Eroticism in Ancient and Medieval Greek Poetry

J. C. B. Petropoulos, Eroticism in Ancient and Medieval Greek Poetry. London: Duckworth, 2003. Pp. xiii + 206. ISBN 0-7156-2985-9. $60.00.

Reader, please let me start this review with a smile. When The Classical Bulletin offered me this book for review, the "eroticism" in the title seemed to promise-however wissenschaftlich the setting-a slice of "low enjoyment" (Housman). Ah, the wiles of these publishers! The book itself I found to be a chaste and sober work of most thorough philology. That hardly disappointed me, and if a spicy title helps to sell scholarship, I heartily approve.

Petropoulos (P.) aims, by examining a small aspect of poetry, to demonstrate how one thread passes through and binds ancient Greek and Byzantine, folk and literary culture. One school has rejected the presence of continuity simply on the argument that Byzantine culture is not identical with the ancient. Recent studies, based on a "dynamic and totalising model," taking much from anthropology, have, hopes P., ".. .dispelled the prejudice that cultural discontinuity is a foregone conclusion." Panta rhei is, of course, Greek wisdom. Yet the river is there, and P. shows what stays the same and what things appear in new forms. He has fully satisfied me that he has proved his thesis. The skill with which P. handles methodology shines throughout his book, and since his conclusions have already been commended, we should take a look at this.

Though I noted...