Asklepiades of Samos
Asklepiades of Samos was an ancient Greek poet. He lived around the turn of the fourth to the third century BC. BC and was an important representative of the Ionian-Alexandrian school . His poems, of which only fragments have survived, were mainly epigrams of an erotic nature. The Asclepiadean stanza is named after him.
It is impossible to estimate how much of the Hellenistic poet has been lost. Numerous poems are ascribed to Asklepiades, or at least his authorship is presumed. These include melic poems , choliambes , epic poetry and hymns . He wrote a total of 33 epigrams, 13 of which are considered spurious.
Asklepiades dealt with the topic of love in a wide range from the description of emotional states to behavior in certain situations of a love relationship. Topics include missed dates , jealousy, invitations and pleasures over wine, description of passions, and attempts to fight off Cupid.
The authorship of numerous motifs is attributed to the poet, which were used again and again in the later Greek love poetry and by the Roman elegists , as well as in the poetry of Horace . Among them is the motto of the later carpe diem , which Asklepiades saw as a counter-image to death. On the one hand, he spoke of the love of boys and, on the other hand, of the unchanged feminine charm, the “Eros, which also sits in the folds” and survives, and defended a dark-skinned woman. The pictorial ideas of Eros as a little archer and Aphrodite throwing arrows are said to go back to him. He also wrote a first paraclaus sithyron , the address to the locked door of the beloved, which became an integral part of elegiac poetry.
The poems are very streamlined by their form. Nevertheless, the poet tried to emphasize their simple effect and their apparent lightness, while at the same time choosing a clear and artistic language. This 'work with the file', which was reduced to the essentials, was typical of Alexandrian poetry. According to the genre, many poems express moods such as melancholy, resignation about the contemporary state of society or joy through humor and irony. At times Asklepiades built small dialogue scenes into his poems, which in longer epigrams took on the character of a mimus in miniature.
There was a dispute in the Alexandrian School over the merit of using epigrams. The poet Callimachus of Cyrene , who was influenced by Asklepiades, but wrote more grave and consecration pigrams, counted him as one of his enemies because of his excellent focus on erotic and Aeschrological topics, while Asklepiades was good friends with the poet Theocritus .
literature
- Richard Reitzenstein : Asklepiades 20 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 1625-1627.
- Enzo Degani: Asklepiades of Samos. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , column 87 f.
- Doris Meyer: Asklepiades of Samos . In: Bernhard Zimmermann , Antonios Rengakos (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity. Volume 2: The Literature of the Classical and Hellenistic Period. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-61818-5 , pp. 245-251
Web links
- Literature by and about Asklepiades von Samos in the catalog of the German National Library
Remarks
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Asklepiades of Samos |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Greek poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 4th century BC Chr. |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | unsure: Samos |
| DATE OF DEATH | 3rd century BC Chr. |