This book is about passages where Pindar uses the future tense with reference to himself or to his song. It addresses the question as to exactly what the function is of the future tense in those passages. This is a vexed problem, which has played a major role in Pindaric criticism for the last decades and which has recently gained relevance for the interpretation of other authors as well. This book offers a detailed examination of all the relevant passages in Pindar, as well as a generous amount of examples from other authors. It takes a firm stand against the communis opinio that first person futures in Pindar merely express a present intention: the so-called "encomiastic" or "performative" future. It demonstrates that the reference to a future moment is relevant in every single instance of a future verb in Pindar and concludes that there is no such thing as an "encomiastic" future. Inhalt: Futures with a text internal reference - Futures referring to a later moment in the ode - "Fictional" futures - Generic futures - Futures with a specific text external reference - The case of Olympian XI - First person futures in Theocritus' second Idyll & magical texts. (Franz Steiner 1999)

For much of Western history, Pindar's work was recognized as the pinnacle of lyric poetry. This book presents an introduction to different aspects of Pindar's art, while demonstrating its importance for the coming into being of literature as it has been conceived of in the West.

The work of Stesichoros, an ancient Greek poet of the early sixth century B.C., is transmitted in fragments only. This volume contains a new edition of some of the most interesting Stesichoros-papyri from the Oxyrhynchus collection. The papyri are analysed under various aspects: survey of relevant secondary literature, introduction about identification and contents of each papyrus (including archaeological evidence), papyrological description, metrics; the edition is complete with a Latin critical apparatus, translation and detailed commentary. A brief general introduction illustrates notorious problems concerning the author, the genre etc. A bibliography and indices are provided at the end of the volume. The book will be welcomed by classicists and papyrologists alike.

A study of three epinicia of Pindar, which have in common that they celebrate victories of Aeginetan athletes and that they respond to the contemporary political situation in Aegina and to circumstances of the victory. The primary objective of this book is to provide an interpretation of each of the three odes as meaningful, coherent works of the literary art. For each ode, it provides a commentary in which problems of text and interpretation are discussed in detail, a structural and metrical analysis, and an interpretative essay, in which the observations of detail are brought together in order to provide an answer to the question as to how the ode at hand could have functioned as a coherent, meaningful epinicion. The introduction addresses questions of method and provides a description of Pindar's style.

Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts, and the fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms alone. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as 'textual events'. Some chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings, while others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. Individual lyric texts and authors, such as Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar, are analysed in detail, alongside treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events aims to re-examine the relationship between the poems' formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of socio-political discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as expressing cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.

A collection of papers by international experts on one of the most paradoxical and influential poetic genres of classical antiquity.

A collection of largely unpublished papers by the distinguished Hellenist W. S. Barrett.They include detailed discussions of Stesichorus' Geryoneis and various odes of Pindar and Bacchylides, a major study of Pindar's metrical practice, substantial pieces on Tragedy, and notes on other authors including Thucydides, Menander, and Seneca.