The ego or speaking subject of Pindar's Sixth Paian is anomalous, as has been acknowledged by many scholars. In a genre whose ego is predominantly choral, the speaking subject at the beginning of Paian 6 differentiates himself from the chorus and confidently analogizes his poetic authority to the prophetic power of Delphi by his self-description as αοίδιμον Πιερίδων προfάταν. I would like to correlate Pindar's exceptional ego in this poem with what has recently emerged as the poem's exceptional performance context. (...) Following Ian Rutherford's 1997 discovery of a second marginal title for the third triad , we might postulate performance by two choruses: the first two triads sung by a Delphian chorus stationary at the altar, the last triad sung by an Aiginetan chorus as they process to the altar. The need to reconcile within the poem and the space of performance two choruses, two communities, and two local mythic traditions generates the strikingly prominent speaking subject of Paian 6 as a mediating figure. (shrink)

The following article investigates how Phaedrus' Latin verse fables engage standard Callimachean topoi. When Phaedrus imitates the Hymn to Apollo he fails to banish Envy and when he adopts Callimachus' own polemical allusions to Aesop he turns them upside down. Such texts are essentially Callimachean in spirit and technique and constitute a recusatio: by “mishandling” or “abusing” and thus “rejecting” various Callimachean topoi and the role of the “successful” Callimachean poet, the fabulist demonstrates his skill and versatility within the Callimachean (...) tradition. This sort of recusatio satirizes those poets who unimaginatively rehash Callimachean staples and represents a strategy that gains momentum in the first century AD. It thereby provides a literary context for understanding Phaedrus' engagement with the evolving traditions of Roman Callimacheanism. (shrink)