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Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis

  • Matthew Chaldekas
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The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis
This chapter is in the book The Poetics of Greek Ekphrasis

Abstract

This chapter addresses Leonidas’ engagement with and innovation in the conventions of the ekphrastic epigram and offers new insights into three key topics. Ekphrasis has long been known as an interplay between description and narration, and Leonidas shows a subtle and playful awareness of this fact. Leonidas engages with the debate about the role of measurement and precise description in ekphrasis, which is famously handled in Callimachus’ sixth Iamb. Furthermore, some of Leonidas’ ekphrases employ a ‘humble aesthetic’ which does not stake a claim to beauty, but instead praises the craftsmanship attainable by poor people. In this way, Leonidas can be seen to adapt the ekphrastic mode to his own poetic persona, which assumes the mantle of poverty. In sum, Leonidas adopts a quintessentially Hellenistic approach to this mode in using it to engage with aesthetic questions and to display his own poetic virtuosity.

Abstract

This chapter addresses Leonidas’ engagement with and innovation in the conventions of the ekphrastic epigram and offers new insights into three key topics. Ekphrasis has long been known as an interplay between description and narration, and Leonidas shows a subtle and playful awareness of this fact. Leonidas engages with the debate about the role of measurement and precise description in ekphrasis, which is famously handled in Callimachus’ sixth Iamb. Furthermore, some of Leonidas’ ekphrases employ a ‘humble aesthetic’ which does not stake a claim to beauty, but instead praises the craftsmanship attainable by poor people. In this way, Leonidas can be seen to adapt the ekphrastic mode to his own poetic persona, which assumes the mantle of poverty. In sum, Leonidas adopts a quintessentially Hellenistic approach to this mode in using it to engage with aesthetic questions and to display his own poetic virtuosity.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures IX
  5. List of Abbreviations
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
  8. Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams 15
  9. Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis 45
  10. Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata 69
  11. Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name 89
  12. Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
  13. The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram 117
  14. Imagined Spaces, Imagined Buildings, and the Idea of Architectural Representation: Phantasia in the Wall Paintings of the 2nd Style in Rome and the Vesuvian Cities 141
  15. A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) 193
  16. Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis 217
  17. Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram 255
  18. Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
  19. Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry 275
  20. Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza 289
  21. Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity 313
  22. A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice 339
  23. List of Contributors 361
  24. Index Nominum
  25. Index Rerum
  26. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112207697-003

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of Figures IX
  5. List of Abbreviations
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I: Ekphrasis and Hellenistic Poetics
  8. Poets’ Signatures and Ekphrasis in Inscribed Greek Epigrams 15
  9. Leonidas of Tarentum and Hellenistic Ekphrasis 45
  10. Pictures in Motion: Descriptive Performance in Hellenistic carmina figurata 69
  11. Aratus’ Ekphrastic Skies: Between the Dragon and the Stars Without Name 89
  12. Part II: Ekphrastic Visualization In and Out of the Mind
  13. The Lover is the Perfect Artist: Praxiteles and the Cnidian Aphrodite in Greek Ekphrastic Epigram 117
  14. Imagined Spaces, Imagined Buildings, and the Idea of Architectural Representation: Phantasia in the Wall Paintings of the 2nd Style in Rome and the Vesuvian Cities 141
  15. A Library of Memory in a Ptolemaic Reading Primer (P. Cairo J.E. 65445) 193
  16. Learning from Illusion: Myron’s Heifer and the Stoic Poetics of Ekphrasis 217
  17. Can You Feel It? Ekphrasis and Mind-Reading in Hellenistic Epigram 255
  18. Part III: Developments in Late Antique Ekphrasis
  19. Patchwork Voices: Poetics and Aesthetics of Ekphrasis in Ancient Greek Cento-Poetry 275
  20. Exegete or Ecstatic Visionary? On the Self-Fashioning of the Poet in the Ekphrasis tabulae mundi of John of Gaza 289
  21. Ekphrastic poikilia in Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy: Towards a Late Antique Poetics of Similarity 313
  22. A Guided Tour through a Poetic Collection of Statues: Observations on Christodorus of Coptus’ Ekphrastic Practice 339
  23. List of Contributors 361
  24. Index Nominum
  25. Index Rerum
  26. Index Locorum
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