Literary elaboration of epigrams seems to have risen with competition for attention in the Hellenistic world. Competition for attention increased with the fragmentation of Alexander the Great’s empire after his death in 323 BCE. The Milan Papyrus is a deliberately arranged collection of epigrams attributed to Posidippus (c. 310 – 240 BCE). It probably comes from the third century BCE. Posidippus was born in the Pella, the capital of Macedonian. He migrated to Alexandria, Egypt, to live under the patronage of the Ptolemies.^ This was also about the time of the founding of the Royal Library of Alexandria. The Royal Library was an institution of literary competition. Epigrams developed into a sophisticated, allusive, highly intertextual competitive field. That’s apparent in the epigrams of Catullus (c. 85 -54 BCE), Martial (c. 40 – 103 CE), and the Greek Anthology.