Mythography in Alexandrian Verse

Abstract The chapter explores how the Alexandrian learned poets worked mythography into poetic form. This cultural and aesthetic trend is exemplified by catalog poems with mythological content, usually arranged around a common theme (e.g., metamorphosis, catasterism, or love). Mythography, stemming from archaic and classical poetic and prose sources, found its way into Alexandrian poetry in various ways. The emblematic Aetia by Callimachus, the blending of mythological cycles in Apollonius’s Argonautica, and the mythological enigmas in Lycophron’s Alexandra clearly reflect the aesthetics of collecting and rewriting rare, curious, or obscure stories as avant-garde poetry. Historical and literary sources exploited by the scholar-poets, principles of collection and arrangement, the authority of the collector-narrator, the fragmentation of mythological narratives and the aesthetics of mythography in poetic form are among the issues addressed.