Simply by formulating a question about the nature of ancient Greek poetry or music, any modern English speaker is already risking anachronism. In recent years especially, scholars have reminded one another that the words ‘music’ and ‘poetry’ denote concepts with no easy counterpart in Greek. μουσική in its broadest sense evokes not only innumerable kinds of structured movement and sound but also the political, psychological and cosmic order of which song, verse and dance are supposed to be perceptible manifestations. Likewise, (...) ποίησις and the ποιητικὴ τέχνη can encompass all kinds of ‘making’, from the assembly of a table to the construction of a rhetorical argument. Of course, there were specifically artistic usages of these terms—according to Plato, ‘musical and metrical production’ was the default meaning of ποίησις in everyday speech. But even in discussions which restrict themselves to the sphere of human art, we find nothing like the neat compartmentalization of harmonized rhythmic melody on the one hand, and stylized verbal composition on the other, which is often casually implied or expressly formulated in modern comparisons of ‘music’ with ‘poetry’. For many ancient theorists the City Dionysia, a dithyrambic festival and a recitation of Homer all featured different versions of one and the same form of composition, a μουσική or ποιητική to which λόγοι, γράμματα and συλλαβαί were just as essential as ἁρμονία, φθόγγοι, ῥυθμός and χρόνοι. (shrink)

En este artículo se examinan los móviles teóricos por los que Filón de Alejandría ha tomado en préstamo uno de los famosos tópicos empleados por Platón, a saber, el motivo de la ‘inspiración divina’. Para explorar este motivo, un lugar clave en el corpus platónico es el diálogo temprano Ión. Allí la inspiración divina es origen de cierta modalidad específica de interpretación. Un estudio inter-textual previo detecta que Filón ha hecho un uso considerable de ese diálogo, asumiendo de él específicamente (...) el motivo de la inspiración. Al atender a tales textos se descubre, además, que ese tópico ha sido introducido tanto por Filón como por Platón en el marco de sus respectivas reflexiones hermenéuticas. La atención al tópico de la inspiración divina desemboca, pues, en el análisis de las continuidades y disrupciones que presentan esos dos modelos hermenéuticos. En la reflexión filoniana la dignidad del libro inspirado lleva a priorizar ‘lo que el texto dice’, de manera que ‘el texto no se discute, se interpreta’. Platón, por su parte, considera que la hermenéutica no puede detenerse ante la canonización de un libro, sino que ha de incorporar previamente el conocimiento y discusión del correlato externo al que un texto se refiere. En este trabajo se defiende que, contra lo que inicialmente podría parecer, ambos modelos no presentan, sin embargo, una disrupción sustancial. (shrink)

It has been easy to take the apparently detached viewpoint of the two early Greek epics as actually objective, a window on a ‘Heroic Age’, on a ‘Homeric society’ and its values. We used to ask whether ‘Homeric society’ belongs to the poets' own time or to some earlier one. We still ask how to characterize and explain the ways in which the ‘Homeric world’ differs from any world that we can accept as having existed: we answer with phrases such (...) as ‘poetic exaggeration’ and ‘epic distance’. We have constructed ‘Homeric society’, but it remains an isolate. It can tell us nothing in return of the poets' intentions, or of the society of their time, unless we have a working hypothesis as to the place in that society that was held by the poets and their audiences. (shrink)

It has been easy to take the apparently detached viewpoint of the two early Greek epics as actually objective, a window on a ‘Heroic Age’, on a ‘Homeric society’ and its values. We used to ask whether ‘Homeric society’ belongs to the poets' own time or to some earlier one. We still ask how to characterize and explain the ways in which the ‘Homeric world’ differs fromanyworld that we can accept as having existed: we answer with phrases such as ‘poetic (...) exaggeration’ and ‘epic distance’. We have constructed ‘Homeric society’, but it remains an isolate. It can tell us nothing in return of the poets' intentions, or of the society of their time, unless we have a working hypothesis as to the place in that society that was held by the poets and their audiences. (shrink)