ABSTRACT
Epinician Poetry and the Past When studying how the Greeks made use of their past, one would not be likely to start, beyond historiography proper, with lyric poetry of the archaic age. What rather springs to mind and lends itself to such an investigation is epic poetry, which, from its outset, claims heroic deeds of distant memory as its remit and, more often than not, emphasises the huge divide between the remote ages of the great warriors and contemporary times.1 Lyric song, iambus and elegy, by contrast, are predominantly concerned with current events and actions such as imminent battles in martial exhortations and civil strife in Alcaeus’ partisan poetry; or the extant fragments reflect seemingly personal feelings and mental states, never tired of, for example, musing about the mystery of love. And yet, although prima facie historical subjects appear insignificant in these genres, lyric poets did engage with what could be labelled ‘history’ in modern terminology. In particular, decisive moments in the history of the Greeks fascinated poets and called for depiction in verse, as in Simonides’ elegies on the battles of Salamis and Plataea.2 The past even became a fixture in one lyric genre that, by definition, was intended to celebrate the immediate present, namely the victory ode. It is in the praise of athletic victories before the assembled crowd that past events and deeds feature regularly, though mostly with an interesting twist. When Bacchylides in Ode 3 describes in graphic detail the sack of Sardis by the Persians and the downfall of its king Croesus, or when Pindar pays tribute to the tyrant Hiero’s foundation of Aetna and victories in war, history is treated not per se, but rather serves to interpret the present occasion, in the sense that the past is a benchmark for the greatness of athletic victories.3
