This is the first of three volumes of B.'s collected papers published by Cambridge University Press. The 36 chapters that comprise volume 1 focus primarily on Greek lyric poetry (with a few chapters on epigram) and are arranged in chronological order, starting from the first publication of B. on elegy (1986) and finishing with his most recent publication on Archilochus (2020). In the introduction B. informs us of how he became interested in elegiac, melic and iambic poetry, and it is fascinating to read about the intellectual and scholarly context within which his ideas were developed and how B. positioned himself in various debates.
All chapters are thematically relevant to each other, which ultimately makes this volume coherent, and they can be divided into smaller groups, each of which develops individual themes: the symposium and questions of performance and re-performance with reference primarily to elegy and iambos (i.e. contexts and mode of performance); the status and place of melic and iambic poets in the song and performance culture of archaic and classical Greece; narrative (e.g. themes, techniques, persona) and narration in elegy, iambos, melic poetry and epigram (dedicatory and sepulchral) and their historical and cultural context; the generic and narrative association of elegy with historiography, and its thematic association with Plato's Symposium; lyric reception and transmission. Arguments are contextualised in terms of recent scholarly discussions. As B. explains, in the production of the volume he corrected some factual errors and made comments where what he ‘wrote in the original publication has been overtaken by more recent discoveries or scholarly argument’ (p. 1). Readers will find incorporated in each chapter the numbering of fragments in recently published editions and also appendices with raw data that corroborate some of the arguments, scholarly or statistical. This is a rich volume that not only celebrates the work of B. on lyric and epigrammatic poetry, but also provides much food for thought for readers. Limited space does not allow me to comment on all chapters, and, unavoidably, this review will not do justice to the scholarly work included.
The first chapter, and thus B.'s earliest publication included in the volume, displays scholarly seeds that are further developed or are taken as the basis for more complex argumentation in later publications (i.e. in the following chapters). In this chapter, and throughout the volume, elegies are perceived primarily as sung poems, whose performance was accompanied by the aulos and whose themes overlap with lyric, iambic and epic poetry, the last of which also becomes an important intertext with regards to elegiac phraseology. In this chapter B. explores the contexts of elegiac performance that M. West suggested in Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (1974), bringing into the discussion elegiac fragments and drawing attention to the fictionality that might characterise elegiac narratives – imaginary situations and singing personae, metaphorical meanings of diction. B.'s detailed analysis allows him to conclude that the most securely established performance context for elegies in the archaic period was the symposium, which accommodated short elegiac poems. Longer elegies, especially of narrative nature, which dealt with the distant past of a local community, were too long to fit in a sympotic context and would have been performed, according to B., at aulodic competitions at public festivals (e.g. the Panathenaea).
The scale of poems (especially elegy), narratives that would have been of interest to the local community and narratives of mimetic account, as well as signals of fictionality and artificiality in elegiac and iambic poems are some of the themes developed in individual chapters, which discuss either specific poets or specific poetic genres. Longer elegies, whose narratives focus on the immediate past, such as Simonides’ Plataea elegy, might have been based on oral traditions and could be perceived as fulfilling the aim of historiography, given that they preserve collective memory (Chapters 8 and 15). The correspondence of poetic theme, cultic context and the local history of a community can also be argued for Archilochus’ Telephus, which may have been performed in a Thasian sanctuary of Heracles (Chapter 31); Archilochus’ Epodes (frr. 185–7, 182–4, 172–81 West) are also politically contextualised (Chapter 12), an analysis that in this case takes the named individuals as referring to real people, not to stock characters (cf. Chapter 4).
Performance context is coupled with geographical space and genre, as B. demonstrates how the locations where poets composed their poems and the geographical place of performance might affect the poetic narrative and specific details in the content of a lyric poem: the topographical description of Erytheia and of the river Tartessus in Stesichorus’ Geryoneis (S7 = fr. 184 PMGF = fr. 9 Finglass and S17 PMGF = fr. 8 Finglass) in comparison with the brief description found in Hesiod (Theogony 287–94) is proof of Stesichorus’ precise knowledge of the geographical location (Chapter 29); Stesichorus might have narrated the story of Daphnis in relation to Himera (fr. 279 PMGF = fr. 323 Finglass), Stesichorus’ hometown, and Ibycus might have relocated the abduction of Ganymedes to the slopes of Aetna (S220 PMGF) in the territory of Leontini, as the poem was performed in Sicily (Chapter 23); B.'s analysis of a number of melic and elegiac poems, including Xenophanes’ fr. 3 West and Alcaeus’ fr. 130B Voigt (with whose lines B. intervenes; he changes the word division in v. 9 and supplements the first two words in v. 11), shows how a poet's displacement could be reflected in his poetic compositions (Chapter 10). Lyric poems, therefore, become personal and local creations, when their subject and stance are adjusted to the needs of a community and include details of a poet's life, while B. recognises that genre and a panhellenic audience at the premiere could affect the themes treated in melic poems; Stesichorus’ poems are perceived as being consciously panhellenic, for instance (Chapter 23).
The status of lyric poets is one of the topics analysed in several chapters, and B. raises questions about professionalism, mobility, knowledge and reputation in antiquity (Chapters 13, 24, 30, 33 and 35). Much space is devoted to Theognis and the Theognidea (Chapters 6, 20 and 22; passim in Chapters 16 and 27), and readers are able to see B.'s extensive and deep knowledge not only of the Theognidean corpus but also of the entire lyric corpus. B.'s detailed and informative analysis brings together questions of authenticity, possibilities about how the Theognidean collection was created, how the corpus was transmitted in antiquity, as well as how it might have survived in citations. B. doubts the authorship of some passages included in the Theognidean collection – he suggests that Theognidea 1123–8 are by Archilochus (Chapter 12), and that Theognidea 667–82 were probably composed by Euenus of Paros and one Simonides of Eretria might have composed Theognidea 903–30 (Chapter 20) –; and although his suggestions are speculative, as he recognises, it is rewarding to observe and follow the thought process by which B. reaches these conclusions.
In its totality, the volume grapples with fundamental aspects of research on Greek lyric poetry, which is perceived in its oral and performative contexts, in sociocultural and political circumstances, within the mythological continuum, in generic dialogue with epigram and prose genres, featuring metrical entities and items of intertextuality, and lastly as a material text that can be collected and transmitted. Some of the chapters included would otherwise not have been readily accessible in many libraries, and their inclusion makes them available to a broader readership. The contents of this volume bear witness to B.'s remarkable scholarly range, erudition, command of the evidence, skill at close reading, lucid and elegant argumentation, and wit. It is a treat for readers to be able to track, within a single volume, the generation and elaboration of B.'s ideas over the last four decades.
