front cover of By Heart or From the Scroll
By Heart or From the Scroll
Text Quotation and Memory on the Grammatika Vases
Maria Nasioula
Harvard University Press

Grammatika vases, one of the most distinctive varieties of Hellenistic relief pottery, present modern scholars with compelling research opportunities, as they document the reception of ancient Greek literature in the Hellenistic world in various ways. Focusing on the group of grammatika vases that feature citations, By Heart or From the Scroll offers new insights into the archaeological material within its broader literary and historical contexts.

This study is based on a collection of six vases—two Boeotian bowls and four Macedonian fragments—all of which depict scenes inspired by Book 22 of the Odyssey, detailing the slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus. These vases provide a direct glimpse into the transmission of the ancient text within a particularly intriguing—and in some cases well-dated—archaeological context, establishing a reference point for other vases of the same category. The thorough examination of the script used in the citations, coupled with its juxtaposition to the epigraphic and calligraphic literary scripts found on contemporary papyri, reveals a remarkable correspondence and offers a key to understanding this type of pottery, shedding light on the people behind its production and use.

Drawing on both archaeological and epigraphic evidence, and guided by Athenaeus’ testimony regarding Dionysius Thrax and his silver Νεστορίς, this interdisciplinary approach provides a novel interpretation of the literary sources cited on these grammatika vases and a reliable terminus post quem for dating excavation efforts in Macedonia and beyond.

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front cover of The Scroll and the Marble
The Scroll and the Marble
Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry
Peter Bing
University of Michigan Press, 2010
"One of the most prominent figures in American Hellenistic poetry scholarship, Peter Bing has long served as a model for acute criticism and careful reading. He has a marvelous ability to make readers rethink their preconceptions; his work is always beautifully argued and documented and his writing style is a pleasure to engage with."
---Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Ohio State University

While people of previous ages relied on public performance as their chief means of experiencing poetry, the Hellenistic age developed what one may term a culture of reading. This was the first era in which poets consciously shaped their works with an eye toward publication and reception not just on the civic stage but in several media---in performance, on inscribed monuments, in scrolls. The essays in Peter Bing's collection explore how poetry accommodated various audiences and how these audiences in turn experienced the text in diverse ways. Over the years, Bing's essays have focused on certain Hellenistic authors and genres---particularly on Callimachus and Posidippus and on epigram. His themes, too, have been broadly consistent. Thus, although the essays in The Scroll and the Marble span some twenty years, they offer a coherent vision of Hellenistic poetics as a whole.

Peter Bing is Professor of Classics at Emory University and editor, most recently, of the Companion to Hellenistic Epigram: Down to Philip (coedited with Jon Steffen Bruss).

Jacket illustration: Film still from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, directed by Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures 1939.  Courtesy of Sony Pictures.

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