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The Emergence of the Lyric Canon
Theodora A Hadjimichael
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T H E EM E R G E N C E O F T H E LY R I C C A N O N
The Emergence of
the Lyric Canon
THEODORA A. HADJIMICHAEL
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Theodora A. Hadjimichael 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
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contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
For you, in absentia
† Dora A. Alexiou
ἐν ἀγκάλαις ἀστέρων τε καὶ ἀγγέλων
Acknowledgements
This book was many years in the making, and it travelled with me to various
corners of the world. Its story started as a doctoral thesis at University College
London supervised by Chris Carey, but it has grown over the years and it
resembles only to a small percentage that initial endeavour. I am particularly
thankful to Chris for his feedback throughout my doctoral years, for his
generosity and patience, enthusiasm and positive thinking, his support and
guidance, but mostly for teaching me how to constantly grow as a researcher
and as a scholar. Maria Wyke asked the right questions before the thesis was
submitted; her background as a Latinist and her specialization in Modern
Reception added to my research a rejuvenating tone and often made me
consider things differently. My two examiners, Felix Budelmann and Angus
Bowie, provided criticism, useful advice, and guidance both at my viva and the
years after. Although this book is very different from its early form, I feel the
need to thank Myrto Hatzimichali, Simon Hornblower, the late Georgios
Katsis, the late Robert Sharples, and Joseph Skinner who helped me with
various intellectual challenges that I faced while completing my doctoral
thesis. Giambattista D’Alessio and his Fragments Seminar at Kings College
London contributed to the development of my skills in Papyrology, and added
to my enthusiasm of dealing with ancient Greek scholarship, textual chal-
lenges, and fragmented questions. If I allow my memory to travel further back,
my academic life would not have started without the foundations that were
laid in my undergraduate years at the National and Kapodistrian University
of Athens, Greece, where I first encountered Pindar and Bacchylides at the
lectures of Mary Yossi.
Since completing my doctorate I have been very fortunate to have been
exposed to various academic environments and scholarly approaches, as
I spent time in the USA, the Netherlands, and Germany before I returned to
the UK. My ideas benefited exceptionally from my wandering academic life,
which much enhanced my academic training and richly shaped my profile as
a classicist. The initial steps of this book’s revisions started with a Margo
Tytus Summer Fellowship at the Classics Department at the University of
Cincinnati, followed by a short-term fellowship at Radboud University in
Nijmegen in the Netherlands that was sponsored by the Institute for His-
torical, Literary and Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Arts. A post-doctoral
fellowship at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany that
was funded by LMUexcellent offered me the required time to think carefully,
write, and prepare the manuscript. The book the reader holds in their hands
viii Acknowledgements
was completed and finalized while I held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
COFUND fellowship at the University of Warwick UK. The financial support
of the DFG Exzellenzinitiative and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement
No. 713548 is gratefully acknowledged. I thank the late Getzel Cohen and
the Classics Faculty at the University of Cincinnati, and also André Lardinois
at Radboud University, Martin Hose at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
München, and Alison Cooley and David Fearn at the University of Warwick
who supported the applications that eventually turned into successful fellowships.
The 2011–12 Advanced Seminar in the Humanities at the Venice Inter-
national University in Italy played a decisive role in my future career, and
I owe special thanks to Ettore Cingano. Friends and colleagues, scattered all
over the world, supported me and stood by me during this journey: Peter
Agócs, June Angelides, Nineta Avani, Emrys Bell-Schlatter, Ingrid Charvet,
Jenn Finn, Lisa Fuhr, Kyriaki Ioannidou, Petros Koutsoftas, Zacharoula
Petraki, Stephany Piper, Zoe Stamatopoulou, Hans Teitler, Bobby Xinyue,
my co-fellows at Warwick Ellie Martus and Elizabeth Nolte, and so many
other friends and contacts I met in my peripatetic life. Peter, Nineta, Zoe, and
Bobby helped me understand that it is time for this book to come to life. I am
most grateful to Margarita Alexandrou for reading and commenting on an
earlier version of the manuscript and to the anonymous reader of Oxford
University Press, whose acute comments and criticism much improved this
book. All remaining errors and follies are of course my own. Many thanks are
also due to Charlotte Loveridge, Tom Perridge, and Georgina Leighton at
OUP for their help and patience in answering all the questions of a first-time
author, and to my copy-editor Christine Ranft for her attention to detail and
for her assistance in preparing this book for publication. Lydia Shinoj oversaw
the production process and I am very thankful to her and to the production
team for their resourcefulness and professionalism. The maps that are in-
cluded in the book were prepared by Michael Athanson whose impeccable
work maps visually and literally the scope of this project. Both the production
of the maps and the inclusion of the vase images were made possible with
funds from my post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Warwick. The
Dali image was discovered with Elena Giusti on a rainy afternoon, and its use
on the cover of this book was made possible in part by a contribution of funds
from the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick
Finally, my immense gratitude goes to my family—my parents and my
brothers—who always believe in me. Words cannot suffice to thank my parents
for their financial, moral, and emotional support, their unconditional love
and self-sacrifice. They and my brothers constantly remind me that I should
always keep my feet on the ground, and for this I am eternally grateful.
This book is dedicated to my cousin, who was gone too soon.
9 July 2018
List of Maps and Figures
Maps
1.1. Geographical distribution of the poetic activity of the nine lyric poets 24
6.1. Locations of known libraries in the Mediterranean, in relation to lyric
activity, from the fifth to the second century BC 221
Figures
5.1. Douris cup. F 2285. Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz 186
Photographer: Johannes Laurentius. © bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung,
SMB / Johannes Laurentius
5.2. Detail of Douris cup (Fig. 5.1) 188
Photographer: Johannes Laurentius. © bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung,
SMB / Johannes Laurentius
5.3. AN1896 1908 G.138.3.a. Onesimos/Panaitios Painter. Attic red figure
cup (kylix) fragments showing seated figure with scroll in front
of bearded double flute (aulos) player 189
Image © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
5.4. Attic red figure hydria of the Polygnotos Painter Group
(Sappho hydria), National Archaeological Museum, Athens,
inv. no. 1260 190
Photographer: Giannis Patrikianos. © Hellenic Ministry of Culture
and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund
Conventions and Abbreviations
The names of the Greek authors and their works appear either unabbreviated or have
been abbreviated following the conventions in LSJ. For ancient authors beyond the
scope of LSJ I follow the abbreviations of the OCD; Latin authors appear as in OCD or
unabbreviated. Journals bear the acronyms used in L’Année Philologique. Σ is used for
scholion, and in the case of the scholia to Aristophanes it is stated with the appropriate
subscript when the scholia are vetera (Σ v) or recentiora (Σ r), whether they refer to the
commentaries of Tzetzes (ΣTz), those of Thomas Magistrus (ΣTh) or Triclinianius
(ΣTr). I include the numbering of the most important editions of lyric fragments by
using the relevant abbreviation and/or the name of the editor in each case and by
separating them with a solidus (/). I state in the text where I favour certain editions,
and in cases where textual discrepancies matter I give the relevant variants. For
fragments I often give not only the fragment number in the edition referred to in
each case but also the reference to the Greek text where the fragment was quoted, and
I connect the two with an equal to (=). For the passages of Pindar and Bacchylides
I give the abbreviation of the relevant edition only for fragments.
AB Austin, C. and Bastianini, G. (2002), Posidippi Pellaei quae

supersunt. Milan.
Adler Adler, A. (1928 38), Suidae Lexicon, 5 vols. Leipzig.
AGEP Stadtmüller, H. (1894 1906), Anthologia Graeca Epigrammatum
Palatina cum Planudea, 3 vols. Leipzig.
ALG² Diehl, E. (1936 42), Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, edition altera,
2 vols. Leipzig.
ARV² Beazley, J. D. (1963), Attic Red Figure Vase Painters, 2nd edn,
3 vols. Oxford.
Bethe Bethe, E. (1900 37), Pollucis Onomasticon. Fasc. 1: Libri I V; Fasc. 2:
Libri VI X; Fasc. 3: Indices. Leipzig.
Broggiato Broggiato, M. (2001), Cratete di Mallo: I Frammenti. La Spezia.
Brussich Brussich, G. F. (2000), Laso di Ermione: Testimonianze e
Frammenti. Pisa.
Brunck Brunck, R. Fr. P. (1794 1814), Anthologia Graeca sive Poetarum
Graecorum lusus. Indices et commentarium adjecit Fridericus
Jacobs, 13 vols. Leipzig.
Calame Calame, C. (1983), Alcman. Rome.
Campbell Campbell, D. A. (1982 93), Greek Lyric, 5 vols. Loeb Classical
Library 142 4, 461, 576. Cambridge MA.
CEG Hansen, P. A. (1983), Carmina Epigraphica Graeca Saeculorum
VIII V a.Chr.n. Berlin.
xiv Conventions and Abbreviations
CLGP I.1 Fasc.2.1: Bastianini, G., Haslam, M., Maehler, H., Montanari,
F. and Römer, C. E. (2013), Commentaria et Lexica Graeca in
Papyris Reperta. Pars I: Commentaria et Lexica in Auctores.
Volume 1: Aeschines Bacchylides. Fasc. 2.1 Alcman. Berlin.
I.1 Fasc.4: Bastianini, G., Haslam, M., Maehler, H., Montanari,
F. and Römer, C. E. (2012), Commentaria et Lexica Graeca in
Papyris Reperta. Pars I: Commentaria et Lexica in Auctores.
Volume 1: Aeschines Bacchylides. Fasc. 4 Aristophanes
Bacchylides. Berlin.
Colonna Colonna, A. (1951), Himerii Declamationes et Orationes: Cum
deperditarum Fragmentis. Rome.
Consbruch Consbruch, M. (1906), Hephaestionis Enchiridion. Leipzig.
Delectus Meineke, A. (1841), Delectus Poetarum Graecorum Anthologiae
Graecae. Berlin.
DF Domingo Forasté, D. (1994), Claudii Aeliani Epistulae et
Fragmenta. Stuttgart.
Di Dindorf, W. (1855), Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam ex
codicibus aucta et emendata, 2 vols. Oxford.
Diehl Diehl, E. (1903 6), Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum
Commentaria, 3 vols. Leipzig.
Diels Diels, H. (1895), Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor
posteriores commentaria. Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca
vol. 10. Berlin.
Dilts Dilts, M. R. (1974), Claudii Aeliani Varia Historia. Leipzig.
Dindorf Dindorf, W. (1829), Aristides, 3 vols. Leipzig.
Dindorf Σ Dindorf, W. (1838), Aristophanis Comoedia. Vol 4. Pars I: Scholia
Greca ex codicibus et emendata. Oxford.
DK Diels, H. (1964), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 11th edn. rev.
W. Kranz, 3 vols. Berlin.
Doutreleau et al. Doutreleau, L., Hemmerdinger, B., Rousseau, A., and Mercier,
Ch. (1969 2002), Contre les hérésies: Irénée de Lyon: édition
critique d’après les versions armenienne et latine, 10 vols. Paris.
Dr. Drachmann, A. B. (1903 27), Scholia Vetera in Pindari Carmina,
3 vols. Leipzig.
Ebert Ebert, J. (1972), Griechische Epigramme auf Sieger an gymnischen
und hippischen Agonen. Berlin.
Erbse Erbse, H. (1969 88), Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Scholia
vetera), 7 vols. Berlin.
Ercoles Ercoles, M. (2013), Stesicoro: Le Testimonianze Antiche. Bologna.
FCG Meineke, A. (1839 59), Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum, 5 vols.
Berlin.
Conventions and Abbreviations xv
FGE Page, D. L. (1981), Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge.
FGrHist Jacoby, F. et al. (1923 ), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker.
Leiden.
FHG Müller, C. (1878 85), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, 5 vols.
Paris.
Finglass Davies, M. and Finglass, P. J. (2014), Stesichorus: The Poems.
Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 54. Cambridge.
Fort. Fortenbauch, W. W., Huby, M. P., Sharples, R. W. and Gutas,
D. (eds) (1992), Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life,
Writings, Thought and Influence, Parts I II. Leiden.
H C Hansen, P. A. and Cunningham, I. C. (eds) (2009), Hesychii
Alexandrini Lexicon: Volumen IV; Τ Ω. Editionem post Kurt Latte
continuans recensuit et emendavit. Berlin.
Harder Harder, A. (2012), Callimachus: Aetia, 2 vols. Oxford.
Henry Henry, R. (1959 91), Photius Bibliothèque, 9 vols. Paris.
Hermann Hermann, G. (1830), Aristophanis Nubes cum scholiis. Denuo
recensitas cum adnotationibus suis et plerisque Io. Aug. Ernestii.
Leipzig.
Hilg. Hilgard, A. (1901), Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem
Grammaticam Leipzig.
Hobein Hobein, H. (1910), Maximi Tyrii Philosophumena. Leipzig.
HWRh Üding, G. (ed) (1998), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik.
Darmstadt.
Ieranò Ieranò, G. (1997), Il Ditirambo di Dioniso: Le Testimonianze
Antiche. Pisa.
IEG² West, M. L (1989 92), Iambi et Elegi Graeci: Ante Alexandrum
Cantati, editio altera aucta aque emendata, 2 vols. Oxford.
IG Inscriptiones Graecae (1873 ), Berlin.
Körte Körte, A. (1912), Menandrea ex papyris et membranis vetustissimis.
Leipzig.
Koster Koster, W. J. W. (1975), Scholia in Aristophanem. Pars I
Prolegomena de Comoedia, Scholia in Archarnenses, Equites, Nubes.
Fasc. IA Prolegomena de Comoedia. Groningen.
Kühn Kühn, C. G. (1821 33), Klaudiu Galēnu Hapanta: Claudii Galeni
Opera omnia, 20 vols. Leipzig.
Latte Latte, K. (1966), Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon. Volumen II; Ε Χ.
Copenhagen.
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LdH Schmitt, H. H. and Vogt, E. (eds) (2005), Lexikon des Hellenismus.
Wiesbaden.
xvi Conventions and Abbreviations
LSJ Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., Stuart Jones, H., McKenzie, R., Glare,
P. G. W. (1996), A Greek English Lexicon, with a Revised
Supplement, 9th edn completed in 1940. Oxford.
M Maehler, H. (1989), Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis. Pars II:
Fragments; Indices. Leipzig.
Maehler Maehler, H. (2003), Bacchylidis Carmina cum Fragmentis. Leipzig.
Martano Martano, A. (2012), ‘Chamaeleon of Heraclea: The Sources, Text,
and Translation’, in Martano, A., Matelli, E. and Mirhady, D. (eds),
Praxiphanes of Mytilene and Chamaeleon of Heraclea: Text,
Translation, and Discussion. RUSCH XVIII. New Brunswick NJ,
157 228.
Meineke Meineke, A. (1849), Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt.
Berlin.
Millis Olson Millis, B. W. and Olson, S. D. (2012), Inscriptional Records for the
Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II² 2328 2325 and Related Texts.
Leiden.
Mirhadi Mirhadi, A. (2001), Dicaearchus of Messana: The Sources, Text,
and Translation’, in Fortenbauch, W. W. and Schütrumpf, E. (eds),
Dicaearchus of Messana: Text, Translation, and Discussion.
RUSCH X. New Brunswick NJ, 3 138.
Moretti Moretti, L. (1953), Iscrizioni agonistiche greche. Rome.
OCD Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A. (eds) (2012), The Oxford
Classical Dictionary, 4th edn. Oxford.
Pack Pack, R. A. (1963), Artemidori Daldiani: Onirocriticon libri V.
Leipzig.
PCG Austin, C. and Kassel, R. (eds) (1983 98), Poetae Comici Graeci.
8 vols. Berlin.
I Comoedia Dorica Mimi Plyaces (2001); II Agathenor Aristonymus
(1991); III.2 Aristophanes Testimonia et Fragmenta (1984);
IV Aristophon Crobulus (1983); V Damoxenus Magnes (1986);
VI.2 Menander (1998); VII Menecrates Xenophon (1989);
VIII Adespota (1995).
The relevant volume is given in small Roman numerals after the
abbreviation.
Pf. Pfeiffer, R. (1949 53), Callimachus, 2 vols. Oxford.
PLG Bergk, Th. (1878 82), Poetae Lyrici Graeci, 4th edn, 3 vols. Leipzig.
PLF Lobel, E. and Page, D. L. (1955), Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta.
Oxford.
PMG Page, D. L. (1962), Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford.
PMGF Davies, M. (1991), Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta,
Vol 1: Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus. Oxford.
Conventions and Abbreviations xvii
Poltera Poltera, O. (2008), Simonides Lyricus, Testimonia und Fragmente:
Einleitung, kritische Ausgabe, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Basel.
Powell Powell, J. U. (1925), Collectanea Alexandrina: Reliquiae Minores
Poetarum Graecorum Aetatis Ptolemaicae 323 146 A.C. Epicorum,
Elegiacorum, Lyricorum, Ethicorum. Oxford.
Radt Radt, S. (2002 11), Strabons Geographika: Mit Übersetzung und
Kommentar, 10 vols. Göttingen.
RE Pauly, A. Fr., Wissowa, G., Kroll, W. et al. (eds) (1894 1980),
Real Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Neue
Bearbeitung begonnen von Georg Wissowa unter Mitwirkung
zahlreicher Fachgenossen, 83 vols. Stuttgart.
Rose Rose, V. (1886), Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta.
Leipzig.
Scheer Scheer, E. (1958), Lycophronis Alexandra. Vol. 2: Scholia continens,
editio altera ex editione anni MCMVIII lucis ope expressa. Berlin.
Schmidt Schmidt, M. (1862), Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon, vol. 4 Appendix.
Jena.
Schneider Uhlig Schneider, R. and Uhlig, G. (1878), Apollonii Dyscoli quae superunt,
Voluminis primi Fasc. 1. Leipzig.
SIG Dittenberg, G. (1915 24), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,
3rd edn, 4 vols. Leipsig.
SLG Page, D. L. (1974), Supplementum Lyricis Graecis: Poetarum
Lyricorum Graecorum Fragmenta quae recens innotuerunt. Oxford.
SEG (1923 ), Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Amsterdam.
SH Lloyd Jones, H. and Parsons, P. (1983), Supplementum
Hellenisticum. Berlin.
SIG Dittenberg, G. (1915 24), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,
3rd edn, 4 vols. Leipzig.
Slater Slater, W. J. (1986), Aristophanes Byzantii Fragmenta. Berlin.
SLG Page, D. (1974), Supplementum Lyricis Graecis. Oxford.
Schwartz Schwartz, E. (1887 91), Scholia in Euripidem, 2 vols. Berlin.
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Vol. 1 Didascaliae Tragicae, Catalogi Tragicorum et Tragoediarum,
Testimonia et Fragmenta Tragicorum Minorum (ed. Snell, B. 1971,
2nd edn. 1986); Vol. 2 Fragmenta Adespota (eds. Kannicht, R. and
xviii Conventions and Abbreviations
Snell, B. 1981); Vol. 3 Aeschylus (ed. Radt, S. 1985); Vol. 4 Sophocles
(ed. Radt, S. 1977, 2nd edn 1999); Vol. 5 Euripides (ed. Kannicht, R; 2
parts 2004).
The relevant volume is given in Arabic numerals after the
abbreviation.
V Voigt, E M. (1971), Sappho et Alcaeus Fragmenta. Amsterdam.
van Krevelen van Krevelen, D. A. (1939), Philodemus: De Muziek. Amsterdam.
W² Wehrli, F. (1967 78), Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und
Kommentar, 2nd rev. edn, Basel.
I Dikaiarchos (1967a); II Aristoxenos (1967b); III Klearchos
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Lampsakos (1969b); VI Lykon und Ariston von Keos (1968b);
VII Herakleides Pontikos (1969c); VIII Eudemos von Rhodos
(1969d); IX Phainias von Eresos. Chamaileon. Praxiphanes (1969e);
X Hieronymos von Rhodos. Kritolaos und seine Schüler. Rückblick:
Der Peripatos in vorchristlicher Zeit. Register (1969f);
Supplementband I Hermippos der Kallimacher (1974);
Supplementband II Sotion (1978).
The relevant volume number is given in small Roman numerals
either after W² or after the date.
Wendel Wendel, C. T. E. (1914), Scholia in Theocritum vetera: Adiecta sunt
scholia in technopaegnia scripta. Leipzig.
W H Wachsmuth, C. and Hense, O. (1884 1912), Ioannis Stobaei
Anthologium, 5 vols. Berlin.
Note to the Reader
The term lyric is used throughout this book in association with the canonical
nine lyric poets and marks primarily their canonization in the Hellenistic era.
Lyric is interchanged with melic, which is used mostly in cases where the
audience and their experiencing of poetry as oral performance are involved. In
those cases lyric song, melos, or melic poem may also be used. Where the
materiality of the physical text is implicated the term lyric is used instead. In
passages where the nine lyric poets are recalled in connection with their poetic
compositions the term melopoios is also used alongside the term lyric in order
to emphasize the performative character of their poetic compositions.
I transliterate and italicize the Greek terms of lyric songs that were recog-
nized in the Hellenistic era as distinct lyric genres and as classifying categories
of song, i.e. enkōmion, hyporchēma, thrēnos, epinikion, partheneion, skolion,
hymnos, prosodion. Transliteration and italicization applies also to other
Greek terms that are included in the text, and I note both the omega and
the iota with a macron (ō, ē). The Greek word symposion, however, is written
‘symposium’.
Translations throughout the book are my own, although I have consulted
the relevant volumes in the Loeb Classical Library and the Aris and Phillips
series for those of the Greek texts. All dates are BC, unless stated otherwise.
I have been unable to access a few books that were published in 2018, and
thus the reader will find important gaps in the Bibliography: i.e. Rawles, R.
(2018), Simonides the Poet: Intertextuality and Reception, Cambridge;
Spelman, H. (2018), Pindar and the Poetics of Permanence, Oxford; Schorn, S.
(2018), Studien zur hellenistischen Biographie und Historiographie. Berlin.
Introduction
The Lyric Canon
Two anonymous epigrams and a twenty-line elegiac poem preserved in the

scholia to Pindar are only some of the several ancient testimonia which record
nine names who are grouped together and are identified as the Lyric Canon.¹
The adespoton epigram AP 9.184 is the first evidence for the existence of a
selection of nine lyric poets.
Πίνδαρε, Μουσάων ἱερὸν στόμα, καὶ λάλε Σειρὴν
Βακχυλίδη Σαπϕοῦς τ’ Αἰολίδες χάριτες
γράμμα τ’ Ἀνακρείοντος, Ὁμηρικὸν ὅς τ’ ἀπὸ ῥεῦμα
ἔσπασας οἰκείοις, Στησίχορ’, ἐν καμάτοις,
ἥ τε Σιμωνίδεω γλυκερὴ σελὶς ἡδύ τε Πειθοῦς
Ἴβυκε καὶ παίδων ἄνθος ἀμησάμενε
καὶ ξίϕος Ἀλκαίοιο, τὸ πολλάκις αἷμα τυράννων
ἔσπεισεν πάτρης θέσμια ῥυόμενον,
θηλυμελεῖς τ’ Ἀλκμᾶνος ἀηδόνες, ἵλατε, πάσης
ἀρχὴν οἳ λυρικῆς καὶ πέρας ἐστάσατε.
Pindar, holy mouth of the Muses, and loquacious Siren
Bacchylides, and the Aeolian graces of Sappho,
Anacreon’s written word and you, Stesichorus,
who drew off from the Homeric stream in your own works,
Simonides’ delightful page, and you, Ibycus,
who gathered the sweet flower of Persuasion and of boys,
and Alcaeus’ sword that poured frequently the blood of tyrants
in defence of ancestral lawful customs,
and Alcman’s soft singing nightingales, be gracious,
you who established the beginning and end of lyric poetry.
AP 9.184
¹ According to Barbantani (1993) 7 the number of the lyric poets is nine in order to create
parallels with the group of the nine Muses. Whether or not this is true, multiplies of three are
strikingly common in ancient canons.
The Emergence of the Lyric Canon. Theodora A. Hadjimichael, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198810865.003.0001
2 The Emergence of the Lyric Canon
We possess no secure chronological information on the epigram, and its date
is thus disputed in modern scholarship. The epigram’s technique, according to
Wilamowitz, suggests that it was not a composition of the Roman period but
rather that it belonged to the time of Bion (c.100 ). Stadtmüller on the other
hand attributes the epigram to Alcaeus of Messene, and consequently dates it
at the end of the third century , while Silvia Barbantani groups it with the
other epigrammatic lists of the second/first century —Antipater Sidonius
AP 7.81 for the Seven Sages, AP 9.58 for the Seven Wonders of the World,
and Antipater Thessalonike AP 9.26 for the Seven Poetesses—and offers an
approximate date in the second century .² The existence of more than one
epigram with similar catalogues of names suggests that (canonical) lists
preserved as epigrams were presumably a trend in the second/first century .
Such a correlation could be used as a helpful (though not absolute) indicator to
date AP 9.184 in that period. The epigram’s hymnic tone through which the
distinct poetic qualities of the lyric poets are enumerated endows each one of
them with exemplary status. It additionally indicates that the epigram was
composed at a period when the Lyric Canon was well established and the
distinguishing features of its individual members were also well recognized.
Each poet is perceived and defined in terms of his/her poetic corpus and its
distinctive features, which are also projected to the figure of each poet: Pindar
is portrayed in a divine aura and in association with the Muses; Bacchylides’
poetic sound resembles that of the Sirens; Sappho is remembered for her
graceful Aeolic poetry; Anacreon is depicted as the poet of the written word;
Stesichorus’ work is characterized by Homeric qualities; Simonides’ poetic
sweetness and Ibycus’ eroticized poems are presented as renowned features of
their personae; Alcaeus is recalled for his political verse and Alcman for his
softly sung partheneia.³
Beyond the attributes to individual poets the epigram becomes an import-
ant source of information not only for the literary history and reception of
lyric poetry but also for the status this canonical list had acquired by its date of
composition.⁴ The very label λυρική (‘lyric’) defines every poet who is named
in the epigram, and embraces all nine of them as a group. We can observe the
persistence of the term λυρικός in other lists and later sources as the principal
² Wilamowitz (1900) 5; Stadtmüller (1906) in AGEP iii.144; Barbantani (1993) 8 and (2009)
303, where she claims that this particular epigram ‘could belong to a scholastic and rhetorical
environment’; Acosta Hughes (2010) 214 dates the epigram in the first century .
³ See also Acosta Hughes (2010) 214 16; Phillips (2016) 94 comments on how the epigram
combines evaluative and stylistic terms that reflect performance (ἱερὸν στόμα, λάλε Σειρήν) and
terms that point to the materiality of the book (γράμμα, σελίς).
⁴ Depending on whether we date AP 9.184 in the third century , the epigram may contain
the first known use of the term λυρική, on which Wilamowitz (1900) 5 and Acosta Hughes
(2010) 217; cf. Budelmann (2009) 2n. 3 who suggests that the earliest occurrence of the term
appears in SIG³ no. 660 (160 ).
Introduction: The Lyric Canon 3
qualification applied to the same group of poets the above epigram evokes.
The very term λυρική draws attention to the single characteristic that unifies
the named poets: the lyre.⁵ This is exceptionally important, as the term not
only reveals the common musical accompaniment of these poets’ compos-
itions, but also reflects the performative context within which their poetry was
once sung and circulated. It implicitly therefore recalls the song-culture of
previous centuries, while the term also attests to the Hellenistic classification
of these poets and to the representation and recognition of lyric poetry as a
distinct poetic category.⁶ Wilamowitz also draws attention to the concluding
phrase of the epigram—καὶ πέρας ἐστάσατε—and argues that the phrase
suggests that by the time of the epigram’s composition the canon of the nine
lyric poets was fixed and closed.⁷ Not only the concluding phrase but also
the entire concluding sentence of the epigram is revealing, and should thus
be interpreted as a complete whole—πάσης | ἀρχὴν οἳ λυρικῆς καὶ πέρας
ἐστάσατε. The concluding verse implies that those who are named within the
epigram (οἵ ) establish the beginning and the end (ἀρχήν . . . καὶ πέρας) of the
whole of lyric poetry (πάσης . . . λυρικῆς). Such a formulation demonstrates
the exclusive and selective character of the list, and confirms as a result its
distinctive nature as canonical. At the same time, it asserts Wilamowitz’s
conclusion on its strictness.
It is also worth considering and briefly commenting on the other testimonia
for the Lyric Canon. A second anonymous epigram lists once more the nine
lyric poets (AP 9.571). The order in which the lyric poets are presented in this
epigrammatic catalogue is different from that of AP 9.184, and each poet is
again qualified with certain poetic characteristics, some of which are also
different from the ones enumerated in AP 9.184. Still, their recollection and
inclusion in AP 9.571 suggest that these recalled poetic features, too, were
accepted as definitive of the poet’s reception and representation.
Ἔκλαγεν ἐκ Θηβῶν μέγα Πίνδαρος ἔπνεε τερπνὰ
ἡδυμελεῖ ϕθόγγῳ μοῦσα Σιμωνίδεω
λάμπει Στησίχορός τε καὶ Ἴβυκος ἦν γλυκὺς Ἀλκμάν
λαρὰ δ’ ἀπὸ στομάτων ϕθέγξατο Βακχυλίδης
Πειθὼ Ἀνακρείοντι συνέσπετο ποικίλα δ’ αὐδᾷ
⁵ Cf. Σ Pi. Capitula de praefationem pertinentia c (Dr. iii, p. 307) Ἐπειδὴ λυρικός ἐστιν ὁ
Πίνδαρος, καὶ πρὸς λύραν ᾄδονται τὰ ποιήματα αὐτοῦ (‘for Pindar is a lyric poet, and his poems
are sung to the lyre’); Commentaria in D.T. Ars Grammatica p. 21.15 17 Hilg. Ταῦτα οὖν τὰ
ποιήματα καλεῖται λυρικά, ὡς ὑπὸ λύραν ἐσκεμμένα καὶ μετὰ λύρας ἐπιδεικνύμενα (‘these poems
are called lyric because they were taken together with the lyre and they were also performed to
the lyre’); Tzetzes Σ ad Lycophron p. 2, 3 5 Scheer λυρικῶν δὲ γνωρίσματα τὸ πρὸς λύραν τὰ
τούτων ἄδεσθαι μέλη (‘the characteristics of the lyric poets were that their melē were sung to the
lyre’). See Färber (1936) 17 16 on the connection between ‘lyric’ and ‘lyre’ in our sources.
⁶ Cf. Acosta Hughes (2010) 217.
⁷ Wilamowitz (1900) 7; cf. Phillips (2016) 93n. 22 on how the position of πέρας ἐστάσατε at
the end of the epigram marks physically the closure and ‘limit’ of the poem.
Ἀλκαῖος, κύκνος Λέσβιος, Αἰολίδι.
ἀνδρῶν δ’ οὐκ ἐνάτη Σαπϕὼ πέλεν, ἀλλ’ ἐρατειναῖς
ἐν Μούσαις δεκάτη Μοῦσα καταγράϕεται.
Pindar shouted greatly from Thebes; the muse of Simonides
with the sweet singing sound was breathing with pleasure;
Stesichorus shines and so does Ibycus; Alcman was sweet;
Bacchylides uttered a sweet voice from his multifarious mouth;
Persuasion accompanied Anacreon;
Alcaeus, the Lesbian swan, cried in Aeolic in various ways.
Among men Sappho is not the ninth;
she is rather recorded among the lovely Muses as the tenth Muse.
AP 9.571⁸
This second epigram is considered an imitation of AP 9.184, and was presum-

ably composed with the aim to enumerate the nine lyric poets, concluding
climactically with Sappho.⁹ Sappho is set apart not only as the sole female
voice among male poets but also as the sole figure from within the canon that
was inscribed among the Muses.¹⁰ Sappho’s recognition as the tenth Muse
might indeed be due to her female gender. Yet, the coincidence of this
identification with the conclusion of the epigram implicitly conveys the idea
that the whole poem was composed with the aim to honour Sappho. The verb
καταγράϕεται ascribes to her inclusion in the group of the Muses a formal
tone, and gives the impression that it was permanently set in stone, and was as
a result unquestionable. The presence of the Muses creates an additional
association between the two epigrams. In AP 9.184 the lyric figure portrayed
in the company of the Muses is Pindar, whose name opens the epigram. In
AP 9.571 Pindar holds his place as the first poet to be named in the list, but
the Muses now move to the end of the epigram, where they embrace the sole
female figure in the canon of the lyric poets, Sappho.
The Pindaric scholia further confirm the selective character of the lyric list.
An elegiac poem survives in three of the manuscripts that came down to us
with scholia on the Pindaric victory odes, and a number of other manuscripts
with Pindaric scholia deliver twice the same list in prose (Σ Pi. De IX Lyricis,
Dr i, pp. 10–11). All three testimonia are revealing. The elegiac poem is
entitled Εἰς τοὺς ἐννέα λυρικούς (‘To the nine lyric poets’), and reads to a
certain extent like a text that was included in the school curriculum; the reader
is asked to learn (μάνθανε). The list is practically a biographical poem for all
⁸ I translate στομάτων as ‘multifarious mouth’ in order to denote the plural of the noun in
Greek and with the aim to point at the generic variety of Bacchylides’ poetic oeuvre.
⁹ Wilamowitz (1900) 5; Barbantani (1993) 9. For an analysis of the epigram, Barbantani
(1993) 10; Acosta Hughes (2010) 216 17.
¹⁰ See AP 9.66 and AP 9.506 for depictions of Sappho as the tenth Muse, and AP 9.26 where
the list of the nine poetesses is parallelized to the group of the nine Muses.
the nine lyric poets, and consciously provides the reader with collected
information about the hometown and origin (πάτρην γενεήν τε), the family
(πατέρας), and the dialect (διάλεκτον) of each poet, as well as about the musical
harmonies they used for the performance of their poems (ἁρμονίην). The title
of the poem, which is mirrored in the introductory phrase to the other two lists
in the other Pindaric manuscripts—Λυρικοί ποιηταὶ μουσικῶν ἀσμάτων ἐννέα
and ἐννέα δέ οἱ λυρικοί, Σ Pi. De IX Lyricis (Dr i, p. 11)—reveals the list’s
exclusive character and the main binding feature of these nine names: the
catalogue includes only nine poets (ἐννέα), all of which are lyric poets (λυρικοί).
Such a characterization suggests that their poetry was classified as lyric, recall-
ing once more the lyre that accompanied the performance of their poems. The
same elegiac poem opens with the puzzling phrase ἐννέα τῶν πρώτων λυρικῶν.
The adjective πρώτων could denote chronology—the oldest of the lyric poets—
or quality and priority—the first and best of the lyric poets. Given how the
catalogue signifies selection, as we have already seen with the two anonymous
epigrams, it is more likely that the phrase is an indication of the selective
character of the list. It would in all probability therefore stand for ‘the nine first
lyric poets’, and only by association would the phrase ἐννέα τῶν πρώτων
λυρικῶν become ‘the nine best lyric poets’.¹¹
One last usually ignored list is preserved in the Pindaric scholia. The
scholiast concludes his metrical analysis and prosodic exegesis of the compos-
itions of the lyric poets in Capitula de praefationem pertinentia (Dr iii,
pp. 306–10) with a reference to the lyric poets themselves (Capitula f, Dr iii,
p. 310). The discussion opens with a remark about the use of strophes,
antistrophes, and epodes in the compositions of the lyric poets (Capitula b,
Dr iii, p. 306), and closes by naming and enumerating these lyric poets.
Λυρικοὶ δέ εἰσιν οὗτοι Ἀλκμὰν Στησίχορος Ἀλκαῖος Ἴβυκος Ἀνακρέων Σιμωνίδης
Πίνδαρος Βακχυλίδης
These are the lyric poets: Alcman, Stesichorus, Alcaeus, Ibycus, Anacreon,
Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides. Capitula f, Dr. iii, p. 310
Surprisingly, the catalogue does not include Sappho, who is later mentioned
along with Alcaeus and Anacreon as an example of a lyric poetess whose
poems were monostrophic. Unless we assume that we are dealing with a
scribal error, a conclusion that the manuscript’s condition does not support,
Sappho’s exclusion from this list could designate the scholiast’s confusion of
whether her poems were performed to the accompaniment of the lyre. As
specified by the scholiast, the lyre is nonetheless the defining characteristic of
the term λυρικός and accordingly the defining feature of the group of the lyric
poets whom he names—λυρικοί: οὕτω δὲ προσηγορεύθησαν διὰ τὸ πρὸς λύραν
¹¹ On the elegiac poem found in the Pindaric scholia, Labarbe (1968); Gallo (1974) 91 104.
ᾄδεσθαι τὰ ποιήματα αὐτῶν (Capitula f, Dr iii, p. 310, ‘lyric poets: they were
called such because their poems were sung to the lyre’). The omission could
indeed also be accidental. Nevertheless, even with this evidently confusing
final list, where Sappho is both excluded from the lyric catalogue and singled
out at the end, we can reasonably conclude that our Hellenistic and post-
Hellenistic sources and testimonia on the Lyric Canon confirm its stable
character in antiquity.
CANONS AND CANO NIZATION
This very brief discussion of the testimonia for the existence of a selection of
nine lyric poets which modern scholarship perceived as the Lyric Canon is a
prerequisite in order to understand the picture promoted in the sources that
deliver this selection. It also formulates the background against which this
book positions itself, and serves as an important introduction to its purpose.
The present book will examine the emergence and establishment of the
Lyric Canon in antiquity, by investigating its formation as a cultural, socio-
logical, and ideological process, thus by taking into account the context(s)
within which the Lyric Canon was shaped in antiquity. Being a modern
concept that is inferred by ancient writers rather than explicitly declared in
ancient sources, the very designation ‘Lyric Canon’ deserves some explan-
ation. Our sources themselves explicate already the term ‘Lyric’, as we have
seen. The poetry that was recognized as lyric was the poetry composed in
strophic metres and performed to the lyre, according to the Pindaric scholiast.
In retrospect therefore the poets who composed these poems were also called
lyric—the λυρικοί as specified both in AP 9.184 and in the scholia to Pindar.
The Alexandrians also recognized this poetry as a distinct poetic category.
Although one should refrain from assuming that performances of lyric poetry
ceased to exist completely in the Hellenistic era, the Alexandrians’ under-
standing of sixth- and fifth-century lyric poetry was in all probability not
based on experiencing for themselves a performance of a sixth- and fifth-
century lyric song. It was rather based presumably on the correlation between
the names of the poets who composed this kind of poetry and their poetic
compositions which the Alexandrian scholars possessed as material texts in
the Library.
The term ‘Canon’ as instrument of cultural memory, as implied in its
modern sense, is itself an invention of the modern era. The term was coined
as a literary metaphor by David Ruhnken in his Historia Critica Oratorum
Graecorum, published in 1768. ‘Canon’ was initially used for religious pur-
poses, and defined the religious scripts that a Christian should or was allowed
to read, and which constituted as a result the biblical Canon. The restrictive
use of ‘canon’ might have been suggested to Ruhnken precisely by the biblical
tradition, but Ruhnken aimed to define a list of valued secular works that
would have been privileged in pedagogical institutions. For this purpose he
drew parallels with selected lists of authors, which the Hellenistic philologists
drew in antiquity.¹² Ruhnken’s coinage was therefore used to refer exclusively
to those texts that were acceptable, perhaps also authoritative. These texts were
meant to be distinguished from those that were less useful or less important,
and which as a consequence were marginalized and thus excluded from
the canon.
‘Canon’ has since been a term that is encountered frequently in modern
scholarship of classical studies.¹³ Ruhnken referred to texts, a characteristic
that is still present in a number of literary canons in the modern era, but the
‘canon’ as a term used for antiquity does not designate a privileged text or
set of texts. It rather denotes a group of authors, and only in retrospect does
it indicate a selection of texts/poems. Antiquity itself ascribed to the Greek
term κανών (‘canon’) its aesthetic application, and additionally prescribed to
the canonical selection the parameter ‘exemplary’, both of which define the
term’s modern usage. Dionysius Halicarnasseus, for instance, chooses Lysias
as the perfect example of the Attic language (D.H. Lys.2), and thus employs
the word κανών as a rhetorical and philological term. Photius also applies
the term to Thucydides, who is presented as the κανών for Dio Cassius, that
is as the highest standard of historiography, or as the model for imitation for
the younger author (Bibl. cod.71, p. 35b32–3 Henry). Implicit in both these
uses is the authoritative character of the canon as a whole and of each of the
selected authors individually, and might apply to those authors who were
considered the culmination of the norm of the literary genre they represent,
the most famous, or the most useful, a meaning that the ancients, too, applied to
their understanding of the word κανών and consequently to their understanding
of the ‘canon’.¹⁴
¹² Ruhnken’s coinage goes back to antiquity itself, as the term κανών is already found as early
as the fourth century . See Asper (1998) 870 2, HWRh s.v. ‘Kanon’ for the uses of the term
κανών down to the third century ; on the history of the word ‘canon’ from the time of Ruhnken
to Rousseau, Gorak (1997).
¹³ It is worth keeping in mind Pfeiffer’s criticism of the term ‘canon’, who points out that the
usage of the word κανών with the meaning ‘selective list’ has no Greek origin; it rather originated
in the eighteenth century, on which Pfeiffer (1968) 207.
¹⁴ In his scholia to Lycophron’s Alexandra Tzetzes refers to the poets who were established as
representatives of each genre (p. 1, 23 4, p. 2, 1 13 Scheer). Without using the term ‘canon’
Tzetzes’ characterization of the most prominent and notable representatives of each poetic genre
as κατ’ ἐξοχὴν ποιηταί and ὀνομαστοί confirms that their selection was made based on merit and
value or at least that this is how canons were understood in later years. On canons in antiquity,
Schmidt, E. (1987) 246 58; Asper (1998) 869 82, HWRh s.v. ‘Kanon’; Dubielzig (2005) 513 19,
LdH s.v. ‘Kanon’; Easterling (2012) 274 6, OCD s.v. ‘Canon’; Huber Rebenisch (2013) 264 6.
It becomes evident through the usage of the term κανών in ancient sources
that each literary canon in antiquity included authors or poets who were
selected from a larger group of authors. Consequently, each literary canon
represents a fraction of the genre in question. Referring to the oratorical
canon, Photius explains how Aeschines was included in the κανών that
comprised the first and best of Attic oratory because he was one of the
approved, so to speak, authors (εἰς τοὺς ἀρίστους ἐγκρίνει Bibl. cod.61,
p. 20b25–7 Henry); the Corinthian Deinarchus was also another orator who
was approved to join those orators who were grouped with Demosthenes,
according to the Suda (s.v. Δείναρχος, δ 333 Adler τῶν μετὰ Δημοσθένους
ἐγκριθέντων εἷς); on the contrary, the Athenian orator Pytheas was never
included in the group with the other orators because of his bold and corrupted
character (Suda s.v. Πυθέας, π 3125 Adler οὐκ <ἐν>εκρίθη μετὰ τῶν λοιπῶν
ῥητόρων); lastly, Diodorus of Sicilus testifies how Periander was excluded
from the canon of the Seven Sages because of his harsh tyrannical rule
(D.S. 9.7.8–10 ἐκκρίναντες τὸν Περίανδρον τὸν Κορίνθιον). Although the direct
evidence we possess for the termini technici that are used for selecting authors
to be included in these canonical lists and for excluding authors from such
catalogues apply exclusively to the orators and the Seven Sages, the verbs
ἐγκρίνειν and ἐκκρίνειν must have also been terms that were applied to the
selected/approved and non-selected/non-approved poets respectively. Those
who became canonical, thus those who were accepted as members of a certain
canon, were the ἐγκριθέντες, in contrast to the ἐκκριθέντες who were left out.
The same verbs that are applied to those privileged and those expelled from
canonical lists reflect the process through which these selections were made,
and consequently the procedure through which canons were formed. The
choice was apparently made possible through judgement of poets (κρίσις
ποιητῶν).¹⁵ In his Ars Grammatica §1 Περὶ Γραμματικῆς Dionysius Thrax
enumerates the steps through which one can have a good and complete
experience of poetry and literature, and identifies in his guide judgement of
poems as the concluding phase (κρίσις ποιημάτων). His instructions proceed
climactically; he describes a procedure where one is involved in prosodic
reading, understanding of poetic style, explanation of language and narration,
discovery of etymology, understanding of analogy in grammatical examples,
in order, lastly, to be able to judge the poem itself as a whole.¹⁶ The compil-
ation of canons, as it seems, goes beyond judgement of individual poems; it
rather involves judgement of poets, which presumably relies on assessing the
entire corpus of each poet. Thus, the overall assessment and evaluation of
¹⁵ Cf. Quintilian Inst.10.1.54 where he points out how Aristophanes of Byzantium and
Aristarchus acted out as ‘judges of poets’ (poetarum iudices), on which see Chapter 5 in this
book, ‘Canonizing Lyric: The “Hellenistic” Lyric Canon’.
¹⁶ On κρίσις ποιημάτων, Ford (2002) 1 22; Laird (2006) 31 2; Porter (2006) 317 18.
poetic corpora implicitly absorbs the act of judging individual poems, pre-
sumably as one of the initial steps of investigation.
Our testimonia to the Lyric Canon and the sources for the selection and
exclusion of orators from the approved group of oratorical figures suggest that
the process of canonization may similarly exceed poetry. We have seen the
characterizations and features through which each lyric poet is identified in
the two anonymous epigrams (e.g. AP 9.184 ἱερὸν στόμα, γλυκερὴ σελὶς ἡδύ τε,
AP 9.571 τερπνά, ἡδυμελής, γλυκύς), as well as how according to the Suda
the moral character of Pytheas was one of the reasons, if not the main reason,
why he was not included in the oratorical canon.¹⁷ Although such character-
izations do not necessarily determine canonization, they implicate that the
process of canonization, whilst based on the corpus of each author, might also
have involved moral and ethical reasoning.¹⁸ The latter would in most cases
have been based on the corpus of each author and poet, which would after all
have functioned as the justification behind any moral or ethical judgements.
Such a formulation implicitly suggests that the choice of those authors or
poets who were included in a literary canon in antiquity was not exclusively a
choice made on literary merit. Features of the personality of the author or
poet and certain characteristics in their representation in antiquity were
presumably equally essential.
There is no sense, however, that the canon was beyond criticism. Canon-
ization did not make a writer unassailable. Despite the relatively established
status of literary canons, selections, distinctions, and comparisons were still
made from among the names that were included in these lists. With reference
to the Lyric Canon, Dionysius of Halicarnassus comments upon Pindar,
Simonides, Stesichorus, and Alcaeus (De Imitatione 31.2.5–8), and the same
four but with Simonides at the final position are singled out by Quintilian
(Inst.10.1.61–4).¹⁹ The similarity to the choices of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
suggests that Quintilian reflects on an already set selection from the Lyric
Canon. It is, however, difficult to claim with certainty that Quintilian distin-
guishes those four lyric poets as the best representatives of lyric poetry as a
whole; he himself admits that there are more authors worth reading than the
ones he mentions (Inst.10.1.45). Nonetheless, the passages in Dionysius of
Halicarnassus and Quintilian insinuate the idea that even after the establish-
ment of literary canons, those who were thought to be the canonical and great
writers (if that was how they were to be understood) could still be assailed and
¹⁷ See also the discussion in Chapter 6 in this book: ‘The Alexandrian Bacchylides: Knowledge
and Reputation’ on how the lyric poets are depicted in epigrams that are composed in their
honour.
¹⁸ On the types of censures in the process of canonization, see Assmann and Assmann (1987)
19 21; Hahn (1987) 30 2 and (1998) 465 6.
¹⁹ Murphy (1965) xi points out that one of Quintilian’s aims is to provide the reader with a
guide to the best authors.
criticized by later authors.²⁰ From among the lyric poets Pindar was almost
always considered to be the definitive example of lyric poetry. We have seen
how he is named first in both anonymous epigrams on the Lyric Canon.
Additionally, Quintilian claims how of the nine lyric poets Pindar was by far
the greatest in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts,
the rich exuberance of his language, and his eloquence (Inst.10.1.61); Petro-
nius chooses to exclusively name Pindar when he refers collectively to the
group of Greek lyric poets in his Satyricon (Sat.2); Pindar becomes Horace’s
exemplary model for his lyric compositions (Carm.IV.2.1); lastly, ps-Longinus
compares the work of Bacchylides to the Pindaric poetics, presumably the
culmination of lyric poetics, and finds it inferior ([Long.] Subl.33.5).²¹ Such
comments and such comparisons might imply that the other lyric poets from
the group of the nine never reached Pindar’s poetic perfection or more
specifically in the second instance that Bacchylides is second to Pindar, thus
implicitly the last in the Lyric Canon in terms of poetic quality.
Separations and comparisons of this kind do not dismiss the poetic value,
nor do they question the eminence of the other poets included in this
canonical selection. Despite preferences from within the list, the Lyric
Canon was composed of nine selected and select poets. According to the
commentator on Dionysius Thrax, all nine of them were also the πραττόμενοι,
a term that should be understood as those to whom editorial and exegetic
attention was devoted.
Γεγόνασι δὲ λυρικοὶ οἱ καὶ πραττόμενοι ἐννέα, ὧν τὰ ὀνόματά ἐστι ταῦτα, Ἀνακρέων,
Ἀλκμάν, Ἀλκαῖος, Βακχυλίδης, Ἴβυκος, Πίνδαρος, Στησίχορος, Σιμωνίδης,
Σαπϕώ, καὶ δεκάτη Κόριννα.
The nine lyric poets had also become the studied poets, and their names are these:
Anacreon, Alcman, Alcaeus, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Pindar, Stesichorus, Simonides,
Sappho, and tenth Corinna.
Commentaria in D.T. Ars Grammatica p. 21.17 19 Hilg.
This is to be expected, as canonized authors gain greater importance after their
canonization. Canons themselves generate the need to care for the text’s
integrity, necessarily and consequently the need to interpret the text itself
and protect its meaning in order to be able to retain the canon’s permanence,
let alone the longevity of the canonical corpus. Thus, both the process and the
²⁰ Ps Longinus is presumably the author who demonstrates clearly that members of literary
canons could still be criticized; e.g. Subl.34.3 on Demosthenes, 15.3 on Euripides, 15.5 on
Aeschylus.
²¹ Russell (1964) 159 ad loc comments that ‘L’s implication that Bacchylides is a good second
rate poet is borne out by the judgement of most modern critics since the discovery of the papyri.’
The comment of ps Longinus may indeed imply that Bacchylides is second to Pindar, but
Longinus does not dismiss Bacchylides as a poet; he still recognizes his poetic elegance as a
positive quality.
consequences of canonization in antiquity promote an inevitable relationship
between the canonized author and the canonized text. The Lyric Canon is
substantially a selection of names and authors not a selection of texts, but the
canonical status of these authors also canonizes in retrospect their poetic
corpus. This mutual connection between poet and poetic corpus necessarily
creates a hierarchy of transmission, and controls as a consequence the editorial
and scholarly work that was done on their poetry.²²
That canons are established in turning points and that they are the result of
socio-cultural developments which promote evolution and continuation is
evident in two not necessarily exclusive factors in canon formation: on the
one hand the canon’s permanence and demand of eternity and on the other
the creation of new and different canons as a result of socio-cultural changes.
These new canons might subsequently replace those already established in
tradition. In the case of the Lyric Canon, the commentator to Dionysius Thrax
adds Corinna as tenth to the list that includes the names of the nine whom
tradition recognized as the lyric poets, and two manuscripts with Pindaric
scholia offer a variation of the canonical lyric list, which finishes with the
phrase τινὲς δὲ καὶ τὴν Κόρυνον, presumably a scribal mistake for Κόρινναν, as
Drachmann emends (Σ Pi. De IX Lyricis, Dr i, p. 11 apparatus criticus 11. ‘and
some also include Corinna’).
The manner in which Corinna is introduced is revealing. Both the com-
mentator and the scholiast name the nine poets whom tradition established as
the selected and presumably select lyric poets. The scholiast to Pindar clarifies
how the lyric poets were nine, whom he subsequently names.
Λυρικοί ποιηταὶ μουσικῶν ἀσμάτων ἐννέα . . . τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα τῶν προειρημένων
λυρικῶν εἰσὶ τάδε . . .
The lyric poets of musical songs were nine . . . the names of the aforementioned
lyric poets are the following . . . Σ Pi. De IX Lyricis, Dr. i, p. 11
Similarly, the commentator to Dionysius Thrax uses the past perfect tense to
introduce the list of lyric names (γεγόνασι), implying that he merely reports an
already made choice. Corinna is introduced only at the end of both lists. Not
only her position at the conclusion of the catalogues is introduced by καί, but
also the definition that is applied to her sets her apart from that lyric group.
Corinna, according to the commentator to Dionysius Thrax, is separately
added as the tenth in the list (καὶ δεκάτη), while the Pindaric scholiast declares
how only some would include Corinna in the Lyric Canon (τινὲς δὲ καί).²³
²² On how canonization might affect the reception of the text itself, Assmann and Assmann
(1987) 12 15; Kammer (2000) 311 20.
²³ The date of Corinna still remains problematic; she has been dated either in the fifth or in
the third/second century . Corinna is not mentioned in any surviving Greek literature before
the second/first century  (cf. AP 9.26), but an inscribed Roman statuette of hers appears to
have derived from a fourth century source. Plutarch (Glor.Ath.347f 348a), Pausanias (9.22.3),
The wording of both the above statements reveals that the Lyric Canon as a
selection of nine lyric poets was well established by the time the commentaries
were written. The Pindaric scholion in particular implies that Corinna’s
inclusion in the list was not generally accepted.
The presence of Corinna as addition or afterthought confirms the nine as a
selected group. It also shows how, despite its longevity and its institutionalized
permanence through the Hellenistic era, the Lyric Canon allowed for the
changing taste or for the changing cultural and aesthetic values to affect its
boundaries and to include another poet in the selected list. Such an addition to
the Lyric Canon reveals how cultural developments or changes in literary
taste might affect a canon’s substance, and how they would consequently
allow for more lyric poets to be canonized after its establishment. Petronius,
as mentioned above, who recognizes the canonical lyric poets as models for
successive generations and chooses to exclusively name Pindar, also increases
the number of exemplary lyric models to ten (Sat.2.4 Pindarus novemque
lyrici).²⁴ For the Byzantine scholar Tzetzes the famous and notable lyric poets
were actually ten.
λυρικοὶ δὲ ὀνομαστοὶ δέκα Στησίχορος, Βακχυλίδης, Ἴβυκος, Ἀνακρέων, Πίνδαρος,
Σιμωνίδης, Ἀλκμάν, Ἀλκαῖος, Σαπϕὼ καὶ Κόριννα
The famous lyric poets were ten: Stesichorus, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Anacreon,
Pindar, Simonides, Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, and Corinna.
Tzetzes Prolegom. ad Lycophron p. 2,11 14 Scheer
Tzetzes’ list incorporates Corinna officially in the Canon of the lyric nine,
suggesting that by the twelfth century ad Corinna had presumably been
established as one of the notable lyric poets of antiquity. Alterations of this
kind, which ultimately increase the number of the canonized lyric poets, do
not pose a threat to those already canonized, as we have seen. The Lyric Canon
evidently still remains consciously and intentionally closed and unified, as
established in the Hellenistic era. Nevertheless, the case of Corinna implies
Aelian (VH 13.25 Dilts), and the Suda (s.v. Κορίννα, κ 2087 Adler) are the main sources that
deliver how Corinna was contemporary with Pindar. In poetic terms her PMG 654 on the contest
between Kithaeron and Helicon reads like a Hellenistic poem, and despite the biographical
stories about her relationship with Pindar, I would suggest that Corinna was most probably a
Hellenistic poetess who composed in the third/second century . The above sources relate her
to Pindar probably in an attempt to establish her fame in antiquity and to portray her as
important a poet as Pindar. On the date of Corinna, Page (1953) 65 84; West, M. (1970)
279 80 and (1990) 557; Allen and Frel (1972); Snyder (1989) 43; Palumbo Stracca (1993);
Segal (1998) 319.
²⁴ Schmeling (2011) 6 ad loc suggest that Petronius might have used the specific expression
‘loosely and without exact knowledge’, or it could imply that Pindar is singled out as the epitome
of lyric poetry. They assume that the group of ten would include Arion as the tenth lyric poet.
Given how Corinna is at times mentioned as a member of the Lyric Canon already from the
Hellenistic times, I would include her in Petronius’ list instead of Arion.
that the canon was contested on the margins, and demonstrates as well
gradations of closedness over time.²⁵
The selection of the ἐγκριθέντες in the Lyric Canon was the result of a
longer process of establishing aesthetic, cultural, perhaps also moral values that
resulted to the official formation of this canonical list as early as the second
century . The beginning of this process can be traced already in the fifth century
.²⁶ As we can read in our sources, the fifth century was an era that experienced
a number of historical, cultural, and social changes after the Peloponnesian
War, and which accordingly had an impact on lyric poetry as a whole.²⁷
The distinction between old and new in literature is one of the central themes
of literary criticism in antiquity, and it appears in particular in the compari-
sons and contrasts drawn by ancient thinkers between the mousikē and
melic poetry of the sixth and fifth century  and the new musical
and melic status quo in the later fifth century, the era of the so-called New
Music. A sense of an ending in nostalgic Athenian writings, such as those of
Aristophanes and Plato, emphasizes their pivotal status both in this cultural
change and in antiquity’s literary criticism. It also stresses the importance
of the fifth century as the era when the need to hold on to tradition is
recognized, and also the era when we can detect the first signs of an attempt
not only to establish a distinction between the old/traditional and the new/
popular but also to form the Lyric Canon itself. As it will become obvious in
the course of this book, we have no evidence for an open-ended process of
accretion. This canonical list of the nine lyric poets remained unchanged
from the very beginning of its formation in the fifth century  until the
Roman Imperial period.
THE E MERGENCE OF THE L YRIC CANON:

CHAPTER L AYOUT
This book consists of seven chapters, progresses chronologically—an inevit-

able condition when dealing with diachronic reception—and focuses on
specific genres, authors, and philosophical schools that played a critical role
in the survival and canonization of lyric poetry. Chapter 1 addresses lyric
poetry in its environment of composition and performance, positions the
poetic activities and movements of the lyric poets on a map of Greece and
Magna Graecia, and also foregrounds the song-types that prevail in certain
²⁵ I owe this point to Felix Budelmann. ²⁶ Asper (1998) 873, HWRh s.v. ‘Kanon’.
²⁷ On the connection of the New Music with the economic and socio cultural changes at the
end of the fifth century , Csapo (2004) 235 45 and (2011) 65 76.
periods and certain areas. It comprises of two parts that deal with local,
wandering, and pan-Hellenic lyric poets and ‘Athenian’ lyric poetry respect-
ively. The first part places lyric poetry in its local and pan-Hellenic contexts,
and takes into account the environment within which lyric poets composed.
Sappho, Alcman, Alcaeus, and Stesichorus, for example, composed exclusively
for local audiences, and were presumably recognizable and highly esteemed
poets in a local context during their lifetime. The discussion also considers
wandering lyric poets, who moved with no local restrictions and who com-
posed both for local audiences (i.e. their native town), for audiences other than
their own, and for pan-Hellenic audiences. Such a category would include
Ibycus and Anacreon, who given their frequent attachment to tyrannical
courts could also be perceived as court-poets. Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchy-
lides, the professional, and international, or pan-Hellenic lyric poets could be
additionally considered as members of this category; several of their poems
were composed in honour of private patrons. All three of them could also be
characterized as the wandering poets par excellence; from the moment of
commissioning their poetry was not exclusively local but was already embed-
ded in a broader Hellenic context.
Fifth-century Athens was just as essential for the formation of the Lyric
Canon, and this is demonstrated in the second part of Chapter 1. The relevant
analysis addresses the paradoxical status of Athens as the city that did not
produce lyric but still helped preserve lyric, as it gradually became the centre
of literary production and cultural development in the fifth century . Thus,
even though at the time of lyric production and circulation our attention is
focused on the broader Greek world, we need always to look for traces of
that poetry within the fifth-century Athenian poetic context. The first section
of this second part explores the manner in which non-Athenian lyric poets
were chosen to participate in Athenian festivals, while the second section
focuses on the preservation (or not) of the names of the victorious dithy-
rambic poets in official Athenian records. The latter also raises the question
concerning the survival of lyric names within the Athenian literary context.
The Athenian cultural and poetic agenda played a vital role in the process of
canonization, and Chapter 2 looks at the comic genre. Comedy is an import-
ant source of information about the Athenian audience’s knowledge of the
lyric poets and of their output. It is also an essential piece of evidence for
discussing the diffusion of lyric poetry in Athens in the fifth and fourth
centuries. The treatment of lyric poets in fifth-century comedy matters enor-
mously for our understanding of canon-formation, as the comic genre is a
major source of information on the movement of song and on poetic reputa-
tion. The discussion brings into the analysis issues such as generic awareness
and poet recognition, comic play with cultic and performative characteristics
of poems, as well as with biographical and anecdotal features of lyric poets.
Comedy as a genre reflects the evolutionary process of canonization, and also
the emerging distinction between the old and the popular, a distinction that
eventually turned into that between the canonized lyric and the New Music.
Such a distinction demonstrates that the canonizing process of lyric poetry
was already at work during the fifth century , and it was by that time
obvious within the Athenian literary background.
Chapter 3 turns to Plato, who is perhaps the Greek author who influenced
profoundly the reception of poetry. The discussion focuses on Plato’s attitude
towards the lyric poets in comparison to the much-discussed hostility towards
tragedy and the Homeric epic, as well as on the diversity with which certain
extracts from specific lyric poems are incorporated in his dialogues. Lyric
poets are depicted as authorities on ethical matters, and melic extracts are
incorporated as pieces of eternal wisdom. Plato proves to be of great value with
regards to the reception of lyric. The evidence provided in the Platonic
dialogues allows us to conclude not only that the lyric poets were well
recognized by mid-fourth century  but also that a number of their poems
were still performed during Plato’s time or were famous enough to be recalled
in his work. The Platonic dialogues also offer us the opportunity to perform a
comparative study with the picture painted in comedy. Beyond reasonable
conclusions that some, if not all, of the lyric poets had acquired canonical
status by the time of Plato, it becomes obvious that the depictions of the
lyric poets in both comedy and Plato were instrumental in the representation
of the lyric nine in later sources.
Chapter 4 demonstrates the importance of the Peripatos in the canonizing
process of lyric, and further determines a degree of continuity between fifth- and
fourth-century reception and evaluation of lyric poetry. Plato’s view of lyric
history and the comic representation of lyric evolution seem to prevail in several
later sources, to the extent that the Peripatetics concentrate in their treatises
mainly on the great lyric masters of the sixth and fifth centuries . Consequent-
ly, they do not devote as much scholarly energy to the kind of lyric poetry that
was negatively criticized in Plato and was parodied by comedy, namely the
New Music. The Peripatetic agenda, the Peripatetic treatises on lyric poets, the
methodology of the Peripatetics, and the contents and resources of the Peripat-
etic library are some of the essential issues that are discussed in this chapter. The
overall analysis demonstrates that Aristotle’s Lyceum becomes a centre for
literary study that dealt with poems as cultural and anthropological sources.
The fourth century is not only a period when literary criticism is conscious-
ly instituted but also a period of rapid and fundamental transitions, and it
proves to be critical for the process whereby lyric moves from song to text.
Chapters 1 to 4 address the question of transmission and diffusion of lyric
song together with questions of reputation, performance, and circulation.
They do not, however, refer to the materiality of text. The question of form
is addressed separately in Chapter 5, which discusses the move from song to
written text, and considers the physical life of lyric song together with the
existence, diffusion, availability, and circulation of material lyric texts in
locations other than Athens. The analysis firstly sets the background and
focuses on the fifth-century literary and archaeological evidence we possess
on the existence of various kinds of books in everyday life, and distinguishes
between public availability of (lyric) texts in Athenian book markets and
copies owned by individuals in a private collection. It also takes into account
the breadth of poetic activities and movements of the lyric poets, as sketched
in Chapter 1, and thus brings into the discussion the possible existence of local
archives with lyric texts. Geographical distinctions prove significant with
reference to questions of transmission of texts, as they have implications for
the volume and nature of what is available in different locations. Moreover,
they foreground plausible differences in local taste and interests. Fifth-century
Athens is instrumental in the formation of the Lyric Canon, and for this
reason the discussion concentrates on, lastly, the broader sociology of lyric
reception and transmission in democratic Athens by addressing questions of
literary fashions and lyric preferences and also the socio-cultural circum-
stances within which they are contextualized according to our late fifth- and
early fourth-century sources.
Chapter 6 transports us to the Library of Alexandria. The first part offers
plausible answers to the question of when and how lyric texts actually reached
Alexandria. Plausible reconstructions can be offered on this issue based on the
connection between Alexandrian and Peripatetic scholars and ultimately on
the association with the Peripatetic library, but the analysis also takes into
account all sources that refer to the process of acquiring texts for the Library.
The chapter opens up questions with reference to the format of travelling texts
of lyric—did they travel collectively as corpora on a single papyrus roll or
individually?—and to the resulting consequences for the Alexandrians in each
case. The discussion then moves on to the available information about the
editing of and commenting on the lyric poets in the Library in order to better
understand the criteria the Hellenistic scholars used as they prioritized texts
and as they chose authors to be edited and annotated. The Lyric Canon itself
becomes the subject of discussion in the second part of the chapter, which
addresses the question of whether the Canon was based on poetic quality and
evaluation or simply on availability of texts. In other words, did the canonical
list include those lyric poets who had already been established as classic before
the Hellenistic period, or those whose work had reached Alexandria and was
thus available in the Library? The analysis emphasizes the ‘closedness’ of the
Lyric Canon in contrast to other literary canons in antiquity, and also dem-
onstrates that the Hellenistic era did not create the Lyric Canon as such. By
explicitly assembling the nine poets in the two main epigrams of the time and
by elaborating on this selection, it practically established the Lyric Canon.
And for the canon’s establishment the Alexandrians followed the lead of
previous literary evaluations.
Bacchylides occupies an unusual position in the Canon of the lyric nine, and
he therefore becomes the focus in Chapter 7. The transmission of his poetry
and the canonization of his name do not seem to follow the norm and
pattern of the rest of the lyric poets. As shown in the analysis in the
preceding chapters, he is neither quoted nor named in any of the sources
that become crucial for the formation of the Lyric Canon. The discussion
takes into account Bacchylides’ presence both in the Lyric Canon and in the
Alexandrian Library in conjunction to the fact that his name did not travel
within antiquity despite his pan-Hellenic poetic presence. It gives promin-
ence therefore to Bacchylides’ reputation in the Hellenistic era, and uses
inscriptional and epigraphical evidence to argue that his poetry was known
at the time and that it possibly also circulated within the broader Hellenistic
world. The case of Bacchylides, who might have reached Alexandria through
Pergamum, is the defining card in understanding that the transmission of
lyric poetry was presumably not linear.
THE H ERMENEUTIC FRAMEWORK:

R E C E P T I O N AN D T HE CLAS S I C
The process of canonization is a form of reception and for this reason central
to the methodology and approach employed in this book is Reception Theory,
as initiated by Hans-Georg Gadamer and as further developed by Hans Robert
Jauss.²⁸ Jauss’ Rezeptionsästhetik acknowledges the historicity of texts and the
aesthetic response of receivers at any present time. It thus recognizes how
literature exists only in the form of a dialogue between work and audience
and between past and present. Jauss frames this interpretative process within
his ‘horizon of expectations’, a hermeneutic and philosophical concept that
is principally linked with Gadamer’s historical conception of reading, and
acknowledges as a result the framework of expectations of the text which enters
the framework of assumptions of the reader.²⁹ Such a mediated interpretation
and understanding of literature fuses the literary-historical surroundings of
the work under question with the receiver’s ‘horizon of expectations’, which
is formed by the conventions of genre, style, and form. Reception Theory
²⁸ A comprehensive presentation of the basic theories of Gadamer and Jauss can be found in
Holub (1984) 36 45, 53 82; also Habib (2005) 708 24.
²⁹ Cf. Kennedy (1997) 50 ‘such interpretations, interpreted in turn, will thereby be seen to
be accommodated teleologically to their ends the preoccupations and interests of their
interpreters’.
recognizes that past and present are always implicated in each other and its
application in literary interpretations avoids ‘crude presentism . . . and crude
historicism’, as Charles Martindale observes.³⁰
A work on the emergence of the Lyric Canon unavoidably raises questions
on the transmission and survival of lyric poetry, and it therefore calls for
attention to the changing historical, cultural, and literary contexts within
which lyric poetry was interpreted and was eventually canonized. Consequent-
ly, the present study perceives the histories of reading of lyric poetry and the
development of the meaning of the Lyric Canon as synchronic and diachronic
literary series, which are practically series of reception(s). Canonization is
necessarily a process that is established through tradition, but it is also a
process that is primarily formed through reception. In this particular case,
tradition, which is itself a case of reception, should be interpreted as a ‘chain of
influence’;³¹ it continuously influences conceptions of lyric poetry, represen-
tations of lyric poets, and interpretations of the Lyric Canon as a whole from
antiquity to the modern era. Implicit in the concepts of both tradition and
reception is a ‘need for sensitivity in context’,³² which requires scholars to
make certain connections between the objects of research (in this case, lyric
poetry) and their contexts—creating and receiving contexts. The chain of
receptions within antiquity is formed through the work’s engagement with a
number of factors: cultural and historical contexts of reception, literary con-
texts of reception, audiences, and readership. In this case in particular the
broad spectrum of engagements with lyric is evaluated and re-evaluated in
antiquity within and by the new markets that are involved in the process of
reception. Markets of reception are mainly formed by the varying character-
istics of each era and equally by the changing nature of audiences, who engage
as receivers with the product in question on the basis of the expectations
created by the nature of the artefact itself and by their personal experiences.
This ‘personal’ engagement attributes to the audience/readership a role in the
construction of meaning at the time of reception, and allows for the collective
formation of what we tend to call tradition.³³
For the purposes of this book the cornerstone in the above dialogic rela-
tionship between tradition and reception and between audiences and contexts
is Jauss’ understanding of the concept of ‘genre’. In his Toward an Aesthetic of
Reception Jauss proposes that a literary work does not present itself as new in a
vacuum; it rather predisposes its audience to a specific kind of reception that is
oriented by the genre or by the type of work.³⁴ The text itself is determined
through its relationship to the succession of texts that form the genre, and it
subsequently evokes for the receivers the kind of ‘horizon of expectations’
³⁰ Martindale (2006) 8. ³¹ Budelmann and Haubold (2008) 16.

³² Budelmann and Haubold (2008) 24. ³³ Martindale (1993) 3.
³⁴ Jauss (1982) 22 3.
which they formulated thanks to their familiarity with earlier texts of the same
genre. Generic identifications are particularly important in a discussion on
canonization of lyric, not solely because the Lyric Canon itself identifies its
generic and performative context. The sources that are examined in this book
show a profound awareness of generic boundaries and an irrefutable under-
standing of the multifarious concept of ‘lyric’, which makes the question of
‘genre’ relevant to the issue of canonization.
As ‘classic’ and ‘classical’ are terms that are used to designate the cultures of
Greece and Rome in antiquity and also to denote chronologically the fifth and
fourth centuries , it is important to offer some clarifications on the way the
two terms are understood in this book, especially in view of the concept of the
Canon. The first documented use of the word ‘classical’ in connection with
authors goes back to the second century ad. Aulus Gellius reports hearing
M. Cornelius Fronto, a noted orator and friend of the emperor Marcus
Aurelius, referring to the ideal group of ancient orators or poets (antiquiore
cohorte) who should be taken as reference points for the correct use of
language by using the expression scriptor classicus (‘first-class/first-rated
writer’) (NA 19.8.15). Gellius specifies in the passage how classicus would be
non proletarius (‘not proletarian’), which suggests that Fronto used figurative-
ly the language of social and political stratification to designate linguistic value
and cultural standing. The use of the word in the sense of ‘first-class’ and more
specifically ‘first-class author’, as used in the Noctes Atticae, seems to disappear
after Gellius. It resurfaces as a learned reuse of an ancient Latin term only in
the Renaissance, where it is used metaphorically in humanistic contexts.³⁵ Over
the centuries the word assumed a range of complex and dense nuances that
made the idea and concept of ‘the classical’ and ‘the classic’ controversial.³⁶
Moreover, the cultural specification of both terms, which are adopted and
adapted in various societal and ideological contexts in correlation with their
universal and absolute applicability, makes them even more problematic.
In his famous essay What is a Classic? T. S. Eliot argues that a classic author
can be known as such only by hindsight and in retrospect, always within a
context and never in isolation.³⁷ Eliot perceives the literature that has been
recognized as classic or classical as reflecting the society that produced it and
as indicating as well its greatness and importance, on occasions even its
uniqueness. Both Eliot and Gadamer draw attention to the existence of a
timeless present in ‘the classical’, and Gadamer goes on to point at the tension
³⁵ Further on the passage from Gellius and on classicus, Citroni (2006) 204 11.
³⁶ See the four groups of the distinguished features of ‘the classic’ in Simm (1988a) 37 8n. 11,
and the nine anatomies of the term in Porter (2006) 14 16.
³⁷ Eliot (1944) for whom the ultimate classic is Virgil and his Aeneid and who views ‘the
classic’ as embedded and exhibited within the authorial text itself. Eliot perceives it as the
culmination of a historical, intellectual, and linguistic process, whose completion is nevertheless
a matter of fortune.
that is created between the self-consciousness of the endurance of ‘the classical’
and the historical moment that generated it.³⁸ ‘It is an awareness of decline
and distance that gives birth to the classical norm’, as Gadamer puts it in his
Truth and Method, and this very awareness of its historical anchoring, its
preservation in time, and the combination of the two shape the concept of
‘the classic’.³⁹ A backward-looking is clearly identified in our fifth- and fourth-
century sources, which idealize the canonical lyric poets as the heyday of
mousikē and paint a picture of decadence and musical degradation with
regards to the current state of poetic and musical compositions in fourth-
century Athens. This very sense of an ending that is vigorously expressed in
their rhetoric encapsulates Gadamer’s decline and distance that give rise to
‘the classic’, in our case to the lyric ‘classic’ and subsequently to the Lyric
Canon. In other words, ‘the classic’ is perceived in the present work always in
association with the canon—the canonical lyric poets are the classical lyric
poets, and their inclusion in the Canon is what makes them classic. The lyric
‘classic’ therefore indicates the restricted and exclusive character of the ca-
nonical lyric list, as well as the selective framework within which the nine lyric
poets were identified as the canonical lyric poets.
Scholarly discussions on modern literary canons and ‘the classic’ context-
ualize the canon debate within educational curricula, and problematize the
criteria upon which the selection of certain authors and texts were chosen:
aesthetic value of form, content characterized by timeless wisdom, and intel-
lectual and linguistic perfection.⁴⁰ Moreover, the canonical works that are
included in the literary curricula of several modern societies are regarded as
carriers of ideological notions and repositories of cultural values, and are
additionally perceived as mirroring the social and political context within
which they emerged. Canon formation is therefore interpreted within the
politics of its own representation. The critique of the canon and the debate
over its eternal value express a critique of the circumstances that led to the
inclusion of authors in ‘The Great Books’ and a critique of the perpetual
nature of the cultural value that the canon embraces. Challenging the canon
ultimately translates into challenging the past that brought it into existence.
It is difficult to make absolute parallels between modern literary canons and
Greek canons in antiquity, at least at the stage of their formation. This is due to
the fact that these critiques frequently attach modern literary canons to
educational institutions, which would often prescribe the texts and authors a
student would study and a general reader would read. With regards to the
Lyric Canon, our sources state the changes that were gradually shaping the
³⁸ Gadamer (1979) 255 6. ³⁹ Gadamer (1979) 256.

⁴⁰ The literature on modern literary canons is enormous, in different languages, and is
associated with various countries and societies; see, very selectively, the collected essays in
Simm (1988b); Guillory (1993); the collected essays in Morrissey (2005).
educational curricula in fifth- and early fourth-century Athens, and although
they convey the idea that canonical lyric probably remained part of education,
they implicitly suggest that it was probably restricted to those who consciously
wanted to follow the old and traditional curriculum. The public, the ‘masses’
as presented in our texts, preferred the new and non-canonical both in their
curriculum and for their entertainment. It should still be recognized that these
kind of modern debates foreground and often criticize the social circum-
stances that contributed to the establishment of literary canons in certain
societies, the social identity of the author that appears as a condition of
canonicity, and the political and ideological agendas that the canons subse-
quently serve in higher education. Canons are interpreted as ‘the products of
historically specific conflicts over culture and values’,⁴¹ and as a reflection of
the past’s sense of its own past. The Lyric Canon, as this book demonstrates
in detail, was the product of an ‘elitist’ and conservative perspective that
connected the musical and poetic developments in the late fifth and early
fourth centuries with the ideological and political changes in Athens. Our
fifth- and fourth-century sources helped pave the way for a formalized lyric
‘classic’, which was shaped by the processes of exclusion and selection and
informed by the logic of closure. They also contributed to the institutional-
ized preservation of the Lyric Canon on the bookshelves of the Alexandrian
Library; the lyric ‘classic’ is encapsulated in the process of transmission as
well as in the aesthetic and cultural commitments of the Peripatetics and the
Alexandrians, and is permanently captured in the two canonical epigrams as
widely accepted heritage.
⁴¹ Lauter (2005) 183.

1
The World of Lyric

Local, Pan-Hellenic, and Athenian
A discussion on lyric canonization requires the canvas of lyric geography. The

objective of this first chapter is to place the nine lyric poets and their poetry on
a map of Greece and Magna Graecia in both a literal and a literary sense (see
Map 1.1).¹ It aims therefore to provide information in connection with the
locations where the canonical lyric poets composed and where their work was
performed and to touch upon the issue of fame-acquisition. The geographical
positioning of the activities of these poets is an important component in a
book on the Lyric Canon, as it allows us to understand the complexity of
the process of transmission and survival and ultimately the complexity of the
process of canonization. Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, Stesichorus,
Ibycus, Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides came from different locations across
mainland Greece and Magna Graecia, some of them composed at locations
other than their hometown, but both the survival of their poetry and the
canonization of their names were later centralized in Athens. This paradoxical
channel of lyric canonization which the following chapters will address sets off
from various geographical locations, initially reaches Athens, and then eventu-
ally Alexandria. For this precise reason, the setting and the living environment
in which lyric poetry was composed, sung, and performed becomes essential as
a first step in understanding the defining role that the established reputation
of each lyric poet played in the subsequent survival of his/her poetry. The main
focus of the analysis in this chapter is essentially the poetic activity and produc-
tion of the canonical lyric poets, which will inescapably bring to the surface the
important components of this World of Lyric: patrons and commissioning
¹ For a concise geographical and chronological account of lyric poetry with maps and figures
that also includes elegy and iambus, see Neri (2004) 61 81 and the interactive map Mapping
Greek Lyric: Places, Travel, Geographical Imaginary created by Driscoll, D., McMullin, I.,
Sansom, A., and Peponi, A. E. at Stanford University, which illustrates the geo cultural aspects
of lyric production from the eighth to the beginning of the fourth century : http://web.
stanford.edu/group/lyricmapping/bubblemap.html
The Emergence of the Lyric Canon. Theodora A. Hadjimichael, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198810865.003.0002
Map 1.1. Geographical distribution of the poetic activity of the nine lyric poets.
The World of Lyric: Local, Pan-Hellenic, and Athenian 25
states, poetic mobility, private and public performance occasions, lyric songs,
and lyric genres. All these features define a confined poetic geography that
exceeds the geographical perimeter of mainland Greece and offers opportunities
for mobility, but which is nonetheless restricted within the cultural boundaries
of Hellenism.
This chapter has an introductory function, and it concentrates on both the
poetic activity and the geographical mobility of the canonical lyric poets. It is
thus divided into two sections. The first section contextualizes lyric poetry in its
natural habitat and also touches upon possible performance contexts, and the
drawn picture is based on evidence provided in the compositions of the poets
themselves and on relevant testimonia on their poetic activity and mobility.
A number of lyric poets compose locally, that is exclusively for their home-
communities, while others move both geographically and poetically within the
broader Greek world. The local, wandering, or pan-Hellenic character of their
poetry subsequently shapes these poets’ fame at the time of their poetic activity,
and it eventually has an impact on their reception in later times. As the city that
considerably influences lyric canonization, Athens becomes the main focal
point in the second section of the chapter. This particular section addresses
the paradoxical status of Athens as the city that does not have its own native lyric
poets to compose melic poetry for the city, but nevertheless helps preserve it
through its festival culture. The centrality of Athens in shaping the Lyric Canon
makes prominent the need to examine its own lyric background.
THE WORLD OF LYRIC: LYRIC GEOGRAPHY

AND TRAVELS
One of the testimonia on the Lyric Canon, the elegiac poem preserved in the
Pindaric scholia that was mentioned in the Introduction, transmits informa-
tion concerning the biography of the nine lyric poets (Dr. i, pp. 10–11). For the
purposes of this chapter the most important piece of information included in
the poem is the identification of the hometown of each lyric poet. We first
learn that Alcaeus came from Mytilene (Μυτιληναῖος); Sappho, who is men-
tioned second and without regional qualification, is indirectly recognized
through Alcaeus also as Mytilenean; Stesichorus came from Himera in Sicily
(Ἱμέρα); we read in the poem that Ibycus came from Rhegium or from
Messene (ἐκ Ρηγίου ἠὲ Μεσήνης); Anacreon came from Teos (Τήιος); Pindar
was a Theban (Θηβαῖος); Simonides and Bacchylides were Ceans (Κείου,
Κεῖος); and Alcman came from Sparta (ἐκ Σπάρτης). The poem moves
geographically from the Greek islands to the Greek West, and concludes in
mainland Greece. While covering the locations where the canonical lyric poets
originated from it also offers a glimpse of the World of Lyric; a narrow and
restricted glimpse, however. The poem focuses on the origin of these lyric
personae and on the linguistic register of their poems, which is directly
connected with their ethnic descent, and it exclusively foregrounds as a result
the hometowns of these poets; these are presented as landmarks for lyric
poetry. In contrast to the picture painted in the poem, in the real World of
Lyric, which this chapter aims to describe at present, only in specific cases did
the hometown of the lyric poets coincide with the actual locations of their
poetic production, as only at times did the poet compose as local for his local
community. Thus, although the specific elegiac poem encompasses in its
geographical view the entire Greek world in which the lyric poets moved
and composed their poetry in the sixth and fifth centuries , by focusing
entirely on their hometowns it ignores the broader and also pan-Hellenic
character not only of lyric song but also of some of the representatives from
the group of the canonical nine.
The geography that the poetry of these poets covered can be used as a
criterion to divide the canonical group into local and wandering poets. Such a
distinction recognizes the geographical origin of each poet and their connec-
tion with both the communities for which they compose and the location
where the premiere of their poems took place. The defining criterion is
therefore the relationship between poet and place, which consequently has
an impact on the association between poetry and place. The question at hand
in this case is whether the lyric poet had a pre-existing connection with the
geographical location where he composes and where his poetry is performed,
be that for an individual patron or for a specific community, or a connection
that is created exclusively through and thanks to the poetic product itself.
More simplistically, when a poet composed for his own community as a local,
his poetry would also be labelled as local, but in cases where the poet is
imported so to speak, his poems would also be perceived as of foreign origin,
namely non-local. The three main representatives of the epinician genre and
their compositions have also been characterized as pan-Hellenic, a character-
ization which is determined, in my view, by two main factors: the geographical
location of the first poetic performance and the link of the poet with that
location, and the ethnic origin of the community or of the individual for
whom the poem is composed. I would suggest that this notion of poetic pan-
Hellenism is especially at force in Magna Graecia; the pan-Hellenic lyric poet
is ultimately a wandering poet. Based on the above pan-Hellenizing factors a
notable difference arises within the group of those wandering lyric poets who
would (at times) also be recognized as non-local. The differentiation derives
from the dynamics created by the origin of the poet and the place where his
poetic composition is firstly performed, and also between poetry (often com-
posed in honour of an individual) and poetic aim, the latter of which is
frequently prescribed by the patron or by the occasion that calls for poetry.
These distinctions will be clarified as the discussion progresses.
The World of Lyric: Local, Pan-Hellenic, and Athenian 27
Local and Wandering Lyric Poets
From the group of the nine canonical lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus are the
most appropriate examples of local poets. Their poetic corpus revolves around
their own persona, a characteristic that inevitably positions their poetry within
their own locale and geographical surroundings. This is particularly obvious
in the case of Alcaeus who often handles poetically the political situation in
Lesbos. The tyrant of Mytilene Pittacus is named frequently in his fragments
(e.g. Alc. 70 and 348 V), prominent political figures and members of political
parties feature in his poems, and his verses reflect on his exile as a consequence
of his political ideology.² Alcaeus’ poems mirror therefore the political situ-
ation of Mytilene at his time, while they interconnect two political institutions:
the hetaireia, which fostered political solidarity and reciprocity among its
group-members, and the symposium, which is evoked in a number of his
poems.³ The latter suggests that the symposium would be a suitable perform-
ance setting for some of Alcaeus’ poems, if not for the majority of his poems,
which are often poetically situated within the context of a drinking-party.⁴
To mention only a few examples, in Alc. 38A V Melanippus is invited to join
the singing voice (Alcaeus?) in drinking; Pittacus’ marriage into the house
of the Penthilidae is reported at a banquet at the accompaniment of a lyre in
Alc. 70 V; the symposiasts are urged to drink before the night falls (Alc. 352,
346 V); the singing voice offers instructions on the preparation of the drinking
cup (Alc. 346 V); and lingering perfume is mixed with wine at a context
where the participants are depicted as drinking (Alc. 50 V). One would
wonder where these symposia might have taken place. Given how Alcaeus’
political poems are locally contextualized, one can reasonably assume that
his sympotic poems were also performed at Mytilene. The positioning of
Alcaeus’ poems within the political context of Mytilene and the naming
of individuals in his poems colour his poetry with a visible Lesbian aura
which is also transferred to his non-political poems. This kind of localization
consequently defines his own poetic persona as a local persona that moves
and composes within the geographical boundaries of Mytilene.
Sappho’s poetic corpus is also connected to Lesbos but differently from the
corpus of Alcaeus. In general, Sappho does not contextualize her poetry in
the broader Mytilenean environment, and only in two cases does she touch on
² e.g. Alc. 70.7 V Μυρσί̣[λ]ω̣ and vv.13 Φιττάκω< ι >, 75.10 V Πεν̣θίλη, 112.23 4
V Κλεανακτ̣ί δαν | (Ἀ)ρχεανακτ̣ί δαν, 129.28 V Μύρσιλ̣[ο, 130b.4 V (Ἀ)γεσιλαΐδα, vv.9 Ὀνυμακλέης,
169a.8 V Μυτι̣[λ]η̣ ν[̣ , 169b.4 V Φίττ[ακ, 302b.1 V Πέ̣νθι[λ, 303Aa.2 V Πωλυαν̣ακ̣τ[ιδ]α . . [, 332.2
V Μύρσιλος, 348 V Φίττακον. Alcaeus was seemingly exiled twice or three times, on which Bowie,
E. (2007) 32 42.
³ On the hetaireiae and the symposium in Alcaeus’ poetry, Rösler (1980) esp. 33 41; Caciagli
(2011) 49 52 and 56 77 for a detailed discussion of the characteristics of hetaireia.
⁴ See Stehle (1997) 230 7.
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man of unflinching courage and dogged bravery: it was said that he had
won his Victoria Cross three times over.
He invited me to join a congratulatory dinner party to be given by him,

at a military club, in honour of Wolseley having been made a Field-
Marshal. All the guests turned up except Wolseley, who had received a late
summons from Windsor, commanding him to dine at the Castle, as Her
Majesty wished to present the bâton to him in person on that very evening.
A long spell of years has passed since my wife and I were guests at
what was then Thomas's Hotel, in Berkeley Square, now converted into
flats, and met Evelyn Wood when he was about thirty, having already won
the V.C. in the Indian Mutiny, after beginning his adventurous career as a
midshipman and being wounded in the Crimea. We lost sight of him for a
long while, and he must have become a Field-Marshal when he dined with
us, as he often did, until increasing deafness made him cautious of
accepting such invitations. He amused us once by threatening to recite the
Lord's Prayer in an alarming number of languages if provoked.
Another Field-Marshal and V.C. whom we knew was the hero of

Ladysmith, Sir George White. I met him first on board a P. & O. steamer
when he was Governor of Gibraltar. We walked many a mile together on the
deck of the Arabia. Both he and Lady White were very kind to me when I
landed from his launch for a short stay on the Rock, and enabled me to be
present at a memorial service for the Duke of Cambridge. When his own
time came White was Governor of Chelsea Hospital. His body was taken
across London, for burial in his native Ireland, to such a tribute of affection
and regard from his comrades and the people as is rarely given.
I first knew the popular old soldier and father of the charming Lady
Burnham and Lady Somerleyton, Sir Henry de Bathe, in the early days of
my membership of the Garrick, and was so struck by his appearance that I
did my best to suggest it in a part I played soon afterwards—I suppose with
a measure of success, for when I stepped upon the stage Lady de Bathe
(now the Dowager, still, happily, strong and well), who was seated in the
stalls, exclaimed audibly, "Why, it's Henry!"
My wife was so impressed by a dramatic story the old general told of
his Crimean days, that she often repeated it.
A convict from One evening, in the severe winter time, it was de Bathe's
Eton duty to direct the clearing of the dead and wounded after a
deadly encounter with the enemy, the brunt of which had
been borne by men drawn from the French convict settlements, who were
thrust into the hottest places when trying work had to be done. The
searching party came across one poor fellow who was grievously wounded
but still alive: de Bathe had him placed upon a stretcher, lifted his head, and
poured brandy into the soldier's mouth. The man took his hand and pressed
it, murmuring in English, "Thank you, de Bathe." Thunderstruck, he
stooped down and asked how a Frenchman knew his name and could also
speak such perfect English. The wounded man smiled and whispered,
"Eton!" as he fainted; de Bathe accompanied the stretcher to the French
lines, saying that he would return as soon as his duty would allow him. He
did so, but the man was dead; de Bathe lifted the sheet from his face and
gazed upon it earnestly without recognising the lost creature, once his
school companion, then known only as a French convict with a fictitious
name.
I remember being once so fortunate, when the old general dined with
me, as to place him between Sir William Howard Russell, the war
correspondent, and Dion Boucicault, the dramatist, and to learn that all
three of them in boyhood's days had been at the same school together in
Dublin.
Lord Rathmore—better remembered and thought of by me as David

Plunket—was a fascinating creature. What otherwise could he be with such
youthfulness, brightness, wit—such qualities as earned for him the
friendship of the sphinx-like Disraeli?
Our acquaintance with him began many years ago at Homburg, where
we had a happy time, and continued until 1915, when, with his company
and that of other pleasant people, my wife and I passed a holiday at the old
Queen Hotel, on The Stray, at Harrogate. He was a delightful guest, an
arresting personality at any table, and one of the most gifted orators—I can
use no smaller word—I have listened to; his highly polished sentences
being rendered even more attractive by his sometimes pronounced stammer,
which often added charm to his brilliant flow of language. David Plunket's
many friends at his favourite club, the Garrick, where he was beloved,
missed him greatly and mourned his loss.
Lord Glenesk, always a great supporter of the drama, gave us his

friendship for many years. As Sir Algernon Borthwick, he was, to our great
delight, at Balmoral when we were commanded by the late Queen to act
there. From his house in Piccadilly, we saw both joyful and mournful
processions. In a letter to my wife he wrote: "You were the first to teach the
school of Nature, and not only by your own bright impersonations, but also
by your influence over all those with whom you were brought in contact, to
prove that English art is second to none."
Acquaintance with the first Lord Ashbourne, so long Lord Chancellor of

Ireland, began years ago in the Engadine, and I recall happy times spent
there and by the Lake of Como in his excellent company.
Edward Carson We were dining with him one evening when my wife
asked who was a young man at the farther end of the table.
"Oh," said her host, "his name is Carson. He is a fellow-countryman of
mine, who has just been called to the English Bar, where he means to
practise." "And where he will go far, if I am any judge of a face," was my
wife's reply. Lord Ashbourne brought the "young Irishman" to her
afterwards, and so an affectionate and enduring friendship with the brilliant
advocate, the valiant patriot, Lord Carson, had its birth.
I was one of four who made up a table with Lord Ashbourne—who was
gay and amusing—to play bridge at the Athenæum on the day before he
was stricken.
I first met Edward Lawson, afterwards Lord Burnham, on the morning

of my wedding day, which chanced to be his birthday. My wife had made
his acquaintance before, as also that of his sage old father, who founded the
fortunes of the great newspaper, of which three generations have now been
justly proud.
I gratefully remember that it is to the senior of the trio the stage owes
much of its present recognition by the press. To digress for a moment, it
was well that Clement Scott, young and enthusiastic, was given his head,
and for a long while—years, in fact—his virile pen was devoted to the
service of the drama.
Lord Burnham continued in his father's footsteps, as, in his turn, his
own son has done. I remember hearing Burnham say, when asked if there
was any particular advantage in being very rich: "Only one; you can afford
to be robbed."
I was indebted to his constant kindness and hospitality, especially at

Hall Barn, for little short of fifty years, until the war broke his splendid
spirit and claimed him as its victim.
Of my friend since his boyhood, the present Viscount, I will only say,
although I can hardly believe it, that I have given him a sovereign when he
went back to Eton!
Alfred My first acquaintance with Alfred Lyttelton was as a

Lyttelton spectator at Lord's, in the field, and in the courts. Before I
knew him I had the privilege of two well-remembered talks
with Miss Laura Tennant, whose beauty and charm left a lasting impression.
His career, political and otherwise, is too well known to need a word from
me. The widespread popularity he enjoyed began early. He was captain of
both his school and university elevens, and held the tennis championship
without a break for many years.
A personal note I can strike with this most lovable man is through going
with him in Paris to see one of the earliest performances of Cyrano by
Coquelin. He also did me the honour to take the place of Sir Henry
Thompson as my seconder at the Athenæum.
Alfred Lyttelton was spared the agonies of the Great War and the
bewildering sense of uncertainty as to what will result from it in this much-
altered world. On the day he was buried, in July, 1913, the Oxford and
Cambridge match was being played at Lord's. At the solemn hour the game
was stopped, and the great assemblage stood uncovered as they thought of
him. Later, on the same day, Mr. Asquith said of him in the House of
Commons that he, perhaps of all men of this generation, came nearest to the
ideal of manhood which every English father would like to see his son
aspire to and attain.
It is among my happy memories to have been many times the guest of

that prince of hosts, Sir Henry Thompson, extending over twenty years. No
dinner parties were more justly celebrated than the "octaves," generally
eight guests and himself, he arranged with so much thought and knowledge.
He was an exceptional, an extraordinary, man, in addition to his skill as

a great surgeon. He had talent as a painter, had pictures hung in both the
Academy and the Salon; he wrote novels, and his knowledge of old
Nanking china, of which he owned a fine collection, was that of an expert;
and he was founder and president of the Cremation Society. He introduced
me to motoring, when it was in its infancy. He was an enthusiast in
astronomy, having a private observatory erected by himself. He gave a
valuable book on this subject to my wife with the inscription: "Homage
from an Astronomer to a Star of the First Magnitude."
Public servants Other names crowd my mind: Sir Frank Lascelles, so

long our Ambassador in Berlin, and Sir Rivers Wilson, also
a distinguished public servant—delightful hosts, delightful guests—both
great gentlemen, and both devoted to cards as an amusement. The former
cursed them (never his partner) when they persistently went against him;
the latter caressed them, however badly they treated him.
Of Schomberg McDonnell, known better to his big circle of friends as

"Pom," I recall one personal incident. He was the first to congratulate me on
my knighthood, through being at the time Lord Salisbury's private secretary,
a post which he had the courage to give up to take his part in the South
African War, where he did good service with the C.I.V., and was rewarded
on his return by being reinstated. He again served his country in the Great
War and died from his wounds, beloved and regretted.
I must in these names include that of a friend of many years, Sir

Thomas Sutherland, so long the chairman of the P. & O. Company. To the
kindness of his invitations to be a guest on trial trips of ships of that great
fleet I owe the happiest "week-ends," in wonderful company, I have ever
spent.
"Mr. Alfred," as Alfred de Rothschild was generally spoken of, was

once our guest; we were often his in Seamore Place. I was invited to join a
week-end party, when I might have seen the wonders of his country home,
with its circus and performing animals, but I could not go. Being delicate
and of a highly nervous temperament, he must have been a mine of wealth
to members of the medical profession. He was a great lover and patron of
the theatre. I remember a peculiar incident concerning him when we
revived Robertson's comedy School at the Haymarket. Sometimes for
several nights running, sometimes twice in a week, he took a large stage
box, occupied it for not more than half an hour, sat alone to see the second
act of the comedy, and then went.
Burton and The two famous travellers and explorers, Burton and
Stanley Stanley, were old friends of ours. I couple their names
because it so chanced that we saw the most of them, and
more intimately, together with Lady Burton and Lady Stanley, in hotels—
one in Switzerland, the other in Italy—when we were all holiday making.
Burton's early career was that of a wild, untamed gipsy spirit. His
childhood was passed in France and Italy, when his mastery of tongues
began. At Oxford he acquired Arabic, having turned his back on Latin and
Greek. He told me that, eventually, he conquered well over thirty languages
—I forget the exact number—as well as made progress towards interpreting
what he called the speech of monkeys. We first met him at the table of a
dear friend, Dr. George Bird, who asked how he felt when he had killed a
man. Burton replied that the doctor ought to know, as he had done it oftener.
Stanley's fame was chiefly established by his "finding" of Livingstone,

when he was only about thirty, the search having occupied eight months.
Of the two, Burton was the easier to get on with, being full of talk and
anecdotes. Stanley was reserved, and it often took my wife some time to
draw from him stories, full of interest, about the King of Uganda and other
persons, and incidents of his courageous travels.
Labouchere Our acquaintance with Henry Labouchere dates back to
the time when he built the Queen's Theatre in Long Acre,
where St. Martin's Hall formerly stood, and of which his wife was the
manageress. Henrietta Hodson was a clever actress, whom, in the early days
of the old Prince of Wales's Theatre, we introduced to London. She
afterwards played Esther Eccles in Caste with the first complete company
which toured the provinces.
Labouchere's varied career, after he left Eton and Cambridge, began in

diplomacy. Among many similar stories I have heard of him in those days,
is one of a pompous visitor who, calling at the embassy in Washington, and
not liking the look of so youthful an attaché, said abruptly: "Can I see your
boss?" Labouchere calmly replied: "With pleasure, if you'll tell me to what
part of my person you refer."
After giving up diplomacy he entered Parliament; at one time

represented Northampton with Bradlaugh. I think it was then he became
known as "Labby," and a sort of licensed clown. He was also prominently
associated with journalism. His "Letters of a Besieged Resident," sent over
from Paris by balloons, were so sensational as to increase the circulation of
a daily paper by more than double.
We knew him best on the Lake of Como, at Cadenabbia, a place he

loved, which my wife said ought really to be renamed Cadelabbya. I
remember his suddenly turning to her one morning and saying that he
would rather be deformed than unnoticed.
On the night that our Haymarket career commenced London was fog-
bound. The density lasted for days, being unique in its horrors, as records of
the time can tell. Labouchere was at the theatre and emerged with the rest of
the audience into dreadful gloom. This is the story of his reaching home. He
ran heavily against a man, who asked him in what direction he wanted to
go. Labouchere replied, "Queen Anne's Gate." The questioner said that he
also was going that way, in fact, that he lived hard by, and would take him
there safely if he chose to go with him. Labouchere had some fears as to
being trapped, but decided to risk it and be wary. The two plodded along
together arm-in-arm; they met with one or two minor difficulties; but
presently the cheerful stranger, who evidently was of humble station, stood
still in the pitch darkness and said: "Here we are; what's your number?"
Labouchere told him, and his companion answered: "Then we must cross
the road." They did so, the man groped about a door with his fingers and
said: "That's your house; you're all right now; try your latchkey."
Labouchere, before rewarding his friendly guide, in amazement asked

how he had found his way so accurately on such a night. The simple answer
was: "I'm blind!"
He ended his days at his villa in Italy. When I read his name in the
Honours List as Privy Councillor, I sent him a telegram: "Labouchere,
Florence. Congratulations. Bancroft." His reply was to the effect that I had
puzzled him dreadfully, as he had no idea to what I referred until he
received The Times on the following day.
Oscar Browning—or shall I say "O.B."?—was an odd-looking creature.

We made his acquaintance in our haunt for many years, the Engadine, when
my wife christened him "The Wicked Monk." For my part, I never felt quite
certain how much of him was "Jekyll" and how little there was of "Hyde."
Some time afterwards he sent word to me at the theatre that he was in

the stalls and would like to introduce me to a young friend who was his
companion. I arranged that he should do so at the end of the play, when they
were brought behind the scenes, and O.B. made me known to Mr. George
Curzon, who had recently left Eton, and whose friendship, if I may use the
word, I claim the privilege of having since enjoyed, in the great position to
which Browning had no doubt foreseen that his pupil would attain. Our last
meeting was when Lord Curzon presided at the dinner given to another old
friend of mine, T. P. O'Connor, with a charm only equalled, in my
experience, on somewhat similar occasions by Lord Rosebery and Lord
Balfour.
Comyns Carr I think it was when I first met Comyns Carr—"Joe"—

early in the seventies, that I heard him rebuke a pushing
young man as "a pantaloon without his maturity and a clown without his
colour"—the sort of thing that he fired off throughout his life, as if he were
a well-charged satirical machine-gun.
He had been called to the Bar, but was then on the eve of his marriage
with the attractive Miss Strettell, the daughter of a delightful old clergyman
whom I knew as the chaplain at St. Moritz. Carr did not stick to his first
choice of a profession, which I always regarded as a pity, but drifted into
journalism instead. He was, in his day, attached to many newspapers. Then,
fostered by his love and knowledge of art, came a long career when Sir
Coutts Lindsay, our old friend and guest, reigned at the Grosvenor Gallery,
with Carr as Director. It was famous for Sunday afternoon parties, which
were unique. The robes of Royalty rubbed against the skirts of Bohemia.
"Ladies and other dukes" were plentiful, as were the followers of every art,
and all were happy. Then he wrote plays; next managed a theatre.
I often think he was right when he said to me: "My dear B, the first duty
of wine is to be red." Most of the witty things he uttered have no doubt
appeared in print; perhaps the following gem has not. An old and well-
known friend, who dyed his hair and beard so unnatural a black that even
the raven's wing had no chance against it, was lunching, on a hot day, in the
revealing sun's rays, with some club friends, of whom one was Comyns
Carr, and presenting a sad picture of the struggle between the ravages of
time and the appliances of art. He left the table early, and his departure was
followed by remarks. "How dreadful—what a pity!" "Can't somebody
advise something?" Some one turned to Carr, who had remained silent, and
asked him what he thought. Joe replied that of all his friends and
acquaintances the old fellow was the only one who really was as black as he
was painted.
Carr's gift of eloquence was naturally sought at public banquets, where

his speeches took high rank. But was it not, after all, the old story of "a
rolling stone" which left him best remembered by his brilliant tongue?
Cecil Clay I could go on writing of other Men of Mark to whom I

have had the good fortune to play the host, and tell again of
the great goodness shown to followers of the stage by members of the
healing art, and by lights in the law; but let me bring this chapter to its close
by a reference to Cecil Clay, who wrote A Pantomime Rehearsal and, with
those who acted his amusing play, gave the old generation much pleasure.
He was beloved in every circle that he moved in, and I never heard an
unkind word pass his lips or saw an unkind look upon his face. He went so
far once as to reproach a fellow-member of one of his many clubs who
swore at the matches because they would not strike. "My dear fellow, don't
be angry; pray remember they are the only things in the country that don't!"
I have asked Owen Seaman to allow me to reprint some lines which

appeared in Punch, written, I feel sure, by the pen of Charles Graves.
"Athlete and wit, whose genial tongue

Cheered and refreshed but never stung:
Creator, to our endless joy,
Of priceless Arthur Pomeroy.
Light lie the earth above his head
Who lightened many a heart of lead;
Courteous and chivalrous and gay,
In very truth no common Clay."
The Sickles I have alluded to an early visit to New York, when I was
tragedy a lad of seventeen. During my stay what was known as "The
Sickles Tragedy" occurred in Washington; the details of
which have lingered in my mind ever since. Many years afterwards my wife
and I were at an evening party given by the Dion Boucicaults to a
handsome and distinguished-looking American, with one leg and a crutch;
the other leg he had lost, valiantly, on the field of Gettysburg. His name was
Daniel Sickles. My interest was at once aroused. He was, or had been,
United States Minister to Spain, being no less eminent in diplomacy and the
civil service than as a volunteer soldier and general. At one time the tragedy
of his life might have robbed his country of his great abilities. He had
married, some six years before, a beautiful girl of sixteen, Italian by origin,
and they were living in Washington, where Sickles held a Government
appointment, when he learned from an anonymous letter that his young
wife was false to him, clandestinely meeting at a certain house hired from
an old negro woman by her lover, named Philip Barton Key, a widower
nearly twice her age, a Government lawyer, and the son of the author of
"The Star-Spangled Banner." Sickles had the house watched, and found that
the news was true. Charged with the offence, his wife confessed all, and
explained the system of signals by which, from an upper window, she and
Key, watching through an opera-glass from his club, arranged their
meetings. Sickles demanded her wedding-ring, told her to leave his house
and return to her parents. Soon afterwards, looking out of his window, he
saw the seducer walking towards the house and make a signal with his
handkerchief. He went out, and coming up with Key at the street-corner,
accused him to his face and shot him. Key attempted to defend himself, but
Sickles fired twice more, and then, while Key was on the ground and still
breathing, put his revolver to his own head. Twice it missed fire. Sickles
then walked away and gave himself up to the police. The case aroused
intense excitement, not only in America but in England. The trial lasted
some weeks, and so strong was public opinion in the prisoner's favour that
he was acquitted, and set free to do his country services in the future. I have
been told that, in years after, husband and wife came together again. It is
certain that all through the affair, Sickles treated her with the greatest
consideration, even allowing her to keep their eldest child, who, grown into
a beautiful girl, was present with her father when we met at the Boucicaults'
and who soon afterwards was our guest.
Of the distinguished Americans who have been sent to our country as

Ambassadors from their own land I have met Mr. Lowell, Mr. Phelps, Mr.
Bayard, Mr. Choate, Mr. Page, and Mr. Davis. It is a privilege to have
known such men; a greater privilege, in the case of Mr. Choate, to have
been his host. I don't know whether a charming little story has been in print
before—very likely it has—but I can answer for its exactitude as I now tell
it, and where the incident occurred.
On one of his visits to us the subject was started—I think by Bishop

Boyd-Carpenter—of changing one's identity. My wife turned to her chief
guest and said: "Tell us, Your Excellency, who you would rather be if you
were not Mr. Choate." The Ambassador, slightly rising from his chair,
bowed across the table to his wife, who was at my side, and at once replied:
"Mrs. Choate's second husband."
VIII
THE STAGE
"Of all amusements the theatre is the most profitable, for there we see important actions
when we cannot act importantly ourselves."—MARTIN LUTHER.
When I was nineteen I ran away from home to become an actor, and
have been stage-struck ever since.
Charles Of eminent Victorian leaders of my calling the first to be

Mathews our guest, in very far-away days, was the accomplished
Charles Mathews, the most conspicuous comedian of his
time. The memory of childhood's play-going days tells me that I once saw
Madame Vestris, his first wife, a beautiful and accomplished woman, in one
of Planche's extravaganzas called The King of the Peacocks, at the Lyceum
Theatre. I first met Charles Mathews in 1863, as a star in the theatrical
firmament when I was a struggling young actor in Dublin, where I had the
great advantage of playing with him in a round of his favourite comedies
for a whole month; during which I hope I learnt something from his
delightful personality of the beautiful art of acting.
Among other accomplishments, he was an amusing after-dinner speaker.

When presiding at a theatrical charity banquet, with his own charm of
manner, he began: "Douglas Jerrold once said to me that he did not despair
of living to see the day when I should be trudging up Ludgate Hill, with an
umbrella under my arm, to invest my funds in the Bank of England. I am
sorry to say that the great humorist did not live to see that vision realised.
The only step I have advanced towards it is, that I have bought the
umbrella."
When Mathews left England for a tour in Australia, a banquet was given
in his honour at which he presided; himself proposing the toast of his own
health in these words:
"The most important task assigned to me has now to be fulfilled, and I

rise to propose what is called the toast of the evening with a mixture of
pleasure and trepidation. I was going to say that I was placed in a novel but
unprecedented position, by being asked to occupy the chair. But it is not so.
There is nothing new in saying that there is nothing new. In The Times of
October 3rd, 1798, there is an advertisement of a dinner given to Mr. Fox
on the anniversary of his first election for Westminster: 'The Hon. Charles
James Fox in the chair.' Here is a great precedent; and what was done by
Charles James Fox in 1798 is only imitated in 1870 by Charles James
Mathews. I venture to assert that a fitter man than myself to propose the
health of our guest could not be found; for I venture to affirm that there is
no man so well acquainted with the merits and demerits of that gifted
individual as I am. I have been on intimate terms with him from his earliest
youth. I have watched over his progress from childhood, have shared in his
joys and griefs, and I assert boldly that there is not a man on earth for whom
I entertain so sincere a regard and affection. Nor do I go too far in stating
that he has an equal affection for me. He has come to me for advice in the
most embarrassing circumstances, and what is still more remarkable, has
always taken my advice in preference to that of any one else."
Needless to say the speech was interrupted at every point by laughter.

Here is a characteristic letter I received from him during a winter which he
was passing at Nice:
"It is hard to be obliged to come indoors on such a heavenly day to

write a letter, and you will no doubt think it harder to be obliged to read it.
But friendship calls, and I sacrifice myself upon its altar. Do thou likewise.
"A very nice fellow has written a comedy. ('O Lord!' I hear you say.) All
I ask of you is to read it, have the parts copied out and produce it, playing
the principal part yourself—nothing more. Your new piece, of course, will
not run more than two or three years, and then you will have this ready to
fall back upon. The human mind naturally looks forward, and managers
cannot make their arrangements too soon. If by any unforeseen and
improbable chance you may not fancy the piece (such things have
happened), please drop me a sweet little note, so charmingly worded that
the unhappy author may swallow the gilded pill without difficulty. There is
something in the piece—or I would not inflict it upon you. If well dressed,
and carefully put upon the stage, it might be effective.
"This is what is called writing just one line. You will of course say it
'wants cutting,' like the piece. So I will cut it—short.
"On reading this rigmarole, I find I have only used the word 'piece' four
times. When you give my letter to the copyist, you can make the following
alterations: For 'piece' (No. 1) read 'play.' For 'piece' (No. 2) read
'production.' For 'piece' (No. 3) read 'work.' For 'piece' (No. 4) read
'comedy.'"
"Our Boys" As an instance of his good judgment, on the first night of

Byron's comedy, Our Boys, which had a phenomenal run, I
was in the billiard room of the Garrick Club; a group of men came in who
said they had been to see a new comedy at the Vaudeville Theatre. Various
opinions were expressed, several present thinking the comedy would only
have a moderate run, when Mathews, who was playing pool, said, quietly:
"I don't agree with you fellows. I was there, and haven't laughed so heartily
for a long while. Byron this time—he doesn't always—has taken his goods
to exactly the right shop. That play is sure to run."
Charles Mathews was originally an architect of considerable skill and

promise. Although he did not go upon the stage until he was thirty, he
became one of the most beloved of the public's favourites. Mathews was
distinctly an actor of manners: it was beyond his range to portray emotion.
Later on, Charles Wyndham, at one time in his career, had some of his
attributes, and so, very strongly, had Kendal. Nowadays, the actor who at
times recalls him to me in the delicacy and refinement of his comedy is
Gerald du Maurier.
Pictorially, Charles Mathews lives again in the interesting series of stage

portraits on the walls of the Garrick Club with which I was first familiar on
the staircases when he lived in Pelham Crescent and Belgrave Road.
In a defence of himself and the view he took of his art, he once said: "It
has been urged against me that I always play the same characters in the
same way, and that ten years hence I should play the parts exactly as I play
them now; this I take as a great compliment. It is a precision which has
been aimed at by the models of my profession, which I am proud to follow,
and shows, at least, that my acting, such as it is, is the result of art, and
study, and not of mere accident."
Charles I can also take the reader back to another link with the
Fechter past and tell him briefly something of Charles Fechter, also
of Victorian fame, whose name opens up a mine of
memories. In our early married days we lived in St. John's Wood; Fechter
was our neighbour and once our guest. I regard him as the finest actor of the
romantic drama I have ever seen. The eye, the voice, the grace—all so
needed—were at his command. He was the original of the lover in La Dame
aux Camélias. I was present at his début in London, so long ago as 1860,
when, as Ruy Blas, he forsook the French for the English stage, and I saw
his first performance of The Corsican Brothers, in which play he also acted
originally in Paris. This was at the old Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street,
which, a decade earlier, had been the scene of the Charles Kean
Shakespearean revivals, most of which I saw in my 'teens. They were a
great advance scenically on all that had been done by Macready, while their
splendours and pageantry were in turn eclipsed first by Irving and
afterwards by Tree; but genius has no part in plastering treacle on jam.
So vivid is my remembrance of Fechter's acting in Hamlet, which took

the town by storm, that I can describe and illustrate much of it after a lapse
of more than fifty years. He made the Prince a fair-haired, almost flaxen,
Dane. Dickens said: "No innovation was ever accepted with so much favour
by so many intellectuals as Fechter's Hamlet."
Quite recently I came across the impressions of Clement Scott, for
many years one of the most prominent of our dramatic critics. He wrote:
"Let me candidly own that I never quite understood Hamlet until I saw
Fechter play the Prince of Denmark. Phelps and Charles Kean impressed
me with the play, but with Fechter, I loved the play, and was charmed as
well as fascinated by the player." He afterwards failed as Othello, while his
performance of Iago was a triumph. It is a coincidence that Fechter should
have received valuable help during his reign at the Lyceum from Kate
Terry, whose younger sister, Ellen, in a similar position, did so much for
Irving in the same theatre later on.
Fechter died in America in 1879. His last years were sad. But a decade
or so before, the idol of the playgoing public, the compeer of all
distinguished in the arts, the welcome guest of Charles Dickens at Gad's
Hill, he died beyond the seas neglected, friendless, almost forgotten. Few
actors at their zenith have held greater sway; few could compare with him
in romantic parts; fewer still could claim to have stirred two nations of
playgoers in different tongues; but such is the fleeting nature of our work,
so faint the record of it left behind, that one might ask how many now can
speak of Fechter as he really was, how few will even know his name? "Out,
out, brief candle!" His talent was not confined to the stage, as a spirited bust
of himself, his own work, now in the Garrick Club, will show.
Salvini Later on, there came the eminent Italian actor, Salvini,
whose visit to this country in 1875 may still be remembered
by a dwindling few. He was the greatest tragedian I have seen—he was
never a tenor trying to sing a bass song. On the stage the Italians, to my
mind, have the advantage over other actors in being beyond question the
finest pantomimists in the world—they can say so much without speaking.
Those two great actresses, Ristori and Duse, made masterly use of this gift.
At an afternoon performance of Othello by Salvini, specially given at

Drury Lane Theatre to the leading representatives of the English Stage, who
chiefly composed the vast assemblage, I was present. Salvini's superbly
delivered address to the Senate at once convinced the remarkable audience
that no ordinary actor was before them—so calm, so dignified, so
motionless—broken only by the portrayal of love as he caught sight of
Desdemona entering on the scene. No ovation that I have taken part in
equalled in enthusiasm the reception from his up-standing comrades at the
close of the third act. His death scene I took exception to as being too
shocking, too realistic, too like an animal dying in the shambles or on a
battle-field. There I thought the Italian was surpassed by the Irishman, G. V.
Brooke, the only actor I have seen who shared Salvini's natural gifts of
voice and bearing, and who, but for his unfortunate intemperate habits,
might have achieved lasting fame upon the stage. His death in Othello
seemed to me as poetic in conception as it was pathetic in execution.
Acting, although not speaking, the closing words, "Killing myself, to die
upon a kiss," he staggered towards the bed, dying as he clutched the heavy
curtains of it, which, giving way, fell upon his prostrate body as a kind of
pall, disclosing, at the same time, the dead form of Desdemona. I agree with
the great Frenchman who said: "Even when it assassinates, even when it
strangles, tragedy remembers that it wears the crown and carries a sceptre."
In a little letter to my wife, Salvini wrote:
"CHÈRE MADAME,—Que vous êtes aimable! Je tiendrai votre joli

cadeau comme un doux souvenir de votre sincère amitié. Ce sera un
précieux talisman qui suivra le reste de ma carrière artistique, et qui, je suis
sûr, m'apportera du bonheur."
The perfect In a conversation I had with Salvini, he modestly said

Hamlet his nationality and Southern blood made it comparatively
easy for him to play the jealous Moor, while they stood in
his way when he attempted the part of the Northern moody Dane, to which
his robust physique was not suited. Salvini's performance, however, of
Hamlet has left me memories almost as keen as those bequeathed by
Fechter. In his arrangement of the play he acted the long speech of his
father's ghost. You only heard, and hardly saw the Phantom. His scene with
his mother was very fine: his management of the foils in the fight with
Laertes as superb as it was original: his death the most touching I can recall:
it was the "Kiss me, Hardy" of Nelson; he felt for Horatio's head and drew
it down to his face as the spirit fled. To make a perfect Hamlet I should
weld together ever to be remembered portions from the performances of
Fechter, Salvini, Irving and Forbes-Robertson.
It is interesting to read what Macready, the greatest of the Victorian

classic actors, said of this complex, fascinating character:
"It seems to me as if only now at fifty-one years of age, I thoroughly see

and appreciate the artistic power of Shakespeare in this great human
phenomenon: nor do any of the critics, Goethe, Schlegel, or Coleridge,
present to me, in their elaborate remarks, the exquisite artistical effects
which I see in this work, as long meditation, like long straining after light,
gives the minutest portion of its excellence to my view."
From my childhood I have always looked upon Macready as the head of

my craft, and regarded him with the reverence a young curate would feel, I
suppose, towards the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I regret that I never saw Macready act. I was not ten years old when he
left the stage. I had the pleasure, long afterwards, to know his son,
Jonathan, a clever surgeon, whose son, Major Macready, I now know; and I
rejoice in the friendship of the tragedian's youngest child, General Sir Nevil
Macready, whom I first saw at his father's funeral, when he was lifted from
a mourning coach—a little fellow of about ten.
My wife was the last stage link with Macready. At one of the farewell
performances he gave when he retired she appeared as the child apparition
in Macbeth.
I am wandering from my departed guests, but may mention that in my

boyhood I saw much of that fine actor, Samuel Phelps, who had so wide a
range and to whom no character seemed to come amiss. I have always felt,
however, that he was a disciple of Macready, to whom undoubtedly he
owed much, and whom he followed as Richelieu, Werner and Virginius.
I may just say that, in my early career, I have acted with Phelps, as well
as with Charles Kean and G. V. Brooke, and it may surprise young actors of
to-day to know that, in my provincial novitiate of four years and three
months, I played no fewer than three hundred and forty-six different parts,
with the advantage of repeating many of the Shakespearean characters with
different leading actors.
A tribute from I met and knew the great French comedian Edmond Got,
Got for many years doyen of the Comédie française, in the far-
off days of the Commune. The chief members of the troupe
were here in exile for many months, when it was a privilege to entertain
them. It was strange to learn that Got had served in the French cavalry
before he went upon the stage. I append a gracious letter I received from
him:
"Je veux vous remercier de la gracieuse hospitalité que vous avez bien
voulu nous offrir, et vous prier de mettre aux pieds de Mme. Bancroft
l'hommage de mon respect et de ma très sincère admiration.
"Quant à vous, monsieur, vous avez montré ce que peut obtenir de ses
artistes un habile administrateur, doublé d'un parfait comédien, c'est-à-dire
un ensemble que je souhaiterais rencontrer sur beaucoup de scènes
parisiennes, et quelquefois sur la nôtre."
Two often welcomed guests were the brothers Coquelin, ainé and cadet.
The elder was a great actor, the younger a good actor and a brilliant diseur.
Coquelin, as well as his distinguished comrade, Mounet-Sully, also his
eminent compatriot, Clemenceau, belonged to "The Vintage."
Coquelin My friendship for Coquelin was one of many years. No

stage-struck youth perhaps was more unlikely to succeed;
but his teacher at the Conservatoire—the great Regnier—always argued that
to make a really fine actor a man should have to fight against some physical
drawback.
Coquelin was the most outspoken admirer of my wife's acting. He said:
"her splendid vitality was contagious: her winning magnetism would fill the
largest stage." If my saying so does not detract from this praise, I may add
that he showered encomiums in a Parisian journal on my performance in
The Dead Heart, when I acted with Irving. He once wrote to me:
"CHER BANCROFT,—Vous avez un excellent théâtre que vous dirigez

en maître—et en maître artiste—que pouvez-vous désirer de plus? Ah, cette
fois-ci, Bravo, et sans restriction. Cet orchestre qu'on ne voit pas, cette
rampe presque imperceptible, cette absence du manteau d'Arlequin, ce
cadre contournant la scène! Le spectateur est devant un tableau dont les
personnages parlent et agissent. C'est parfait pour l'illusion et pour le plaisir
artistique. Votre ami,—C. COQUELIN."
I have a valued souvenir of him in his autographed portrait as Cyrano.
In his home his gaiety was delightful, while his love for his simple old
mother was enshrined in his heart as it would seem always to be in that of a
good Frenchman.
The farewell words of Jules Claretie, the accomplished director of the

Théâtre français, spoken by his grave, were indeed a tribute: "Coquelin was
more than a stage king, he was a king of the stage, and has left a luminous
trail in the heaven of art."
I was one of the group of English actors who went to Paris with our
sculptured offering to his genius which is enshrined in the historic foyer,
where, at a luncheon, I had the temerity to make a short speech in
indifferent French, urged to do so by Madame Bartet, a brilliant actress,
who helped me to frame some of its sentences.
And his poor brother. It is painful to think of cadet's bright nature being
quenched by incurable melancholia: distressing indeed to imagine what his

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THE WORLD OF LYRIC: LYRIC GEOGRAPHY

Local and Wandering Lyric Poets

He invited me to join a congratulatory dinner party to be given by him,

Another Field-Marshal and V.C. whom we knew was the hero of

Lord Rathmore—better remembered and thought of by me as David

Lord Glenesk, always a great supporter of the drama, gave us his

Acquaintance with the first Lord Ashbourne, so long Lord Chancellor of

I first met Edward Lawson, afterwards Lord Burnham, on the morning

I was indebted to his constant kindness and hospitality, especially at

Alfred My first acquaintance with Alfred Lyttelton was as a

It is among my happy memories to have been many times the guest of

He was an exceptional, an extraordinary, man, in addition to his skill as

Public servants Other names crowd my mind: Sir Frank Lascelles, so

Of Schomberg McDonnell, known better to his big circle of friends as

I must in these names include that of a friend of many years, Sir

"Mr. Alfred," as Alfred de Rothschild was generally spoken of, was

Stanley's fame was chiefly established by his "finding" of Livingstone,

Labouchere's varied career, after he left Eton and Cambridge, began in

After giving up diplomacy he entered Parliament; at one time

We knew him best on the Lake of Como, at Cadenabbia, a place he

Labouchere, before rewarding his friendly guide, in amazement asked

Oscar Browning—or shall I say "O.B."?—was an odd-looking creature.

Some time afterwards he sent word to me at the theatre that he was in

Comyns Carr I think it was when I first met Comyns Carr—"Joe"—

Carr's gift of eloquence was naturally sought at public banquets, where

Cecil Clay I could go on writing of other Men of Mark to whom I

I have asked Owen Seaman to allow me to reprint some lines which

"Athlete and wit, whose genial tongue

Of the distinguished Americans who have been sent to our country as

On one of his visits to us the subject was started—I think by Bishop

Charles Of eminent Victorian leaders of my calling the first to be

Among other accomplishments, he was an amusing after-dinner speaker.

"The most important task assigned to me has now to be fulfilled, and I

Needless to say the speech was interrupted at every point by laughter.

"It is hard to be obliged to come indoors on such a heavenly day to

"Our Boys" As an instance of his good judgment, on the first night of

Charles Mathews was originally an architect of considerable skill and

Pictorially, Charles Mathews lives again in the interesting series of stage

So vivid is my remembrance of Fechter's acting in Hamlet, which took

At an afternoon performance of Othello by Salvini, specially given at

In a little letter to my wife, Salvini wrote:

"CHÈRE MADAME,—Que vous êtes aimable! Je tiendrai votre joli

The perfect In a conversation I had with Salvini, he modestly said