8. Reading Drama* During an earlier phase in my career my great passion was Epicureanism, but over the last twenty years I have devoted most of my scholarly work to the field of Greek tragedy, often in collaboration with Pierre Judet de La Combe. Perhaps I should try to explain how this shift occurred. The path from the pre-Socratic thinkers to the tragedians… Read more
9. An Act of Cultural Restoration: The Status Accorded to the Classical Tragedians by the Decree of Lycurgus* The measures concerning drama have pride of place among the laws promulgated by Lycurgus, according to the Lives of the Ten Orators (included in Plutarch’s Moralia, 841F): these measures include the institution of competitions for the selection of dramatic actors and public honors awarded the… Read more
21. Syro-Cilician Approaches Kinnaru of Ugarit, I have argued, was probably but one regional manifestation of a more widespread pattern. Kinnaru himself, of course, belongs to a Syrian milieu. We also saw that material from the Hurrian sphere, stretching across Syria and into Cilicia/Kizzuwatna, documents both its second-millennium kinnāru-culture, and divinization of cult tools and objects (see Chapter 6). This background can help explain the curious… Read more
Appendices Appendix A. A Note on ‘Balang’ in the Gudea Cylinders The balang was the usual instrument of the gala’s song. But the description of Ušumgal-kalama in the Gudea Cylinders shows that, in the third millennium at least, a balang could also appear in the hands of the nar. [1] The identity of the balang has long been controversial. But… Read more
Appendix B. Ptolemy Khennos as a Source for the Contest of Kinyras and Apollo The Novel History (Kainḕ Historía) by the early imperial wondermonger Ptolemy ‘The Quail’ Khennos is known mainly from a terse epitome by Photios, but was equally available to Eustathios, who reproduces a dozen episodes in fuller detail without naming his source (n.b.). [1] That Eustathios could have seen… Read more
Appendix C. Horace, Cinara, and the Syrian Musiciennes of Rome Horace alludes several times to a certain Cinara whom he loved in his youth, and her untimely death. She may of course be partly or largely poetic fiction, like other lover-muses of Roman elegy. This role she most clearly fulfils at the start of Odes 4.1, when the poet, returning to lyric after a hiatus, pretends to… Read more
Appendix D. Kinyrízein: The View from Stoudios I have argued that kinyrízein meant first and foremost ‘play the kinýra’. [1] This is corroborated by the word’s third and latest attestation—in a passage of Theodoros, Abbot of the monastery of Stoudios (Constantinople) in the first years of the ninth century. Tired of seeing his monks giving themselves to worldly pleasures about the… Read more
Appendix E. The ‘Lost Site’ of Kinyreia Pliny the Elder, in his list of fifteen Cypriot cities, states that “there was once also Cinyria, Mareum, and Idalium.” [1] A Kinýreion was also mentioned in the Bassarika attributed to Dionysios the Periegete (second century CE) in a passage listing the Cypriots who supported Dionysos’ conquest of India, which included “those [sc. who held]… Read more
Appendix F. Theodontius: Another Cilician Kinyras? One further and quite peculiar Cilician connection for Kinyras is found in Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods. This massive and impressive synthesis, many years in the making (ca. 1350–1375), was undertaken at the behest of King Hugo IV of Cyprus (abdicated 1358). The work remained generally influential for centuries, [1] though its original Cypriot commission… Read more
Appendix G. Étienne de Lusignan and ‘the God Cinaras’ More than once I have cited the sixteenth-century Franco-Cypriot historian Étienne de Lusignan, arguing for some independent, traditional authority behind several of his unique notices. [1] These included metallurgical and ceramic inventions attributed to his ‘Cinaras’, [2] with associated topographic details; an anonymous brother, whom I connected with… Read more
