Epigrammatic literature: an invaluable addition to the textual tradition of early medieval Mathematics or poetry as mathematical text

The short nature of epigrams, a literary genre of Greek short poems characterized by elaborate language, condensed ideas and poetical meter, has been a popular literary genre throughout ancient Greek tradition, ingrained in the culture of the Hellenistic world and beyond. Such has been its success, that it transcended its original situ (as inscription) on the surfaces of public buildings, engravings, anathematic stones, monumental signs and much more, to eventually evolve into a unique bibliographic genre: that of literary epigrams, namely epigrams compiled in a cohesive manuscript work. In the following paper I will explain how current historiographical contexts, expanding methodologies to materials that have been studied in certain views, can produce fruitful information and create a multifaceted narrative about the dissemination of mathematical content, the nature of mathematical text and ultimately the corpuses of texts altogether.