Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

From present to presence : modes of presentification in Hellenistic poetry / Evina Sistakou -- The savage past and noble present? : Hellenistic poetry on the rise of human civilisation / Agnieszka Kotlinska-Toma -- A Hellenistic glimpse at a 'Homeric' Messenia / Miels Bakker -- Echoes of Hellenistic epigrams in inscriptional Epitaphs / Maria Ypsilanti -- Tradition and succession in Theocritus' bucolic poetry / Jeffrey M. Hunt -- Weaving together the present and past : Theocritus' Linus and reinvention of time and literature in Idyll 24 / Gary Vos -- Eros and the Erotes : from the Archaic erotic poetry into Hellenistic epigram and beyond / Maria Kanellou -- Callimachus' Bath of Pallas and the Greco-Egypian Danaids / Leanna Boychenko -- Past and present in the fifth Hymn of Callimachus : mimesis aitiology and reality / Flora P. Manakidou -- Imperial Asia : past and present in Callimachus's Lock of Berenike / M.S. (Marijn) Visscher -- A Hellenistic Hippocrene : poetic inspiration in Apollonius' Africa / Amanda Regan -- Jason the Farmer-King / Ross Jaffe.

"The papers in this volume show how the past 'is present' in a variety of forms and contexts in the work of the Hellenistic poets and how these poets cannot escape dealing with it in depth, often in a creative and intriguing manner, which may help to give further meaning to the present as well. Some papers discuss the subject of past and present from a general point of view, others deal with issues of literary tradition and intertextuality or discuss the connections between past and present as they are used and established on an ideological level. The papers show that the past, though almost 'omnipresent', is never used in a purely antiquarian way. The Hellenistic poets clearly manage to link it to the present in a meaningful way and are able to use it to establish their own position in the literary tradition as well as in issues of ideological importance."-- Provided by publisher