ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a specific quality of Gaza in Late Antiquity. To Greek culture and its texts, pace, for example, Aristotle, the dimension of experience was much more important than the dimension of theory. A great part of Greek literature was observably created within contexts of organisation that guaranteed certain forms of continuity and repetition, that is, broadly speaking, mainly the context of the Greek polis. Its institutions offered a constellation of production and performance of literature and provided opportunities for its repetition and experience. The ‘agonistic’ context of poetry is reflected by the scattered testimonia and fragments of poets and musicians active in Sparta. Terpander is cited as the inventor of some striking innovations, namely the seven-stringed lyre, certain lyric forms such as the nomos and new scales and rhythms. A faint impression of the innovative force of Sparta in poetry and music is conveyed by the fragments of the best-preserved Spartan poets, Alcman and Tyrtaeus.
