8. An Etymology for the Dactylic Hexameter* 8§1 In his far-reaching survey of Indo-European poetics, Calvert Watkins remarks: “The origins of the Greek epic meter, the dactylic hexameter, are particularly challenging.” [1] His own contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the hexameter’s derivation is seminal. He writes: “I argued in passing in [Watkins] 1969 [p. 227] for… Read more
Chapter 4. Homeric Responses [1] The Shield of Achilles: Ends of the Iliad and Beginnings of the Polis Homer critics have begun to interpret the resolution of the Iliad in Book 24, at the end of the epic, as a reflection of a new spirit that emerges from the heroic tradition and culminates in the ethos of the City State or… Read more
Bibliography Andersen, Ø. 1976. “Some Thoughts on the Shield of Achilles.” Symbolae Osloenses 51:5-18. Austin, N. 1975. Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer’s Odyssey. Berkeley and Los Angeles. ———. 1991. “The Wedding Text in Homer’s Odyssey.” Arion (third series) 1:227-243. Bakker, E. J. 1997. Poetry in Speech: Orality and… Read more
Editor’s Foreword {v|vi} Building on the foundations of scholarship within the disciplines of philology, philosophy, history, and archaeology, this series spans the continuum of Greek traditions extending from the second millennium B.C.E. to the present, not just the Archaic and Classical periods. The aim is to enhance perspectives by applying various disciplines to problems that have in the past been treated as the exclusive concern of a… Read more
Introduction The research presented here has its origins in the philological controversy carried on for the last hundred years concerning the poem generally known as the “first Partheneion” by Alcman; following tradition, the fragment is the first of the poems attributed to Alcman in the Poetae Melici Graeci edited by D.L. Page (Oxford 1962), to which edition I shall refer throughout. Even if we are now sure… Read more
Morphology of the Lyric Chorus {18|19} The first step in comprehending what unites the participants in the choral performance is to study the various elements that make up a female lyric chorus during the Archaic period. To understand not only the formal character, but also the dynamic aspect of this unity, I shall study its function as much as its formal structure. The lyric Greek chorus is… Read more
Chorus and Ritual Up to now, my analysis of the chorus has been mainly morphological; I have described its internal organization and defined the positions and roles assigned to each of its participants. The relationship between choregos and chorus-members is at the heart of the ensemble. The function of the choregos is to set up and conduct the chorus, and he/she is responsible for the arrangement and… Read more
The Function of the Lyric Chorus {206|207} The analysis of the female lyric chorus as to internal structure and connections to ritual and cult has shown it to play a frequent role in paying homage to deities. But above all it seems to have provided a vehicle for the intervention of gods into the human sphere, in conformity with the attributions of the divinity in question. The… Read more
Chapter 7. Religion and Superstition Abstract Since the Indo-Europeans did not conceive of that omnipresent reality which religion represents as a separate institution, they had no term to designate it. In those languages which do present such a term it is of great interest to trace the process by which it was constituted. In Ionic Greek, in Herodotus, the term thrēskeíē properly refers to the observances of cult prescriptions. The… Read more
