DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu20.2016.202 UDC 82-1/-9 Philologia Classica. 2016. Vol. 11. Fasc. 2 THE CHILDREN OF MNEMOSYNE: A CONTRASTIVE METAPOETICS OF PINDAR AND BACCHYLIDES1 Boris Maslov University of Chicago, 1010 East 59th Street, Classics 116 Chicago, IL 60637 USA National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, 17 Promyshlennaia, St. Petersburg 198099, Russian Federation;
[email protected] The article investigates the uses to which the figures of the Muse(s) are put in the poetics of Pindar and Bacchylides, considered against the background of their earlier employments in elegiac and melic poetry. Based on a thorough examination of the evidence, it argues that the two poets pursue different strategies: whereas Bacchylides develops a poetic mythology of named Muses (particularly, Ourania), Pindar rede- ploys the single unnamed Muse of the earlier hexameter and choral traditions, envisioning her as the poet’s collaborator. Pindar may thus be seen to originate the notion of the Muse as a deity associated with poetic composition, as contrasted with her mnemonic-epistemic role in hexameter verse. Keywords: Archaic Greek lyric, epinikion, metapoetics, authorship, the Muses, Pindar. The epinikion is unique among Archaic Greek melic genres in that it is represented, for us, by two sizable contemporary corpora. In this regard, epinikion can be compared to Attic tragedy and the “Homeric” corpus of dactylic hexameter poetry; in the latter two cases, intensive comparative work has yielded profound insights into both the poetics of particular texts and, more generally, the evolution of the literary system in Ancient Greece. Much less work has been done on a contrastive poetics of epinikion.