This colloquium volume celebrates a new Hellenistic epigram collection attributed to the third-century B.C.E. poet Posidippus, one of the most significant literary finds in recent memory. Included in this collection are an unusual variety of voices and perspectives: papyrological, art historical, archaeological, historical, literary, and aesthetic. These texts are considered as individual poems and as collective artifact, an early poetry book. The volume will be of interest to readers of Greek and Latin epigram, students of the Hellenistic period, and all readers interested in the aesthetics of poetry collection and the evolution of the poetry book in antiquity.

Since Friedrich Schleiermacher’s work in the 1800s, scholars interested in the literary dimension of Plato’s writings have sought to reconcile the dialogue form with the expository imperative of philosophical argument. It is now common for mainstream classicists and philosophers to attribute vital importance to literary form in Plato, which they often explain in terms of rhetorical devices serving didactic goals. This study brings the disciplines of literary and classical studies into methodological debate, questioning modern views of Plato’s dialogue form.

In the first part of this book, David Schur argues that the literary features of Plato’s dialogues—when treated as literary—cannot be limited to a single argumentative agenda. In the second part, he demonstrates the validity of this point by considering a rhetorical pattern of self-reflection that is prominent in the Republic. He emphasizes that Plato’s book consistently undermines the goal-driven conversation that it portrays. Offering a thought-provoking blend of methodological investigation and methodical close reading, Schur suggests that the Republic qualifies the authority of its conclusions by displaying a strong countercurrent of ongoing movement.

If Heraclitus is one of our most ancient writers, Kafka seems especially modern. They share in a struggle between disclosure and obscurity that is perhaps as old as writing itself. In this lucid and engaging volume, David Schur takes us from philosophy to literature and back in a sustained examination of a fundamental philosophical metaphor: the way or path of method. Through close readings of texts by Heraclitus, Plato, Heidegger, Blanchot, and Kafka, he follows the development of a rhetorical commonplace into a distinctly Heraclitean paradox of method, concluding that Kafka's account of the way beyond mortal existence renews Heraclitus's emphasis on oblivion in the search for truth.