Simonides the Poet

Intertextuality and Reception

Richard Rawles

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781107141704
• eBook ISBN: 9781108699563
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

Simonides is tantalising and enigmatic, known both from fragments and from an extensive tradition of anecdotes. This monograph, the first in English for a generation, employs a two-part diachronic approach: Richard Rawles first reads Simonidean fragments with attention to their intertextual relationship with earlier works and traditions, and then explores Simonides through his ancient reception. In the first part, interactions between Simonides' own poems and earlier traditions, both epic and lyric, are studied in his melic fragments and then in his elegies. The second part focuses on an important strand in Simonides' ancient reception, concerning his supposed meanness and interest in remuneration. This is examined in Pindar's Isthmian 2, and then in Simonides' reception up to the Hellenistic period. The book concludes with a full re-interpretation of Theocritus 16, a poem which engages both with Simonides' poems and with traditions about his life.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Simonides and the Poets of the Past
• Part II Simonidea: Simonides through Ancient Receptions
• Appendix: Simonides’ Poems Concerning Battles of the Persian Wars
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Passages Discussed