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
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 II. Anabolê, Prooimion, Nomos: Form and Content of Citharodic Songs 1. Prelude/Anabolê In their descriptions of Nero’s performance in Naples, neither Tacitus nor Suetonius says anything about an instrumental lead-in, but a prelude to the song proper, typically called the anabolê, was a standard element of citharodic performance, and so would most likely have been performed by Nero in Naples. The proto-citharodic Homeric bards Demodocus… Read more
Part I. Princeps Citharoedus 1. Setting the Scene: A Citharode in Naples He made his performance debut at Naples, and, even though the theater was rocked with a sudden earthquake, he did not cease singing until he had finished the nomos that he had begun. In the same city he sang frequently over the course of several days. Even when he took a short… Read more
Preface This book examines the origins, development, and elaboration of kitharôidia in its social and political contexts and in its relation to other poetic, musical, and discursive forms and practices. It is thus, in part, an archaeology of a performative practice (singing to the kithara) and a song genre, the citharodic nomos; a social history of the production and consumption of professional agonistic music in ancient Greece… Read more
Acknowledgments This book was a long time in the making. I could neither have begun nor completed it without the understanding and support of my wonderful mother and father, Michele and Conrad, and my dear sisters, Suzanne and Stephanie. I am indebted for intellectual and moral support to all my colleagues and friends at Harvard University, University of Washington, Seattle, the Center for Hellenic Studies, and Rutgers… Read more
Contributors CURTIS DOZIER received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley, and is Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin at Vassar College. His research focuses on the social context of Latin poetry: where and in what format Romans encountered it, what intellectual and social role it played in Roman society, and how Roman social practices shaped its interpretation. DAVID LARSEN is a Postdoctoral Associate… Read more
8. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo Translated by Rodney Merrill Translator’s Note My main aims in translating this hymn are similar to those I have set forth at some length in the translator’s introduction to my version of the Odyssey (Ann Arbor, 2002, 64–85), and more briefly in the introduction to my version of the Iliad (Ann Arbor, 2007, 1–22). They have to do with… Read more
7. Homeric Poetics and the Aeneid Curtis Dozier Everyone has always known that Vergil imitated Homer, but I do not think it is known whether Vergil thought he was imitating, on the one hand, the work of a blind bard who single-handedly recorded the best versions of the sack of Troy and the wandering of Odysseus, or, on the other hand, the result of a centuries-old… Read more
6. Skillful Symposia: Odyssey ix, Archilochus Fr. 2 West, and the Οἶνος Ἰσµαρικός Timothy Pepper The Origins of Objects Though the names and origins of characters tend to receive much attention, the identities and origins of named objects often do not. A good case in point is οἶνος Ἰσμαρικός, ‘Ismaric wine’, which is mentioned by name only twice in extant ancient literature before the first… Read more
