The New Simonides Contexts of Praise and Desire [Hardcover]

Over the course of his life (550-460 BC), the Greek poet Simonides produced poetic work of every kind then extant. Unfortunately, Simonides' corpus has survived only in fragments, though classical scholars have been studying his work for generations. The 1992 discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri revolutionized the study of Simonides, casting particular light on the epic of Plataea. This edited volume gathers the best of the recent research on Simonides' newly expanded oeuvre into a single collection that will be an important reference for scholars of Greek poetry.

This book provides an excellent appraisal of the state of scholarship on the 'New Simonides.' It surpasses most edited volumes in the degree to which the contributors are clearly aware of one another's essays and provide cross-references to sustain the course of the questioning about the text. It has launched some important new challenges about the historical and literary traditions represented by the text. --American Journal of Philology

The substantial new pieces of narrative and erotic elegy by Simonides that hit the world in 1992 were among the most exciting additions to Greek poetry for decades. This volume draws together eighteen leading scholars on their interpretation and reception, some reprinted in revised form from the much shorterArethusavolume of 1996, others from elsewhere, and several not previously published. Together they constitute a marvelous companion to the reading of the poems, tackling issues of interpretation on many levels and admirably displaying the range of approaches found in modern scholarship on ancient Greek poetry. --Ewen Bowie, University of Oxford

Simonides was a celebrated and prolific writer in a variety of genres. The discovery and publication of a substantial part of his elegiac poem on the battle of Plataia (479 BCE) fills an important gap in our knowledge of late archaic Greek poetry, although it has perhaps raised justlƒg