Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic TraditionBacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition combines close literary analysis of Bacchylides' poetry with detailed discussion of the central role poetry played in a variety of differing political contexts throughout Greece in the early fifth century BC. In Bacchylides' praise poetry, David Fearn argues, the poet manipulates a wide range of earlier Greek literature not only to elevate the status of his wealthy patrons, but also to provoke thought about the nature of political power and aristocratic society. New light is also shed on Bacchylides' Dithyrambs, through detailed discussion of the evidence for the kuklios khoros ('circular chorus') and its relation to a variety of different religious festivals, especially within democratic Athens. The links created between literary concerns and cultural contexts reinvigorate these underappreciated poems and reveal their central importance for the self-definition of political communities. |
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Agora Aiakeion Aiakid Aiakidai Aiakos Aias Aigina Aiginetan Akhaians Akhilleus Alexander Alexander's allusion Antenor Apollo aristocratic Asopos Athenaios Athenian Athens audience Bacch Bacchylidean Bacchylides 13 celebration choral performance connection context cult cultic cultural Delos Delphi democratic Dionysiac Dionysos discussion dithyramb elite enkomion epic epinician Euthymenes evidence festival fifth century Greek Hektor Herodotos Hieron of Syracuse Homeric Iliad Isth Isthmian Jebb Khoregia khoros kuklioi khoroi lines lyric Macedon Macedonian Maehler Medism Menelaos Music myth mythical mythological narrative narrator Nemean Odysseus paeans Panathenaea Panathenaic panhellenic pankration parallel parthenoi passage pediments Persian Pfeijffer Phylakidas Pind Pindar Plato poem poet poetic poetry political praise Pytheas reading reference relation ritual Rutherford significant simile Simonides Skamandros Solon song Spartan specific suggest sympotic tradition tragedy Trojans Troy victory Zeus γὰρ δὲ δὴ ἐν καὶ μὲν τε τὸ τὸν τῶν ὡς