Avenging Vipers: Tragedy and Succession in Nicander's Theriaca

This article examines Nicander's description of the mating habits of the viper as an example of how his biological information and his literary engagement with earlier Greek poetry influence each another. Nicander claims that female vipers kill their mates during copulation, and are then in turn killed by their babies during childbirth, "avenging" their father's death. I trace the intertexts that shape the passage from Herodotus to Aeschylus to Lycophron. Allusions to these authors allow Nicander to draw parallels between the violent reproductive cycle of vipers and literary succession of Hellenistic poets engaging with Classical authors of the past.