This paper argues that Lycophron's Alexandra follows earlier texts in presenting challenges to Agamemnon's power as metaphorical re-enactments of primordial theogonic conflicts between Zeus and the forces of chaos. The Alexandra figures Agamemnon as Zeus and portrays Achilles, Clytemnestra and Cassandra as chthonic monsters opposed to the Olympian order. Employing intertexts with epic and tragedy, the poem highlights these figures’ symbolic antagonism with Agamemnon–Zeus and their connections to each other. It presents a radically resystematized vision of the cosmos that champions the chthonic, the disordered and the feminine over the Olympian, the ordered and the masculine. Cassandra uses this backdrop to reinterpret her own story, inserting herself into the cosmogonic narrative as a resister of Olympian patriarchy who triumphs over masculine domination.

This article examines the verb τιθαιβώσσω, a Homeric hapax legomenon of unknown meaning and etymology: it reviews its use in Hellenistic poetry and strives to provide a contextually plausible meaning for the verb (‘to sting’), as well as for the related adjective θιβρός (‘stinging, mordant, piquant’). It argues that τιθαιβώσσω is etymologically related to Latin fīgere ‘insert, pierce’, fībula ‘pin’, Lithuanian díegti ‘to poke, sting’, and Tocharian B tsākā- ‘to bite’.

This paper seeks to shed fresh light on the aesthetic and stylistic affiliations of Lycophron's Alexandra, approaching the poem from two distinct but complementary angles. First, it explores what can be gained by reading Lycophron's poem against the backdrop of Callimachus’ poetry. It contends that the Alexandra presents a radical and polemical departure from the Alexandrian's poetic programme, pointedly appropriating key Callimachean images while also countering Callimachus’ apparent dismissal of the ‘noisy’ tragic genre. Previous scholarship has noted links between the openings of the Aetia and of the Alexandra, but this article demonstrates that this relationship is only one part of a larger aesthetic divide between the two poets: by embracing the raucous acoustics of tragedy, Lycophron's poem offers a self-conscious and agonistic departure from Callimachus’ aesthetic preferences. Second, this article considers another way of conceiving the aesthetics of the poem beyond a Callimachean frame, highlighting how Lycophron pointedly engages with and evokes earlier Aristotelian literary criticism concerning the ‘frigid’ style: the Alexandra constructs its own independent literary history centred around the alleged name of its author, ‘Lycophron’. The article proposes that this traditional attribution is best understood as a pen name that signposts the poem's stylistic affiliations, aligning it not so much with the Ptolemaic playwright Lycophron of Chalcis but rather with Lycophron the sophist and a larger rhetorical tradition of stylistic frigidity. Ultimately, through these two approaches, the article highlights further aspects of the Alexandra's aesthetic diversity.

Much of the debate over the authorship and composition date of the Alexandra has focused on the so-called ‘Roman Passages’ (lines 1226–82 and 1446–50). Though attributed to Lycophron, a scholar-poet in the court of Ptolemy II, many scholars, ancient and modern, have questioned whether the extravagant terms used to describe Roman power are appropriate for the early third century BC. Scholars have mostly either settled for the traditional date and assign the ‘Roman Passages’ to the aftermath of the Pyrrhic War or they have dated the passages to the time of the Second Macedonian War. This article offers a new context for the material on Rome, namely the Antiochene War. The new dating is based on the appearance of similar themes in the Alexandra and accounts, both historical and propagandistic, of the Antiochene War. These themes, which include Rome's Trojan origins, the conflict of Europe and Asia, and Rome's conquest of the world, are absent from accounts of the Pyrrhic and Second Macedonian Wars. After establishing a date in the aftermath of the Antiochene War, this article identifies the shadowy figures mentioned in the second ‘Roman Passage’.