Hacking Classical Forms in Haitian Literature, 2024
This is the first book to study how Haitian authors-from independence in 1804 to the modern Haiti... more This is the first book to study how Haitian authors-from independence in 1804 to the modern Haitian diaspora-have adapted Greco-Roman material and harnessed it to Haiti's legacy as the world's first anti-colonial nation-state. In nine chronologically organized chapters built around individual Haitian authors, Hawkins takes readers on a journey through one strand of Haitian literary history that draws on material from ancient Greece and Rome. This cross-disciplinary exploration is composed in a way that invites all readers to discover a rich and exciting cultural exchange that foregrounds the variety of ways that Haitian authors have 'hacked classical forms' as part of their creative process.
Acknowledgements 1. Ignorance and the Reception of Comedy in Antiquity Tom Hawkins and C. W. Mars... more Acknowledgements 1. Ignorance and the Reception of Comedy in Antiquity Tom Hawkins and C. W. Marshall 2. Juvenal and the Revival of Greek New Comedy at Rome Mathias Hanses 3. Parrhesia and Pudenda: Genital Pathology and Satiric Speech Julia Nelson Hawkins 4. Dio Chrysostom and the Naked Parabasis Tom Hawkins 5. Favorinus and the Comic Adultery Plot Ryan Samuels 6. Comedies and Comic Actors in the Greek East: An Epigraphical Perspective Fritz Graf 7. Plutarch, Epitomes, and Athenian Comedy C. W. Marshall 8. Lucian's Aristophanes: On Understanding Old Comedy in the Roman Imperial Period Ralph M. Rosen 9. Exposing Frauds: Lucian and Comedy Ian C. Storey 10. Revoking Comic License: Aristides' Or. 29 and the Performance of C Comedy Anna Peterson 11. Aelian and Comedy: Four Studies C. W. Marshall 12. The Menandrian world of Alciphron's Letters Melissa Funke 13. Two Clouded Marriages: Aristainetos' Allusions to Aristophanes' Clouds in Letters 2.3 and 2.12 Emilia A. Barbiero
Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage., 2020
Throughout most of Luis Alfaro's Electricidad (2003), his cholo adaptation of the myth of Electra... more Throughout most of Luis Alfaro's Electricidad (2003), his cholo adaptation of the myth of Electra set in the Boyle Heights neighbourhood of Los Angeles, Orestes is in exile in Las Vegas, where his mentor Nino trains him for gang life. 1 Eventually, affairs in LA demand Orestes' return, as Nino explains: In el mundo del cholo [the world of the cholo] the Four Directions are at war. .. We're trapped between three freeways and a Pollo Loco. La Casa de Atridas [the House of Atridas] is vulnerable. 2 Near the play's climax, Las Vecinas ('The Neighbors' , a chorus of 'mujeres [women] from the hood' , 66), share their foreboding that something bad is imminent. As with Nino's words, Las Vecinas express their dread in terms that blend narrative demands with a sense that the neighbourhood, despite being in the middle of LA, is a kind of prison: Don't go near the windows. Trapped in our casas [houses]. Trapped in our yardas [yards]. Trapped in our barrios [neighbourhoods]. 3 These passages typify the world of Alfaro's Greco-cholo tragedies, both in terms of the urban confinement and his Anglo-friendly idiom of lightly inflected Spanglish. This chapter centres in the intersection of verbal hybridity, socio-geographical marginalization, and the classical tradition. To access these issues more universally, I pair Electricidad with Feliks Moriso-Lewa's Antigòn (1953), the first major work of literature in Haitian Creole. 4 These examples are sufficiently separated in time, space, plot and cultural milieu that any direct influence is improbable. Instead, these two plays help us push beyond isolated case studies and work, together with many of the chapters in this volume, towards a more theoretical framework for approaching reception studies. My impulse to pair these plays stems from the fact that both were composed in hybrid languages. Haitian Creole and Spanglish share certain similarities but also reveal, interestingly, different linguistic histories. Haitian Creole has long been the language used by the vast majority of Haitians, but French (and, increasingly English) continues to
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2018
The Veil-W. E. B. Du Bois's term to describe the impediment to racial harmony in America-has long... more The Veil-W. E. B. Du Bois's term to describe the impediment to racial harmony in America-has long been recognized as one of his most important images for explaining the politics of race. Howard Winant, a sociologist and leading theorist of race, describes Du Bois's discussions of the Veil in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as 'the most nuanced and powerful theory of race and racism ever developed.' 1 Classicists, too, have highlighted the importance of the Veil and explored some of the Greek and Roman models that inform Du Bois's use of this term. 2 Yet more remains to be said, and I will here argue that Du Bois's Veil owes more to Plato's Cave than has been previously recognized and that in the shift from Cave to Veil, Du Bois reprocesses Plato's pedagogical-metaphysical image into a more pliable and dialectical sociological concept. Although the main focus here will be on connections between Plato's Cave and the Veil as it is presented in Souls, I will also draw upon Du Bois's references to the Veil in his later writings and this, in turn, will lead to a second classical point of reference with the figure of Prometheus. The Cave is one of Plato's most enduring and powerful images. At the beginning of the seventh book of Republic (514a-20a), Socrates conjures a strange scene as an allegory for the transformational power of education. Imagine, he suggests, a deep Cave in which prisoners, who have never known any other life, are chained in place.
Hipponax frequently evokes Odyssean mythology in a lowered poetic register, and at least in a few... more Hipponax frequently evokes Odyssean mythology in a lowered poetic register, and at least in a few instances he also conflates Homeric and contemporary contexts. These parodies have been amply demonstrated, but few scholars have explored the poetic implications of such parody in any detail. In part this is the result of two obvious challenges—the fragmented state of Hipponax’s surviving corpus, and our inability to construct clear historical or social contexts for his poetry. Nevertheless, I believe that we can make better sense of Hipponax’s engagement with the mythology of Odysseus by drawing upon modern theories of parody. From this perspective I will assemble the Hipponactean material in order to argue that such poetry expects a particularly active type of intellectual involvement on the part of his audience. I do not believe that we can nail down the specific details of that audience response (e.g. conservative aristocratic or proto-democratic revolutionary), but we can recogniz...
In this article, I take up the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose biopolitical theories, and in parti... more In this article, I take up the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose biopolitical theories, and in particular, the idea of “bare life,” are widely adduced in contemporary, morally charged discussions of politics, immigration studies, and the marginalization of various social groups. Agamben builds his ideas upon a reading of Aristotle, but I argue that his identification of Aristotle as the ur-source of biopolitical thinking misses an earlier moralizing discourse found in archaic Greek literary sources. I analyze passages of archaic epic and iambic poetry that describe proto-biopolitical moments before suggesting that the Ionian pharmakos ritual represents an early example of working with something like Agamben’s “bare life.” Biopolitics requires the logistics and technical infrastructure of an advanced civic bureaucracy, but the narrative fantasy of a community cohering around the abjection of select members of the group can be found already in the moralizing strategies of archaic Greek b...
Classical Greek literature presents a variety of speaking animals. These are not, of course, the ... more Classical Greek literature presents a variety of speaking animals. These are not, of course, the actual voices of animals but human projections. In a culture that aligns verbal mastery with social standing, verbal animals present a conundrum that speaks to an anxiety about human communication. I argue that the earliest examples of speaking animals, in Homer, Hesiod and Archilochus, show a fundamental connection with Golden Age tales. Later authors, such as Plutarch and Lucian, look back on such cases from a perspective that does not easily accept notions of divine causation that would permit such fanciful modes of communication. I argue that Plutarch uses a talking pig to challenge philosophical categories, and that Lucian transforms a sham-philosopher of a talking-cock to undermine the very pretense of philosophical virtue.
This chapter discusses the role of popular invective in shaping imperial politics. Starting from ... more This chapter discusses the role of popular invective in shaping imperial politics. Starting from Asinius Pollio’s quip to Octavian that ‘it’s not easy to play the scribe against one who can proscribe’ these pages chart the transformation of invective strategies at the end of the Republic that highlighted the political dimension of popular abuse directed at leading figures. The chapter falls into three parts: first, a discussion of invective in terms of its social register and the difference between literary analysis and interpersonal communication; next, an outline of republican patterns of politicized invective (both popular and elite); and finally, a closer examination of the imperial situation. The argument throughout is that the presence of the emperor changed the rules of the Roman invective game such that popular invective took on a greater role in Roman life. The two primary reasons for this change were the constraints on elite behaviour vis-à-vis the emperor and the close relationship between the imperial regime and massive, monumentalized spectacle architecture. The imperial consolidation of political and military power constrained the freedom of elite speakers, but non-elite invective, because of its diffuse nature, could engage the emperor more freely.
The festival of the kalends of January (or January 1) began as an occasion for official ceremonia... more The festival of the kalends of January (or January 1) began as an occasion for official ceremonial during the Roman Republic. From 153 BCE, the first day of January became the stage upon which a variety of state pageantries played out. Among the most important events the year’s two new consuls were installed in office, and armies swore their allegiance to Rome. Yet it was not until 45 BCE and Julius Caesar’s radical reform of the calendar that this day served as the first day of the year. Thus, in the period from 153 to 45 there were effectively two annual cycles that were not in synch, an administrative calendar that began on January 1 and a traditional version that began on March 1. As the Republic gave way to the Empire, however, this festival, which had been a rather formal affair celebrated primarily in the city of Rome itself, grew, spread and changed. The very idea of real consular power became increasingly peripheral as the principate strengthened its position, leaving the Kalends as a party bereft of its original cause for celebration. In response, the festival took on a more and more populist feel. Highlights included exchanging gifts, hour upon hour of chariot races, and opportunities to make fun of civic leaders with impunity. By the third century we can see the Kalends being celebrated outside Italy, and by the fourth century we know a great deal about the wild, costumed, drunken, and carnivalesque parties that were held all over the empire not just on January 1, but for several days in succession. My focus here will be on the events that took place during the Kalends of 363 in Antioch and the Emperor Julian’s surpassingly strange response piece, his Misopogon, or “Beard Hater.” During the Kalends festival the people of Antioch had taunted and made fun of their leader. This was a standard part of the festival’s celebration, but it seems that on this occasion things went too far (at least in Julian’s mind). The emperor took offense, penned a caustic riposte, and
Et mea Musa potest proprio deprensa colore insignis uitiis forsitan esse suis. Tam mala Thersiten... more Et mea Musa potest proprio deprensa colore insignis uitiis forsitan esse suis. Tam mala Thersiten prohibebat forma latere quam pulchra Nireus conspiciendus erat. Maybe my Muse can be caught in her own hue, marked by her shortcomings. For Thersites' foul mien kept him from hiding, as much as Nireus stood out for his beauty. Ovid, Ex Pont. 4.13.13-16
This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambi... more This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambic poetry on Roman imperial authors and audiences. It demonstrates how authors as varied as Ovid and Gregory Nazianzen wove recognizable elements of the iambic tradition (e.g., meter, motifs, or poetic biographies) into other literary forms (e.g., elegy, oratorical prose, anthologies of fables), and it shows that the humorous, scurrilous, efficacious aggression of Archilochus continued to facilitate negotiations of power and social relations long after Horace's Epodes. The eclectic approach encompasses Greek and Latin, prose and poetry, and exploratory interludes appended to each chapter help to open four centuries of later classical literature to wider debates about the function, propriety, and value of the lowest and most debated poetic form from archaic Greece. Each chapter presents a unique variation on how each of these imperial authors became Archilochushowever briefly and to whatever end. tom hawkins is Associate Professor of Classics at Ohio State University. His work and teaching focus on iambic poetics and invective as well as animal studies and personhood.
Lycambes, the most famous of Archilochus' whipping boys, is everywhere upstaged in the surviv... more Lycambes, the most famous of Archilochus' whipping boys, is everywhere upstaged in the surviving iambic texts and testimonia. This paper seeks to reconstruct something of Lycambes' voice and its role in the Archilochean tradition. I begin with a reconsideration of Archilochus' ““first epode”” and argue that Lycambes is styled as an older public rival to Archilochus who questions the role of the poet's iambos. The preliminary results of this section are then strengthened by drawing upon two relevant episodes in the later ancient reception of Archilochean poetics: the sniping between Aristophanes and his older rival Cratinus and the Mnesiepes Inscription's tale of the uproar surrounding Archilochus' first performance. Lycambes emerges from this study as a character constructed to question the value and status of the iambist within the social space of contemporary Paros. As such, his criticisms afford Archilochus the opportunity to trumpet his claim to the very ...
Hacking Classical Forms in Haitian Literature, 2024
This is the first book to study how Haitian authors-from independence in 1804 to the modern Haiti... more This is the first book to study how Haitian authors-from independence in 1804 to the modern Haitian diaspora-have adapted Greco-Roman material and harnessed it to Haiti's legacy as the world's first anti-colonial nation-state. In nine chronologically organized chapters built around individual Haitian authors, Hawkins takes readers on a journey through one strand of Haitian literary history that draws on material from ancient Greece and Rome. This cross-disciplinary exploration is composed in a way that invites all readers to discover a rich and exciting cultural exchange that foregrounds the variety of ways that Haitian authors have 'hacked classical forms' as part of their creative process.
Acknowledgements 1. Ignorance and the Reception of Comedy in Antiquity Tom Hawkins and C. W. Mars... more Acknowledgements 1. Ignorance and the Reception of Comedy in Antiquity Tom Hawkins and C. W. Marshall 2. Juvenal and the Revival of Greek New Comedy at Rome Mathias Hanses 3. Parrhesia and Pudenda: Genital Pathology and Satiric Speech Julia Nelson Hawkins 4. Dio Chrysostom and the Naked Parabasis Tom Hawkins 5. Favorinus and the Comic Adultery Plot Ryan Samuels 6. Comedies and Comic Actors in the Greek East: An Epigraphical Perspective Fritz Graf 7. Plutarch, Epitomes, and Athenian Comedy C. W. Marshall 8. Lucian's Aristophanes: On Understanding Old Comedy in the Roman Imperial Period Ralph M. Rosen 9. Exposing Frauds: Lucian and Comedy Ian C. Storey 10. Revoking Comic License: Aristides' Or. 29 and the Performance of C Comedy Anna Peterson 11. Aelian and Comedy: Four Studies C. W. Marshall 12. The Menandrian world of Alciphron's Letters Melissa Funke 13. Two Clouded Marriages: Aristainetos' Allusions to Aristophanes' Clouds in Letters 2.3 and 2.12 Emilia A. Barbiero
Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage., 2020
Throughout most of Luis Alfaro's Electricidad (2003), his cholo adaptation of the myth of Electra... more Throughout most of Luis Alfaro's Electricidad (2003), his cholo adaptation of the myth of Electra set in the Boyle Heights neighbourhood of Los Angeles, Orestes is in exile in Las Vegas, where his mentor Nino trains him for gang life. 1 Eventually, affairs in LA demand Orestes' return, as Nino explains: In el mundo del cholo [the world of the cholo] the Four Directions are at war. .. We're trapped between three freeways and a Pollo Loco. La Casa de Atridas [the House of Atridas] is vulnerable. 2 Near the play's climax, Las Vecinas ('The Neighbors' , a chorus of 'mujeres [women] from the hood' , 66), share their foreboding that something bad is imminent. As with Nino's words, Las Vecinas express their dread in terms that blend narrative demands with a sense that the neighbourhood, despite being in the middle of LA, is a kind of prison: Don't go near the windows. Trapped in our casas [houses]. Trapped in our yardas [yards]. Trapped in our barrios [neighbourhoods]. 3 These passages typify the world of Alfaro's Greco-cholo tragedies, both in terms of the urban confinement and his Anglo-friendly idiom of lightly inflected Spanglish. This chapter centres in the intersection of verbal hybridity, socio-geographical marginalization, and the classical tradition. To access these issues more universally, I pair Electricidad with Feliks Moriso-Lewa's Antigòn (1953), the first major work of literature in Haitian Creole. 4 These examples are sufficiently separated in time, space, plot and cultural milieu that any direct influence is improbable. Instead, these two plays help us push beyond isolated case studies and work, together with many of the chapters in this volume, towards a more theoretical framework for approaching reception studies. My impulse to pair these plays stems from the fact that both were composed in hybrid languages. Haitian Creole and Spanglish share certain similarities but also reveal, interestingly, different linguistic histories. Haitian Creole has long been the language used by the vast majority of Haitians, but French (and, increasingly English) continues to
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2018
The Veil-W. E. B. Du Bois's term to describe the impediment to racial harmony in America-has long... more The Veil-W. E. B. Du Bois's term to describe the impediment to racial harmony in America-has long been recognized as one of his most important images for explaining the politics of race. Howard Winant, a sociologist and leading theorist of race, describes Du Bois's discussions of the Veil in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as 'the most nuanced and powerful theory of race and racism ever developed.' 1 Classicists, too, have highlighted the importance of the Veil and explored some of the Greek and Roman models that inform Du Bois's use of this term. 2 Yet more remains to be said, and I will here argue that Du Bois's Veil owes more to Plato's Cave than has been previously recognized and that in the shift from Cave to Veil, Du Bois reprocesses Plato's pedagogical-metaphysical image into a more pliable and dialectical sociological concept. Although the main focus here will be on connections between Plato's Cave and the Veil as it is presented in Souls, I will also draw upon Du Bois's references to the Veil in his later writings and this, in turn, will lead to a second classical point of reference with the figure of Prometheus. The Cave is one of Plato's most enduring and powerful images. At the beginning of the seventh book of Republic (514a-20a), Socrates conjures a strange scene as an allegory for the transformational power of education. Imagine, he suggests, a deep Cave in which prisoners, who have never known any other life, are chained in place.
Hipponax frequently evokes Odyssean mythology in a lowered poetic register, and at least in a few... more Hipponax frequently evokes Odyssean mythology in a lowered poetic register, and at least in a few instances he also conflates Homeric and contemporary contexts. These parodies have been amply demonstrated, but few scholars have explored the poetic implications of such parody in any detail. In part this is the result of two obvious challenges—the fragmented state of Hipponax’s surviving corpus, and our inability to construct clear historical or social contexts for his poetry. Nevertheless, I believe that we can make better sense of Hipponax’s engagement with the mythology of Odysseus by drawing upon modern theories of parody. From this perspective I will assemble the Hipponactean material in order to argue that such poetry expects a particularly active type of intellectual involvement on the part of his audience. I do not believe that we can nail down the specific details of that audience response (e.g. conservative aristocratic or proto-democratic revolutionary), but we can recogniz...
In this article, I take up the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose biopolitical theories, and in parti... more In this article, I take up the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose biopolitical theories, and in particular, the idea of “bare life,” are widely adduced in contemporary, morally charged discussions of politics, immigration studies, and the marginalization of various social groups. Agamben builds his ideas upon a reading of Aristotle, but I argue that his identification of Aristotle as the ur-source of biopolitical thinking misses an earlier moralizing discourse found in archaic Greek literary sources. I analyze passages of archaic epic and iambic poetry that describe proto-biopolitical moments before suggesting that the Ionian pharmakos ritual represents an early example of working with something like Agamben’s “bare life.” Biopolitics requires the logistics and technical infrastructure of an advanced civic bureaucracy, but the narrative fantasy of a community cohering around the abjection of select members of the group can be found already in the moralizing strategies of archaic Greek b...
Classical Greek literature presents a variety of speaking animals. These are not, of course, the ... more Classical Greek literature presents a variety of speaking animals. These are not, of course, the actual voices of animals but human projections. In a culture that aligns verbal mastery with social standing, verbal animals present a conundrum that speaks to an anxiety about human communication. I argue that the earliest examples of speaking animals, in Homer, Hesiod and Archilochus, show a fundamental connection with Golden Age tales. Later authors, such as Plutarch and Lucian, look back on such cases from a perspective that does not easily accept notions of divine causation that would permit such fanciful modes of communication. I argue that Plutarch uses a talking pig to challenge philosophical categories, and that Lucian transforms a sham-philosopher of a talking-cock to undermine the very pretense of philosophical virtue.
This chapter discusses the role of popular invective in shaping imperial politics. Starting from ... more This chapter discusses the role of popular invective in shaping imperial politics. Starting from Asinius Pollio’s quip to Octavian that ‘it’s not easy to play the scribe against one who can proscribe’ these pages chart the transformation of invective strategies at the end of the Republic that highlighted the political dimension of popular abuse directed at leading figures. The chapter falls into three parts: first, a discussion of invective in terms of its social register and the difference between literary analysis and interpersonal communication; next, an outline of republican patterns of politicized invective (both popular and elite); and finally, a closer examination of the imperial situation. The argument throughout is that the presence of the emperor changed the rules of the Roman invective game such that popular invective took on a greater role in Roman life. The two primary reasons for this change were the constraints on elite behaviour vis-à-vis the emperor and the close relationship between the imperial regime and massive, monumentalized spectacle architecture. The imperial consolidation of political and military power constrained the freedom of elite speakers, but non-elite invective, because of its diffuse nature, could engage the emperor more freely.
The festival of the kalends of January (or January 1) began as an occasion for official ceremonia... more The festival of the kalends of January (or January 1) began as an occasion for official ceremonial during the Roman Republic. From 153 BCE, the first day of January became the stage upon which a variety of state pageantries played out. Among the most important events the year’s two new consuls were installed in office, and armies swore their allegiance to Rome. Yet it was not until 45 BCE and Julius Caesar’s radical reform of the calendar that this day served as the first day of the year. Thus, in the period from 153 to 45 there were effectively two annual cycles that were not in synch, an administrative calendar that began on January 1 and a traditional version that began on March 1. As the Republic gave way to the Empire, however, this festival, which had been a rather formal affair celebrated primarily in the city of Rome itself, grew, spread and changed. The very idea of real consular power became increasingly peripheral as the principate strengthened its position, leaving the Kalends as a party bereft of its original cause for celebration. In response, the festival took on a more and more populist feel. Highlights included exchanging gifts, hour upon hour of chariot races, and opportunities to make fun of civic leaders with impunity. By the third century we can see the Kalends being celebrated outside Italy, and by the fourth century we know a great deal about the wild, costumed, drunken, and carnivalesque parties that were held all over the empire not just on January 1, but for several days in succession. My focus here will be on the events that took place during the Kalends of 363 in Antioch and the Emperor Julian’s surpassingly strange response piece, his Misopogon, or “Beard Hater.” During the Kalends festival the people of Antioch had taunted and made fun of their leader. This was a standard part of the festival’s celebration, but it seems that on this occasion things went too far (at least in Julian’s mind). The emperor took offense, penned a caustic riposte, and
Et mea Musa potest proprio deprensa colore insignis uitiis forsitan esse suis. Tam mala Thersiten... more Et mea Musa potest proprio deprensa colore insignis uitiis forsitan esse suis. Tam mala Thersiten prohibebat forma latere quam pulchra Nireus conspiciendus erat. Maybe my Muse can be caught in her own hue, marked by her shortcomings. For Thersites' foul mien kept him from hiding, as much as Nireus stood out for his beauty. Ovid, Ex Pont. 4.13.13-16
This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambi... more This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambic poetry on Roman imperial authors and audiences. It demonstrates how authors as varied as Ovid and Gregory Nazianzen wove recognizable elements of the iambic tradition (e.g., meter, motifs, or poetic biographies) into other literary forms (e.g., elegy, oratorical prose, anthologies of fables), and it shows that the humorous, scurrilous, efficacious aggression of Archilochus continued to facilitate negotiations of power and social relations long after Horace's Epodes. The eclectic approach encompasses Greek and Latin, prose and poetry, and exploratory interludes appended to each chapter help to open four centuries of later classical literature to wider debates about the function, propriety, and value of the lowest and most debated poetic form from archaic Greece. Each chapter presents a unique variation on how each of these imperial authors became Archilochushowever briefly and to whatever end. tom hawkins is Associate Professor of Classics at Ohio State University. His work and teaching focus on iambic poetics and invective as well as animal studies and personhood.
Lycambes, the most famous of Archilochus' whipping boys, is everywhere upstaged in the surviv... more Lycambes, the most famous of Archilochus' whipping boys, is everywhere upstaged in the surviving iambic texts and testimonia. This paper seeks to reconstruct something of Lycambes' voice and its role in the Archilochean tradition. I begin with a reconsideration of Archilochus' ““first epode”” and argue that Lycambes is styled as an older public rival to Archilochus who questions the role of the poet's iambos. The preliminary results of this section are then strengthened by drawing upon two relevant episodes in the later ancient reception of Archilochean poetics: the sniping between Aristophanes and his older rival Cratinus and the Mnesiepes Inscription's tale of the uproar surrounding Archilochus' first performance. Lycambes emerges from this study as a character constructed to question the value and status of the iambist within the social space of contemporary Paros. As such, his criticisms afford Archilochus the opportunity to trumpet his claim to the very ...
Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2009
The relationship between Archilochus's poetry and the account of his life preserved in the Mnesie... more The relationship between Archilochus's poetry and the account of his life preserved in the Mnesiepes Inscription is intimate but obscure. Here I present one avenue for elucidating this connection by focusing on two episodes of social breakdown. In the first section I propose a reading of Archilochus fragment 230 in terms of wider patterns of ecological collapse. In the second, I contrast this reading with the episode of impotence visited upon the men of Paros as told by Mnesiepes. By reading these crisis narratives against one another we can better understand Mnesiepes' dynamic authorial role in the Hellenistic reception of the iambic tradition.
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