Part II. Sporting at Symposia: Verse and Skolia Competitions ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play’d on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. Hamlet, Act III, Scene ii 6. Play and the Seriousness of Sympotic Poetry Games In contrast to the rather severe traditional concerns… Read more
7. The Skolion Game Our sources tell us that the most common poetry game played at symposia was called skolion, the testimonia of which were thoroughly outlined in 1893 by Richard Reitzenstein, [1] whose work has significantly influenced generations of other critics. [2] The term itself, however, admits of several different usages already in the earliest literary… Read more
8. Aristophanes’ Wasps 1222–49 We are fortunate to possess in Aristophanes’ Wasps 1222–49 one of the earliest depictions of how the skolion game was actually played. [1] It involves examples 3) and 4) (given earlier) as definitions of skolion—known lyric passages or improvised poetry recited to cap a previous verse or verses. We might note at the outset that the game’s very… Read more
9. The Attic Skolia, Theognis, and Riddles By pairing the so-called “Attic skolia” preserved for us by Athenaeus (694c–695f = PMG 884–908) with Theognis, I have in mind to demonstrate that the form of both sets of poetry as we have them reflects, at least in part, an improvisational heritage. Both Athenaeus’ collection of skolia and the doublets in Theognis give evidence of being performance variations, recorded… Read more
10. Symposiasts versus Rhapsodes In Part III we shall see how rhapsodes performing at a major public festival like the Panathenaia were capable of improvising in the course of reciting memorized verses. Memorized lines of Homeric poetry furnish the basis for modifications in sense or embellishment, in other words improvisation, as each competing rhapsode contributes to the larger performance demand of interweaving passages or episodes of Homer. Read more
11. Xenophanes Most vicious and explicit in his criticism of epic, by which is meant Homer and Hesiod, is of course Xenophanes of Colophon (frr. 21 B 11 and 12 DK from his Silloi), and it is important to establish the vantage point of his critique. Xenophanes was not only said to have composed hexametric poetry but also to have performed his own poetry rhapsodically. [… Read more
12. Heraclitus Heraclitus of Ephesus also rejected the performance of Homeric poetry in a vein similar to, but not identical with, that of Xenophanes. Although Heraclitus’ criticisms never achieved the recognition of Xenophanes’, they appear nevertheless to derive similarly from the vantage point of the symposium. One fragment that has drawn attention is (fr. 30 Marcovich = 22 B 42 DK): τόν τε Ὅμηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον ἐκ… Read more
13. Solon Solon confronts the performance of epic with a brief but sharp criticism: πολλὰ ψεύδονται ἀοιδοί “poets tell many lies” (fr. 25 G.-P.). As had Xenophanes before him, Solon too calls attention in particular to the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, which was known in the sixth century, as it had been in the seventh, primarily through rhapsodic performances. We do not know if the… Read more
14. Anacreon As we have seen, on one hand Xenophanes and Solon, and on the other Heraclitus, invidiously opposed the ethical and metaphysical disunity of Homeric poetry to symposiastic values. Anacreon of Teos, in contrast, suggests that he is willing to incorporate Homeric poetry into his own sympotic poetry, provided that Homeric themes are adjusted to suit the occasion of conviviality. Again we focus not on all… Read more
15. Conclusion In sections 1–4 of this Part, I outlined the range of verse types including hexameters, elegiacs, iambics, skolia, and previously composed (lyric and iambic) passages by dramatic poets recited with or without improvisation at sympotic gatherings. There the focus was on the competitive social matrix of élite aristocrats that motivated these performances, especially in the context of symposia whose often-stated purposes of mirth, celebration, and… Read more
