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The Poet as Hero: Fifth-Century Autobiography and Subsequent Biographical Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mary R. Lefkowitz
Affiliation:
Wellesley College

Extract

The old proverb (‘poets tell a lot of lies’) can still more accurately be applied to their biographers.‘ Even the more plausible and psycho logically tempting details in the lives of literary figures derive from these authors’ fictional works, poems, and dramas, and not from the kind of source material biographers use today, letters, documents, eyewitness testimony. Critics and readers eager to establish some historical correlation between any ancient poet's life and his work should expect to be disappointed. But even if the ancient lives are useless to the historian or critic trying to explain what in Euripides’ experience compelled him to write about Medea, these stories are of interest to mythologists. If we stop being angry at the Lives for failing to be historical, and look at them rather as myths or fairy tales, some informative patterns begin to emerge.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 Paroem. Gr. 1. 371. 17, attributed first to Solon, fr. 29 W. On poets’ lives, see esp. Fairweather, J. A., ‘Fiction in the Biographies of Ancient Writers’, Ancient Society 5 (1974), 231–75.Google Scholar Also Lefkowitz, M. R., ‘Pindar's Lives’, Classica et Iberica (Festschrift Matique; Worcester, Mass., 1975), 7193Google Scholar; ‘Fictions in Literary Biography: the New Poem and the Arcehilochus Legend’, Arethusa 9 (1976), 181–9Google Scholar; Riginos, A. S., Platonica: The Anecdotes Concerning the Life and Writings of Plato (CSCT 3; Leiden, 1976).Google Scholar

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9 Cf. also the poet Solon's hardly unbiased description of his own singularly righteous conduct of Athenian politics, fr. 39W, and the story about his poem on Salamis, fr. 1W.

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25 See above, n. 16.

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34 Wilamowitz, (n. 32), 25; Hdt. 4. 114.Google Scholar

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43 Renehan, R., ‘The Michigan Alcidamas Papyrus: A Problem in Methodology’, HSCP 75 (1971), 85105Google Scholar; all references in this article are to his text, pp. 85–6. See also his ‘Linguistic Criteria for Dating and Author ship: The Alcidamas Papyrus’, Studies in Greek Texts (Hypomnemata 43 (1976), 144–59).Google Scholar Aristotle fr. 76 tells story of Homer's mother (Plut, . Vit. Hom. 3, p. 240 Allen)Google Scholar; Trenkner, (n. 23), p. 30.Google Scholar

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48 On fictional techniques in Herodotus, see Fehling, D., Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot: Studien zur Erzabikunst Herodots (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur and Geschichte 9; Berlin, 1971), pp. 67125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar More, however, needs to be said about what Herodotus and his contemporaries regarded as ‘true;’ see Cobet’s, J. review of Fehling, Gnomon 47 (1974), 737–46.Google Scholar

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51 This article is based on a paper read at the Institute of Classical Studies in London, and at the Universities of Oxford and of Cambridge. I am especially grateful to the following for suggestions and information: E. Badian, W. Calder, J. Fairweather, E. W. Handley, H. Lloyd-Jones, A. A. Long, C. Macleod, R. Syme, S. West.