See Rutherford 2001: 210–232 and Power 2011.46 46 See Peponi 2012: 87.
47 47 See Race 1997: 261. Cf. Rutherford 2001: 282 who translates: “known also for providing the Muse in plenty.”
48 48 In the First Isthmian, 1–3, Pindar mentions a song he must compose for Delos, but presumably has not yet finished, because he gave priority to his epinician for the Theban Herodotus. Scholars have long thought that Pindar’s reference is to the late delivery of the Fourth Paean. See, e.g., Race 1997: 135; Rutherford 2001: 284–285. As Rutherford points out (ibid 292 with n. 48), the speaker envisages his choreia on Ceos, a statement that has led the ancient scholiast to posit a rehearsal on Ceos.
49 49 For a detailed discussion see Athanassaki 2018a.
50 50 The translation is that of Bury (1926, Loeb Classical Library) slightly modified.
51 51 Elsewhere in the Laws Plato mentions human intermediaries: see 656c and 816bd.
52 52 For Apollo as leader of the Cretan chorus see also Nagy 2009.
53 53 See for instance the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus 26, 9–10, which depicts Dionysus leading the choruses of nymphs who raised him to be honored with many hymns (πολύυμνος, 7).
54 54 See Athanassaki 2018a: 96–98.
55 55 The parallelism is achieved by the παιᾶνα μέν – παιᾶνας δέ construction in lines 687 and 691. See H. Parry 1965: 37 and Henrichs 1996.
56 56 For the metaphorical meaning see Rutherford 2001: 307 who suggests that “the inclusion of the Kharites and Aphrodite in the prayer identifies the register as one of sexuality and celebration: it is as if the χορός of young men (line 122) is a κῶμος arriving at Delphi.”
57 57 See Neer and Kurke 2014 with references to earlier scholarship.
58 58 Pausanias 1.29.2; Philostratus Lives of the Sophists p. 549. The xenismos of Dionysus as the performance context of this song-dance was advanced by Sourvinou-Inwood 2003: 95–96, who seems to be thinking of the Agora north of the Acropolis. Note that her book came out the same year as the publication of John Papadopoulos’ finds (Papadopoulos 2003) that offered definitive arguments for the location of the Ancient Agora to the East of the Acropolis before the Persian wars. Note also that the date of Pindar’s dithyramb is unknown.
59 59 For the location of the old Agora to the east of the Acropolis see Neer and Kurke 2014 with references.
60 60 Bowie 2006.
61 61 This is Eupolis’ verdict quoted by Athenaeus 1.2c–3a.
CHAPTER 2 Religion and Ritual in Early Greek Lyric
William Furley
It is hard to overstate how much the modern mindset differs from the ancient in the matter of religion. Today, instead of praying to healing gods, or performing rituals in iatromantic cults if we are ill, we call on all the vast repertoire of modern medicine, confident that science and technology will have the answer to our malady. Today, when we enter an athletic competition, we rely on dietetics, training, and good equipment instead of prayers to Hermes or Iris. Today, when a state deliberates on an international crisis, it does not ask Delphi or Dodona or another oracle for advice, but rather it calls on all possible experts and, in a democracy, it debates in the relevant houses, before it, for example, imposes sanctions or declares war on another country. No need to labor the point. The old gods are dead, science and technology rule. Since most classicists—I mean teachers and students—at modern universities pursue the scientific way of thinking, it is hard for us to make the imaginative leap necessary to understand what an ancient prayer, hymn, or ritual really meant to the individual praying or the group singing.1 They certainly would not have done it if they thought it was wasted breath. So our approach can be either that of the interested observer or we can attempt somehow to step inside the ancient mindset. It is in fact the old dichotomy of the anthropologist: emic (the perspective from within the social group) or etic (the perspective of the observer). The external observer of a rite from a different culture can interpret the rite from his point of view, while the person performing the rite may have a quite different “reason.”2 We do not need to go too far down this road. Suffice it to remind readers that in the religious lyric we will be discussing there is very much an emic and an etic standpoint.
But what is this religion which we wish to discuss in conjunction with archaic and classical lyric poetry? The only earlier sources to survive are the epics of Homer and Hesiod, together with fragments of the so-called epic cycle. It is probable that lyric poetry coexisted with epic, but as we map existing texts, lyric comes “after” epic. And before the two epic giants there existed a society in Greece which we can only investigate through archaeology, including inscribed clay tablets which speak to us to a very limited degree. Philology on the other hand has shown how Homeric epic developed over the centuries as an oral form of poetry with its roots in Mycenaean Greece.3 Many of the gods we encounter in literature recur in the Mycenaean linear B tablets.4 So the first datum is the age of many of the gods and their cults which form the background to literary religion. In Homer we see the gods assembled and conversing;5 we see individual gods taking individual action on earth, and humans conversely engaged in a number of actions directed toward winning divine attention and favor: praying, sacrificing, consulting oracles, singing hymns (on Achilles’ Shield), burying the dead with elaborate rituals, and so on. When the lyric poets begin their work the whole apparatus exists. They draw on tradition, personalize it, select from it.6 Did the poets—and their audiences— “believe” in the gods which appear in their poems, or were they already mere literary abstractions as in English classical verse? The question of belief is often brushed aside by modern scholars who maintain that Greek religion up to and including the Classical period was a question of doing, saying, but not believing. Personally I side with scholars who take the opposing view that there is no point going to great lengths to worship a god if one does not believe in his (or her) power. Is it possible to imagine that Sappho’s heart-rending appeals to Aphrodite were directed at a literary abstraction? I think not.7
Another important point to make at the outset is the communality of Greek lyric. Choral lyric obviously involved a number of interested parties, as we shall see: the poet, chorus, listeners, and divine “audience,” to whom the performance was addressed. But monodic lyric no doubt involved a group experience as well: apart from the singer (aoidos) there was often, we imagine, a group of male or female companions (hetairoi or hetairai) who may have joined in, too, if they knew the tune. This means that the poet was always composing for this performative context, and was not merely expressing feelings in private.8 This is a very important principle for Aeolic lyric (Sappho and Alcaeus) because sometimes scholars have tried to read their works as if they were private diary entries. So Greek lyric is much more public than modern poetry for the reason that it had to make itself understood to its listeners, that it had to be memorable both for performer and listener, and, above all in our case, it had to deliver an unequivocal message to the gods. There was not only a “song culture” in Greece at this time, there was also a hymn and prayer culture.9 The vast majority of lyric compositions, whether cult hymns or less overtly hieratic compositions, from this period are lost.10 We should beware of generalizing from the scant remains, but this “congregational” aspect of the poetry should be kept in mind.11
Religion itself as a thing in its own right did not exist either in the archaic or the classical period. The Greeks had no one word for it, as scholars never tire of pointing out.12 No need to rehearse that argument. The converse of this truism,
