Early Greek Poetry

Greek myth commonly uses the motif of ingesting of human flesh (anthropophagy) to mark a disruption of social norms. The most famous account of a deity feasting on this taboo dish is Demeter’s accidental consumption of Pelops due to grief over Persephone in Pindar’s Olympian 1.

This paper explores how Sappho utilizes the concept of the chorus to express relationship dynamics and communicate with specific audience groups.

This paper explores Bacchylides’ innovative treatment of myth in Bacchylides 15 through his engagement with Homer, Hesiod, Solon, and Pindar. The fragmentary poem stages the Greek embassy to Troy, ending with Menelaus’ verbatim appeal to the Trojans to shun hubris (47-63). Pfeiffer’s analysis of the poem’s reminiscences of the Iliad (Il.3.199-224) has elicited appreciation for the surprise the ending would have excited in an audience well-attuned to oral, inter-textual allusions.

This paper examines poetological reflections in Pindar’s Nemean 5 and Bacchylides 13, commissioned for Pytheas of Aegina’s pankration victory. Pindar routinely stresses his superiority over unnamed epinician competitors, most famously at Ol. 2.83-88 and Nem. 3.80-82. Beginning with Pindaric scholiasts, these statements have been falsely interpreted as references to an historical rivalry between Pindar and Bacchylides (Lefkowitz 1991).

The Second Olympian is one of the most well-known and, by common consent, problematic Odes of the Pindaric corpus.

In this paper, I argue for the previously unacknowledged influence of an Egyptian tale, “Tales of Wonder from the Court of King Khufu,” on Greek stories of the birth of Apollo, especially as told in the major Homeric Hymn to Apollo. While the Egyptian tale has many significant themes found in Greek mythology—disguised gods impregnating women, fear of succession, jealousy surrounding a birth, etc.—I focus her