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Lesbian citharodes including Arion and ending with Perikleitos sometime in the sixth century.23 We hear that the Spartans always offered the platform first to descendants of Terpander, then to any other Lesbian singer who might be present. Sappho praised someone as 'supreme, like the singer from Lesbos performing abroad'.24 Other musicians from overseas who performed at Sparta included Thaletas and Polymnestus.25 Some say that Tyrtaeus the elegist and Alcman were also of non-Spartan origin, but this is doubtful. We hear also of one Xenodamus of Cythera, who composed songs for dancing chorus that some classified as paeans. The place of performance is not specified, but for a poet from Cythera Sparta is an obvious guess.26 |
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Seventh-century song, so far as our evidence goes, was either stichic (as in epic recitation) or strophic. In the islands of the central Aegean and east of it, strophes were of the 'closed' type (p. 209), small in scale and clearly divided into single verses. In the Aeolian area there was the archaic-looking tradition represented by Sappho and Alcaeus. From Ionia we have the 'epodic' songs of Archilochus, built from simple dactylic and iambo-trochaic units, and the widely popular form that is the elegiac couplet. Elegiacs were commonly sung to aulos accompaniment in social contexts, presumably to conventional melodies that the aulete could repeat (or vary) for as long as required. Some of these melodies were probably attributed to Olympus or Klonas, both of whom are associated with elegy. The elegiac poet Mimnermus was himself an aulete, according to later sources.27 In all this Aeolian and Ionic strophic song we may suppose that the shaping of melodic lines was subject to the general principles adumbrated in Chapter 7 (pp. 210f.). |
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In mainland Greece and the west, at any rate at Sparta by the end of the century, larger strophic structures were being used in songs for dancing choruses. This is probably what is meant by Glaucus of Rhegium's statement that Thaletas 'imitated the melodic forms of Archilochus but increased their length'.28 In Alcman we find |
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23 See above, n. 8. |
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24 Cratinus fr. 263, Arist. fr. 545, Aelius Dionysius l 7, Paus. Atticista µ 14; Sappho fr. 106. |
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25 Paus. 1. 14. 4. |
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26 Pratinas, PMG 713; ps.-Plut. De mus. 1134bc, probably from Glaucus of Rhegium. |
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27 See my Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus, 12, 13f.; K. Bartol, Eos 75 (1987), 261-78. |
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28 Ps.-Plut. De mus. 1134d. |
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