Lessons in Reading and Ideology

Abstract

Chapter 3 explores the transmission of Greek epigrams outside poetic books, that is, in compilations of texts designed to satisfy an individual’s needs and not for widespread distribution. Therefore the chapter analyses in particular the papyri with selections of and excerpts from literary texts assembled for a use on specific occasions and following personal tastes, collections used in school contexts, as well as ostraca and templates for stonemasons. The chapter detects in such Hellenistic ‘paraliterary’ contexts resonances of contemporary literary production and argues that already in the third century BCE school anthologies trained young readers in the sequential reading of epigrams and served as a means of disseminating Ptolemaic ideology.