A Companion to Greek Lyric E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1575

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Discover the power of Greek lyric with essays from some of the foremost scholars in the field today 

Recent decades have seen a strong resurgence of interest in Greek lyric, resulting in this topic becoming one of the most dynamic areas of Classical scholarship. In A Companion to Greek Lyric, renowned Classical scholar Laura Swift delivers a collection of essays by international experts and emerging voices that offers up-to-date approaches on the methodology, contexts, and reception of Greek lyric from the archaic to the Hellenistic period. 

This edited volume includes detailed analyses of the poets themselves, as well as a reflection of the current state of play in the study of Greek lyric. It showcases the scope and range of approaches to be found in scholarly work in the field.  

Newcomers to the subject will benefit from the range of contextual and technical information included that allows for a more effective engagement with the lyric poets. Readers will also enjoy:  

• Guidance on working with texts that are mainly preserved as fragments 
• A selection of ways in which lyric poetry has influenced and inspired writers from Rome to the modern era 
• Recommendations for further reading that offer a starting point for how to follow up on a particular topic  

Perfect for undergraduate and master’s students taking courses on Greek lyric or survey courses on classical literature, A Companion to Greek Lyric also belongs in the libraries of students of English or Comparative Literature seeking an authoritative resource for Greek lyric. 

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A COMPANION TO GREEK LYRIC

Edited by

Laura Swift

Open UniversityMilton Keynes, UK

This edition first published 2022© 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Swift, Laura, 1979- editor.Title: A companion to Greek lyric / edited by Laura Swift.Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022. | Series: Blackwell companions to the ancient world | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Contents: Contexts. The lyric chorus / Lucia Athanassaki -- Religion and ritual in early Greek lyric / William Furley -- Epic and lyric / Adrian Kelly -- Commemorating the athlete / Nigel Nicholson -- Aristocracy, aristocratic culture and the symposium / Marek We.cowski -- Politics / Jonathan M. Hall -- Methodol gies and techniques. Papyrology / C. Michael Sampson -- Citation and transmission / Tom Phillips -- Metre and music / Armand D’Angour -- The lyric dialects / Mark de Kreij -- Deixis and world building / Evert van Emde Boas -- Lyric space : Sappho and Aphrodite’s sanctuary / Annette Giesecke -- Sappho, performance, and acting fragments / Jane Montgomery Griffiths -- Authors and forms. Iambos / Klaus Lennartz -- Elegy / Krystyna Bartol -- Stesichorus / P. J. Finglass -- Alcman / Timothy Power -- Sappho / Andre. Lardinois -- Alcaeus / Henry Spelman -- Ibycus and Anacreon / Ettore Cingano -- Solon and Theognis / Ewen Bowie -- Simonides / Richard Rawles -- Pindar / Christopher Brown -- Bacchylides / David Fearn -- The new music / Pauline LeVen -- Dramatic lyric / Laura Swift -- The lyres of Orpheus : the transformations of lyric in the Hellenistic period / A. D. Morrison -- Receptions. Greek iambic and lyric in Horace / Andreas T. Zanker -- Greek lyric at Rome : before and after Augustan poetry / Tobias Allendorf -- The gift of song : German receptions of Pindar / John T. Hamilton -- ‘Anacreon’ in America / Patricia Rosenmeyer -- Greek lyric : a view from the north / William Allan -- Sappho and the feminist movement : twentieth and twenty-first centuries / Marguerite Johnson -- Ann Carson’s lyric temporalties / Hannah Silverblank -- Greek lyric and Pindar in Brazil / Robert de Brose.Identifiers: LCCN 2021021056 (print) | LCCN 2021021057 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119122623 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119122647 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119122654 (epub) | ISBN 9781119122661 (ebook)Subjects: LCSH: Greek poetry--History and criticism. | Lyric poetry--History and criticism. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays.Classification: LCC PA3092 .C65 2022 (print) | LCC PA3092 (ebook) | DDC 881.009--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021056LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021057

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Contents

Cover

Series page

Title page

Copyright

Abbreviations and Standard Editions

Author Biographies

Preface

SECTION 1 Contexts

1 The Lyric Chorus

2 Religion and Ritual in Early Greek Lyric

3 Epic and Lyric

4 Commemorating the Athlete

5 Aristocracy, Aristocratic Culture, and the Symposium

6 Politics

SECTION 2 Methodologies and Techniques

7 Papyrology

8 Citation and Transmission

9 Meter and Music

10 The Lyric Dialects

11 Deixis and World Building

12 Lyric Space: Sappho and Aphrodite’s Sanctuary

13 Sappho, Performance, and Acting Fragments

SECTION 3 Authors and Forms

14 Iambos

15 Elegy

16 Stesichorus

17 Alcman

18 Sappho

19 Alcaeus

20 Ibycus and Anacreon

21 Solon and Theognis

22 Simonides

23 Pindar

24 Bacchylides

25 The New Music

26 Dramatic Lyric

27 The Lyres of Orpheus: The Transformations of Lyric in the Hellenistic Period

SECTION 4 RECEPTIONS

28 Greek Iambic and Lyric in Horace

29 Greek Lyric at Rome: Before and After Augustan Poetry

30 The Gift of Song: German Receptions of Pindar

31 “Anacreon” in America

32 Greek Lyric: A View from the North

33 Sappho and the Feminist Movement: Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

34 Anne Carson’s Lyric Temporalities: Desire, Immortality, and Time in the Fragments of Sappho and Stesichorus

35 Greek Lyric and Pindar in Brazil

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1 P.Fouad inv. 239: lyrics...

Figure 7.2

P.Oxy

. 25...

Figure 7.3 Excavating for papyri at Oxyrhynchus...

Figure 7.4

P.Tebt

. 2...

Figure 7.5

P.Tebt

. 2...

Figure 7.6

PSI

13.1300...

Figure 7.7 Critical apparatus of the “...

Figure 7.8 Excerpt from the “new...

Figure 7.9 Excerpt from the “new...

Figure 7.10

P.Köln

...

Figure 7.11

P.Köln

...

Figure 7.12

P.Oxy

. 26...

Figure 7.13

P.Oxy

. 10...

Figure 7.14

P.Oxy

. 21...

Figure 7.15

P.Oxy

. 35...

Figure 7.16

P.Oxy

. 22...

Figure 7.17 P. Berol. inv. 9875 (= Timotheus...

Figure 7.18 An excerpt from British Library...

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1 A simplified typology of Text...

Chapter 18

Figure 18.1 Attic red-figure kalyx-krater...

Figure 18.2 Red-figured kalathos attributed to...

Guide

Cover

Series page

Title page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Standard Editions

Author Biographies

Preface

Begin Reading

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

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Abbreviations and Standard Editions

Allen

Allen, A. 1993.

The Fragments of Mimnermus. Text and Commentary

. Stuttgart.

AP

Paton, W. R. 1917–2014.

The Greek Anthology

. Vol. I (2014):

Books

1-5, revised by Michael A. Tueller. Vol. II (1917):

Books

6–8. Vol. III (1917):

Book

9. Vol. IV (1918):

Books

10–12. Vol. V (1918):

Books

13–16. Cambridge, MA.

Bernabé

Bernabé, A. 1987 (1996

2

).

Poetae Epici Graeci. Testimonia et fragmenta

. Pars I, Leipzig.

Campbell

Campbell, D. A. 1982–1993.

Greek Lyric. Vol I

(1982):

Sapppho and Alcaeus

.

Vol II

(1988)

Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman

.

Vol III

(1991)

Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others

.

Vol

IV

(1992)

Bacchylides, Corinna, and Others. Vol V

(1993)

The New School of Poetry and Anonymous Songs and Hymns

. Cambridge, MA.

CEG

Hansen, P. A. 1983–9.

Carmina Epigraphica Graeca

. Berlin.

CIG

Boeckh, A. 1825-60.

Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum

. Berlin.

CLGP

Commentaria et lexica Graeca in papyris reperta, Pars I

:

Vol. 1, Fasc. 2.2

, edited by A. Porro, M. Farioli, M. Molfino (Berlin 2016).

Consbruch

Consbruch, M. 1906.

Hephaestionis Enchiridion

. Leipzig.

da Rios

da Rios, R. 1954.

Aristoxeni Elementa Harmonica

. Rome.

Daviesand Finglass

Diehl

Diehl, E. 1952.

Anthologia Lyrica Graeca

. 3

rd

edn. Leipzig.

D-K

Diels, H.

Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker

6

(3 vols; rev. W. Kranz; Berlin 1951–2)

Dr.

Drachmann, A. B. 1903–27.

Scholia Vetera in Pindari Carmina

. Leipzig.

Et. Gen

The

Etymologicum Genuinum

, edited by F. Lasserre and N. Livadaras,

Etymologicum Magnum Genuinum. Symeonis Etymologicum una cum Magna Grammatica. Etymologicum Magnum auctum

(2 vols. [α–β only]; Rome and Athens 1976-92). C. Calame,

Etymologicum Genuinum. Les citations de poètes lyriques

(Rome 1970). G. Marcovigi, “Le citazioni dei lirici corali presso l’Etymologicum Genuinum – edizione comparata,” (1970):1–49.

F

Davies, M. and Finglass, P. J. 2014.

Stesichorus: The Poems

. Cambridge

FGrH

Jacoby, F. et al. 1923.

Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker

Leiden, Boston, Cologne.

FHG

Müller, C. 1941–70.

Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum

. Paris.

Fornara

Fornara, C. W. 1983.

Translated Documents of Greece & Rome

, vol. 1:

Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War

. Cambridge. 2

nd

edn.

Gentili-Prato

Gentili, B. and Prato, C. 1979-1985.

Poetae elegiaci. Testimonia et fragmenta

. 2 vols. (2

nd

edition of vol 2: 2002)

Gerber

Gerber, D. E. 1999.

Greek Elegiac Poetry from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC

. Cambridge, MA

Gow

Gow, A. S. F. 2008.

Machon: The Fragments

. Cambridge.

Harder

Harder, A. 2012.

Callimachus: Aetia

. Oxford.

K-A

Kassel, R. and Austin, C. F. L. eds. 1983–

Poetae Comici Graeci

(8 vols; Berlin and New York.

Kaibel

Kaibel, G. 1886–90.

Athenaei Naucratitae Dipnosophistarum libri XV

. Leipzig.

IC

Guarducci, M. 1935.

Inscriptiones Creticae Opera et Consilio Friederici Halbherr Collectae

. Rome.

IG

1873–.

Inscriptiones Graeci

. Berlin.

Jocelyn

Jocelyn, H. D. 1967,

The Tragedies of Ennius

.

The Fragments Edited with an Introduction and Commentary

. Cambridge.

LP

Lobel, E. and Page, D. L. 1955. Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta. Oxford.

Leo

Leo, F. 1895–6.

Plauti comoediae

. 2 vols. Berlin.

Lesher

Lesher, J. H. 1992.

Xenophanes of Colophon. A Text and Translation with a Commentary

. Toronto.

LIMC

1981–99.

Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae

. Zürich, Munich and Düsseldorf

Maehler

Maehler, H. 1982.

Die Lieder des Bakchylides

. Leiden.

Manuwald

Manuwald, G. 2012.

Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta. Vol. 2: Ennius, Göttingen

Martano

Martano, A. 2012.

Praxiphanes of Mytilene and Chamaeleon of Heraclea

. London.

ML

Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D. M. 1988.

A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC

. Oxford. Revised edn.

PCG

Kassel, R. and Austin, C. F. L. 1983–.

Poetae Comici Graeci

. Berlin and New York.

Pf.

Pfeiffer, R. 1949–53.

Callimachus

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Author Biographies

William Allan studied Classics and Gaelic at Edinburgh University. He is Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, and McConnell Laing Fellow and Tutor in Classics at University College. His publications include Greek Elegy and Iambus: A Selection (Cambridge, 2019).

Tobias Allendorf’s DPhil, on the choruses in Seneca’s tragedies, is in preparation for publication with OUP’s Classical Monographs series. He taught for various colleges and as a Departmental Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics at Oxford, before deciding to leave academia (and the UK) in 2019. He maintains interests in Latin literature, intersections between Latin and English, and the ways in which Latin and English are taught to the next generations.

Lucia Athanassaki is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Crete. Her publications include Mantic Vision and Diction in Pindar’s Victory Odes (PhD thesis 1990); Ἀείδετο πὰν τέμενος (2009); Apolline Politics and Poetics (co-ed. with R. P. Martin and J. F. Miller, 2009); Archaic and Classical Choral Song (co-ed. with E. L. Bowie, 2011); Ιδιωτικός βίος και δημόσιος λόγος στην ελληνική αρχαιότητα και τον διαφωτισμό (co-ed. with A. Nikolaidis and D. Spatharas, 2014); Gods and Mortals in Greek and Latin Poetry (co-ed.with C. Nappa and A. Vergados, 2018). She is presently working on two Lyric and the Sacred (co-ed. with A. Lardinois, Brill) and Plutarch’s Cities (with F. B. Titchener, OUP) and writing a book, provisionally titled Euripides’ Athens. Art, Myth and Politics.

Armand D’Angour is a Professor of Classics at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He has published articles and chapters on the music, literature, and culture of ancient Greece and Rome, and has conducted research into reconstructing the sounds of ancient Greek music. Recent books include Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece (OUP 2018, co-edited with Tom Phillips) and Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher (Bloomsbury 2019).

Krystyna Bartol is Full Professor of Classics at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. She works on Greek lyric poetry, especially on early elegy and iambus. She published a monograph on this topic (Greek Elegy and Iambus. Studies in Ancient Literary Sources, 1993) as well as numerous papers in various classical journals. Her areas of interest (besides Greek lyric poetry) include Greek Imperial prose (Athenaeus, Plutarch) and didactic poetry (Oppian). She has also produced Polish translations (with commentaries) of many Greek authors, among them Ps.- Plutarch, Philodemus, Oppian, and (co-authored) Athenaeus and comici minores.

Ewen Bowie, now an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was Praelector in Classics there from 1965 to 2007, and successively University Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature in Oxford University. He has written on early Greek elegiac, iambic and melic poetry; Aristophanes; Herodotus; Hellenistic poetry; and many aspects of Greek literature and culture under the Roman Empire. He has published a commentary on Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (CUP 2019); edited a collection entitled Herodotus. Narrator, scientist, historian (de Gruyter 2018); and co-edited collections entitled Archaic and Classical Choral Song (de Gruyter 2011) and Philostratus (CUP 2009).

Christopher G. Brown is William Sherwood Fox Professor of Classics in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He has written on a wide range of Greek poetry, and is currently the editor of Phoenix, the journal of the Classical Association of Canada.

Ettore Cingano is Professor of Greek Literature at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. He has edited and commented on Pindar’s Pythians 1 and 2 for the Fondazione Valla and has published extensively on the epic cycle, on the Hesiodic corpus, on lyric poetry from Stesichorus to Bacchylides, on early mythography and local traditions. Among his most recent publications: “A Fresh Look at the Getty Hexameters: Style, Diction, Tradition and Context,” in C. Antonetti (ed.), Gli Esametri Getty e Selinunte: testo e contesto (2018); “The early antecedents for the representation of strong-minded women in Greek tragedy,” in G.B. D’Alessio, L. Lomiento, C. Meliadò, G. Ucciardello (ed.), Il potere della parola. Studi di letteratura greca per Maria Cannatà Fera (2020).

Robert de Brose graduated summa cum laude in Classics from the University of São Paulo with a thesis on the performance of Pindaric epinikia. He is currently Professor of Classics and Translation at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil, as well as member of the Graduate Programme of Translation Studies at that same institution. He has published on Ancient Greek lyric and poetics (mainly Pindar), its receptions and translation. He is currently working on a complete translation of Pindar’s odes and fragments, as well as on a translation of Greek lyric, and a handbook on Greek meter.

Mark de Kreij is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek and Papyrology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. His research ranges from linguistics to papyrology, and in his current project he studies the material and documentary evidence for the reading, composition, and performance of Greek lyric in Roman Egypt.

Evert van Emde Boas is Associate Professor in Classical Philology at Aarhus University. He previously held posts at the University of Oxford and at various universities in the Netherlands. His research focuses on the application of modern linguistic and cognitive approaches to Greek literature. He is the lead author of The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (CUP 2019), author of Language and Character in Euripides’ Electra (OUP 2017), and co-editor of Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature (Brill 2018).

David Fearn is Reader in Greek Literature at the University of Warwick. He has published widely on Greek lyric poetry, including the recent books Pindar’s Eyes: Visual and Material Culture in Epinician Poetry (OUP, 2017), and Greek Lyric of the Archaic and Classical Periods: From the Past to the Future of the Lyric Subject (Brill, 2020), a survey of the state of lyric scholarship.

P. J. Finglass is Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol. He has published a monograph Sophocles (2019) in the series Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics; has edited Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (2018), Ajax (2011), and Electra (2007), Stesichorus’ Poems (2014), and Pindar’s Pythian Eleven (2007) in the series Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries; has co-edited six books, including (with Adrian Kelly) The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (2021) and Stesichorus in Context (2015), and (with Lyndsay Coo) Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy (2020); and edits the journal Classical Quarterly.

William Furley benefited from the freedoms of the European Union when he moved from London to S Germany after completing his BA. Work as research assistant of Konrad Gaiser in Tübingen was followed by a Cambridge PhD supervised by Geoffrey Kirk. Then Furley moved to Heidelberg as Assistent of Albrecht Dihle where he remained, eventually becoming adjunct professor of Greek. Visiting professorial appointments were at Saarbrücken, Tübingen, Mannheim, London, Catania, Lyon. His main work is in the fields of Greek religion, Menander, and literary papyrology.

Annette Giesecke is the Elias Ahuja Professor of Classics at the University of Delaware. She is a specialist in the history, meaning, and representation (in literature and the arts) of ancient Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern gardens and designed landscapes. Her work extends to the many cultural “uses” of plants in antiquity: symbolic, religious, culinary, medicinal, ornamental, and technological. Her recent books include: A Cultural History of Plants (6 vols., Bloomsbury: 2022), Classical Mythology A to Z (Black Dog and Leventhal: 2021), The Good Gardener? Nature, Humanity, and the Garden (Artifice Books on Architecture: 2015), and The Mythology of Plants (The J. Paul Getty Museum: 2014).

Jonathan M. Hall is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History and Classics at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (1997), Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (2002), A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200–479 BCE (2nd ed., 2014), Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian (2014), and Reclaiming the Past: Argos and its Archaeological Heritage in the Modern Era (2021), as well as numerous articles and chapters on the political, social, and cultural history of ancient Greece.

John Hamilton is the William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Publications include: Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the Classical Tradition (2004); Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language (2008); Security (2013); Philology of the Flesh (2018); and, most recently, Über die Selbstgefälligkeit (“On Self-Complacency,” 2021).

Marguerite Johnson is Professor of Classics at The University of Newcastle, New South Wales. Her research expertise is predominantly in the area of ancient Mediterranean cultural studies, particularly in representations of gender, sexualities and the body. These interests also intersect with her work in contemporary debates surrounding feminism, LGBTIQ histories, and related issues. She also works in Classical Reception Studies, with an emphasis on colonial Australasia.

Adrian Kelly is Tutorial Fellow in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford, and Associate Professor and Clarendon University Lecturer in Classics at the University of Oxford. He has recently co-edited (with P. J. Finglass) The Cambridge Companion to Sappho (Cambridge, 2021) and (with Christopher Metcalf) Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Ancient Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge, 2021), and he is completing a Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics commentary on Homer, Iliad Book XXIII.

André Lardinois is Professor of Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD degree from Princeton University in 1995, after studying Classics at the Free University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University. His main field of study is early Greek poetry. Among his publications are Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton 2001), edited with Laura McClure; Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works (Cambridge 2014), with Diane Rayor; and The Newest Sappho: P. Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs. 1-4 (Leiden 2016), edited with Anton Bierl.

Klaus Lennartz is Associate Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Hamburg. He is the author of Non verba sed vim: Kritisch-exegetische Untersuchungen zu den Fragmenten der archaischen römischen Tragödie (1994) and of various articles on classical and mediaeval texts. In the field of greek and latin iambos, he published on Archilochus, Hipponax, and Catullus, and gave a detailed view of this poetic genre in his Iambos: Philologische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte einer Gattung in der Antike (2010).

Jane Montgomery Griffiths is a multi award winning actor, playwright & academic. She has performed with theatre companies across the UK & Australia & her plays have been produced by Malthouse Theatre, NIDA & ABC Radio National. “Sappho…in 9 Fragments” was short listed for the NSW and Victorian Premiers’ Literary Awards & is published by Currency Press. Jane was formerly Professor of Theatre Practice & Director of Monash University’s Centre for Theatre & Performance.

A.D. Morrison is Professor of Greek at the University of Manchester, where he has taught since 2001. His books include The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2007), Apollonius Rhodius, Herodotus and Historiography (Cambridge, 2020) and (as co-editor) Ancient Letters (Oxford, 2007) and Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science (Oxford, 2013). Current projects include a commentary on Callimachus for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series, a G&R New Survey on Hellenistic poetry and (since 2016) co-directing the AHRC project on Ancient Letter Collections.

Nigel Nicholson is the Walter Mintz Professor of Classics at Reed College, where he has also served as the Dean of the Faculty. His research circles around Pindar, athletics, medicine, and Sicily, and he is the author of three books: Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2005), The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West: Epinician, Oral Tradition and the Deinomenid Empire (Oxford University Press, 2016), and The Rhetoric of Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2019), jointly authored with Dr. Nathan Selden. In 2005, he was named Oregon’s Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Pauline A. LeVen (PhD Princeton & Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris) is Associate Professor of Classics at Yale University. She is the author of The Many-Headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry (Cambridge, 2014), which received the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Yale College Prize for outstanding publication; and Music and Metamorphosis in Graeco-Roman Thought (Cambridge, 2021). She has published widely on Greek poetry, musical culture, and literary criticism, and co-edited, with Sean Gurd, A Cultural History of Western Music, vol.1: Antiquity (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Her new monograph is entitled Posthuman Lyric: Greek Poetry and the Anthropocene.

Tom Phillips is Lecturer in Classical Literature at the University of Manchester. His publications include Pindar’s Library: Performance Poetry and Material Texts (Oxford, 2016), Untimely Epic: Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (Oxford, 2020), and articles on Greek and Latin lyric poetry.

Tim Power is Associate Professor of Classics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. His research focuses mainly on the poetry of archaic and classical Greece, and its various contexts of production, performance, and reception. A current project deals with the representation of singing in lyric and drama.

Richard Rawles is Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of articles on Greek lyric, tragedy, comedy and Hellenistic poetry, and of monographs on Simonides and on Callimachus.

Patricia A. Rosenmeyer is George L. Paddison Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, having taught previously at Michigan, Yale, and Wisconsin. She has published books in various research areas: The Politics of Imitation: Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition (Cambridge 1992), Ancient Epistolary Fictions: the Letter in Greek Literature (Cambridge 2001), Ancient Greek Literary Letters (Routledge 2006), and The Language of Ruins: Greek and Latin Inscriptions on the Memnon Colossus (Oxford 2018). Her interests also include the reception of Classical literature by English, French, German, and Jewish authors.

C. Michael Sampson is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He is an editor of the Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri (https://papyri.info) and is the author of “Deconstructing the Provenances of P.Sapph.Obbink” (Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 57, 2020: 143–169).

Hannah Silverblank is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Classics at Haverford College, where she teaches courses in Greek, Latin, Comparative Literature, and Religion. She received her DPhil in 2017 from Oxford, where she wrote her dissertation on monstrous voice in ancient Greek epic, lyric, and tragedy. Her research examines nonhuman sociologies and the power-sensitivity of categories in Greek, Latin, and English literature. Her recent research focuses on occulture, disability studies, and classical reception; regarding the two latter subjects, she has recently published an article in Classical Receptions Journal with Marchella Ward entitled “Why does Classical Reception need Disability Studies?”

Henry Spelman is the Leventis Fellow in Ancient Greek at Merton College, Oxford. He is the author of Pindar and the Poetics of Permanence (Oxford University Press, 2018) and the editor of TheCambridge Companion to Pindar (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press).

Laura Swift is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University. She is the author of Archilochus: The Poems (2019), Greek Tragedy: Themes and Contexts (2016), The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric (2010) and Euripides: Ion (2008), as well as numerous articles on Greek tragedy and early Greek poetry. She has also worked with theatre practitioners on how to represent and stage fragmentary Greek poetry as a contemporary art form.

Marek Wecowski (M.A. Warsaw; Ph.D. Paris, with honours) is associate professor of ancient history at the University of Warsaw and member of the Academic Board of the Polish Archaeological Institute at Athens. He was a junior fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and a Fulbright visiting professor at Princeton University. His research interests include archaic Greek poetry, Greek historiography, archaic and classical Greek history and Athenian democracy. His works include the book on The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet (OUP 2014). The English translation of his recent book on the original purpose of Athenian ostracism is in preparation

Andreas T. Zanker holds the position of Assistant Professor of Classics at Amherst College. He has published two monographs - Greek and Latin Expressions of Meaning: The Classical Origins of a Modern Metaphor and Metaphor in Homer: Time, Speech, and Thought - as well a volume (co-edited with Kathrin Winter and Martin Stöckinger) dedicated to the relationship between Horace and Seneca.

Preface

Recent decades have seen a resurgence of interest in Greek lyric, making it one of the most dynamic areas of Classical scholarship. The papyrological discoveries of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have transformed our knowledge of the corpus of Greek lyric, by both expanding the number of texts available, and allowing us access to a range beyond those selected for quotation in later authors. Meanwhile, new methodological approaches to ancient texts have taken the study of lyric beyond the textual and philological handling of fragments. This volume aims to reflect the current state of play in the study of Greek lyric, and showcase the scope and range of approaches to be found in scholarly work in the field. It also seeks to orient the newcomer to the range of contextual and technical information which is needed to engage with the lyric poets, and to work with texts which are mainly preserved as fragments.

The volume is divided into sections which explore Greek lyric from a variety of different perspectives. Section one situates Greek lyric in its historical and performative contexts. While performance context is an important factor in all Greek literature, the close relationship of lyric poetry with ritual, communal, and social life makes it particularly closely bound to time, location, and occasion. Section two has a two-fold purpose: first, it aims to give a clear overview of the technical issues that particularly apply to dealing with Greek lyric, and which can pose difficulties to those new to the field. These include the transmission of the corpus and how scholars work with papyri and manuscripts, the language of lyric, and the role of meter and music. Second, the section showcases some of the methodologies that characterize modern approaches to lyric poetry, and that can help us read these texts in new ways. Section three provides a detailed overview of the authors and forms that constitute Greek lyric, from our earliest texts in the seventh century BC through to classical Athens and the Hellenistic period. Finally, Section four offers insights into the rich reception history of Greek lyric. This section begins with two chapters on the crucially important Roman reception of Greek lyric, followed by other chapters on how lyric poetry has influenced and inspired writers in the modern era. The latter is not meant to be an exhaustive study (which would easily fill a Companion volume of its own), but offers rather a selection of current research into where and when lyric has inspired later authors.

The volume is intended to be accessible to those with little previous knowledge of Greek lyric, including undergraduate and Masters’ students. Some of the more technical topics by their nature pre-suppose a greater level of previous subject knowledge or linguistic ability: in particular, the chapters on dialects, meter, and papyrology are aimed at a reader with some experience of the Greek language. In the rest of the volume, no knowledge of Greek is assumed, and Greek, where included, is translated. Each chapter is followed by a short guide to further reading, to assist the reader who wishes to know what their next steps could be in learning more about the topic or author, while the bibliography at the end provides a much more extensive list of up-to-date research in the field. The list of abbreviations at the front of the volume includes the standard editions and abbreviations used by scholars working in this field.

A volume of this size owes a great deal to many. I am grateful to the contributors themselves for their hard work and wise insights, to the external readers, who made many helpful suggestions on structure and scope, and of course to those at Blackwell-Wiley who guided it through the process of publication. My editorial work was done during a period of research leave funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and I am grateful to the Trust for their generous support. Particular thanks are due to Bill Allan, for his support throughout, and for the index.

SECTION 1 CONTEXTS

CHAPTER 1 The Lyric Chorus

Lucia Athanassaki

The chorus was a group of male, female, or male and female adults, adolescents, or children who sang and danced simultaneously in honor of the gods at periodic Panhellenic and local festivals or smaller cultic events.1 Choruses also celebrated in song and dance important moments and achievements of mortals, such as weddings, athletic victories, civic and religious appointments, and any other activity that a community or a family thought worth celebrating and/or commemorating. Even when choruses celebrated human achievements, however, gods enjoyed an equal, if not greater, share in the eulogy, because divine favor was considered a sine qua non for human success and poets were well aware of the divine wrath and punishment awaiting those who did not pay them proper tribute.2

Traditional songs were available for the wide range of cultic and social occasions, but the great number and variety of Panhellenic and local occasions in the metropolitan and colonial Greek world, the agonistic spirit, and the prosperity of Greek cities during the archaic and early classical period gave rise to a booming song culture that fostered great artistry, creativity, and innovation.3 The Panhellenic and high-profile local festivals were the venues where poets had the opportunity to display their talent and choruses their virtuosity. Like poets, choruses also traveled to Panhellenic and other major sanctuaries for theoric purposes,4 but these also had their own resident choruses, often female. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo offers a precious early testimony of such a chorus on Delos, the famous Deliades, who are also epigraphically attested.5

The gender and number of choreuts6 varied according to the occasion, the honorand, and in all likelihood the region. Apollo, for instance, was worshipped by male, female, and mixed choruses in Delphi, Athens, Delos, and elsewhere.7 Similarly, male choruses performed dithyrambs for Dionysus in Athens, whereas the god is frequently imagined as leading his female Bacchic choruses in Thebes and Delphi. Whereas Attic drama initially required 12 and later 15 choreuts for tragedy and 24 for comedy, the number of choreuts that performed on different occasions in different places must have varied greatly.8 Fifty seems to have been the usual high number, three the low number; divine choruses who were the models for human choruses ranged from fifty (Nereids) to three choreuts (Graces). Athenian dithyrambic choruses required fifty choreuts, but our early sources are not particularly enlightening concerning the number of choreuts that performed other genres, such as hymns, paeans, and partheneia. The young Spartan women who performed Alcman’s composition in Sparta, for instance, seem to give the number ten for the members of their chorus. Another famous performance in honor of Apollo on Delos, the song-dance of Theseus’ fourteen male and female companions, who imitated the hero’s movements in the Labyrinth, gives us the number fifteen for a mixed chorus of young men and women.9

The choral audio-spectacle, much admired in antiquity, is lost for us. As we shall see, however, we can reconstruct aspects of it thanks to self-referential choral statements in the texts that have survived. Epic and dramatic descriptions of choruses, sculptural and vase representations, and later accounts and treatises add substantial information on the nature and the appeal of choral performances.10

The Great Masters of the Archaic and Early Classical Periods

Countless traditional songs must have been sung and danced, and countless new song-dances must have been produced in the Greek cities over the centuries. Of this prolific output little has survived: names of great masters, titles of their songs, and a small number of their poems—mostly in fragments.

Probably all nine poets who were included in the Alexandrian canon of the nine lyric poets tried their hand at choral compositions. Alcman, who lived and composed in 7th-century cosmopolitan Sparta, became famous for his partheneia, choral compositions for female choruses (AP 9.184.9).11 In 1855 a papyrus found in a tomb in Saqqara by Auguste Mariette brought to light a precious song that Alcman composed for a Spartan female chorus. If we take into account the importance of female choruses in the religious and social life of the Greek polis, the surviving fragments are frustratingly few. I shall come back to song-dances for young women in the next section.

At the other side of the Aegean the most famous female poet of the ancient world, Sappho, probably composed songs for both solo and choral performances on Lesbos.12 In the next section I shall look at some evidence that depicts Sappho as a chorodidaskalos, i.e., chorus teacher/leader. The other famous Lesbian poet, Alcaeus, is mostly associated with compositions for the solo voice, but some scholars have suggested the possibility of compositions for choral performance in ritual contexts.13

According to the 10th-century ad dictionary Suda, Stesichorus was the first to set up a chorus to cithara-singing (Sud. Σ 1095 (iv 433 Adler)). This testimony together with the length of Stesichorus’ compositions gave rise to the view that Stesichorus was a citharode, but this view has been persuasively refuted.14 If the testimony claiming that Stesichorus was the first to set up a chorus has any authority, the reference must be to some Stesichorean choral innovation and its impact. In all likelihood he made his reputation leading his choruses first in Western Greek festivals and then in Spartan and Athenian festivals.15 Another Western Greek, Ibycus from Rhegium, also composed for choruses and drew his inspiration from Homer and the epic cycle.16 He spent time at the court of Polycrates on Samos and took part in the tyrant’s symposia which must have been the venue for his homoerotic songs, probably composed for a solo voice. Another famous poet associated with Polycrates was Anacreon from Teos. Anacreon is thought to have composed love songs for the symposium, but it is possible that some of his hymns were meant for choral execution. Moreover, it has been shown that he was perceived as a choral poet by the later Anacreontean tradition.17

Very few fragments survive of Simonides’ choral compositions, but as we shall see in the next section he became legendary for his fitness as a chorodidaskalos in his old age. The number of his victories in dithyrambic contests also became legendary: an epigram claims that he won fifty-six (XXVII Page). Some scholars have thought that this number too high, but it sounds right if we take into account the poet’s longevity and Panhellenic success.18

We are infinitely luckier with Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ choral compositions. Bacchylides’ poetry was essentially lost until a papyrus bought by E. A. Wallis Budge in Egypt reached the British Museum in 1896 and was edited by Kenyon a year later.19 In addition to epinicians, this papyrus preserved a number of dithyrambs, two in very good condition (c. 17 and 18). The best preserved corpus by far is Pindar’s epinicians. Some modern scholars have argued that epinicians were intended for solo performance. The scales have tipped in favor of chorality, a view that has ancient authority as well, but the heated controversy in the 1980s and the 1990s has shown that the texts alone can lead to diametrically opposing views.20 In any event our knowledge of Pindar’s prolific output and range shows that he composed mainly for choruses. We know that the Alexandrian edition of Pindar consisted of 17 books: 1 book of hymns, 1 book of paeans, 2 of dithyrambs, 2 of prosodia, 3 of partheneia, 2 of hyporchemes, 1 of encomia, 1 of threnoi, 4 books of epinicians.21

The distinction between choral and solo compositions is unquestionably important for the reconstruction of the occasion and the audio-spectacle, but their boundaries were fluid. We know that choral compositions were re-performed solo and that solo compositions re-performed chorally.22 There are also songs that conjure up different performance venues, such as sanctuaries and symposia, which indicate different performance modes.23 Moreover unforeseen circumstances and/or practical considerations might dictate a course of action at variance with the initial intention of a given composition.

Choruses, Chorus Leaders, Chorodidaskaloi, and Poets

Unlike the modern world’s specialization and professionalization, Greek poets composed the words, the melodies, and trained the choruses who were by and large amateurs drawn from the citizen body. Although our evidence is scant, it indicates that poets trained choruses at least in their own cities. We have seen that recent scholarship has entertained the possibility of Sappho as a choral poet. This view, which as we shall see has ancient authority, gains further support from the recently discovered fuller version of the Tithonus poem (fragment 58):

(several words missing) the violet-rich Muses’ fine gifts, children, (several words missing) the clear-voiced song-loving lyre: (several words missing) skin once was soft is withered now, (several words missing) hair has turned white which once was black, my heart has been weighed down, my knees, which once were swift to dance like young fawns, fail me. How often I lament these things. But what can you do? No being that is human can escape old age. For people used to think that Dawn with rosy arms (several words uncertain) Tithonus fine and young to the edges of the earth; yet still grey old age in time did seize him, though he had a deathless wife.24

The speaker talks to young people about the gifts of the Muses and a song-loving lyre, she complains about the marks old age has left on her complexion, her hair, her mood, and her agility. She can no longer dance like a young fawn, because her knees do not support her. Our speaker is clearly a choreut, in all likelihood female, who experiences problems because she is getting on in years. A number of scholars identify the speaker of this fragment with Sappho herself.25 If the identification is right, our speaker is Sappho in her role of chorodidaskalos, which she is no longer able adequately to fulfill, if we take the statement at face value, because of her old age.26

I suggest that Philostratus the Elder had this and other poems of Sappho in mind in his description of a painting featuring a choral performance in the precinct of Aphrodite (Imag. 2. 1, ὑμνήτριαι). For our purposes it makes little difference if Philostratus does not describe an actual painting, but reconstructs a rehearsal of a choral performance on the basis of his own contemporary experience, Sappho’s poetry, and possibly other sources.27

What Philostratus describes is a performance of young women in a sanctuary of Aphrodite. The chorus leader is skilled, beautiful, and still young, but a wrinkle heralds old age. The statue of Aphrodite is lifelike, too. At this point the speaker apostrophizes his readers, asking if they want to pour a libation of words on the altar, for the altar has already enough frankincense and cinnamon and myrrh, it has a fragrance of Sappho. Once again, the painter is praised for the vividness of the painting which enables the viewers to hear the young choreuts singing. One of them is off-tune. The chorodidaskalos frowns at her, claps her hands, and ably brings her back into tune. A description of the appearance of the young choreuts follows: they are barefoot, they wear close-fitting girdles and colorful garments, their chitons are loose so as to not constrict their movement. They are beautiful. Paris or any other judge would have a hard time to choose the best, because they rival one another in looks and “honeyed voice” (μελίφωνοι). The speaker hastens to add that this is Sappho’s expression. The envisaged hypothetical contest is not based on looks only, but on looks, movement, and voice. The emphasis on the sound is further strengthened by the assertion that Eros is playing along with them and producing harmonious notes by striking his bow. The description of the painting ends with the subject of the song-dance. The eroticized choreuts sing and dance the birth of the goddess of love. The Philostratean ekphrasis goes far beyond a vivid description of a choral performance. It is a successful attempt to reproduce the irresistible visual, aural, and olfactory appeal of choreia, Sappho-style. The Philostratean image of Sappho as a chorodidaskalos gains further support from an epigram in the Palatine Anthology (9.189) that depicts the poet as chorus leader (3–4) and to a reference in Aulus Gellius to choruses of boys and girls performing Sappho’s and Anacreon’s poetry.28

Sappho was not the only poet to express the frustration of the aging chorodidaskalos. Antigonus of Carystus (Mir. 23 [27] p. 8 Keller) quotes some lines from one of Alcman’s songs and asserts that the aging speaker who complains about his heavy knees that no longer support him is Alcman himself.29 In contrast to Sappho, however, who laments the inevitability of old age, Alcman expresses the wish that he were a bird: