Altar poem

An altar poem is a pattern poem in which the lines are arranged to look like the form of an altar. The text and shape relate to each other, the latter usually giving added meaning to the poem itself. The tradition of shaped poetry goes back to Greek poets writing in Alexandria before the Common Era but most examples date from later and were written by European Christian poets during the Baroque period.

Three poems in the shape of altars date from Classical times, starting from the turn of the Common Era, and refer to Pagan altars, even though the last of the poets was a Christian.

The name of the creator of the earliest poem is known to be Dosiadas, but there is no other information about him. As in some of the shaped poems written before it, the 18 lines propose a riddle to which the shape gives a clue. Containing recondite allusions to Greek mythology which have to be penetrated first, they begin “I am the work of the husband of the man-mantled queen, the twice young mortal,” by which one understands Jason, husband of Medea, who had once had to flee for her life in male disguise and who rejuvenated her husband by boiling him in a cauldron. The puzzle continues on for another sixteen longer and shorter lines arranged to represent an altar balanced on a pillared base.

The second poem is also in Greek and was the work of Lucius Julius Vestinus, who describes himself as “High-priest of Alexandria and all Egypt, Curator of the Museum, Keeper of the Libraries of both Greek and Roman at Rome, Supervisor of the Education of Hadrian, and Secretary to the same Emperor.” The 26 lines of the poem represent the altar’s self-referential soliloquy, but the initial letters of the lines are also an acrostic that spell out a complimentary message to the Emperor.

Finally there is a poem written in Latin by Publilius Optatianus Porfirius dating from the first quarter of the 4th century. In this the altar describes its construction as “polished by the craft of the poet's musical art (fabre politavitis artem musica)…I am straightly confined and hold back my edges as they attempt to grow and then, in the succeeding portion, let them spread more broadly." It then elaborates in an equally self-descriptive way. The poem has been judged to be 'undoubtedly a direct imitation of “Jason’s Altar”' by Dosidas.

...
Wikipedia