Alcman (also Alkman, Greek Ἀλκμάν) (7th century BC) was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets. (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) The 7th century BC started on January 1, 700 BC and ended on December 31, 601 BC. // Overview Events Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria who created the the first systematically collected library at Nineveh A 16th century depiction of the Hanging Gardens of... Sparta (Doric: Spártā, Attic: SpártÄ“) is a city in southern Greece. ... The nine lyric poets (nine melic poets) were a canon of archaic Greek composers esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of critical study. ...

Biography

Family

The name of Alcman's mother is not known but his father may have been named either Damas or Titarus.^[1]

Origin

Alcman's nationality was a matter of dispute even in ancient days. Unfortunately, the vitae of the ancient authors were often deduced from biographic readings of their poetry and the details are often untrustworthy. Antipater of Thessalonica wrote that poets have "many mothers" and that the continents of Europe and Asia both claimed Alcman as their son.^[2] Frequently assumed to have been born in Sardis, capital of ancient Lydia, the Suda claims that Alcman was actually a Laconian from Messoa.^[3] The compositeness of his dialect may have helped to maintain the uncertainty of his origins, but the many references to Lydian and Asian culture in Alcman's poetry must have played a considerable role in the tradition of Alcman's Lydian origin. Thus, Alcman claims he learned his skills from the "strident partridges" (caccabides),^[4] a bird native to Asia Minor and not naturally found in Greece. The ancient scholars seemed to have referred to one particular song, in which the chorus says:^[5] Antipater of Thessalonica was the author of upwards of a hundred epigrams in the Greek Anthology. ... Dymaxion map by Buckminster Fuller shows land mass with minimal distortion as only one continuous continent A continent (Latin continere, to hold together) is a large continuous mass of land on the planet Earth. ... World map showing the location of Europe. ... World map showing the location of Asia. ... A recent view of the ceremonial court of the thermae–gymnasium complex in Sardis, dated to 211—212 AD Sardis, also Sardes (Lydian: Sfard, Greek: Σάρδεις, Persian: Sparda), modern Sart in the Manisa province of Turkey, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, the seat of a proconsul under... Lydia (Greek ) is an historic region of western Anatolia, congruent with Turkeys modern provinces of Ä°zmir and Manisa. ... Suda (Σουδα or alternatively Suidas) is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopædia of the ancient Mediterranean world. ... Laconia (; see also List of traditional Greek place names), also known as Lacedaemonia, is a prefecture in Greece. ... Anatolia (Greek: ανατολη anatole, rising of the sun or East; compare Orient and Levant, by popular etymology Turkish Anadolu to ana mother and dolu filled), also called by the Latin name of Asia Minor, is a region of Southwest Asia which corresponds today to...

Yet, given that there was a discussion, it cannot have been certain who was the third person of this fragment. Some modern scholars defend his Lydian origin on the basis of the language of some fragments^[6] or the content.^[7] However, Sardis of the seventh century BC was like modern Paris or New York, a cosmopolitan city. The implicit and explicit references to Lydian culture may be a means of describing the girls of the choruses as fashionable.

Career

One tradition, going back to Aristotle,^[8] holds that Alcman came to Sparta as a slave to the family of Agesidas (= Hagesidamus?^[9]), by whom he was eventually emancipated because of his great skill. Sparta (Doric: Spártā, Attic: Spártē) is a city in southern Greece. ... Slave redirects here. ... Manumission is the act of freeing a slave, done at the will of the owner. ...

Death

Aristotle reported that it was believed Alcman died from a pustulant infestation of lice (phthiriasis),^[10] but it may be a mistake for the philosopher Alcmaeon of Croton.^[11] According to Pausanias, he is buried in Sparta next to the tomb of Helen of Troy.^[12] Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... Suborders Anoplura (sucking lice) Rhyncophthirina Ischnocera (avian lice) Amblycera (chewing lice) Lice (singular: louse) (order Phthiraptera) are an order of over 3000 species of wingless parasitic insects. ... Alcmaeon of Croton (mid-fifth century B.C.) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and medical theorist. ... Pausanias (Greek: ) was a Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century A.D., who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. ... Helen was the wife of Menelaus and reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. ...

Text

Transmission

There were six books of Alcman's choral poetry in antiquity (ca. 50-60 hymns), but they were lost at the threshold of the Medieval Age, and Alcman was known only through fragmentary quotations in other Greek authors until the discovery of a papyrus in 1855 in a tomb near the second pyramid at Saqqâra in Egypt. The fragment, which is now kept at the Louvre in Paris, France, contains approximately 100 verses of a so-called partheneion, i.e. a song performed by a chorus of young unmarried women. In the 1960s, many more fragments were discovered and published in the collection of the Egyptian papyri from a dig of an ancient garbage dump at Oxyrhynchus. Most of these fragments contain partheneions, but there are also other kinds of hymns among them. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... A pyramid is any three-dimensional structure where the upper surfaces are triangular and converge on one point. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Blank papyrus. ... Oxyrhynchus (Greek: Οξύρυγχος; sharp-nosed; ancient Egyptian Per-Medjed; modern Egyptian Arabic el-Bahnasa) is an archaeological site in Egypt, considered one of the most important ever discovered. ...

Dialect

Pausanias says that even though Alcman uses the Doric dialect, which is normally not particularly euphonious, it has not at all spoiled the beauty of his songs.^[13] Pausanias (Greek: ) was a Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century A.D., who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. ...

Alcman's songs were composed in the Greek Dorian dialect of Sparta (the so-called Laconian dialect). This is seen especially in the orthographic peculiarities of the fragments like α = η, ω = ου, η = ει, σ = θ, σδ = ζ, -οισα = -ουσα (the last two of which are not attested in Laconian itself, though) and the use of the Doric accentuation. [[Im Category: ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ...

Apollonius Dyscolus describes Alcman as συνεχῶς αἰολίζων "constantly using the Aeolic dialect".^[14] However, the validity of this judgment is limited by the fact that it is said about the use of the digamma in the third-person pronoun Fός "his/her"; it is perfectly Doric as well. Yet, many existing fragments display prosodic, morphological and phraseological features common to the Homeric language of Greek epic poetry. This mixing of features adds complexity to any analysis of his works. Apollonius Dyscolus (fl. ... Digamma (upper case , lower case ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral. ... Homeric Greek is the form of Ancient Greek that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. ...

The British philologist Denys Page comes to the following conclusion about Alcman's dialect in his influential monograph (1951): Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ... A monograph is a scholarly book or a treatise on a single subject or a group of related subjects. ...

In his dissertation on the dialect of Alcman (2001), the Danish philologist George Hinge reaches to the opposite conclusion: that Alcman composed in the same poetic language as Homer ("the common poetic language"); however, since the songs were performed by Spartans, they were also transmitted with a Laconian accent and written down with a Laconian orthography in the 3rd cent. BCE.[1] This article is about the thesis in dialectics and academia. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ...

Metrical form

To judge from his larger fragments, Alcmans poetry was normally strophic: Different metres are combined into long stanzas (9-14 lines), which are repeted several times. Strophic form, or chorus form, is a sectional and/or additive way of structuring a piece of music based on the repetition of one formal section or block played repeatedly. ... Meter (British English spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. ... In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. ...

One popular metre is the dactylic tetrameter (in contrast to the dactylic hexameter of Homer and Hesiod). Dactyl may mean: A dactyl, a creature in Greek mythology. ... In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet: And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea (Anapaest tetrameter) (Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib) You who are bent and bald and blind (Iambic tetrameter, except for the first foot which is a trochee) (W... Dactyllic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter) is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. ... Homer (Greek: , ) was an early Greek poet and aoidos (rhapsode) traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now identified by some as possibly Hesiod Hesiod (Hesiodos, ) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC. Hesiod and Homer, with whom Hesiod is often paired, have been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived...

Content

Girls' choruses and initiation

The type of songs Alcman composed most frequently appear to be hymns, partheneia (maiden-songs), and prooimia (preludes to recitations of epic poetry). Much of what little exists consists of scraps and fragments, difficult to categorize. The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, and one of the major forms of narrative literature. ...

The choral lyrics of Alcman were meant to be performed within the social, political, and religious context of Sparta. Most of the existing fragments are lines from partheneia or "maiden-songs" (Greek παρθένος "maiden"), i.e. hymns sung by choruses of unmarried women. The partheneia were performed as a type of drama by choruses of girls during festivals in connection with their initiation rites. This genre has been described exhaustively by the French scholar Claude Calame (1977).

The girls express a deep affection for their chorus leader:

Earlier research tended to overlook the erotic aspect of the love of the partheneions; thus, instead of the verb translated as "gards", τηρεῖ, at the end of the first quotation, the papyrus has in fact the more explicit τείρει, "wears me out (with love)". However, there is now a consensus in most modern scholarship that this homoerotic love, which is similar to the one found in the lyrics of the contemporaneous poetress Sappho, matches the pederasty of the males and was an integrated part of the initiation rites.^[17] At a much later period, but probably relying on older sources, Plutarch confirms that the Spartan women were engaged in such same sex relationships.^[18] It remains open if the relationship also had a physical side and, if so, of what nature. Yet, the very fact that the love was codified by a man, Alcman, and even proclaimed during the festivals of the city, is a clear indication that the romantic feelings of the girls were not only tolerated silently, but even promoted loudly. In the late twentieth century, male homoeroticism flourished in the visual arts. ... Ancient Greek bust. ... Zephyrus and Hyacinthus Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo was a patron hero of pederasty in Sparta. ...

Some scholars think that the chorus was divided in two halves, who would each have their own leader; at the beginning and close of their performance, the two halves performed as a single group, but during most of the performance, each half would compete with the other, claiming that their leader or favorite was the best of all the girls in Sparta. There is, however, little evidence that the chorus was in fact divided. The role of the other woman of Alcman's first partheneion, Aenesimbrota, is contested; some consider her indeed a competing chorus-leader,^[19] others think that she was some sort of witch, who would supply the girls in love with magic love-elixirs like the pharmakeutria of Theocritus's Second Idyll,^[20] and others again argue that the she was the trainer of the chorus like Andaesistrota of Pindar's Second Partheneion^[21] Theocritus (Greek Θεόκριτος), the creator of Ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC. Little is known of him beyond what can be inferred from his writings. ... Pindar (or Pindarus) (522 BC – 443 BC), perhaps the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. ...

Other songs

Alcman probably composed choral songs for the initiation rites of Spartan boys as well. Thus, the Spartan historian Sosibius (ca. 200 BCE) says that songs of Alcman were performed during the Gymnopaedia festival (according to Athenaeus^[22]): Sosibius (in Greek Σωσιβιoς; lived 3rd century BC) was the chief minister of Ptolemy Philopator (221–203 BC), king of Egypt. ... Corybantian dance, the type of dance most likely danced on Gymnopedia festivals (image from Smiths Dictionary of Antiquities) Gymnopaedia derives from the ancient Greek γυμνοπαιδία, a festivity in Sparta, where naked youths would perform war dances. ...

Praise for the gods, women, and the natural world

Regardless of the topic, Alcman's poetry has a clear, light, pleasant tone which ancient commentators have remarked upon. Details from rituals and festivals are described with care, even though the context of some of those details can no longer be understood. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... A festival or fest is an event, usually staged by a local community, which centers on some theme, sometimes on some unique aspect of the community. ...

Alcman's language is rich with visual description. He describes the yellow color of a woman's hair and the golden chain she wears about her neck; the purple petals of a Kalchas blossom and the purple depths of the sea; the "bright shining" color of the windflower and the multi-colored feathers of a bird as it chews green buds from the vines.

Geographic features get close attention: ravines, mountains, flowering forests at night, the quiet sound of water lapping over seaweed. Animals and other creatures fill his lines: birds, horses, bees, lions, reptiles, even crawling insects.

Notes and references

Greek Anthology (also Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Ancient and Byzantine periods of Greek Literature. ... Valentin Rose (1829-1916), a classicist and textual critic, received his doctorate from the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin in 1854. ... Herakleides Lembos was an Ancient Greek philosophical writer. ... History of Animals (or Historia Animalium, or On the History of Animals) is a text by Aristotle. ... The Deipnosophistae (deipnon, dinner, and sophistai, professors; original Greek title Deipnosophistai, English Deipnosophists) may be translated as The Banquet of the Learned or Philosophers at Dinner or The Gastronomers. ...

Literature

Texts and translations

Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article:

To Artemis Orthia

• Greek Lyric II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympis to Alcman (Loeb Classical Library) translated by David A. Campbell (June 1989) Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-99158-3 (Original Greek with facing page English translations, an excellent starting point for students with a serious interest in ancient lyric poetry. Nearly one third of the text is devoted to Alcman's work.)
• Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets translated by Willis Barnstone, Schoken Books Inc., New York (paperback 1988) ISBN 0-8052-0831-3 (A collection of modern English translations suitable for a general audience, includes the entireity of Alcman's parthenion and 16 additional poetic fragments by him along with a brief history of the poet.)
• Alcman. Introduction, texte critique, témoignages, traduction et commentaire. Edidit Claudius Calame. Romae in Aedibus Athenaei 1983. (Original Greek with French translations and commentaries; it has the most comprehensive critical apparatus.)
• Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Vol. 1. Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus. Edidit Malcolm Davies. Oxonii: e typographeo Clarendoniano 1991.

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... Carmina Cantabrigiensia, Manuscript C, folio 436v, 11th century Textual criticism or lower criticism is a branch of philology or bibliography that is concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts and manuscripts. ...

Secondary literature

• Calame, Claude: Les chœurs des jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque, vol. 1-2 (Filologia e critica 20-21 ). Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1977. Engl. transl. (only vol. 1): Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 1997, rev. ed. 2001. ISBN 0-7425-1524-9 .
• Hinge, George: Die Sprache Alkmans: Textgeschichte und Sprachgeschichte (Serta Graeca 24). Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag 2006. ISBN 3-89500-492-8.
• Page, Denys L.: Alcman. The Partheneion. Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1951.
• Pavese, Carlo Odo: Il grande partenio di Alcmane (Lexis, Supplemento 1). Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert 1992. ISBN 90-256-1033-1.
• Puelma, Mario: Die Selbstbeschreibung des Chores in Alkmans grossem Partheneion-Fragment, Museum Helveticum 34 (1977) 1-55.
• Risch, Ernst: 'Die Sprache Alkmans'. Museum Helveticum 11 (1954) 20-37 (= Kleine Schriften 1981, 314-331).