The Greeks have long been regarded as innovators across a wide range of fields in literature, culture, philosophy, politics and science. However, little attention has been paid to how they thought and felt about novelty and innovation itself, and to relating this to the forces of traditionalism and conservatism which were also present across all the various societies within ancient Greece. What inspired the Greeks to embark on their unique and enduring innovations? How did they think and feel about the (...) new? This book represents the first serious attempt to address these issues, and deals with the phenomenon across all periods and areas of classical Greek history and thought. Each chapter concentrates on a different area of culture or thought, while the book as a whole argues that much of the impulse towards innovation came from the life of the polis which provided its setting. (shrink)

Pindar's Dithyramb 2opens with a reference to the historical development of the genre it exemplifies, the celebrated circular chorus of classical Greece. The first two lines were long known from various citations, notably in Athenaeus, whose sources included the fourth-century authors Heraclides of Pontus and Aristotle's pupil Clearchus of Soli. The third line appears, only partly legible, on a papyrus fragment published in 1919, which preserves some thirty lines of the dithyramb including most of the first antistrophe.

Excitement struggles with the restraint of form and language and the artifice of verbal repetition… runs riot.’ The repetition is more pronounced and personal here than in another Lesbia epigram, no. 70, where ‘the repetition dicit…dicit makes it certain that Catullus had [Callimachus, Ep. 25 Pf.] in mind’. Poem 70 illustrates how Catullus might allude to and adapt a Hellenistic model in expressing his personal feelings; while the longer elegiac poems in particular show the depth of his engagement with Callimachean (...) literary technique. We should not be surprised to find Callimachean elements here too, given the demonstrable correspondences with poem 68 in particular, a composition noted for its use of Alexandrian artifice. But while there are close echoes of the high emotion, the doctus poeta of 68 seems to be largely missing from 107. Here Catullus exults ipsa refers te / nobis ; there his mistress se nostrum contulit in gremium. (shrink)

Socrates: the philosopher whose questioning gave birth to the foundations of Western thought, and whose execution marked the end of the Athenian Golden Age. Yet despite his pre-eminence among the great thinkers of history, little of his life story is known. What we know tends to begin in his middle age and end with his trial and death. Our conception of Socrates has relied upon Plato and Xenophon--men who met him when he was in his fifties, a well-known figure in (...) war-torn Athens. There is mystery at the heart of Socrates's story: what turned the young Socrates into a philosopher? What drove him to pursue with such persistence, at the cost of social acceptance and ultimately his life, a whole new way of thinking about the meaning of existence? In this revisionist biography, classicist Armand D'Angour draws on neglected sources to explore the passions and motivations of young Socrates, showing how love transformed him into the philosopher he was to become. What emerges is the figure of Socrates as never previously portrayed: a heroic warrior, an athletic wrestler and dancer--and a passionate lover. Socrates in Love sheds new light on the formative journey of the philosopher, finally revealing the identity of the woman who Socrates claimed inspired him to develop ideas that have captivated thinkers for 2,500 years."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

What difference does music make to performance poetry, and how did the ancients understand this relationship? This volume explores the interaction of music and language in ancient Greek poetry, arguing that music crucially informs the ways in which these texts create meaning and exploring its place in contemporary critical writings.