Sympotic Poetry

The article explores the concept of sympotic poetics in European culture as a distinctive form of discourse. This tradition originated in the Greek civilisation during the archaic period as a technique for socialisation within aristocratic culture and subsequently developed in Roman culture during the imperial period. Sympotic poetics thrived in medieval and modern Europe, where new forms of literary games, rooted in the intellectual traditions of antiquity, emerged. The article examines the beginnings of scholarly literary discussion and reviews selected examples of sympotic discussion practices in European culture.

This class explores the places and spaces of Greek lyric poetry from the seventh to fifth centuries BCE, using the polis as a shorthand for overlapping layers of geographic, sociopolitical, and religious context that define the genre's richness. Grouping the lyric poets by their main centers of performance and patronage (rather than meter or chronology), we will proceed from the early elegists and iambographers of Asia Minor to the wandering poets and Western Greece, and finally conclude with the panhellenic victory odes of Bacchylides and Pindar.

In this contribution I present a proposal to understand the materiality of the
Elephantine papyrus P.Berol. 13270, a fragment dating from the early third century B.C., a date that places it among the oldest literary papyri that have been preserved. The format is difficult to elucidate, since it is very fragmentary, but there are sufficient indications to consider that it was not originally part of a papyrus roll which would have contained more poems, but a sort of memorandum for declamation in a symposium. We resort to contemporary copies and to the comparative method to arrive at our proposal.

Не знаю, пригодится ли кому этот краткий компилятивный очерк истории греческого языка в эллинистическую эпоху, но, надеюсь, что для кого-нибудь он окажется небесполезным. В основном я написал его для одного учебника по истории эллинизма, но редактор «отредачил» его до трех страниц, поскольку, мол, история языка – это не «история». Я спорить не стал, но предупредил, что выложу куда-нибудь и полный вариант. Очерк сам очень общий, но, как мне кажется, дающий представление об истории греческого в этот период с точки зрения современной классической филологии. К сожалению, его никто не редактировал, так что возможны опечатки и неудачные фразы. Не судите слишком строго!

Platonic Investigations 16.1 (2022): 413–430.
The publication presents a commented Russian translation of Proclus’ Abridged Grammatical Chrestomathy, which has been preserved as an epitome in the Bibliotheca of Patriarch Photius (c. 810/820–893). Given its content, nowadays this work would have been titled something like a Short Course in Literary Criticism. We find here an index and brief specifications of various poetical genres, along with the listings of authors and works representing them. In the past, it was ascribed to the renowned Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus Lycius (412–485), known not only by his commentaries on several of Plato’s dialogues, but by his purely philological works as well. Even today, a number of scholars are still inclined to support this attribution, though it appears that it was most likely written by an otherwise unknown philosopher’s namesake, to wit a grammarian from the Alexandrian school, who lived in the first half of the 2th century AD.

The boys are my gods”, what Anacreon says in an anecdote transmitted by the scholia to Pindar (Isthm. 2, 1b), symbolises a characteristic of his erotic poetry, at the heart of which are his pupils. The datum that Anacreon would have composed no hymns to gods can be explained in the light of both a narrow concept of “hymn” (celebration of gods) on the one hand, and a devaluation of Anacreon’s hymns on the other. Anacreon’s appearances here and throughout the tradition, together with Ibycus and Alcaeus – especially as a representative pederastic poet and/or in connection with musical subjects – lead back to the moral background of IV cent. BC within which the Peripatetic Aristoxenus of Tarentum appears to have played an important role.

The aim of the present article is to discuss relations between archaic Greek philosophy and poetry through the example of Xenophanes of Colophon (sixth century BCE), the poet best known for a critique of traditional religion using anthropomorphic imagery. The initial problem lies in understanding the performative aspect in Xenophanes’ elegiac poems; analysis of fragments 1W and 2W has revealed that his literary output can be situated within the framework of the aristocratic symposium. This sympotic context determines the second question: how the poetic fragments fi t with those compositions in which Xenophanes attacks traditional beliefs and poetic ideas of Homer and Hesiod. As I suggest, the critique of traditional mythical narratives, and undermining other poets’ authority, can be interpreted as an expression of performative practices functioning at symposia of the archaic and classical epochs. By removing the division between “philosophy” and “poetry”, different aspects of Xenophanes’ fragments begin to coincide with the phenomenon of the ancient symposium, understood as a space for intellectual competition.

The image of the Helen in Sapph. Fr. 16 (Neri–Cinti) is analyzed in detail on the basis of the new papyrus fragments which were published by Dirk Obbink (Obbink, 2016a). According to the results of the comparative analysis, it is concluded that the form of the aoristic active participle from the verb περιέχειν, which is used in Sapph. Fr. 16, refers not only to the vocabulary of Homer, but also to the vocabulary of legal documents (cf.: Hom. Il. XV, 653–654; Hellanic., Fr. 31, 50 Jacoby; IG XII(2), №58, 8–9 etc.). Thus, we confirm a special significance of the Sapph. Fr. 16, which is a "program" song of Sappho’s thiasos (cf. Bierl, 2003).

Homometric occurrences show great frequency in the extant Greek strophic poetry, fitting well in its careful metrical and verbal construction and strengthening keywords or central ideas in the odes. Nevertheless, it attracts almost no attention in the main Greek metrics handbooks, where this poetic tool is usually mentioned in cursory assertions about general correspondences between the metrical and the verbal level in a choral ode. Despite J. B. Bury's attempt at underscoring isometric verbal repetitions in Pindar's epinician odes, an overall study and an attempt to provide an interpretation remain a desideratum. In the following paper I shall discuss some aspects regarding this topic in Pindar's poetry, aiming to demonstrate its relevance to poetic exegesis.

Greek poets of the archaic period, though often characterised as amateur aristocrats, could also seek to present themselves as professionals – regular practitioners of a specialist skill (τέχνη). In this capacity, the poet is understood to work primarily for the benefit of the community (either his own or, more commonly, those through which he travels). In return for these services, he expects to receive both a special status and material rewards (though financial gain is not presented as his main motivation). The poet's professional status thus forms one part of his identity and is a source of respect in the ancient city.

Abstract: This essay examines the poetic production connected to the occasion of the symposium (seventh ‒ fifth cent. BCE), a production that underwent different stages of submersion determined by diverse cultural and political factors, and further examines the lullaby as a different type of monodic poetry, composed by and large by women. The author argues that lullabies are a perpetually emergent typology of text on the synchronic level, due to the recursive nature of their compositional occasion, and explores the dynamics which conversely resulted in the total submersion of the individual texts on the diachronic level, partly due to the failure to secure their written transmission.

The paper discusses the social status of doctors and seers in the archaic and early classical era. The élite specialists participated actively in the aristocratic display and culture, yet the changeable dynamics of their prestige made their situation exceptional compared to the other aristoi. A crucial factor to be taken into account was their high geographical mobility, inherent to their occupation. I argue that it enabled them to achieve a high status in new communities at a great speed, but also deprived them of the mechanism of protection that less mobile individuals had and thus often contributed to their downfall. Finally, I show the strategies the specialists employed to keep their prestige stable.

The research on this article was supported by the National Science Centre grants
number 2016/23/N/HS3/00838 (Mythical genealogies of aristocratic families in archaic and classical Greece)

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Please note that because of the lag between research and publication, I missed this important reference: "From Ugarit to Madaba: Philological and Historical Functions of the marzēaḥ" by Estēe Dvorjetski (https://academic.oup.com/jss/article-abstract/61/1/17/2472176).

The A. supports with new arguments von der Mühll's idea that in Anacreon fr. 356 PMG (=33 Gentili) Athenaeus has joined two distinct short poems. The first (fr. a) is an invitation to drink heavily in order to provoke Dionysiac enthusiasm; the second (fr. b) is an admonition against the degeneration of the symposium and a reminder of the rules of a well-ordered rite. The performance of the two poems must be placed in the same symposium at some distance of time, or, more probably, in different symposia: both could be performed whenever similar circumstances occurred. Some arguments are proposed in defence of Pauw's amendment ἀνυβρίστως in fr. (a).

Abstract: Epigram AP 10. 42, attributed to Lucian in the Palatine Anthology, probably is not by Lucian, nor is it originally even an epigram: the allusion to the oral publication of the verses, which must be protected by a “seal” affixed to the tongue, betrays an archaic (rather than classical) mentality, while the almost total thematic coincidence with the Theognidean elegy of the “seal” (Theogn. 19-26), as well as the similarity between the solutions proposed in the two compositions and the broader stylistic and linguistic similarities, suggest that this epigram should be recognized as a couplet from a lost section of the Theognidean corpus, just like other texts attributed to Theognis by Stobaeus.

Bacch. fr. dith. 29d M. Tra i dithyramborum vel epiniciorum fragmenta dell'edizione di Bacchilide curata da H. Maehler (Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis, Monachii-Lipsiae 2003 11) compaiono, sotto il nr. 29, sette lacerti (a-g) tramandati da due papiri dei secc. II e III d.C. 1 e ascritti ad un ditirambo, forse intitolato Ὀρφεύς 2. Si riproduce di séguito il testo del frammento, con le integrazioni che appaio-no sicure (come quelle dei vv. 7, 9 e 14) o, quanto meno, molto probabili (come quelle dei vv. 10-13) 3. 1 Si tratta di P. Oxy. XXXII 2364 addendum a + b (C add. a + b) e di P. Oxy. XXIII 2364 (R), assegnati da Lobel rispettivamente al III e al II sec. d.C. I due papiri sono stati congiunti tra loro da Maehler (H. M., Die Lieder des Bakchylides, II. Die Dithyramben & Fragmente, Leiden 1997, 282s.) sulla base di alcune corrispondenze metriche rilevate da Führer (R. F., Zu P. Ox. XXXII (1967), p. 160. Addendum to 2364 (Bacch. Dith.), «Maia» n.s. XXI, 1969, 83-85) e dallo stesso Maehler (Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis, Lipsiae 1970 10 , 118 ad fr. 65), riassumibili come segue: fr. 29a [R fr. 1] vv. 1-4 = 29d [C add. b] vv. 10-13; 29b [R fr. 2] vv. 6-18 = 29d [C add. b] vv. 1-13. 2 Così Snell (B. S., rec. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, XXXII, London 1967, «Gnomon» XL, 1968, 116-123: 122), e quindi Maehler nelle edizioni del melico (vd. supra n. 1). Sulla stessa linea è anche Irigoin (J. I., Bacchylide. Dithyrambes, épinicies, fragments, trad. par J. Duche-min-L. Bardollet, Paris 1993, 65). 3 Vd. anche Maehler, Die Lieder II cit. 52-55. Ai vv. 7-9 non si è accolto l'accostamen-to del frammento papiraceo C add. a, che pure confermerebbe, al v. 7, la felice congettura (πόντι]ον) di Snell, ma che costringe, al v. 8, a correggere il testo tràdito in κλε[ῖό]ν <σ>ε τὸν Οἰαγρίδα[ν (come alternativa, Maehler [o.c. 52] proponeva in apparato κλε[ῖό]ν <τ>ε τὸν Οἰαγρίδα[ν). In un testo così lacunoso, appare più prudente accedere all'ipotesi di errore da parte del copista solo dopo avere tentato altre possibilità di ricostruzione del testo. Un'al-tra proposta, più cauta, è quella, suggerita dubitativamente da Snell (Bacchylidis carmina cit. 122), di integrare κλε[αί]νετον, finora attestato solo come idionimo, ma mai come aggettivo. L'integrazione più probabile per il v. 8 appare, in ogni caso, εὐαί]νετον, proposto da Lobel (E. L., Addendum to 2364, in Id., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, XXXII, London 1967, 160-162: 161) sulla scorta di Pind. P. 4,177 (si veda inoltre Bacch. 19,11, dove l'epiteto è attribuito alla poesia bacchilidea stessa), ovviamente accettabile solo se non si accoglie l'accostamento dell'addendum papiraceo e si attribuisce invece quest'ultimo frammento alla colonna precedente (per questa possibilità, cf. Snell, o.c. 123). Per una più dettagliata discussione sul contenuto del frammento sia concesso il rinvio a Orfeo apollineo (tra lirica arcaica e critica letteraria d'età classica), «AOFL» II (2009) 47-67. «EIKASMOS» XXV (2014)