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It may be safely asserted that few of the fragments of Greek lyric poetry have excited more discussion than the so-called ‘Lament of Danae’ but it is curious, considering that we owe our knowledge of it to Dionysius's desire to set his readers a metrical puzzle, to see how little attention has been given to the metre of the fragment by the many scholars who have contributed to the literature of the problem since 1835. The purpose of the present study (...) is to enquire into the scansion of the fragment, quoting parallels wherever possible from the extant remains of Simonides and, where these fail, from the works of other lyric poets. (shrink)

This article attempts to gather the evidence for panhellenism in the fifth century B.C. and to trace its development both as a political program and as a popular ideology. Panhellenism is here defined as the idea that the various Greek city-states could solve their political disputes and simultaneously enrich themselves by uniting in common cause and conquering all or part of the Persian empire. An attempt is made to trace the evidence for panhellenism throughout the fifth century by combining different (...) kinds of evidence: that is, both poetic and historical texts, as well as the testimonia for monuments which are no longer extant. Any thought of a panhellenic crusade was impossible before the Persian invasions, but such an expedition, under the dual leadership of Athens and Sparta, was espoused by Cimon. After his death it remained an item of popular talk for the rest of the century and this talk intensified during the second half of the Peloponnesian War. The paper has six parts: the first finds hints of panhellenist ideology in the fragments of Simonides' Plataea elegy and in Aeschylus' Persians. The second part attempts to explain several puzzling passages in Herodotus in terms of his reflecting contemporary panhellenist discourse, especially in his account of Aristagoras of Miletus at Sparta. Part three reconstructs Cimon' s belief in dual hegemony and his plans for a joint Athenian-Spartan expedition against the Persian empire. Part four connects an anecdote about Miltiades with the Cimonian monuments and argues that the artistic program of the Stoa Poikile was intended to support Cimon's panhellenist aspirations. Part five discusses panhellenist sentiments in late fifth-century Greek poetry, and dates the Olympic Oration and Funeral Oration of Gorgias to the period 408-405 B.C., Finally, part six relates the panhellenist writings of Isocrates to earlier developments. (shrink)

La ‘explicación’ platónica de la creación poética en el Ion como efecto de la inspiración permite identificar las condiciones culturales que le subyacen: por carecer de escritura, la sabiduría griega, incluida la poética, es transmitida oralmente. La circunstancia en que realiza su actividad el poeta llevan a Platón a proponer entonces que esta no obedece a la téchne y, por tanto, el poeta no puede dar razón de lo que dice. Esta crítica alcanza a los sofistas en sus usos ‘pedagógicos’ (...) de la poesía, y cabe preguntarse si podría estar dirigida contra las concepciones sofísticas de la poesía como téchne. Sin embargo, sostener que está asimismo dirigida contra estas concepciones constituye un forzamiento de la doctrina platónica de la poesía, porque los planteamientos de la sofística surgen, desde Simónides de Ceos, dentro de circunstancias culturales en que las tesis platónicas pierden validez: la obra de los sofistas es producto de una época que dispone ya de escritura alfabética. (shrink)

In adapting the story of the Great War to the taste of his own age Ephoros, himself a pupil of Isokrates and a professional historian, was led astray by the combined influences of rhetoric and rationalism; as neither the rationalism nor the rhetoric was of the best quality, the intrusion of both at this stage could have inflicted irreparable damage on the tradition of the war if the text of Herodotus had not survived to refute the inventions grafted on the (...) authentic record by Ephoros. (shrink)

‘It is hard to become a truly good man': so Plato's Protagoras purports to understand the first line , and modern interpreters of the poem have followed him without exception.

‘It is hard to become a truly good man': so Plato's Protagoras purports to understand the first line, and modern interpreters of the poem have followed him without exception.

The paper aims at reconstructing the influence of Simonides on a contiguous series of Horatian poems . The starting point is provided by the discovery of new Simonidean fragments published by Peter Parsons and by Martin West in 1992. But the research casts a wider net, including the influence of Theocritus on Horace-and of Simonides on Theoocritus-and the simultaneous and competing presence of Pindar and Simonides in late Horatian lyric. The influence of Simonides is seen in (...) specific textual pointers-e.g., a simile on the death of Achilles in 4.6, the idea of caducity in 4.7-as well as in the composite role-model of Simonides, the immortalizing poet, the flexible praise-singer. Some wider questions are put in perspective: As for Horace's approach to the poetic tradition, the Roman poet is able to glance across whole genealogies of models, without necessarily making a choice, but making the invocation of several predecessors, already linked in a tradition, relevant to his new text. "Odes" 4.7, for instance, features a dialogue of Horace, Homer, Mimnermus and Simonides. The oscillation in modern criticism between an "Alexandrian" and a "classicizing" Horace could be better explained by constructing a complex model of intertextuality: "Pindar" plus "the Pindar in Callimachus"; "Simonides" plus "the Simonides in Theocritus." The dominating influence of Pindar in Book IV could be a part of a richer picture of influence, now difficult to reconstruct since all we have is the four Pindaric books of epinicia, not necessarily the only widely read choral lyric in antiquity. The reuse of early-classical praise poetry includes references to social constructs and cultural models of patronage, gift exchange, and poetic addressee: they are important in Augustan lyric precisely because they are felt as distant and impossible to recreate, and become a part of Horace's deft and often ironical negotiations with the problem of being a lyric poet in Augustan Rome. (shrink)

In Grenfell and Hunt's Hibeh Papyri, Vol. I, recently published, there is an interesting but obscure fragment, composed of sayings apparently ascribed to the famous poet. I submit two or three suggestions on them.

Crowning six decades of literary, rhetorical, and historical scholarship, Harry Berger, Jr., offers readers another trenchant reading. Berger subverts the usual interpretations of Plato’s kalos kagathos, showing Socrates to be trapped in a double ventriloquism, tethered to his interlocutors’ speech acts even as they are tethered to his. Plato’s Republic and Protagoras both reserve a small but significant place for a poet who differs from Homer and Hesiod: the lyric poet Simonides of Ceos. In the Protagoras, Socrates takes apart (...) a poem attributed to Simonides and uses this to finish off the famous and supposedly dangerous sophist, Protagoras. Couch City is a close reading of the comic procedures Socrates deploys against Protagoras as he reduces him to silence. But it also shows that Socrates takes the danger posed by Protagoras and his fellow sophists seriously. Even if they are represented as buffoons, sophists are among the charismatic authority figures—poets, rhapsodes, seers, orators, and lawgivers—who promote views harmful to Athenian democracy. Socrates uses Simonides’s poem to show how sophists not only practice misinterpretation but are unable to defend against it. Berger ports his roots as a pioneering literary theorist into this rhetorical discussion, balancing ideas such as speech-act theory with hard-nosed philology. The result is a provocative and counterintuitive reassessment of Plato’s engagement with democracy. (shrink)

In Aristotle′s Nicomachean Ethics , at 1149b15–16, there is a quotation:Aristotle does not tell us who wrote these words, and we now find the quotation as lyric fr. adesp. 949.2.

In Aristotle′s Nicomachean Ethics, at 1149b15–16, there is a quotation: Aristotle does not tell us who wrote these words, and we now find the quotation as lyric fr. adesp. 949.2.

A treatise on rhetorical tropes is attributed in manuscripts to the first-century grammarian Trypho: this article considers for the first time a fifteenth-century manuscript of this work (Leiden, BPG 74G), which turns out to be the only complete witness of its hitherto unknown original version; this version (very fragmentarily transmitted by a fifth-century papyrus scrap) is also partly found in another fifteenth-century manuscript now kept in Olomouc (M 79). Four interesting poetic fragments are quoted in this newly discovered, fuller version (...) of Ps.-Trypho'sDe Tropis: some lines from Callimachus’ fifth and fourthIambi(23–9 and 90–2 respectively: a radically new light is shed by this new witness on the parallel papyrus fragments carrying Callimachus’ text), an epigram dubiously attributed to Simonides (FGE44 Page, probably to be dated to the Hellenistic period: the text can be now restored to its complete form), and some enigmatic lines of “Hesiod”'sWedding of Keyx, which the new witness finally makes fully understandable. (shrink)

Unresolved questions surround Simonides fr. 531, which eulogizes the Greeks who fell at Thermopylae. To what genre do these lines belong, what were the original conditions of their performance, and does Diodorus Siculus, who preserves the fragment, transmit just an extract or the complete piece? Commentators even differ as to where Simonides’ lines began: for some the words τŵυ ༐υ Θερμοπλαιζ θαυóυτωυ form part of the original composition, for others they conclude Diodorus' prose introduction. In my reading of (...) the fragment, I aim to address some of these puzzles by focusing chiefly on issues that allow for greater certainty: the structure and sentiments of the lines, and the cohesion between the song's contents and the conventions found in near contemporary commemorations of men fallen in battle on their country or polis’ behalf. As the comparative material will suggest, Diodorus’ designation of the lines as an encomion, something ‘properly’ delivered in praise of living men, should perhaps not be dismissed out of hand. Simonides‘ words may have been embedded within a composition as much designed for the purpose of praising, exhorting and inspiring the living as for memorializing the dead. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone explorar las particularidades literarias y morfosintácticas de la canción de cuna presente en el _ Poema de Dánae _ _ _(fr. 271 P.) de Simónides, _Arrastradores de redes_ _ _(fr. 47a R.) de Esquilo y el _Idilio_ XXIV de Teócrito. El objetivo es demarcar las características comunes entre los cantos y analizar los recursos retóricos y temáticos utilizados como estrategia de los poetas para caracterizar el discurso directo de determinados personajes (mujeres y sátiros). Se espera llegar (...) a una delimitación del género de la canción de cuna como tal y considerar tanto su contexto de performance como lo escaso de su conservación. (shrink)