Literature Hellenistic period

relief menander , new comedy masks (roman, ad 40-60) - masks show 3 new comedy stock characters: youth, false maiden, old man. princeton university art museum

the hellenistic period saw rise of new comedy, few surviving representative texts being of menander (born 342/1 bc). 1 play, dyskolos, survives in entirety. plots of new hellenistic comedy of manners more domestic , formulaic, stereotypical low born characters such slaves became more important, language colloquial , major motifs included escapism, marriage, romance , luck (tyche). though no hellenistic tragedy remains intact, still produced during period, yet seems there no major breakthrough in style, remaining within classical model. supplementum hellenisticum, modern collection of extant fragments, contains fragments of 150 authors.

hellenistic poets sought patronage kings, , wrote works in honor. scholars @ libraries in alexandria , pergamon focused on collection, cataloging, , literary criticism of classical athenian works , ancient greek myths. poet-critic callimachus, staunch elitist, wrote hymns equating ptolemy ii zeus , apollo. promoted short poetic forms such epigram, epyllion , iambic , attacked epic base , common ( big book, big evil doctrine). wrote massive catalog of holdings of library of alexandria, famous pinakes. callimachus extremely influential in time , development of augustan poetry. poet, apollonius of rhodes, attempted revive epic hellenistic world argonautica. had been student of callimachus , later became chief librarian (prostates) of library of alexandria. apollonius , callimachus spent of careers feuding each other. pastoral poetry thrived during hellenistic era, theocritus major poet popularized genre.

this period saw rise of ancient greek novel, e.g., daphnis , chloe , ephesian tale.

around 240 bc livius andronicus, greek slave southern italy, translated homer s odyssey latin. greek literature have dominant effect on development of latin literature of romans. poetry of virgil, horace , ovid based on hellenistic styles.