Colin Austin (1941–2010), Professor of Greek at Cambridge and distinguished editor of poetic texts, was renowned for the precision and brilliance of his scholarship. This collection of studies, offered by some of his pupils, aims to honor his memory. The papers combine philology and textual criticism with a strong interest in setting the works under examination in their literary and cultural context. Individual contributions are devoted to the establishment of the text of the comic poet Menander and the epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella, while one chapter offers a new critical edition of and the first detailed commentary on a number of erotic epigrams. Other essays explore poetic, performative and narratological features in Socratic works of Plato and Xenophon. The volume also includes an analysis of the trope of pathetic fallacy in the bucolic poem Epitaph for Bion and a study of the concept of ‘frigidity’ in ancient literary criticism.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note to the reader
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• PART I: Comedy
  • 1. Textual notes on Menander’s Dyskolos: Antonis K. Petrides
  • 2. From certainty to hypothesis: Menander’s Misoumenos: Efrosyni Stigka
  • 3. Charisios and the divine in Menander’s Epitrepontes: Eftychia Bathrellou
• PART II: Poetry in prose/prose on poetry
  • 4. Socrates orans (Pl. Phdr. 279b8–c3): Nikos G. Charalabopoulos
  • 5. The filter and the magnifier: Plato’s and Xenophon’s sympotic narratives: Andrea Capra
  • 6. Words that chill: ψυχρότης in ancient humour and criticism: Richard Hunter
• PART III: Epigrammatic poetry
  • 7. Marginalia posidippea: Valentina Garulli
  • 8. The erotic ‘newcomers’ of the Sylloge Parisina: a new critical edition and commentary: Lucia Floridi
• PART IV: Epitaph for a teacher
• 9. Αἴλινά μοι στοναχεῖτε: insights into the exploitation of pathetic fallacy in the Epitaph for Bion: Margherita Maria Di Nino
• Bibliography