The Plataea Elegy of Simonides and questions about the reception of his poetry in Athens

2025.04.20 | By Gregory Nagy

§0. This pre-edited essay centers on the Plataea Elegy of the poet Simonides (F 11 ed.2 West), which celebrated the victory of the Hellenes who fought the forces of the Persian Empire at the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE. The Elegy became, I argue, part of the repertoire of what I call the Lyric Canon. And I also argue that this composition by Simonides was once performed at the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. Such argumentation is in line with two general arguments to be found in the work of Ewen Bowie (1986) on the performative traditions of ancient Greek elegy:

1. elegiac compositions in the archaic and classical periods were conventionally sung to the accompaniment of the aulos ‘reed’
2. there were two basic social contexts for the singing of elegy by men, namely, the symposium and the public festival.

Applying Bowie’s general argumentation, I focus here specifically on the performance of elegy at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, and I argue, more specifically, that the Plataea Elegy of Simonides became part of a repertoire of Panathenaic competitions in performing canonical songs. The specific category of performance in this case was known as aulōidiā ‘singing to the accompaniment of the aulos’.

The argument

§1. The Plataea Elegy of Simonides, ever since the publication of surviving fragments written on papyrus (ed.2 West), has generally been interpreted as a poetic glorification of Sparta. The composition of this Elegy by the poet Simonides seems to be glorifying the fact that the city-state of Sparta was credited as the primary winner in a famous land-battle that took place at Plataea. The year was 479 BCE, which was when allied Hellenic forces, under the leadership of Sparta, decisively defeated the invading army of the Persian Empire. This event followed a related event in 480 BCE, which was when the navy of the Empire was decisively defeated by allied Hellenic forces led by a rival of Sparta, the city-state of Athens, in a sea-battle that took place at Salamis. In my essay here, I propose that the Plataea Elegy of Simonides was meant to glorify not only Sparta by way of praising primarily this one particular city-state for its leading role in the Hellenic victory over the Persian Empire in the land-battle of Plataea. The Elegy was also meant, I propose, to praise secondarily the rival city-state of Athens. The fact is that Athens too, not just Sparta, had participated in the same land-battle at Plataea, as we know from the reportage of Herodotus (9.28), Diodorus (11.29.4, 11.32.4), Plutarch (Life of Aristides 11), and other sources.

§2. My formulation here is a proposal, not a fact, since there is no direct trace of any glorifying of Athens in the fragmentary text of the Elegy as it has survived in the papyrus fragments. Nevertheless, I argue that my proposal is valid—even though we have no access to the entire text but only to the fragments that are left. To glorify Athens at least secondarily while glorifying Sparta primarily, in terms of my argument, would have been an obvious opportunity for the composer of the Elegy, Simonides the poet, to enhance his own poetic glory by way of achieving a glorified reception of his poetry in Athens, not only in, say, Sparta.

§3. As we will see, however, the politics of Athens in the aftermath of the victories at Salamis and Plataea turned out to diminish the personal reputation of Simonides—which ultimately depended, as we will also see, on the Athenian reception of his poetic compositions as performed in public concerts, not only in private symposia.

§4. When I say that the personal reputation of Simonides was ultimately diminished by Athenian politics, however, this is not the same thing as saying that our poet’s glory as a master of poetry did not survive. It is only to say that the reputation of Simonides as a personality, not as a poet, was diminished because one of his most important patrons, whose name I have not yet revealed, became eventually discredited—for political reasons.

§5. Before naming the name of the one patron I have in mind, though, I must insist that the reputation of Simonides as a master poet, who was counted as one of nine poets whose poetry was part of what I call here the Lyric Canon, survived and remained intact. The fact is, Simonides never lost his exalted status as one of the nine canonical poets of “lyric.”

Background about the Lyric Canon

§6. The Lyric Canon, as studied, for example, by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in his Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker (1900), consisted of poetry attributed to nine poets. These poets were Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides—I list them here in what I think is the most likely chronological order. Our textual sources for this list include:

• two epigrams in the Greek Anthology, 9.184 and 9.571 (commentary by Wilamowitz 1900:5–6)
• the Scholia for Dionysius Thrax (Grammatici Graeci 1.3 ed. Hilgard p. 21 lines 17–19)
• the Life of Pindar texts (in the Pindar scholia, ed. Drachmann p. 11).

§7. I will hereafter refer to the canonical grouping of these poets simply as the Lyric Nine, paraphrasing the expression ennea lurikoi ‘nine lyric poets’ as used in the Life of Pindar texts (Drachmann pp. 10–11).

§8. The textualization of this Lyric Canon, which was transmitted primarily by way of Athenian reception, took shape in a pre-Classical era of Athens, during the years extending—roughly— from the second half of the sixth century BCE into the first half of the fifth century. These years converge—again, roughly—with the actual lifetime of Simonides.

About Simonides and the Lyric Canon in the pre-Classical era of Athens

§9. The historical era of the Lyric Canon in pre-Classical Athens, as I have outlined it so far, becomes politically problematic for Simonides, since the Canon took shape during the years when the city-state of Athens was still being dominated by a political dynasty known as the Peisistratidai, who became eventually demonized as “tyrants” by the evolving democracy that had put an end to their domination of Athens and expelled the Peisistratidai from the city in 510 BCE.

§10. Which brings me to the historical reasons for the diminishing of the personal reputation of a poet like Simonides. Perhaps it will come as a surprise that it was not the patronage of the Peisistratidai that threatened this poet’s reputation. As we are about to see, the threat to his personal reputation would have been caused by another person who had been a patron of this poet. And this other patron, as we will soon see, seems to have had a special relationship with Simonides as poet.

§11. There is a simple reason for my saying that this other patron, soon to be named, seems to have had a special relationship with Simonides. Unlike three other near-contemporaneous poets whose poetry is part of the Canon of the Lyric Nine, only Simonides was the beneficiary of this particular patron. The three other poets whom I have just now described as near-contemporaneous were Anacreon, Pindar, and Bacchylides.

More about Anacreon, Pindar, and Bacchylides—as compared with Simonides

§12. The names of the three poets I just mentioned, added to the name of Simonides, are the last four names that I have already listed in chronological order as I was naming, a minute ago, the Lyric Nine. Of these three poets, the lifespan of Anacreon can be dated a few decades earlier than that of Simonides, while the lifespans of the other two, Pindar and Bacchylides can be dated a few decades later.

§13. As we are about to see, there was a patron of Simonides who was markedly dissimilar, in one all-important detail, from other patrons shared by Simonides with these three other near-contemporaneous poets, that is, with Anacreon, Pindar, and Bacchylides. In order to highlight the dissimilarity, however, I must first review briefly the similarities.

§14. I start with Anacreon, who as I just said is a slightly earlier figure by comparison with Simonides. In this case, we find only similarities, not dissimilarities, when we think of the patrons that these two poets shared with each other. The fact is, both Anacreon and Simonides were protégés of the dynastic lineage of the Peisistratidai in Athens, who, as I already noted, were later demonized as “tyrants” after they were expelled from the city in 510 BCE.

§15. Next, I proceed to consider the slightly later figures Pindar and Bacchylides. Neither one of these two later poets was connected with the patronage of the Peisistratidai, but both of them shared with Simonides the benefits of having other such powerful patrons, the most prominent of whom was Hieron, self-proclaimed tyrant of Syracuse—a city that had become, in the early fifth century BCE, the most powerful Greek state in the western stretches of the Mediterranean. In Chapter 6 of Pindar’s Homer (Nagy 1990, especially pp. 174–198), I analyze in some detail the kind of patronage that is extended by the tyrant Hieron to Pindar and Bacchylides as well as to Simonides. Also in that chapter, I take note of the fact that all three of these poets—Simonides and Pindar and Bacchylides—were favored protégés of the elite oligarchs who controlled the powerful island-state of Aegina in that same era, the early fifth century BCE.

Simonides and a patron who has not yet been named

§16. So much for similarities. But now I turn to a major dissimilarity between Simonides on the one hand and the three other poets whom I have so far considered on the other hand. I am now ready to name a patron of the poet Simonides who was not shared by the three other poets considered so far, that is, Anacreon, Pindar, and Bacchylides. This patron was Spartan royalty. He was Pausanias, victorious generalissimo of all the Greek forces fighting at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, and this man Pausanias is actually glorified by name at line 34 in the Plataea Elegy of Simonides.

§17. Pausanias was descended from the Agiad branch of the Spartan dual kingship, and he had become Regent of Sparta on behalf of the under-age prince Pleistarkhos, son of the Agiad king Leonidas, who had just recently been killed at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE—and who was the brother of Pausanias. The successes of Pausanias as commander-in-chief at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE are most dramatically narrated by Herodotus in Scroll 9 of his Histories. After the battle of Plataea, as we see from the wording of a direct quotation in Herodotus 9.76, an admirer actually addressed Pausanias not as Regent of Sparta but simply as King of Sparta (Ὦ βασιλεῦ Σπάρτης…).

§18. For Simonides to have as his very own patron such Spartan royalty as Pausanias, son of Kleombrotos—the father too is named, at line 33 of the Elegy—must have eventually tainted his political reputation in Athens, as we can see especially from the narrative in Scroll 1 of Thucydides about the life and times of Pausanias. The end of this king’s life was marred by personal disgrace, from the standpoint of Thucydides (1.134), who reports that the ephors of Sparta had ruled that Pausanias was guilty of corruption and had ordered his execution, which eventuated in his death by starvation. Historians today are mostly agreed in dating the king’s demise at around 465 BCE, almost fifteen years after his glory days as the victorious generalissimo who had soundly defeated the land army of the Persian Empire at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE.

Fifteen or so years as a time-frame for reconstructing public performances of the Plataea Elegy of Simonides

§19. I focus now on fifteen or so glory years of Pausanias, king of Sparta. The time-frame of these years starts with the aftermath of the Battle of Plataea and extends all the way to the grim days when death-by-starvation terminated the king’s life. It was within the time-frame of these years, I argue, that the Plataea Elegy of Simonides was composed and then performed. And when I say that the Elegy was performed, I posit more than one occasion and more than one venue for such performances.

§20. The venue for performing Plataea Elegy could have been a variety of locales where the local politics favored the ambitions of Pausanias. And here I must add that the words of the Elegy, in its admittedly incomplete form as we read the fragmentary text in the surviving papyri, celebrate mostly the hero Achilles—and that Pausanias and his father seem to be celebrated mostly in the heroic afterglow, as it were, of Achilles. Moreover, Achilles is clearly being celebrated not only as a hero of epic but also as a hero who was worshipped specifically as a cult-hero. That is to say, Achilles was worshipped in many Greek-speaking locales as a cult-hero whose superhuman power, radiating from the glorious past of the heroic age, was believed to have intervened in bringing victory to the Hellenes at the Battle of Plataea. Here I agree with the relevant argumentation of P.J. Shaw in a book of collected essays about the Plataea Elegy (ed. Boedeker and Sider 2001). In her essay, Shaw proposes that the most likely first occasion and first setting for the performance of the Elegy would have been one of the many locales, throughout the Greek-speaking world, where the hero-cult of Achilles is attested. Shaw’s work surveys the many different places where local populations did in fact worship Achilles as their primary cult hero, and her survey even leaves room for thinking that there may well have been more than one venue for performing the Elegy.

§21. But there is more to it, I think. As the survey of Shaw (2001) also shows, the prestige of Achilles as a cult-hero was enhanced in the early fifth century—as also already in previous eras—by his concurrent prestige as an epic hero who was widely celebrated in the Greek-speaking world. And the poetic glory of epic narrations about Achilles was consistently fused with the poetic glory of corresponding lyric narrations and invocations—formatted in the kind of lyric poetry composed by master poets like Simonides.

§22. When I say lyric here, I include elegiac poetry as exemplified by the Plataea Elegy of Simonides. In order to explain my including this kind of poetry under the category of lyric, I must now return to the subject of the Lyric Canon.

§23. As I already noted, Simonides was one of the “Lyric Nine,” and, as I will now start to explain in more detail, this Lyric Canon of Nine, to which this poet’s poetry most prominently belongs, was originally shaped in Athens, where the prestige of a heroic figure like Achilles depended not so much on his status as a cult hero but, rather, on his concurrent status as an epic hero, celebrated as a centerpoint of attention in the epic tradition of the Homeric Iliad as transmitted primarily by way of seasonally recurring performances at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens.

More on the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens

§24. As I have argued at length in earlier work (especially in the book Homer the Preclassic, listed as Nagy 2010|2009 in the Bibliography below), epic poetry that was attributed to Homer—as exemplified by “our” Iliad as well as “our” Odyssey—was shaped primarily by its transmission in the form of public performances by rhapsōidoi or ‘rhapsodes’ at the festival of the Panathenaia in the era of the Peisistratidai, that is, during most of the second half of the sixth century BCE. And, as I also argued in still earlier work—especially in the book Homer the Classic, listed as Nagy 2009|2008 below—the public performance of epic poetry at the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia was a tradition that continued unabated after the expulsion of the Peisistratidai from the city in 510 BCE, and this tradition maintained its civic importance in successive years, extending into the fifth century and beyond, during the golden era of the evolving Athenian democracy.

§25. In more recent work—Nagy 2024.05.18 and 2024.05.19—I offer deeper commentary on the Panathenaic performances of Homeric poetry in the democratic era of Athens. In such recent work, I have more to say about the evolving distinction between the so-called Great Panathenaia, which in the era of the democracy was celebrated every four years as opposed to the “Lesser” Panathenaia, celebrated every other year. For my present purposes in the essay here, however, I find it unnecessary to emphasize this distinction between “greater” and “lesser” versions of the festival, since the differences becomes ever less pronounced if we reconstruct, going backward in time, earlier phases of the festival as it existed in the pre-Classical era of the Peisistratidai. Accordingly, in what follows, I speak only about the Panathenaia in general, as it existed through time in the pre-Classical as well as Classical eras.

§26. What I just noted about evolving traditions of performing epic at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens—where the primary form of such epic became Homeric poetry as we know it—holds true also for the performing of lyric poetry at this festival, and here is where I need to highlight a striking fact about the life-span of the poet Simonides—as also about the even earlier life-span of the poet Anacreon. The fact is, the poetic careers of both these paragons of verbal art overlapped between an earlier phase of patronage lavished by the Peisistratidai, later deemed to be the “tyrants” of Athens, and a later phase of public support granted by the democratic régime that replaced the previous patrons.

§27. The earlier phase of supposedly “tyrannical” patronage is well documented in a Platonic work, generally thought to have been composed not by Plato himself. It is a work that is named after Hipparchus, who, along with his father, Peisistratos, was a leading figure in the lineage of the Peisistratidai who dominated Athens around the latter half of the sixth century BCE.

§28. I now quote this passage from the Platonic text about Hipparchus, son of Peisistratos. In this passage, Hipparchus is credited with actually shaping the performance traditions of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaia in Athens. And, in this same context, he is also credited with introducing the lyric songs of Anacreon and Simonides in Athens. What I find most remarkable about this passage is the parallelism that is drawn between epic and lyric performance traditions in Athens. Here, then, is the passage:

… Ἱππάρχῳ, ὃς ἄλλα τε πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ ἔργα σοφίας ἀπεδέξατο, καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἔπη πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταύτην, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ἐξ ὑπολήψεως ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διιέναι, ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι {c} οἵδε ποιοῦσιν, καὶ ἐπ’ ᾿Ανακρέοντα τὸν Τήιον πεντηκόντορον στείλας ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, Σιμωνίδην δὲ τὸν Κεῖον ἀεὶ περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχεν, μεγάλοις μισθοῖς καὶ δώροις πείθων· ταῦτα δ’ ἐποίει βουλόμενος παιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας, ἵν’ ὡς βελτίστων ὄντων αὐτῶν ἄρχοι, οὐκ οἰόμενος δεῖν οὐδενὶ σοφίας φθονεῖν, ἅτε ὢν καλός τε κἀγαθός.

[I am referring to] Hipparchus, who accomplished many beautiful things in demonstration of his expertise [sophiā], especially by being the first to bring over [komizein] to this land [= Athens] the verses [epos plural] of Homer, and he forced the rhapsodes [rhapsōidoi] at the Panathenaia to go through [diienai] these verses in sequence [ephexēs], by relay [ex hupolēpseōs], just as they [= the rhapsodes] do even nowadays. And he sent out a state ship to bring over [komizein] Anacreon of Teos to the city [= Athens]. He also always kept in his company Simonides of Keos, persuading him by way of huge fees and gifts. And he did all this because he wanted to educate the citizens, so that he might govern the best of all possible citizens. He thought, noble as he was, that he was obliged not to be stinting in the sharing of his expertise [sophiā] with anyone.

“Plato” Hipparchus 228b–c

§29. In what follows, my interpretation of this passage is a rewriting of parts of my earlier work on the Lyric Canon (Nagy 2021.11.29). The old paragraphs numbered §§21–38 there are now replaced by new and rewritten paragraphs numbered §§30–49 here.

§30. The use of the word sophiā ‘expertise’ in this passage is pre-Classical: it expresses the idea that Hipparchus demonstrates his expertise in poetry by virtue of sponsoring poets like Homer, Anacreon, and Simonides, who are described as ultimate standards for measuring expertise in poetry. In the overall logic of the narrative, Hipparchus makes this kind of gesture because he wants to demonstrate to the citizens of Athens that he is not ‘stinting with his sophiā ’ (σοφίας φθονεῖν 228c), since he provides them with the poetry and songmaking of Homer, Anacreon, and Simonides; by implication, his sophiā ‘expertise’ is the key to the performance traditions of all these three poets in Athens.

§31. In the case of Homeric poetry, Hipparchus is being credited here not only with the regulation of Homeric performances at the Panathenaia (comparable is the testimony of Dieuchidas of Megara FGH 485 F 6 via Diogenes Laertius 1.57, though this version credits Solon for such regulation). More than that, Hipparchus is credited with the far more basic initiative of actually introducing Homeric-style performances in Athens.

§32. It is in this same context that Hipparchus is also credited with the initiative of introducing performances, in Athens, of lyric poetry composed by Anacreon and Simonides— poetry that could have been performed originally even by the composers themselves. And, as I will now argue, a most prestigious venue for these performances in Athens was the festival of the Panathenaia. So, we see here the same venue as established for the performances of Homeric poetry.

§33. In the case of Anacreon, the wording in our Platonic narrative, just quoted, shows that Hipparchus undertook a veritable rescue operation in transporting this master of lyric across the Aegean Sea from the island-state of Samos in the Ionian East all the way to the state of Athens in the Ionian West. While he had lived in Samos, Anacreon was a court poet of the Panionian maritime empire of the tyrant Polycrates. Here I recall briefly a relevant story told by Herodotus about the final days of this Polycrates, who was soon to be captured and executed by agents of the Persian Empire (3.125.2–3). Right before that bitter end, we get a glimpse here of happier times: Polycrates is pictured as reclining on a sympotic couch and enjoying the company of that ultimate luminary of Ionian lyric poetry, Anacreon (Herodotus 3.121.1). In the logic of this narrative, the Ionian lyric tradition represented by Anacreon had to be rescued from the Persians once the old Panionian maritime empire of Polycrates of Samos had collapsed, soon to be replaced by the new Panionianism of the Peisistratidai of Athens. Once the rescue operation had succeeded, it could now be the tyrant Hipparchus in Athens, not the tyrant Polycrates in Samos, who got to enjoy the sympotic company of lyric celebrities like Anacreon.

§34. In terms of this narrative, Hipparchus accomplished something far more than simply invite lyric poets like Anacreon or Simonides for ad hoc occasions of performance at, say, symposia: what he also accomplished, as I will now argue, was to institutionalize the competitive performing of songs composed by such lyric masters, and such performances would be prominently featured at public concerts at the festival of the Panathenaia.

§35. Such a Panathenaic context for the performance of songs composed by these lyric poets Anacreon and Simonides can be reconstructed, I propose, by way of analyzing more closely the narrative about the accomplishments of Hipparchus (again, “Plato” Hipparchus 228b–c). In the logic of this narrative, Hipparchus had a primary motive in introducing both Homeric and lyric performances to the Athenian people. I repeat here the original Greek wording as quoted earlier: ταῦτα δ’ ἐποίει βουλόμενος παιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας, ἵν’ ὡς βελτίστων ὄντων αὐτῶν ἄρχοι ‘And he did all this because he wanted to educate the citizens, so that he might govern the best of all possible citizens’. The educating of the body politic, as the wording here makes clear, requires the reception of lyric song, not only of Homeric poetry. That is why I can argue that Hipparchus accomplished something far more than simply inviting lyric poets for ad hoc occasions of performance at symposia. After all, performances at private symposia for the elite would hardly contribute to the education of the citizens at large.

§36. The narrative about the accomplishments of Hipparchus makes it clear that his initiative in introducing the performance of Homeric poetry was parallel to his initiative in introducing the performances of lyric songs composed by the most celebrated poets in his era—figures like Anacreon and Simonides. The use of the word komizein (228b) in expressing the idea that Hipparchus ‘brought over’ to Athens the epē ‘verses’ (= epos plural) of Homer is parallel to the use of the same word komizein (228c) in expressing the idea that Hipparchus also ‘brought over’ to Athens the poet Anacreon—on a state ship, from the island of Samos. In terms of my interpretation, the parallelism implies that the songs of Anacreon were meant to be performed at the festival of the Panathenaia in the same way that the poetry of Homer was meant to be performed.

§37. In the case of Homer, however, Hipparchus transported not the poet Homer himself but Homer’s notional descendants, called the Homēridai, the ‘sons of Homer’; further, by contrast with the case of Anacreon, Hipparchus brought the Homēridai over to Athens not from the island of Samos but from the island of Chios (Nagy 2010|2009:28, 54–55, 57–66, 328).

§38. In terms of this narrative, then, in “Plato” Hipparchus 228b–c, there are two parallel accomplishments being attributed to Hipparchus: through his initiatives, it was not only the poetry of Homer that could now be performed in public concerts at the Panathenaia in Athens but also the Ionian lyric songs of poets like Anacreon of Teos and the Dorian lyric songs of poets like Simonides of Keos.

§39. Moving now from the earlier phase of the Panathenaia in Athens, shaped in the era of the “tyrants”—the Peisistratidai—we now come to the era of the early democracy, starting after 510 BCE and extending into the early fifth century BCE. In this era, the songs of Anacreon continued to be well-known in Athens, as we see most clearly from the evidence of vase paintings that show Anacreon himself (the adjacent lettering identifies him) in the act of singing while accompanying himself on a string instrument that is pictured as a barytone lyre or barbitos and occasionally as a concert lyre or kitharā. For an admirable analysis of this iconographic evidence, I recommend the relevant comments in a book by Timothy Power (2010:413, 466, 470, 510; I also recommend an essay by Sarah Price 1990 on the iconographic evidence).

§40. While the Anacreontic paintings point to the symposium as the immediate context to be visualized for the singing of songs attributed to Anacreon, both during and after his lifetime, I argue that the ultimate context would be the re-enactment of such sympotic singing in the context of public concerts at the Panathenaia, where the kitharōidos ‘citharode’ who re-enacts Anacreon would accompany himself either on the barbitos or on the more conventional kitharā.

§41. Taking a broader look at the medium of the kitharōidos—to which I will refer hereafter simply as the citharodic medium—I need to make a disclaimer at this point. I do not mean to say that all songs attributed to figures like Anacreon would at all times be formally suitable for inclusion in the repertoire of citharodic songs to be performed at the Panathenaia. As Power (2010) argues, not all lyric forms were necessarily compatible with the citharodic forms that eventuated in the context of the Panathenaia. Accordingly, I heed the reservations expressed by Power (2010:262–263n187) concerning the historical possibilities of fitting lyric forms into a citharodic medium. As we trace the citharodic medium forward in time, it seems that the metrical and the melodic formalities of this medium became increasingly constrained, so that we cannot in the end expect all lyric forms to fit into the narrower frame of the citharodic medium. That said, however, I maintain that this citharodic medium had been far more flexible in earlier phases of its evolution. And I think it was in such an earlier phase that lyric forms first made their massive entry into the citharodic medium as it evolved in the context of the Panathenaia. Most accommodating, in any case, were lyric forms that could readily convert from frames that were stanzaic to frames that were stichic (verse-by-verse), since the evolution of citharodic forms evidently gravitated away from strophic configurations.

§42. Thus the songs of Anacreon, who was personally brought to Athens by Hipparchus, were integrated into the canonical repertoire of citharodic performances at the Panathenaia, and the tradition of performing citharodic song continued into the era of the Athenian democracy.

§43. Now I turn to the songs of Simonides. He too, as we saw in the same passage that mentioned Anacreon (again, “Plato” Hipparchus 228b–c), was personally brought to Athens by Hipparchus.

§44. And now I will argue that the songs of Simonides were likewise integrated into the repertoire of performances at the Panathenaia. In this case, however, at least some of his songs were integrated into the repertoire of aulōidoi, that is, ‘those who sing to the accompaniment of the aulos or reed’, not only into the repertoire of kitharōidoi, that is, ‘those who sing to the accompaniment of the kitharā’. In other words, the lyric medium of Simonides was compatible not only with the citharodic medium but also with the aulodic medium.

§45. Here I take note of a specific argument I offered viva voce at a conference of the Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek Song held in the summer of 2012 in Washington, DC, on which occasion I already proposed what I propose here: that the Plataea Elegy of Simonides, celebrating the victory of the Hellenes who fought the Persian forces at the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, had become part of the repertoire of the Lyric Canon. In support of my proposal, I already cited the work of Ewen Bowie (1986:14–21, 34; noted also even earlier, in Nagy 2010:38) on the performative traditions of archaic Greek elegy, expressing my agreement with his view that elegiac compositions in the archaic and classical periods were conventionally sung to the accompaniment of the aulos ‘reed’, and that there were two basic social contexts for the singing of elegy by men, namely, the symposium and the public festival. And, once again here, I argue that the performing of elegy at the Panathenaia belonged to competitions in the category of aulōidiā ‘singing to the accompaniment of the aulos’.

§46. This is not at all to say, however, that elegy was the only form of aulōidiā to be performed at the Panathenaia. Besides the stichic form of elegy, I leave room for the possibility that non-stichic forms of aulōidiā also existed in at least the earlier phases of the Panathenaia, just as I have left room for non-stichic forms of kitharōidiā ‘singing to the accompaniment of the kitharā ’.

§47. I must also note here the possibility that aulodic performances could be interchangeable with citharodic performances, as well as the other way around. A case in point is Aristophanes’ comedy Women at the Thesmophoria. Here the tragic poet Agathon is depicted as wearing a turban and a woman’s khitōn—costuming that matches the costume of the lyric poet Anacreon as depicted by the Cleophrades Painter (Copenhagen MN 13365; commentary by Price 1990:169, with bibliography). In the comedy of Aristophanes, the stage Agathon even says that his self-staging replicates the monodic stagings of Ibycus, Anacreon, and Alcaeus (lines 159– 163). This reference suggests, I argue, that Agathon as a master of tragic poetry was strongly influenced by the monodic performance traditions of lyric song, both citharodic and aulodic, as performed at the Panathenaia (Nagy 2007:245–246, following Bierl 2001:160–163; on Agathon as a stage Anacreon, see Bierl 2001:158n137, 165.).

§48. I should emphasize in this context the fact that aulodic compositions were appropriate not only for performance at the competitions of aulodes at the Panathenaia but also for the competitions of choruses who were singing and dancing in the dramas of Athenian State Theater at the City Dionysia and at other dramatic festivals, since the singing and dancing of the songs of drama were conventionally sustained by the accompaniment of a single aulos. So, my point about Agathon is that he was experimenting with compositions in his dramas that would have sounded like aulodic performances by aulodes competing with each other at the Panathenaia. And, going even further, Agathon experimented even with citharodic compositions in his dramas.

§49. In short, I propose that the compositions of the Lyric Nine were suitable for both citharodic and aulodic performances in at least the earlier phases of the Panathenaia.

§50. That said, I can now highlight, finally, a most basic fact about the reception of both Homeric poetry and lyric poetry in the performance traditions of the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. The fact is, these performance traditions survived the era of the Peisistratidai, who were retroactively demonized as “tyrants,” into the era of the Athenian democracy. To put it bluntly, the reputation of epic and lyric poetry as patronized by these “tyrants” managed to survive into the era of Athenian democracy—by contrast with the reputations of those who were the original patrons of all this poetry.

On the reception of the Plataea Elegy in democratic Athens, after the era of the Peisistratidai

§51. So, as I started to argue earlier, the personal reputation of Simonides was not harmed by the reputation of the Peisistratidai as his former patrons. No, the personal reputation of this lyric poet was harmed by his relationship with another patron. He was Pausanias, king of Sparta. As I pointed out elsewhere (Nagy 1990:167), in Sparta the use of poetry for private gain, even on the part of a king, was a symptom of tyrannical tendencies, of usurpation. Thus, for example, in the narrative of Thucydides (1.132.2) concerning the downfall of the Spartan king, whose meteoric rise in personal prestige as a result of the Persian War led to his eventual downfall, the charges brought against the king included the fact that he had an epigram inscribed on the victory tripod dedicated at Delphi celebrating the defeat of the Persians at Plataea—an epigram commissioned ‘for his private purposes’ (ἰδίᾳ). The poet who was commissioned to compose this epigram, as quoted by Thucydides (again, 1.132.2), was none other than Simonides of Keos (Simonides Epigrammata Graeca 17; I add here the testimony of an antiquarian who also happens to be named Pausanias, at Periegesis 3.8.2).

§52. So, the question is, what would have been the year, in the history of the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, when the Plataea Elegy could have been performed for the first time at this festival? I posit sometime between 479 BCE, the date of the Battle of Plataea, and 465 BCE, the estimated date of the death of Pausanias. I posit further a “Great Panathenaic” year—so, perhaps 478/7 or 474/3 or 470/69 or 466/5. But what I am arguing can succeed only if I am correct in thinking that this composition glorified the secondary role of Athens in defeating the Persian army at Plataea, not only the primary role of Sparta. My thinking here is supported by the historical fact that Simonides composed a Salamis Elegy, the text of which is attested (F 1 ed. West). In this case it is clear that the Salamis Elegy glorified the primary role of Athens in the Hellenic victory of the sea battle of Salamis in 479 BCE. And, in terms of my overall argumentation, not only the Salamis Elegy of Simonides but also his Plataea Elegy were in different years actually performed at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens.

§53. So, I am arguing that, the poetry of Simonides as performed in two different years at the festival of the Panathenaia was glorifying Athens not only in praise of this city’s primary role in the victorious sea battle at Salamis but also in praise of the same city’s secondary role in the victorious land-battle at Plataea.

§54. I find an apt point of comparison in the historical circumstances of a drama composed by the Athenian poet Aeschylus. As is well known to students of Classical Greek literature, the primary role of Athens in the naval victory at Salamis was amply glorified in the drama known as Persians, composed by the poet Aeschylus and performed in the year 472 at the Festival of the City Dionysia in Athens. As we learn from the ancient testimonia that accompany the textual tradition of Persians, this masterpiece of political glorification by the poet Aeschylus was the second in a set of three tragedies (Phineus/Persians/Glaucus, together with the accompanying satyr-drama Prometheus the Fire-Lighter) that were entered in competition for first prize at the festival, and the performance of this set of poetic compositions by this poet did indeed win first prize. I hasten to add the historical fact that the poet’s patron, as we can also read in the testimonia, was a rising politician who just happened to be none other than a young Pericles, who was the official sponsor in his role as khorēgos.

§55. In the light, then, of what we know about the political glorification of Athens by the poetry of Aeschylus, who foregrounds the Athenian victory in the sea-battle at Salamis, I highlight the fact that this poetry also glorified the secondary role of Athens in the victorious land-battle at Plataea. At line 817 of Persians, the ghost of the Persian King of Kings Dareios even refers to Plataea by name, and, in fact, the earlier lines 728–730 already signal a ghostly foreknowledge of a future disaster for the Persians in the land-battle of Plataea, soon to follow the already lamented disaster in the sea-battle of Salamis.

§56. The historical fact that the Persians of Aeschylus as performed in the city of Athens was sponsored by the statesman Pericles as patron can be compared with an ancient report (Eratosthenes of Cyrene, F 109 ed. Strecker, from Scroll 3 of the essay On Old Comedy) about the later sponsorship of the same drama as performed at a later time in the city of Syracuse, where the patron for the performance, directed by Aeschylus himself, was the tyrant Hieron—who as I noted earlier was on other occasions also a patron of Simonides.

§57. The convergence of Aeschylus and Simonides as beneficiaries of patronage by Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, can even be compared to a report about a rivalry between these two poets as beneficiaries of support from the early democratic régime of Athens: according to the anonymous Life of Aeschylus (8), prefixed in the textual transmission of Aeschylus, it is said that Simonides defeated Aeschylus for the state commission of composing an epigram in honor of the Athenian citizen-warriors (Nagy 1990:167n94),

Conclusion

§58. In this essay, I started by noting two social contexts for the singing of elegy, namely, performances by non-professionals at symposia and performances by professionals at public festivals (for the basics, I cite Nagy 2010:38; also a relevant essay by Cecilia Nobili 2011). Then I focused on professional performances, in the context of competitions in aulōidiā ‘singing to the accompaniment of the aulos’ at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. And a prime example of such performance, I went on to argue, was the Plataea Elegy of Simonides.

Bibliography

Bierl, A. 2001. Ritual und Performativität (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusen und der Phalloslieder fr. 851 PMG). München and Leipzig.

—. 2007. Ritual and Performativity. The Chorus in Old Comedy. Trans. A. Hollmann. Cambridge MA and Washington, DC. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Bierl.Ritual_and_Performativity.2009.

Boedeker, D., and D. Sider, eds. 2001. The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire. Oxford.

Bowie, E. L. 1986. “Early Greek Elegy, Symposium and Public Festival.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 106:13–35.

Calame, C. 2020. “Melic Poems and Melic Forms in the Comedies of Aristophanes: Poetic Genres and the Creation of a Canon.” The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext, ed. B. Currie and I. Rutherford, 112–128. Volume 5 of Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song. Mnemosyne Supplements 430. Leiden.

Nagy, G. 1990. Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Pindars_Homer.1990.

—. 1996. Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Poetry_as_Performance.1996.

—. 2002. Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music: The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens. Cambridge, MA and Athens. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Platos_Rhapsody_and_Homers_Music.2002. 3rd ed. in Classical Continuum 2021.10.01, https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/platos-rhapsody-and-homers-music-the-poetics-of-the-panathenaic-festival-in-classical-athens/.

—. 2007. “Did Sappho and Alcaeus Ever Meet?” In Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch–rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen. MythosEikonPoiesis 1.1., ed. A. Bierl, R. Lämmle, and K. Wesselmann, i.211–269. Berlin and New York. This printed version was republished online in 2009: https://chs.harvard.edu/curated-article/gregory-nagy-did-sappho-and-alcaeus-ever-meet-symmetries-of-myth-and-ritual-in-performing-the-songs-of-ancient-lesbos/. That version has now been rewritten and superseded in Essay 3 of Nagy 2023.12.28, Sappho from ground zero, https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/sappho-from-ground-zero/.

—. 2009|2008. Printed | Online version. Homer the Classic. Hellenic Studies 36. Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Homer_the_Classic.2008.

—. 2010|2009. Printed | Online version. Homer the Preclassic. Berkeley and Los Angeles. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Homer_the_Preclassic.2009.

—. 2010. “Ancient Greek Elegy.” The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, ed. K. Weisman, 13–45. Oxford. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:Nagy.Ancient_Greek_Elegy.2010.

—. 2018.11.22. “Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part 1: On the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia.” Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/homeric-problems-and-bibliographical-challenges-part-1-on-the-performances-of-rhapsodes-at-the-festival-of-the-panathenaia/.

—. 2018.11.30. “Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part 2: More on the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia.” Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/homeric-problems-and-bibliographical-challenges-part-2-more-on-the-performances-of-rhapsodes-at-the-festival-of-the-panathenaia/.

—. 2018.12.06. “Previewing an essay on the shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens.” Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/previewing-an-essay-on-the-shaping-of-the-lyric-canon-in-athens/.

—. 2020. “On the Shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens.” The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext, ed. B. Currie and I. Rutherford, 95–111. Vol. 5 of Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song. Mnemosyne Supplements 430. Leiden. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004414525_005.

—. 2021.11.29. “On the Shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens.” Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/on-the-shaping-of-the-lyric-canon-in-athens/. This online essay, dated 2021.11.29, is a revised preprint version of a chapter (number 4) originally printed in The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World: Transmission, Canonization and Paratext, ed. Bruno Currie and Ian Rutherford, 95–111, Volume 5 of Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song. Mnemosyne Supplements 430. Leiden. 2020. An abridged earlier version of my online essay appeared in Classical Inquiries, dated 2018.12.06: “Previewing an essay on the shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens.” https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/previewing-an-essay-on-the-shaping-of-the-lyric-canon-in-athens/. In the unabridged preprint version as now revised here, the page-numbers of the original version printed in 2020 are indicated within “curly” brackets (“{“ and “}”). For example, “{95|96}” indicates where p. 95 of the printed version ends and p. 96 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the original printed version.

—. 2024.05.18. Rewritten from Classical Inquiries 2018.11.22. “Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part 1: On the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia.” Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/homeric-problems-and-bibliographical-challenges-part-1-on-the-performances-of-rhapsodes-at-the-festival-of-the-panathenaia/.

—. 2024.05.19. Rewritten from Classical Inquiries 2018.11.30. “Homeric problems and bibliographical challenges, Part 2: More on the performances of rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia.” Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/homeric-problems-and-bibliographical-challenges-part-2-more-on-the-performances-of-rhapsodes-at-the-festival-of-the-panathenaia/.

Nobili, C. 2011. “Threnodic Elegy in Sparta.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 51:26–48. Power, T. 2010. The Culture of Kitharōidia. Hellenic Studies 15. Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Power.The_Culture_of_Kitharoidia.2010.

Price, S. D. 1990. “Anacreontic Vases Reconsidered.” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 31:133–175.

Shaw, P. J. 2001. “Lords of Hellas, Old Men of the Sea: The Occasion of Simonides’ Elegy on Plataea.” The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire, ed. D. Boedeker and D. Sider, 164–181. Oxford.

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von 1900. Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker. Berlin.