This book explores the dynamics of comic mockery and satire in Greek and Roman poetry, and argues that poets working with such material composed in accordance with shared generic principles and literary protocols. It encourages a synoptic, synchronic view of such poetry, from archaic iambus through Roman satire.

Ralph Rosen is Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

• 1: Dynamics of Ancient Satirical Poetry


• 2: Two Paradigms of Mockery in Greek Myth: Iambe and Demeter; Heracles and the Cercopes


• 3: Where the Blame Lies: The Question of Thersites


• 4: Shifting Perspectives of Comic Abjection: Odysseus and Polyphemus as Figures of Satire


• 5: Satiric Authenticity in Callimachus' Iambi


• 6: Mockery, Self-mockery, and the Didactic Ruse: Juvenal Satires Nine and Five


• 7: Archilochus, Critias, and the Poetics of Abjection