Books by Theodora Hadjimichael
Oxford University Press UK, 2019
The Hellenistic period was an era of literary canons, of privileged texts and collections. One of... more The Hellenistic period was an era of literary canons, of privileged texts and collections. One of the most stable of these consisted of the nine (rarely ten) lyric poets: whether the selection was based on poetic quality, popularity, or the availability of texts in the Library of Alexandria, the Lyric Canon offers a valuable and revealing window on the reception and survival of lyric in antiquity.
This volume explores the complexities inherent in the process by which lyric poetry was canonized, and discusses questions connected with the textual transmission and preservation of lyric poems from the archaic period through to the Hellenistic era. It firstly contextualizes lyric poetry geographically, and then focuses on a broad range of sources that played a critical role in the survival of lyric poetry - in particular, comedy, Plato, Aristotle's Peripatetic school, and the Hellenistic scholars - to discuss the reception of the nine canonical lyric poets and their work. By exploring the ways in which fifth- and fourth-century sources interpreted lyric material, and the role they played both in the scholarly work of the Alexandrians and in the creation of what we conventionally call the Hellenistic Lyric Canon, it elucidates what can be defined as the prevailing pattern in the transmission of lyric poetry, as well as the place of Bacchylides as a puzzling exception to this norm. The overall discussion conclusively demonstrates that the canonizing process of the lyric poets was already at work from the fifth century BC and that it is reflected both in the evaluation of lyric by fourth-century thinkers and in the activities of the Hellenistic scholars in the Library of Alexandria.
This volume explores the complexities inherent in the process by which lyric poetry was canonized, and discusses questions connected with the textual transmission and preservation of lyric poems from the archaic period through to the Hellenistic era. It firstly contextualizes lyric poetry geographically, and then focuses on a broad range of sources that played a critical role in the survival of lyric poetry - in particular, comedy, Plato, Aristotle's Peripatetic school, and the Hellenistic scholars - to discuss the reception of the nine canonical lyric poets and their work. By exploring the ways in which fifth- and fourth-century sources interpreted lyric material, and the role they played both in the scholarly work of the Alexandrians and in the creation of what we conventionally call the Hellenistic Lyric Canon, it elucidates what can be defined as the prevailing pattern in the transmission of lyric poetry, as well as the place of Bacchylides as a puzzling exception to this norm. The overall discussion conclusively demonstrates that the canonizing process of the lyric poets was already at work from the fifth century BC and that it is reflected both in the evaluation of lyric by fourth-century thinkers and in the activities of the Hellenistic scholars in the Library of Alexandria.
Edited Volumes by Theodora Hadjimichael
Trends in Classics Suppl.Vols 58, Berlin and Boston, 2018
Papers by Theodora Hadjimichael
Editing the Text of Homer in Plato's Republic
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 2024
Before the Homeric epics are accepted for performance in the ideal city in Plato’s Republic, Socr... more Before the Homeric epics are accepted for performance in the ideal city in Plato’s Republic, Socrates identifies and expunges problematic passages, which he deletes from the Iliad and the Odyssey to make the poems conform to the ethics of the new city. This article analyses Socrates’ engagement with Homer as an example of early Homeric criticism and proto-scholarship. The discussion focusses on the list of Homeric quotations in Republic III and in particular on the terms that Socrates uses to characterize his interference with the Homeric text, and is contextualized in terms of the realities of the fifth and fourth centuries BC—the turn towards textuality, the co-existence of written texts and oral performances, as well as the social practices of emending and updating public documents—in order to demonstrate that the Republic contains a precious and hitherto overlooked example of how the textual scholar’s approach was a natural way of thinking about the Homeric poems in the fourth century BC.
Literary Reflections on the Dithyrambic Genre
The American Journal of Philology, 2022
This article addresses the question of how the dithyramb was classified in antiquity, examining i... more This article addresses the question of how the dithyramb was classified in antiquity, examining in detail two fragmentary papyri (P.Graec.Vindob. 19996a–b; P.Berol. 9671 verso) alongside other testimonia which comment on the nature and development of the dithyrambic genre. While the majority of these testimonia expect the dithyramb to be associated with Dionysus, some show that this Dionysiac link was not exclusively followed as the defining criterion for the poems’ classification, even after the Alexandrian taxonomy of lyric genres had been established. This article demonstrates that throughout antiquity generic identification of dithyrambs was a process that was always in the making.
Bacchylides Playing Tragic (open access)
in Prodi, E. E. & Vecchiato, S. (eds), ΦΑΙΔΙΜΟΣ ΕΚΤΩΡ: Studi in onore di Willy Cingano per il suo 70o compleanno. Antichistica 31. Filologia e letteratura 4, Edizioni Ca' Foscari, Venice, 2021
This paper focuses on features in Bacchylides’ poetry that have been mainly associated with the t... more This paper focuses on features in Bacchylides’ poetry that have been mainly associated with the tragic genre: human error, the ignorance of tragic characters, the audience’s privileged knowledge at a tragic and lyric performance and its activation, tragic irony, and the audience’s participation in the completion of mythological narratives. As evidence of Bacchylides’ tragic aura I analyse the figures of Deianeira and Heracles in Odes 5 and 16 in connection with the story in Sophocles’ Trachiniae; the resemblance of the structure of Ode 18 with encounters with the tragic chorus and how it creates internal and external audiences; questions of closures and narratives endings.
https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-549-0/bacchylides-playing-tragic/
https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-549-0/bacchylides-playing-tragic/
‘The Agōn as Literary Motif in Representations of the Lyric Poets’, forthcoming in Edwards, M., Efstathiou, A., Karamanou, I. and Volonaki, E. (eds) The Agōn in Classical Greek Literature. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement.
The Peripatetics and the Transmission of Lyric
in Currie, B.G.F. and Rutherford, I. (eds) The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext. Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song vol. 5. Leiden: Brill, 2019
This chapter focuses on the Peripatetic interest in lyric poetry and the lyric poets. As well as ... more This chapter focuses on the Peripatetic interest in lyric poetry and the lyric poets. As well as offering us an important insight into the process of transmission and canonisation, the Peripatos also raises some interesting questions about lacunae. Lyric poets for whom the Peripatetics did not devote a treatise and who are completely absent from the Peripatetic project bring to the foreground fundamental questions: how did these philosophers know of particular lyric poets? Was lyric poetry circulated solely as performance or as a textual entity as well? Consideration of the Peripatos in the process of canonisation creates important connections both with the Platonic view of specific poetic genres and with the Hellenistic attitude towards lyric poetry and the New Music.
On Kinesias’ Musicopoetic Paranomia
Greek and Roman Musical Studies 7.2, 2019
In this article I focus on the New Poet Kinesias and on the ways in which he was depicted, ridicu... more In this article I focus on the New Poet Kinesias and on the ways in which he was depicted, ridiculed, and criticized in our sources. I contextualize his depiction as a poetic and musical corrupter and as a thin and disabled individual within the criticism of the New Music in late fifth- and early fourth-century philosophical works, namely those by Plato and Aristotle, to argue that he was considered the poet who embodied the musicopoetic paranomia and the lack of orthotēs in the New Music. I also bring into my analysis a fragment from a speech of Lysias against Kinesias, where I focus on the accusations against the poet, in order to show that both his political actions (as described in the fragment and in Athenaeus who transmits the passage) and his experimentations with the chorus and with poetic performances were interpreted as a threat to the coherence and stability of the community.
Sports-writing: Bacchylides’ Athletic Descriptions
Mnemosyne 68.3, 2015
This paper looks at the role of victory descriptions within the economy of Bacchylides’ victory o... more This paper looks at the role of victory descriptions within the economy of Bacchylides’ victory odes, and examines the narrative of the particular descriptions, their contribution to the commemoration and celebration of the victorious event, and the rhetorical aim they serve within the poem.
Bacchylides Fr. 60 M. and the Kassandra (open access)
Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrology 51, 2014
Discussion of the identification and classification of Bacchylides' fr.60 M. in connection with t... more Discussion of the identification and classification of Bacchylides' fr.60 M. in connection with the poem Kassandra in P.Oxy.23.2368.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0051.001:09
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0051.001:09
Greek and Roman Musical Studies 2, 2014
This paper is concerned with the reading specifically of Bacchylides in Aristophanes. It argues i... more This paper is concerned with the reading specifically of Bacchylides in Aristophanes. It argues in favour of the use of Bacchylides’ Ode 5 to Hieron in Birds 1373-1409 as well as for the poem’s reconfiguration by Kinesias within the context of the New Music. In the process it comments on a number of poetic characteristics of Bacchylides’ poetry and draws conclusions on Bacchylides’ status within the melic tradition as the poet in-between classical lyric poetry and the New Music.
Castaldo, D., Giannachi, F., Manieri, A. (eds) Poetry, Music, and Contests in Ancient Greece. Vol. 1. Rudiae. Ricerche sul mondo classico 22-23. Galatina., 2010
Bacchylides’ persona is rarely visible within his poetry, and it is unsurprising that this seemin... more Bacchylides’ persona is rarely visible within his poetry, and it is unsurprising that this seeming absence has been seen as a deficiency. This paper explores the absence of the poetic persona from Bacchylides’ poetry as part of a communicative strategy and examines the alternative means used by Bacchylides not only to locate himself within a tradition but also to create authority, to secure effective communication with the audience, and to ensure favourable reception by the community. One such feature is his exploitation of detailed descriptions of the victorious athletic event as a way of bridging large gaps in time and space and uniting diverse audiences. Emphasis is given to the potential significance of the backgrounding of the poet for the performance of the victory odes. Lack of a visible persona in the victory odes can serve to further both the objectification of the process of praise and alignment of speaker and spoken word not only with the Homeric kleos aphthiton but also with the normative force of the civic voice. What Bacchylides does is evidently a strategic ploy that does not imply inability to do better.
Book Reviews by Theodora Hadjimichael
Review of Capra, A. (2014) Plato’s Four Muses. The Phaedrus and the Poetics of Philosophy, Cambridge Mass, JHS 136 (2016) 282-283.
Music, Body, Soul (F.) Pelosi Plato on Music, Soul and Body. Translated by Sophie Henderson. Pp. ... more Music, Body, Soul (F.) Pelosi Plato on Music, Soul and Body. Translated by Sophie Henderson. Pp. viii + 228. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Cased, £55, US\$95. ISBN: 978-0-521-76045-4.