Ancient - Greek verse - lyric/ode

After studying Ancient Greek drama, I am now looking at Ancient Greek verse. I have already touched upon the type of verse sometimes used in tragedies, comedies and satyrs, but now I will look at Greek verse in more detail.

Greek lyric poetry is associated with the 7th-5th centuries BC, but continued into later centuries. Like Greek drama, lyric poetry is associated with the political, social and intellectual culture of Greek city-states; primarily Athens. 

Many Greek lyrics were written as occasional poetry, verse composed for a public performance by a soloist or chorus to mark special occasions.The word 'lyric' derives forom the tradition of poetry put to music and sung with the accompaniment of the lyre.

Greek lyrics were written in a meter that was based on patterns of long and short syllables (in contrast to English verse, which is written in a meter based on stress). Iambic and trochaic meters, most commonly iambic trimeter and trochaic tetrameter, alternate long and short syllables. These imabic meters were thought to reflect the rhythms of Greek spoken by most ordinary people and so were usually used for dialogue in Greek plays during the Golden Age of Drama. Later lyric poets composed verse in a variety of metrical forms, including complex triadic forms of strophe, antistrophe and epode. The strophe and antisrophe would have a similar metrical pattern and the epode would take a different form. 

Greek lyrics were generally divided into elegiac poetry and iambic poetry. Elegiac poetry was written in elegiac couples with a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. The hexameter line was a similar meter to the form used in epic poetry, and these poems often used military or didactic themes, also similar to epics. Iambic poetry was written in iambic trimeter and was frequently employed for poems of a less serious subject matter than elegiac poetry or epics.

The themes of Greek lyric broadly include politics, war, the heroic past, the gods, sports, money, drinking, youth, old age, death and both heterosexual and homosexual love. Greek lyrics often celebrate athletic victories (epinikia), offer religious devotion in hymns and dithyrambs, exhort soldiers to valour in paeans or commemorate the dead. Choruses of maidens (unmarried, virginal women) would often sing partheneias, or 'maiden-songs'; love poems would express unfulfilled desire and either proffer seductions or blame their former lover for a breakup; and sometimes invective poems would attack, insult or shame a personal enemy.

The earliest known Greek lyric poet was Archilochus, who excelled at the invective verse and largely wrote iamic poetry. He wrote in versatile and innovative forms of meter and was the earliest known Greek writer to compose verse entirely on the theme of his own emotions and experiences. Only fragments of his work remains, but the ancient Greeks revered him as one of their best writers, on the same level as epic poets Homer and Hesiod. The fragments of his work suggest he was an embittered adventurer and an archetypal poet of blame in the invective form. He presented himself as a realist to the point of bitterness in war and love. His invectives were said to have driven his former fiance and his father to suicide.

The most famous later Greek lyric poets are known as the Nine Lyric Poets, who were mainly writing in the 3rd century BC. The Nine are divided among those who composed choral verse for a group of people, and those who composed monodic verse for a soloist. The Nine are (in chronological order); Alcman (choral), Sappho (monodic), Alcaeus (monodic), Anacreon (monodic), Stesichorus (choral), Ibycus (choral), Simonides (choral), Bacchylides (choral) and Pindar (choral).

Alcman wrote mainly in dactylic tetrameter. His lyric verse has a light and pleasant tone. He describes festivals with rich visual descriptions, as well as describing the physical attributes of women with lots of allusions to colour and similies comparing them to nature. He paid specific attention to nature and wrote about mountains, forests and animals.

Stesichorus composed verses in units of three stanzas (strophe, antistrophe and epode), a format later followed by other choral lyric poets such as Bacchylides and Pindar. His triadic structure allowed for novel arrangments of dactylic meter - the defining meter of Homeric epic - which allowed for Homeric phrasing to be adapted to new settings. Indeed, Stesichorus often wrote about epic stories in the lyric form; his verse often being concerned with Greek mythology, in particular the Trojan war.

Bacchylides composed verse similarly to Stesichorus. He used traditional epithets borrowed from epic poetry, and indeed he regularly wrote lyrics for a sophisticated social elite. However, he also had an innovative vocabularly and uses more lyrical compositions, such as compound adjectives. He is renowned for his use of imagery, using similies to compare people to nature. His lyrics abound with picturesque detail of moons, stars, suns, mountains and rivers. He wrote lyrics offered as a hymn and dance of devotion to the gods, and also heroic odes to honour Greek heroes.

Pindar composed lyric verse similarly to Stesichorus and Bacchylides, but his work is the best preserved of all of the Nine, and he is widely regarded as one of the best. He exalted lyric, choral poetry and articulated a passionate faith in what men, by the grace of gods, can achieve. His lyric verse is a meeting ground for gods, heroes and men. He reveres the gods in odes; they are the embodiment of power and are uncompromisingly proud of their nature and in defense of their position. Pindar subjects fortune and fate to divine will.

The gods are never depicted in a demeaning role in Pindar's odes, and traditional myth are changed if the gods are presented in a morally ambiguous way. Pindar's gods are above ethical issues and he makes it clear that it is not for men to judge them by ordinary human standards. Heroes can be judged according to ordinary human standards, unlike the gods, and so they do sometimes demean themselves in Pindar's verse. However, mythological heroes are usually the descendents of divine unions between gods and mortals, so they are often regarded as an intermediate group between gods and men. A hero may have a flaw, but his ultimate status is not diminished by an occasional blemish and instead rest on a summative view of his heroic exploits.

Pindar also wrote victory odes for the triumphs of athletes from the Olympic games. His odes capture the prestige and aristocratic grandeur of the moment of  victory. They are usually composed in honour of boys, youths and men who have enjoyed recent victories, but older victories and lesser ones are also sometimes celebrated, usually as a pretext for addressing other achievements and issues.

Pindar's athletic victory odes usually begin with an invocation to gods or the Muses, followed by praise of the athletic victor or his family, ancestors or hometown. A narrated myth follows in the longest section of the poem, which usually exemplifies a moral, whle aligning the poet and his audience with the world of gods and heroes. The ode ends with eulogies of trainers or relatives who have won past events, as well as with prayers for hope for future success. These odes are usually triadic in structure with stanzas grouped together in threes. Each triad comprises two identical stanzas and a third stanza differing in length and meter but rounding off the lyrical movement. The shortest odes comprise of single triad, the largest comprise thirteen. A few odes are monostrophic (each stanza identical in length in meter). These odes seemed to have been composed for athletes' victories, whereas the triadic odes are suited to choral dances.

Simonides was the nephew of Bacchylides and a bitter rival of Pindar. He composed lyric poetry almost entirely for public performances, unlike previous lyric poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed lyrics for more intimate occasions, such as to entertain families and friends. He used compound adjectives and decorative epithets, yet also kept restraint and balance. His expression is clear and simple, relying on straightforward statement. Simonides wrote encomiums, a type of victory ode, that were similar to hymns, but were written for athletes and ordinary people, instead of just to gods or heroes. He differed from his contemporary Pindar because he championed a tolerant, humanistic outlook that celebrated ordinary goodness, and recognized the immense pressures that life places on human beings, instead of venerating the perfection of the gods. He was specifically adept a lively compositions suited to be put to dance. Simonides was also successful at dithyrambic competitions, where lyrics were offered up to the god Dionysus as part of a festival.

Ibycus composed lyrics with mythological themes and structured his verses in triads (units of three stanzas each, called strophe, antistrophe and epode), in the same vein as Stesichorus. He is also remembered for his poems about homoerotic love, and for exalting the ancient Greek social custom of pederasty whereby an adult man would have an official romantic or sexual relationship with an adolescent male.

The most famous monodic lyric poets were Sappho and Alceus. They both wrote in Aeolic verse with stanzas of four lines written in hendecasyllables (11 syllables). They both perfected their own versions of this stanza; Sappho's later became known as the Sapphic stanza, and Alceus' as the Alcaic stanza. They were contemporaries who both lived on the island of Lesbos.

Sappho's verse is often concerned with a female narrator telling of her infatuations and love for another woman. She used vivid imagery often associated with love poetry, such as the full moon in a starry sky or the solitary red apple at the tree-top. Her verse was deeply emotional and celebrates homosexuality between women. The word 'lesbian' derives from the island of 'Lesbos', in honour of Sappho. Alcaeus wrote a broad range of themes of lyric verse; including political songs about power struggles on Lesbos, love songs, hymns to the gods, commemoration of Greek heroes and drinking songs.

Anacreon is third monodic lyric poet. His lyrics were structured around the alternation of long and short vowel sounds, similarly to most other ancient Greek poetry. His verse touched on universal themes of love, infatuation, revelry, parties and festivals, disappointment and everyday life and people. His hymns were highly regarded, and were often written to honour the gods. He also regularly wrote drinking songs, usually to the wine god Bacchus and to Dionysus, the god of drinking and pleasure. However, it is perhaps too obvious to describe him as a drunk; he describes the more extreme forms of intoxication as only fit for barbarians.