This volume is the result of a conference on archaic and classical Greek epigram held at Schloss Rauischholzhausen, Germany, in 2005. More broadly, it is the result of a new interest in early Greek epigram, which has arisen over the past twenty years, facilitated by the publication of Hansen's Carmina Epigraphica Graeca in 1983 and 1989 and concentrating, so far, on a limited number of questions (the development of the epigrammatic genre; the influence of stone-epigrams on Hellenistic literary epigrams; ritual and performance; Simonides' epigrams, cf. p. 2 and J. Day, Archaic Greek Epigram and Dedication [2010]), while several topics remain still a desideratum (e.g. a commentary and a comprehensive study of the language of early Greek epigrams).

The book is divided into two parts, ‘Contextualisation’ (Chapters 2–13) and ‘Literarisation’ (Chapters 14–17). There is a rich bibliography and an index, though there is no index locorum, which renders consultation difficult. The introduction by the editors discusses why early Greek epigrams have been analysed in classical scholarship mostly as items with practical functions and rarely as literary texts, suffering in comparison with Hellenistic literary epigrams: (1) the peculiar nature of the material: stone-epigrams belong to an intersection of philology, ancient history and archaeology, which, paradoxically, has made them a marginal subject of each discipline; (2) a corpus consisting of extremely refined epigrams (‘true gems’) alongside simple, highly formulaic ones, due to their ‘accidental’ and not aesthetic selection. In my opinion, the presence of prose counterparts of the same sub-genres, i.e. dedicatory and funerary inscriptions in prose, might also have contributed to this neglect, as the usual division is poetic versus prose genres. Ironically, from the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. onwards some early epigrams were considered fine poetry and therefore attributed to famous poets (e.g. Simonides). Arranged in collections, through which they entered Hellenistic and Medieval anthologies, these poems influenced post-classical as well as modern taste and perspectives on archaic and Hellenistic epigrams. The introduction presents the theoretical approach and aims of the book: ‘on the one hand to contribute to a better understanding of the historical reception of archaic and classical Greek epigram and on the other to clarify the place of archaic and classical Greek epigram in the epigrammatic genre as well as its role in the genre's development from stone to book’.

Part 1 examines the different contexts which determine the meaning of early Greek epigrams: the dialogue between epigram and passer-by (Tueller, Schmitz and Vestrheim; the latter two especially concerned with ‘voice’ features in early Greek epigrams and lyrics); the material or spatial context (Borg on the ‘Chest of Kypselos’ described by Pausanias, on which C. Zizza, Le iscrizioni nella Periegesi di Pausania: commento ai testi epigrafici [2006] may be added to the relevant bibliography; Keesling on Callimachus' dedication – exemplarily analysed as a unit of monument and epigram – as a model for Persian Wars memorials; Lorenz on epigrams on archaic kouroi); the religious context (Furley on dedications; Trümpy on dedications and epitaphs); the historical and political context (Higbie on Persian War epigrams; Petrovic on public epigram and propaganda); the generic/literary context (Gutzwiller on the heroic epitaphs and earlier collections; Wachter on the definition, origin and tradition of the ‘speaking-object’ epigrams).

Part 2 discusses the ‘strict’ literarisation of epigram as a genre and the transition from stone to book which it underwent in Hellenistic times, and also, more innovatively, poetic features of archaic and classical epigrams that can be regarded as forerunners of Hellenistic epigrams. In particular, the papers focus on the narrative strategies (Bowie, who attributes the success of the elegiac couplet as metre for sepulchral and dedicatory epigrams to the influence of sympotic and festive elegiac poetry); language and imagery (Hunter); the art of variation of a theme (Fantuzzi); and the art of description (Bruss).

Among the contributions, some are particularly suggestive. Tueller argues that early Attic epigrams had passer-by specific and independently developed conventions (location in space and time, with the outlines of specific actions: motion, stop, look, lament), and analyses features of passer-by epigrams, such as the designation of the passer-by as ξένος; the dialogue epigrams; the motif of carrying a message as antecedents of features later developed in Hellenistic epigrams.

Petrovic, by examining the process of selection, commission to a poet, persuasion strategies and the wording of some relevant public epigrams, argues that archaic and classical public epigrams had the function of conveying, not a historical truth, but what a given group (at Athens mostly on behalf of the polis) transmitted as ‘truth’ about its system of values and views of the past. This ‘truth’ was shaped in public epigrams to form an exemplum for the coming generations.

Gutzwiller, via a remarkable analysis of the diction, style, structure and metric form of the heroic funerary epigrams collected in the ‘Aristotelian’ Peplos, convincingly argues that they belong to a peculiar epigrammatic sub-genre formed in the classical period, tied neither to an inscription nor a text, but to a story about a hero and his site of burial or veneration. In classical times these heroic epitaphs circulated both orally and written in mythical compendia or local histories; subsequently, during the fourth century b.c., some of them were arranged by a Peripatetic author in the Peplos, not an anthology of epigrams, but a prose catalogue/handbook on mythical events that included epitaphs for heroes.

Fantuzzi admirably treats the two main types of variation on a theme typical of Hellenistic epigram: variation on the themes of other epigrams (i.e. in absentia) and variation operating in companion-pieces (i.e. in presentia). He demonstrates the complex balance of tradition and innovation in the relationship between early stone-epigrams and Hellenistic stone and literary epigrams. He argues that Hellenistic literary epigram was influenced in its taste for the art of variation by the attempt in early verse inscriptions to achieve some poetic variation of the repetitive information they contained. On the other hand, the variation in presentia in early epigrams on stone consisted in alternating complementary voices, being therefore a rhetorical device to heighten the effectiveness of communication (maintained in Hellenistic paired stone-epigrams), while it assumed the characteristic of aesthetic literary emulation only in Hellenistic literary epigram.

Bruss discusses the distinctive features and the development of ecphrastic epigrams, i.e. those which identify the object upon which they are engraved while inviting viewing, instructing in aesthetics, prompting response, from the archaic period down to 300 b.c. By analysing the different speech-act situations and ecphrastic impulses in funerary stone-epigrams of the type σῆμα τοῦ δεῖνος, Bruss identifies in the increased attention to the viewer and act of viewing, in the transformation of the reader into interlocutor and in the prescription of the emotional stance from which the monument should be viewed, important steps towards Hellenistic literary epigrammatic ecphrastic practices.

The book covers several topics on archaic and classical Greek epigram, and does so from different perspectives: the relationship between the material (the artistic support on which epigrams were inscribed) and the immaterial (the poetic text) parts of the epigrams, which involves, inter alia, the question of orality versus written text and reception / reading of the epigrams; the features and praxis of fourth century b.c. epigrams, as distinct from those of both early and Hellenistic epigrams. This interdisciplinary approach makes it useful to specialists from different fields.