Greek poetic tradition, including practices of live performance, played a key role in shaping Bacchic mysteries. Ritual officiants seized on language, images, and concepts from a traditional poetic repertoire, selecting, combining, and reinterpreting them to suit both the ritual occasion (initiation, burial) and the specific preferences of individual clients. The gold leaves are products of this dynamic. They develop the theme of memory in several different directions, often echoing the language and thought patterns of early epic and lyric; they share fictions of commemoration with funerary epigrams, even using such devices in similar ways; their physical form shows the influence of verse incantations; and even their material points toward metal symbolisms of epic. In all these aspects, the tablets reflect an engagement with the themes and vocabulary of early Greek poetry and its multifaceted performance culture.