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influence of wine, it is remarked, even a very sensible man will sing, dance, chuckle, and say indiscreet things.55 The gods too are imagined as diverting themselves with music in their more carefree moments on Olympus. Apollo plays the lyre, the Muses sing, and sometimes other gods and goddesses dance.56 |
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Much of the elegiac and lyric poetry of the seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries was composed to be sung at the symposium, the post-prandial drinking-party at which, in aristocratic circles, the men of the house relaxed with their friends. They took it in turns to sing whatever they cared to: a little hymn to a god, a piece of political comment or exhortation, reflections on the joys of wine or the pains of love, moral advice, humorous abuse. At the end of the evening the merry guests were liable to carouse through the streets, still singing and dancing, and pay further visits on acquaintances. |
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So far as we can tell, pieces in elegiac metre were sung with a piper (male or female) providing the accompaniment, while those in more elaborate metres were accompanied by the singer himself on a lyre or less often a harp. A creative poet would keep producing new songs; others would repeat old ones. Theognis promises his friend Cyrnus that he has made his name immortal: |
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You'll be at every dinner, every feast,
and many a man will have you on his lips,
and lovely lads accompanied by alto pipes
will sing of you in voices sweet and clear.57 |
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Thus Theognis confidently expects that his own songs to Cyrnus will circulate widely at symposia, far into the future. Certainly at Athens in the fifth century symposiasts regularly sang songs or excerpts from 'classic' poetsAlcman, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Anacreon, Simonides, Phrynichus, Pindar, and othersincluding pieces originally composed for quite other purposes.58 |
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The ability to play the lyre was not uncommon among the archaic |
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55Od. 14. 463-6, cf. 1. 421, 17. 605, 18. 304, Hymn. Hom. Merc. 56. |
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56Il. 1. 603-4, Hes. Th. 36-52, ps.-Hes. Sc. 201-6, Hymn. Horn. Ap. 186-206, Titanomachia fr. 6 Bernabé = 5 Davies, Pind. Pyth. 1. 1-12, Hermippus fr. 31 K.-A. |
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57 Theog. 239-43. |
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58 See Pl. 6; Ar. Nub. 1354ff., fr. 235, Eup. frs. 148, 395, Timaeus, FGrH 566 F 32; R. Reitzenstein, Epigramm und Skolion (Giessen, 1893), 24-33. On the symposium generally as a setting for the performance of song see my Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin and New York, 1974), 11-17; W. Rösler, Dichter und Gruppe (Munich, 1980), 37ff., 87f., 94f., 98ff.; E. L. Bowie, JHS 106 (1986), 13-21; O. Murray (ed.), Sympotica (Oxford, 1990). |
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