ON THE PROBABLE COMPASS AND CONTENTS OF ODE I, WHEN ENTIRE.

That portion of the Ode which has been preserved in a coherent form begins with the arrival of Minos in Ceos, his union with Dexithea, and the birth of Euxantius. It is evidently the last part of a mythical narrative. The probable nature of the part which preceded it will be discussed presently. One thing is certain,—that it was of considerable length.

The verse with which my text of Ode I begins is numbered as verse III of that Ode in the edition of Professor Blass. He supposes that, of the 110 verses which originally came before it, 64 are wholly lost, while 46 (not all consecutive) can be partly reconstructed from small separate fragments, with the aid of conjectural supplements.

This reconstruction is given below. The element of conjecture involved in it is so very large that (in my opinion) it is inexpedient to print it as if it formed part of the ascertained text. But it is interesting and suggestive. I will endeavour to state clearly the scope of the reconstruction, and the nature of the evidence on which it rests.

A metrical ‘system’ in this Ode consists of 23 verses (a strophe of 8, an antistrophe of 8, and an epode of 7). The number of lines in a column of the MS. varies from 32 to 36, 35 being the commonest total, while 34 is also frequent.

Parentage.

Bacchylides was born at Iulis, the chief town of Ceos. His father's name is given as Medon, Meilon (clearly an error for Meidon), or Meidylus. His paternal grandfather Bacchylides had been distinguished as an athlete. His mother was a younger sister of the poet Simonides, who, like his nephew, was a native of Iulis.

Date of birth.

Simonides was born in 556 b.c.; Pindar, probably in 518: and ancient tradition said that Bacchylides was younger than Pindar. The earliest work of Bacchylides which can be approximately dated may belong to 481 or 479. The date of his birth cannot be precisely fixed, but may probably be placed somewhere within the period from 512 to 505 b.c.

Notices in the Chronicle of Eusebius.—(1) ἤκμαζεν.

According to the Chronicle of Eusebius, he ‘was in his Prime’ (ἤκμαζεν) in Ol. 78. 2, 467 b.c. The physical prime denoted by the word ἤκμαζεν was usually placed at about the fortieth year. If such a reckoning could be assumed in the present case, we should have 507 b.c. as the approximate date of birth; and that is probably not far from the truth. But, seeing how little appears to have been known as to this poet's life, it is unlikely that Eusebius had found a record of the birth-year, from which he computed the date of the prime.

The following is the text as it stands when the smaller fragments, which had become detached from the continuous portions of the papyrus, have been fitted into their places. Hence this text contains, in many verses, some letters or words which appear only in the plates of fragments at the end of the Autotype Facsimile published in 1897, since, at that time, those fragments were still unplaced.

The object is to exhibit the text of the papyrus as it was left by the ancient correctors, before any modern hand had touched it.

1. 1. A vertical line, ∣, denotes that the letters or words following it are supplied by a separate fragment. See, e.g., vv. 3—5.

2. 2. A dot on the line denotes a lost letter.

3. 3. A letter which has a dot under it is doubtful.

4. 4. The sign] denotes that a lacuna precedes, and the sign [that a lacuna follows.

5. 5. The marks, in a verse of which some part remains, denote the loss of a considerable but uncertain number of letters (as in III. 41). When those marks occupy a whole line, they denote that a verse is lost (as after x. 30).

6. 6. Asterisks, * * * *, denote a loss of several verses.

7. 7. The metrical divisions (strophe, antistrophe, epode) are shown in the margin. These indications make it easy to verify the use or omission in the MS. of paragraphus and coronis.

8. […]

The dialect prescribed by tradition for choral lyric poetry was Doric in its general colouring. But the Doricism could be more or less strongly marked, and more or less tempered by an admixture of non-Doric forms, according to the taste of the poet. Indeed, as Pindar shows, the same poet might vary the complexion of his dialect from ode to ode. In the dialect of Bacchylides, the Doricism,—which for him, an Ionian, was purely conventional,—is of the mildest type. It is further distinctive of him that, in numerous instances, he modifies Doric forms by compromises which his own sense of euphony dictated, but which it is difficult to bring under any consistent rules.

Doric a.

He sometimes retains η, instead of the Doric α, in order to avoid the occurrence of the a-sound in two successive syllables. Thus he writes ἀδμήτα (V. 167), but ἄδματοι (X. 84): λῃσταί (XVII. 8), but λαΐδος (XV. 17): φήμα (II. I), but φαμὶ καὶ φάσω (I. 49). It is not easy to see why he should agree with Pindar in writing προφάτας (VIII. 3, IX. 28), and yet differ from him in writing κυβερνήτας (V. 47, XI. 11). Pindar has ζαλωτός: Bacchylides has ἐπίζηλος (V. 52), πολύζηλος (X. 63), πολυζήλωτος (VII. 10, etc.). His ʾΑθάνα (XII. 195, etc.) and ʾΑθᾶναι (XVII. 60) may be explained by supposing that, in these instances, the Doric convention of the choral lyric was too strong for him.

EPINIKIA.

THE CYCLE OF THE FOUR GREAT FESTIVALS.

The Olympian games were held towards the end of summer, at the time of a full moon (Pind. O. III. 19), and lasted five days (O. v. 6). The incidence of the festival was regulated by a cycle of 99 lunar months, in such a manner that the interval between two celebrations was alternately one of 49 lunar months and one of 50. In the former case the festival seems to have coincided with the second full moon after the summer solstice, and in the latter with the third (Schröder, Prolegomena to Pindar, p. 48). According to scholia on Pind. O. III. 35, the celebration was alternately in the month Apollonius and in the month Parthenius (ib. p. 46); but it is not known to what Attic months these corresponded.

The Nemean games were held in summer, probably in July, at the beginning of the second and fourth years of each Olympiad.

The Isthmian games were held in spring, probably in April (cp. Thuc. VIII. 7—10), in the latter half of the second and fourth years of each Olympiad.

The Pythian games were held in August (the Delphian month Bucatius, the Attic Metageitnion), early in the third year of each Olympiad.

To exemplify this cycle, we will take the 74th and 75th Olympiads.

The papyrus of Bacchylides (Brit. Mus. Pap. DCCXXXIII) was found in Egypt by natives; the place of discovery is uncertain. It was brought to the British Museum towards the end of 1896, in the condition which Dr F. G. Kenyon thus describes:—

That the poems were those of Bacchylides, appeared from the occurrence in the papyrus of some verses known to be his.

THE Bacchylides papyrus was brought from Egypt to the British Museum in the autumn of 1896; and the editio princeps, by Dr F. G. Kenyon, appeared in 1897. We have thus acquired a large body of work by an author previously known only through scanty fragments; and the value of that acquisition is enhanced by the class to which it belongs. Of all the poets who gave lyric expression to Greek feeling and fancy in the interval between the age of Epos and the age of Drama, Pindar alone, before this discovery, could be estimated in the light of considerable remains. The fragments of the rest, exquisitely beautiful as they sometimes are, afford little more than glimpses of the genius and the art which produced them. Now there is a second representative of Greek song who can be judged by a series of complete compositions. Bacchylides has, of course, no pretension to be a poet of the same order as Pindar; it might rather be said that part of the interest which he possesses for us arises from the marked difference of poetical rank. In reading his odes, so elegant, so transparently clear, so pleasing in their graceful flow of narrative, often so bright in their descriptive touches, and at moments so pathetic, we feel that this is a singer who, moving in a lower sphere than Pindar, must also have been more immediately intelligible to the common Hellenic sense.

Extant work of Bacchylides.

The poems, or fragments of poems, in the Bacchylides Papyrus are of two general kinds. The first thirteen pieces are epinikia. The remaining six, all relating to episodes in the story of heroes and heroines, were collectively classed by the Alexandrians as ‘dithyrambs,’ in that large sense of the term which was explained above. The number of verses represented by the continuous portions of the papyrus (including verses lost in lacunae of which the length can be determined) is 1392. If we suppose, with Blass, that the part lost at the beginning (of which small fragments remain) represents 110 verses, the total is 1502. The fragments preserved by ancient writers, and not found in the papyrus, give about 95 verses more, thus raising the approximate total to 1597. That number is only about 150 less than half the total in Pindar's extant odes and fragments, which is (roughly) about 3500.

His treatment of the epinikion.

Details of the victory.

In considering the poetical qualities of Bacchylides, we may set out from his treatment of the epinikion. A trait in which he differs from Pindar, and probably follows Simonides, is the tendency which he sometimes shows to dwell on the circumstances of the particular victory. An illustration is furnished by his fifth ode, as compared with Pindar's first Olympian, which was written on the same occasion.

The work of Bacchylides, well worthy of study in itself, derives a further interest from the peculiar place which he holds in the history of the Greek Lyric. He is the latest of the nine poets whom the Alexandrians included in their lyric canon, the others being Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides and Pindar. In his youth, all the types of the lyric had been fully developed; and the life of lyric poetry was still vigorous. Before his death, a decline had begun. In the last third of the fifth century, exquisite lyrics continued to adorn the plays of Sophocles, of Euripides, and of Aristophanes; but, after Bacchylides, no purely lyric poet attained to a high rank. From the commencement of the Peloponnesian War onwards, the only kinds of lyric which remained fertile and popular were such as attested the degradation alike of poetical and of musical art, such productions as the dithyrambs of Philoxenus and the nomes of Timotheus.

Period of the classical Lyric.

Olympus.

Terpander.

The history of the classical Greek Lyric is comprised in a period of some two hundred years, from the early or middle part of the seventh century b.c. to about the middle of the fifth. The rise of a lyric poetry was necessarily preceded by a development of music, which was traditionally associated with two principal names. The Phrygian Olympus, a dim figure, represented some marked improvement in the music of the double flute (αὐλητική), soon followed by an advance in the art of singing to that instrument (αὐλῳδική).