Il-Kweon Sir (University of Cambridge)
This paper offers a fresh approach to Greek and Latin lyric meters by proposing a new methodology for a literary history of Greek and Latin lyric meters and examines greater asclepiads (gl2c) as a test case.
Most scholarship on Greek and Latin lyric meters has been technical or theoretical and rarely concerned with literary aspects. However, despite a more recent interest in the literary associations of lyric meters among scholars (e.g. Morgan 2010, Pedicone 2013), this attention has predominantly been on Hellenistic and Roman poetry, while literary-minded metrical studies have tended to focus on single poets or only one of Greek or Latin poetry (e.g. Parker 1997, Steinrück 2007, Ceccarelli 2008). Instead, this paper argues that knowledge of a meter’s literary associations throughout history is not only essential for the interpretation of individual poems but also for the understanding of how lyric genres develop.
This paper challenges the current assumption that lyric meters do not have literary associations in early Greek poetry, referring in particular to Archilochus, Sappho, and Alcaeus (influentially laid out in Maas 1923, §73). Because of this assumption, scholars have investigated how Hellenistic and Roman lyric poets exploited the literary associations of meters by focusing on allusions and the ancient reception of earlier poets. However, while this method has yielded interesting results for some meters, such as the scazon or Sapphic stanza, it has been unsuccessful with most others and the methodology’s shortcomings have limited its application. Instead, it is argued that not only our earliest well-preserved lyric poets are parts of established traditions, but also that at least some of their meters had already acquired literary associations that create generic expectations. This is supported by a summary of findings on the metrical practice of Sappho and Alcaeus, which shows differences in content and style between individual meters, contrary to consensus. This synchronic study further enables a diachronic analysis that can show the ways in which these associations could be altered or expanded by subsequent poets.
Greater asclepiads are examined in detail in order to demonstrate how this approach to lyric meters can enrich our understanding and appreciation of the choice of meter and offer new perspectives for the interpretation of individual poems. A core profile of associations of greater asclepiads, contrasted with that of Alcaic stanzas, is established through an overview of greater asclepiads in Sappho (frr.51-7) and Alcaeus (frr.6, 58, 71-6, 119, 129, 206, 208, 249, 298, 307, 310-1, 325, 327, 328, 331-8, 382); new interpretations of the individual fragments are explored in the context of this snapshot of the meter at its earliest attestation. The associations’ development in later poets is further traced diachronically in Theocritus (Id. 28, 30), Catullus 30, and Horace (Carm. 1.11, 1.18, 4.10), which shed new light on the evolution of the meter and the interpretation of poems. Moreover, Callimachus Ep. 69 (=fr. 400 Pf.) and Theocritus are used to discuss the expansion of the meter’s literary associations and the lost significance of Asclepiades for this meter.