Greek Lyric A Selection Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics Series

The corpus of Greek lyric holds a twofold attraction. It provides glimpses of the song culture of early Greece in which lyric performance had a central place, and it presents us with some captivating and memorable poetry which has been admired since antiquity. This edition gathers poems by seven of the nine canonical lyricists (Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides), as well as a number of carmina popularia and carmina convivalia and passages from Timotheus' Persians. Both longer and shorter pieces are included. The introduction discusses major issues in the study of Greek lyric including genre, performance and transmission. The commentary is literary in emphasis but also treats questions of syntax, textual reconstruction, metre and dialect. The volume will be of interest to higher-level undergraduates and graduate students as well as to scholars.

List of maps; Preface; Conventions and abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Definitions and perspectives; 2. Charting the corpus; 3. Genre and genres; 4. Performers, authors and the lyric voice; 5. Relationship with epic; 6. Dissemination and transmission; 7. Metre; 8 Dialect; Greek lyric: a selection: Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides, Timotheus, Anonymous song; Commentary; Works cited; Index.

Felix Budelmann is University Lecturer in Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric (2009).