Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture

In this book one of the world's leading Hellenists brings together his many contributions over four decades to our understanding of early Greek literature, above all of elegiac poetry and its relation to fifth-century prose historiography, but also of early Greek epic, iambic, melic and epigrammatic poetry. Many chapters have become seminal, e.g. that which first proposed the importance of now-lost long narrative elegies, and others exploring their performance contexts when papyri published in 1992 and 2005 yielded fragments of such long poems by Simonides and Archilochus. Another chapter argues against the widespread view that Sappho composed and performed chiefly for audiences of young girls, suggesting instead that she was a virtuoso singer and lyre-player, entertaining men in the elite symposia whose verbal and musical components are explored in several other chapters of the book. Two more volumes of collected papers will follow devoted to later Greek literature and culture.

Brings together a wide range of essays, some of whose original published versions are very hard for many scholars and students to access
Covers a wide range of poetic genres, revealing many similarities in poetic practice
Presents all quotations from ancient Greek literary and epigraphic texts both in Greek and in translation

Reviews & endorsements

'Bowie's work has played a crucial role in keeping classics in Britain a flourishing enterprise by showing what significant new work can be done by looking at evidence others pass over … Any reader will be dazzled by Bowie's technical mastery.' Ben Cartlidge, Times Literary Supplement

See more reviews

Product details

Published: March 2023
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781107692091
Length: 884 pages
Dimensions: 244 × 168 × 48 mm
Weight: 1.5kg
Availability: Available

Often bought together

This title is available for institutional purchase via Cambridge Core

Learn more

Related Journals

Also by this Author

Contents

1. Early Greek Elegy, Symposium and Public Festival (1986)
2. One That Got Away. Archilochus frr. 188–92 and Horace Odes 1.4 and 5 (1987)
3. Miles Ludens? The Problem of Martial Exhortation in Early Greek Elegy (1990)
4. Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry (1993)
5. Greek Table-talk Before Plato (1993)
6. The Theognidea: A Step Towards a Collection of Fragments? (1997)
7. Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Narrative (2001)
8. Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry? (2001)
9. Sympotic Praise (2002)
10. Early Expatriates: Displacement and Exile in Archaic Poetry (2007)
11. From Archaic Elegy to Hellenistic Sympotic Epigram? (2007)
12. Sex and Politics in Archilochus' Poetry (2008)
13. Wandering Poets, Archaic Style (2009)
14. Epigram as Narration (2010)
15. Historical Narrative in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Elegy (2010)
16. Stobaeus and Early Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2010)
17. Marathon in Fifth-century Epigram (2010)
18. The Trojan War in Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2010)
19. Performing and Re-performing Helen: Stesichorus' Palinode
(2010)
20. Simonides of Eretria Redivivus (?)(2010)
21. Alcman's First Partheneion and the Song the Sirens Sang (2011)
22. An Early Chapter in the History of the Theognidea (2012)
23. Stesichorus and Ibycus: Plain Tales from the Western Front (2012)
24. Epinicians and 'Patrons' (2012)
25. Unnatural Selection: Expurgation of Greek Melic, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry (2012)
26. Marathon, the 1500 Days After: Culture and Politics (2013)
27. The Sympotic Tease (2013)
28. Rediscovering Sacadas (2014)
29. Stesichorus' Geryoneis and Greeks in the West (2104)
30. Stesichorus at Athens (2015)
31. Cultic Contexts for Elegiac Performance (2016)
32. Quo usque tandem? How Long were Sympotic Songs? (2016)
33. How did Sappho's Songs get into the Male Sympotic Repertoire? (2016)
34. The Performance Contexts of Trochaic Tetrameters Catalectic (2018)
35. Alcaeus' Stasiotica: Catullan and Horatian Readings (2019)
36. Reconfiguring Archilochus. How have Papyri and Inscriptions Changed Perceptions of Archilochus' Iambic and Elegiac Poetry? (2020)
Bibliography
Indices.

Look inside

Courses

Resources

Additional Information

About the authors

Author

Ewen Bowie , University of Oxford
EWEN BOWIE is the Emeritus E. P. Warren Praelector and Fellow in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Emeritus Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. He writes on early Greek poetry; Old Comedy; Hellenistic poetry; and the Greek literature and culture of the Roman Empire. He co-edited volumes on Philostratus (Cambridge, 2009) and Archaic and Classical Choral Song (2011), edited one on Herodotus (2018), and published a commentary on Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge, 2019).

Products and services

About us