Visioni bucoliche tardoantiche

Abstract

This paper is to be considered a preliminary approach towards a more general study on the generic consciousness of pastoral in Greek late antique literature and art. While bucolic poetry in its proper meaning and genre is quite rare in Greek late literature, there is a great diffusion of pastoral imagery in other genres, like epic and epigrammatic poetry, according to the general trend of generic deconstruction in Late antique literature. Pastoral images could express traditional erotic themes or even emphasize the distress for political troubles evoking a blissful way of life (in the case of an epigram by Cyrus of Panopolis). The strong presence of bucolic images in Nonnus’ Dionysiacs shows the possibilities of reusing pastoral tradition in an epic poem: a part from the traditional theme of pastoral unhappy love, we find pastoral similitudes in description of battles, or pastoral motifs exploited to show the superiority of Dionysiac song to bucolic poetry. The allegorical meaning of pastoral is, in fact, overspread in late poetry, especially referring to poetic investiture, as some exemples from different genres and authors show (Quintus of Smyrne, an ethopeic poem from Oxyrhynchus, the Christian poem of Nonnus, the orphic poem On Stones).