It is now 32 years since the first publication of the Lives of the Greek Poets, and in that interval it has made its mark on Greek literary studies. Its central argument, compellingly made, is that the contents of the vitae attached to the manuscripts of poetic texts are more fiction than fact. Sources for the lives are shown to be the poets' own work, caricatures of them in comedy, and miscellaneous factors of indeterminable date, processed in ways that both heroise and demean their subjects. It is a largely negative argument made in the laudable interest of discouraging scholars from using the poets' dubious ‘biographies’ to develop critical strategies for understanding their texts.
The second edition, following the same format of the first, has chapters on the vitae of the most important Greek poets, individually, where there is adequate material (Hesiod, Homer, Solon, Simonides, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), and otherwise in groups (archaic poets, comic poets and Hellenistic poets). Each of the vitae is examined in detail, with attention to its possible sources and over-arching themes. English translations are included at the back, as well as a bibliography which has now been brought up to date. Additionally, a freshening of the presentation makes the book more accessible to a wider range of readers.
Since its original publication L.'s thesis has proven to be robust, but a developing interest in classical reception, and particularly the work of B. Graziosi (Inventing Homer: the Early Reception of Epic [2002]) on the vitae of Homer has demonstrated that ancient biography is not entirely without value. While it may tell us little or nothing about its subject's own life, it none the less contains important information about the way a poet and his work were understood in later periods. Beyond this, the overall evolution of ancient biography reflects changes in the public's perception of its literary past. Other work since L. has focussed on how ancient biography developed. For example, T. Compton (Victim of the Muses [2006]) emphasises the role of myth in providing a framework for the vitae, a process already noted by L., and more recently M. Kivilo (Early Greek Poets' Lives [2012]) focusses on their earliest possible sources.
In the second edition L. maintains her original thesis, but also takes account of this wider perspective and presents, wherever possible, a fuller, more nuanced reading of the ancient vitae. An example is the life of Euripides. As in the first edition we are shown, for example, that the biographers' claim that Euripides' mother was a vegetable seller is based on a favourite witticism of Aristophanes (Arch. 478; Eq. 19; Ran. 840; Thes. 387) that was taken at face value. Likewise, their claim that the poet died after being torn apart by a pack of dogs is an appropriation from the poet's own Bacchae, where Pentheus meets the same fate at the hands of the chorus; and generally, that the vitae of Euripides are shaped, overall, to fit a pattern familiar from the lives of mythical heroes in drama.
In the second edition, L. adds a new dimension by giving additional space to the sources of Euripides' portrait and their development. She begins by clearly discriminating four distinct sections of the vitae, which both duplicate and contradict each other. This suggests, in turn, that their authors used different sources, and that the text, as we have it, is the result of a process of amalgamation and condensation over time. She also gives additional attention to the fragments of second-century dialogue on the life of Euripides by Satyrus, whom she finds more sympathetic to the poet than the later compilers, and more insightful about the process of extracting biography from literature. With these new additions it becomes even clearer that the development of the vitae was both complex and unpredictable. This, in turn, raises further questions about the veracity of their so-called facts.
This new edition makes L.'s thesis even more compelling than the first, and will ensure its continued influence.
