Chapter 2 - Stesichorus and the Name Game

Summary

The naming of poetic predecessors within one’s own composition, often associated with a so-called Hellenistic aesthetic, has a less explored heritage going back to the sixth century BCE. This chapter traces the strategy in its earliest phases, especially as we find it within lyric poetry, from the reported statement by Stesichorus [fr. 168 Finglass] that the Shield of Heracles was indeed composed by Hesiod, to the Simonidean allusion to Homer as his forerunner in praise-poetry (fr.11.15–18), and on to Pindar’s complex and varied namings of Archilochus, Terpander, and the masters of hexameter verse. It offers a typology of three main functions of such naming (approbation, criticism, or the representation of conversational interaction), and then an in-depth analysis of two problematic issues: the generic affiliations of Stesichorean art, and the difficulties related to the Pindaric naming of Homer, in particular at Nemean 7.20–7. The device of naming a predecessor emerges as a sort of reception degree-zero, whereby previous verbal art is highlighted, distilled, and set up as a foil, while a new performative space is opened up for the presentation of one’s own innovative productions.