oa Drie broers en een schipbreukeling

In this article I will apply an intertextual perspective to a selection of epigrams from the Greek Anthology in order to assess the role of variation within these epigrams. Within the tradition of the literary epigram, the element of variation had always been important, yet some Hellenistic and Imperial epigrammatists, such as Archias and Zosimus, took this dimension of the genre to extremes, in creating strings of epigrams which intentionally vary on their Imperial models and on their Imperial models´ Hellenistic models. This article charts some of these epigrammatic ‘chain reactions’: the poems on the three hunting brothers Damis, Clitor and Pigres, the birthday epigrams of Leonides of Alexandria, the epigrams on the shipwrecked Antheus, and several epigrams on ships that were destroyed prematurely. All serve to assess the way in which intertextual processes develop within the epigrammatic tradition, and to show that such a perspective is essential to their appreciation.