Epic Lessons: An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry Book

	Introduction
1	Who Reads Didactic Epic?	1
2	Word of Mouth: Orality and Didactic Poetry from Hesiod to Empedocles	20
3	The Universe as a Book: Hellenistic Literacy and the Poems of Aratus and Nicander	49
4	Roman Renewal: Cicero and Lucretius	78
5	Politics, Power, and Play: Polyphony in Virgil's Georgics and Ovid's Fasti	109
6	Amusements for a Smoky December: Horace on Poetry and Ovid on Eros	146
7	Humans, Nature, and God: Epic Lessons in the First Century	175
8	Resisting Instinct: Hunting, Fishing, Science, and God	194
9	Didactic Dinners: Instruction in Narrative Epic and in the Novel	213
10	A Literary History of Leisure? The Didactic Epic	238
	Bibliography of works cited	252
	Index	265