Hellenistic poetry: a cosmos in six lines

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Fed up with women, Pygmalion created a female statue. And although his creation was so charming and lifelike that he “gazed on the work of his hands with ardent love,” soon this was no longer enough for the sculptor. He asked Venus, the goddess of love, for a companion that was the living likeness of his work. Venus understood, and the statue came to life.

The story was told by the Roman poet Ovid more than 2,000 years ago. “This narrative had an incredible impact. To this day there is an unending stream of stories reworking this motif, and artists, including painters, have reimagined the scene over and over again,” says Regina Höschele, who has been Professor of Greek Philology at LMU since last July. “What is less well known is that many similar anecdotes have come down to us from ancient Greece. In Ovid, the statue is fictional, but Greek texts contain repeated accounts of men falling in love with actual statues.” There is a particularly large number of anecdotes, for example, surrounding the Aphrodite statue created by the sculptor Praxiteles in the 4th century BC. This is thought to have been the first nude female statue, explains Höschele, who is fascinated by why such stories are told.

People falling in love with statues is just one of the research interests of Höschele, whose work is characterized by the comparative study of texts. “My background is in Latin literature and I find Greek literature incredibly fascinating. Most of all, I’m interested in where these two cultures and literatures meet.” At these interfaces, the philologist investigates Greco-Roman intertextuality, in search for previously undiscovered connections that reveal new layers of meaning.

Captivated by the Greek language from the beginning

Höschele taught herself Greek at the end of her schooldays. “I learned it secretly under my desk,” she recalls with a laugh. “It just gripped me.” She went on to study Classical and Medieval Latin Philology at LMU, where she obtained her PhD in 2007 through the International Doctoral Program “Textuality in the Pre-Modern Period” with a dissertation on epigrams – short poems that originally functioned as inscriptions, but which were also composed for books from the Hellenistic period onward.

After that, she moved to the University of Toronto. “I was very fortunate to get an assistant professorship in Canada directly after my doctorate.” She had research residencies at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Emory University in Atlanta. Since July 2024, Höschele has been Chair of Greek Philology at LMU with a special focus on literary studies.

Clear interactions

“We need to rethink the relationship between Greek literature and its Roman counterpart,” says Höschele. “Scholars have tended to consider Greek literature, which of course begins earlier, separately from Latin literature and deny references to Roman literature in Greek works. But there are centuries in which these literatures and cultures existed side by side and where there are clear interactions, including on the Greek side.”

Among other things, Höschele is currently researching an anthology of epigrams that was compiled under the reign of Emperor Nero, the so-called Garland of Philip of Thessalonica. In this collection, Philip ‘wove’ epigrams from the first century BC and the first century AD – that is to say, from predecessors and contemporaries – into a ‘garland’, together his epigrams of his own.

The anthology should be seen as a metaphor, proposes Höschele: “I think that as a whole, this garland forms a sort of map of the Roman Empire. Various regions of the world are evoked in many of the poems. It’s really a portrait of this empire, made up of many little mosaic tiles, which give an impression of the variety of regions, cities, and cultures.” Höschele demonstrates the presence, for example, of allusions in the poems to the Roman national epic, Vergil’s Aeneid. “An epigram has only six lines, but you can spend hours following its intertextual traces. In such epigram anthologies, moreover, poems placed alongside each other enter into a dialog. When you read them in sequence, it opens up a whole cosmos.”

Höschele is also researching a work from late antiquity – the Dionysiaca, written by Nonnus in the 5th century AD, which tells of the birth and deeds of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. “This is the longest surviving Greek epic. It was created at a time when Christianity had a strong status and influence, when the old world of pagan gods was being opposed.” Höschele would like to undertake a new German translation of the Dionysiaca. “It’s such a brilliant text and yet it’s been hard to access for general readers in German.”

She describes her first months as professor at LMU as “wonderful.” Her students are interested and engaged and teaching is a lot of fun. After so many years abroad, the philologist also brings a new perspective to her subject from her time in North America, where she experienced a discourse that calls into question the discipline’s self-image. She hopes for similar developments to occur in Europe, with more space being accorded, alongside research, to reflection on the subject itself, its role and history.