The Poetics of Ambush The phrase “poetics of ambush” encapsulates our approach and our goals for this volume, so let us begin here by defining what we mean by it. When we speak of “poetics” we mean that we are proposing a theory of the structure and functioning of the traditional language within which Iliad 10, as well as several other episodes within the epic tradition, was… Read more
Tradition and Reception: Rhesos, Dolon, and the Doloneia In this essay, we pair two concepts for investigation: the traditionality of the characters of Rhesos and Dolon and the reception of these characters and the story of the Doloneia in later works. Both concepts involve exploring what we know about these characters, the story of the Doloneia, and ambush in general from outside of Iliad 10. We start… Read more
Iliad 10: A Multitextual Approach This volume takes a multitextual approach in its presentation of the transmitted texts of Iliad 10. We want to avoid presenting a critical text that obscures the multiformity of the oral tradition or is misleading about the historical realities about the textual transmission. For that reason we have chosen to include four separate witnesses that illustrate the text of part or all… Read more
Iliad p609 (Mertens-Pack 864.1; P. Mich. 6972) Text based on the edition of Alexander Loney, after the edition of A. Edwards (1984) [1] This papyrus roll dates to the second century BCE and is a palimpsest, meaning that the papyrus had been written on and erased before these verses were written on it. The earliest of the texts of Iliad 10… Read more
Iliad p425 (Mertens-Pack 855.1; P. Berol. inv. 11911 + 17038 + 17048 + 21155) Text based on the edition of Bart Huelsenbeck and Alexander Loney, after the edition of H. Maehler; W. Müller; G. Poethke (1976) [1] The fragments of this early-third-century CE papyrus scroll found in Hermoupolis Magna in Egypt reside in the Königlischen Museum, Berlin and were joined and… Read more
Iliad p46 (Mertens-Pack 658; P. Cairo Maspero inv. 67172-4 + P. Berol. inv. 10570 + P. Strasb. inv. G 1654 + P. Rein. 2.70) Text based on the edition of Alexander Loney, after the edition of J.-L. Fournet (1999) [1] This papyrus codex from the sixth century CE exists in pieces belonging to four separate collections (the Cairo Museum in Egypt,… Read more
Venetus A (Marcianus Graecus Z. 454 [= 822]) Marcianus Gr. Z. 454 (= 822) is the earliest extant, complete manuscript of the Iliad, and it is the one on which modern printed texts are primarily based. (The few medieval manuscripts that predate it contain commentary and paraphrases or portions of the poem, but not a complete text.) It was hand copied and assembled by Byzantine Greek scribes… Read more
Part III. Inventions of Terpander 1. Terpander between Myth and History Any study of kitharôidia must reckon closely with Terpander of Lesbos. While figures such as Orpheus, Philammon, and Amphion were routinely put forward as exponents of citharodic music in the mythic illud tempus—as Wilamowitz put it, Orpheus was “nothing but a citharode retrojected into the Heroic Age”—Terpander emerges from the ancient sources as its true… Read more
Part IV. Panathenaic Kitharôida 1. Kitharôidia Comes to Athens By the beginning of the fifth century BCE, and probably still earlier, Athens had become a premier market for kitharôidia, its Panathenaic mousikoi agônes overshadowing the long-established regional contests at the Spartan Carneia and rivaling the international allure of the Pythian games at Delphi. The city’s emergence as a citharodic center had everything to do with the… Read more
