Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches Series Editor: Gregory Nagy, Harvard University Iambic Ideas Assistant Editor: Timothy Power, Harvard University On the front cover: A calendar frieze representing the Athenian months, reused 111 the Byzantine Church of the Little Metropolis in Athens. The cross is Essays on a Poetic Tradition superimposed, obliterating Taurus of the Zodiac. The choice of this frieze for hooks in Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches reflects this series' from Archaic Greece to the Late t·mphasis on the blending of the diverse heritages-Near Eastern, Classical, and <'lu istian-in the Greek tradition. Drawing by Laurie Kain Hart, based on a Roman Empire photograph. Recent titles in the series are: · Nothing is As It Seems: The Tragedy ofthe Implicit in Euripides' Hippolytus by HannaM. Roisman /1'1ir· Quotation in Plato EDITED BY by Marian Demos ALBERTO CAV ARZERE, ANTONIO ALONI, I Iff,· and the Poetics ofLoss in Greek Tradition hy Nancy Sultan AND ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI n,, . <' lassica/ Moment: Views from Seven Literatures t·d i led by Gail Holst-Warhaft and David R. McCann "'11111' lissays on Homer t·dllt:d by Miriam Carlisle and Olga Levaniouk 11/,·,l:on• and the Tragic Chorus in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus hy Roger Travis /liolt\ '.l'f\'111 rm d Comedy hy Xavier Riu 1 'onl!'\ltwlizing Classics: Ideology, Performance, Dialogue t•thh·d by Thomas M. Falkner, Nancy Felson, and David Konstan '1/t, 1'111' ofAchilles: Oral Style and the Unity of the Iliad hy .I in yo Kim /kfll'''''" Magic and Religion: interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Af, •tltl!'ll'lllll'lllt Religion and Society t'dllt·d hy Sulochana R. Asirvatham, Corinne Ondine Pache, and lol111 Wall ous !,unhtr' lt/,•n.l" h'.\·,wys on a f>o£'/ic 1hulition from Archaic Greece to the Lat ,,.,,/111/l , ... ,,,,.,. ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, IN nl111·d hy 1\llw•lo CltVIIIZCIC, 1\nhHIIO /\lo1H, and 1\kssandro Barchicsi Umlwm • /Joulder • New York • Olford xiv Preface of Greek poetry there has been spectacular progress in making sense of iambos in its social and performative context and important advance in exegetical and textual studies. These chapters refuse to make a clear-cut choice between those two approaches, and accept the challenge of discussing scraps of evidence and problematic fragments while trying to redefine the concept of the genre in its evolution. Watson focuses on a Horatian epode that defies interpretation because the deft allusive strategy of the Roman poet has been fatally reinforced by the loss of crucial information regarding Anacreon and his verse. Aloni and Andrisano meet the double challenge of working on fragmentary utterances by Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Sappho and Alcaeus while making inferences on the evolution of iambic Nnra·ative discourse and its recognizability in an alien context. Bowie criticizes the construction of iambos as essentially blame and slander but also contributes to a wider and richer assessment of its potential. Zanetto recuperates from the 1,: ,,.,.11 /Jowie apparently unitary language of abuse of Old Comedy strands and inflexions that could have been recognized as iambic moments by the audience. Both Zanetto I l'lwpter explores the relative importance of invective and narrative in the and Edmunds usefully remind us that iambos as a literary genre-if this is a Ii i~ correct definition-coexists and negotiates for a long time with a genre of ' 'Ill Il l'S I surviving fragments of Greek iambic poetry, and argues that narrative discourse, ainos, the Aisopic tradition, and interested readers might want to save '''''Y have been just as important as invective in defining the genre. In this insight for a later encounter with Cavarzere's Phaedrus. '1'1'11 11\C hing this question it is important to remember that these surviving We regret not having had more contributions on Callimachus, but the timing li llf(llll'llts 1 are very unlikely to represent the beginnings of Greek iambic poetry. of the conference might have been too early for an anticipated revival of \\ In nt•vcr and wherever these beginnings may have been, they were almost Callimachean/iambic studies, since two major contributions to the text of the 1 1 il lltnly some time, perhaps many generations, before our first fragments, which 1r Iambs by Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Amd Kerkhecker are forthcoming in the d 11 r, om around 650 B.C. I am very sceptical about the possibility of 1, ucting plausible hypotheses about the development of iambic poetry before year 2000 as we write this preface. One could also deplore the absence of 111 ~ 11 Hipponax and of Herodas, the focus of much exciting research recently (R. 1111 poems from which these fragments come. In them we find no trace that their Hunter, G. Mastromarco, C. Miralles, R. Rosen, to name but a few: updated 11 1111posc rs , Archilochus of Paros and Semonides of Amorgos, are at an early critical assessment in R. Hunter, "The presentation of Herodas' Mimiambi." t.lf.t l' 111 the development of the genre or in the handling of its meters-rather Antichthon 27 (1993): 31-44). Another author whose work might have 1h1 y di splay an assured skill in both respects. I suppose that they had illuminated ancient iambos from the margins is Martial, whose corpus I'' n k rcssors whose work was not preserved because it was only around 650 B.C. reproduces the small-scale work of Catullus metrically, and in many of its tlt.tl w• iting came into use for the transmission of literary texts, and I see in attitudes; but unlike his model he refuses the label iambus, never using the word, \1 1 lulochus the presence of some phrases that might be seen as iambic formulae 2 i l possible product of an earlier tradition. and instead produces a seminal text for the genre "epigram." ~ ~ In the end it seems to us that our contributors have responded to the 1 In citing the fragments I use the numeration and (with a few exceptions) the text provocation of Iambic Ideas with constructive approaches and that future 11 1' W1·~ t 19!l9. revisitations of the field might profit from individual contributions and address .:. I 01 possible iambic formulae compare Zeu<; n:ati]Q 'OA.ut.miwv frr. 25.6, some of the broader issues in this volume. In praising the authors who have now , 'OA.uf.Ln:lw[v.)o.L[ fr. a dative version 8ec.i>v 'OAUf.LJtLWV vo<p fr. 1.! ~ 1 Zr"i lc; 98 .13; become our friends we are aware that editors, of all people, are the least likely to 111. 11, rtA.r c; <XLXf.Lf\ frr. 23. 19, 96.5; t ywvtaf.LEL~Of.Ll']Y frr. 196A.9 and perhaps escape that most persistent of all iambic functions, blame. 1 I I , !I Ol e; l'Q l X.tUJtOU L\U)£ fr. 94.2, n:at<; 'A01']VUL1'] LllO<; fr. 98.7 For a possible l11 11111il11 IIVililublc for elegy and for dactylic lines of asynarteta, avi]Q h etw, Arch. fr. Alberto Cavarzere I 'lhi\ 1\ Ty•tncus fr. 11.4 . Antonio Aloni Alessandro Barchicsi Ewen Bowie Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Narrative 3 This exploration has been prompted by an interest in two problems, one more have opened the "Cologne epode" (fr. 196 and 196A):6 that is, he is actually general and the other more particular. The more general problem is whether in performing poetry which his words deny that he can compose. If that were so, a J\rchilochus' time there was a recognised genre iambos, and if so, how it was poem which commemorated his dead brother-in-law and which was composed in defined. The more particular, but of course related, problem is the generic place the metre we call iambic trimeters would for Archilochus be an example of of the long trochaic tetrameter fragments of Archilochus, much of them iambos. But the term need not be self-reflexive: he could equally well be saying containing narratives of war, that have been preserved chiefly on papyrus and on that his grief prevented him being interested in either iamboi or jollifications and the two big inscriptions from the Archilocheion on Paros. 3 assume that the poem that he was currently performing would be perceived as The question of the existence and nature of an early genre iambos has been 4 falling into neither category. It would of course be helpful if the disjunction oih' much discussed. I shall try as far as possible to avoid engaging too closely with t<if.,l(}Wv out€ tEQnwA.Ewv (neither iamboi nor jollifications) could offer us a any individual scholar's view, or with the issues either of quasi-dramatic clue. But that could be a disjunction either of similar or of dissimilar elements, performance or of the reality or fictionality of named individuals. Our so it cannot tell us whether iamboi were like tEQJtWAEWV (jollifications) or understanding is hindered by the fact that only one fragment of early poetry uses unlike them. the term iambos (Laf..lf3oc;), and that fragment of Archilochus (2 I 5 W., cited by More light is shed on the term iambos by the use of the name Iambe in the the twelfth-century A.D. Byzantine scholar Johannes Tzetzes) allows us to account of Demeter's mourning for Persephone as given in the Homeric hymn to interpret iambos in more than one way: Demeter: a woman Iambe used jesting and mockery to make Demeter laugh and recover her tranquillity: xai f!' oi'.n:' taf!~wv oilt£ t£QnwA.€wv f!EA£L y' And I have interest in neither iamboi nor jollifications.