Surprised by Self: Audible Thought in Hellenistic Poetry

IN Greek poetry of the third century B.C.E. especially in the epigrams of Callimachus and the idylls of Theocritus the speaking persona expresses his thoughts with such casual, unstudied grace that we never ask ourselves how he might have learned to do this. But there are few models, and nothing really equivalent, in earlier Greek writing. Here is a specimen, so finely made that its oddness almost entirely escapes notice. There are no internal signs, no shrill notes, that could show how far the speaker has moved beyond the resources of selfrepresentation available to Greek poets before him: