1. The Problem Stated: A Look at Hesiod’s Feast and Beyond In the Works and Days, occasional local details—trapped as it were amidst uniform details—mirror aptly the larger “panhellenic,” or trans-national, orientation of the poem as a whole. [1] The composition of the WD could manage little more than occasionally to have disparate local details jostle one against another, often against other… Read more
2. The Harvest Without question the most gruelling of the year’s tasks, the wheat harvest is conducted fifteen days after the harvest of the barley crop, which occurs in mid-May. [1] The whole of June is devoted to reaping, and presumably for this reason the month is also called ‘The Harvester’ (Θεριστής). [2] The harvest schedule is… Read more
3. The Threshing Threshing in Greece. (Photograph by the author.) Threshing falls in July, giving this month the names ‘Αλωνάρης, Ἁλωνιάτης, and ‘Αλωνιστής (‘Thresher’). [1] The shocks of wheat are transferred from the heap to the communal threshing-floor (ἁλώνι) [2] and planted erect in a circle, and then unbound. The work is done by… Read more
III. Delos, Cyprus, and Argos After consideration of the major variants of the Ariadne-Theseus myth, the next step must be a division on the basis of content. The last three sets discussed, those of Cyprus, Delos, and Argos, all contain one particular element absent from the Cretan and Naxian variants: a reference, however small, to the goddess Aphrodite and the consequent implication of her eventual predominance over… Read more
IV. Crete and Naxos Although the Cypriote, Delian, and Argive variants are set apart from the Cretan and Naxian by virtue of their mention of Aphrodite, a single salient feature, which occurs in at least one variant from each locality, draws all the different versions together: the death of Ariadne. Assuredly, the death of the heroine does not occupy the central position within each retelling, as the… Read more
List of Works Consulted Carpenter, Rhys. Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics. Berkeley, 1956. Dow, Sterling. “The Greeks in the Bronze Age,” in The Language and Background of Homer, ed. G. S. Kirk. Cambridge, 1964, 140–173. Frisk, Hjalmar. Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg, 1960. Hainsworth, J. B. The Flexibility of the Homeric… Read more
Foreword The timing could not be more perfect (téleios). It is a privilege, honor, and joy for me to welcome the second English edition of my Ritual Lament. A privilege above all else because two outstanding young scholars, Panagiotis Roilos and Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, have given freely of their expertise to bring about the completion (télos) of this revised edition, at just the same time as their Greek… Read more
Introduction to the Second Edition Margaret Alexiou’s The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, first published in 1974, has long since been established as a classic in several fields. Even in the wake of a large number of studies on Greek lament since then, Alexiou’s book remains what it was at its original publication twenty-five years ago: the only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament… Read more
Preface My purpose in this book is to study the ritual lament as it evolved and developed throughout Greek tradition, indicating how poets of different ages were able to draw on a common fund of ideas, themes and formulae, frequently investing an old and well-established convention with a new significance and contributing something of their own. At the same time, since the practice of ritual lamentation is… Read more
Problems and method The lament for the dead is essentially functional. It is only one part of a complex tradition of ritual customs and beliefs. To understand the nature of its development in Greek tradition, and to determine the extent of its continuity from ancient to modern times, it must therefore be studied not in isolation but as an integral part of the ritual to which it… Read more
