Academic literature on the topic 'Iambic poetry, Greek'

AbstractIn this paper, I set out to study the distribution of some accentual types of two different word shapes in the Homeric hexameter: iambs and iambic ending words and dactyls and dactylic ending words. Following Nagy 2000 and 2010 and David 2006, I start from the idea that accent has a role in Ancient Greek poetry, which has been corroborated in Abritta 2015 by studying the distribution of trochaic ending words. In the sections corresponding to each word shape, after a statistical consideration of the distribution, I examine some literary uses of accentual types, which the poet places in the line apparently in order to produce a certain effect on the audience. The article is conceived as a first approximation to the study of accentual distribution in Ancient Greek poetry.

Arthur Symons was a major influence on the Australian poet Christopher Brennan (1871–1932). For his long poem The Wanderer, Brennan took from Symons's poetry of the fin de siècle the theme of longing for a lost love, and much of its associated imagery and rhythms. Chief among the latter is the dochmial rhythm of the Aeschylean drama, which expresses, in shorter irregular lines, the spasmodic emotional ejaculations of the common people, and stands in contrast to the measured iambic rhythm and longer lines of the great speeches of the nobles. Eros was highly problematic for both writers, contributing to Symons's breakdown of 1908, and Brennan's ongoing psychological crises of the 1890s. I propose that both writers’ employment of the dochmial rhythm in longer, measured lines, was to ennoble the Self as a subject worthy of respect and study, in a way typical rather of modernism than Decadence.

Advice on marriage and the proper deportment for wives begins with the earliest Greek literature. While Homer's Andromache and Penelope provide practical role models, Hesiod (Works and Days 695-705, Theogony 568-612), followed (in iambics) by Semonides (frr. 6, 7), forcefully articulates male concerns about evil wives and women's wicked wiles. Hesiod's imperatival infinitives as well as his viewpoint reverberate more than a millennium later in a poem of advice composed, probably in the early 380s, by the Christian Gregory of Nazianzus for the marriage (νῦν μὲν σοὶ τόδ' ἔδωκα γαμήλιον, ‘now I have given you this wedding gift’, 2.2.6.108) of Olympias, elder daughter of Vitalian, a local Nazianzene worthy. This paper seeks to contribute to recent revaluations of Gregory's poetry—and hence of his place in the larger development of later Greek hexameter poetry—by illustrating how reading of the Olympias poem is enriched by exploration of its literary allusions and intertexts and its poetic craftsmanship. My title adopts Gregory's own image of ‘sugaring the pill’ of instruction for the young by writing in verse, but I extend the expression to include the pleasure that any reader may obtain in recognising Gregory's literary artistry, even when unpalatable prescriptions for female married life are the theme. Since the corpus is not well known, I begin by locating the poem within the context of Gregory's verse.

The last chapter of the gospel of Luke includes a story of the risen Christ meeting two of his disciples on their way from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and chastising them with the poetic expression ὦ ἀνόητοι καὶ βραδεῖς τῇ καρδίᾳ ‘O foolish ones, and slow in heart’ (Luke 24.25). No commentator has ever observed that Jesus' expression occurs verbatim, in the same iambic trimeter metre, in two poetic versions of animal fables attributed to the famous Greek fabulist Aesop. It is plausible that Luke is here, as at least twice elsewhere in his gospel, tapping into the rich tradition of Aesopic fables and proverbs that were widely known throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century ce.

This article treats the verbal and physical altercation between the disguised Odysseus and the local beggar Iros at the start of Odyssey 18 and explores the overlapping ritual and generic aspects of the encounter so as to account for many of its otherwise puzzling features. Beginning with the detailed characterization of Iros at the book's start, I demonstrate how the poet assigns to the parasite properties and modes of behavior that have close analogues in later descriptions of pharmakoi and of famine demons expelled from communities in rites that are documented from different parts of the Greek world from the archaic period on; so too the account of Iros' ejection from the house and of his subsequent fate conforms to the patterns observable in these rituals. The second part of the discussion examines the ways in which the beggars' quarrel anticipates the enmities that the Ionian iambographers would construct with those whom they cast as their echthroi and rivals, and suggests that we see in the Homeric scene an early instance of an iambic-style confrontation presented in poetic form for performance at the symposium. The iambographers' own deployment of the scapegoat and famine demon paradigms for the vilification of their targets promotes the overlap between the epic and iambic material. In both portions of the argument, the discussion observes how the several frames informing the episode in Book 18 coincide with and promote the Odyssey's larger themes.

On the analogy of the colloquial register in some modern languages, where narrative and argument may be punctuated by oaths and exclamations (sometimes obscene or blasphemous) in order to maintain a high affective level and compel the hearer's attention, it is reasonable to postulate that Attic conversation also was punctuated by oaths, that this ingredient in comic language was drawn from life, and that the comparative frequency of ║ (|) M M (M) Δ in comedy is sufficiently explained thereby. There are obvious affinities between some passages of comedy, relaxed conversation in Plato and Xenophon, and the forceful, man-to-man tone which Demosthenes sometimes adopts to such good effect (e.g. xxi 209). Compare, for instance, Ar. V. 133 f. ἔστιν δ' ⋯νομα ⋮ τῷ μ⋯ν γέροντι ⋮ Φιλοκλέων / να⋯ μ⋯ Δία, τῷ δ' υἱεῖ κτλ., where the oath is a response to imagined incredulity, and X. Smp. 4.27 αὐτ⋯ν δ⋯ σέ, ἔɸη, ⋯γὼ εἶδον να⋯ μ⋯ τ⋯ν Ἀπόλλω, ὅτε κτλ. (‘Oh, yes, I did!’).It is also important that the commonest oaths fit, in most of their forms, the end of an iambic trimeter: (να⋯) μ⋯ τ⋯ν Δία, ν⋯ (τ⋯ν) Δία,ν⋯ τούς θεούς, μ⋯ τοὺς θεούς. Add that in Aristophanic dialogue (by contrast with Menander) over half the iambic trimeters end with major pause, and half the remainder with minor pause, and we can see why Δ / established itself early as a distinctive comic pattern. Out of 105 examples of M M (M) Δ cited from comedy in Section II above, 59 have the oath at verse-end.In the case of πάνυ, which was almost exclusively Attic and — to judge from its great rarity in tragedy — felt by Athenian poets to be prosaic, we lack evidence on its functions in the colloquial register; it may or may not have served as affective punctuation. In prose, we have to reckon with the fact that π Mπ and Mπ π constituted a genuine stylistic choice (cf. n. 32) as far back as the evidence will take us, since the two earliest instances in prose are [X.] Ath. 2.3 πάνυ δι⋯ χρείαν and ibid. 3.5 πολλ⋯ ἔτι πάνυ. The oath, as treated by the comic poets on the basis of colloquial usage, is bound to have served as a model for πάνυ, exerting an influence which pulled πάνυ to the end of the verse, but there was also a powerful metrical constraint. As a dibrach ending in a vowel which could not be elided or enter into crasis, πάνυ was especially appropriate for verse-end. That in itself was enough both to establish Mπ π as the dominant pattern in comedy and to promote Mπ … π. Out of the total of 104 examples of Mπ (…) π in comedy, 93 have πάνυ at verse-end, which makes Mπ (…) π / one of the hallmarks of comic style. Mπ … π does not occur in prose in association with any other feature identified as colloquial, but it should be noted that Aiskhines and Demosthenes are much fonder of Mπ π than other prose authors. In some cases one can see that the order Mπ π avoids a succession of short syllables (e.g. D. xviii 130, liv 1) or hiatus (e.g. D. xxx 36) or both (e.g. D. xliii 10), but there are other cases in which it has the opposite effect (e.g. D. xxiv 140, xliii 53). The possibility of comic influence on oratorical language cannot be dismissed out of hand. It is also possible that someone will find positive determinants which will explain all the cases of Mπ π in prose.σɸόδρα, which, like πάνυ, is peculiarly Attic, is metrically more tractable than πάνυ, since it can be elided; even so, out of the 80 comic examples of Mσ (…) σ no less than 58 have σɸόδρα at verse-end, and of those 58 there are 22 at major pause, 8 at presumed major pause and 9 at minor pause. The comic treatment of σɸόδρα is thus comparable with the treatment of πάνυ, and Timokles (CGFP) 222(b).4 τηρεῖν…σɸόδρα is in fact the closest analogy we have to Ar. Pl. 234 f. ἄχθομαι…πάνυ.δέ and γάρ are a different matter, and in some significant respects different from each other. Postponement of δέ is especially prominent in Aeschylus (45 examples, including a few in which the text is suspect) and then abundant in fourth-century comedy. It is much less common in Euripides (18 examples), rare in Sophocles (6) and Aristophanes (6), and virtually limited in prose to the categories which I labelled (l)–(3). There is as yet no evidence to associate postponement of δέ with colloquial language; on the contrary, it seems to have begun as a feature of poetic language and to have been taken up and exploited by fourth-century comedy. If, in addition to being Aeschylean, it was colloquial in the fourth century, what happened to it afterwards? Except for such an isolated and inexplicable case as Diod. xx85.1 (v.l.!) — in a military narrative — it is not a feature of the Koine at literary, documentary or subliterate level.Postponement of γάρ was no doubt encouraged by postponement of δέ, but it is not itself notably poetic (20 examples in tragedy, of which only three come in my class (5)). One can see how it could possibly have developed in the spoken language of the fourth century, extending the function of γάρ as an explanatory particle (rather on the lines of γε) in a way which makes it comparable with the English ‘you see’ in (e.g.) ‘He didn't dare pick it up. He hurt his back last year, you see’. For an extension of this kind we may compare the current extension of the English genitive affix in (I heard both examples a year or two ago) ‘Then the girl whose place she was taking's mother turned up’ and ‘The man that Christopher liked's Introduction is much better’. Moreover, postponed γάρ appears in a segment of conversation constructed in indirect speech by Theophrastus in Char. 8.9 τ⋯ πρ⋯γμα βο⋯σθαι γάρ (p C N γάρ). Again we must ask: what happened to it afterwards? A couple of cases in Theophrastus' botanical works (CP iii 11.3 and HP iv 6.1) could be a reflex of the influence of comedy on literary language at Athens. The influence was plainly short-lived, since it did not affect the Koine.It is not hard to see why serious poetry in the fifth century and earlier should have experimented occasionally with the postponement of δέ and γάρ: treatment of M M q as a valid alternative to M q M is metrically very convenient. No poet, however, could afford to use common words in a bizarre, un-Greek way merely to save himself time and trouble in constructing a verse. Linguistic innovation is normally analogical, proceeding by extension from a starting-point already there, and the most obvious starting-point for postponement of δέ and γάρ is constituted by my class (3). This consideration provides comic postponement with a pedigree, but does not deny it individuality. The remarkable scale and frequency with which comedy exploited a phenomenon which tragedy used with restraint and prose hardly at all gives comic postponement the right to be regarded as a quite distinctive artificial feature of comedy.

The paper discusses the literary proper names Larin, Larina, Lariny (the Larins) from Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin, aiming to identify the most important factors behind the choice of this surname. To this end, the researcher establishes a reference for each of the poetonyms, considers their distribution in the text, examines the contexts of the primary and repeated character naming, and explores the semantic potential of these names for characterization and revealing the author’s attitude to his characters. The study has identified six factors that determined the relevance of poetonyms in the given work and, respectively, explain their choice by the writer. The first factor is the commonality of usage which adds to the realism and credibility of the literary image. Another significant factor is the word-formation pattern the name follows. The surname Larin comes from the folk anthroponymic forms Larya, Lara, which, in turn, are derived from the personal name Larion that goes back to the anthroponym Ilarion (from ancient Greek ἱλαρός, ‘cheerful, joyful’). The third factor is related to using the etymological meaning of the personal name Ilarion for characterization purposes. The fourth factor is its associative flow, that is, the ability to trigger associations that describe the surname bearers in the general context of the work. This associative background of the poetonyms evolves in two possible directions: Larin (-a, -y) — lar’ and lary. Both of these perform characterization functions, affecting the reader’s understanding of the poetonym. The fifth factor is the syllabic structure of the surname. The male form Larin is a choreic foot, the female and collective forms of Larina / Lariny form a dactylic foot. Both easily fit into the iambic tetrameter used in Pushkin’s novel. The sixth factor is the phonetic aspect of the surname. The phonosemantic analysis of the poetonyms provides convincing evidence that their exponents have positive ratings across a number of scales. The positive axiological coloring of these poetic names contrasts with the negative coloring of the names of other landowners, which is consistent with the author’s assessment of the characters.

Teesid: Käesolev artikkel käsitleb uusklassikalist luulet ehk luulet, mis tärkab humanistliku hariduse pinnalt ja on loodud nn klassikalistes keeltes ehk vanakreeka ja ladina keeles. Artikli esimene pool toob välja paar üldist probleemi varauusaja poeetika käsitlemises nii Eestis kui mujal. Teises osas esitatakse alternatiivina mõned näited (autoriteks G. Krüger, H. Vogelmann, L. Luden, O. Hermelin ja H. Bartholin) Tartu ja Tallinna uusklassikalisest luulest värsstõlkes koos poeetika analüüsidega, avalikkusele tundmata luuletuste puhul esitatakse ka originaaltekstid. SUMMARYThis article discusses poetry in classical languages (Humanist Greek and Neo-Latin) belonging to the classical literary tradition while focusing on poetry from Tallinn and Tartu from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It does not aim to present an overview of this tradition in Estonia (already an object of numerous studies), but rather to discuss some general problems connected to such studies—both in Europe and Estonia—and to show some alternative (or complementary) analyses of neo-classical poetics, together with verse translations and texts that are not easily available or are unknown to the scholars.The discussion of neo-classical poetry in Estonia finds problems in a detachment from poetics and the consequent discrepancies. Firstly, although scholarly treatises stress the value of casual poetry (forming the most eminent part of Estonian Neo-Latin and Humanist Greek poetry), the same treatises present this poetry from the viewpoint of its social background, focusing more on the authors and events than the poetic form. For example, in the Anthology of Tartu casual poetry and the corpus of Neo-Latin poetry from Tartu, texts are presented according to genre, which is defined only according to the classification of social events (epithalamia, epicedia, congratulations for rectorate, disputations, etc). Secondly, in most cases (the anthology, re-editions), this poetry is presented to readers as prose translations. As in the case of ancient Greek and Roman poetry, the established norm in Estonia is verse translation. Translating poetry into prose, therefore, signals that these works are not to be considered poetry. Thirdly, commentaries on this poetry tend to list lexical parallels with authors from classical antiquity without distinguishing actual quotations from the usage of poetic formulae while simultaneously (mostly) ignoring the impact of pagan and Christian texts from late antiquity and renais­sance and humanist literature.One alternative is to present Neo-Latin and Humanist Greek poetry as verse translations and focus more on discussing poetic devices and the impact of its contemporary poetry. Therefore, the second part of this article presents five poems as translations of verse and a subsequent analysis of their poetics.The first example is from a manuscript in the Tallinn City Archives and represents the earliest collection of neo-classical poetry, containing one Latin and five Greek poems belonging to the epistolary poem genre. Its author, Gregor Krüger Mesylanus (a latinized Greek translation of the name of his birth-town Mittenwalde, near Berlin), worked as a priest in Reval after his studies in Wittenberg during the time of Ph. Melanchthon (which explains Krüger‘s chosen poetic form). The Greek cycle is regarded thematically as variations on the same subject of the author‘s longing for home and his unhappiness with the jealousy and hostility of his fellow citizens in Reval. His choice of meter is influenced by Latin poetry, the initial long elegy balanced by four shorter poems of different meters (iambic and choriambic patterns). The final poem of the Greek cycle (Enviless Moon) is presented together with a metrical translation and analysis to demonstrate how sonorous patterns orchest­rate the thematic development of the poem: the author‘s wish to be like the moon, who receives its light from the brighter sun, but remains still happy and grateful to God for his own gift and ability to bring a smaller light to others.The second example analyzes the structure and poetic motives of a metrical translation of a Greek Pindaric Ode by Heinrich Vogelmann from 1633. The paper’s author also examines the European tradition of The second example analyzes the structure and poetic motives of a metrical translation of a Greek Pindaric Ode by Heinrich Vogelmann from 1633. The paper’s author also examines the European tradition of such odes (including more than sixty examples from 1548 until 2004). The third example discusses two alternative translations and additional translation possibilities of a recently discovered anagrammatic poem by Lorenz Luden. The fourth and fifth examples are congratulatory poems addressed to Andreas Borg for the publication of his disputation on civil liberty (in 1697). A Latin congratulatory poem by Olaus Hermelin is an example of politically engaged poetry, which addresses not the student but the subject of his disputation and contemporary political situation (the revolt of Estonian nobility against the Swedish king, who had recaptured donated lands, and the exile of its leader, Johann Reinhold Patkul). The Greek poem by H. Bartholin refers to the arts of Muses to demonstrate the changes in poetical representations of university studies: by the end of the seventeenth century the motives of the dancing and singing, flowery Muses is replaced with the stress of the toil in the stadium and the labyrinth of Muses.This article discusses poetry in classical languages (Humanist Greek and Neo-Latin) belonging to the classical literary tradition while focusing on poetry from Tallinn and Tartu from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It does not aim to present an overview of this tradition in Estonia (already an object of numerous studies), but rather to discuss some general problems connected to such studies—both in Europe and Estonia—and to show some alternative (or complementary) analyses of neo-classical poetics, together with verse translations and texts that are not easily available or are unknown to the scholars.The discussion of neo-classical poetry in Estonia finds problems in a detachment from poetics and the consequent discrepancies. Firstly, although scholarly treatises stress the value of casual poetry (forming the most eminent part of Estonian Neo-Latin and Humanist Greek poetry), the same treatises present this poetry from the viewpoint of its social background, focusing more on the authors and events than the poetic form. For example, in the Anthology of Tartu casual poetry and the corpus of Neo-Latin poetry from Tartu, texts are presented according to genre, which is defined only according to the classification of social events (epithalamia, epicedia, congratulations for rectorate, disputations, etc). Secondly, in most cases (the anthology, re-editions), this poetry is presented to readers as prose translations. As in the case of ancient Greek and Roman poetry, the established norm in Estonia is verse translation. Translating poetry into prose, therefore, signals that these works are not to be considered poetry. Thirdly, commentaries on this poetry tend to list lexical parallels with authors from classical antiquity without distinguishing actual quotations from the usage of poetic formulae while simultaneously (mostly) ignoring the impact of pagan and Christian texts from late antiquity and renais­sance and humanist literature. One alternative is to present Neo-Latin and Humanist Greek poetry as verse translations and focus more on discussing poetic devices and the impact of its contemporary poetry. Therefore, the second part of this article presents five poems as translations of verse and a subsequent analysis of their poetics. The first example is from a manuscript in the Tallinn City Archives and represents the earliest collection of neo-classical poetry, containing one Latin and five Greek poems belonging to the epistolary poem genre. Its author, Gregor Krüger Mesylanus (a latinized Greek translation of the name of his birth-town Mittenwalde, near Berlin), worked as a priest in Reval after his studies in Wittenberg during the time of Ph. Melanchthon (which explains Krüger‘s chosen poetic form). The Greek cycle is regarded thematically as variations on the same subject of the author‘s longing for home and his unhappiness with the jealousy and hostility of his fellow citizens in Reval. His choice of meter is influenced by Latin poetry, the initial long elegy balanced by four shorter poems of different meters (iambic and choriambic patterns). The final poem of the Greek cycle (Enviless Moon) is presented together with a metrical translation and analysis to demonstrate how sonorous patterns orchest­rate the thematic development of the poem: the author‘s wish to be like the moon, who receives its light from the brighter sun, but remains still happy and grateful to God for his own gift and ability to bring a smaller light to others. The second example analyzes the structure and poetic motives of a metrical translation of a Greek Pindaric Ode by Heinrich Vogelmann from 1633. The paper’s author also examines the European tradition of This article discusses poetry in classical languages (Humanist Greek and Neo-Latin) belonging to the classical literary tradition while focusing on poetry from Tallinn and Tartu from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It does not aim to present an overview of this tradition in Estonia (already an object of numerous studies), but rather to discuss some general problems connected to such studies—both in Europe and Estonia—and to show some alternative (or complementary) analyses of neo-classical poetics, together with verse translations and texts that are not easily available or are unknown to the scholars.The discussion of neo-classical poetry in Estonia finds problems in a detachment from poetics and the consequent discrepancies. Firstly, although scholarly treatises stress the value of casual poetry (forming the most eminent part of Estonian Neo-Latin and Humanist Greek poetry), the same treatises present this poetry from the viewpoint of its social background, focusing more on the authors and events than the poetic form. For example, in the Anthology of Tartu casual poetry and the corpus of Neo-Latin poetry from Tartu, texts are presented according to genre, which is defined only according to the classification of social events (epithalamia, epicedia, congratulations for rectorate, disputations, etc). Secondly, in most cases (the anthology, re-editions), this poetry is presented to readers as prose translations. As in the case of ancient Greek and Roman poetry, the established norm in Estonia is verse translation. Translating poetry into prose, therefore, signals that these works are not to be considered poetry. Thirdly, commentaries on this poetry tend to list lexical parallels with authors from classical antiquity without distinguishing actual quotations from the usage of poetic formulae while simultaneously (mostly) ignoring the impact of pagan and Christian texts from late antiquity and renaissance and humanist literature.One alternative is to present Neo-Latin and Humanist Greek poetry as verse translations and focus more on discussing poetic devices and the impact of its contemporary poetry. Therefore, the second part of this article presents five poems as translations of verse and a subsequent analysis of their poetics.The first example is from a manuscript in the Tallinn City Archives and represents the earliest collection of neo-classical poetry, containing one Latin and five Greek poems belonging to the epistolary poem genre. Its author, Gregor Krüger Mesylanus (a latinized Greek translation of the name of his birth-town Mittenwalde, near Berlin), worked as a priest in Reval after his studies in Wittenberg during the time of Ph. Melanchthon (which explains Krüger‘s chosen poetic form). The Greek cycle is regarded thematically as variations on the same subject of the author‘s longing for home and his unhappiness with the jealousy and hostility of his fellow citizens in Reval. His choice of meter is influenced by Latin poetry, the initial long elegy balanced by four shorter poems of different meters (iambic and choriambic patterns). The final poem of the Greek cycle (Enviless Moon) is presented together with a metrical translation and analysis to demonstrate how sonorous patterns orchestrate the thematic development of the poem: the author‘s wish to be like the moon, who receives its light from the brighter sun, but remains still happy and grateful to God for his own gift and ability to bring a smaller light to others.The second example analyzes the structure and poetic motives of a metrical translation of a Greek Pindaric Ode by Heinrich Vogelmann from 1633. The paper’s author also examines the European tradition of

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo, inicialmente, investigar os modos como Horácio organiza seus poemas e livros e como faz a passagem de um poema a outro, buscando seus antecedentes, seja na poesia grega, seja na latina. Concentra-se, depois, no livro de Epodos, que apresenta duas partes muito claras: a primeira do epod. 1 ao 10 e a segunda do epod. 11 ao 17. Tal divisão é a base da tese que se propõe a distinguir iambo de epodo na obra invectiva de Horácio, que se serviu não só dos modelos gregos, arcaicos e helenísticos, mas também de modelo latino. Do estudo que se fez decorrem alguns critérios da tradução proposta em verso: é a primeira tradução poética em português de todo livro dos Epodos. Recolhem-se, por fim, todas as traduções poéticas em português que foram encontradas, apresentadas por pequena introdução.
The initial objective of the present work is to investigate how Horace organizes his poems and books and how he operates the transition from one poem to the next. In order to accomplish that, his predecessors both in Greek as in Latin poetry were studied. Subsequently, it focuses on the Book of Epodes, which can be clearly be divided into two parts: the first, from epod. 1 to 10, and the second from epod. 11 to 17. Such division is the basis of this thesis, which proposes a distinction between iambus and epodes in Horaces invective work. Horace made use not only of Archaic Greek and Hellenistic but also of Latin models. From this study, some criteria for the proposed translation in verse were derived: this is the first poetic translation into Portuguese of the whole Book of Epodes. Finally, all the poetic translations into Portuguese that could be found were gathered and they are preceded by a brief introduction.

Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur la mendicité et la figure du mendiant dans la littérature grecque, d’Homère jusqu’au philosophes cyniques. Quatre familles de mots servent de point de départ à cette étude : πτωχός « le mendiant », ἀγύρτης « le prêtre mendiant », ἀλήτης « vagabond », πλάνης « le rôdeur » et la triade ἐπαίτης, προσαίτης, μεταίτης « le quémandeur ». Le hasard de la conservation veut que les attestations de la mendicité dans la littérature grecque se cantonnent au corpus poétique. Or, par sa dimension pragmatique, la poésie grecque reste liée à son contexte d’origine, en traitant toujours de problématiques sociales qui lui sont contemporaines. Notre travail se propose d’étudier dans quelle mesure les représentations littéraires et esthétiques de la mendicité sont investies d’une fonction sociale. Notre thèse adopte trois perspectives méthodologiques : une étude lexicale de la mendicité examinant les jeux de synonymie et les connotations, un examen des fonctions littéraires et dramatiques du personnage, tantôt catalyseur de l'action, tantôt vecteur d'émotions, et une analyse sur son rôle argumentatif dans les réflexions politiques et morales sur la pauvreté au IVème siècle. Le motif de la mendicité permet aux Grecs d’envisager un certain type d’exclusion civique, et en contre-point, d’appréhender la nature du lien social. Une étude chronologique montre que ce personnage, initialement contre-modèle du parfait citoyen, devient aux moments de grands bouleversements économiques un personnage attachant, permettant à la cité de réintégrer symboliquement les pauvres et de prôner indirectement la solidarité collective
This study/PhD thesis is focused on the beggary and the beggar in Greek literature, from Homer to the cynicism. At the beggining, I am dealing with the study of four word groups : πτωχός ‟beggar”, ἀγύρτης ‟begging priest”, ἀλήτης ‟vagabond”, πλάνης ‟wanderer” and ἐπαίτης, προσαίτης, μεταίτης ‟almsman”. The preserved corpus of Greek literature with mention of the beggary is fortuitously restricted to poetry. By her pragmatic function, ancient Greek poetry remains connected with contemporary social problems. My work's aim is to investigate how literary and aesthetic representations of the beggary have a social function. I adopted three methodological perspectives: a semantic study of the beggary (synonyms and connotations), an study of the literary and dramatic functions of that character (sometimes action accelerator, sometimes factor of emotions), and an analysis of his argumentative role in political and moral reflexions about poverty during the fourth century B.C. The motive of the beggary enabled Greek people to consider a type of civic exclusion, and in parallel, to apprehend the nature of the social cohesion. A chronological approach shows that this character, previously a counter-model of the perfect citizen, becomes - when big economical changes arrive - an endearing character, who symbolically reinstates excluded people in the city and indirectly promote public solidarity

This chapter focuses on the collection of twenty verse letters that Horace published roughly three years after the appearance of Odes 1–3. Because they profess to be exercises in moral philosophy, the letters can be seen as a kind of generic ascent following the lyrics of the Odes. Differences between the Epistles and Odes 1–3 are highlighted, including the persons addressed and the range of themes treated. Particular attention is devoted to the penultimate letter (19), in which Horace boasts of his transferral of Greek iambic and lyric poetry into Latin, and the final letter (20), addressed to the book itself, which dramatizes the tension between a desire to be read and a suspicion of popular approval.

This chapter considers the creation of a few works of intermediate character that combine the full and exact detail typical of the special lexica with coverage of a wider band of literature. An example is the vision of a Poetic Lexicon of Classical Greek, embracing epic, elegy, iambus, lyric, philosophical poetry, drama, and verse inscriptions of the pre-Alexandrian centuries. The chapter presents a few specimen entries: an interjection, an adjective, a verb, and a noun. The layout of the entries will remind the reader of Liddell and Scott (LSJ), and the model of LSJ has been followed in many respects. One difference is that where there is anything to say about etymologies it is put at the beginning.

This chapter discusses the publication of the second-century A.D. papyrus that contain eight and a fragmentary ninth of the Mimiambs of Herodas in 1891 by F.G. Kenyon. It explains how Herodas was known only through approximately twenty lines that survived in quotations found in Athenaios' Scholars at Dinner and in the fourth book of Stobaios' Anthology. It also examines the remark by Pliny the Younger around 100 A.D. about his friend Arrius Antoninus' epigrams in Greek and his iambic poems as the only ancient comment about Herodas. This chapter looks at the evidence that Herodas lived during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphos from 285 to 247 B.C. It describes Herodas as a contemporary of the greatest of the Hellenistic poets, Kallimachos, Theokritos, and Apollonios.