Motivi eziologici e propaganda filo-tolemaica nella poesia ellenistica sul mito di Europa

The most important work about Europa’s myth belonging to the Hellenistic period is the epyllion entitled with the name of the heroine written by the poet Moschus of Syracuse in the second century BC. Alongside this important testimony, there are several brief references to the myth in Hellenistic poetry, among which we will consider in particular Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Lycophron, AP XV 21 (the Syrinx, Theocritus?). These passages, not sufficiently appreciated until now in the reconstruction of the tradition of the myth, deal in different ways with the aetiological theme, behind which it is possible to see political meanings.