The Greeks and the Romans produced very interesting didactic poetry: first of all, we must remember the father of this literary genre, Hesiod, and two important Latin authors, Lucretius and Virgil. Another relevant Greek didactic poet is Empedocles, who is highly praised by Lucretius in the first book of De rerum natura. In the fifth century bc Empedocles, who was an aristocrat of Agrigentum, composed a poem On Nature and the Purifications (350 lines of the first work survive and 100 of the second). There is also Aratus of Soli, a Greek poet who flourished in Macedonia in the early third century bc. His only surviving work is the Phaenomena, a book describing the constellations and weather signs. Another name to note is that of Nicander, who flourished in the second century bc near Colophon, in Ionia. He wrote a number of works in both prose and verse, of which two are preserved: the longer one, Theriaca, is a hexameter poem of 958 lines on the nature of venomous animals. The details of this work were taken from the prose writings of Apollodorus, an early third-century writer. The other one, Alexipharmaca, may also have been derived from Apollodorus. It consists of 630 hexameters concerning poisons and their antidotes. Nicander's works were praised by Cicero in De oratore (1.69 de rebus rusticis hominem ab agro remotissimum Nicandrum Colophonium poetica quadam facultate, non rustica, scripsisse praeclare) and imitated by Ovid. Nevertheless, as Plutarch says in De audiendis poetis (16c), in practice they have nothing poetic about them except the metre, and their style is unclear. However, they contain interesting information on the ancient approach to the subjects covered. Lastly, we must mention Horace and his Ars poetica, whose didactic genre is neither philosophy nor the cultivation of fields but literary precepts.
This attractive and up-to-date multidisciplinary volume opens with an introduction by the editors, which summarises the subject by referring to the essays contained therein. We know that since ancient times the fundamental question has been about the relationship between didactic poetry and other poetry. Horace suggests mixing business with pleasure (AP 343 omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci), but he also advises not to be wordy (335 quicquid praecipies, esto brevis). The two editors also quote Thomas De Quincey, who thought that ‘poetry can teach only as nature teaches’ because ‘to teach formally and professedly is to abandon the very differential character and principle of poetry’ (‘The Poetry of Pope’, North British Review, August 1848).
Chapter 1, ‘Knowledge is Power: Dynamics of (Dis)Empowerment in Didactic Poetry’ by O'Rourke, is a chronological survey of didactic poetry. The ancient writers taken into consideration are Hesiod, Nicander and Hellenistic didactic poets (Aratus of Soli, whose work is based on the technical work by Eudoxus of Cnidus), Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid (Fasti and the erotodidaxis’ works), Manilius. O'Rourke's point of view is that didactic poetry generally coincides with periods of political change. For this reason he quotes (p. 24) A. Wallace-Hadrill, according to whom ‘the political and social revolutions of the first century bce … involved a parallel revolution in ways of knowing’ (‘Mutatio morum: the idea of a cultural revolution’, in T. Habinek and A. Schiesaro [edd.], The Roman Cultural Revolution [1997], p. 6).
Chapter 2, ‘Thinking for Yourself: Hesiod's Works and Days and Cognitive Training’ by Canevaro, is about the first didactic author, Hesiod, whose Works and Days Canevaro analyses by a methodology sensitive to cognitive processes. According to Canevaro, in this type of analysis the issues of authorship and autobiography do not matter, since it is the poem that seems didactically and intellectually coherent.
Chapter 3, ‘Homer Ethicus’ by D. Sider, focuses on Homer, who is not generally considered an author of didactic poetry because by the Hellenistic period the category came to be reserved for poems of a scientific sort (astronomical, medical etc.). But ‘Homer himself’, as Sider observes, ‘composed in the hope that he had the power to alter men's perceptions about themselves for the better’ (p. 75).
Chapter 4, ‘Elegiac Pharmacology: the Didactic Heirs of Nicander?’ by F. Overduin, concerns the didactic authors who lived after Nicander: Dionysius Periegetes, also known as Dionysius of Alexandria, author of an Oikoumenes Periegesis, who lived under the emperor Hadrian; the two Oppians, authors of the Halieutica (second century ce) and of the Cynegetica (third century ce). The Nicandrean influence on Dionysius’ poem seems clear. However, Overduin also refers to other writers, such as Servilius Damocrates, author of medical poetry, whose remedies, known to us through Galen, amount to 1,650 lines in iambics, and above all the elegiac poets Andromachus, Eudemus, Aglaias and Philo, who have many elements in common. Andromachus of Crete composed a new theriacum in 67/68 ce. The poet was linked to Nero's court (the emperor is the addressee of the work). Much shorter than Andromachus’ poem is the poem by the unknown doctor Aglai(d)as of Byzantium, inventor of an eye salve (SH 18: as transmitted, the poem's text is not without problems). The work is essentially a recipe for the treatment of cataracts. In addition, as Andromachus’ poem is associated with the similar theriac recipe of Eudemus, that of Aglaias is similar to a verse recipe by Philo of Tarsus. It is unclear whether the authors of these works were technical experts or others who found their material in pharmacological prose sources. All of these poems certainly reflect an elite culture and the pleasure of playful learning.
Chapter 5, ‘Name Puns and Acrostics in Didactic Poetry: Reading the Universe’ by M.R. Gale, relates to wordplay and to the acrostics present in ancient didactic poetry. Instances of etymological paronomasia can be found in Empedocles, Aratus, Nicander, Lucretius, Virgil and Grattius, while acrostics can be found in Aratus (e.g. the famous ΛΕΠΤΗ in the proem, on his own name, probably an echo, as Gale notes [p. 126], of the Homeric ΛΕΥΚΗ at Il. 24.1–5), Nicander (who incorporates acrostics of his own name into each of his two surviving works), Ennius, Lucretius (P. Thibodeau, mentioned on p. 130, reported the presence of the acrostic MEMMI in lines 4.1015–19), Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid (one thinks of the MARS acrostic at 7.601–4), Grattius’ Cynegetica (at 494–8 we find the acrostic ASCRA) and Manilius (his acrostics are contained in Books 1 and 2).
Chapter 6, ‘Ovid's Ars Poetica: Metapoetic Didactic in the Ars Amatoria’ by E. Giusti, relates to both Ovid and Horace. Giusti suggests that Ars Amatoria ‘acquires additional meaning when read … vis-à-vis Horace's Ars Poetica as a set of instructions not on “how to love” but on “how to to be a love poet”’ (p. 126). The suggestion that Ovid's Ars Amatoria may be read as an Ars Poetica has previously been put forward by A. Deremetz (1995), but while Deremetz sees Ovid as an imitator of Horace, other scholars read the relationship under the sign of aemulatio.
Chapter 7, ‘Didactic and Apocalyptic Turns: Clarity and Obscurity, Homer and Hesiod in the Sibylline Oracles’ by H. Van Noorden, is about the extant corpus of Sibylline Oracles, in which there are various forms of didaxis. The corpus, composed by Jews and Christians from the second century bce onwards, is presented in Greek hexameters and as the work of a pagan prophetess, the Sybil, who is first mentioned by Heraclitus. The oracles draw on Jewish and Christian scripture but also on Homer (combined with Hesiod), Hesiod (blended with Genesis) and other pagan authors.
Chapter 8, ‘Embodied Teaching: Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi and the Babylonian Didactic Tradition’ by J. Haubold, ‘asks what classicists might learn from reading ancient Babylonian didactic literature’ (p. 205). In other words Babylonian texts should not be considered as simply precursors of classical didactic. The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer or Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi was very popular in scribal circles of the first millennium bce. In fact, even if it is not known exactly when it was composed, it is preserved in some sixty witnesses. The author teaches patience in adversity and to have faith in the supreme god, Marduk, but questions the wisdom of conventional didactic. Haubold notes that to focus on the Mesopotamian roots of classical didactic ‘can distort our perception of Babylonian literature’ (p. 219). For this reason, in his opinion, it would not be significant to consider if Babylonian literature influenced Hesiod's work.
The topic of Chapter 9, ‘Fauna and Erotic Didactics in Archaic Greek and Kalanga Oral Wisdom Literatures’ by M. Moyo, is the ways in which symbolic animals are used in the depiction of human erotic love in archaic Greek and Kalanga didactic literature (Kalanga refers to a people and language in Zimbabwe and Botswana). In spite of differences, the archaic Greek and oral Kalanga traditions have many points of comparison. Kalanga and archaic Greek societies are both patriarchal, and in these societies women can experience oppression by men. In particular, both traditions make use of animal imagery to discuss matters of love and related issues. The comparison shows that, while canine imagery is used in very similar ways in both Greek and Kalanga literature, the category of equine imagery is not so present in the Kalanga tradition for the reason that the donkey is not native to southern Africa.
The tenth and last chapter, ‘Scientia Demands the Latin Muse: the Authority of Didactic Poetry in Early-Modern Scotland’ (the title resembles that of J. Naiden's 1952 article ‘Newton Demands the Latin Muse’) by D. McOmish, is a provisional assessment of the role played by didactic Latin poetry in Scotland and Europe in the early modern period. The influence was really sweeping. In fact, we can see this in David Kinloch's poetry on topics of medicine (influenced by Lucretius and Virgil's Georgics), George Buchanan's De Sphaera (influenced in particular by Virgil), Andrew Melville, author of the Stephaniskion, on theology and statecraft, who reworks both Virgil and Lucretius, and Professor Adam King on astronomy, who wrote supplements to Buchanan's unfinished work (also influenced by Manilius and Jacopo Sannazaro).
In conclusion, this volume may be certainly considered a leading guide to the subject, which it treats from different angles and with often very original arguments.
