Conclusion The line outside the bus starts with Iris. Behind her stands the widow of the pastor in Michigan who died after being hit by a car, could Lance write a letter to be read at the funeral? Behind her stand the parents of a twelve-year-old Pennsylvania boy wondering if Armstrong might have a minute to make a phone call. Behind them stand still others,… Read more
Appendix This Appendix documents the analysis described in Chapters 3 and 4 above and applied to all of Pindar’s epinikia. The primary purpose of this Appendix is to provide supporting evidence for the arguments presented in Chapters 3 and 4, principally that five ways of epinician speaking—gnôma, lyric, angelia, mythological narrative, and eukhesthai—constitute the epinician way of speaking. This Appendix also documents the fact that many of… Read more
Bibliography Aloni, A. 1998. Cantare glorie di eroi: Comunicazione e performance poetica nella Grecia arcaica. Turin. Anzai, M. 1994. “First-Person Forms in Pindar: A Re-Examination.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 39:141–150. Athanassaki, L. 2004. “Deixis, Performance, and Poetics in Pindar’s First Olympian Ode.” In Felson 2004a:317–341. Austin, J. L. 1975. How to… Read more
Preface [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] Homeric representations of animal sacrifice have often been included in… Read more
1. Defining Homeric Sacrifice 1.1 Sacrifice and the Homeric Text Rituals are actions performed in a repetitive pattern recognizable to members of a community that act as symbolic markers of the values underpinning a given society. Such actions can be both symbolic and functional, as is the case with the ritual of animal sacrifice: symbolic actions, such as scattering barley grains or wearing special clothing, elaborate… Read more
2. The Ritual Process The thematic resonance of sacrifice in the Iliad depends on the combination of individual ritual actions, each appropriate to context, which produce a pattern of significance throughout the poem. [1] To better illuminate this pattern, we can catalog the range of possible ritual details in Homeric sacrifices and thus clarify the restricted focus on certain actions according to… Read more
3. The Gift of Sacrifice The post-kill phase of sacrificial ritual can be divided into two categories: gifts for the gods and food for men. [1] Gifts for the gods are proportionately meager in comparison to the feasts enjoyed by the mortal participants. The inequality of these offerings underlies much of ancient Greek discourse about sacrifice, as discussed in Chapter One. Hesiod’s… Read more
Chapter 2. Kômos and Comedy: The Phallic Song between Ritual and Theater The Choral Culture between Literature and Ritual: Origin or Structural Commonalities? When one talks today in a scholarly context about ritual and theater, a culturally preformed association usually asserts itself. Under the influence of Aristotle’s theory of entelekheia, which is also expressed in his Poetics, under the influence of the Enlightenment, and especially as… Read more
Summary and Outlook To talk about ritual requires a great deal of understanding, reflection, and nuanced breadth in order to come even close to doing justice to the complexity of the phenomena involved. Despite the danger of falling prey to simplification after studying the details, I shall nevertheless attempt to summarize my conclusions in brief. The Aristophanic comic chorus should in large part be understood in… Read more
Bibliography Editions of Aristophanes Collected Editions Biset, O. 1607. Aristophanis comoediae undecim . Paris. Küster (= Kusterus), L. 1710. Aristophanis comoediae undecim. Amsterdam. Brunck, R. F. P. 1783. Aristophanis comoediae I–III. Strassburg. Bothe, F. H. 1845. Aristophanis comoediae I–IV. Leipzig. Bekker, I. 1829. Aristophanis comoediae I–V. Read more
