Recensione a: Lucia Floridi (ed.). Lucillio, Epigrammi: Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento

Lucillius, the most cutting Greek epigrammatic poet, amply deserves a modern edition of his poems—and, thanks to Floridi’s excellent book, one of the more significant sources of Martial’s well-known wittiness and sharpness can now be studied and appreciated in a fully satisfactory way. The Greek text and the Italian translation of Lucillius’ 142 epigrams (including five dubia and ten spuria) are preceded by a rich introduction, almost one hundred pages long, where Floridi deals with the poet’s life and his relation to the emperor Nero; his prominent position within the genre of the scoptic epigram; the language and the style of his poems; the structure of his books of epigrams; and his fortune in late Latin, Greek, and Byzantine satiric poetry. Floridi dedicates a long section of her introduction to the manuscript tradition, where she enriches the already copious information given in the introductory pages of her edition of another celebrated epigrammatic poet (Stratone di Sardi: Epigrammi [Alessandria 2007]) by taking into account some other manuscripts (such as the Riccardianus 25) and by discussing some new bibliography, especially F. Maltomini, Tradizione antologica dell’epigramma greco. Le sillogi minori di età bizantina e umanistica (Rome 2008). A specific chapter is dedicated to the versification technique of Lucillius’ epigrams.