Book contents
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustration and Tables
- Places of Original Publication
- Preface
- Editions and Abbreviations
- Introduction to Volume 1: Greek Poetry before 400 BC
- 1 Early Greek Elegy, Symposium and Public Festival (1986)
- 2 One That Got Away: Archilochus frr. 188–92 and Horace Odes 1.4 and 5 (1987)
- 3 Miles ludens? The Problem of Martial Exhortation in Early Greek Elegy ()
- 4 Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry (1993)
- 5 Greek Table-Talk before Plato (1993)
- 6 The Theognidea: a Step towards a Collection of Fragments? (1997)
- 7 Early Greek Iambic Poetry: the Importance of Narrative (2001)
- 8 Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry? ()
- 9 Sympotic Praise (2002)
- 10 Early Expatriates: Displacement and Exile in Archaic Poetry ()
- 11 From Archaic Elegy to Hellenistic Sympotic Epigram? (2007)
- 12 Sex and Politics in Archilochus’ Poetry (2008)
- 13 Wandering Poets, Archaic Style (2009)
- 14 Epigram as Narration (2010)
- 15 Historical Narrative in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Elegy (2010)
- 16 Stobaeus and Early Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2010)
- 17 Marathon in Fifth-Century Epigram (2010)
- 18 The Trojan War in Early Greek Melic, Iambic and Elegiac Poetry (2010)
- 19 Performing and Re-performing Helen:Stesichorus’ Palinode (2010)
- 20 Simonides of Eretria (redivivus?) (2010)
- 21 Alcman’s First Partheneion and the Song the Sirens sang (2011)
- 22 An Early Chapter in the History of the Theognidea (2012)
- 23 Stesichorus and Ibycus: Plain Tales from the Western Front (2012)
- 24 Epinicians and ‘Patrons’ (2012)
- 25 Unnatural Selection: Expurgation of Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2012)
- 26 Marathon, the 1500 Days after: Culture and Politics (2013)
- 27 The Sympotic Tease (2013)
- 28 Rediscovering Sacadas (2014)
- 29 Stesichorus’ Geryoneis and Greeks in the West (2014)
- 30 Stesichorus at Athens (2015)
- 31 Cultic Contexts for Elegiac Performance? (2016)
- 32 Quo usque tandem? How long were Sympotic Songs? (2016)
- 33 How did Sappho’s Songs get into the Male Sympotic Repertoire? (2016)
- 34 The Performance Contexts of Trochaic Tetrameters Catalectic (2018)
- 35 Alcaeus’ stasiotica: Catullan and Horatian Readings (2019)
- 36 Reconfiguring Archilochus: How have Papyri and Inscriptions changed Perceptions of Archilochus’ Iambic and Elegiac Poetry? (2020)
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index of Greek Terms
- General Index
31 - Cultic Contexts for Elegiac Performance? (2016)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2021
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustration and Tables
- Places of Original Publication
- Preface
- Editions and Abbreviations
- Introduction to Volume 1: Greek Poetry before 400 BC
- 1 Early Greek Elegy, Symposium and Public Festival (1986)
- 2 One That Got Away: Archilochus frr. 188–92 and Horace Odes 1.4 and 5 (1987)
- 3 Miles ludens? The Problem of Martial Exhortation in Early Greek Elegy ()
- 4 Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry (1993)
- 5 Greek Table-Talk before Plato (1993)
- 6 The Theognidea: a Step towards a Collection of Fragments? (1997)
- 7 Early Greek Iambic Poetry: the Importance of Narrative (2001)
- 8 Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry? ()
- 9 Sympotic Praise (2002)
- 10 Early Expatriates: Displacement and Exile in Archaic Poetry ()
- 11 From Archaic Elegy to Hellenistic Sympotic Epigram? (2007)
- 12 Sex and Politics in Archilochus’ Poetry (2008)
- 13 Wandering Poets, Archaic Style (2009)
- 14 Epigram as Narration (2010)
- 15 Historical Narrative in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Elegy (2010)
- 16 Stobaeus and Early Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2010)
- 17 Marathon in Fifth-Century Epigram (2010)
- 18 The Trojan War in Early Greek Melic, Iambic and Elegiac Poetry (2010)
- 19 Performing and Re-performing Helen:Stesichorus’ Palinode (2010)
- 20 Simonides of Eretria (redivivus?) (2010)
- 21 Alcman’s First Partheneion and the Song the Sirens sang (2011)
- 22 An Early Chapter in the History of the Theognidea (2012)
- 23 Stesichorus and Ibycus: Plain Tales from the Western Front (2012)
- 24 Epinicians and ‘Patrons’ (2012)
- 25 Unnatural Selection: Expurgation of Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2012)
- 26 Marathon, the 1500 Days after: Culture and Politics (2013)
- 27 The Sympotic Tease (2013)
- 28 Rediscovering Sacadas (2014)
- 29 Stesichorus’ Geryoneis and Greeks in the West (2014)
- 30 Stesichorus at Athens (2015)
- 31 Cultic Contexts for Elegiac Performance? (2016)
- 32 Quo usque tandem? How long were Sympotic Songs? (2016)
- 33 How did Sappho’s Songs get into the Male Sympotic Repertoire? (2016)
- 34 The Performance Contexts of Trochaic Tetrameters Catalectic (2018)
- 35 Alcaeus’ stasiotica: Catullan and Horatian Readings (2019)
- 36 Reconfiguring Archilochus: How have Papyri and Inscriptions changed Perceptions of Archilochus’ Iambic and Elegiac Poetry? (2020)
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index of Greek Terms
- General Index
Summary
A scattering of testimonia in Greek texts, mainly of the Hellenistic and imperial period, had always made it clear that elegy was used in the archaic and early classical eras for substantial narrative poems.1 That evidence was not given much attention until I argued in the 1980s for the existence of a body of such elegiac poetry which constituted an important genre or form distinct from that of the shorter elegiac songs composed for and transmitted by performance in symposia.2 The publication in 1992 of papyrus fragments of elegiac poems by Simonides on the battles of Plataea and Artemisium seemed to some extent to support this claim, though a poem on a single battle, even if a poem of several hundred lines, is rather different from what I had proposed as the nature of Mimnermus’ Smyrneis, Tyrtaeus’ Eunomia or Xenophanes’ two thousand lines on the Foundation of Colophon and Emigration to Elea in Italy …’.3 One of many questions raised by the fragments of Simonides’ Plataea poem was the context and location of its first performance. That question must also be asked of Archilochus’ recently published elegiac narrative of Telephus’ rout of the Achaeans.
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- Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture , pp. 683 - 699Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021