The late Roman Alcestis and the applicability of generic labels to two short narrative poems

It is undeniable that in late antique literature, next to long hexametric compositions, there is a strong tendency toward miniaturization, and indeed within various narrative forms. At the same time, most such poems, despite their minor format, have quite major ‘ambitions’, so to speak, aiming to explore themes so far reserved for grand genres. The two texts on Alcestis, i.e. the one referred to as Alcestis Barcinonensis and the cento Alcesta, are representative of this trend. Both are extremely short (122 and 162 hexameters, respectively), and yet concern themselves with a (par excellence) tragic protagonist, presenting her story in extenso, though understandably with major shortcuts. Both are composed in narrative mode, and yet show similarities with dramatic forms, thus provoking intriguing questions concerning their performative contexts. In addition, one of these texts, the Alcesta, happens to be a Virgilian cento. This material provides excellent grounds for a discussion on late antique approaches to genres and generic divisions, on the applicability of certain generic labels (those coined in antiquity and those invented by modern scholars), and – last but not least – on the reinterpretations of a classical myth in a culture that was already, if not wholly Christianized, at least strongly permeated by Christian concepts of familial love, sacrifice, and (im)mortality