gems, Posidippus of Pella, Lithika, Milan papyrus

Most scholars now agree that the collection of 112 epigrams from the Milan Papyrus, which was written toward the end of the 3rd century BC and published about a decade ago, is probably the work of Posidippus of Pella. A remarkable feature of the papyrus is the division of text into sequences: At the start of our papyrus, the final letters of a heading “ka” have been interpreted as λιθικά “stones”. Other headings are better preserved: We have οἰωνοσκοπικά “bird omens”, ἀναθεματικά “dedications”, ἀνδριαντ̣ο̣π̣οιι̣κά “statues”, ἱππικά “horse racing”, ναυαγικά “shipwrecks”, ἰαματικά “thanksgiving for cures”, τρόποι “characters”. The subtitle of the third sequence, [ἐπιτύμβια] “epitaphs” has been completely restored. The headings testify to Posidippus’ debt to the traditional genres of inscriptional epigrams and to his interest in exploring the literary dimension of the inscribed text. By molding his collection after the form of inscriptional genres, such as dedicatory inscriptions and epitaphs, Posidippus invited readers to negotiate different levels and forms of epigrammatic contextualization.