Greek Lyric Poetry

493 Pages·1991·9.88 MB·English

by  David A. Campbell (ed.

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Greek
Lyric Poetry--·
A SELECTION
OF EARLY GREEK LYRIC,
ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC
POETRY
by
DAVID A. CAMPBELL
Professor of Classics
University of Victoria
British Columbia. Canada
MACMILLAN
ST MARTIN'S PRESS.
©David A. Campbell 1967
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission
First edition 1967
Reprinted 1972, 1gj6
Published by
MACMILLAN EDUCATION LIMITED
Houndmills Basingstoke Hamft.shire RG2I 2XS
and London
Associated companies in New rork Dublin
Melbourne Johannesburg and Delhi
Library of Congress catalog card no. 67-17137
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Printed in Great Britain by
ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO LTD
Printers to the University of Glasgow
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Contents
Preface page ix
Introduction xi
Abbreviations XXX
Addenda
XXXlll
ARCHILOCHUS I notes 136
8 r6r
CALLINUS
TYRTAEUS 9 r68
SEMONIDES !2 !83
ALCMAN r8 !92
MIMNERMUS 27 222
SOLON 29 23!
STESICHORUS 38 253
SAPPHO 40 260
ALCAEUS 52 285
IBYCUS 63 3°5
ANA CREON 67 313
XENOPHANES 74 331
PHOCYLIDES 77 342
DEMODOCUS 78 343
THEOGNIS 79 343
HIPPONAX 87 373
w
viii CO~TENTS
SIMONIDES page 8g notes 377
PRATINAS IOO 403
TIMOCREON IOI 406
CORINNA 103 408
BACCHYLIDES I06 413
PRAXILLA 130 ++6
CARMINA POPULARIA 130 446
SCOLIA 132 449
Appendix on Metre 454
Index 461
Preface
BoTH as student and as lecturer I have bemoaned the
lack of a suitably annotated text of the Greek lyric
poets, and I hope that this volume will be found useful
by others who have shared my plight. In writing it
I have had the needs of sixth-formers and under
graduates in mind.
In a sense my book is a successor to Herbert Weir
Smyth's Greek Melic Poets, published by Messrs.
Macmillan & Co. in 1 goo and now unhappily out
of date, but it is not a .revision of it: the com
mentary is on a less ample scale, and my selection of
texts differs in that I include elegiac and iambic poetry
and exclude poetry written after c. 450 B.c. There is no
Pindar, because a poet of his importance deserves a
volume of his own and would only be misrepresented
by the Selection of a few odes or fragments.
I have been fortunate in the timing of my work.
Within recent years excellent texts of all the lyric poets
have been published in Poetarum Leshiorum Fragmenta
(Edgar Lobel and Denys Page), Poetae Melici Graeci
(Denys Page) and Bacchylides (Bruno Snell), and those
who know these books will realise how much I am
indebted to them. I have drawn heavily also on Pro
fessor Page's interpretative studies of Sappho and
Alcaeus, Aleman and Corinna.
I have paid considerable attention to metrical
matters in the hope that students will make an effort to
ix
X PREFACE
master at least the easy metres. It is fairly certain that
the rhythmical pattern of melody and words was
identical; that is, the rhythm of the poem as sung was
dictated solely by the longs and shorts of the words,
not by the music, so that even if the melodies have
disappeared beyond hope of recovery, we may at least
enjoy and appreciate the rhythms.
I hope too that students will approach these poems
in a critical spirit, prepared not to lump them together
as a small package of the glory that was Greece, but
to evaluate them separately and to be cautious in
generalising. Criticism, however, will be valid only
of poems which are or may be complete, and such
poems are lamentably few; an image out of its context
may be admired for the vividness or economy of its
expression, but little else may be profitably said of it.
It is a pleasure to record my indebtedness to many
friends: to the late Professor J. A. Davison for advice
and encouragement in the early stages of the book and
for the loan of material on Aleman and Stesichorus; to
my colleagues Professors J. M. Cook, D. E. Eichholz
and N. G. L. Hammond and to Mr. D. S. Raven for
answering questions; to the librarian of the University
of Bristol and his staff for obtaining rare books; to the
conseil of the Fondation Hardt for a month's generous
hospitality; to Miss M. Savery and Mr. S. E. Scully for
help with the preparation of the manuscript; to Dr.
A. B. Cottle for help with the proof-reading; and
above all to Miss R. M. Harriott, who has read the
work more than once, made many wise suggestions
and corrected mistakes and inaccuracies. I am of
course entirely to blame for errors which remain.
Introduction
ALL the poetry in this volume, with the exception of
the work of Theognis, has survived not in rega.Iar
manuscript tradition but through the haphazard
discovery of papyrus scraps in Egypt or in quotation,
usually fragmentary, in later writers who found the
content, dialect, syntax, grammar or metre interesting.
Such unity as the poems have may be found in two
circumstances: they belong, roughly speaking, to the
two centuries from 650 to 450; and they are short in
comparison with epic poetry and drama.
To tum from Homer or even Hesiod to Archilochus
is to enter a new world: we find the poet using an
astonishing variety of metres with the greatest skill;
and the material of his poetry is his own life - new
surroundings, his love for a girl, the death of his
brother-in-law, the treachery of a friend. If we move
on to Aleman, oUr first writer of choral poetry, we find
writing of great metrical complexity and baffiing
allusiveness: the singers, Spartan girls, at one moment
relate a gloomy episode from Spartan mythology and
at the next indulge in gay bantering of the choir
leaders.
The background of this poetry was tbe political,
social and intellectual ferment of the Greek world in
the seventh and sixth centuries, ahd much of the
history of the period is reflected in, even reconstructed
xi
xii GREEK LYRIC POETRY
from, our poems. Political revolutions resulted in the
almost complete disappearance of hereditary kingship
and the rise of the tyrants: in the lyrics of Alcaeus we
read the reactions of a man who took part in the struggle
for power in Mytilene; his contemporary, Solon, used
verse to record the aims of his legislation and to
answer detractors in the years immediately before the
establishment of tyranny in Athens; Theognis of
Megara grumbles at the influx of peasants into the
city, and exclaims against the new rich: 1rA.oiJros
Ep.Etgr; ylvos. The hardships of overseas settlers too are
r.::fiected in the poems: Archilochus left 'the figs
and sea-faring life' of Paras for a new home and a
dangerous life on Thasos. Trade flourished and men
travelled abroad: Sappho's brother carried Lesbian
wine to Egypt, and Alcaeus' brother fought in the
army ofNebuchadrezzar: Hesiod's single sea-trip had
been no further than from Aulis to Chalcis, and he can
scarcely have enjoyed even that: SewOv S' Earl,
BaveEv p.eTd ~<Vp.amv, he warns his brother.
Familiarity with other nations led to a reassessment
of traditional ideas and values, and the Greeks began
to think about man and his place in the universe.
Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes tried to under
stand the physical world and speculated about its
origin. Xenophanes introduced relativism into religion
by noting that the gods of the Ethiopians were snub
nosed and black, while Thracian gods were blue-eyed
al}d red-haired, and he found fault with the gods as
Homer and Hesiod portrayed them. Ethical questions
were aired by Theognis and Simonides.
Little can be said with certainty about the develop-