Table Of ContentFranco Montanari
History of Ancient Greek Literature
Franco Montanari
History of Ancient
Greek Literature
Volume 1: The Archaic and Classical Ages
With the collaboration of
Fausto Montana
Translated from the Italian original
by Rachel Barritt Costa
with revision by Orla Mulholland
Italian original: Franco Montanari, Storia della letteratura greca, con la collaborazione
di Fausto Montana: nuova edizione Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2022.
ISBN 978-3-11-041992-4
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042632-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042634-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935008
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Musa reading a volumen (scroll), at the left an open chest. Attic red-figure lekythos,
ca. 435–425 BC. From Boeotia. Musée du Louvre, Collection of Samuel Jean de Pozzi, 1919 © Wiki-
media commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Muse_reading_Louvre_CA2220.jpg)
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
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Preface
It is a great satisfaction for me to see the publication of this English edition of my
History of Greek Literature, written in collaboration with Fausto Montana, which ap-
peared in a first edition in 1998 (published by Laterza) and in a second (revised and
expanded) Italian edition in 2017 with the distinguished publisher Edizioni di Storia
e Letteratura in Rome: a volume that aims to provide a reference manual for university
and for consultation by scholars and by anyone with an interest in ancient Greek lit-
erature, now entrusted to a publishing house of great international prestige, namely
De Gruyter (Berlin/Boston). The English translation was the occasion for a revision of
the text, which is now leading to the publication of a new Italian edition, aligned with
this English edition.
I believe that some things I wrote in the 1998 preface remain entirely valid, so I
repeat them without any hesitation. I remain firmly convinced of the utility of the
manual of literary history, despite what has been said against it and its supposed neg-
ative effects also in recent years – convinced that it is essential to keep at hand and
make use of an instrument that is capable of providing the connecting historical
threads of a discipline, within which only certain parts can ever be approached
through deeper specific study (which is true of literature, history, philosophy, the fig-
urative arts and every field of knowledge), and convinced too that it is appropriate
and useful to continue to produce manuals and to renew them, if for no other reason
than that the underlying orientations and ideas differ depending on the authors (and
to have a greater choice is certainly a boon) and because there is a need to update
them, both from the point of view of content (since research advances) and from the
point of view of form and presentation.
A manual should be concerned above all with providing data, information and
basic concepts, which in their entirety form the discipline’s connecting historical
threads: it should aim to be a work of reference. It is important to seek a balance
(which is certainly not easy) between this aspect and the expression of personal ori-
entations and interpretations, chiefly when it concerns a topic that is (or has been)
the object of particular research by the author of the manual. Of course we know well
that there can be no neutral manual, just as there can be no pure and aseptic infor-
mation, especially when the area of interpretation is both wide and fascinating.
The fundamental line adopted in the exposition in this manual of ancient Greek
literature is historical: I believe that the historical development is the indispensable
starting point. The structure of the book is therefore essentially chronological, aiming
to highlight the connections between the phenomena in a diachronic sense, tracing
the path and development of the literary forms over time. However, within this frame-
work we have endeavoured to take account as far as possible also of the system of
literary genres, trying not to fragment them more than necessary, in order not to lose
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110426328-201
VI Preface
sight of the importance that genre, whether respected or contested, has played in the
literary creation of ancient Greece.
Each of the four parts into which the treatment of the History has been organised
(The Archaic Age, The Classical Age, The Hellenistic Age, The Roman Imperial Period)
begins with a chapter entitled “The Period,” which presents a historical picture and
brief synopsis of its literary production, with the aim of picking out the key points of
reference that will be useful to keep in mind while reading the comprehensive treat-
ment.
My debt to Fausto Montana is great and is summarised, at least symbolically, in
the fact that the title page identifies him in fact as the co-author of this manual. Very
important help in the preparation of the English version was provided by Valeria
Bacigalupo and Elena Squeri: I owe them gratitude also for the frequent suggestions
that they have given me in the course of the work. Elena Squeri also provided the
index of authors and the list of translations used. Fabio Acerbi has generously pro-
vided his expertise on scientific texts. I would also like to thank Serena Perrone for
her support in revising the English language. Unless otherwise noted, all translations
of the ancient works cited are taken from published translations by expert Hellenists:
the reader is invited to consult the list at the end of this volume (bearing in mind that
the translation indirectly informs about the Greek text used).
I am grateful to the publisher De Gruyter who accepted this History for publica-
tion and to Serena Pirrotta, Marco Michele Acquafredda and Anne Hiller for the assis-
tance that they have given me in the final phases of preparation of the book for print.
Of course, responsibility for what is published in these pages remains entirely
mine.
Franco Montanari
Università degli Studi di Genova, July 2021
Contents
Preface V
Introduction: Ancient Greek Literature and its Transmission 1
1 Greece, the Greeks and the Greek language 1
1.1 The first Greeks: the Mycenaeans 1
1.2 The Doric migration and the Hellenic Middle Ages 3
1.3 The polis and the expansion of Greek culture in the
Mediterranean 6
1.4 The Greek dialects and literature 7
1.5 The κοινὴ διάλεκτος (koinē dialektos) 9
2 Chronology of ancient Greek literature 10
2.1 The periods 10
2.2 The Archaic Age 11
2.3 The Classical Age 12
2.4 The Hellenistic Age 13
2.5 The Roman Imperial Period 13
2.6 The Byzantine Period 14
3 The conservation and transmission of the texts 15
3.1 Direct tradition and indirect tradition 15
3.2 Greek literature and the writing system 17
3.3 Books in the Greek world 20
3.4 Readers in the Greek world 23
3.5 Tradition and selection 26
The Archaic Age
I The Period 33
1 Early and Middle Archaic Period (Eighth to Seventh Century B.C.) 33
1.1 The polis 33
1.2 Colonisation of the Mediterranean 35
1.3 Conflicts within the poleis 36
2 The Sixth Century and the Persian Wars (490–479 B.C.) 37
2.1 Athens in the Sixth Century 37
2.2 Sicily and Magna Graecia 39
2.3 The Asian colonies and the Persian expansion 40
3 Circulation of ideas and literary communication 41
VIII Contents
II Archaic Greek Epic 47
1 Homer 47
1.1 Before Homer: the problem of the pre-Homeric 47
1.1.1 Poets prior to Homer 47
1.1.2 The reconstruction of a pre-Homeric literary history 48
1.1.3 Evidence concerning pre-Homeric literary forms 49
1.2 Biographical traditions about Homer 50
1.3 The Homeric poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey 52
1.3.1 Two masterpieces at the outset of Greek literature 52
1.3.2 The Iliad: structure and content 53
1.3.3 The Odyssey: structure and content 57
1.3.4 Iliad and Odyssey: an initial comparison 59
1.3.5 Relative and absolute chronology of the poems 63
1.4 Myth vs. history: from the Mycenaean world to the Homeric
poems 64
1.4.1 Heinrich Schliemann and Homeric archaeology 64
1.4.2 Mycenaean society 68
1.4.3 The historical-linguistic problem and the historical-archaeological
problem 70
1.4.4 Conclusion: distant reminiscences and the world of poetry 81
1.5 The gods, the heroes, the world of the divine and the ethical
background of Homer 83
1.5.1 The role of the world of the divine 83
1.5.2 The Homeric representation of the divine 84
1.5.3 Interaction between men and the gods 85
1.5.4 The world of heroes-men 88
1.6 Homeric poetics 89
1.7 Language and metre 93
1.7.1 The language of Homer 94
1.7.2 The metre of epic 97
1.8 Style and diction, orality and the written form. The poet and the
public 99
1.9 The Homeric question and its present-day aspect 108
1.9.1 The poems during antiquity 108
1.9.2 The poems in the Modern Age 110
1.9.3 The modern Homeric question 111
1.9.4 The present-day picture of the Homeric question 122
1.10 Homer “Minor” 126
1.10.1 Pseudo-Homeric works 126
1.10.2 The Homeric Hymns 127
1.10.3 The Margites 130
1.10.4 The Batrachomyomachia 130
Contents IX
1.10.5 The Homeric Epigrams 131
2 The epic cycles and post-Homeric epic 132
2.1 The epic cycles 132
2.1.1 Characteristics and themes 132
2.1.2 The formation of the epic Cycles 137
2.1.3 Relations between the Cyclic poems and Homer. Attribution
problems 139
2.1.4 Composition and “publication” of the cyclical poems 141
2.1.5 The reception of the epic themes 143
2.2 Later figures of archaic epic poetry 143
2.2.1 The themes 143
2.2.2 Historically grounded authors 143
2.2.3 Semi-legendary authors 144
2.2.4 Legendary authors 145
2.2.5 Historical epic 147
3 Hesiod and “didactic” epic 147
3.1 Hesiod 147
3.1.1 The first individuality 147
3.1.2 Theogony and Works and Days 148
3.1.3 The structure of the two poems 152
3.1.4 The poet, his production and his thought 154
3.1.5 Other works attributed to Hesiod 159
3.1.6 The reception of Hesiod 161
3.2 Didactic poetry: the problem of the genre 162
III Lyric Poetry 164
1 Occasions, contexts, modes of execution 164
1.1 Lyric Poetry 164
1.2 Settings and occasions: manner of execution and genres 165
1.2.1 The occasions of song. Monody and chorus 165
.. Recitative and melodic song 167
1.2.3 The genres of melic poetry 170
1.2.4 Metre, language, content 171
1.3 Individuality, convention, biography 173
1.4 The tradition of archaic lyric poetry 176
2 Iambic and trochaic poetry and the elegy 176
2.1 Iambic and trochaic lyric poetry 176
2.1.1 Terminology, metres, language 176
2.1.2 The occasions for song and the poets 178
2.2 Archilochus of Paros 179
2.2.1 Biographical information 179
2.2.2 Forms and themes of Archilochus’ poetry 180
X Contents
2.2.3 Language and style 184
2.3 Semonides of Amorgos 184
2.3.1 Biographical information 184
2.3.2 The themes of the surviving fragments 185
2.3.3 Language and style 186
2.4 Hipponax of Ephesus 187
2.4.1 Biographical information 187
2.4.2 Themes from daily and private life 187
2.4.3 Language and style 189
2.5 Elegy 190
2.5.1 Terminology, metre, language 190
2.5.2 The occasions of song performance and the elegiac poets 191
2.6 Callinus of Ephesus and paraenetic elegy in archaic Ionia 192
2.6.1 Life and fragments 192
2.6.2 Language and style 192
2.7 Tyrtaeus: a poet in archaic Sparta 193
2.7.1 Biographical information 193
2.7.2 The warrior ethic of the hoplite polis 193
2.7.3 Language and style 195
2.8 Mimnermus of Colophon, poet of the human condition 196
2.8.1 The poet and the historical context 196
2.8.2 The themes of his poetry 197
2.8.3 Language and style 198
2.9 Solon of Athens: a complex historical figure 199
2.9.1 Life 199
2.9.2 An elegy with political content 201
2.9.3 The fragments in iambic and trochaic metre 203
2.9.4 Language and style 204
2.10 Theognis of Megara and gnomic elegy 204
2.10.1 An author known via the direct tradition 204
2.10.2 Biographical information 205
2.10.3 The themes of the Theognidean corpus. The gnomic elegy 205
2.10.4 Language and style 207
2.11 Phocylides of Miletus: the gnomic elegy in Ionia 208
2.11.1 Chronology 208
2.11.2 The fragments 208
2.12 Xenophanes of Colophon, a philosopher-poet 208
2.12.1 A singular figure 208
2.12.2 The elegies 209
2.12.3 The Silloi and other works 210
2.12.4 Language and style 211
