The cambridge companion to greek lyric

t h e ca m b r i d g e c o m p a n i o n t o
g re e k l y ri c
Greek lyric poetry encompassed a wide range of types of poem, from elegy to
iambos and dithyramb to epinikion. It particularly flourished in the archaic and
classical periods, and some of its practitioners, such as Sappho and Pindar, had
significant cultural influence in subsequent centuries down to the present day.
This Companion provides an accessible introduction to this fascinating and
diverse body of poetry and its later reception. It takes account of the exciting
new papyrus finds and new critical approaches which have greatly advanced our
understanding of both the corpus itself and of the socio-cultural contexts in which
lyric pieces were produced, performed and transmitted. Each chapter is provided
with a guide to further reading, and the volume includes a chronology, glossary
and guide to editions and translations.
A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book

Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010


Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010


THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO

GREEK LYRIC
EDITED BY

FELIX BUDELMANN

Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
The Cambridge companion to Greek lyric / edited by Felix Budelmann.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-84944-9
1. Greek poetry – History and criticism.
I. Budelmann, Felix. II. Title.
pa3110.c26 2009
884′.0109–dc22
2009004022
isbn 978-0-521-84944-9 hardback
isbn 978-0-521-61476-4 paperback
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third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
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Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010


CONTENTS

List of illustrations and maps
Notes on Contributors
Preface
Citations, abbreviations and transliteration
Introducing Greek lyric
felix budelmann
part i

page viii
xi
xv
xvii
1

contexts and topics

1

Genre, occasion and performance
chris carey

2

Greek lyric and the politics and sociologies of archaic
and classical Greek communities
simon hornblower

19
21

39

3

Greek lyric and gender
eva stehle

58

4

Greek lyric and the place of humans in the world
mark griffith

72

5

Greek lyric and early Greek literary history
barbara graziosi and johannes haubold

95

6

Language and pragmatics
giovan battista d’alessio

114

7

Metre and music
luigi battezzato

130

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contents
part ii

poets and traditions

147

8 Iambos
chris carey

149

9 Elegy
antonio aloni

168

10

Alcman, Stesichorus and Ibycus
eveline krummen

189

11

Alcaeus and Sappho
dimitrios yatromanolakis

204

12

Anacreon and the Anacreontea
felix budelmann

227

13

Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides
hayden pelliccia

240

14

Ancient Greek popular song
dimitrios yatromanolakis

263

15

Timotheus the New Musician
eric csapo and peter wilson

277

part iii

reception

295

16

Lyric in the Hellenistic period and beyond
silvia barbantani

297

17

Lyric in Rome
alessandro barchiesi

319

18

Greek lyric from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century
pantelis michelakis

336

19

Sappho and Pindar in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
margaret williamson

352

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contents
epilogue
20 Lyric and lyrics: perspectives, ancient and modern

michael silk
Chronology of select melic, elegiac and iambic poets
Editions, commentaries, English translations, lexica, bibliographies
Glossary
List of works cited
Index

371
373

386
388
396
400
449

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ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

1 Wooden plaque showing sacrificial procession of women and musicians.
Corinthian, c. third quarter sixth century BCE. National Archaeological
Museum, Athens, inv. no. 16464. © Ministry of Culture, Archaeological
Receipts Fund.
page 85
2 Inside of a red-figure kylix attributed to Douris, showing aulos-player
and singing symposiast. Attic, c. 480 BCE. Staatliche Antikensammlung
und Glyptothek, Munich, inv. no. 2646. ARV² 437.128. © Hirmer

Verlag.
86
3 Red-figure kylix signed by Douris, showing a school scene, including
youths playing the aulos and writing on tablet (side a), and man and youth
playing lyres and man holding scroll (side b). Attic, c. 490–480 BCE.
Antikensammlung, Berlin, inv. no. F2285. ARV² 431.48. © bpk.
87
4 Black-figure Siana cup attributed to the Heidelberg painter, showing
choral group of dancers. Attic, mid-sixth century BCE. Allard Pierson
Museum, Amsterdam, inv. no. 3356. ABV 66.57.
88
5 Red-figure kalathos-psykter. Obverse side, showing Sappho and Alcaeus.
Attic, c. 480–470 BCE. Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek,
Munich, inv. no. 2416. ARV² 385.228.
205
6 Red-figure hydria showing Sappho, attributed to the Group of
Polygnotus. Attic, c. 440–430 BCE. National Archaeological Museum,
Athens, inv. no. 1260. ARV² 1060.145. © Ministry of Culture,
Archaeological Receipts Fund.
224
7 Red-figure hydria in the manner of the Niobid Painter, showing a seated
female figure reading in the company of three other female figures.
Attic, c. 440 BCE. British Museum, London, inv. no. E190. ARV²
611.36. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
225
8 Fragmentary red-figure kalyx-krater attributed to the Kleophrades
painter, showing three men, one wearing headdress and carrying a parasol
and one carrying a barbitos inscribed ANAKREON. Attic, c. 500
BCE. ARV² 185.32. Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, inv. no. 13365.
237

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list of illustrations and maps
9 Jacques-Louis David, Sappho and Phaon, 1809. State Hermitage
Museum, St Petersburg, inv. no. GE-5668.
10 Théodore Chassériau, Sapho se précipitant dans la mer, 1846. Musée du
Louvre. Photo RMN / © Jean-Gilles Berizzi.
11 Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864.
Tate Collection, London, inv. no. T03063.

357
358
359

The background on the front cover is a detail of P Lond. 733 (the ending of
Bacchylides 18 and the beginning of 19). The foreground is a black-figure plate
showing an aulos player and a dancer holding a barbitos. Athenian, late sixth
century BCE. Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig, Basel, Kä 421. ABV 294.21.

Maps
The Greek world in the archaic and early classical periods.
The major dialect areas during the archaic and classical periods.

xxii
121

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

a n t o n i o a l o n i is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Turin. He has
published on New Comedy, Plutarch and tragedy, and especially on Greek epic and
archaic lyric poetry. He is currently working on Hesiod.
s i l v i a b a r b a n t a n i is Researcher in Greek Literature and teaches Greek language
at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano. She has written widely on
literary papyrology and Hellenistic poetry and history, including the monograph
Φά τις νικηφόρoς: Frammenti di elegia encomiastica nell’età delle guerre galatiche
(Milan 2001).
a l e s s a n d r o b a r c h i e s i teaches Latin literature at the University of Siena at
Arezzo, and at Stanford. His work on Latin poetry (especially Vergil, Ovid and
Horace) frequently addresses the appropriation of Greek literary and cultural
traditions, for example in the preface to Ovidio: Metamorfosi (Milan 2005), vol. I.
He has contributed chapters to several Cambridge Companions on Roman
literature.
l u i g i b a t t e z z a t o is Professor of Greek Literature at the Università del Piemonte
Orientale, Vercelli. He has published on textual criticism, ancient Greek language
and metre, and Greek tragedy (Il monologo nel teatro di Euripide, Pisa 1995;
Linguistica e retorica della tragedia greca, Rome 2007).
f e l i x b u d e l m a n n teaches Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author
of The Language of Sophocles (Cambridge 2000), and works on Greek lyric and
drama, as well as their reception history. His current main project is a ‘green-andyellow’ commentary on selections from Greek lyric.
c h r i s c a r e y has taught in Cambridge, St Andrews, Minnesota and London. He has
published on Greek lyric, epic, tragedy, comedy, oratory and law. He is editor of the

Oxford Text of Lysias.
e r i c c s a p o is Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney. He is co-author of
The Context of Ancient Drama, and author of Theories of Mythology. Together
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notes on contributors
with Peter Wilson he is currently working on a social and economic history of the
ancient theatre.
g i o v a n b a t t i s t a d ’ a l e s s i o , Professor of Greek Language and Literature at
King’s College London, has studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa), and has
taught at the University of Messina. He has published extensively on Greek archaic
epic and lyric poetry and on Hellenistic poetry.
b a r b a r a g r a z i o s i is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Durham University. She has
written Inventing Homer (Cambridge 2002) and, together with Johannes Haubold,
Homer: The Resonance of Epic (London 2005). She is currently working on a
commentary of Iliad 6 and editing, together with George Boys-Stones and Phiroze
Vasunia, The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies.
m a r k g r i f f i t h is Professor of Classics, and of Theater, Dance and Performance
Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked primarily on Greek
drama, and is also the author of articles on Hesiod, ancient Greek education and
various aspects of performance in the ancient world.
j o h a n n e s h a u b o l d is Leverhulme Senior Lecturer in Greek Literature at
Durham University. He is the author of Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social
Formation (Cambridge 1999) and has written, together with Barbara Graziosi,
Homer: The Resonance of Epic (London 2005). He is currently working on a
commentary of Iliad 6, and on a collection of essays on Plato and Hesiod.
s i m o n h o r n b l o w e r is Professor of Classics and Grote Professor of Ancient
History at University College London. He is the author of Thucydides and Pindar:

Historical Narrative and the World of Epinikian Poetry (Oxford 2004) and he coedited Pindar’s Poetry, Patrons and Festivals (Oxford 2007). The third and final
volume of his Thucydides commentary was published by OUP in 2008. His next
project is a ‘green-and-yellow’ commentary for CUP on Herodotus book 5.
e v e l i n e k r u m m e n is Professor of Classics at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz
(Austria). She is the author of Pyrsos Hymnon (Berlin and New York 1990, English
translation in preparation), and has published on Greek and Roman literature and
culture, including religion and reception history. She is currently working on a
monograph on Greek lyric and its institutional background and on a Fragmente
der griechischen Historiker volume devoted to the history of Greek literature.
p a n t e l i s m i c h e l a k i s is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol.
He is the author of Achilles in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 2002) and Euripides’
Iphigenia at Aulis (London 2006). He has also co-edited Homer, Tragedy and
Beyond: Essays in Honour of P. E. Easterling (London 2001) and Agamemnon in
Performance, 456 BC–AD 2004 (Oxford 2005).
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notes on contributors
h a y d e n p e l l i c c i a has taught Classics at Cornell University since 1989; he is the
author of Mind, Body, and Speech in Homer and Pindar (Göttingen 1995) and a
variety of articles on classical literature from Homer to Virgil; he has edited Selected
Dialogues of Plato (New York 2000).
m i c h a e l s i l k is Professor of Classical and Comparative Literature, and from 1991
to 2006 was Professor of Greek Language and Literature, at King’s College London.
He has published widely on poetry, drama, thought and theory in Greek antiquity
and the modern world, from Homer to Aristotle to Shakespeare to Nietzsche to Ted
Hughes.
e v a s t e h l e teaches at the University of Maryland, mainly in the areas of Greek
language, literature and religion. She uses performance analysis as a method of

investigating several areas of Greek culture, including the complexities of gendered
public performance in Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece (Princeton
1997).
m a r g a r e t w i l l i a m s o n is Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative
Literature at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Sappho’s Immortal
Daughters (Cambridge, Mass. 1995) and co-editor of The Sacred and the
Feminine in Ancient Greece (London 1998). Her current project, provisionally
entitled The Classicising Self, is on classical allusion and colonialism in the nineteenth-century British West Indies.
p e t e r w i l s o n is the William Ritchie Professor of Classics at the University of
Sydney. He is author of The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: the Chorus, the
City and the Stage (Cambridge 2000), editor of Greek Theatre and Festivals:
Documentary Studies (Oxford 2007) and co-editor of Music and the Muses: the
Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford 2004). Together with
Eric Csapo he is currently working on a social and economic history of the ancient
theatre.
d i m i t r i o s y a t r o m a n o l a k i s is Associate Professor in the Department of
Classics and the Department of Anthropology at The Johns Hopkins University.
He is the co-author of Towards a Ritual Poetics (with P. Roilos; Athens 2003) and
author of Sappho in the Making (Cambridge, Mass. 2006) and Fragments of
Sappho: A Commentary (Cambridge, Mass. forthcoming). He is currently completing a book on the history of the socio-cultural institution of mousikoi agônes against
the background of religious festivals in archaic, classical and Hellenistic Greece.

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PREFACE

Greek lyric has been a vibrant field of study in recent years. New papyrus
finds, new approaches and new philological work have advanced our understanding of both the corpus itself and of the socio-cultural contexts in which
lyric pieces were produced, performed and transmitted. This companion aims
to give a stimulating and accessible account of Greek lyric in the light of these
developments (with ‘lyric’ understood here as including elegy and iambos: see
pp. 2–3). It is intended to provide essential information and broad coverage,
but it also reflects both the contributors’ and the editor’s interests and viewpoints. Where appropriate, chapters take one step beyond summarising the
current state of play. The result, it is hoped, is a more engaging book.
The volume is intended for anybody with a serious interest in Greek lyric.
As demanded by the subject, it includes discussion of relatively technical
matters such as fragmentary texts, dialect, metre and ancient scholarship,
which make certain demands on readers, but all chapters were written with
non-experts in mind. The first chapter is intended as a general introduction to
Greek lyric and scholarship on Greek lyric, and thus to the volume. The last
chapter is an epilogue. Technical terms are usually explained where they
occur, but note also the glossary on pp. 396–9.
As the list of contributors illustrates, scholarship on Greek lyric is highly
international. The challenge for a volume like this lies in the fact that many
important publications are in languages other than English. The policy
adopted here is to provide for all topics sufficient references to Englishlanguage work but not to shy away from pointing to material in other
languages where relevant.
Translations unless otherwise noted are the contributors’ own. For
further practical matters, note pp. xvii–xxi, on citations, abbreviations and
transliteration.
I have accumulated a number of debts in preparing this volume. To Pat
Easterling, Johannes Haubold, Liz Irwin, Pantelis Michelakis, Tim Power and
Richard Rawles for commenting on one or both of my own chapters (and to
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preface

Richard Rawles also, and especially, for various kinds of advice and editorial
work). To Peter Agocs, Luigi Battezzato and Agis Marinis for advice on
bibliography. To Michael Sharp at CUP for commissioning the volume, for
guidance on its shape and for efficient support throughout. To Malcolm Todd
for meticulous copy-editing. And, most of all, to all contributors for their
commitment and their readiness to tailor their chapters to the needs imposed
by the series and the volume overall.

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CITATIONS, ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLITERATION

Citations from Greek lyric
With a few exceptions the numbering systems used for citing Greek lyric texts in
this volume are those of the following editions (see below for the bibliographical
detail): Voigt’s Sappho et Alcaeus (V) for Sappho and Alcaeus; Davies’ Poetarum
melicorum Graecorum fragmenta (PMGF) for Alcman, Stesichorus and Ibycus;
Maehler’s Teubner editions (M) for Pindar fragments and for Bacchylides;
Page’s Poetae melici Graeci (PMG) for all other melic poetry; West’s Iambi et
elegi Graeci (W) for iambos and elegy. For the vast majority of texts these are
also the numbering systems used in the most recent Loeb editions.
For the sake of clarity, the numbering system used is explicitly indicated in
all potentially ambiguous citations, e.g. ‘Sa. 1 V’ for Sappho, fragment 1, in
the numeration of Voigt.

The word ‘fragment’ or ‘fr.’ is often left out: ‘Sa. 1 V’ = ‘Sa. fr. 1 V’. However,
rather awkwardly, in the case of Pindar the fragments are conventionally numbered separately from the complete epinikia and in the case of Bacchylides the
fragments are numbered separately from the longer epinikia and dithyramb texts
(even though most of those are fragmentary too). So for instance ‘Bacch. 3 M’
(one of the longest Bacchylidian epinikian texts) is not the same as ‘Bacch. fr.
3 M’ (a one-word fragment from a hymn). In citations of Pindar and Bacchylides,
therefore, unlike in the citations of other lyric texts, the presence or absence of
‘fr.’ or ‘fragment’ is always significant, rather than a matter of stylistic preference.
The works of Simonides and Anacreon are divided across West’s elegy edition
and Page’s PMG. To avoid ambiguity, their elegiac fragments are indicated by
‘eleg.’ Thus Simonides’ fr. eleg. 11 W2 is elegiac, while his fr. 542 PMG is melic.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are regularly used for the poets covered in this
volume: Alcm(an), Anacr(eon), Archil(ochus), Bacch(ylides), Hipp(onax),
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citations, abbreviations and transliteration

Ibyc(us), Mimn(ermus), Pind(ar), Sa(ppho), Sem(onides), Sim(onides),
Sol(on), Stes(ichorus), Th(eo)gn(is), Timoth(eus), Tyrt(aeus), Xenoph(anes).
Pindar’s books of epinikia are abbreviated: Ol(ympians), Pyth(ians),
Nem(eans), Isthm(ians).
Abbreviations of journals in the bibliography follow L’Année
Philologique. Abbreviations of editions of inscriptions follow the
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.
For other abbreviations, of ancient and modern authors and works, see the
third edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, but note Aristot(le) and

Aristoph(anes).
Abbreviations used frequently in the volume (and those not included in the
Oxford Classical Dictionary) are listed here for convenience:
ABV
ARV2
Bekker
Bernabé

CA

CEG
Consbruch
Courtney
Da Rios
Degani
D-K

Domingo-Forasté
FGE

J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters.
Oxford 1956.
J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd
edn. (3 vols.). Oxford 1963.
I. Bekker, Photii Bibliotheca. (2 vols.). Berlin 1824–5.
A. Bernabé, Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia et fragmenta. (2 parts, part 2 in three fasc.).
Leipzig (part 1) and Munich (part 2) 1996–2007.
J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina: Reliquiae
minores poetarum Graecorum aetatis Ptolemaicae
323–146 a.C. Oxford 1925. Reprinted Chicago 1981.

P. A. Hansen, Carmina epigraphica Graeca. Vol. I.
Berlin 1983.
M. Consbruch, Hephaestionis Enchiridion. Leipzig
1906. Reprinted Stuttgart 1971.
E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets. Oxford
1993.
R. Da Rios, Aristoxeni Elementa harmonica. Rome
1954.
E. Degani, Hipponactis testimonia et fragmenta. 2nd
edn. Stuttgart 1991.
H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker. (3 vols.). 11th edn. Zurich and
Berlin 1964.
D. Domingo-Forasté, Claudii Aeliani epistulae et
fragmenta. Stuttgart 1994.
D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams: Epigrams
Before 50 A.D. from the Greek Anthology and

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citations, abbreviations and transliteration

FGH
FHG
Fortenbaugh

Gerber
GLP

GMAW

G-P

Greene
Harding

Hausrath
HE
Heitsch
IG

Jan
K-A

Other Sources not Included in ‘Hellenistic Epigrams’
or ‘The Garland of Philip’, revised by R. D. Dawe
and J. D. Diggle. Cambridge 1981.
F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker. Berlin 1923–.
K. Mueller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum. (5
vols.). Paris 1841–84.
W. W. Fortenbaugh, Theophrastus of Eresus:
Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and
Influence. (2 vols.). Leiden 1992.
D. E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry from the Seventh
to the Fifth Centuries B.C. Cambridge, Mass. 1999.
D. L. Page, Select Papyri III. Greek Literary Papyri I.
Poetry. Revised edn. London 1950.
E. G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient

World. 2nd edn., revised and expanded by P. J.
Parsons. (BICS Suppl. 46). London 1987.
B. Gentili and C. Prato, Poetarum elegiacorum
testimonia et fragmenta. 2nd edn. (2 vols.). Leipzig
1988–2002.
W. C. Greene, Scholia Platonica. Haverford, Pa.
1938. Reprinted Chico, Calif. 1981.
P. Harding, From the End of the Peloponnesian War
to the Battle of Ipsus. (Translated Documents of
Greece and Rome, 2). Cambridge 1985.
A. Hausrath, Corpus fabularum Aesiopicarum. 2nd
edn., ed. H. Hunger. Leipzig 1959–.
A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology:
Hellenistic Epigrams. (2 vols.). Cambridge 1965.
E. Heitsch, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der
römischen Kaiserzeit. (2 vols.). Göttingen 1961–4.
Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin 1873–. [Roman
numerals indicate the volume, index figures the edition, Arabic numerals the number of the inscription.
Thus IG I3 671 is inscription no. 671 in the third
edition of volume I.]
G. Jan, Musici scriptores Graeci. (2 vols.). Leipzig
1895–99. Reprinted Stuttgart 1995.
R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae comici Graeci.
Berlin 1983–.

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citations, abbreviations and transliteration

Kannicht
Kemke
Koniaris
LGPN
LSJ

M
M
Meineke
M-L

M-W
OCD
Pfeiffer
PMG
PMGF
P.Oxy.
PSI
Radt
RE

Rose
Rutherford

R. Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Vol.
V: Euripides. Göttingen 2004.
J. Kemke, Philodemi De musica librorum quae
exstant. Leipzig 1884.
G. L. Koniaris, Maximus Tyrius: Philosophumena –

Διαλέξεις. Berlin and New York 1995.
P. M. Fraser et al. (eds.), A Lexicon of Greek
Personal Names. Oxford 1987–.
H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, revised by H. S. Jones, A
Greek–English Lexicon. 9th edn with supplement
edited by E. A. Barber et al. Oxford 1996.
H. Maehler, Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis.
11th edn. Leipzig 2003.
H. Maehler, Pindari carmina cum fragmentis, Vol.
II. Leipzig 1989.
A. Meineke, Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae
supersunt. Berlin 1849.
R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Selection of Greek
Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth
Century BC. Revised edn. Oxford 1988.
R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta
Hesiodea. Oxford 1967.
S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.) The Oxford
Classical Dictionary. 3rd edn. Oxford 1996.
R. Pfeiffer, Callimachus. (2 vols.). Oxford 1949–53.
D. L. Page, Poetae melici Graeci. Oxford 1962.
M. Davies, Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Vol. I. Oxford 1991.
Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London 1898–. [Cited by
papyrus number.]
Papiri della Società Italiana.
S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Vol. IV:
Sophocles. Göttingen 1999.
A. Pauly et al. (eds.), Paulys Realencyclopädie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart 1893–
1972.

V. Rose, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta. Leipzig 1886. Reprinted Stuttgart 1966.
I. Rutherford, Pindar’s Paeans: A Reading of the
Fragments with a Survey of the Genre. Oxford 2001.

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citations, abbreviations and transliteration

schol.
Schwartz
SEG
SH

Skutsch
Slater
SLG
S-M
Uhlig
V
W, W2

Wehrli

West
Winnington-Ingram

scholion.
E. Schwartz, Scholia in Euripidem. (2 vols.). Berlin

1887–91.
Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum. Amsterdam
1923–.
P. J. Parsons and H. Lloyd-Jones, Supplementum
Hellenisticum. (2 vols.). Berlin and New York
1983–2005.
O. Skutsch, The Annals of Q. Ennius. Oxford 1985.
W. J. Slater, Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta.
Berlin and New York 1986.
D. L. Page, Supplementum lyricis Graecis. Oxford
1974.
B. Snell and H. Maehler, Pindari carmina cum fragmentis, vol. I. 8th edn. Leipzig 1987.
G. Uhlig, Dionysii Thracis Ars Grammatica.
(Grammatici Graeci, 1.1). Leipzig 1883.
E. M. Voigt, Sappho et Alcaeus: fragmenta.
Amsterdam 1971.
M. L. West, Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum
cantati. 2nd edn. (2 vols.). Oxford 1989–92. [W2 is
used where the second edition differs significantly
from the first.]
F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und
Kommentar. 2nd edn. (10 vols.). Basel and
Stuttgart 1967–9.
M. L. West, Carmina Anacreontea. Corrected edn.
Stuttgart and Leipzig 1993.
R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Aristidis Quintiliani De
musica libri tres. Leipzig 1963.
Transliteration

Transliteration of Greek terms always involves choices and compromises,

especially in a volume that covers periods from antiquity to the twentieth
century. The overriding aim has been to use the spellings that are currently
most familiar – inevitably a matter of judgement. The letters η and ω are
rendered in transcription ê and ô to distinguish them from ε and ο. Long α, ι
and υ are not specially marked in transcription.

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Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010

0

0

100

100

200

Camarina

200

300

Syracuse

400

500 km

ENIA
MESS

S
EU

LACONIA

Sparta

Siphnos
Melos

Cydonia

Cythera

R. Eurotas

Map 1 The Greek world in the archaic and early classical periods

300 miles

LY
ESS A
T H Pherae

Lemnos

Chios

Lesbos

Tenedos

CRETE

MYSIA

Cos

Cnidus

Rhodes

Halicarnassus

Miletus

C AR

LYDIA Sardis

Magnesia

Mytilene

Sigeum
Troy

Smyrna
Clazomenae
Colophon
Teos
I O N I A Ephesus
Samos

Knossos

Naxos

Delos

Thera

Paros

B
Thermopylae
O
LOCRIS
Orchomenus Opus E A
Thebes
Delphi
Plataea
Gulf o

f Co
Ithaca
BOEOTIA
rint Megara
Marathon
h
EA
HA Sicyon
C
Athens
A
Corinth
ATTICA
Nemea
Aegina
ARCADIA
Ceos
Epidaurus
Olympia
Argos

Dodona

Mt Olympus

Thasos
Samothrace

A

Gela

M. Aetna

S I C I LY

Corcyra

E

M Methone

Abdera

E

Acragas

Selinus

Locri Epizephyrii
Rhegium

Croton

Taras

E D O N
A C

T H R A C E

N

Himera

Poseidonia
Metapontion

RU

E

E A

Segesta

Bay of Naples

PI

A
G

S

IA


FELIX BUDELMANN

Introducing Greek lyric

In my eyes he matches the gods, that man who
sits there facing you – any man whatever –
listening from closeby to the sweetness of your
voice as you talk, the
sweetness of your laughter: yes, that – I swear it –
sets the heart to shaking inside my breast, since
once I look at you for a moment, I can’t
speak any longer,
but my tongue breaks down, and then all at once a
subtle fire races inside my skin, my
eyes can’t see a thing and a whirring whistle
thrums at my hearing,
cold sweat covers me and a trembling takes
ahold of me all over: I’m greener than the
grass is and appear to myself to be little
short of dying.
But all must be endured, since even a poor [

This is Sappho’s fragment 31 V, in the translation by Jim Powell.1 It has proved
to be an engrossing text to many readers, arresting in its physicality yet elusive
in its description of what is happening between the speaker, the addressee and
the man. A long list of later poets were prompted to write their own versions –
Catullus, Philip Sidney, Tennyson, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell,
Marguerite Yourcenar – to name just a few. Sappho 31 is a text that shows the
ability of Greek lyric to fascinate readers throughout the centuries.
Yet at the same time as exerting fascination, Greek lyric is sometimes
perceived as one of the less easily accessible areas of Greek literature. Greek

1

Powell 2007, 11. The Greek text is uncertain in various places.

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The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric

lyric has many points of contact with Homer, tragedy and other early Greek
literature, but it also poses a distinct set of challenges. This introduction will
discuss these challenges and the way in which they have shaped lyric scholarship. The aim is not to characterise Greek lyric as forbidding – its cultural
influence across the centuries proves that in many respects it emphatically is
not – but to help users of this volume understand some of the concepts and
issues that dominate the study of Greek lyric today.
Greek lyric and its challenges
The meanings and history of ‘lyric’
One immediate obstacle in approaching Greek lyric is the ambiguity of the term
itself. Classicists use ‘lyric’ in both a narrow and a comprehensive sense. The
narrow sense excludes two major genres, elegy and iambos,2 while the comprehensive usage includes them. David A. Campbell’s Greek Lyric Loeb edition
and G. O. Hutchinson’s Greek Lyric Poetry edition, for instance, contain only
lyric in the narrow sense (elegy and iambos have separate Loeb volumes), while
Campbell’s Greek Lyric Poetry commentary and M. L. West’s Greek Lyric
translation cover also elegy and iambos, and scholarship in other languages
shows similar variation.
This variation in the scope of the term ‘lyric’ today is a consequence of its
changeful history. λυρικός, ‘lyric’, means literally ‘relating to the lyre’, and
appears first in the second century BCE.3 The Hellenistic age was a period of
intense scholarly work on the famous poets of the past. ‘Lyric’ arose in the context

of this work, as a term to refer to one particular category of poets and poetry. It
picks up on the frequent mention of the lyre in the lyric poems themselves.
Before λυρικός was coined the terminology was more loose. The most
important term was μέλος (‘song’, ‘tune’), which is used by various early
lyric poets to refer to their compositions, and Plato occasionally distinguishes
‘songs’ from other poetic forms, like epic and tragedy.4 μέλος continued in use
also when λυρικός existed, and the adjective μελικός, literally ‘relating to
μέλος’ and often rendered ‘melic’, is attested from the first century BCE.
From then on, λυρικός and μέλος / μελικός existed side by side. λυρικός
seems to have been associated in particular with early lyric poetry rather

2
3

4

See Aloni and Carey, this vol. chs. 9 and 8, respectively, for discussion of their definitions.
In the inscription F.Delphes III.1 no.49 = SIG³ no. 660, and possibly (date debated) Ps.-Dion.
Thrax Ars gramm. 2, p. 6 Uhlig. In general, on the history of ‘lyric’ discussed in this section, and
also for a sceptical view of ‘lyric’ as a genre, see Calame 1998.
μέλος in lyric: e.g. Alcm. 39.1 PMGF, Pind. Pyth. 2.68. μέλος in Plato: Ion 533e–34a (vs. epic)
and Rep. 379a (vs. epic and tragedy).

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Introducing Greek lyric

than contemporary work: it is standard in lists of the canonical lyric poets

from the seventh to fifth centuries BCE. By contrast, μελικός and other μέλοςwords often appear in timeless classifications of different kinds of poetry. But
there was a good deal of overlap, and in many cases ‘lyric’ and ‘melic’ are used
with little distinction.5 Eventually, Latin adopted both terms, as lyricus and
(the less frequent) melicus, and Renaissance poetics created equivalents in
modern languages. ‘Lyric’, then, is not a term known to the lyric poets
themselves, but was coined with hindsight for what had previously been –
and to a degree remained throughout antiquity – more loosely ‘songs’.
What is more, it is a term that changed its meaning over time. In Greek and
Roman antiquity, both ‘lyric’ and ‘melic’ were used only in the narrow sense,
distinct from elegy and iambos. Ancient scholars drew up separate canons of
lyric and iambic poets, and in the rare cases that the word μέλος occurs in an
elegiac and iambic (rather than a melic) poem it usually points to some other
song rather than this song (e.g. Archil. 120 W, Thgn. 761). By contrast,
elegiac poetry could be described with the same term as epic: ἔπη (‘words’,
‘statements’, e.g. Thgn. 22, Hdt. 5.113).
The narrow sense of lyric remained the norm also in the Renaissance, but
gradually lyric began to occupy a place on a par with epic and drama and
hence became more comprehensive. This broader sense became standard
from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Goethe created the
notion of ‘natural forms of poetry’, of which there are three: epic, lyric and
drama.6 In the course of the nineteenth century, this triad entered classical
scholarship and with it the comprehensive meaning of lyric.
Yet the narrow ancient sense was never completely forgotten, and so we are
left with the ambiguous scope of lyric. One response to the ambiguity is to drop
‘lyric’ altogether and to use only melos and ‘melic’, which retained its ancient
meaning with little ambiguity: elegy and iambos are hardly ever called melic.
Another response is to specify explicitly how one uses ‘lyric’. This volume
covers melos as well as elegy and iambos. ‘Lyric’ in the title is therefore to be
understood in the broad sense, as an anachronistic but convenient term referring to all the poetry under discussion. Individual chapters use ‘lyric’ in different
ways as suits their subject matter, but are careful to avoid ambiguity.

A second, less frequently discussed, kind of ambiguity in ‘Greek lyric’
concerns periods. Greek poets composed lyric pieces in the broad and narrow
5
6

On the use of λυρικός vs. μέλος / μελικός see Färber 1936, 7–16, with full documentation.
‘Naturformen der Dichtung’: in ‘Besserem Verständnis’, first published 1819 (Münchner Ausgabe,
vol. 11.1.2 (1998), 194–5). An early example of the triad is: Antonio Sebastiano Minturno, L’arte
poetica (1563) 3. For seventeenth-century examples see Scherpe 1968, 60–1. On Plato (Rep.
3.394b–c) as a possible predecessor, see Silk, this vol., 377–8, but note the different view of
Calame 1998, 97–8. On ‘lyric’/‘melic’ in Renaissance poetics in general see Behrens 1940, section C.

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