Bacchylides

Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition combines close literary analysis of Bacchylides' poetry with detailed discussion of the central role poetry played in a variety of differing political contexts throughout Greece in the early fifth century BC. In Bacchylides' praise poetry, David Fearn argues, the poet manipulates a wide range of earlier Greek literature not only to elevate the status of his wealthy patrons, but also to provoke thought about the nature of political power and aristocratic society. New light is also shed on Bacchylides' Dithyrambs, through detailed discussion of the evidence for the kuklios khoros ('circular chorus') and its relation to a variety of different religious festivals, especially within democratic Athens. The links created between literary concerns and cultural contexts reinvigorate these underappreciated poems and reveal their central importance for the self-definition of political communities.

Anne Burnett shows us the art of Bacchylides in the context of Greek lyric traditions. She discusses the beginnings of choral poetry and the functions of the choral myth; she describes the purposes of the victory song in particular and the practices of Bacchylides and Pindar as they fulfilled their victory commissions. In analyzing individual poems Burnett's approach is two-fold, for each ode is seen as a choral performance reflecting archaic cult practice, while it is also studied as the expression of a particular poetic vision and sensibility. Thus the formal elements of the Bacchylidean victory songs are recognized as the response of a chorus which must give semi-religious praise to a noble athlete or prize-winning prince in times of increasing democracy. At the same time an artistry and an ethic peculiar to Bacchylides are discovered in the manipulation of fictions and mythic materials.

A 2004 selection of songs of praise and songs for choral performances composed by Bacchylides (c. 520-450 BC).

Not much is known about the life of Bacchylides, but everyone knows how great of a poet he was, becoming one of Ancient Greece's best lyrical poets. The Greeks included him in their canonical list of nine lyric poets, and some of his works survived. His career coincided with the rise of drama, including the playwrights Aeschylus or Sophocles, and his lyrics are known for their clarity in expression and simplicity, making it easier to study the lyrical poetry of Ancient Greece. Epinicians were a genre of occasional poetry that resembled victory odes, written in prose in Ancient Greece as lyrics for a chorus. These were commissioned for and performed at the celebration of an athletic victory in the Panhellenic Games and sometimes in honor of a victory in war. Some of Bacchylides' epinicians survived and are reproduced here.

An original and wide-ranging study of the Greek lyric poet Bacchylides, exploring his engagement with poetic tradition and evaluating the complex relationship of the poetry to its multiple contexts of performance.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

Until a century ago, the fifth-century Greek poet Bacchylides was known only by 107 nonsequential lines buried as quotations in the writings of other ancient authors. With the discovery in 1896 of a papyrus containing his work, 1,382 lines were reassembled and the poems of Bacchylides finally began to take shape for the modern reader. Slavitt argues in the Introduction to this collection that, although Bacchylides is often considered a "lesser Pindar," he is a poet who warrants consideration. "He deserves attention not because he is beetling, like Pindar, but because he is not. He relies on craftsmanship and reliably displays an attractive grace and elegance."

Bacchylides wrote masterful choral poetry of many types. Other fifth-century BC lyricists included: Myrtis, Telesilla of Argos, Timocreon of Rhodes, Charixena, Diagoras of Melos, Ion of Chios, and Praxilla of Sicyon. More of Boeotian Corinna's poetry survives than that of any other Greek woman poet except Sappho.