Leonida di Alessandria, ›Epigrammi‹

The volume contains the first modern commentary entirely dedicated to the epigrams of Leonidas of Alexandria, a 1^st century AD poet affiliated with the imperial court. Leonidas’ claim to fame lies with his composition of the so-called isopsephic distichs, a peculiar example of technopaegnion.

The book includes an exhaustive introduction, tracing the figure of the author and discussing the transmission of the text as well as the treatment of the isopsephic method by modern scholars. Furthermore, the introduction offers a synthesis of Leonidas’ work from the literary, stylistic, and prosodic point of view, presenting it in the broader context of the Imperial Age and comparing it to the extant isopsephic writings.

The main body of the book consists in the critical edition of circa 40 epigrams, and a line-by-line philological, literary and explanatory commentary, coupled with the reconstruction – where possible – of historical circumstances.

While appreciating Leonidas’ experiments with the epigrammatic form, the analysis presented in the book encompasses poems whose worth goes beyond their isopsephic structure and which, considering their dazzling variety of topics, constitute a prime example of Greek epigram in the Imperial Age.

• First full edition of the epigrams of Leonidas of Alexandria
• New and more comprehensive analysis since D.L. Page’s notes in Further Greek Epigrams (1981)
• Complete edition with philological, linguistic, literary, and socio-cultural commentary

Vittoria Dozza, University of Bologna, Italy.