Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Hittite and Greek perspectives on travelling poets, texts and festivals
- 3 Thamyris the Thracian: the archetypal wandering poet?
- 4 Read on arrival
- 5 Wandering poets, archaic style
- 6 Defining local identities in Greek lyric poetry
- 7 Wandering poetry, ‘travelling’ music: Timotheus' muse and some case-studies of shifting cultural identities
- 8 Epigrammatic contests, poeti vaganti and local history
- 9 World travellers: the associations of Artists of Dionysus
- 10 Aristodama and the Aetolians: an itinerant poetess and her agenda
- 11 Travelling memories in the Hellenistic world
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - World travellers: the associations of Artists of Dionysus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Hittite and Greek perspectives on travelling poets, texts and festivals
- 3 Thamyris the Thracian: the archetypal wandering poet?
- 4 Read on arrival
- 5 Wandering poets, archaic style
- 6 Defining local identities in Greek lyric poetry
- 7 Wandering poetry, ‘travelling’ music: Timotheus' muse and some case-studies of shifting cultural identities
- 8 Epigrammatic contests, poeti vaganti and local history
- 9 World travellers: the associations of Artists of Dionysus
- 10 Aristodama and the Aetolians: an itinerant poetess and her agenda
- 11 Travelling memories in the Hellenistic world
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Patterns of mobility on the part of poets and musicians in any society and in any given period are likely to be determined by three factors: first, key features of the society they are operating in, such as its cultural and political divisions, and conditions of travel and communication; second, the existence of opportunities for performance that might attract performers, such as festivals and competitions; and third, aspects of the professional organisation of poets and musicians: are we dealing with individuals or groups, with people who normally live at home or with professionals who are continuously on the move? The present paper explores these issues for the Artists of Dionysus operating in the Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic and imperial periods. I shall show that in both these periods the volume of travel was very great, as the result of the explosion in festival culture that took place at the beginning of the Hellenistic period and continued in the Roman empire. At the same time, I shall suggest that the general pattern exhibited by the movements of the Artists was very different in the two periods: in the Hellenistic period, travel is focused through a number of regional associations of artists, which themselves comprised poets and musicians from a wide variety of places; whereas in the Roman empire, these regional associations fall away, and eminent artists are designated as belonging to the oikoumenē (‘the inhabited world’ within the boundaries of the Roman empire).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek CultureTravel, Locality and Pan-Hellenism, pp. 217 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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