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A Papyrus commentary on Alcman published in 19571 brings us news of a poem in which Alcman “physiologized”. The lemmata and commentary together witness to a semi-philosophical cosmogony unlike any other hitherto known from Greece. The evidence is meagre, but it seems worth while to see what can be made of it; for it is perhaps possible to go a little farther than has so far been done.

A Papyrus commentary on Alcman published in 19571 brings us news of a poem in which Alcman “physiologized”. The lemmata and commentary together witness to a semi-philosophical cosmogony unlike any other hitherto known from Greece. The evidence is meagre, but it seems worth while to see what can be made of it; for it is perhaps possible to go a little farther than has so far been done.

In the long section of anapaests with which they make their entry, the old men of Argos methodically deliver three essential messages to the audience: 40–71. It is the tenth year of the Trojan War. 72–82. We are men who were too old to go and fight in it. 83–103. Some new situation seems to be indicated by the fact that Clytemnestra is organizing sacrifices throughout the town.

It is generally accepted that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was not conceived as a single poem but is a combination of two: a Delian hymn, D, performed at Delos and concerned with the god's birth there, and a Pythian hymn, P, concerned with his arrival and establishment at Delphi. What above all compels us to make a dichotomy is not the change of scene in itself, but the way D ends. The poet returns from the past to the present, (...) and takes leave of his audience; farewell, he says, and remember me ever after. He is quite clearly finishing. Whereupon there is an abrupt and unsatisfactory transition to P. (shrink)

Histories of literature tend to treat Stesichorus as just one of the lyric poets, like Alcman or Anacreon. But the vast scale of his compositions puts him in a category of his own. It has always been known that his Oresteia was divided into more than one book; P. Oxy, 2360 gave us fragments of a narrative about Telemachus of a nearly Homeric amplitude; and from P. Oxy. 2617 it was learned that the Geryoneis contained at least 1,300 verses, the (...) total being perhaps closer to two thousand. Even allowing for the shorter lines, this was as long as many an epic poem. Indeed, these were epic poems, in subject and style as well as in length: epics to be sung instead of recited. What was behind them ? Who was this Stesichorus, and how did he come to be, in Quintilian's phrase, ‘sustaining on the lyre the weight of epic song’ ? The biographical problem must be tackled first. The question of Stesichorus’ historical setting and date is confused by legendary elements as well as by contradiction in the sources. On the whole scholars remain spellbound by the specious precision of the Suda's dates , although it has long been realized that they are founded on nothing but the assumption that Stesichorus was younger than Alcman and older than Simonides. There have been excellent discussions by Wilamowitz and Maas, but they seem to have had little influence. (shrink)

The work of many scholars in the last hundred years has helped us to understand the nature and origins of the treatise which we know for short as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The present state of knowledge may be summed up as follows. The work in its extant form dates from the Antonine period, but much of it was taken over bodily from an earlier source, thought to be the Movaelov of Alcidamas. Some of the verses exchanged in (...) the contest were current even earlier, and some scholars have supposed that the story of a contest went back to the fifth, sixth, or even eighth century; but this is now much doubted. (shrink)

City archives, mined by Aristotle for his Didaskaliai, preserved a reasonably complete record of dramatic productions in the fifth century. But how far back did these archives go? The so-called Fasti, an inscription set up c. 346 and listing dithyrambic, comic and tragic victors year by year, must have been based on the same archives, but went back, it is thought, only as far as 502/1. Its heading πρ]τον κμοι ἦσαν τ[ι διονσ]ωι τραγωιδο δ[, however supplemented, implies an intention of (...) going back to the beginning of things, in other words to the beginning of the archival record. This raises serious doubt as to whether that record went back to the alleged date of Thespis' première, or indeed to those given for Choerilus' and Phrynichus'. (shrink)

I shall argue for two complementary theses: firstly that ‘Homer’ was not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name, and secondly that for a century or more after the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey there was little interest in the identity or the person of their author or authors. This interest only arose in the last decades of the sixth century; but once it did, ‘Homer’ very quickly became an object of admiration, criticism, and (...) biographical construction. (shrink)

By the colours and decoration of a vase fragment one determines the period and style to which the original belonged; while its physical contours show from what part of the original it comes. The material may be insufficient for a reconstruction of the whole design. But it is often legitimate to go beyond what is actually contained in the preserved pieces.

They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the (...) case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry. (shrink)

Several of the treatises and lectures that make up the Hippocratic corpus begin with more or less extended statements about the physical composition and operation of the world at large, and approach the study of human physiology from this angle. We see this, for example, in De Natwra Hominis, De Flatibus, De Carnibus, De Victu; it was the approach of Alcmaeon of Croton, Diogenes of Apollonia, and according to Plato of Hippocrates himself. The work known as De Hebdomadibus would appear (...) to be a prime example of the type. The first twelve chapters are cosmological. They are dominated by two ideas: that everything in nature is arranged in groups of seven, and that the human body is constructed on the same pattern as the whole world. In the later part of the book we pass to the subject of fevers, their causation and treatment. But as Roscher observed, the cosmology and the pathology do not belong together. (shrink)

‘Alcman lived sometime in the seventh century.’ ‘At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before or during or after it.’ Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more (...) precise dating for Alcman. Some people think, that in fact it does, and I am one of them. (shrink)

This important and extensive fragment of the Catalogues is preserved on a papyrus of the third century A.D., no. 10560 in the Berlin collection. First published in 1907 by Schubart and Wilamowitz, Berliner Klassikertexte, v. 1. 31 ff. , it was also collated by Crönert, who published his readings in Hermes xlii , 610 ff. The most recent edition is that of Merkelbach, Die Hesiod-fragmente auf Papyrus , pp. 24 ff. The photograph mentioned above is the only one published. It (...) covers only a small portion of the text; most of the rest is too faint to be suitable for photography. (shrink)

By the colours and decoration of a vase fragment one determines the period and style to which the original belonged; while its physical contours show from what part of the original it comes. The material may be insufficient for a reconstruction of the whole design. But it is often legitimate to go beyond what is actually contained in the preserved pieces.

Each of the Orphic Hymns is headed in the manuscripts by the name of the deity to which it is addressed, and in most cases a specification of the kind of incense to be used: thus 2 Only the first hymn lacks a heading. It is preceded in the manuscripts by a poem in which Orpheus addresses Musaeus and teaches him a prayer to a multitude of gods.

The third volume in West's Hellenica trilogy is devoted to philosophy, and music and metre; however, it also contains essays on other literary texts and topics.

Catalexis was the subject of an important recent article by L. P. E. Parker. There is one particular aspect of it that she does not touch, and that ought not to be left out of account: its presumable Indo-European origins. Consideration of this aspect leads to the drawing of distinctions which otherwise tend to escape notice.

In CQ 20 , 277–87, 1 argued for dating Corinna to the third century B.C. In my Greek Metre , p. 141, I continued to assume this date, observing that not everyone accepted it but that I knew of no attempt to answer my arguments. I must confess to having overlooked at least one such attempt, by A. Allen in CJ 68 , 26–8; and now M. Davies has mounted another in SIFC 81 , 186–94, largely repeating Allen's points but (...) with some new touches. Allen upholds the traditional fifth-century date. Davies has yet to come to a decision, but meanwhile he is eager to discredit what he regards as an unsatisfactory case for a Hellenistic dating. (shrink)

It is well known that sometime before 700 b.c. the Greeks took over from the Near East a complex theogonic myth about the succession of rulers in heaven, involving the motifs of the castration of Sky and a swallowing and regurgitation by his successor, and that this story forms the framework of Hesiod's Theogony. It is less well known that at a later epoch, sometime before the middle of the sixth century b.c., a quite different and no less striking oriental (...) myth about the beginning of things was introduced to Greece: the myth of the god Unaging Time, who created the materials for the world from his own seed, and of the cosmic egg out of which the heaven and the earth were formed. I have discussed this myth and its variants elsewhere. My purpose in re-examining it here is firstly to clarify various details of the Phoenician versions of the cosmogony as reported in Greek sources, secondly to obtain a sharper picture of its original form, and thirdly to argue that the world model of the early Ionian philosophers, which to some extent set the pattern for subsequent Greek cosmology, owed more to the myth than has generally been appreciated. (shrink)

It is well known that sometime before 700b.c. the Greeks took over from the Near East a complex theogonic myth about the succession of rulers in heaven, involving the motifs of the castration of Sky and a swallowing and regurgitation by his successor, and that this story forms the framework of Hesiod'sTheogony. It is less well known that at a later epoch, sometime before the middle of the sixth centuryb.c., a quite different and no less striking oriental myth about the (...) beginning of things was introduced to Greece: the myth of the god Unaging Time, who created the materials for the world from his own seed, and of the cosmic egg out of which the heaven and the earth were formed. I have discussed this myth and its variants elsewhere. My purpose in re-examining it here is firstly to clarify various details of the Phoenician versions of the cosmogony as reported in Greek sources, secondly to obtain a sharper picture of its original form, and thirdly to argue that the world model of the early Ionian philosophers, which to some extent set the pattern for subsequent Greek cosmology, owed more to the myth than has generally been appreciated. (shrink)

In the controversy over the date of Corinna, the following points may be taken as agreed: 1. An edition was made in Boeotia about the end of the third or beginning of the second century B.C. 2. The texts of Corinna current in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods were all descended from that Boeotian edition. 3. Before its dissemination, Corinna was unknown in Greece at large. If she wrote at an earlier period, she must have been remembered only locally. (...) The difference between Boeotian spelling of the fifth century and that of the fourth is very great: but the difference in this respect between the mid-fourth century and the late third or early second is comparatively slight. It is therefore tenable that whereas there would be a good reason for the re-spelling of fifth-century Boeotian into the later convention of any period, there would be no obvious or adequate reason for re-spelling Boeotian of the fourth century into the orthography of the third, or that of the third into that of the second. Even those features of fourth-century spelling which have ceased to preponderate are by no means unknown or even uncommon at the end of the third century. (shrink)

C. Prien, Rh. Mus. 6, 192f.: ‘…so habe ich vor Jahren schon vermuthet [but lot published, apparently] ρκιóν γ' αδουμνους mit Vergleichung der Stellen V. 650 = 680] ρκον αδεσθε und 680 [ = 710] αδουμνους τòν ρκον, ohne sie für evident usgeben zu wollen.’.