Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Genre, Tradition and Individuality - Monica Gale Part I: Framing Epics: Epic, Didactic and Related Genres 1. Getting the Measure of Heroes: The Dactylic Hexameter and Its Detractors - Llewelyn Morgan 2. Politian's Ambra and Reading Epic Didactically - Andrew Laird 3. The Story of Us: A Narratological Analysis of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura - Monica Gale 4. From Didactic to Epic: Georgics 2.458 - 3.48 - Damien Nelis Part II: Genre and Tradition: Virgil and After 5. Virgil's Corycius Senex and Nicander's Georgica: Georgics 4.116-148 - Stephen Harrison 6. Tradition and Originality: Allusion in Valerius Flaccus' Lemnian Episode - Ray Clare 7. The Repetitions of Hypsipyle - Bruce Gibson 8. Claudian: The Epic Poet in the Prefaces - Catherine Ware Part III: Receptions: Reinventing Classical Epic 9. Approaching Christian Epic: The Preface of Juvencus - Roger Green 10. Virgilian Imperialism, Original Sin and Fracastoro's Syphilis - Philip Hardie 11. The Aeneid and Twentieth-Century Welsh Poetry - Ceri Davies Index Locorum General Index