Chapter 1 - Messages and Heralds

Summary

While the figure of herald and the actual angelia at the athletic site sit at the beginning of athletic praise, these real figures and actual proclamations are not the only heralds and messages that find their way into epinikian song and inscribed epigram. Rather, explicit and implicit references to the figure of the herald and the angelia are frequent in both genres. This chapter examines implicit and explicit heralds and messages across epinikian song and inscribed epigram. It focuses on the figure of the herald and the message and their ability to authenticate what are, in fact, secondary and elaborated speech-acts. By attaching themselves to the voice of the herald at the Games, epinikian songs and epigrams demand that audiences take their praise seriously, as if it were the voice of herald itself in the sacred landscape of a Panhellenic sanctuary.