ABSTRACT
The term “lyric poet” encompasses a wide spectrum of men and women over many parts of the Greek world, writing in a variety of metres and genres, from as early as the seventh century until well into the fifth. Their subjects range from the highly personal (Sappho, Archilochos) to the political and topical (Alkaios, Tyrtaios, Theognis); from light verses performed at the symposium (Anakreon) to those performed at religious festivals (Alkman). Still others drew on the same body of heroic myth that Homer and other epic poets had treated, but reshaped it into shorter poems, each in his or her own distinctive voice. The vast majority of Archaic Greek lyric has come down to us in tiny fragments, either quoted out of context by late writers or on scraps of papyrus. There is almost never a connected narrative, although one papyrus of Stesichoros, made known only twenty-five years ago, comes close, and has important and interesting implications for our understanding of the visual arts.
