BMCR 2008.11.14, David Fearn, Bacchylides. Politics, Performance

David Fearn, Bacchylides. Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition.
Oxford Classical Monographs.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2007.
Pp. xii, 428; figs. 6.  ISBN 978-0-19-921550-8.  $140.00.

Reviewed by Giambattista D'Alessio, King's College London
(giambattista.d'[email protected])
Word count:  4642 words
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In his monograph on Bacchylides ("the first ... in English in over
twenty years") Fearn presents his own approach as "original and
wide-ranging" and describes his book as "a significant and timely
contribution" to an ongoing debate (p. v). There is no doubt that very
few monographs have been devoted to Bacchylides, in English or in other
languages for that matter, and Fearn's work, based on a 2003 Oxford
dissertation, is thoroughly researched, wide-ranging and stimulating.
The book comprises an introduction, on "Tradition and
Contextualization", and two parts, one on "Praise", and the other on
Bacchylides' 'Dithyrambs'. It is on points of detail that the book's
strength can be more easily recognized, and the second part, on the
so-called Dithyrambs, seems to me to be the most successful one.

In his introduction, after the usual brief preamble about Bacchylides'
neglect in comparison to Pindar and other contemporary poets, Fearn
devotes twenty pages to the interpretation of fragment 5, a short
quotation from one of Bacchylides' Paeans about the importance of
tradition and the difficulty of innovation for the sophoi (i.e., the
poets) in finding the gates of not-yet-said words. Fearn finds fault
not only with the view that these words may have anything to do with a
personal polemic between Bacchylides and Pindar (somewhat of a
straw-man, since very few scholars would share this view nowadays), but
even that they may simply (Fearn's emphasis) relate "to Bacchylides'
poetic agenda" (p. 4). It may well be argued that "poetic agenda" is
too vague an expression, but it can hardly be denied that Bacchylides'
lines are indeed a statement about poetic expression. Fearn draws
attention to the different way in which these lines have been read by
early Christian authors. Clement of Alexandria who, according to Fearn,
plausibly "had knowledge of the wider context of the Bacchylidean
lines", quotes them "to illustrate the point that even the Greeks had
some inkling about the divinity of God and the Gnostic life". The wider
relevance of Clement's reading of the fragment for our understanding of
Bacchylides' attitude toward issues of tradition and innovation in
poetic expression is more than doubtful. It certainly is an interesting
case of Christian interpretation of Greek classical poetry, but even if
we assume that Clement had not read the lines in an anthology of
quotations on the importance of sophia (by far the likeliest
possibility), a comparison with one of the other passages he quotes in
the same context, Callimachus epigr. 46.4 Pfeiffer, could easily show
how misleading a guide Clement would be for reconstructing the line's
"wider context". According to Callimachus "poetry (sophia) is indeed a
remedy against all diseases". Clement understands this as an example of
how the Greeks acknowledged the divine status of 'Gnostic life'. In
Callimachus it introduces the example of the lovesick Cyclops, who
finds consolation in singing about his love. I think that most of us
would agree that in fifth century Greek lyric poetry sophia and cognate
words potentially evoke a semantic sphere that could be broadly defined
as 'religious'. I doubt that many would say the same for Callimachus'
epigram. In both cases, Clement's reading of these lines as a
foreshadowing of 'gnostic' sophia is more interesting as an example of
the ways in which quotations acquire a life of their own, once
separated from their original contexts. It is difficult to share
Fearn's view, however, that this has a methodological lesson to offer
for our reading of these lines. Fearn then moves to the issue of the
interpretation of the poetic voice in Bacchylides' paean, via a long
digression on Pindar's paean 7b, where the poetic voice emphasizes its
own originality using one of the same images of Bacchylides' fragments,
that of the gates of words. This is useful enough in itself though
perhaps not very illuminating for our understanding of Bacchylides'
fragment. Fearn next suggests that in our fragment the words to which
the gates lead are not (only) "unuttered" but (also) "unutterable",
referring to secret lore connected to mystery cults. This sounds
unlikely given that the quotation comes from a paean, not a typical
song for a mystery-cult context, that the topos of the sophos who has
to struggle for novelty of expression and subject is a common one in
archaic poetry, and that the verb used by Bacchylides, exeurein, "to
invent, discover", is typically used of the task of poetic composition
rather than for transmission of hidden lore, as Fearn himself
acknowledges (19, n. 65). In conclusion, Fearn comes back to the well
established idea that "Bacchylides' narrative technique tends to flaunt
its indebtedness to pre-existing ... narrative, in a way that the
Pindaric narrator appears generally to have eschewed" (20). The
assessment of Bacchylides' different attitude toward poetic tradition,
however, is neither the only nor perhaps even the most important
subject Fearn explores in the bulk of the book.

The introduction is followed by two parts, the first one dealing with
praise poetry, the second one with the 'dithyrambs'. While the second
part also covers some more general issues about the lyric genre, the
first comprises only a close reading of two poems, fr. 20 B, a short
sympotic poem for Alexander, a prince and later king of Macedon, and
Epinician 13, a long victory ode for an Aeginetan victor. Fearn's
reading of the ode for Alexander, a fairly neglected fragmentary poem,
probably among the earliest ones by Bacchylides, is rich in subtle and
perceptive comments. Too often, however, Fearn seems to me to read far
too much into this text. Only the first half of the poem is well
preserved: it is one of the earliest variations on the topos of the
delusion and fantasies experienced by intoxicated symposiasts. These
include sex (for the young ones, neoi, l. 6), and, for more mature men
(andres, l. 10), military achievements, absolute rule over all other
men, material luxury and wealth. A sympotic poem by Pindar for a member
of the Sicilian family of the Emmenidai (fr. 124 ab S.-M.) offers a
slightly different treatment of the same topos. In Fearn's view,
Bacchylides' use of this topos is driven by a somewhat hidden agenda.
Pindar, in a poem in honour of this same Alexander, exploits his
homonymy with the Trojan hero ("homonymous with the prosperous
descendants of Dardanos" fr. 120 S.-M.). Fearn makes very much out of
this, and sees this address as "an instance of parainesis" (48), which
would allude, inter alia, to a passage in the Iliad where Priam is said
once to have been "prosperous" (24.543). By addressing Alexander in
this way, Fearn argues, Pindar warns him "about the stakes involved in
warfare". Bacchylides, on the other hand, says nothing about
Alexander's Trojan connections, but, according to Fearn, his use of the
expression "undoing the veils of cities" at line 11 (a variation on an
epic formula, not unnaturally used of Troy in the Homeric poems)
suggests that the audiences of the ode are invited "to consider
analogies" between the two Alexanders "as destroyers of their own
cities" (Fearn's italics). By such associative processes Fearn
transforms a topical sympotic poem into a covert criticism of the
praised dedicatee. This is a technique well familiar to readers of
Augustan poetry but Fearn's attempt to apply it to Bacchylides'
relationship with his Macedonian addressee, in a context where the
circumstances of patronage and the political background were very
different, fails to carry conviction. Equally unconvincing is his idea
that one of the crucial themes of the ode is the construction of
Alexander's "Hellenicity". There is no explicit allusion to this in the
preserved portion: Fearn speculatively imagines that this might have
been an important theme in its largely fragmentary second half, but his
evidence is very thin at best. Equally absent in the ode is the issue
of Alexander's philopersian or philhellenic attitude. According to
Fearn (p. 78), however, "the question that Bacchylides asks is with
whom should Alexander be associating himself as a king: should it be
with panhellenic Greek poets like Bacchylides himself, or should it be
with others who make submissions at the Macedonian court, people like
the Persians", and inviting the conclusion that (p. 81) "for
pan-hellenic poets, Macedonians are difficult to work with". There is a
good deal of fiction in all of this, and Fearn's view that Alexander
would have been viewed as "alien or even hostile to the interests of
Greek elites or poleis, because of allegations of, and outright
evidence for, Macedonian Medism" is based, in my opinion, on a
simplistic view of what the interests of "Greek elites" (far from
unified) would have been in the early  490s. One only has to think of
the Aeginetans, who, arguably, were not difficult to work with for
panhellenic poets, and who (among many other Greek poleis) made act of
submission to the Persian empire as late as 491 (Hdt. 6.49.1). Fearn
quotes this passage in his next chapter on Bacchylides' Aeginetan
patrons (p. 93), stating that Herodotus "suggests (emphasis mine) that
Aigina submitted", and suggesting himself that "such accusations had
much to do with Athenian propaganda". Herodotus in fact plainly says
that they did (together with other Greek islands), and the fact that
later on they changed their allegiances does not contradict his
unambiguous statement.[[1]] The idea that a few years earlier
Bacchylides should have acted as a member of a board of "panhellenic"
poets in awarding (or refusing) his patrons patents of Hellenicity,
scrutinising their attitudes toward the Persians, sounds very unlikely
to me, and certainly not supported by the remains of fr. 20
Bacchylides.

Fearn's next chapter is a reading of one of Bacchylides' longest
preserved poems, to be dated around 485, his Epinician 13, for Pytheas
of Aegina, Lampon's son, the dedicatee of Nemean 5, an ode by Pindar,
who also composed Isthmian 6 for him and his brother Phylakidas and
another lost Isthmian ode for another member of his family (Fearn has a
long appendix on the dates of some of these poems, on pp. 342-350). The
bibliography on this ode is much richer than that on fr. 20B and Fearn
is well informed and up-to-date.[[2]] Fearn first provides a useful
introduction to the ode's historical and archaeological background
dealing with a wide range of relevant issues and putting into context
Aegina's mythological traditions, and its choral performances.[[3]] The
next section explores, largely drawing (with some qualifications) upon
a 2000 article by T. Power, the issue of the interaction between the
female choral performances evoked in Bacchylides' ode (ll. 83-99) and
its own performance, to which the text refers in ll. 190 ff. It is not
quite correct to say, however, that the projected chorus of virgins
"sing and catalogue the female line of the Aiakidai", while the male
chorus sing "of their sons", as the former song includes Aiakos
himself: the division in the subject matter has to do more with
generations than with gender. The bulk of the chapter is taken by a
detailed reading of the ode's mythical section, exploring its narrative
technique, its use of imagery and its intertextual relation with the
Iliad.

On the whole, Fearn's reading of Bacchylides 13 and of Victory Odes in
general stresses the possible elitist implications of the texts in
contrast to other current interpretations that privilege their function
as a means for re-integrating a member of the aristocratic elite within
the broader political community. The situation, as Fearn acknowledges,
might have been different in different contexts (see e.g. p. 150 n.
169), and I am not sure that Bacchylides 13 is the best example to make
a strong statement about this issue, as I suspect that most readers
(Fearn included) would agree that Bacchylides does represent the
celebration of Pytheas' victory through mechanisms (such as the
blurring mention of the chorus of parthenoi: in particular ll. 84 ff.)
that assimilate it to a celebration of the whole community. To what
extent such a representation did match with the actual dynamics taking
place at the time of the performance is a matter of conjectural
reconstruction. I think Fearn is probably right in stating that the
situation might have been complex. Concepts such as "community" and
"integration" should not be used too loosely. The definition itself of
"political community" needs to be refined, and if we should be wary of
talking about it as if it necessarily were a homogeneous body, we
should equally avoid the same pitfall when talking about local elites
(e.g. p. 152, 160).[[4]]

On a point of detail: on p. 155 Fearn argues that the use of the
epithet <greek>xrusa/rmatos</greek> for Athena might have conveyed a
particularly aristocratic connotation. Among the evidence he adduces in
favour of this interpretation is the ancient grammarian Dionysios of
Phaselis, quoted in the ancient commentary on Pind. Pyth. 2. Fearn
mistranslates the passage as: "[Dionysios says to] compare how Pindar
addresses Athens as 'shining' etc." A more accurate translation would
be "[he says that] Pindar has a certain tendency to address Athens as
'shining', Thebes as 'golden-charioted' etc." By the way, the problem
is exactly that in Pyth. 2 Pindar uses the 'Athenian' epithet when
apparently speaking of Thebes, and Dionysios emended the text on this
ground. I am not really sure this tells us anything about the
aristocratic connotation of the adjective. And, though the idea of an
aristocratic nuance is appealing, we should also bear in mind that
Athena was often represented as mounting a chariot in Athenian vases
(LIMC s.v. a9, and cf. e.g. also E.  Ion 1528-9). In an appendix at the
end of his book Fearn has an extremely detailed discussion of the text
of Bacchylides 13.155-167, based on his own inspection of the papyrus.
Maehler's text of these lines is heavily indebted to an important paper
of W.S. Barrett, dated to 1975 but not published until 2007.[[5]] Not
all of Fearn's changes seem to be improvements to me (I am thinking
specially of the ones on ll. 155-7), but a few are interesting. I do
find <greek>xoro\n</greek> in v. 162 attractive, but cannot help
noticing that in Fearn's own drawing of the supplement (p. 352) the
contrast between the widely spaced letters of this word and the
preceding one, and the cramped ones of the following word raise some
doubts. Fearn's <greek>i)qei=an</greek> in v. 156 had already been
anticipated by Barrett among the alternatives he had discarded as "in
various ways inadequate or inappropriate" and I do not find Fearn'
defence of Blass's  <greek>du/sfrones</greek> in 157 persuasive.
Against the integration of a nominative participle in v. 160 f.
(<greek>e)kpe/rsantes</greek> Blass, Barrett) Fearn quotes Jebb's
objection that this "would ... imply that they (i.e. the Trojans)
actually destroyed the ships" (Jebb as quoted by Fearn p. 357, with
Fearn's omission). This is not correct, as in similar cases the
nominative is regularly felt as belonging to the infinitive rather than
to the main clause (cf. e.g. Il. 8.498, Alc. Fr. 129.13-20 etc.).
Jebb's objection applied (and applies) only to the hypothesis that the
subject of the main verb and that of the infinitive were not the same
one, i.e. only to Fearn's option (i), with <greek>po/lin</greek> as the
subject of both infinitives, while Fearn uses the argument to rule out
exactly his option (ii), with the Trojans as the subject of the first
infinitive.

As far as new alternative interpretations of the traces are concerned,
the reader has now two extremely detailed and partly independent
descriptions of these lines, that of Barrett and that of Fearn In most
cases, reassuringly, they do corroborate each other. A few divergences
are involved, e.g. in lines 159 and 162. In both instances I found
Barrett's description closer to what I saw on the original. For the
trace in line 159, which Barrett read as part of an ypsilon , and Fearn
as the "small extension to the upper left (...) at the apex of delta"
(p. 354), I would concur with Barrett that, once the small portion of
papyrus is notionally "twisted back to its original position", the
trace would rather look as "a stroke rising gently to the right"
(Barrett, p. 273). It is equally my impression that the traces above
the line, interpreted by Fearn as a chi supra lineam, belong in the
same category as the "smudgy ink" traces preceding it, and are rather
different from the traces of the text itself (so Barrett). In l. 162,
Barrett's interpretation of the first trace ("foot of an upright or
stroke slanting upwards or perhaps most readily (with an upright left
edge and slanting right) from the left angle of <greek>a</greek>" (p.
276 n. 132) looks more convincing than Fearn's alternative chi. As for
the next trace, Fearn rules out Barrett's iota in favour of his rho,
describing the trace as the "lowest of three" (p. 355): but the trace
is very much at the same level of the other two, and certainly not the
lowest one.

The second half of Fearn's book deals with Bacchylides' Dithyrambs: a
long section on the definition of the genre is followed by a survey of
the contexts and a closer reading of Bacchylides 15. In the first
section Fearn argues that the poems gathered under the heading
Dithyrambs in Bacchylides' Alexandrian editions belong to the wider
category of the kuklioi khoroi. This label was used already in
classical times to describe a large group of choral poems according to
their mode of performance, the dithyrambs being in fact its most
conspicuous sub-category. The partial overlap between the two
classificatory terms has produced considerable confusion in modern
discussion on the dithyramb, particularly (but by no means only) when
discussing the lack of Dionysiac connotations of several of
Bacchylides' Dithyrambs. One of the most important contributions to the
clarification of the issue is due to L. Kaeppel.[[6]] This line of
inquiry has been subsequently pursued by other scholars, particularly
at a conference on the "Contexts of the Dithyramb", which was held at
Oxford in July 2004, including P. Ceccarelli, and myself (in a paper
where I discuss in detail the implications of the partial semantic
overlap of the generic terms dithyrambos, nomos, and kuklios
khoros).[[7]] Fearn's general introduction to the 'dithyrambs' follows
the same interpretative approach, but expands its horizon considerably,
and explores important implications about the contexts of the kuklioi
khoroi and their later reception(s). Fearn also examines some aspects
of the criticism of the 'New Music' from this perspective. The
relevance of this latter section to the interpretation of Bacchylides'
poems is somewhat debatable: the discussion, though, is very useful and
stimulating. In some cases, however, this leads to a potentially
misleading confusion between two only partly overlapping issues. For
example, Plato's criticism of modern musical decline and confusion of
forms is linked by Fearn to the problem of "the applicability of the
kuklios khoros to a wider range of Athenian festivals than simply the
City Dionysia" (p. 188, cf. also pp. 200 f.). But this does not ever
seem to be an issue per se for Plato.[[8]] Fearn's treatment of the way
in which Plato's Laws deal with Dionysiac music is also less than
satisfactory. In the Laws in fact Plato attributes the greatest
importance to Dionysiac influence in musical performances, and the
"Dionysiac khoreia" far from being "relegated to third place" and "left
as patronizing pick-me-up for old men" (Fearn, p. 199, n. 113, emphasis
mine) is presented as the most authoritative and persuasive form of
choral performance in the whole city (cf. e.g. 2.665d), and Plato
attributes to the third chorus a function close to, if not identical
with, that of the Nocturnal Council.[[9]] I am also sceptical about the
idea (derived from Kaeppel) that the Alexandrian classification of the
kuklioi khoroi under the label of 'dithyrambs' might be due to the
influence of Plato. The overlapping confusion which involves kuklioi
khoroi,'dithyrambs' and even 'nomoi' is attested earlier than Plato,
and it is unlikely that the two passages quoted by Fearn on p. 211, one
defining the 'dithyramb' in terms of content, the other focussing on
its narratological features, might have exerted such a pervasive (and
diverging) influence on later scholarly practice. Fearn argues that
"later sources crediting Arion with the invention of the kuklios khoros
may be simply misremembering Herodotos", with reference to Procl. ap.
Phot. Bibl. 5.320a.32, but this is not possible as the earliest
testimony is Hellanicus 4 F 86 FGrHist, Herodotus' contemporary
(curiously quoted by Fearn himself in a different context, p. 230 n. 9,
without any expression of doubt). The passage on the classification of
Xenocritus' poems as 'dithyrambs' based on their heroic narrative
content in Ps. Plutarch On Music 1134e has been attributed to a source
drawing upon Glaucus of Rhegion, 5th century BCE. The issue has been
debated, but it is noteworthy that Glaucus is quoted immediately before
and after this passage, which, in any case is often supposed to go back
to Heracleides of Pontus.[[10]] It is more likely that 'dithyramb' was
used as a shorthand label, mainly due to the enormous importance of
Dionysiac choral festivals at Athens (and elsewhere at a later date).

In the next chapter Fearn deals with the contexts of Bacchylides'
'Dithyrambs'. In the first section, on Sparta, he examines Bacchylides
20, where the song actually performed is said in the text to have been
"such as" the one performed in mythical times by the "blonde maidens of
the Lakedaimonians", and argues that it was a kuklios khoros performed
by men rather than by women. This is hardly convincing, and overlooks,
among other issues, the fact that another (almost surely) Spartan poem
that was very probably part of the collection of Bacchylides'
'Dithyrambs', fr. 61 S.-M., equally begins with the evocation of the
performance of a group of female singers and dancers. Performances of
kuklioi khoroi by maidens are frequently mentioned in various sorts of
texts, and it is much more likely that these two Spartan songs belong
in this group. The rest of the chapter is devoted to Athens, where
Bacchylides 15 and 18-19 are usually said to have been performed
(though only in the last case is explicit evidence provided by the
title in the papyrus), and to Delos (Bacchylides 17, the most famous
among Bacchylides' 'Dithyrambs', on whose political and ideological
background Fearn has some perceptive comments to offer), while no
section covers Delphi (Bacchylides 16, which has also been read as a
poem for an Athenian performance, is briefly discussed in another
section, p. 171 f.).

The last chapter is a close reading of Bacchylides 15, which Fearn, as
most modern scholars starting from the early '70s, sees as a poem
originally performed at the Panathenaia. This is a reasonable
assumption, but an entirely conjectural one. Fearn tries to project
this text against the background of the wider, intriguingly complex
background of Athenian democratic ritual performances, which most
famously included also dramatic performances. Given the conjectural
nature of the starting point (i.e. the attribution of this poem to a
performance at the Panathenaia), the inevitable danger of circular
reasoning in this case should perhaps have been stressed in a more
explicit way. Among the issues explored by Fearn in this densely argued
chapter are the cultural and ideological implications of the poem's
intertextual relation with Homer and Solon. In some instances Fearn's
subtle intertextual reading entails assumptions that might be not to
everybody's taste. For example, in Bacchylides 15 the speech addressed
by Menelaos to the Trojans is preceded by an invocation to the Muse
(47-49) introducing a question about priority ("who was the first
..."?). This device is found thrice in the Iliad, and in its first
occurrence, in Book 11, it introduces a catalogue of heroes killed by
Agamemnon, the first one being Iphidamas, one of the sons of Antenor.
The sons of Antenor were mentioned in Bacchylides' dithyramb and gave
it (perhaps at a later stage) one of the titles it now bears in the
papyrus. As we know from other epic sources (the Cypria), Antenor
pleaded in favour of Menelaos' proposal before the Trojan assembly. On
an earlier occasion in the same book Agamemnon had killed another two
Trojan  heroes, the sons of Antimachus, saying that this was an apt
reward for the fact that, after Menelaos' and Odysseus' embassy, their
father had plotted to kill them in an ambush. According to Fearn,
Bacchylides' audience should have picked up in their memory exactly
this Iliadic occurrence of the "who first" motif, should have connected
it to the previous Homeric episode, and given extra meaning to the text
of Bacchylides, who does not mention Iphidamas, Antimachus, his plot,
nor, for that matter, the outcome of the embassy at all. In another
instance, Fearn argues that the use of the two words <greek>mu=qon
*)Axaiw=n</greek> in Bacchylides 15.39 should have evoked the only
occurrence of the word-group in Homer in Il. 7.406. It is perhaps not
impossible that Bacchylides might have had that particular passage in
mind (though I would be less ready than Fearn is in ruling out the
importance of other lost epic sources, such as the Cypria), but it is
certainly less than likely that this allusion was meant to be easily
picked up by an audience who had no access to concordances or
electronic data-bases. Fearn, however, goes even further, and suggests
that it was exactly thanks to this somewhat cryptic intertextual
reference to a (failed) killing plot (that Bacchylides does not
mention) that this poem (allegedly performed in the Athenian Agora)
would have also evoked the tradition of the murder committed by the
tyrannicides during the Panathenaic procession in 514 BCE.

Fearn also develops some more general considerations on this poem as an
example of the kind of poetry (other than the dramatic one) the
Athenians performed and enjoyed in their public ritual contests. Some
of the points he makes on Bacchylides' style in this very stimulating
section are certainly sound and useful. I am not sure, however, that
one should indulge too much in such generalizations. Enargeia is one of
the most outstanding features of Bacchylides' poetry, and Fearn argues
that, in the case of Bacchylides 15, this has very much to do with the
performance context and with its interplay with the Rhapsodic
performances which took place during the same festival. Enargeia,
however, is a feature of Bacchylides' poems in general, not only of
Bacchylides 15, nor, even, of his kuklioi khoroi. Fearn establishes an
intriguing connection between the 'open closure' of Bacchylides 15 and
its (conjectural, I would stress, once again) Athenian, democratic
context of performance (p. 314). This is a very interesting insight:
one should be cautious, however, about the possibility of such simple
ideological explanations especially as so few kyklioi poems from any
context are reasonably well preserved, and as Bacchylides shows a
preference for similar narrative effects in other poems as well: what
about the 'open' ending of the mythical narration of Bacchylides 5, a
poem for a 'tyrant', and the closures of Bacchylides 16 and of fr. 60
(though I suppose one might always assume an 'Athenian' background for
the former)?

After a brief conclusion, the book is rounded off by two appendices (on
Bacchylides 13, discussed above), a 38-page bibliography, and two
indexes. It is generally well produced: I have found a mere handful of
slips and typos.

All in all, this is an extremely stimulating and thorough reading of
some of Bacchylides' poems, which leaves very few stones unturned, and
should be consulted by everyone interested not only in archaic Greek
poetry, but also in Athenian performance culture (and even in later
transformations of lyric narrative techniques in Latin poetry). It is
also because of its wide-ranging and searching exploration of the
subject that it is bound to raise questions (and occasional criticism)
such as the ones I have voiced in this review.

------------------
Notes:


1.   Evidence that Aegina might have submitted to Persia at an even
earlier date, based on the presence of an Aeginetan silver stater in
the Apadana foundation deposit, is much more uncertain: cf. M. Cool
Root in Numismatic Chronicle 148 (1988), 1-12, and A. R. Meadows,
Numismatic Chronicle 163 (2003), 342-4.

2.   The omission of a relevant article by J. B. Fenno published in
Hermes 133 (2005), 294-311 (cf. Fearn pp. 113-5, and his appendix on
the date of the odes) is easy to understand, though quite a few other
2005 (and even 2006) items are included in the bibliography.

3.   Callimachus' Iamb 8 and A. R. 4.1765 f. should be added to Fearn's
references on cultic performances by the so-called "Asopian water" (p.
104 n. 66): Ch. M. Dawson in YCS 11 (1950), 88 f. had already provided
the correct explanation of the scholia on Pind. Nem. 3.4 using this
material.

4.   For a recent contribution to debate on the ideological
interpretation of Greek Lyric, not discussed by Fearn, see D. Hammer,
"Ideology, the Symposium, and Archaic Politics", AJPh 125 (2004),
479-512.

5.   Cf. W.S. Barrett, Greek Lyric, Tragedy and Textual Criticism.
Collected papers assembled and edited by M.L. West, Oxford 2007,
232-284. Fearn knows Barrett's arguments only thanks to Maehler's
references to the unpublished paper.

6.   "Bakchylides und das System der chorlyrischen Gattungen im 5. Jh.
v. Chr.", in A. Bagordo and B. Zimmermann (eds), Bakchylides. 100 Jahre
nach seiner Wiederentdeckung, Muenchen 2000, 11-27.

7.   There is no mention of this conference in Fearn. The debt to
Kaeppel 2000 "on questions of Alexandrian classification" is
acknowledged in the first footnote of this section, on p. 163.

8.   Cf. also p. 174, where Fearn suggests that the issue was debated
in classical Athens, without, however, providing satisfactory evidence.

9.   On the whole issue of Dionysus in the Laws see, at least, E.
Belfiore, "Wine and Catharsis of the Emotions in Plato's Laws", CQ n.
s. 36 (1986), 421-437 and, most recently, G. Panno, Dionisiaco e
Alterita\ nelle "Leggi" di Platone. Ordine del corpo e automovimento
dell'anima nella citta\-tragedia, Milan 2007, with previous
bibliography.

10.   Incidentally, the classification of Pindar's dithyrambs is not at
all likely to go back to Aristarchus, as stated by Fearn on p. 212.