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The author examines how commands and requests are expressed in a corpus of Greek and Latin literature, in order to show how the politeness systems of ancient Greek and Latin may have differed.

Summary

Chapter 19 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho takes the narrative into the culture of fifth and fourth-centry Greece, showing Sappho’s immense and varied significance, made e.g. into a typical figure of fun on the comic stage, but also Plato’s praeceptor amoris in the Phaedrus.

In Aristophanes’ Wasps, Philocleon says that he and his fellow jurors do not acquit Oeagrus until he has recited a speech from the Niobe. Scholars have almost universally assumed that this was the name of a contemporary tragic actor, despite its extreme rarity. This article argues that the reference is rather to the father of Orpheus. As a figure from the generation before the archetypal bard, ‘an Oeagrus’ represents the old-fashioned poetry to which Philocleon and his fellow jurors are devoted.

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Chapter 2 - Towards a Comparison of Greek and Roman Politeness Systems

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Chapter 19 - Sappho in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greek Literature

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SINCE ORPHEUS WAS IN SHORT PANTS: REASSESSING OEAGRUS AT ARISTOPHANES, WASPS 579–80

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3 results

Chapter 2 - Towards a Comparison of Greek and Roman Politeness Systems

Summary

Chapter 19 - Sappho in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greek Literature

Summary

SINCE ORPHEUS WAS IN SHORT PANTS: REASSESSING OEAGRUS AT ARISTOPHANES, WASPS 579–80