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This book’s concern is with notoriously obscure ancient poets-riddlers, whom it argues to have been an essential, albeit necessarily marginal, element of the literary landscape of Antiquity, which, in addition, exerted subtle yet lasting influence on European culture. The three first essays in this book trace a direct line of influence between the early Hellenistic scholar-poet Simias of Rhodes, the late Republican Roman experimentalist Laevius and Constantine the Great’s virtuoso panegyrist Optatian Porfyry, whereas the fourth essay discusses the preservation and transformation of the model invented by Simias in Byzantium. The Appendix reflects on the triumph of this intellectual paradigm in Neo-Latin Jesuit education by investigating the case of a peripheral yet highly influential Central European college at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book is at once a contribution to the scholarship on the reception of Hellenistic poetry and to the study of ancient ‘technopaegnia’ (i.e. playful poetry) and their cultural influence in Antiquity, Byzantium and post-mediaeval Europe.

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"The present volume offers a variety of case studies rather than a theoretically oriented survey of trends and overall approaches towards the fragmentarily preserved ancient material. Nevertheless, the discussions of specific cases are not confined to merely illustrating with examples the patterns already detected and followed by scholars, but also formulate some new theoretical proposals applicable to different kinds of material."--

Manuscript fragments. --- Criticism, Textual. --- Archaeology and history --- Mediterranean Region --- Historiography.

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In May 2011, a conference on riddles and word games in Greek and Latin poetry took place at the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of Warsaw. The conference was intended as an open forum where specialists working in different fields of classical studies could meet to discuss the varied manifestations of riddles and other technopaegnia - both terms being understood broadly to encompass the full range of play with language in classical antiquity, in keeping with the use made of the two terms in ancient and early modern theoretical discussions. This volume offers revised versions of the papers presented during the conference. Contributions by scholars from Europe and the USA treat a number of interconnected topics, including: ancient and modern attempts to formulate a definition of the riddle; poetic games at Greek symposia; experimentation with language in late classical poetry; riddles in the book cultures of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity; the functions of word games carved in stone, written on papyrus, or inscribed on the wall as graffiti; authors famed for their obscurity, such as Heraclitus and Lycophron; wordplay in Neo-Latin poetry; oracles, magic squares, pattern poetry, palindromes and acrostichs.

Greek poetry --- Latin poetry --- Riddles in literature. --- Plays on words --- Rhetoric, Ancient. --- Ancient rhetoric --- Classical languages --- Greek language --- Greek rhetoric --- Latin language --- Latin rhetoric --- Play of words --- Play on words --- Word play --- Wordplay --- Semantics --- Wit and humor --- History and criticism. --- Rhetoric --- Greek and Roman Culture. --- Greek and Roman Literature. --- Neo-Latin Studies. --- Riddles. --- Word Games.