The Gods of Greek Hexameter Poetry: From the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity and Beyond

Product Description
This book explores the representation of the gods in Greek hexameter poetry in its many forms, including epic, hymnic and didactic poetry, from the archaic period to late antiquity. Its twenty-five chapters, written by an international team of experts, trace a broad historical arc, reflecting developments in religious thought and practice, and ongoing philosophical and literary-critical engagement with the nature and representation of the divine and the relationship between humans and gods. They proceed from the poems ascribed to Hesiod and Homer and the so-called Cyclic epics, via the Hellenistic poets Apollonius, Callimachus, Aratus and Moschus, to the poets and poems of the third to sixth centuries CE, including Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus, the Cynegetica, Nonnus, Eudocia, Colluthus, the Argonautica of Orpheus and the Sibylline Oracles. An epilogue explores the reception of the Greek "epic" gods by the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, and by the English poets Tennyson, Walcott and Oswald.
Review
"The present collection of essays [...] represents the first solid and comprehensive study of the theme of the divine in hexameter poetry.""a particularly rich collection of papers"
About the Author
James J. Clauss is Professor of Classics at the University of Washington, Seattle. Martine Cuypers is Lecturer in Greek at Trinity College Dublin. Ahuvia Kahane is Professor of Greek at Royal Holloway, University of London.