Les images dans les Alexipharmaques de Nicandre

Abstract

In this article I show how Nicander, in his Alexipharmaca, reappropriates a standard epic practice, the use of similes, and how he uses these for ends that are not purely ornamental, but which answer as much to the construction of his hexameter poem as to the mythological or metapoetic discourse into a technical one. But the similes are not only a window open on another discursive type: they are also at times fully operative in the technical discourse and so take full part in medical description.

Keywords

• Hellenictic poetry
• Homeric tradition
• metapoetics
• myth
• scientific poetry
• simile