About 25 years have passed since the publication of the Supplementum Hellenisticum by Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Peter J. Parsons (1983) and the Supplementum Supplementi Hellenistici by the same Hugh Lloyd-Jones (2005). Yet, in a relatively short time, the discovery and publication of new papyri and the intense advancement of research and scholarly debate have significantly expanded and improved our textual knowledge on Hellenistic Greek poetry. The quantity and value of these novelties are such to recommend not to prepare a new Supplement of the Supplement(s), but to conduct a comprehensive critical review and an analytical updating of the two previous works, also to include authors and texts previously discarded because they were already included in other corpora such as the Collectanea Alexandrina by J.U. Powell (Oxford 1925). This book, edited by specialists of cultural history and of Hellenistic poetry, proposes a new and original stage along the way of systematic collection, editing and reconstruction of that poetic heritage.

Nearly a century after J.U Powells Collectanea Alexandrina (1925) and some decades after H. Lloyd-Jones and P.J. Parsons Supplementum Hellenisticum (1983) and H. Lloyd-Jones related Supplementum Supplementi Hellenistici (2005), a deep revision and up-dating of the whole of fragmentary Hellenistic poetry was needed, in the light of the intervening great season of critical editions of many of those texts, of widespread research on the poetic fragments themselves and on their witnesses, of increasing bibliography, and of reassessments and new discoveries (especially papyri). A selected team of scholars expert in Hellenistic poetry and culture joined forces to achieve this ambitious goal.