With the publication in 1974 of an inscribed ‘Orphic’ gold leaf from Hipponium in Southern Italy, and that in 1977 of another, now at Malibu, California, we have a relatively extensive series of gold leaves from graves bearing brief instructions concerning the afterlife. Whether these are Orphic, Pythagorean or whatever, will not be in question here; but the relation between the different texts constitutes a problem interesting in itself, whose dispassionate exploration may also contribute to the eventual understanding of the (...) religious background. (shrink)

Much has been written on the genesis of the pseudo-hesiodic Shield of Heracles — so much, that true progress is difficult to discern among the welter of theories. But some has been made, although the conclusions that have been reached must be regarded as likely hypotheses rather than proven facts. In this article I propose to proceed from some of these conclusions, ensuring that they are as firmly grounded as possible, to an assessment of how this poem's version of the (...) combat of Heracles and Cycnus relates to the likely circumstances and occasion of its original performance. This will involve considering the legend's variants , and a new look at the first half of the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo. (shrink)

The more I understand the Southslavic poetry and the nature of the unity of the oral poem, the clearer it seems to me that the Iliad and the Odyssey are very exactly, as we have them, each one of them the rounded and finished work of a single singer…. I even figure to myself, just now, the moment when the author of the Odyssey sat and dictated his song, while another, with writing materials, wrote it down verse by verse, even (...) in the way that our singers sit in the immobility of their thought, watching the motion of Nikola's hand across the empty page, when it will tell them it is the instant for them to speak the next verse. (shrink)

In his magisterial work Persephone, Zuntz drew a basic distinction between two sets of Orphic gold leaves—those known from the elaborate tumuli at Thurii, which he called Group A, and a more widely scattered series, Group B, then represented by two longer texts from Petelia in southern Italy and Pharsalus in Thessaly, and, in a shortened form, by a series of six short texts from the environs of Eleutherna in Crete. Three further finds have reinforced Zuntz's distinctions: first, a tablet (...) from Hipponium, the colony of Epizephyrian Locri in southern Italy, published by Foti and Pugliese Carratelli, then a lamella said to be from Thessaly but now in Malibu and published by Breslin, and finally a tablet said to be from Entella in Sicily and recently in Geneva, which was published in a bad transcription by Frel and much clarified by Riedweg. The first and third belong to Zuntz's Group B, while the second is close to his Group C. Pugliese Carratelli has published an exceptionally fine set of photographs of all the texts except those from Petelia and Entella. My restudy of the leaf from Petelia has led to some improved readings. Not even a drawing exists of the Entellan leaf, which no scholar except its first editor has ever seen. This fact prompted a reviewer of this article to wonder about its authenticity. In the absence of the object itself, such doubts can only be allayed if its text consistently contributes to improving our understanding of the archetype from which it is derived. One of the aims of this article is to show that it does indeed do so. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal M. L. West made the plausible suggestion that some features of the parodos of Aeschylusü Agamemnon, including the famous simile of the vultures deprived of their young, display the influence of Archilochusü celebrated epode in which Lycambes was admonished with the tale of the fox and the eagle. I think a passage in the Choephoroe confirms his view. One of the Oresteiaüs most characteristic traits is the manner in which themes and images recur (...) during the trilogy. The simile of the vultures at Ag. 48 ff. and the omen of the eagle and the hare at 112 ff. are conspicuously placed and vividly drawn, and we are not surprised to find a resumption of this imagery in the Choephoroe, when the eagleüs nestlings, Electra and Orestes, are reunited and plan their revenge . Here we find the image reversed: the young have lost their parents, not the parent-birds their young as at Ag. (shrink)

The more I understand the Southslavic poetry and the nature of the unity of the oral poem, the clearer it seems to me that the Iliad and the Odyssey are very exactly, as we have them, each one of them the rounded and finished work of a single singer…. I even figure to myself, just now, the moment when the author of the Odyssey sat and dictated his song, while another, with writing materials, wrote it down verse by verse, even (...) in the way that our singers sit in the immobility of their thought, watching the motion of Nikola's hand across the empty page, when it will tell them it is the instant for them to speak the next verse. (shrink)

The On Poems by Philodemus of Gadara is our main source for Hellenistic literary and critical theory. This first edition of Book 2 includes a Greek text and facing English translation of the newly reconstructed treatise on poetry in ancient Greek, as well as a comprehensive introduction and incisive analytical commentary.

The form has lately caused controversy. It is traditionally interpreted as poetic for but O. Skutsch has denied that iota could be lost in this way, pointing out that instead it could be a correctly formed future cf. with a root ending in the laryngeal. M. Campbell rejects this, and rightly claims that ApoUonius borrowed the line from the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo 528.

An important fragment of the lost portion of Aristotle's Poetics is the definition of synonyms preserved by Simplicius, which corresponds to Aristotle's own citation of the Poetics for synonyms in the Rhetoric, 3. 2.1404b 37 ff. I shall argue elsewhere that this derives from a discussion of the sources of verbal humour in the lost account of comedy and humour. Here it is my aim to show that Simplicius definitely derived the quotation from Porphyry, which pushes back the attestation of (...) this part of the Poetics by more than two centuries . Furthermore, I shall show that some of the words in the definition are a gloss added by Porphyry for the purposes of his own polemic. (shrink)

Nouns and personal names ending in –εύς –ῆϝος are unique to Greek, and have often been deemed pre-Hellenic in origin simply on account of the lack of Proto-Indo-European correspondences. Our failure to find convincing etymologies for βασιλεύς, ἑρμηνεύς, and βραβεύς has itself contributed to this view. However, we should hesitate, for general reasons, to posit pre-Hellenic origins for these words, since viable explanations both of βασιλεύς and of ἑρμηνεύς lie near to hand. Although the explanation of βασιλεύς that will be (...) proposed below still presents difficulties, I believe that it improves on previous attempts. (shrink)

In Python's comic satyr play Agen Harpalus, Alexander's errant treasurer, is mocked for erecting costly buildings left and right to honour his dead lover, the notorious prostitute Pythionice:ἔστιν δ’ ὅπου μὲν ὁ κάλαμος πέϕυχ’ ὅδε†ϕέτωμ’ ἄορνον, οὑξ ἀριστερᾶς δ’ ὅδεπόρνης ὁ κλεινὸς ναός, ὃν δὴ Παλλίδηςτεύξας κατέγνω διὰ τὸ πρᾶγμ’ αὑτοῦ ϕυγήν.1–2 πέϕυκε· ὁ δ’ εϕετωμα ορνον Athenaei cod. A: ὅδε scr. Dindorf, ἄορνον Fiorillo †ϕέτωμ’ vox desperata: ϕάτνωμ’ Fiorillo, ἕλωμ’ Meineke, πέτρωμ’ Pezopulus, ϕλέωμ’ A. von Blumenthal, στόμωμ’ Erbse, ϕηγὼν (...) Friebel. (shrink)

It used to be a commonplace that Bacchylides made profligate use of epithets to adorn his poetry, and not always in an appropriate fashion. More recently, there has been a healthy reaction against this attitude, with attempts to seek more subtle relationships between epithets and the contexts in which they occur. Recent study of poem 17 has concentrated on the conflict of character between Theseus and Minos, and the structure of the Ode, but the epithets have received some attention.

Aeneas ends his first speech to Dido as follows: quae te tam laeta tulerunt saecula? qui tanti talem genuere parentes? in freta dum fluuii current, dum montibus umbrae lustrabunt conuexa, polus dum sidera pascet, semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt, quae me cumque uocant terrae. A number of parallels have been cited for 607–9, notably Eel. 1.59f. and the positive statement at Eel. 5.76ff., which even ends with the same line.

Because of an incomplete description of its contents, it has escaped notice that the fifteenth-century vellum MS Parisinus graecus 2833 contains Orphic Hymns 76 and 77 on folio 91 verso. The Hymns are copied, without indication of title or authorship, after Musaeus' Hero and Leander , and before the collected Prolegomena to Hesiod A a, b, c, BEF a, b Pertusi, which are followed by Hesiod's Works and Days, Shield and Theogony. These are all in the same hand.

The use of ατ τοτο, ‘this very thing’, is perfectly familiar in classical Greek; but there is no general awareness, as witness the silence of the reference grammars and lexica, of the parallel usage of ατός juxtaposed with κενος, which is in fact not infrequent in the classical period, and mentioned in Apollonius Dyscolus . The examination of this construction which follows is intended not only to add to our knowledge of Greek syntax, and thereby to defend some passages against (...) erroneous emendations, but also to place in a wider context one of Plato's ways of referring to the Forms. As far as I can establish, the only scholar who has ever paid much attention to ατς κενος is J. Vahlen in 1906, and that in an obscure place, to explain an obscure passage; moreover, he simply accumulated parallels from authors of the Imperial period, without discussing how the construction is employed. It will emerge that the usage is no less frequent earlier, when it is used in a greater variety of ways, especially by Plato. (shrink)