This (appropriately slender, given its subject) book is a collection of studies on aspects of Hellenistic poetry published by H. between 1994 and 2015 in various outlets. The book’s main purpose is to increase accessibility to some of these studies that might otherwise be difficult to track down. Inevitably, this means that the thread connecting the studies is at times loose, and the book lacks the cohesion of a monograph or most edited volumes. Nevertheless, the pieces have been assembled with evident care and, especially in the book’s first half, make a compelling case for reading them in conjunction.

Part 1 consists of a 1994 Museum Helveticum article, in which H. demonstrates how an implicit critique or commentary of poetry is often to be found within Callimachus’ poems. Selecting texts that in his view contain overtly metaliterary statements (although further argumentation on how one can safely distinguish between overt and inferred metaliterary passages would be welcome), he observes that they often presuppose other, actual or implied, texts. The echo (ἠχώ) in Callimachus, Ep. 28, for example, is taken as a nod to and a critique of other unoriginal, derivative texts presented as ‘counterpoints’ to Callimachus’ poems; at the same time, the real echo in Callimachus’ epigram is – in its brevity and critical sense – superior to the various acts of imitation. Strongest is the section on the epigrams, which are, as a medium, more naturally geared towards interactions with other texts and media, although the same approach is fruitfully applied to the Hymn to Apollo, too. H. argues that the hymn contains an explanation of itself, that it comprises several markers that distance readers from the narrated religious ceremony, and that the ‘critical’ voice in the hymn constitutes a counterpoint to the song that we as readers think we perceive: in essence, the text contains both a hymn and a reflection on how to write one. The study remains instrumental to our understanding of the Callimachean hymn, even if attractive alternative readings of the presence of different ‘voices’ in the hymn have been put forward since its original publication (see e.g. A. Gramps, The Fiction of Occasion in Hellenistic and Roman Poetry [2021], Chapter 1).

Part 2 consists of three studies on Apollonius’ Argonautica. In Chapter 2 H. explores the ‘enigmatic’ in the Argonautica, concluding that allusive information in the poem is often given in a fragmentary manner, and it is spread across the narrative. In a similar vein, Chapter 3 proposes that all female characters in the Argonautica anticipate, to some extent, the character of Medea – what H. calls Medea’s ‘préfigurations’ – as if Medea is ‘distributed’ over several characters across the narrative. This is an argument in itself prefigured in the work of, for example, R. Hunter, who in his influential 1993 book argues that Hypsipyle and Medea ‘resonate against each other’ and that they look ‘forward and back, creating meaning from similarity and difference’ (R. Hunter, The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies [1993], pp. 47–8), although H. expands this approach to all female characters and proposes that Medea’s fate beyond the end of the Argonautica is constantly foreshadowed. Even geography can have a prefigurative function in Apollonius’ poem, as we learn in Chapter 4, which explores the processes that Apollonius uses to integrate ethno-geography into the epic’s fabric. H. observes that Apollonius’ ventures into geography and ethnology, which are put to the service of mythos and not merely advertise the poet’s knowledge/erudition, are dominated by incompleteness, indeterminacy and transformations. The three chapters follow nicely from each other and offer a sense of unity.

Part 3 consists of two chapters. In the first one H. explores Hector’s posthumous destiny in Lycophron’s Alexandra and how it ties in with Boeotia. He then proceeds to explore further connections of the Alexandra with the region, of which he traces several (including Odysseus’ Theban origins and the Island of the Blessed’s association with Boeotia). Arguing that Thebes (and, by extension, Boeotia) stands for a timeless past, H. proposes that, although any straightforward temporal line connecting the Theban Cycle with the Trojan (with which the Alexandra is more explicitly concerned) is removed, Lycophron nevertheless extends a bridge to the tradition of the Theban Cycle in his desire to encompass in the Alexandra the whole of epic culture. Lycophron’s cryptic ‘tragedy’ is compared in the second chapter with the fragmentary Exagoge of Ezekiel. H. sees in both a dialogue of cultures and an act of ‘translating’. Unlike Ezekiel, who ‘translates’ Jewish culture into the medium of tragedy, Lycophron might not need to worry about translating from one cultural code or language into another, but, in having a messenger relate to Priam a prophecy that he does not understand, he sets up a challenge for his readers – to prove that they belong to the group of those who can decipher cryptic cultural references. What is thus challenged or thematised is participation in Greek culture. Whether Ezekiel aims to show that Jewish culture can beat the Greek one at its own game or he simply tries to demonstrate the common ground between the two cultures, H. astutely observes that a cultural dialogue lies at the core of his tragedy, precisely as in the Alexandra.

Part 4 reprints an influential study on the Helicon Stele (also known as Euthycles Stele, IG VII 4240), which preserves inscriptions important for our understanding of Hesiod’s popularity in Hellenistic times. H. interprets the reference that Hesiod has celebrated the Muses in most beautiful songs/hymns (καλλίστoις ὕμνoις) as evidence that the tradition Pausanias mentions (9.31.4), namely that Hesiod was the author solely of the Works and Days (without the prelude to the Muses), was neither the only one nor the dominant one.

Finally, Part 5 contains two studies on the reception of Hellenistic literature in Ovid and Gregory of Nazianzus. The first chapter looks at how Ovid borrows techniques from Hellenistic poets and occasionally subverts them. It remains significant in setting the tone for studying the effect of Hellenistic poetry on Ovid (in particular, his Metamorphoses), even though exploring Hellenistic intertexts has entered the mainstream of Ovidian scholarship since the study’s original publication. The second chapter, on Gregory of Nazianzus, returns to the tone and approach taken in the comparative study of Ezekiel and Lycophron (second chapter of Part 3). H. demonstrates how Gregory uses classical forms to express a Christian experience against a background of biblical texts. In this way, Gregory attempts (as he proclaims) to prove that Christians are just as good on the literary level, and he also achieves a fusion of cultures in which, it is argued, both are present and mutually illuminative.

Although, regrettably, the book does not offer any unpublished studies by H., its mission of rendering important studies more accessible is a noble one, and it is a reminder of the good scholarship that is out there.