Theocritus' twenty-second idyll is cast in the form of a hymn to the Dioscuri, who are addressed in the proem as saviours of men, horses, and ships. This opening section of the idyll is modelled loosely on the short thirty-third Homeric hymn, and like that hymn contains an expanded account of the twins' rescue of ships about to be lost in a storm. As is hardly surprising, Theocritus in reworking the Homeric hymn draws on other literary antecedents as well, and (...) like other Alexandrian poets makes prominent use of diction borrowed and adapted from the Homeric epics. At the same time, the proem also shares several points of contact, largely overlooked or disputed by previous scholarship, with the poetry of Theocritus' own contemporaries. In the present paper, I shall suggest that in the storm scene of the proem references to Aratus' Phaenomena and Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica occur in a carefully arranged pattern with potentially significant implications for our understanding of the proem and the idyll as a whole. (shrink)

In the penultimate scene of the Ecclesiazusae, the young man who has come to see his lover is accosted in succession by three old women, each insisting that the new legal code requires him to sleep with her first. In lines 999–1000, the first of these old women, faced with his refusal to cooperate sexually, swears by Aphrodite.

Zucker Littérature et érotisme dans les Passions d'amour de Parthénios de Nicée. Actes du colloque de Nice 31 mai 2006. Pp. 218. Grenoble: Éditions Jérôme Millon, 2008. Paper, €25. ISBN: 978-2-84137-218-8. Biraud, Voisin, Zucker with Delbey, Vanhaegendoren, Wendling, Charlet Parthénios de Nicée: Passions d'Amour. Pp. 314. Grenoble: Éditions Jérôme Millon, 2008. Paper, €26. ISBN: 978-2-84137-217-1.