Published
June 21, 2021
Keywords
- Strato,
- Greek epigram,
- nightingales,
- obscenity
Copyright (c) 2021 Gabriele Palermo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
In his programmatic epigram 2 Fl., Strato of Sardis addresses the reader warning him not to look for, inter alia, ‘nightingales’ in his poems (l. 3). This term, under the obvious mythological reference to the story of Procne, could hide an obscene double meaning (‘female sexual organ’, attested in a fragment of Archilochus), thus implicitly declaring Strato’s rejection of heterosexual poetry.