Characterization in Hellenistic Epigram

It might seem paradoxical to expect to nd characterization in poems which have such a small compass as Hellenistic epigrams. Yet in certain sub-branches of the genre, especially in the early period, the very brevity of the format appears to have been felt as a challenge to authors to give the speaker as vividly characterized a persona as possible. There is no systematic treatment of this aspect of Hellenistic epigram, and the following essay attempts to open up a neglected eld. It is important that we understand precisely in what ways the Hellenistic period understood what we call characterization. Aristotle’s Poetics is particularly enlightening for the late-classical background to Hellenistic thinking. In Chapter Six Aristotle states that in the composition of tragedy the people involved in the action must have certain moral and intellectual characteristics for the audience to be able to judge their actions (49b36–50a7); the representation of character ( ) reveals the moral choices made by the gures in the play, and the representation of intellect ( ) denotes their ability to say what the situation involves and requires, or to make general statements relevant to the situation (50a38–50b12). Modern sensitivity demands that characterization include the emotional element, which Aristotle accommodates when he describes how the tragedian should represent character in Chapter Fifteen: a gure’s character (n.b. ) may be lifelike and contain negative traits like proneness to anger, laziness and so forth, but should be portrayed as morally good (54b8–15). It should not be thought that since Aristotle calls plot the “soul” of tragedy at 50a38 he would necessarily give secondary importance to character in all genres of poetry: the pre-eminence he gives to plot in tragedy is conditioned by his tenet that tragedy is primarily a representation of an action (49b24), and that a plot is conceivable in tragedy without character (50a23–9, 50a39–50b3). Elsewhere, he enthusiastically applauds Homer for the way he introduces the people in his epics by letting them speak and act for themselves, so that they all are “full of character” ( ’ ’ , 60a5–11). Of course, he preceded the developments in epigram in the Hellenistic period, but