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37 results

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  • XENOPHANES B6 DK: ETHICS, RECIPROCITY AND THE MYSTERY OF THE TRAVELLING MEAT

  • Henry Spelman
  • Journal:
    The Classical Quarterly , First View
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    16 April 2025, pp. 1-10
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  • Uncertainty about the pragmatic context, the fundamental content and hence the philosophical significance of Xenophanes B6 DK prevents this comparatively extensive fragment from playing much of a role in scholarly discussions. This essay reviews interpretations of that difficult text and then offers a new reading which arguably better accords with the preserved Greek, Xenophanes’ other fragments and ritual custom. It is also suggested how B6 fits in with Xenophanes’ philosophical and specifically ethical concerns as evidenced in other fragments.

  • 2 - Epic and Lyric

  • from Part I - Epic Engagements
  • Edited by Emma Greensmith, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic
    Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 41-57

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the complex relationship between epic and the tricky genre of lyric. Spelman begins with brief historical orientation and then focuses on broader and more theoretical questions of genre, which have been given new impetus by Culler’s Theory of the Lyric. Taking ‘lyric’ in a broad sense to include iambos and elegy as well as melic poetry, Spelman considers some of the most famous and important lyric passages (especially drawing from Pindar and Sappho) that engage with Homeric epic, the Homeric Hymns and the Epic Cycle. Spelman ultimately examines how and whether lyric works out a definition for itself in contradistinction to epic—and whether such a definition can offer us a more nuanced understanding of what epic itself is.

  • 5 - Invoking Homer

  • from Part II - Lyric and Epic
  • Edited by Adrian Kelly, University of Oxford, Henry Spelman, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
    Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 118-137

  • Summary

    This chapter argues for and interprets allusions to the invocation before the Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2.484-93) in Ibycus’ ’Polycrates Ode’, Pindar’s Paean 6 and Paean 7b, and Simonides’ ’Plataea Elegy’. It then considers these four poems together as a unique case study for the early reception of Homer. For no other passage from the Iliad or the Odyssey can we trace an equally extensive afterlife in early Greek lyric. The author argues that the unusual prominence of the narrator’s personality and the exceptionally emphatic claim to objective truth in Il. 2.484–93 made these lines a privileged point of reference for subsequent explorations of the nature of poetic authority.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Adrian Kelly, University of Oxford, Henry Spelman, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
    Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 1-28

  • Summary

    The first section of this introduction sets the scene for the volume as a whole by briefly considering the history of intertextuality within modern classical scholarship, both Latin and Greek, and then highlighting the special methodological and historical challenges that attend on comparative approaches to early Greek literature. As scholars increasingly agree on the need to read early Greek literature in a comparative way, it is argued, this only makes more urgent the question of how best to do so. The second section of the introduction highlights some of the core methodological, historical, and literary preoccupations of this book by exploring in chronological order two contrastive and complementary case studies from early elegy, one from Tyrtaeus and one from Simonides. Rather than providing a set of definitive answers about how these texts relate to epic tradition and/or particular epics, this section aims to give a sense of the sort of questions at stake in the following chapters. The introduction then concludes by summarising each of those chapters and highlighting interconnections between them.

Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
  • Edited by Adrian Kelly, Henry Spelman
  • Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • Encompassing the period from the earliest archaic epics down through classical Athenian drama, this is the first concerted, step-by-step examination of the development of allusive poetics in the early Greek world. Recent decades have seen a marked rise in intertextual approaches to early Greek literature; as scholars increasingly agree on the need to read these texts in a comparative way, this only makes all the more urgent the question of how best to do so. This volume brings together divergent scholarly voices to explore the state of the field and to point the way forward. All twelve chapters address themselves to a core set of fundamental questions: how do texts generate meaning by referring to other texts and how do the poetics of allusivity change over time and differ across genres? The result is a holistic study of a key dimension of literary experience.

  • ‘If one knows what is to come’: ethics, audience and eschatology in Pindar’s Olympian 2

  • Henry Spelman
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Hellenic Studies / Volume 144 / November 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 November 2024, pp. 48-64
    Print publication:
    November 2024
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  • This essay uses one difficult sentence from Pindar’s Olympian 2 as a jumping-off point to address larger issues about the relationship between literature and belief. Section II tackles Pindar’s judgement of the dead (56–60) and argues that this passage is better understood as an instance of unusual particle usage rather than as an elliptical expression of recondite doctrine. Here the posthumous fate of humanity is decided on the grounds of ethical conduct. Section III discusses the unfinished conditional beginning in line 56 and probes the connection between eschatological knowledge and pragmatic action. Scholars have focused on the unusual details of Pindar’s eschatology, but its overarching practical thrust is to reinforce a conventional ethic. Section IV examines the knowledge of the future mentioned in line 56 and other gestures towards privileged knowledge. Scholars have considered Olympian 2 an ‘intimate’ text intended for a select audience, but there is reason to think that this epinician aimed at a panhellenic reception. Combining motifs from various sources, Pindar creates a unique vision of the afterlife that is capable of transcending doctrinal labels and appealing to many. Section V briefly concludes by considering how this poem works as both a victory ode and a religious text. Pindar’s ode is not a ‘corrupt paraphrase’ of anything else; the text creates a world of its own and inscribes core epinician values into the very architecture of the cosmos.

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