Book contents
- Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
- Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Early Intertextuality
- Part II Lyric and Epic
- 4 Sappho’s Intertextual Geographies
- 5 Invoking Homer
- 6 Pindar, Bacchylides, Archaic Epic, and Intertextuality
- Part III Drama
- Part IV Conceptual Contexts
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
5 - Invoking Homer
The Catalogue of Ships and the Early Reception of the Iliad
from Part II - Lyric and Epic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2024
- Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
- Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Early Intertextuality
- Part II Lyric and Epic
- 4 Sappho’s Intertextual Geographies
- 5 Invoking Homer
- 6 Pindar, Bacchylides, Archaic Epic, and Intertextuality
- Part III Drama
- Part IV Conceptual Contexts
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
Summary
This chapter argues for and interprets allusions to the invocation before the Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2.484-93) in Ibycus’ ’Polycrates Ode’, Pindar’s Paean 6 and Paean 7b, and Simonides’ ’Plataea Elegy’. It then considers these four poems together as a unique case study for the early reception of Homer. For no other passage from the Iliad or the Odyssey can we trace an equally extensive afterlife in early Greek lyric. The author argues that the unusual prominence of the narrator’s personality and the exceptionally emphatic claim to objective truth in Il. 2.484–93 made these lines a privileged point of reference for subsequent explorations of the nature of poetic authority.
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- Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece , pp. 118 - 137Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024