttheorie bei Herondas, Mimiambus 4," in Catalepton: Festschrift für Bernhard Wyss zum 80. Geburtstag , ed. Christoph Schäublin (Basel: Seminar für klassische Philologie der Universität Basel, 1985), 96-116.

12. E.g., Green, Alexander to Actium , 206, 246.

13. On Browning's "My Last Duchess," see, e.g., Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition , 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 79-86; see also Heffernan, Museum of Words , 139-45.

14. See Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye," for an important "first step" toward a "rewriting of the history of ecphrasis not merely as the history of a rhetorical topos but as the history of the formations of a viewing subject" (223).

See also Gutzwiller, Theocritus' Pastoral Analogies , 90-94, who proposes a distinction between "epic-narrative" and "mimetic-dramatic" ekphrases . See too Skinner, "Nossis,'' 25-29, on Nossis's ekphrastic epigrams, their preoccupation ''not so much with the painter's success in effecting a physical likeness as with his ability to capture distinctive traits of the sitter's personality' (26). For further studies on the subjective factor in ekphrasis , see, e.g., Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry , trans. Edward Allen McCormick (1766; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962); Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954); Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation , 2d ed., rev. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Hagstrum, Sister Arts ; Mary Ann Caws, The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

15. On the function of descriptive passages in literature of the Second Sophistic, see Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Roll of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), esp. 3-39.

16. See, e.g., Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry , 13.

17. Psychological characterization is just one aspect of this choral ode's dramatic function in Euripides' Electra . For an important and wide-ranging discussion, see George B. Walsh, "The First Stasimon of Euripides' Electra ," Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977), 277-89.

18. See, e.g., Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 164-65.

19. Other sixth- and fifth-century works on this theme exist only as titles, summaries, or fragments—e.g., Aeschylus's Theoroi e Isthmiastai ; Epicharmus's Theoroi (Epicharmus, frs. 79-80, in Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta , ed. Georgius Kaibel, vol. 1.1, Doriensium Comoedia Mimi Phlyaces , 2d ed. [Berlin: Weidmann, 1958]; see also Epicharmus ap . Ath. 3.107a, 8.362b, 9.408d); Sophron's Tai Thamenai ta Isthmia (title taken from Kaibel, Doriensium Comoedia , 155).

20. On this parodos , see also G. Müller, "Beschreibung yon Kunstwerken im Ion des Euripides,' Hermes: Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie 103 (1975), 29-36; V. Rosivach, "Earthborns and Olympians: The Parodos of the Ion ," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 27 (1977), 284-94; Froma I. Zeitlin, "The Artful Eye: Vision, Ecphrasis, and Spectacle in Euripidean Theatre," in Goldhill and Osborne, Art and Text , esp. 147-54.

21. The narrator comments on the subjectivity of Aeneas's aesthetic experience and the neutrality of art: he feeds his soul on an empty picture (Verg. Aen . 1.464). A work of art is neutral here insofar as it does not tell the viewer how to "read." The context of viewing and the viewer's preoccupations influence the process of "reading," but Aeneas's "misreading" of pictures of Troy's fall on the walls of Juno's temple shows that it is not necessary for the viewer to integrate visual art into its setting: art can transcend ideology. The irony of Aeneas's response to these pictures has been much discussed: see, e.g., Keith Stanley, "Irony and Foreshadowing in Aeneid , 1, 462," American Journal of Philology 86 (1965), 273-77; W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 103-5; Page duBois, History, Rhetorical Description, and the Epic: From Homer to Spenser (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, N.J.: Biblio, 1982), 32-35; R. O. A. M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 209-10.

22. For a useful and dear introduction to cognitive factors in aesthetic response, see Michael J. Parsons, How We Understand Art: A Cognitive Developmental Account of Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

23. E.g., Giangrande, "Interpretation of Herodas," 93; White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 202; Green, Alexander to Actium , 246.

24. In Theoc. Id . 2, the Thracian nurse uses this verb to invite Simaetha to view a festival of Artemis ( , "she entreated me / to see the ceremonial procession," 71-72). Callimachus uses the verb in Hymn 3 when Helios admires the nymphs dancing around Artemis ( , 181), and again in Hymn 6 when noninitiates are forbidden to look at the ceremonial basket of Demeter ( , 3). So too in Eur. Ion , Ion uses the verb of viewing works of art in Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi ( , 232). Also, in Men. Sam ., a young man describes himself viewing the Adonia as a ("spectator,"' 43). Further, the scholia to Theoc. Id . 15 use the verb in a title for one of Sophron's mimes to refer to viewers of the Isthmia ( ; for the scholia, see Wendel, Scholia , 305; for discussion, see Gow, Theocritus 2: 265, with citation of Greek text of scholia).

25. This verbal adjective is also traditionally associated with rituals, ceremonial objects, and gods—e.g., in Hes. Th . the adjective (wondrous) is used of the wand Hesiod received from the Muses (31), and in Callim. Hymn 3 the adjective is used of Artemis (141). Pindar too repeatedly uses the adjective (wondrous): of a young man ( , P . 10.58), of the body ( , N . 11.12), of a contest ( O . 3.36), of a girl's form ( , P . 9.108).

26. The motif of ekphrasis of woven materials was popular during the Hellenistic period (see, e.g., the ekphrasis of Jason's wondrous figured cloak at Ap. Rhod. Argon . 1.721-67). On the popularity of ekphrasis , see, e.g., Richard F. Thomas, "Callimachus, the Victoria Berenices , and Roman Poetry," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 33 (1983), 108-12 (109 n. 102 includes the Adonis figure on Theoc. Id . 15's figured tapestries). Also, on the popularity of finely woven and figured materials in the Hellenistic era, see Gow, Theocritus 2: 286-87 n. 78; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:138; Thomas, "Callimachus," esp. 111 n. 108.

27. White argues that the Adonis figure described by Praxinoa is the same as the three-dimensional figure described by the hymnist (White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 199-203; so too Schwinge, Künstlichkeit yon Kunst , 57 n. 27). For the purposes of this discussion, I follow Gow and Dover, who consider that the Adonis figure described by Praxinoa is represented on the tapestries (Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 198-99; idem, Theocritus 2: 265, 288 n. 84f.; Dover, Theocritus , 206). My argument is not materially affected by the number of Adonis figures in the display.

28. The word silver is emphasized by being the first substantive word after the verbal adjective (84) and by appearing in the line before its noun (85).

29. Cunningham calls this speaker Phile (see discussion in "Herodas 4," esp. 119-20). For the purposes of this discussion, I have used the more traditional identification of the woman as Kokkale (for arguments in favor of the name Kokkale, see Mastromarco, Public of Herondas , 39-45).

30. In presenting this picture in pieces, Herodas anticipates a practice that becomes particularly popular in the Second Sophistic; for example, Lucian describes pictures first as puzzles and only afterward introduces interpreters (e.g., Heracles ); for discussion, see Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel , 15-30. By presenting a riddling ekphrasis through a fictive character, Herodas can involve and flatter readers (by allowing them to solve a puzzle that the fictive character does not), while also focusing on the psychology of aesthetic experience.

31. E.g., Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 200-1 n. 59-71; Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art , 159-60.

32. See passages given in Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies , 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945), 1:303-15. Cf. Herod. Mime 4.14-16 and Polyb. Hist . 32.15.1-5, as cited in Edelstein and Edelstein, Asclepius , 306-7, no. 546.

33. On the Hellenistic taste for the grotesque, see Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , 134-35; B. H. Fowler, Hellenistic Aesthetic , 66-78.

34. On the artfulness of this representation, see, e.g., Amore, "Herodas," 123-28.

35. The statue of an old man is barely mentioned ( ; "and that old man, Kynno"; 30) when the attention shifts to a third statue (a boy strangling a goose, 30-31).

36. For discussion of the significance of the woman's name and stance, see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 186-87; Cunningham, Herodas , 135.

37. On how Lucretius's vivid linkage of wounds and love in De Rerum Natura 4.1045-57, recalls the pervasive use of such imagery by Greek epigrammatists, see E. J. Kenney, "Doctus Lucretius," Mnemosyne , 4th ser., 23 (1970), 380-84.

38. An association of wounds and love can have shock value, particularly when placed in a woman's mouth—e.g., Clytemnestra horrifies the chorus of Argive alders when she describes how Agamemnon's and Cassandra's bloody deaths heighten her sexual pleasure (Aesch. Ag . 1388-92, 1444-47).

39. Gow, Theocritus 2:287 n. 79.

40. Garson, "Aspect of Theocritean Humor," 296.

41. See also Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 255; Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye,"' 217.

42. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 122, notes: "Within the precincts of the palace both women feel the need to assume a more dignified tone."

43. See, e.g., Callim. Ep . 27.3-4: ("hail, subtle / phrases"); and Callim. Aet . 1, fir. 1.11: ("on a small scale"). On the use of as a term representative of refined Hellenistic poetics, see Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 137-38. See also Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 7; Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry,'' 561. Of course Hellenistic literary terms had earlier roots, e.g., Ar. Ra . 1108: (''Venture to say something fine and clever'). On , see esp. Erich Reitzenstein, "Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos," in Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1931), 25-40 (but note Hutchinson's warning against overinterpretation; Hellenistic Poetry , 84 n. 116). See also Gelzer, "Mimus und Kunsttheorie," 105 n. 23.

44. Callimachus too seems to use the term of woven materials at Epica et Elegiaca Minora , fr. 383.15: (see Pfeiffer, Callimachus 1:310 nn. 14, 15). Thomas notes that Callimachus's interest in weaving (here and elsewhere) "is doubtless connected with Callimachus' awareness of the metaphorical potential implied by this activity: elaborate weaving may stand for highly artistic poetic production" ("Callimahus," 107-8).

45. For a discussion of Hellenistic literary terms, see, e.g., Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 135-38; see also Gelzer, "Mimus und Kunsttheorie" (on Theocritus's Idyll 15 and Herodas's Mime 4). For a handy table of literary terms used by Horace, Catullus, and Callimachus, see N. B. Crowther, "Horace, Catullus, and Alexandrianism," Mnemosyne , 4th ser., 31 (1978), 40.

46. See also Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye," 218.

47. On the problems involved in evaluating depth of aesthetic experience, see B. H. Smith, Contingencies of Value , esp. 83-84.

48. Skinner, "Nossis," 32. On how the poet H. D. later challenges the hierarchical tradition that relegates women to small lyrical poems, see, e.g., Alicia Ostriker, "The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking," in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory , ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 314-38.

49. Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 35.

50. If the hangings were meant to be garments on the Adonis and Aphrodite figures, the statement would not be expressed hypothetically (Gow, Theocritus 2: 287 n. 78; Atallah, Adonis , 110).

51. On the rarity of these terms and for descriptions of the garments so described, see Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 184-87; and idem, Theocritus 2: 273 n. 21. Gow suggests that the compound found in Hesychius's dictionary "if not a conflation of the two words in T., would seem to come from some other Doric writer" ( Theocritus 2:273 n. 21). So too Magnien, "Syracusain littéraire," 127: "Ces termes ne nous apparaissent pas, ou ne nous apparaissent que rarement dans le lexique grec, parce qu'ils appartiennent à une langue dont nous n'avons presque plus rien.''

52. On Hellenistic ruler cults, see, e.g., Arthur Darby Nock, "Notes on Ruler-Cult, I-IV," Journal of Hellenic Studies 48 (1928), 21-48; idem, " ," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41 (1930), 1-62; Julien L. Tondriau, "Princesses ptolémaïques comparées ou identifiées à des déesses (IIIe-Ier siècles avant J. C.)," Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie 37 (1948), 12-33; L. Cerfaux and J. Tondriau Le culte des souverains dans la civilisation gréco-romaine (Tournai: Desclée and Co., 1957), esp. ch. 5, "L'Égypte ptolémaïque," 189-227; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:213-46; S. R. F. Price, "Hellenistic Cities and Their Rulers,'' ch. 2 in Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984; reprint, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 23-52.

53. Among the fourth-century philosophers, Plato and Aristotle examine moral issues involved in evaluating art. Later, Cicero, Quintilian, and Dio Chrysostum are among those who value works of art by their capacity to contribute to the religious and ethical life of the viewer. For example, Dio Chrysostom describes the benefits a spiritually troubled individual can obtain by beholding Phidias's statue of Zeus at Olympia: ("Whoever might be burdened with pain in his soul, having borne many misfortunes and pains in his life and never being able to attain sweet sleep, even that man, I believe, standing before this image, would forget all the terrible and harsh things which one must suffer in human life"; trans. Pollitt, Art of Ancient Greece , 62; Or. 12.51-52; Greek text taken from Dio Chrysostom, vol. 2 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977]).

54. Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 41, and Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 249, respectively. So too, e.g., Fritzsche, Theokrits Gedichte , 187: " spricht ärgerlich der Mann, der im Königshofe neben den unermüdlich schwatzenden Weibern steht"; Monteil, Théocrite , 159: ''invective d'un voisin aux deux bavardes"; Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , who throughout his discussion of Idyll 15 refers to the women as ''Klatschweiber," even when he applauds the liberty of their speech (57-59). The scholia, on the other hand, describe the bystander's irritation without endorsing it: ("Someone says this who is following alongside the women and feeling annoyed at their great volubility; wherefore he also censures them for examining the particularities of the images"; Greek text taken from Wendel, Scholia , 313).

55. Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 36.

56. Although the poem may start for some readers with an apparent collusion between the poet and the reader against the women, the tone of the ekphrasis encourages the abandonment of an implied reader who holds conventional elitist views about women's incapacity for elevated aesthetic response and expects Theocritus's representations of fictive women responding to art to reflect such attitudes.

57. For a discussion of how Theocritus's poetry encourages this mode of self-recognition, see Simon Goldhill, The Poet's Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 246-72.

58. On similarities between Idylls 1 and 15, see Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 124-28.

59. For a discussion of how Id . 1's rustic cup evokes earlier Homeric themes and ekphrases (e.g., Achilles' shield, Il . 18.478-608), see Halperin, Before Pastoral , 161-89. Cf. the similar exploitation of Achilles' shield in A.P . 11.48, a request to Hephaestus to make a decorated silver cup rather than a suit of armor, with the specific instruction that the decorations consist of vines, dusters, and Bacchus, not stars, chariots, and Orion (such decorations would recall Achilles' shield).

60. See Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 124-28, esp. 126-27.

61. E.g., Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals , 27-30; Charles Segal, "'Since Daphnis Dies': The Meaning of Theocritus' First Idyll," in Poetry and Myth , 29-33; Halperin, Before Pastoral , 161-89.

62. The goatherd animates the decorations within the cup as he describes them (cf. the description of Achilles' shield in Homer's Iliad , book 18).

63. Gow, Theocritus 2: 110 n. 105.

64. On display in private homes in the fourth century, see Dem. 3.29; on floor mosaics in private homes from the fourth century, see Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , 210-29. In the fifth century, to commission works of art for the home was considered extravagant: the notoriously extravagant Alcibiades reportedly imprisoned an artist in his home to decorate it with paintings (Plut. Alc . 16).

65. Headlam and Knox, Herodas , lii and 362 n. 105, suggest that in Mime 7 the cobbler may also be marketing dildoes; I. C. Cunningham, "Herodas 6 and 7,"' Classical Quarterly , n.s., 14 (1964), 33-35, elaborates this suggestion. For arguments against, see Gilbert Lawall, "Herodas 6 and 7 Reconsidered," Classical Philology 71 (1976), 165-69.

66. On Mime 6's spoof of Orphic rituals and myths, see Jacob Stem, "He-roads' Mimiamb 6," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 20 (1979), 247-54 (Metro as Mother, Koritto as Kore, Euboule possibly as the Orphic myths Eubouleus). One might also note the mention of an unchaste, sexually innovative "Artemeis" ( Mime 6.87-90) and the suggestion of the goddess Athena as a maker of dildoes (65-67).

67. Frederic Will, Herondas (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973), 100, notes "the strange beauty" of the image "soft as sleep" in reference to dildoes.

68. Idyll 15 and Mime 6 share other elements of language and shaping. Both poems start with a hostess bidding a guest sit and ordering a maid to fetch a chair ( Id . 15.2-3: ; Mime 6.1-2: ). Both poems end with a similar declaration of the need to return home to feed the husband ( Id . 15.146-48: , 147; cf. 26; Mime 6.97-98: ). Both poems include similarly worded abuse against a slave girl ( Id . 15.30: ; Mime 6.10: ). Further, Mime 6's Koritto uses the word (holiday) in describing her slave as lazy: ("and the rest of you sheer idleness," 17); Idyll 15's Praxinoa precedes peremptory orders to her slave girl with a similar expression: ("It's always holiday for those that have nothing to do," 26). Compare too the statement Mime 6's Koritto includes in her description of Kerdon's dildoes ( ; ''you'll think [you see / the hands of Athena herself], not those of Kerdon''; 66-67) with the exclamation Id . 15's Gorgo makes on viewing the tapestries ( , "you'll say they are gowns worthy of the gods,"' 79). Finally, just as in Mime 6, Kokkale addresses an audience of women with the vocative ("women," 27), so too in Theoc. Id . 15, the hymnist addresses an audience of women in her final farewell to Adonis (143). Less extensive similarities link Herodas Mime 2 and Theocritus's Idyll 14: both poems feature violent sympotic behavior that involves the beating of a girl, and in both poems a speaker uses the phrase "a mouse caught in pitch" w describe himself ( Id . 14.51 and Mime 2.62). But any discussion of influence between Herodas and Theocritus is purely speculative, since we do not know the relative dates of Herodas's and Theocritus's poems.

69. For discussion of Sophron as a possible influence, see Ussher, "Mimiamboi of Herodas," 66-67. The scholia on Theoc. Id . 15 (Wendel, Scholia , 305) claim that Id . 15 was modeled after Sophron's mime on viewing the Isthmia. Thus some of the many linkages between Herodas's Mimes 4 and 6 and Theocritus's Idyll 15 may be due to common echoes of Sophron's mime on the Isthmia (and his mime on dildoes, fr. 24 Kaibel, Doriensium Comoedia ). On Sophron as a source for Theoc. Id . 2, see the scholia (Wendel, Scholia , 269-70); Sophron, frs. 4-5 Kaibel, Doriensium Comoedia ; for discussion, see Gow, Theocritus 2:33-35.

70. For a comparison of the thematic movements of Idylls 1 and 15, see Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 124-28; see also Miles, "Characterization," 155-56.

71. For a recent discussion of Theocritus's use of frames, see Goldhill, Poet's Voice , 223-85. On framing techniques in narrative texts, see also, e.g., Mary Ann Caws, Reading Frames in Modern Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

72. On the topic of metapoetic passages, see Caws, Metapoetics of the Passage . On poetic closure in general, see the seminal book by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); see also Dan P. Fowler, "First Thoughts on Closure: Problems and Prospects," Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 22 (1989), 75-122.

73. For a theoretical introduction to this subject, see Thomas G. Pavel's Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," 573, privileges fantasy in Theocritus's poetic project: "In fact the Idylls are essentially fantasy, and Theocritus' central concern in almost all of his poetry is with the art of illusion and the exploration of mood." On polarities in Id . 1, see Segal, "Since Daphnis Dies.'' See also Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals , esp. 15-31.

74. Pace Miles, "Characterization," 155-56: "The effect of the goatherd's response to song [in Idyll 1] is not at all unlike that of Gorgo in Idyll 15 after she has heard a hymn. . .. The settings of the two Idylls may be quite different, but the mentality of the characters is the same."

75. The standard phraseology of hymnic endings includes the imperative farewell (farewell/rejoice) and a vocative. occurs 28 times in the Homeric hymns, 16 times starting the line, as at Id . 15.149. In Hellenistic poetry, see also, e.g., Theoc. Id . 17.1535 ( ; "farewell, lord Ptolemy") and the dose of Callim. H. Apollo .

76. Audience participation was traditionally integral to private celebrations of the Adonia. In Idyll 15, by including the audience's women in the next morning's ritual of grief and song, the hymnist maintains a mood of audience participation: ("At dawn we will gather with the dew and carry him [Adonis] outside / to the waves crashing on the shore, / and with hair unbound, robes in folds at our ankles, / breasts bare, we shall begin the funereal song'; 132-35).

77. Cf. the hymnic farewell of Hom. H . 26.12 (to Dionysus), where the participle is also used to represent the recurring joy of the celebrants at what appears to be an annual festival: ("Grant that we joyously reach this season again," trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis, The Homeric Hymns [Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976], 65).

78. Pace Gow, Theocritus 2:303 n. 145: "I do not know . else here so used, nor the adj. at all where there is so little perceptible emphasis on the sexy"

79. Translations and interpretations commonly disregard the difference in gender of the artisans—e.g., Anthony Holden, Greek Pastoral Poetry (Harmonds-worth: Penguin Books, 1974), 103: "What craftsmen they must have been / to make these, what artists to draw such lines." Cf. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 254, who overlooks the men who helped make the tapestries: "They [Gorgo and Praxinoa] see in the Adonis festival an affirmation of female power and self-sufficiency. . .. It was women who made the tapestries." Yet the anaphora of exclamatory pronouns ( and ) and the alliteration of (every other word through ) highlight the artisans' difference in gender and their collaboration.

80. Miles, "Characterization,"' 156.

81. See, e.g., J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology , student ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 92-94 n. 28.

82. See discussion in Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 138.

83. A conventional excuse for women's departures is to return home and feed a husband (in life, as in poetry, e.g., Herodas's Mime 6.97-98). But unlike Mime 6, Idyll 15 places this motif in a ritual context. On the importance of food within the family and in spiritual contexts, see, e.g., Dubisch, "Culture," esp. 207-8.

84. The two lines describing the singer's artistry balance the two lines describing Diocleides' hunger, a contrast underscored by the emphatic placement of (referring to the woman singer) at the end of line 145 and of at the end of line 147.

85. But cf. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 118, for whom the definition of remains economic in nature at the end of the poem, as earlier: " is shown in Egyptian society at large to derive ultimately from the royal house— surely a comforting notion for monarchy who kept so much of that for themselves." (So too Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 255.)

86. On the novelist's concern about "the divergence of comfortable story and the non-narrative contingencies of modem reality," see Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (1967; reprint. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 127-52 (quote taken from 128).

1. For a general survey of Greek patronage, see Gold, Literary Patronage , 15-37.

2. Strabo 17.793-94. On the institutionalized system of Ptolemaic patronage, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:305-35 (with attention to the connection, through Demetrius of Phaleron, with the Lyceums Mouseion, 314-15).

For a general discussion of royal patronage in the Hellenistic period, see Klaus Bringmann, "The King as Benefactor: Some Remarks on Ideal Kingship in the Age of Hellenism," in Bulloch et al., Images and Ideologies , 7-24.

3. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:307-8.

4. Ael. VH 3.17.

5. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:65, calls Theocritus (and his fellow countryman Archimedes) "Syracusan birds of passage."

6. On the availability of formal schooling for Greek females from the fourth century (and on the limited introduction of coeducation), see Pomeroy, "Technikai kai Mousikai," 51-68, and Cole, "Greek Women," esp. 227-33.

7. On the royal tutors, see, e.g., Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 92, 154-55; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:309, 311, 322-23; Thomas Gelzer, "Transformations," in Bulloch et al., Images and Ideologies , 142.

8. The second generation of Ptolemies continued the tradition of cultivated tutors by appointing Apollonius Rhodius to teach Ptolemy Ill (P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:309, 322-23).

9. See Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , esp. 31-52; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 6-11; Carney, "Olympias; esp. 51-62; Elizabeth D. Carney, "The Career of Adea-Eurydice," Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 36 (1987), 496-502.

10. See, e.g., Theoc. Id . 17.34-39, for praise of Berenice's intelligence and passion. See also Asclepiades 39 Gow and Page, which compares a Berenice with Aphrodite (although note uncertainties about its authorship and the identity of Berenice: Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:143).

11. Both Theoc. Id . 24 and Herod. Mime 3 represent women taking strong roles in their children's education: Id . 24's Alcmene selects Heracles' tutors and Mime 3's Metrotime tells the schoolmaster how to discipline her son.

12. For discussion (with references), see Stanley Mayer Burstein, Outpost of Hellenism: The Emergence of Heraclea on the Black Sea (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 86-87; idem, "Arsinoe II," 199.

13. On Arsinoe's rotunda, see James R. McCredie et al., The Rotunda of Arsinoe , vol. 7 of Samothrace: Excavations Concluded by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University , ed. Karl Lehmann and Phyllis Williams Lehmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). On the dedicatory inscription of Arsinoe's Rotunda, see also P. M. Fraser, The Inscriptions on Stone , vol. 2.1 of Samothrace: Excavations Conducted by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University , ed. Karl Lehmann (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), 48-50 (no. 10).

14. Frazer bases his proposal on similarities in style between Ptolemy's Pro-pylon and Arsinoe's Rotunda (Alfred Frazer, The Propylon of Ptolemy II , vol. 10 of Samothrace: Excavations Conducted by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University , ed. Karl Lehmann and Phyllis Williams Lehmann [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990], 225, 232). Georges Roux suggests that Arsinoe may have been Ptolemy's wife when she dedicated the Rotunda (McCredie et al., Rotunda of Arsinoe , esp. 231-39). On the dating of the Rotunda and Propylon, see also P. M. Fraser, Inscriptions on Stone , 5-6; Frazer, Propylon of Ptolemy II , 232-33 (with comment on Roux's suggestion).

15. Arsinoe helped sponsor worship at Samothrace, where Lysimachus was granted divine honors, and she also sought refuge after Lysimachus's death in two places which granted Lysimachus divine honors while he was alive, Cassandreia and Samothrace. (Perhaps her familiarity with the notion of a deified king also led her later to encourage her brother's projects of serf-deification.)

16. For the suggestion that Arsinoe's wealth enabled her to hire a mercenary force at Cassandreia, see Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , 114-15.

17. See Rudolf Pfeiffer, "Arsinoe Philadelphos in der Dichtung," Die Antike 2 (1926), 161-74.

18. Theoc. Id . 15, esp. 23-24, 109-11.

19. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:207. See also Callim. Lyrica fr. 228 (with dieg .), in which the Dioskouroi carry off dead Arsinoe.

20. For translation of the Pithom stele, the evidence of this visit, see Édouard Naville, "La stèle de Pithom," Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 40 (1902), 71-72, lines 12-16. See also, e.g., Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , 119; Gow, Theocritus 2:339-40 nn. 86-90.

21. On the significance of the Decree of Chremonides, see Burstein, "Arsihoe II," 207-10 (a cautious approach, with useful summary of previous scholarship); Hauben, "Arsinoé II," 114-17; Christian Habicht, "Athens and the Ptolemies," Classical Antiquity 11 (1992), 72-73 (with attention to the redating of Arsinoe's death to 268).

22. The elite Alexandrian taste for the miniature shows a turning away not only from the spectacular displays of the Ptolemies (Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , 40; Green, Alexander to Actium , 158, 183), but also from the monumental Egyptian world to which they had come, a world of, e.g., gigantic pyramids and temples and colossal statues. For a Greek perspective on Egypt's monumentality, see Hdt. 2.124-38, 148, 155, 175-76, etc. Thus Hdt. 2.148 (on a great Egyptian labyrinth): ("Were all that Greeks have builded and wrought added together the whole would be seen to be a matter of less labour and cost than was this labyrinth"; trans. A. D. Godley, Herodotus , vol. 1, Books I-II , rev. ed. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926], 455-57; Greek text O.C.T. ).

23. On Alexandria's population to 215, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:38-75.

24. See, e.g., Callim. Iambus 13, fr. 203, with dieg . (for discussion of variety in Callimachus's iambi, see D. L. Clayman, Callimachus' Iambi [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980], 48-51). On the Alexandrian fashion for mixing genres, see Kroll, "Kreuzung der Gattungen," 202-24; L. E. Rossi, "I generi letterari e le loro leggi scritte e non scritte nelle letterature classiche," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (University of London) 18 (1971), esp. 83-84. On Theocritus's mixing of genres and styles (e.g., bucolic poems written in hexameter verse and including Homeric diction), see Fabiano, "Fluctuation in Theocritus' Style," esp. 526-37. On mixing of genres in Hellenistic poetry (and on Theocritus's bucolic poetry as refashioned epic), see Halperin, Before Pastoral , esp. 193-266.

25. On streets named after Arsinoe, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:35-36, 2:110 n. 276. On the joint temple of the Theoi Sotores (built by Ptolemy II), see Theoc. Id . 17.123-27. On the Alexandrian Arsinoeum (temple of Arsinoe, left-incomplete when Ptolemy II and the architect died) and its wondrous statuary and obelisk, see Plìny HN 34.148 (an iron statue of Arsinoe planned for suspension from lodestone temple-vaulting), 36.69 (a 120-foot obelisk), 37.108 (a 6-foot topaz statue of Arsinoc); for discussion, set P. M. Frascr, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:25. On the royal palaces, see Strab. 17.793-94.

26. Ath. 5.197c-202a (for discussion, set E. E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus [London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983]).

27. On Hellenistic ruler cults, set, e.g., Nock, "Notes on Ruler-Cult," 21-48; idem, " ," 1-62; Tondriau, "Princesses"; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:213-46; Price, "Hellenistic Cities,' 23-52. For the suggestion that redating Arsinoe's death to 268 makes it more possible that she helped set up her own cult, see Gutzwiller, "Callimachus' Lock ,'' 365 n. 22; see also D. B. Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai , 120 (cited by Gutzwiller, ''Callimachus' Lock ," 366 n. 25). On redating Arsinoe's death to 268, see Grzybek, "Mort," 103-12.

28. On dedicatory plaques and oinochoai, set Louis Robert, "Sur un décret d'Ilion et sur un papyrus concernant des cultes royaux," in Essays in Honor of C. Bradford Welles (New Haven: American Society of Papyrologists, 1966), 202-10; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:190-91, 226-28, 240-43; D. B. Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai , esp. 16-17, 76, 96, 117.

29. On the advantages of mercenary service under the Ptolemies, set, for example, E.G. Turner, "Ptolemaic Egypt," in Walbank et al., Hellenistic World , 124-25.

30. On the encomium as the purpose of the poem, set, e.g., Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals , 122; on the encomium as a digression, see, e.g., Legrand, Étude sur Théocrite , 139. Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , 64-65, also separates the encomium from the fictive story. Stern, "Theocritus' Idyll 14," 58, and Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 110-12, both approach the encomium from within the fictive story, but with a focus on the "historical reality of Ptolemy" (phrase taken from Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 110).

31. Gow, Theocritus 2:259 n. 60. A person interested in enlisting (with the expectation of pay and land grants) could find more useful information in Idyll 17's descriptions of Ptolemy's soldierly record, vast military force, surplus wealth, and fertile and abundant lands.

32. Cf. Id . 16.27-28 (a poem directed toward Hieron II), where a value is set on being a good host, even to a stranger.

33. Aeschinas's failure to investigate a rumor of Cynisca's unfaithfulness (27-28) underscores his persistent obliviousness to signs of eros.

34. Cf. the contrast between Catullus's and Propertius's poetry's obsessive fixation on a single love-object and Horace's poetry's less romanticized approach to love.

35. The weight of the description (63-64, half the encomium) and the inclusion of a prescriptive clause ( , "as befits a king," 64) place special emphasis on the quality of generosity, critical to successful relationships between patron and poet, paymaster and mercenary. Cf. Id . 17.106-16, 123-27. On Ptolemy II's sponsorship of Dionysiac artists, set Id . 17.112-16; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , 1:618-19, 2:870-71 n. 2 (on the exemption of Dionysiac artists and other members of the cultural community from the salt tax).

36. Euergetes II, in his Memoirs, FGrH 234 F4 (= Ath. 13.576e-f), describes several of Ptolemy's mistresses (cf. Plut. Mor . 753e). Euergetes sums up Ptolemy's sexual character as ("very inclined toward sexual pleasures"). On the deification of another mistress, Bilistiche, see Plut. Mor . 753e. See Cameron, "Two Mistresses," 287-304 (on Didyme and Bilistiche).

37. See Ath. 13.576f, 10.425e-f. So too Polyb. 14.11 At Theoc. Id . 4.31, Corydon mentions Glauce, a famous musician and possibly another of Ptolemy's favorites (for discussion, see Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," 572).

38. Twice earlier, Thyonichus focuses attention on Aeschinas's immoderate desires (11, 57). These two passages are linked with Thyonichus's exhortation through the use of the vocative form of Aeschinas's name (only occurring at 10, 58, and 65), and lines 11 and 64 are further joined by the repetition of forms of the (immoderate) adjective .

39. On how Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II exploited this appeal, see, e.g., Erich S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome , 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 1:138 (with notes 37 and 38).

40. Cf. Herodas Mime 1.26-35, which places a description of Alexandria's glittery attractions in the mouth of a bawd. For an example of Ptolemy's playfulness, see Ath. 11.493e-494b.

41. Ptolemy himself blurred the boundary between private and public friendships and interests insofar as he treated Egypt as a royal possession and rewarded his designated friends by appointing them to high administrative of-rices (see, e.g., Green, Alexander to Actium , 192).

42. Euhemerus's travel novel offered opportune precedent for the Hellenistic practice of deifying mortal rulers: for instance, Zeus was originally a mortal king who, having set up cult worship for his grandfather Uranus, was also himself proclaimed a living god. On Euhemerus's work and its reception, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , 1:289-95; see also Green, Alexander to Actium , esp. 55, 398-99.

43. I draw here on Kermode's useful distinction between myths and fictions: "Myths call for absolute, fictions for conditional assent" ( Sense of an Ending , 39).

44. Idyll 14, which includes an encomium of Ptolemy, is Theocritus's only poem that does not refer to deities. By not referring here to gods, Theocritus also avoids the topic of the Ptolemies' possible deification.

45. Praxinoa justifies leaving her son at home by exclaiming ("the horse bites," 40); later she explains her fixation: ("From childhood on I've been most fearful of horses and cold snakes," 58). An underlying theme here is related to the Adonis story: if Praxinoa keeps her son away from horses and cold snakes, she can prevent him from becoming a man (and leaving her); Aphrodite has a similar thought about Adonis and wild beasts, esp. boars (see, e.g., Or. Met . 10.539-52, cf. 708-16).

46. Gow, Theocritus 1:xxviii, points out that "some or all of the bucolic poems may well have been composed in Alexandria." On the dialogic possibilities available in presenting rural fictions to city folks, see, e.g., Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

47. Cameron, "Two Mistresses," 287-95. For the connection between Ptolemy's and Asclepiades' Didyme, see also Pomeroy, Women , 55.

48. These lines, in conjunction with the two lines that follow, stress Bombyca's dark color: ("Dark is the violet and the lettered hyacinth, / yet in garlands these are accounted first"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:85; Id . 10.28-29). By having Bucaeus underscore society's inconsistency in mocking a woman's dark hues but not a flower's, the poet draws attention to the theme of ethnic prejudice. Also, through Bucaeus's oppositional fondness for the slender Bombyca, Theocritus can approach the issue of his own "unpopular" predilection for "slender," Callimachean values in art (e.g., small-scale poetic projects). Cf. Callim. fr. 398: (''The Lyde is a fat and inelegant book," trans. Trypanis, "Callimachus,'' 247). On public partiality for grand Homeric epic, see Theoc. Id . 16.20. For a statement of Callimachean poetic values (through the fictive Lycidas), see Theoc. Id . 7.45-48.

49. Ath. 10.425e-f, 13.576f; Polyb. 14.11.

50. See, e.g., Theoc. Id . 17.95: ("In riches he could outweigh all other kings"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:137).

51. Id . 17 praises Ptolemy's riches (95-97, 106-15), which enabled him to set golden and ivory representations of his mother and father in shrines (121-25). Ptolemy's Pompe also included statues and representations of gold, some sponsored by Ptolemy, e.g., a golden statue of Alexander (Ath. 5.202a); some financed by others, e.g., two golden portrait-statues of Ptolemy II on golden chariots (Ath. 5.203b). On Ptolemy's wealth, see also, e.g., Ath. 5.203b-c.

52. See discussion below.

53. Gow, Theocritus 2:199 n. 26.

54. On the indeterminacy of Bombyca's status and relation to Polybotas, see Gow, Theocritus 2:196-97 n. 15; Dover, Theocritus , 166-67. If Polybotas (man of many grazing animals) were wealthy, a flute girl's relation to him would probably be as slave or employee; but if not wealthy, she might be a daughter, whom he hires out.

55. Gow, Theocritus 2:196 n. 15; Strab. 10.489.

56. Callim. Hymn 1 is commonly dated early in Ptolemy's career. On the dating of Hymn x to a celebration of Ptolemy's accession to the throne (and birthday), see James J. Clams, "Lies and Allusions: The Addressee and Date of Callimachus' Hymn to Zeus," Classical Antiquity 5 (1986), 155-70.

57. Cf. Id . 17.13-15 (on Ptolemy I).

58. For discussion of the panhellenic audience's effect on song, see G. Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press; 1990), esp. 37-47.

59. Their recruits included such outsiders as prostitutes, slaves, and freed persons. On the Epicureans' appeal to such persons, see Frischer, Sculpted Word , 206.

60. See Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults , 40-41, 149 n. 67 (who cites Hdt. 2.171 for the claim that the Thesmophoria came to Greece from Egypt); Green, Alexander to Actium , 586-601. On the topic of religion in Alexandria, P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:189-301 (ch. 5: "Religious Life") is fundamental (on the cult of Cybele and Attis in Alexandria, see 1:277-78). See too, e.g., Callim. Ep . 40, Ep . 47, Ep . 57, Iambus 3, fr. 193.54-38; Dioscorides Ep. 3 Gow and Page (= A.P . 5.53), Ep . 4 Gow and Page (= A.P . 5.193), Ep . 16 Gow and Page (= A.P . 6.220), Ep . 56 Gow and Page (= A.P . 11.195); Sotades fr. 3 Powell, Coll. Alex .

61. On the development of Hellenistic ruler cults, see, e.g., Green, Alexander to Actium , 396-406. On worship of the Olympian deities in Alexandria, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:193212.

62. On the Ptolemies' cultivation of a connection with Dionysus, see Walter Burkert, "Bacchic Teletai in the Hellenistic Age," in Masks of Dionysus , ed. Thomas H. Carpenter and Christopher A. Faraone (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), esp. 262-64. On how state support of Dionysus worship might heighten a Ptolemy's status and strengthen his genealogical claims, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria , esp. 1:202-3. On the connection of Alexander and Dionysus, see, e.g., Nock, "Notes on Ruler-Cult," 21-30. On how worship of Aphrodite began to coincide with Arsinoe's own, see Tondriau, ''Princesses," 16-18; Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:239-40; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , esp. 30-38.

63. Rice, Grand Procession , 83-86. On Ptolemy II's extension of the empire, see also Theoc. 17.86-92 (with discussion in Gow, Theocritus 2:339-40 nn. 86-90); Polyb. 5.34.5-9 (with comment in Gruen, Hellenistic World 2 :672).

64. See Theoc. Id . 17.112-14. For discussion of the Dionysiac guild in Ptolemaic Egypt, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:203; Rice, Grand Procession , 52-58.

65. Thus P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:197; Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 30-31.

66. On Aphrodite as patroness of marriage (with references for cult titles such as Aphrodite Thalamon, "of the bridal chamber," Aphrodite Hanna, "who yokes together," Aphrodite Nymphia, "the bridal Aphrodite"), see Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 656-57. On Aphrodite as goddess of "passionate sex in marriage," see Paul Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 142-43. See also Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 31-38. For the important argument that the emergence of the Aphrodite cult in Alexandria and the emphasis in Alexandrian poetry on reciprocal passion in marriage reflected Ptolemaic policy to justify ''the sharing of monarchic power by husband and wife," see Gutzwiller, "Callimachus' Lock ," esp. 363-68 (quote taken from 364). On the importance of love in Ptolemaic ideology, see also Koenen, "Adaptation ägyp-fischer Königsideologie," esp. 157-68; idem, "Ptolemaic King," esp. 62. On the effect of powerful female patronage on courtly discourse during the Renaissance, see, e.g., Leonard Tennenhouse, "Sir Walter Raleigh and Clientage," in Lytle and Orgel, Patronage in the Renaissance , 246: "By encouraging her courtiers to make suit to her in the poetic language of love, Elizabeth had institutionalized her personal metaphor of rule."

67. Poetry identifying Arsinoe with Aphrodite includes the anonymous hymn in Powell, Coll. Alex ., pp. 82-89. See also the epigrams connected with Arsinoe-Aphrodite's temple at Zephyrium: Callim. Ep . 5; Posidippus Ep . 12, 13 Gow and Page; Hedylus Ep . 4 Gow and Page (also available in Ath. 7.318b-d; 11.497d-e), with useful commentary in Gow and Page, Greek Anthology , vol. 2.

68. Gutzwiller, "Callimachus' Lock ," 364-68. See also Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 31-38.

69. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt , 36, suggests that "Theocritus has given the festival a domestic context and has described only the wedding night of Aphrodite and Adonis, because he is celebrating Aphrodite as goddess of marriage."

70. Strab. 17.789.

71. See, e.g., Paus. 1.6.8. Detienne, Gardens of Adonis , 66, emphasizes the Adonia's linkage with extramarital affairs: "The couple formed by Adonis and Aphrodite epitomized the type of relations that exist between a lover and his mistress."

72. On Idyll 15's reflection of cult practice, see Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 180-204; Gow, Theocritus 2:262-304. See also Atallah, Adonis , 105-35; G. Glotz, "Les fêtes d'Adonis sous Ptolémée II," Revue des études grecques 33 (1920), 169-222.

73. E.g., Dioscorides Ep . 3 Gow and Page (= A.P . 5.53), Ep . 4 Gow and Page (= A.P . 5.193); Callim. Iambus 3, ft. 193.34-38. Sotades, a poet notorious for scurrilous verses against the Hellenistic courts, also wrote a poem called Adonis (fr. 3 Powell, Coll. Alex .). But cf. Nossis Ep . 5 Gow and Page (= A.P . 6.275), an epigram on the dedication of a perfumed headdress to Aphrodite (see discussion in Skinner, "Nossis," 24-25); and we also have evidence that Philicus, a member of Ptolemy II's tragic Pleiad, wrote a tragedy called Adonis , presumably elevated in tone (see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:198; 2:333 n. 62). For the observation that Callim. Iambus 3, fr. 193.34ff., which links Cybele and Adonis, treats contemptuously a cult sponsored by Arsinoe, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:786.

74. E.g., Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 202; Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 256. W. C. Helmbold, "The Song of the Argive Woman's Daughter," Classical Philology 46 (1951), 17, asks "why is the song so long, so tedious, and so dull?" and suggests it may be a parody. Dover, Theocritus , 210, remarks: ''I should have expected Theokritos to take the opportunity of showing how well he could write a hymn, not the opportunity of showing how badly most people wrote them; but this expectation founders on the hymn we have before us." Robert Wells, Theocritus: The Idylls (1988; reprint, London and New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 34, agrees that the hymn is probably a parody.

75. Dover, Theocritus , 209. See too Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 202: "The extravagant commendations of 'the incorrigible Gorgo' are more amusing and more in keeping with her character if they are bestowed upon a work which, to a more cultivated taste, does not deserve them"; and Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 249: "Yet this mawkish spectacle, gotten up for the consumption of the masses, parallels the Gothic novels and soap operas of our own day in symbolizing the housewife's failure of imagination."

76. Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," 580: "A truly grand and rather exotic festival hymn." So too Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry , 150 ("It is elevated and lavish in its language and feeling, and depicts the visual beauty and extravagance of the tableau created by the Queen"); Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 13 ("he has tried to invest the Adonis-rite at Alexandria with all the sensuousness, eroticism and pathos it will have held"). Before Bulloch, a favorable judgment of the hymn was rare. See, e.g., E. M. Forster, Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922; reprint, with new introduction by Forster, Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), 37: ''a beautiful hymn."

77. Goldhill, Poet's Voice , 276-77; idem, "Naive and Knowing Eye," 219-21.

78. See Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 107, on the Adonia's "independence from and virtual antagonism to the established state cults." See also discussion in Detienne, Gardens of Adonis , esp. 79-82 and 99-131; and response by John J. Winkler, "The Laughter of the Oppressed: Demeter and the Gardens of Adonis," in The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990), 188-209. Cf. Eva Stehle, "Sappho's Gaze: Fantasies of a Goddess and Young Man," differences 2 (1990), 103-7.

79. Men were probably used to a low level of involvement in celebrations of the Adonia: in literary representations of the Adonia of the fourth century B.C. , men watch women celebrate and sometimes women invite them to private parties as "Adonis substitutes" (e.g., Men. Sam . 35-50; Ath. 13.579e-580a; Alciphron Epist. Meret . 14.8; cf. Lucian Dial. Meret . 17.297; Dioscorides Epigrams 3 and 4 Gow and Page = A.P . 5.53 and 5.193). For discussion of courtesans celebrating the Adonia, see Detienne, Gardens of Adonis , 64-66.

80. Ar. Lys . 378-98: a commissioner describes how private celebrations of the Adonia in 415 B.C. disturbed an assembly meeting (cf. scholia on Ar. Lys . 389). For discussion, see Detienne, Gardens of Adonis , esp. 65-66. For a link-age of the Adonia and the mutilation of Athens's herms, see Keuls, Reign of the Phallus , 23-32.

81. See T. W. Allen, W. R. Halliday, and E. E. Sikes, eds., The Homeric Hymns , 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936).

82. See Tondriau, "Princesses," 16-18; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1: 197, 239-40; Pomeroy, Women of Hellenistic Egypt , 30-38.

83. For Ovid's version of Adonis's unhappy tale, see Met . 10.298-739.

84. Sotades was not known for his courtly tact. We have one line left of another poem, which addresses Ptolemy II (on his marriage to Arsinoe II): ("you are thrusting your prick into an unclean hole"; Sotades ft. 1 Powell, Coll. Alex . [Ath. 14.621a]). The one line we have left from a poem by Callimachus on the wedding of Arsinoe and Ptolemy, on the other hand, suggests a celebratory tone: ("I begin, stranger, my song of Arsinoe's wedding"; fr. 392, which Pfeiffer titles "In Arsinoes Nuptias?").

85. See Detienne, Gardens of Adonis , esp. 67-68.

86. For a fundamental discussion of strategies of praise in Theocritus's work, see Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , although he judges that "The Adonis hymn . . . conspicuously lacks the wit and evasiveness of the other courtly poems (apart from the Ptolemy )" (58).

87. See, e.g., Dover, Theocritus , 209-10; see also Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye," 220-21.

88. On sexual ambiguity in Theocritus's representation of Adonis, see chapter 2.

89. Thus Forster, Alexandria , 37: "In this Hymn Theocritus displays the other side of his genius—the 'Alexandrian' side. He is no longer the amusing realist, but an erudite poet, whose chief theme is love." See also Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 14, who privileges love in Alexandrian poetry, but connects the emphasis on love with realism.

90. Although the verb is traditional in descriptions of an immortal's relationship to a mortal (e.g., Il . 2.197, Il . 9.117; cf. Od . 15.245, Il . 16.94, Il . 7.204), still it is not typically used to describe a god's relation to cult sites. Instead the verbs (e.g., Hom. H . 22.3), (e.g., Il . 1.38), and (e.g., Hom. H . 6.2) customarily appear. For example, in Theocritus's Id . 17, the more typical verb describes Aphrodite's connection with Cyprus: (36).

91. Although the gold has been variously interpreted (as jewelry, toys, money, etc.; for discussion, see, e.g., White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 192-94; W. Geoffrey Arnott, "The Stream and the Gold: Two Notes on Theocritus," in Filologia e for, letterarie, Studi offerti a Francesco Della Corte , vol. 1, Letteratura greca , ed. Sandro Boldrini et al. [Urbino: Università degli studi di Urbino, 1987], 343-46), scholars generally agree that a description of Aphrodite "playing" (particularly in the context of an Adonia) has an implicitly sensual resonance (see, e.g., Dover, Theocritus , 210 n. 101: "she also because the enjoyment of sex belongs to ''; White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 193; Arnott, ''Stream and the Gold," 344-46).

92. As suggested earlier, a mother can fear that her zopyrion might one day develop into a pyrros like Adonis, and try to lock her boy away from danger (as Aphrodite tries to preserve Adonis): ("I will not take you, child. Mormo, the horse bites. / Cry however much you like, but I won't have you maimed"; 40-41).

93. Cf. a woman's derisive use of the term Adonis to refer to a weak, skinny boy, too short for his age (Ath. 13.580e-f: one of Machon's anecdotes of prostitutes).

94. Cf. Idyll 16's use of vulnerable young warriors (who die at Troy) to illustrate a poet's power to confer fame: especially the feminized Cycnus ( , "maidenlike of skin"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:125; 49), but also Priam's long-haired sore (49), and Lycian princes (48; e.g., Glaucus and Sarpedon, doomed friends). Thus in Idyll 15, which represents a female festival sponsored by a female patron, Theocritus identifies a Trojan prince by his mother; but in Idyll 16, which asks for patronage from Hieron, king of Syracuse, the poet identifies the Trojan princes in the traditional (male) manner: by their father.

95. For Achilles' son as Neoptolemus, see, e.g., Hom. Il . and Od. ; Soph. Phil. ; Eur. Andr .

96. The hymnist's catalogue of warrior-heroes thus may suggest a feminine vantage on epics of war like the Iliad . Cf. Idyll 16, which, looking toward Hieron II, a commander who seized power in Syracuse through military force, also suggests oppositional readings of Homer's epics (e.g., Id . 16.48-49, 54-56). Both Idylls 15 and 16 open a dialogue between cultures definition of masculinity as aggression and literature's capacity to redefine that ideal. Idyll 16 includes the famous pacifistic lines: ("May spiders spin their delicate webs over armour, and the cry of onset be no more even named"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:129; 96-97). On female reception of male-generated epics, see, e.g., John J. Winkler, "Public and Private in Sappho's Lyrics," in Foley, Reflections of Women , esp. 66-77; Lillian Eileen Doherty, ''Gender and Internal Audiences in the Odyssey ," American Journal of Philology 113 (1992), 161-77.

97. For the story of Hecuba's revenge on King Polymestor for murdering her son (Polydorus), see Euripides' Hecuba .

98. Just. Epit . 24.3.

99. Cf. Theoc. Id . 16.74, which offers Achilles and Ajax as models for Hieron. For the story of how later Alexandrians mocked Antoninus for imitating Alexander and Achilles, who were strong and tall whereas he was small (not unlike sickly Ptolemy II), see Herodian 4.9.3.

100. See Gow, Theocritus 2:335 nn. 53-57. A weak man physically (Strab. 17.789), Ptolemy II might have felt somewhat uneasy about meeting the expectations of leadership set by his father, a powerful general and shrewd politician. On the controversy concerning Ptolemy II's military prowess (and Arsinoe's influence), see, e.g., Burstein, "Arsinoe II," esp. 205 (who cites Ptolemy's accomplishments before marrying Arsinoe); Hauben, "Arsinoé II," 107-27 (who puts more emphasis on Arsinoe's political role).

101. On the political implications of Alexandrian poetry's rejection of epic, see Schwinge, Künstlichkeit yon Kunst , esp. 40-43 (who cites Callim. Aet . 1, fr. 1.3-5 on 41: ; "[The Telchines blame me because] I did not accomplish one continuous poem of many thousands of lines on . . . kings or . . . heroes, but like a child I roll forth a short tale"; trans. Trypanis, "Callimachus," 5).

102. Pollock raises pertinent questions: "But what is the meaning of the equation of women's art with femininity and femininity with bad art? And, more significantly, why does the point have to be stressed so frequently?" (Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art [London and New York: Routledge, 1988], 24).

103. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 256.

104. For an interesting parallel, see Livy 41.20 (on the generosity of the Seleucid King Antiochus IV).

105. E.g., the reunion feast in Euripides' Ion includes gold bowls (1165-66), gold and silver cups (1175, 1181-82), abundant food (1169), and a tent (1129) shaded by embroidered tapestries (1132-66). In Latin literature, e.g., Peleus's wedding feast in Catullus's Poem 64 includes gold and silver (44), ivory thrones and bright cups (45), a couch of Indian tusk and a purple coverlet embroidered with figures (47-51), a doorway covered with soft green foliage (292-93; cf. the green bower laden with tender dill at Id . 15.119), and tables laden with food (304). So too Dido's banquet welcoming Aeneas in Vergil's Aen . 1 includes a quantity of silver and golden embossed plates, a golden couch, golden tapestries (697-98), and purple coverlets, some embroidered. Both Peleus's and Dido's displays exemplify regal splendor, not "vulgarity": "tota domus gaudet regali splendida gaza" (Catull. Poem 64.46); ''at domus interior regali splendida luxu" (Verg. Aen . 1.637). Further, poets customarily praise the generosity of rulers and patrons and thereby encourage "appropriate'' expenditures (e.g., Bacchyl. Ode 3.11-22, 63-66; Pind. Nem . 1.19-33; Pind. Isthm . 1.60-68). Thus Theocritus's Idyll 17 praises Ptolemy for using his Wealth to honor gods (106-9) and also describes the system of benefactions in regard to poets (115-17).

106. On the Ptolemies' wealth, see, e.g., M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World , 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), 1: 407-11; Préaux, Monde hellénistique , esp. 1:208-9. Ath. 5.197c-202a provides a detailed account of a lavish ceremonial procession sponsored by Ptolemy II (for discussion, see Rice, Grand Procession ).

107. The Petrie papyrus, dated not later than 250 B.C. , indicates that private individuals (this one probably a man since the expenditures include bath and barber) continued to contribute to celebrations of the Adonia in Ptolemaic Egypt (J. P. Mahaffy and J. G. Smyly, eds., The Flinders Petrie Papyri , vol. 3, [Dublin: Academy House, 1905], no. 142). For discussion, see Glotz, "Fêtes," 169-222 (for a summary of Glotz's commentary, see Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 180-83 [available again in Gow, Theocritus 2:262-63]). See also Atallah, Adonis , 136-40.

108. Gow, Theocritus 2:296 n. 118, footnote 1: "Shaped cakes as offerings were sometimes at any rate merely cheap substitutes for the animals they represented (Hdt. 2.47, Suid. s.v. ), and these would find no place in Arsinoe's celebrations." Yet shaped cakes need not be cheap; see, e.g., the pastry eggs (33.6), cake piglets (40.4), and pastry thrushes (69.6) featured at Trimalchio's luxurious dinner in Petronius's Satyricon . In the Satyricon , food allusions are part of the iconography representing the crossing of boundaries and instability of categories and meaning. In Idyll 15, in which the crossing of boundaries (life and death, mortal and immortal, male and female, royalty and commoner, house and palace) is also an important theme, food allusions would not be out of place. The poetic structure and grammar of the passage in Idyll 15 that lists offerings strengthen an identification of the creatures of line 118 as shaped cakes. If line 118 is taken in association with the cakes, a single sentence encompasses all the offerings, a sentence gracefully structured in a chiastic ring (location, offering, offering, location), with the of line 118 recalling the of line 112. The heavy alliteration of in lines 117 and 118, compared with the previous five lines, further encourages the reader to associate line 118 (the creatures) with line 117 (the cakes).

109. E.g., Barriss Mills, The Idylls of Theocritus (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1963), 59; Daryl Hine, Theocritus: Idylls and Epigrams (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 58; Anna Rist, The Poems of Theocritus (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 141; Thelma Sargent, The Idylls of Theocritus: A Verse Translation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 61; Wells, Theocritus , 105; Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 13. But while most of the British and Americans require "meat" (e.g., Dover, Theocritus , 118: "If this line referred to cakes of different shapes, there would be no reference to meat"), the French prefer "cake" (see Atallah, Adonis , 123, followed by Monteil, Théocrite , 164). See also White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 197-98, who posits both shaped cakes and wax fruits among the offerings.

110. Gow, Theocritus 1:118, transfers the strong stop from line 118 to line 117, which supports his interpretation of 118 as referring to "meats" not "shaped cakes" (for discussion, see 2:296 n. 118).

111. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 256.

112. I have followed Ahrens's reading of in 127 (so too Monteil, Théocrite , 165 n. 127: "une couche qui est nôtre"). Gow, Theocritus 2:300-1 nn. 126f., prefers to Ahrens's . Dover, Theocritus , 213 n. 127, reads (with the mss., except K) (so too R. J. Cholmeley, The Idylls of Theocritus [London: George Bell and Sons, 1906], 301), but also approves : "Confusion between LL and M was easy in ancient texts, since the midpoint of M was lower than in a modern M."' White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 203-5, reads (with K ) and so does not place a full stop afterwards.

113. A repetition of the verb links the creative activity of making cakes with weaving tapestries ( , 80; cf. , 115), and among the modern Hellenistic writers, the verb can represent poetic craftsmanship. Rosenmeyer, Green Cabinet , 22, defines Callimachean as "the careful and self-denying labor that goes into the making of the good poem." In Theocritus's Idyll 7, the verb describes making poetry (51) and the noun is associated with the cicadas' song (139); for discussion, see Harry Berger Jr., "The Origins of Bucolic Representation: Disenchantment and Revision in Theocritus' Seventh Idyll," Classical Antiquity 3 (1984), 16-20.

114. On Ptolemy II's acquisition of Samos, see M. Cary, A History of the Greek World: 323 to 146 BC , 2d ed., rev. (1951; reprint, London: Methuen, 1978), 104; Graham Shipley, A History of Samos: 800-188 BC (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 182-83; on Ptolemy II's acquisition of Miletus, see, e.g., Cary, History , 104 (with app. 5, 387-89).

115. Idyll 115's spatial and temporal movement highlights the issue of how a public Adonia might attract marginal viewers by moving outlanders—Syra-cusan, Doric-speaking women—from Alexandria's suburbs through crowded streets to the palace grounds to view an Adonia, a celebration of an exotic marginal god (who has himself been moved from the cultish margins to the ideological center of the state).

116. The implied audience of Id . 15's Adonia, for a brief moment, includes a hypothetical Samian shepherd. The actual audience could have included Samians as well. On the presence of Samians in Egypt, especially Alexandria, during the Hellenistic period, see Shipley, History of Samos , 225-26. See also Callim. Ep . 37 Gow and Page ( A.P . 7.459), an epitaph for Crethis, a working-class Samian girl (for discussion, see Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:194; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:577).

117. So Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," 541: "The new regime determined to build for themselves in Africa a way of life which was powerfully and essentially Greek." See also Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 19-22.

118. See, e.g., W. W. Tam, Hellenistic Civilisation , rev. author and G. T. Griffith, 3d ed. (1952; reprint, Cleveland: World Publishing, 1961), 196-97; P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:106-15; Préaux, Monde hellénistique 2:587-601; Koenen, "Ptolemaic King," 40 (on possible influences between the Greek and Egyptian legal systems, see ibid., esp. 40-43, with references).

119. By bringing a private ritual into the public arena, Arsinoe's Adonia blurred the boundaries between public and private life. That this was part of the program is suggested by how the Arsinoe cult also emphasized the association of public and private rites of worship, as shown by an Alexandrian decree regulating the festival of Arsinoe, which approved private sacrifices along the public procession route (on this decree, see Robert, "Sur un décret," esp. 192-210; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:229-30, 2:378 n. 315; D. B. Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai , 71-73).

120. Examples of local pride in Idyll 15: Syracusans vaunting their ethnic origin (90-93) and hypothetical islanders praising their own work (126-27).

121. See discussion in Burkert, Structure and History , esp. 102-11. See also Griffin, "Theocritus," 203. The name Adonis recalls adon , a Semitic word meaning Lord (Burkert, Structure and History , 105). Cow, Theocritus 2:264, suggests that the Adonia in the Fayyûm, as analyzed by Glotz, "Fêes; has an Egyptian flavor that makes it differ from worship in Alexandria (as represented by Theocritus). So too the cult of Sarapis, also supported by the Ptolemies, seems to have eventually transcended cultural difference (see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, "Two Studies on the Cult of Sarapis in the Hellenistic World," Opuscula Atheniensia 3 [1960], 8-9, 15-17). On the cult of Sarapis, see also, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1: 24-6-76; John E. Stambaugh, Sarapis under the Early Ptolemies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972).

122. See, e.g., A. Rosalie David, The Ancient Egyptians: Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 107-8.

123. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:206, 255; Dorothy J. Thompson, Memphis under the Ptolemies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 28-29, 212-13. See also Hdt. 2.48's description of Egyptian "Dionysus-processions" featuring women carrying puppets with immense phalluses made erect by pulling strings (for discussion of the link between the Egyptian ithyphallic Osiris, Herodotus's Egyptian "Dionysus," and the Greek Dionysus [with refs.], see Alan B. Lloyd, Herodotus: Book II: Commentary 1-98 [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976], 220-24 [on Hdt. 2.48]; cf. the 180-foot golden phallus displayed in Ptolemy's Procession of Dionysus, Ath. 5.201c).

124. D. J. Thompson, Memphis under the Ptolemies , 202-3.

125. See, e.g., Hdt. 2.112; D. J. Thompson, Memphis under the Ptolemies , 88 -90.

126. On how the Egyptianization of oinochoai (wine jugs) made for the Ptolemaic ruler-cult helped draw in non-Greeks as well as Greeks, see D. B. Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai , esp. 119-21. See also Callim. fr. 383.14 for a possible representation of a collaboration between Egyptian and Colchian women in weaving a celebratory cloth for Berenice (for discussion, see Thomas, "Callimachus," esp. 106-8). For a discussion of how the Ptolemies contrived to appeal to both Greeks and Egyptians, see Koenen, "Ptolemaic King."

127. J. B. Miller, New Psychology , 113.

128. On the importance of Argos in Ptolemaic propaganda and the political suggestiveness of references to Argos in Alexandrian poetry, see Bulloch, Callimachus , 12-13 (with attention to Callim. Hymn 5's setting in Argos), who accounts for the link between the Macedonian and Peloponnesian towns called Argos: "Although the town of Argos with which the Argeads were connected was actually situated in northern Macedonia, it was the practice even in the fifth century to give them a more romantic and flattering origin by making Peloponnesian Argos their homeland and thus giving them an ancient and impeccable Dorian descent, through Temenus, from Heracles and Dionysus." On the Ptolemies' interest in publicizing their connection with the Argead dynasty, see also W. S. Greenwalt, "Argaeus, Ptolemy II, and Alexander's Corpse," The History Bulletin 2 (1988), 39-41.

129. See discussion in chapter 2.

130. Pace Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 202: "The extravagant commendations of 'the incorrigible Gorgo' are more amusing and more in keeping with her character if they are bestowed upon a work which, to a more cultivated taste, does not deserve them." So too Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 249: "the housewife's failure of imagination." See also Miles, "Characterization,'' 156; Motto and Clark, ''Idyllic Slumming," 41; Walker, Theocritus , 94.

131. For evidence, see Gow, Theocritus 2:83 (on Id . 4.31). On the possible impact at court of a reference to Glauce, see Bulloch, "Helenistic Poetry," 572.

132. Bakhtin and Lyotard both emphasize the oppositional value of little voices/stories to monologic or grand narratives (on correspondences between Bakhtin's and Lyotard's theories, see David Carroll, "Narrative, Heterogeneity, and the Question of the Political: Bakhtin and Lyotard," in The Aims of Representation: Subject/Text/History , ed. Murray Krieger [New York: Columbia University Press, 1987], 69-106; see also Bruce Henricksen's summary in Nomadic Voices: Conrad and the Subject of Narrative [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992], esp. 11-14).

133. On the Samothracian gods as saviors at sea, see Burkert, Greek Religion , 284. Although the Samothracian gods are unknown, the central deities may well be a female (probably a Cybele-type) attended by two males comparable to the Dioskouroi (Susan Guettel Cole, Theoi Megaloi: The Cult of the Great Gods at Samothrace [Leiden: B. J. Brill, 1984], 3). Burkert, Greek Religion , 283-84, in-dudes among the deifies featured at Samothrace the Cybele-type deity prominent in Samothracian coinage and a young, subordinated male god (who acts as a servant), which would correspond to the gender dynamics of Aphrodite and Adonis. Cf. also Theoc. Id . 1's cup decoration of a woman flanked by two males, and the triad composed of Helen and the Dioskouroi, important figures in Ptolemaic propaganda and Theocritus's poetry as well (e.g., Idylls 18 and 22).

134. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1: 207. On the Dioskouroi as saviors at sea, see Burkert, Greek Religion , 213. Thus Theoc. Id . 22 (on the Dioskouroi), with its emphasis on the Dioskouroi's status as saviors at sea (6-22), may look toward Arsinoe. On Arsinoe's connection with Helen and the Dioskouroi, see Giuseppina Basta Donzelli, "Arsinoe simile ad Elena (Theocritus Id. 15.110)," Hermes: Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie 112 (1984), 306-16. The Dioskouroi also offered attractions to royals moving toward self-deification, as Burkert's description suggests: "The Dioskouroi, like Heracles [also favored at Alexandria], . . . were seen as guiding lights for those hoping to break out of the mortal sphere into the realm of the gods" (Burkert, Greek Religion , 213). Callim. Lyrica fr. 228 (see dieg .) has the Dioskouroi carry dead Arsinoe to the sky.

135. On Arsinoe's assimilation with Aphrodite as protector of the maritime empire, see, e.g., Robert, "Sur un déret," 198-202; Hauben, "Arsinoé II," III-14. See too the epigrams on the temple of Aphrodite at Cape Zephyrium, dedicated by an admiral: Callim. Ep . 5; Posidippus Ep . 12, 13 Gow and Page; Hedylus Ep . 4 Gow and Page (also available in Ath. 7.318b-d; 11.497d-c).

136. On the connection of savior gods with Alexandria's lighthouse, see Sostratus's dedicatory inscription as reported in Lucian Hist. Conscr . 62: these gods have been understood to refer to Berenice and Ptolemy I or to the Dioskouroi. See Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:490 (on Posidippus Ep . 11): "It is difficult to believe that such a dedication at Alexandria [Sostratus's] was not intended at least to include them [Ptolemy I and Berenice]." See too P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:19, who remarks in a discussion on the uncertainties of the inscription's authenticity (and the savior gods' identity) that perhaps the inscriptions "savior gods" refer to "all those deities who protect seafarers'' (for discussion, see 1:18-19).

137. On temples and shrines of Bilistiche-Aphrodite, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:239-40. Harpalus, a Macedonian who embezzled Alexander's funds, also set up a temple and altar of Pythionice-Aphrodite when his Athenian courtesan Pythionice died (Ath. 13.595c). On the shrine of Arsinoe-Aphrodite at Zephyrium, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:239-40; Posidippus's Epigrams 12 and 13 Gow and Page; Strab. 17.800.

138. A. Bouché-Ledercq, Histoire des Lagides , vol. 1, Les cinq premicers Ptolé-mées (323-181 avant J.-C.) (1903; reprint, Brussels: Culture et civilisation, 1963), 185 n. 1 (cited by Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , 124; Tondriau, "Princesses," 31). On public honors for Ptolemy's mistresses, see too Edwyn R. Bevan, The House of Ptolemy: A History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (1927; rev. reissue, Chicago: Argonaut, 1968), 77-78.

139. See chapter 2.

140. Gow, Theocritus 2: 346 n. 130 (on Id . 17); followed by Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , 61.

141. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 61. Greek text taken from F. H. Sandbach's Loeb edition ( Plutarch's Moralia , vol. 9, trans. Edwin L. Minar Jr., F. H. Sandbach, and W. C. Helmbold [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969]).

142. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 61. On the association of Arsinoe with Hera, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:35, 237-38; McCredie et al., Rotunda of Arsinoe , 238 n. 26 (Georges Roux). On the association of Ptolemy II with Zeus, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1: 666-67, 194-95.

143. Callimachus's hymns do not feature Aphrodite and Dionysus (the Ptolemies' most favored deifies), but they do feature Zeus and Hera. Aphrodite only briefly enters Hymn 5 (to Athena) in a contrast between her intensive beauty ritual and Athena's simpler self-care (21-22).

144. See, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 2:915 n. 284; Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 62-63; Clauss, "Lies and Allusions." See also Green, Alexander to Actium , 172. But cf. Thomas Gelzer, "Kallimachos und das Zeremoniell des Ptolemäischen Königshauses," in Aspckte der Kultursoziologie: Aufsätze zur Soziologie, Philosophic, Anthropologie und Geschichte der Kultur: Zum 60. Geburtstag von Mohammed Rassem , ed. Justin Stagl (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1982), 22. For a judicious warning against over-imaginative historical references, see F. Williams, Callimachus , 1 (on Callim. Hymn 2 [to Apollo]).

145. See, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:652, 2:915 n. 284 (who dates Hymn 1 between 280 and 275); Clauss, "Lies and Allusions," esp. 158-59 (who suggests the date of Ptolemy II's accession to the throne in 285/284 or its anniversary in 284/283).

146. See, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:652, 657-58 (who suggests 271/270 as a probable date for Hymn 4); W. H. Mineur, Callimachus: Hymn to Delos (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 16-18 (who suggests the date 274).

147. See P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:652, 2: 915 n. 287.

148. On Greek reactions to the incestuous Ptolemaic marriage, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:117-18. See also Carney, "Reappearance of Sibling Marriage," 420-21, 428-29, who cautions against "overestimat[ing] Hellenic disapproval" and cites Sotades' remark, which "rather than manifesting moral outrage, seems intended to make fun'' (428).

149. Scholia Theoc. Id . 17.128 (Wendel, Scholia , 325). See also Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens , 120-21; Burstein, "Arsinoe II," 205-7.

150. Mineur also suggests a possible reference to Ptolemy II in Callim. Hymn 4.240-43 ( Callimachus , 203 n. 240f: "The Alexandrian audience may have thought here of Philadelphus, who (Athen. Deipn . 13.576e, f.).' On Ptolemy's mistresses, see also Plut. Mor . 753e; Cameron, "Two Mistresses," 287- 304.

151. Because Asteria refused the amorous Zeus, Hera forgives her here for helping Leto, Zeus's pregnant mistress. Cf. Ap. Rhod. Argon . 4.790-94, where Hera reminds Thetis that she earned her favor by refusing Zeus's lovemaking.

152. See, e.g., Palls. 1.10.3-5; Burstein, "Arsinoe II," 199-200 (with references in n. 11).

153. Gercke also suggests this allusion in Callim. Hymn 3.134-35 to Arsinoes I and II (Alfred Gercke, "Alexandrinische Studien," Rheinisches Museum füur Philologie , n.s., 42 [1887], 273-75).

154. Any reservations about court ideology that Callimachus's references to Zeus and Hera's marriage may suggest, however, are indirect, available for cynical (and informed) audience members, but not necessary for enjoyment of the poems. Callimachus also wrote more directly (and in a more courtly manner) of Arsinoe and other Ptolemaic women. See, e.g., Callim. fr. 392, which Pfeiffer titles "In Arsinoes Nuptias?" (we have only one line left); fr. 228, on Arsinoe's death (the least fragmentary section, 40-75, approaches the death from her sister Philotera's vantage); Lock of Berenice (to Berenice II, wife of Ptolemy III). See Schwinge, "Gedichte auf Frauen des Königshauses," in Künstlichkeit von Kunst , 67-72. On Callim. Lock of Berenice , see Gutzwiller, "Callimachus' Lock ,"; Koenen, "Ptolemaic King,'' 89-113.

155. Idyll 18 ironizes the theme of mutual passion by having its maiden's chorus sing a wedding song mocking Menelaus's early slumber on his wedding night and exalting Helen's beauty and talents. On the disparity between "the divine stature of Helen" and "the rather hapless figure which Menelaus cuts," see David Konstan, "A Note on Theocritus Idyll 18," Classical Philology 74 [1979], 233-34.

156. Theoc. Id . 12.10-11 includes a wish for mutuality in a homoerotic context. See also Alcaeus of Messene Ep . 9 Gow and Page (= A.P . 12.64), which presents a prayer to Zeus for (like-mindedness) between erastes and eromenos (6). On the rarity of "erotic reciprocity" between ancient Greek males (outside Plato), due to the problematic nature of the passive sexual role for males, see David M. Halperin, "Why is Diotima a Woman," ch. 6 in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Rout-ledge, 1990), 129-37 (but see also 225, addendum). See too Dover, Greek Homosexuality , 52.

157. On Hellenistic poetry's emphasis on passion without reciprocity and marriage without passion, see Vatin, Recherches sur le mariage , esp. 46, 53-54, 56.

158. See also Mastromarco, Public of Heron , 93.

159. On the importance of imagery of mutual married love in the Ptolemies'. project of self-legitimation, see Gutzwiller, "Callimachus' Lock," esp. 363-68. See too Koenen, "Adaptation ägyptischer Königsideologie," 157-68; Mary Ann Rossi, Theocritus' Idyll XVII: A Stylistic Commentary (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1989), esp. 188-89; Koenen, "Ptolemaic King," 62. On the theme of reciprocal love in Hellenistic poetry, see M. A. Rossi, Theocritus' Idyll XVII , 79, with references.

160. This term comes from Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provok'd Wife (1697), 1.1 (cited by Spacks, Gossip , 122). On the later Alexandrian fashion for defamatory jokes against authority, see Herodian 4.9.2-3: ("To a certain extent it was a natural feature of the people to indulge in lampoons and repetition of many pungent caricatures and jokes belittling the authorities, since they are considered very witty by the Alexandrians"; trans. C. R. Whittaker, Herodian , vol. 1, Books I-IV [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969], 413). Thus later Alexandrians reportedly considered such jokes as calling Antoninus's mother Jocasta (and thus hinting at incest) (playing), although Antoninus did not (Herodian 4.9.3).

161. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court .

162. See Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , 66.

163. Gow, Theocritus 2:331 n. 26.

164. Cunningham, Herodas , 66 n. 30, reads line 30's "good king" as Ptolemy Philadelphus: " [of the brother-sister gods] is an attribute to distinguish this [shrine] from all others, and does not necessitate understanding of a different king" (see also idem, "Herodas 1.26ff.," 7-9). On the possibility that line 30's ''good king" might also refer to Ptolemy III, see, e.g., P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 2:878 n. 30; Sherwin-White Ancient Cos , 95 n. 60. For a brief history of scholarly opinion, see Mastromarco, Public of Herondas , 3-4 (who supports the identification with Ptolemy Philadelphus).

165. The self-proclaimed brother-sister gods are Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II.

166. Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 23-24 n. 26; followed by Cunningham, Herodas , 65 n. 26. On the title for Arsinoe, see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 2: 567 n. 228.

167. See Griffiths, Theocritus at Court .

168. Marylin B. Arthur, "Early Greece: The Origins of the Western Attitude toward Women," in Peradotto and Sullivan, Women , 50.

1. As Hutcheon emphasizes, "there is no directly and naturally accessible past 'real' for us today: we can only know—and construct—the past through its traces, its representations" (Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism [London and New York: Routledge, 1989], 113).

2. The series of framing devices distancing his story underscores Comatas's isolation: Lycidas performs a song describing a celebration at which Tityrus shall perform a song describing how a king imprisons Comatas in a coffer. On the thematic significance of Comatas's imprisonment, see also Berger, "Origins of Bucolic Representation," 35-39. Cf. the iconoclastic poet Timon's mockery of the cloistered environment available in Alexandria as a "birdcage of the Muses."

3. On the importance of friendship as a factor in audience reception, see Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).

1. Christopher Wordsworth, Theocritus , 2d ed. (Cambridge: Deighton Bell and Associates, 1877), 126; Fritzsche, Theokrits Gedichte , 186; Cholmeley, Idylls of Theocritus , 299.

1. On Idyll 2's line numeration, see Gow, Theocritus 2: 40; followed by Dover, Theocritus , 103 n. 23; but cf. White, "Spells," 22-30.

2. Praxinoa, in describing the tapestries, shows how the woven figures can present an illusion of reality to the viewer.

3. On entering the ceremonial grounds through crowded doors, Gorgo and Praxinoa view tapestries that elicit their admiration. A courtly encounter with a polite stranger (69-75) brings the women into the elevated atmosphere of the palace grounds; fear for clothing is transformed into pleasure at viewing woven art. In an environment where everyone is turning into pigs, as Praxinoa claims, what saves the women and the stranger who looks after them? In the Odyssey , Hermes provides Odysseus with an herb to protect him from Circe's powers. Perhaps polite behavior is a moly in Idyll 15: a means to transcend the squalidness of the street.

4. For an important discussion of Callimachus's use of allusion, see Anthony W. Bulloch, "Callimachus' Erysichthon , Homer, and Apollonius Rhodius," American Journal of Philology 98 (1977), 97-123: "irony, wit and allusion are also the means by which Callimachus revivifies the traditional material and makes it pointedly real for his contemporaries" (114). See also Herter's and Giangrande's fundamental articles: Hans Herter, "Kallimachos und Homer: Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation des Hymnos auf Artemis," in Xenia Bonnensia; Festschrift zum Fünfundsiebzigjäbrigen Bestehen des Philologischen Vereins und Bonner Kreises (Bonn: E Cohen, 1929), 50-105; Giuseppe Giangrande, "'Arte Allusiva' and Alexandrian Epic Poetry," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 17 (1967), 85-97; idem, ''Hellenistic Poetry and Homer,'' L'antiquité classique 39 (1970), 46-77. On the function of allusion in Alexandrian poetry, see too Bing, Well-Read Muse , esp. 73-75.

5. Horstmann, Ironie grid Humor , 35.