ABSTRACT
The preceding discussion has questioned the current arrangement and interpretation of the papyrus fragments going under the name the “new Simonides.” The particular focus has been on the fragments that are presumed to belong to compositions pertaining to the Persian Wars. The premise underlying this study has been that our incomplete knowledge of Simonides’ verses on the Persian Wars makes it difficult to assign any of the new fragments to a particular elegy concerned with battles in these wars. It has also been assumed that the appearance of verses presumably belonging to a hitherto unknown poem on the battle of Plataea highlights and increases this difficulty. With these assumptions in mind, I have aimed to show that the current orthodoxy concerning the arrangement of the new fragments into separate elegies on battles in the Persian Wars, one on Artemisium, one on Salamis and one on Plataea, must be reevaluated. Since our overall ignorance about Simonides’ poetic works extends beyond his verses on the Persian War, I have suggested that this need for a revaluation forces us to rethink many of the details that are believed to be present in all of these new fragments. It must be admitted that we know very little about any of the works by Simonides that have survived in a fragmentary state or have slipped through the cracks of transmission; therefore, the current views on the so-called “sympotic fragments” in the “new Simonides” have also been scrutinized. The conclusion that has arisen is the current assignment of these fragments to specific poems on the Persian Wars or on other topics is not supported by the new evidence itself.
