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Skolion
A skolion (from grc, σκόλιον) (pl. skolia), also scolion (pl. scolia), was a song sung by invited guests at banquets in ancient Greece. Often extolling the virtues of the gods or heroic men, skolia were improvised to suit the occasion and accompanied by a lyre, which was handed about from singer to singer as the time for each scolion came around. "Capping" verses were exchanged, "by varying, punning, riddling, or cleverly modifying" the previous contribution. Etymology Although Greek folk etymology connects skolion with δύσκολος 'difficult', the likeliest connection is with σκέλος 'bent limb, part' as joined verse or repartee. This use is comparable to Japanese renga 'linked verse'. Background Skolia are often referred to as 'banquet songs', 'convivial songs", or 'drinking songs'. The term also refers to poetry composed in the same form. In later use, the form was used in a more stately manner for chorus poetry in praise of the gods or heroes. Terpander ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terpander
Terpander ( grc-gre, Τέρπανδρος ''Terpandros''), of Antissa in Lesbos, was a Greek poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC. He was the father of Greek music and through it, of lyric poetry, although his own poetical compositions were few and in extremely simple rhythms. He simplified rules of the modes of singing of other neighboring countries and islands and formed, out of these syncopated variants, a conceptual system. Though endowed with an inventive mind, and the commencer of a new era of music, he attempted no more than to systematize the musical styles that existed in the music of Greece and Anatolia. Terpander is perhaps the earliest historically certain figure in the music of Ancient Greece. Biography About the time of the Second Messenian War, he settled in Sparta, to where, according to some accounts, he had been summoned by command of the Delphic Oracle to compose the differences that had arisen between different classes in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sappho
Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the "Ode to Aphrodite" is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers; Charaxos (Χάραξος), Larichos (Λάριχος) and Eurygios ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Weir Smyth
Herbert Weir Smyth (August 8, 1857 – July 16, 1937) was an American classical scholar. His comprehensive grammar of Ancient Greek has become a standard reference on the subject in English, comparable to that of William Watson Goodwin, whom he succeeded as Eliott Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University. Life He was educated at Swarthmore ( A.B. 1876), Harvard (A.B. 1878), Leipzig, and Göttingen ( Ph.D. 1884). From 1883 to 1885, he was instructor in Greek and Sanskrit at Williams College, and then for two years, he was reader in Greek at Johns Hopkins. From 1887 to 1901, he was professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr. In the latter year, he was called to Harvard as professor of Greek and in 1902, and he was appointed Eliott professor of Greek literature, succeeding Goodwin. From 1899 to 1900, he was professor of the Greek language and literature at the American Classical School at Athens. From 1889 to 1904, he was secretary of the American Philological Association ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard August Reitzenstein
Richard August Reitzenstein (2 April 1861, Breslau – 23 March 1931, Göttingen) was a German classical philologist and scholar of Ancient Greek religion, hermetism and Gnosticism. He is described by Kurt Rudolph as “one of the most stimulating Gnostic scholars.” With Wilhelm Bousset, he was one of the major figures of the ''Religionsgeschichtliche Schule'' ( history of religions school). His ''Poimandres: Studien zur Griechisch-Ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur'' of 1904 was a pioneer scholarly study of the ''Poimandres'', which he compared to the '' Shepherd of Hermas''. In collaboration with the German Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg, Richard August Reitzenstein founded a famous collection of Greek and Egyptian papyri, purchased during an expedition in Egypt in 1898/99.Fr. COLIN, ''Comment la création d’une ‘bibliothèque de papyrus’ à Strasbourg compensa la perte des manuscrits précieux brûlés dans le siège de 1870'', La revue de la BNU, 2, 201 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balliol College
Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the foundation and endowment for the college. When de Balliol died in 1268, his widow, Dervorguilla, a woman whose wealth far exceeded that of her husband, continued his work in setting up the college, providing a further endowment and writing the statutes. She is considered a co-founder of the college. The college's alumni include four former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom ( H. H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, and Boris Johnson), Harald V of Norway, Empress Masako of Japan, five Nobel laureates, several Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, and numerous literary and philosophical figures, including Shoghi Effendi, Adam Smith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Aldous Huxley. John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anno Domini
The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", taken from the full original phrase "''anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi''", which translates to 'in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ'. The form "BC" is specific to English and equivalent abbreviations are used in other languages: the Latin form is but is rarely seen. This calendar era is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus, ''AD'' counting years from the start of this epoch and ''BC'' denoting years before the start of the era. There is no year zero in this scheme; thus ''the year AD 1 immediately follows the year 1 BC''. This dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, but was not widely used until the 9th century. Traditionally, English follows Latin usage by placing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seikilos Epitaph
The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The epitaph has been variously dated, but seems to be either from the 1st or the 2nd century CE. The song, the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in the ancient Greek musical notation, was found engraved on a tombstone (a stele) from the Hellenistic town of Tralles near present-day Aydın, Turkey, not far from Ephesus. It is a Hellenistic Ionic song in either the Phrygian octave species or Iastian tonos. While older music with notation exists (for example the Hurrian songs), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition. Inscription text and lyrics The following is the Greek text found on the tombstone (in the later polytonic script; the original is in majuscule), along with a transliteration of the words which are sung to the melody, and a somewhat free English t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pindar
Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet hims ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symposium Scene Nicias Painter MAN
In ancient Greece, the symposium ( grc-gre, συμπόσιον ''symposion'' or ''symposio'', from συμπίνειν ''sympinein'', "to drink together") was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation.Peter Garnsey, ''Food and Society in Classical Antiquity'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 13online Sara Elise Phang, ''Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 263–264. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's ''Symposium (Plato), Symposium'' and Xenophon's ''Symposium (Xenophon), Symposium'', as well as a number of ancient Greek literature, Greek poems such as the elegiac couplet, elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Ancient Greek art, Greek and Etruscan art that shows similar scenes. In modern usage, it has co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC (though this excludes a number of Greek city-states free from Alexander's jurisdiction in the western Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica). In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Praxilla
Praxilla of Sicyon ( grc-gre, Πράξιλλα), was a Greek lyric poet of the 5th century BC, from Sicyon on the Gulf of Corinth. Eusebius dates her ''floruit'' to 451/450 BC (the second year of the 82nd Olympiad). Little of Praxilla's work survives – five fragments in her own words, and three paraphrases by other authors.Plant, I.M. ''Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome''. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004 pp 38-39. These vary in style: three are skolia (drinking songs) one is a hymn to Adonis, and one is a dithyramb. One of the skolia is in a metre named the Praxilleion after her. The three works known only in paraphrase are all versions of myths. In the second century AD, Athenaeus reports that Praxilla was particularly known for her skolia. Praxilla was well regarded in antiquity. Antipater of Thessalonica lists her first among his canon of nine "immortal-tongued" women poets, and the sculptor Lysippus (also from Sicyon) sculpted her in bronze. Sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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