Posidippus (epigrammatic poet)


Posidippus of Pella was an Ancient Greek epigrammatic poet.

Life

Posidippus was born in the city of Pella, capital of the kingdom of Macedon as the son of Admetos. He lived for some time in Samos before moving permanently to the court of Ptolemy I Soter and later Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Alexandria, Egypt. An inscription from Thermon in Aetolia records that he was honoured by the Aetolian League in about 264/3 BC. He was friends with the poets Asclepiades of Samos and Hedylus.

Poetry

Twenty-three of Posidippus' poems were included in the Greek Anthology, and several more were quoted in either part or whole by Athenaeus of Naucratis in his Deipnosophistae. Until 2001, based on these remains, it was assumed that Posidippus wrote only about drinking and love. In that year the Milan Papyrus P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309 was recovered from the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy dating to about 180 BC. It contained 112 poems, two of which were previously known to have been written by Posidippus, which address subjects that include events of the court of the Ptolemaic dynasty, gemstones, and bird divination. Because of Posidippus' authorship of these two poems, scholars have concluded that the other poems of the Milan Papyrus were also written by him.
The poems of the Milan Papyrus are grouped into sections, and the papyrus largely preserves the section headers for the surviving poems:
  1. On Stones
  2. On Omens
  3. Dedications
  4. Epitaphs
  5. On Statues
  6. On Equestrian Victories
  7. On Shipwrecks
  8. On Cures
  9. Characters

  10. Editions