Munere Mortis: Studies in Greek Literature in Memory of Colin Austin [Hardback]

Colin Austin (1941–2010), Professor of Greek at Cambridge and distinguished editor of poetic texts, was renowned for the precision and brilliance of his scholarship. This collection of studies, offered by some of his pupils, aims to honour his memory. The papers combine philology and textual criticism with a strong interest in setting the works under examination in their literary and cultural context. Individual contributions are devoted to the establishment of the text of the comic poet Menander and the epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella, while one chapter offers a new critical edition of and the first detailed commentary on a number of erotic epigrams. Other essays explore poetic, performative and narratological features in Socratic works of Plato and Xenophon. The volume also includes an analysis of the trope of pathetic fallacy in the bucolic poem Epitaph for Bion and a study of the concept of ‘frigidity’ in ancient literary criticism.

1. Textual notes on Menander’s Dyskolos – Antonis K. Petrides. 2. From certainty to hypothesis: Menander’s Misoumenos – Efrosyni Stigka. 3. Charisios and the divine in Menander’s Epitrepontes – Eftychia Bathrellou. 4. Socrates orans (Pl. Phdr. 279b8–c3) – Nikos G. Charalabopoulos. 5. The filter and the magnifier: Plato’s and Xenophon’s sympotic narratives – Andrea Capra. 6. Words that chill: ψυχρότης in ancient humour and criticism – Richard L. Hunter. 7. Marginalia posidippea – Valentina Garulli. 8. The erotic ‘newcomers’ of the Sylloge Parisina: a new critical edition and commentary – Lucia Floridi. 9. Αἴλινά μοι στοναχεῖτε: insights into the exploitation of pathetic fallacy in the Epitaph for Bion – Margherita Maria Di Nino.