Elegiac, iambic and melic poetry

Only of hexameter poetry have we examples earlier than 700 BC. But many genres first known to us from the seventh century were certainly thriving long before – that century gives us our first elegiac, iambic, and melic poetry because by then writing was spreading so that the works of celebrated poets could be recorded as those of their predecessors could not. Of our genres only elegiac significantly exploited those formulaic phrases which both aided the composition and recitation of epic and contributed to its oral preservation. Furthermore much of our poetry was composed with particular audiences and occasions in view, so that incentives to preserve it orally were fewer.
Also different from epic is the prominence given to the personality of the poet or singer. The first person becomes the focus of attention and ‘I’ (occasionally ‘we’) tell of ‘my’ loves, grieves, hates, and adventures. This has sometimes misled scholars into seeing the seventh century as an efflorescence of individualism. Not only, however, did such poetry exist earlier, but the ‘I’ of a poem cannot unquestioningly be referred to the person of the singer or poet. As traditional folk-songs and modern popular songs show, ‘I’ songs can be sung with feeling by many other than their composers. Rarely do we take such statements as autobiographical; sometimes indeed no composer is known. Hence we should hesitate to use fragments of such poets as Archilochus to ascribe strident self-assertion or to reconstruct biography.
Three more preliminaries. First, although what survives is ascribed to a few dozen figures, the genres exemplified, and many conventional themes and approaches, will have been attempted by hundreds over the Greek world. Most of our poetry was not, like epic, the virtuosos’s preserve, but was designed for occasions were amateurs contributed. This is clearest in the tradition about after-dinner singing at Athens: a myrtle branch circulated, and with it the obligation to sing…
Second, relative importance of text and accompaniment. Melic and elegiac poetry was sung, usually accompanied respectively on the lyre and the aulos (an oboe-like wind instrument). For no song can we reconstruct the vocal or instrumental line, and indeed we have only a rudimentary understanding of what it might have been like. In many songs music may have contributed more to initial impact than text, in many more it was an integral part of the effect. Doubtless the texts selected for copying and transmission were those whose words were of greater moment than music: but never forget that, even reading these poems aloud, we gain access only to part of their intended effect, and before impugning deficiency of thought or skill, ponder whether modern song-writers would gladly be judged on ‘lyrics’ alone.
Third, the work of almost all these poets has survived only in shattered fragments, preserved by later quotation or on papyri recovered from Graeco-Roman Egypt. We have a few dozen elegiac poems arguably complete, but of melic poets other than Pindar and Bacchylides only half a dozen complete songs remain.

Ewen Bowie


Ewen Bowie. Lyric and Elegiac Poetry. In: J. Boardman, J. Griffin, O. Murray ed. The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World. Oxford UP, 1986-1991