The Proem of Simonides’ Plataea Elegy and the Circumstances of Its Performance

Abstract

Abstract This chapter offers a literary-historical rather than a philological interpretation of the proem of the new Simonidean elegy on the battle of Plataea (n W2), the longest and best-preserved part of the poem.1 The text is a largely hypothetical text, the fruit of the editors’ interpretation of the material available to them and of stopgaps proposed exempli gratia by West and by Parsons. However, while it appears impossible to reconstruct Simonides’ actual words with any degree of certainty, one can outline the contents of the piece with some confidence (and, even more important, outline the structure of the elegy as a whole). So, while any aesthetic evaluation of the work is out of the question (apart, that is, from an appreciation of the high quality of the proem), one can discuss the reasons behind the composition, the way in which-and the audience for which the elegy was composed. I offer some comments on a number of passages in fr. 11.2

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 56 citations exist upstream.