Examining carefully the Egyptian epic hexameter production from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD, especially that of the southern region (Thebaid), this study provides an image of three centuries in the history of the Graeco-Egyptian literature, in which authors and poetry are related directly to the social-economic, cultural and literary contexts from which they come. Laura Miguélez Cavero demonstrates that the traditional image of a “school of Nonnos” is not justified ? rather, Triphiodorus, Nonnus, Musaeus, Colluthus, Cyrus of Panopolis and Christodorus of Coptos are just the tip of a literary iceberg we know of only to some extent through the texts that papyri offer us.