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Countless Deeds of Valour: Bacchylides 11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Richard Garner
Richard Garner
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

There was a time when the detractors of Bacchylides singled out his eleventh ode as inept even by Bacchylidean standards: it was like the unfortunate tenor who was so stupid that even the other tenors noticed. The time of such criticism is gone, and the unfavourable verdict against Bacchylides' ode has nearly disappeared as well. The mythical journey in time which proceeds from the building of Artemis' altar back to the madness of Proetus' daughters and back further to the quarrel between Proetus and Acrisius is no longer seen as rambling. Instead the ode's structure has been revealed as an elegant set of concentric rings. Proetus' unhappy daughters are no longer unwanted, for Bacchylides has woven images into and around their story which suggest the integration of young women into the structure of the Greek city: the girls' resistance to marriage (Hera) is overcome through the mediation of Artemis, and they are returned to their father at last fit to be wed to the men of Tiryns. The entire ode has now been described as a fitting song for a city delighting in a victory gained with the aid of Artemis.4 The ode's images have been analysed and found coherent. Epithets, once scorned as too plentiful and various to bear true meaning, have now been defended. And finally, for a wonder, the song has been singled out as an example of that very thing so routinely denied to Bacchylides: Pindaric style. But even the most complimentary treatments of the poem seem somehow to fall short of explaining how this song serves as proper and sufficient praise for Alexidamus, the boy from Metapontum who wrestled his way to victory at the Pythian games.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , December 1992 , pp. 523 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1992

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References

1 One of the earliest and harshest critics was Farnell, L. R., ‘Archaeological Notes on Bacchylides’, CR 12 (1898), 343–6Google Scholar. But he was not the last: see Townsend, E. D., Bacchylides and Lyric Style (Diss., Bryn Mawr, 1956), pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Maehler, H., Die Lieder des Bakchylides: Erster Teil: Die Siegeslieder: II. Kommentar (Leiden, 1982), pp. 202–5Google Scholar; and Burnett, A., The Art of Bacchylides (Cambridge and London, 1985), pp. 109–10.Google Scholar

3 See Seaford, R., ‘The Eleventh Ode of Bacchylides: Hera, Artemis, and the Absence of Dionysos’, JHS 108 (1988), 118–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See Burnett, A., The Art of Bacchylides (Cambridge and London, 1985), pp. 107–13.Google Scholar

5 Stern, J., ‘Bestial Imagery in Bacchylides Ode 11’, GRBS 6 (1965), 275–82.Google Scholar

6 See Segal, C., ‘Bacchylides Reconsidered: Epithets and the Dynamics of Lyric Narrative’, QUCC 22 (1976), 99–130 (for Ode 11, pp. 122–8).Google Scholar

7 Carey, C., ‘Bacchylides Experiments: Ode 11’, Mnemosyne 33 (1980), 225–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The mythical material has been found particularly relevant to Alexidamos on biographical grounds: see Montepaone, C., ‘L'apologia di Alexidamos: “L'awentura del cavaliere”’, Metis 1 (1986), 219–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But Montepaone's biography of Alexidamus is entirely conjectural.

9 Since Alexidamus was still sufficiently young to be in the boys' wrestling contest it seems unlikely that the defeat at Olympia could have come as much as six years earlier. See Jebb, R., Bacchylides (Cambridge, 1905), p. 210.Google Scholar

10 The parallels between Alexidamus and the Proetides are adduced with varying specificity and emphasis by Burnett, op. cit., p. 113; Stern, op. cit., pp. 275–6: Carey, op. cit., pp. 236–40; and Jebb, op. cit., p. 210. Farnell, op. cit., pp. 345–6, saw no real connection at all between the victor and the myth. Others (e.g. Segal, op. cit., and Seaford, op. cit.) choose not to discuss the relevance of the myth to the victor.