This volume unites scholars of classical epigraphy, papyrology, and literature to analyze the documentary habit in the Roman Empire. Texts like inscriptions and letters have gained importance in classical scholarship, but there has been limited analysis of the imaginative and sociological dimensions of the ancient document. Individual chapters investigate the definition of the document in ancient thought, and how modern understandings of documentation may (mis)shape scholarly approaches to documentary sources in antiquity. Contributors reexamine familiar categories of ancient documents through the lenses of perception and function, and reveal where the modern understanding of the document departs from ancient conceptions of documentation. The boundary between literary genres and documentary genres of writing appears more fluid than prior scholarship had allowed. Compared to modern audiences, inhabitants of the Roman Empire used a more diverse range of both non-textual and textual forms of documentation, and they did so with a more active, questioning attitude. The interdisciplinary approach to the "mentality" of documentation in this volume advances beyond standard discussions of form, genre, and style to revisit the document through the eyes of Greco-Roman readers and viewers.

In this book, leading Greek scholars explore the rich and diverse poetry and prose of the long Hellenistic period. Chapters focus on the poets of Alexandria such as Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and Posidippus and on prose texts written in Greek in the Roman Empire. This volume demonstrates the versatility of this literature and examines its multiple cultural affiliations. The Hellenistic writers emerge from this volume as complex, playful, and politically engaged figures, interested in the relationship between culture and society, and far removed from the stereotype of them as distant or elitist. This book makes a major contribution to the study of Hellenistic Greek culture. Susan Stephens is the Sarah Hart Kimball Emerita Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, USA. Her contributions to the study of Hellenistic literature and culture are immense. She is the author of over fifty articles and the author or editor of ten books. Many of these publications have made a significant impact on the study of the ancient world. Her research on the poets of Alexandria and on ancient Greek prose fiction is widely regarded as path-breaking. She is an inspiring and influential teacher who guided and mentored generations of students and is closely associated with Stanford, where she obtained her undergraduate and doctoral degrees and where she taught from 1978 until her retirement.