Project description

This project investigates ancient Greek lyric poetry, and in particular the epinician odes of Pindar and Bacchylides, in their historical, social, and most importantly, geographical context. The odes were composed to commemorate major Panhellenic athletic victories of individuals hailing from various towns and regions of Greece, including the Greek colonies in the south of Italy (Magna Graeca). These two locations - the site of the victory and the site of victor’s hometown - form the spatial “backbone” of every epinician ode, and their prominent inclusion in the poetic texts has traditionally been viewed as one of the required elements in the poet’s encomiastic program (Bundy, E. L. 1962. Studia Pindarica. Berkeley). This explanation, however, does not fully account for the iterative references to the two locales, usually at the beginning and the end of the odes, and the persistent shifting of the attention between the two.

Moreover, these are by no means the only kinds of spatial designations traced by the victory odes: various mythical narratives are routinely developed or alluded to, extending further the poetic geographical horizons by following foundation accounts, developing genealogies, or cataloguing heroic accomplishments. The inclusion of the mythical subject matter has similarly been understood within the encomiastic framework of the poems, as forming a grand heroic backdrop for the contemporary athletic victory and establishing an immediate and meaningful connection between past and present. While certainly valid, this interpretation tends to minimize the complexities of the particular geographical movements within any given narrative and consequently the differences in the spatial patterns created by different odes. Furthermore, I believe that the lines between mythical narratives and the references to the “here and now” of the epinician performance and its occasion are more ambiguous than has been recognized so far. The “real” geography that connects the sites of victory with victors’ hometowns is a diachronic analogue of the “mythical” geography that connects distant events and heroes to the local performance.

Geographical dimensions of the victory odes have been surprisingly understudied, in part because different kinds of spatial references have been treated for the most part separately by scholars. The proposed project takes its starting point from such case studies and is concerned with developing a comprehensive methodology for the investigation of geographical and spatial poetic expressions in the extant epinician corpus. The research involved is inherently interdisciplinary as it seeks to integrate all relevant cultural information (literary, mythological, historical, and archaeological) for understanding the spaces (re)created in and by the odes.

The cooperation with the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) in this undertaking would be especially productive as well as mutually beneficial because of the numerous points of contact between the goals of the project and the current and future operations conducted by FHW.