ARISTIDES and the Llterature of the PAST CHAPTER ONE

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PART ONE ARISTIDES AND THE llTERATURE OF THE PAST CHAPTER ONE ARISTIDES AND EARLY GREEK LYRIC, ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETRY EWEN BowiE This paper investigates Aristides' quotations of and allusions to early Greek lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry. One reason for its restriction to these poets is that I have been looking at their citation and other ways they are drawn upon in a number of imperial Greek texts. 1 But an equally important reason for the exclusion of other early poetry, above all of Homer, Hesiod and other hexameter poetry, is because its inclu sion would undoubtedly have raised issues that would have required a much longer paper. The London doctorate of T.K. Gkourogiannis, entitled Pindaric Qyotations in Aelius Aristides, completed in 1999, regis tered the presence in Aristides of 253 citations of the Iliad and 93 of the 04Jssey. 2 This is a far larger number than Aristides' quotations of tragedy or comedy, where Gkourogiannis documented 45 for Aristo phanes; 26 for Euripides; 16 for Sophocles; 10 for Aeschylus; and five each for Eupolis, Cratinus and Menander. In some respects the pro portion of these quotations between Homer, tragedy and comedy show Aristides to be not dissimilar to other authors writing in this period, or to what we know of readers' habits from papyri, 3 though the frequency of Aristides' citation of Menander is rather low, and of Aristophanes rather high: this is partly because of his extensive exploitation of Aristo phanes for Athenian history in Oration 3 (which has some 16 citations), partly, I suspect, because Aristides was drawn, or was made by his tutor Alexander of Cotiaeum, to read Aristophanes with due care and atten tion in order to beef up his Atticism.4 1 In Athenaeus, Bowie 2ooo; in Plutarch, Bowie 1997 and forthcoming (b); in Philostratus' Apollonius in Bowie forthcoming (a); in Stobaeus in Bowie forthcoming (c). 2 Gkourogiannis 1999. 3 Kruger 1990. 4 For Aristophanes in other authors of the period, see Bowie 2007. .

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