20 - Dionysios son of Kalliphon

Summary

This chapter presents a new annotated translation (in loose English iambic pentameters) of the two surviving passages of a didactic poem by one Dionysios son of Kalliphon (early to mid-1st century BC), describing mainland Greece and the Aegean in coastal sequence. The chapter introduction evaluates the evidence for the poem’s date, the Stoic influences upon it, and its debts to Artemidoros and Apollodoros; and offers new prosopographical evidence suggesting that the poet was born into intellectual circles at Athens. The work–perhaps a private tribute to an Old Greece that was being overwhelmed by Roman power–left no discernible legacy and has excited surprisingly little scholarly interest. The translation replicates the acrostic that identifies the author’s name.