Intertwined with the celebration of Athenian democratic institutions, we find in the "Oresteia" another chain of interactions, in which the elite families of Argos, Phokis, Athens, and even Mount Olympos employ the traditional aristocratic relationships of xenia and hetaireia to renegotiate their own status within-and at the pinnacle of-the civic order, and thereby guarantee the renewed prosperity of their respective communities. The capture of Troy is the result of a joint venture by the Atreidai and the Olympian "family" . Although (...) Agamemnon falls victim to his own mishandling of aristocratic privilege, his son is raised by doryxenoi in Phokis , a relationship which is mirrored by that with the Olympian "allies," Hermes and Apollo. Orestes' recovery of his father's position is thus shown to depend upon a network of "guest-friends" and "sworn-comrades," reinforced by the traditional language of oaths and reciprocal loyalty. In the Eumenides, the alliance between the Olympian and Argive royal families is re-invoked as the basis both for Athena's protection of Orestes, and finally for Zeus' concern for his daughter's Athenian dependents. In contrast to this successful "networking," and the resultant benefits that trickle down to the citizens of Argos and Athens, stand the seditious oaths and perverted "comradeship" of Aigisthos and Klytaimestra; likewise, the Erinyes are unable to draw on equivalent claims of pedigree or xenia to those enjoyed by Orestes and Apollo. Like all Greek tragedies, the "Oresteia" presents the action through constantly shifting viewpoints, those of aristocrats and commoners, leaders and led, while the propriety of this hierarchy itself is never questioned. And although the action moves from monarchical Argos to an incipiently democratic Athens, paradoxically we hear less and less about "ordinary," lower-class citizens as the trilogy progresses. Thus, at the same time that the trilogy reinforces the sense of collective survival and civic values , it also suggests that these can be maintained only through the proper interventions of their traditional leaders. Aeschylus' plays were composed during a time when the Athenian democracy was still developing, and elite leadership and patronage were still taken for granted. Attic tragedy and the City Dionysia may be seen as a site of negotiation between rival ideologies within the polis, wherein a kind of "solidarity without consensus" is achieved. Written and staged by the elite under license from the demos, the dramas play out dangerous stories of royal risk-taking, crime, glory, and suffering, in such a way as to reassure the citizen audience simultaneously of their own collective invulnerability, and of the unique value of their leading families. (shrink)

When Immanuel Bekker, the editor to whom Aristotle owes his page numbers, travelled to Paris in search of manuscripts between 1810 and 1812, Theognis had been a mainstay of classical scholarship for many hundreds of years. Even so, the small tenth-century parchment volume Bekker discovered there came as a surprise. Not only did it contain a text of theTheognideawhich was four hundred years older than the earliest codex known so far; it also added an entirely new section of 176 lines. (...) Presented by the scribe as ‘book 2’ of theElegiac Poemsby Theognis, they revolved around the theme of pederastic love – until then a topic not usually associated with the moralist from Megara. In spite of their similarities to what had now turned into ‘book 1’, they were dismissed as a late forgery almost instantly after Bekker's 1815 edition. Although that view came to be challenged later and can now be considered obsolete, even van Groningen's first comprehensive commentary to theTheognidea, published in 1966 and not superseded since, breaks off where the second book would have begun. Until today, research on this part of the Theognidean corpus has not grown much beyond a trickle flowing at some distance from the classical mainstream. (shrink)

A striking feature of the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus is their constant use of ‘deictic’ signals to establish a setting in a specific location in time and space. This article examines the created worlds of Sappho and Alcaeus, drawing on cognitive methodologies, in particular Text World Theory. It argues for the importance of a methodological distinction between the circumstances of performance of the songs, and the cognitive world they create. The locations established by the songs are designed to assimilate (...) to, or mirror, the plausible/potential circumstances of actual performance, but are distinct from them, and are just as constructed as the artful lyric locations of Horace or Thomas Gray. Close readings of the songs show how Sappho and Alcaeus use ‘location’ as a tool in their poetics, exploiting the interaction between the world created by the songs and the circumstances of their performance. (shrink)

χαιρέτω ἡμέτερος βασιλεὺς σωτήρ τε πατήρ τε·ἡμῖν δὲ κρητῆρ’ οἰνοχόοι θέραπεςκιρνάντων προχύταισιν ἐν ἀργυρέοις· †ὁ δὲ χρυσὸςοἶνον ἔχων χειρῶν νιζέτω εἰς ἔδαφος.†σπένδοντες δ’ ἁγνῶς Ἡρακλεῖ τ’ Ἀλκμήνηι τε,Προκλεῖ Περσείδαις τ’ ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχόμενοιπίνωμεν, παίζωμεν· ἴτω διὰ νυκτὸς ἀοιδή,ὀρχείσθω τις· ἑκὼν δ’ ἄρχε φιλοφροσύνης.ὅντινα δ’ εὐειδὴς μίμνει θήλεια πάρευνος,κεῖνος τῶν ἄλλων κυδρότερον πίεται.May our king rejoice, our saviour and father; let the attendant cup-bearers mix for us a crater from silver urns; †Let the golden one with wine in his hands wash (...) to the base† Pouring libations piously to Heracles and Alcmene, Procles and the sons of Perseus and Zeus first of all, let us drink, let us play, let our song rise through the night. Dance someone, willingly begin the festivities. And anyone who has a fair girl waiting to share his bed will drink more like a man than all the others.(Ion, fr. 27 West = fr. 90 Leurini). (shrink)

This article inquires into the shaping force that competition at musical contests exercised on ancient perceptions of literary genres, particularly for the non-choral and non-dramatic kinds of the Classical Period. Three musical contests of the fourth century BCE, the Panathenaia, the Amphiaraia, and the Artemisia, are taken as case studies. After a reconstruction of their programs, principles of categorization that spectators might have inferred from the contests are deduced, and modes in which categories of competition and literary genres interacted are (...) put forward. The article concludes by suggesting that, by enacting taxonomies, either strengthening or weakening the specificity of traditional types, institutionalized poetic and musical competitions contributed to the ancient conceptualization of literary genres. (shrink)

The article shows that in the Archaic period the Greeks did not possess a term equivalent to Classical ποιητής “poet-composer.” The principal meaning of the word άοιδός, often claimed to correspond to ποιητής and modern English poet, was “tuneful” or “singer” . The secondary meaning “poet working in the hexameter medium” is limited to the post-Iliadic hexameter corpus. It is furthermore possible to show that the simplex άοιδός was backderived from a compound. More specifically, following Hermann Koller, I propose that (...) the secondary meaning, being an epic innovation, developed from the compound *θεσπιαοιδός “singer of things divine,” whereas the primary meaning “singer” may go back to έπαοιδός, which later acquired the specialized meaning “singer of incantations.”. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of Archaic and Early Classical philosophical poetry within the competitive context which characterized the poetic production of that period. In particular, I evaluate the ideas and arguments of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Epicharmus and Empedocles in the context of the social and cultural aspects of Archaic poetic performance in order to evaluate their response to traditional agonism. As I argue, these figures entered the poetic contest not only to defeat their poetic adversaries, but also to transform and (...) redefine the terms of the competition itself. Chapter 1 is devoted to the analysis of three institutionalized forms of poetic agonism: sympotic games, rhapsodic contests, and dramatic performances. In chapter 2, I evaluate the socio-political import of Xenophanes' poetry and argue that his conception of the greatest god serves to substantiate his moral prescriptions aimed at eliminating civic conflict. In chapter 3, I examine Parmenides' original notion of alētheia as logical deduction, whereby he provides a solution to the problem of the truth-status of poetry stemming from the Muses' ability to inspire both genuine and false accounts, as narrated in Hesiod's Theogony. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of Empedocles' polemic allusions to his poetic and philosophical predecessors. I argue that Empedocles' confidence in his poetic authority is ultimately grounded on his self-declared divine status, which grants him a unique and comprehensive poetic knowledge. In chapter 5, I evaluate Epicharmus' philosophical fragments against the background of early rhetoric and argue that, through the use of philosophically inspired arguments, Epicharmus aimed to make manifest philosophy's agonistic potential and to show how it could be exploited to one's own advantage. (shrink)

In Archaic Athenian vase-painting, silens are often sexually aroused, but only sporadically satisfy their desires in a manner acceptable to most Athenian men. François Lissarrague persuasively argued that the sexuality of silens in vase-painting was probably laughable rather than awe-inspiring. What sort of laughter did the vase-paintings elicit? Was it the scornful laughter of a person who felt nothing in common with silens, or the laughter of one made to see something of himself in their behavior? For three reasons, I (...) argue for the latter interpretation. First, some vase-paintings are constructed so as to invite the viewer to adopt imaginatively the persona of a silen. Second, parallels for the less-than-triumphant sexuality of silens occur in Archaic iambic poetry. Like the vase-paintings, the poetry was often constructed so that performers of the poems are incorporated into the narratives as all-too-human protagonists. Third, certain formal features of classical satyr-play encouraged the audience to identify with the point of view of the satyr-chorus, while others reminded it that there were better role models than silens. In all three media, a negative characterization of male characters or silens is combined with a manner of presentation that invites the viewer or performer to see himself among those characters despite their negative traits. That form of humor may have been common in Archaic symposia, but its presence in satyr-play suggests that it may also be a fundamental characteristic of silens. (shrink)

The literary stock of Achilles Tatius has been increasing steadily in value since 1964, when an article about his romanceLeucippe and Cleitophonin an encyclopedia of world literature began, ‘Das Werk weist alle Mängel seines Genres samt einigen zusätzlichen eigenen auf.’ To be sure,Leucippe and Cleitophonremains among the last and probably least read of the Greek romances; yet in the last decades critics have begun to draw attention to original and effective aspects of its composition. As is usually the case, this (...) revaluation has been accompanied not so much by the discovery of new virtues which had previously been neglected, but rather by the redescription as virtues of what had always counted as vices. Thus Cleitophon's lack of heroism can now be welcomed as comic realism, the implausibly melodramatic twists of the plot praised as selfconsciously theatrical ironies, and the baroque frigidity of the style counted as loony metaphysical wit or as BrechtianEntfremdung seffekt. (shrink)

Jacoby's influential opinion that the Atthidographers were part of the political discourse of the fourth century has been the subject of revision in recent years. His critics have argued that the genre of Atthidography is primarily antiquarian and that to look for partisan political attitudes in the Atthides is a mistake. An examination of the work of Kleidemos, however, reveals a coherent presentation of the Athenian past designed to vindicate the democratic constitution and to demonstrate the close connection between the (...) democracy and Athens' naval power. This emerges most clearly in Kleidemos's treatment of three important democratic heroes: Theseus, Kleisthenes, and Themistokles. By the fourth century, Theseus had already emerged as the most popular Athenian hero. His accomplishments were modeled in part on the deeds of Herakles and were recorded in vase painting and relief sculpture, and on the walls of the Stoa Poikile. Kleidemos presented a distinctive account of Theseus, emphasizing his role in founding the Athenian navy in preparation for the expedition to Krete. Kleidemos portrayed him as a leader capable of defending Athens and making peace with Athens' enemies, first the Kretans and later the Amazons. This is a king in the tradition of Euripides' Theseus in the Suppliants, the ruler of a free and democratic city. The connection between democratic leadership, Athenian might, and the naval power of Athens is also underscored in Kleidemos's handling of Kleisthenes. Again, the information provided by Kleidemos is distinctive, inasmuch as he reports that it was Kleisthenes who was responsible for the system of naukrariai, which he likens to the symmories of the fourth century. Unlike the version of the Ath. Pol., which imagines the Kleisthenic demes replacing the Solonian naukrariai, Kleidemos saw the demes and naukrariai as complementary divisions, the former organizing the state's resources for the upkeep of the navy, and the latter establishing the political basis for the democracy. Themistokles is also given unique treatment. Kleidemos records the anecdote according to which Themistokles was responsible for the Battle of Salamis because he found sufficient money to man the ships when the generals had run out of funds and had ordered the abandonment of the city. He used the disappearance of the gorgoneion of the statue of Athena as an excuse to ransack the baggage of the Athenians and collect enough wealth to pay the fleet. The story is as tendentious as the account in the Ath. Pol., which gives the credit to the Areopagos. Both versions demonstrate how Athens' past had become a battleground in the political debates of the mid-fourth century. Unlike the epitaphios logos with its emphasis on the eternal and unchanging glory of Athens, the "Atthis" of Kleidemos attempted to prove that the greatness of Athens rested historically on three foundations: the heroes of the democracy, the democratic constitution, and the navy. (shrink)

This article aims to present an overall interpretation of a poem by Callimachus that centres on the dead Ptolemaic queen Arsinoe II. Firstly the position of the Ektheosis Arsinoes in Callimachus’ œuvre, the genre to which it belongs and its structure will be investigated. This leads to the analysis of the highly allusive character of the work (above all to Hesiod, Ibycus, Simonides and Pindar as well as to hymnic poetry). In addition, realia (the historical background) and textual difficulties arising (...) from the fragmentary transmisson will also be treated. The appendix discusses a hitherto unnoticed testimony to the poem’s reception in the Roman epicist Ennius. (shrink)