Conclusion

Summary

The central aim of this book has been to enrich our reading of these texts, and so its main value resides in the specific readings it has generated. Nevertheless, some more general points have emerged and are here summarised. These authors were not restrained by their medium but rather masters of it, so that their use of verse cannot be fully explained by recourse to the circumstances of production. Their texts are designed to elicit emotional and cognitive responses from the audience that are contingent on form and phrasing. In this sense, they qualify as poetry rather than mere verse. The conclusion traces some implications of this suggestion for the contested question of whether or not verse plays an essential philosophical role for the three authors in question. It then summarises the main points made earlier in the book concerning their role in the history of Greek poetics. Finally, it highlights certain poetic techniques they deploy that would become characteristic of the didactic genre.