Simonides is tantalising and enigmatic, known both from fragments and from an extensive tradition of anecdotes. This monograph, the first in English for a generation, employs a two-part diachronic approach: Richard Rawles first reads Simonidean fragments with attention to their intertextual relationship with earlier works and traditions, and then explores Simonides through his ancient reception. In the first part, interactions between Simonides' own poems and earlier traditions, both epic and lyric, are studied in his melic fragments and then in his elegies. The second part focuses on an important strand in Simonides' ancient reception, concerning his supposed meanness and interest in remuneration. This is examined in Pindar's Isthmian 2, and then in Simonides' reception up to the Hellenistic period. The book concludes with a full re-interpretation of Theocritus 16, a poem which engages both with Simonides' poems and with traditions about his life.
Author(s): Richard Rawles
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Commentary: part 6 is missing
Pages: 318
FM......Page 1
Dedication......Page 5
Contents......Page 7
Preface......Page 11
Introduction......Page 13
1. Epic Traditions in Lyric Songs......Page 33
2. The ‘New Simonides’......Page 87
3. Pindar, Simonides and Money......Page 141
4. Simonides and Wealth......Page 163
5. From Stories to Songs......Page 202
Appendix : Simonides’ Poems Concerning Battles of the Persian Wars......Page 234
Bibliography......Page 246
Index of Subjects......Page 265
Index of Passages Discussed......Page 271
