Asclepiades & Leonidas: The Poems Book

Asclepiades of Samos and Leonidas of Tarentum set the course that later Greek epigrammatists would follow in their choice of subject matter. To Asclepiades, the epigram was a vehicle for personal feeling; in the hands of Leonidas the field was broader, dwelling often on the suffering that attends the poor and destitute.

The combined poems by these two writers scarcely exceed 800 lines, making this volume a manageable text for an undergraduate Greek class. It is an excellent introduction to Hellenistic poetry. The epigrams convey a good sense of the Hellenistic ethos without posing some of the daunting vocabulary problems of the major authors of the period.