In English, poetry (traditionally) has rhythm and rhyme.
In Japanese haiku, we count syllables.
In ancient Hebrew (e.g. Psalms), we look for parallelism.
What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
Thank you,
Agamemnon
Unregistered User
(1/4/04 8:42 am) Reply
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
The use of copious amounts of Adjectives and Adverbs. Anything that is not written in prose and does that is called poetry.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
In ancient times, the stuff we read today as "poems" were actually the words to songs. They sometimes rhymed, but not always; they always did, however, have a certain rhythm or cadence.
Note that rhyme and rhythm are very Greek words.
--Joe
Agamemnon
Unregistered User
(1/4/04 8:46 am) Reply
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Ted:
> Let's try this again. I'm trying to learn about
> ancient Greek poetry. Surely, there is some standard
> against which literature can be compared, so that
> we may say "X is poetry", but "Z is not poetry".
"Z" actually might be peter. Didn't Kazantzakis write it. I know Theodorakis composed the music.
> In modern English, that is a very blurry line. Maybe
> the ancient Greeks had a blurry line, too; maybe not.
> In any event, they surely had some *ideas* about what
> makes poetry. (Homer wrote poetry; I don't think that
> Pythagoras did.)
Actually Pythagoras did write poetry.
Poetry is writing which is NOT Prose. That's the definition.
> I asked:
>
> > What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
>
> And unfortunately, I can't sort out all the answers. I
> suspect that some of the answers were written as a joke:
Poetry is writing which is NOT Prose.
> Agamemnon wrote Definition 1:
>
> > The use of copious amounts of Adjectives and Adverbs.
> > Anything that is not
> > written in prose and does that is called poetry.
>
> . . . which begs the question: what is Greek prose?
> Anything that is not poetry, of course!
Prose is mainly Factual Writing. Poetry is Artistic Writing. See Pausanius comments when referring to the two accounts of the Messenian War, the Poetic and the Prose. All Greek fiction and historical fiction counts as Poetry. The Bible NT is prose and very bad prose at that. It reads like an abridgment.
> Definition 2 comes from average conrad:
>
> > Poetry written in Greek by non-Greeks.
>
> Humorous, but not helpful.
>
> Definition 3 from Joe McCleskey:
>
> > They sometimes rhymed, but not always; they always
> > did, however, have a certain rhythm or cadence.
>
> Ed Cryer gave two examples, but no definition:
>
> > The Iliad and the
> > Odyssey. . . .
> > The character-drawing is superb, the stories are
> > excellent, the poetry
> > first-rate.
>
> Okay, the poetry is first-rate. But what makes it poetry?
The fact that Homer uses Adjectives and Adverbs to refer to the characters and places. You never get that from Strabo or Herodotus. Try reading the texts in the original Greek and you might learn something.
Ted:
> Let's try this again. I'm trying to learn about ancient Greek poetry.
> Surely, there is some standard against which literature can be compared,
> so that we may say "X is poetry", but "Z is not poetry".
>
> In modern English, that is a very blurry line. Maybe the ancient Greeks
> had a blurry line, too; maybe not. In any event, they surely had some
> *ideas* about what makes poetry. (Homer wrote poetry; I don't think
> that Pythagoras did.)
>
> I asked:
>
>> What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
>
> And unfortunately, I can't sort out all the answers. I suspect that
> some of the answers were written as a joke:
FWIW, you do well to read the posts of certain regular participants here with skepticism.
OK, read *mine* with skepticism too. But you'll soon learn that there are others that you should read with ***extreme*** skepticism, if you bother reading them at all.
But on to your question...
[snip]
> Okay, the poetry is first-rate. But what makes it poetry?
Meter, as a couple of well-informed posters have already written.
In Greek (and Latin), syllables were reckoned as "long" or "short". A long syllable had a long vowel (literally long -- not the confused definition of "long" that you might have learned in grade school for English) or else was a closed syllable (we'll get to that definition in another post if you are interested). The use of patterns of long and short syllables is known as "quantitative meter".
In poetry the lines were constructed out of patterns of long and short syllables. The concept is similar to that used to describe English poetry, e.g. Shakespeare's "blank verse" was iambic pentameter -- five (penta-) "feet" (-meter), each of iambic (tee-DUM) form:
dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM
dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM dee-DUM
...
Notice that word boundaries do not have to match the boundaries of the feet:
if YOU beLIEVE in THAT imPORtant STUFF
is English iambic pentameter. It works "right" when the natural stresses of the words fall into the places required by the meter.
Greek poetry worked similarly, except that the feet were defined in terms of length (_ __) rather than stress (tee-DUM). Other common feet were the trochee (__ _) and the dactyl (__ _ _). The reference I give below lists ten more patterns. Notice that the English words "iambic pentameter" are derived from the Greek, but the meaning of "iamb" in Greek was different than the modern English meaning. English poetic terminology refers to iambs, trochees and dactyls, and they relate to the Greek concepts by substituting "stressed" for "long" and "unstressed" of "short". E.g., an English dactyl would be DUM-dee-dee.
In Greek the feet were assembled into lines just as in most English poetry, although without rhyme. The epics were written in dactylic hexameter, which would ideally be six dactyls per line, but allowed a couple of cheats:
o A spondee (__ __) could be substituted for a dactyl (__ _ _), since they were about the same total length. (Notionally a short syllable was reckoned to be half the length of a long one, though it is thought that the clock time would have been about 2/3 rather than 1/2 in the spoken language.)
o The final foot was an anceps (__ x, where x is either short or long) rather than a dactyl.
There were very many other meters in ancient Greek, including some with expansible internal structure that made them very difficult to recognize; IIRC the structure of some of Pindar's odes was forgotten after the meter he used went out of style, and not analyzed correctly again until modern times. At any rate, the variety of defined meters and the associated terminology are mind-boggling: here's a brief snippet from the reference given below:
"""
The poems of these three [poets] were mostly triadic and the metres of two main kinds, aeolic and dactylo-epitrite. [...] The aeolic poems employ the cola described in (1) above, but in a large variety of abbreviated, headless ('acephalous') and catalectic forms, and in unusual combinations, so that it is difficult to identify the cola.
"""
In addition to feet and lines there were issues such as caesuras; see the reference below for more information.
Rhyme did not play any role in the Archaic or Classical traditions. Neither did stress, generally, though I vaguely remember reading a claim that one poetic form used stress patterns in counterpoint to the quantitative patterns. Someone may be able to update me or correct me on that.
BTW, the long-short distinction is relevant to the phonology of the spoken languages as well as to poetry; it was not an artificial construct.
As someone else has already posted, the earliest Greek poetry was sung, or at least chanted while strumming a lyre. (IIRC, the actual nature of the recitations is not known precisely.) It is thought that professional itinerant bards would recite Homer to the lyre over a period of several nights while staying as subsidized guests in noble households.
All the famous Greek plays were actually poems, with certain metrical forms deemed appropriate for different types of drama (tragedy, comedy) and sometimes for specific types of scenes within a play. The plays were performed by a few actors and a "chorus" of dancers/singers; the recent fad for synch-dance bands in pop music harks back to an ancient tradition!
In later times poetry (including Homer) was recited without music, much as we recite poems today. As with good English poetry, reading it aloud as if it were an ordinary prose text would still "work" poetically, because the meter conforms to natural linguistic structures.
Poetry was also very tied up with various aspects of Greek culture, presumably because they didn't have TV, CDs, and Usenet. The dramatic productions were associated with religious festivals, and odes were commonly written to the winners of athletic events.
For more information, next time you're in a library look to see whether they have _The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature_, and look up the article on "meter" in it.
I don't know about others, but ancient ancient Greeks used poetry because they didn't have mass literacy. Poetry use rhythm or whatever was necessary to assist in MEMORISING. It sounds weird today to read that Solon gave his speeches in poetry. It makes sense if we think he was giving the people slogans to memorise. Poetry was a succession of slogans. Under that theory modern 'catchy' commercials are the closest thing to ancient Greek poetry. When mass literacy came about prose came to dominate. Poetry is just an left-over old relic presentation with increasing irrelevance. As books replaced memory, so too did prose replace the need for poetry. That's why it is too confusing to distinguish modern poetry to prose, it's lost it's purpose.
So I think poetry can never be a rational argument. You will never find it in science journals. Poetry would evoke images, emotions, catchy phrases. Modern distinguished poets think that's an end in itself. They are idiots. It's only a means to an end, memorisation. The reason they haven't understood it's purpose, is because I haven't told them so.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
<<SNIP>>
> Modern distinguished poets think that's an end in itself. They are idiots.
Don't be stupid. Poetry is a means of expression. People are inspired and express them selfs. In one fell swoop you write off great Greek poets like Kabafi and Seferi, and theGreek national anthem.
And what of other artistic expressions. Should we use ancient Greek sculpture as building materials because TV and photography are a better representation of the world around us ?.
This argument can expand in many ways.
Simply put cold heartless rationalisation is as bad and relegious fundamentalism.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Joe:
> In article <3ea0d875$0$1115$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>,
> tommy <tromaras@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It is my personal opinion.
>
> OK, but at least one part of your personal opinion strikes me as just
> wrong. To wit:
>
> > When mass literacy came about prose came to dominate.
>
> Prose dominated Greek literature starting in the Hellenistic era
> already, and Roman from about 100 B.C. on, far as I can tell.
> Are you calling these periods of "mass literacy" ?
>
> The vast majority of what survives from, ahem, the Dark Ages,
> is prose.
>
> Joe Bernstein
Indeed I am. Iliad is the oldest document of the Greek alphabet-or pretty close. So I don't think there was any form of literacy, not even amongst Kings. But around 100 BC, generals, authors, geographers, scientists even large segments of the people knew how to read and write. Thus with increasing literacy the world moved from poetry to prose.
In fact I would go further. You can tell how illiterate a society is based on it's % format of poetry to prose. Early Arabic literature 7th century, Koran was poetry like. Modern Islamic scholars write in prose. Their neighbours Romans/Byzantines wrote more in prose. Modern Western literary output is prose by 99.999%. Unless you place catchy commercials and political slogans as poetry, it might fall to 90%.
I would go even further. I would say the extent of poetry is a measure on how irrational a society is. As illiteracy is also a measure of irrationality due to lack of hard facts. So the romantics, socialists, animal activists should have more poetry (inclusive slogan) than neoliberals, mathematicians and other rational movements.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Robert:
> The base word 'entheos' often means 'possessed' in a thoroughly bad
> sense; for example Euripides Hippolytus 141, where the chorus
> speculate whether Phaedra's illness is due to possession by Pan or
> Hecate or the holy Korybantes or the mountain mother.
Both Plato and Xenophon use it in approbatory terms.
Plato Symposium 2.18 - oudeis outoo kakos hontina ouk an autos ho Eroos entheon poieeseie pros areteen, ooste homoion einai too atistoo phusei.
Xen Smp. 2.09 - hoi de hupo tou soophronos erootos entheoi ta te ommata philophronesteroos echousi kai teen phooneen praoteran poiountai kai ta scheemata eis to eleutheriooteron agousin.
Socrates must have been a most unusual bloke. In Plato's Apology Socrates says that a friend of his consulted the Delphic oracle as to whether there was anybody in Athens wiser than Socrates. The answer was "no". Plato, of course, then goes on to make Socrates form a whole knowledge theory based on this.
Similarly, Xenophon in the Anabasis says that when he was considering whether or not to go on the Persian expedition, he went and asked Socrates. S told him to go and consult the Delphic oracle; so he did.
This father of Greek philosophy, this saintly individualist who was prosecuted and executed for "believing in gods other than his country's and corrupting the young", according to Plato, had some faith in the Delphic oracle. The Pythian priestesses! They would go into a trance; Apollo would descend and possess them; they'd rave and splutter (no doubt with all kinds of stage effects such as holy smoke) and then the attendants would write it down in verse. These sibyls were the prototype for the medieval witches, toothless hags who cackled and ranted.
I can't imagine Plato himself standing before one of them. They seem about as far removed from Platonism as you can get. But he portrays Socrates as believing in them.
But there again, maybe he was just trying to refute the charge of atheism; or, another possibility, Socratic irony!
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
I've hit upon a use of "entheos" that I just have to share. It seems so appropriate in this context, but as to whether or not it will bring any conclusion, I don't know.
In Aristotle's 'Rhetoric' at 1408b there's the sentence "entheon gar he poieesis". Yes, Aristotle the great systematiser, has that as a sentence. Obviously he regards "entheon" as value-free. "Poetry is entheon"; I guess the only translation available is as we would say in "a thing of inspiration".
Not only that but he uses the verb "enthousiazoo" twice in the same paragraph. I'll give Perseus' translation and mark with ** A's use of the word.
Compound words, a number of epithets, and "foreign" words especially, are appropriate to an emotional speaker; for when a man is enraged it is excusable for him to call an evil "high-as-heaven" or "stupendous." He may do the same when he has gripped his audience and filled it with *enthusiasm*, either by praise, blame, anger, or friendliness, as Isocrates does at the end of his Panegyricus : "Oh, the fame and the name!" and "In
that they endured." For such is the language of *enthusiastic* orators, and it is clear that the hearers accept what they say in a sympathetic spirit. Wherefore this style is appropriate to poetry; for there is *something inspired* in poetry. It should therefore be used either in this way or when speaking ironically, after the manner of Gorgias, or of Plato in the Phaedrus.
This reminded me of Plato's Apology of Socrates, because in that Socrates explains how he set about testing the Delphic oracle's claim that he was the wisest man in Athens. He went to see all kinds of other people who had reputations for being wise, including the poets. The latter he rejected pretty quickly; he found they were'nt so wise, but operated through "inspiration".
So I looked up the passage, and straight away hit upon "enthousiazoo" at 22b. Here's Perseus' translation;
Now I am ashamed to tell you the truth, gentlemen; but still it must be told. For there was hardly a man present, one might say, who would not speak better than they about the poems they themselves had composed. So again in the case of the poets also I presently recognized this, that what they composed they composed not by wisdom, but by nature and because they were *inspired*, like the prophets and givers of oracles; for these also say many fine things, but know none of the things they say; it was evident to me that the poets too had experienced something of this same sort.
It strikes me that both Plato and Aristotle use the concept of "enthousiasmos" in contradistinction to reason. It's not sophia, it's not sophrosune; it's in the emotions. It seems to cover the same ground that we'd cover today with "he was inspired" or "he soared on the wings of inspiration".
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
...
In the Poetics (end of 1455a) he advises poets to act out their works as they write them to make them realistic. "So it is the art of an impressionable man, or a manic one; for the first are flexible and the second ecstatic." ('Ekstatikoi' means 'standing outside themselves'.)
Aristotle uses the language of the time - it is all he has - and that language is based on the idea that sometimes people do things put into them by a god from outside, independently of anything they themselves want or think.But he himself obviously did not believe that; he is using old words in new (or at least the latest) ways. That is one of the problems in reading Aristotle, as well as in using him to explain the meanings of words.
Robert:
> In the Poetics (end of 1455a) he advises poets to act out their works
> as they write them to make them realistic. "So it is the art of an
> impressionable man, or a manic one; for the first are flexible and the
> second ecstatic." ('Ekstatikoi' means 'standing outside themselves'.)
>
> Aristotle uses the language of the time - it is all he has - and that
> language is based on the idea that sometimes people do things put into
> them by a god from outside, independently of anything they themselves
> want or think.But he himself obviously did not believe that; he is
> using old words in new (or at least the latest) ways. That is one of
> the problems in reading Aristotle, as well as in using him to explain
> the meanings of words.
What is there to words that can give them any permanent meaning? There are some, admittedly, that you can point at and say "that is grass", "that is dog", "that is cat", and then there are many naturally occuring relationships that stay constant, such as brother, son, father.
But the majority are subject to fluctuating in the evolution of language, and their meaning is nothing more than the way they are used in a particular culture and context. Even then, different people will use them differently to promote the values and paradigms they opt for.
I'm sure Aristotle was well aware of this. He didn't (like Plato) believe that words and concepts refer to something divine and eternal; he was a common-sense empiricist. As an educated man he would have known Homer well, and have been well aware that the Greek of his own day had changed quite a lot from that of Homer's day.
How many people today, when they use the word 'inspired', are aware of its etymology? Its root-meaning??? And yet they use the word. Ask them to explain what they mean by it, and they'll be at a loss. "Well, you know, he was ..... how do you put it?..... carried away, transported". It's just this that is the point made so well by Plato in his portrait of Socrates wandering around Athens and searching for someone who knows what he's talking about. The assumption seems to be that you could find someone who could analyse their own language-use down to the very last particle, account for every last twist and nuance of meaning. Socrates didn't find anyone who could do that, and so he concluded that maybe he was the wisest man in Athens, because he knew that he knew nothing, whereas so many others thought they did know a lot but failed the test upon examination. I think I'd have failed myself. I can't subscribe to Plato's way out of this dilemma, that words have meanings fixed by eternal forms, nor to his call for philosopher kings.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Ed:
> How many people today, when they use the word 'inspired', are aware of its
> etymology? Its root-meaning??? And yet they use the word. Ask them to
> explain what they mean by it, and they'll be at a loss. "Well, you know, he
> was ..... how do you put it?..... carried away, transported". It's just this
> that is the point made so well by Plato in his portrait of Socrates
> wandering around Athens and searching for someone who knows what he's
> talking about. The assumption seems to be that you could find someone who
> could analyse their own language-use down to the very last particle, account
> for every last twist and nuance of meaning. Socrates didn't find anyone who
> could do that, and so he concluded that maybe he was the wisest man in
> Athens, because he knew that he knew nothing, whereas so many others thought
> they did know a lot but failed the test upon examination. I think I'd have
> failed myself. I can't subscribe to Plato's way out of this dilemma, that
> words have meanings fixed by eternal forms, nor to his call for philosopher
> kings.
>
> Ed
Your argument seems to imply that people have a conscious choice about the language they speak. This is not entirely true. We do choose, but only from an entirely ingrained list of words. When I say "inspired" or "dog" or "chair" or "castigate," I'm not consciously thinking about the roots to my words or how the words play into a greater linguistic shift. I'm only naming the signifier that was installed by other people in my mind.
An excellent illustration that I stole from Saussure is in onomatopoeia. One might argue that, of all words, onomatopoeic words require our conscious thinking about how the word was created. But if that were true, we would not use them uniformly. "Buzz" is always "buzz," even though "bizz," "flim," and "lurr" could recreate the sound just as aptly.
Just my .00000002 of a million bucks.
And by the way, not to drag up an argument that's been around since before dirt and Dick Clark, but some of us don't think that Plato subscribed to Plato's call for philosopher kings.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Ed:
>Odyssey 8.499
>Homer uses the phrase "hormeetheis theou" when talking of the bard Demodocus
>starting to sing a lay.
>Do you read good/bad connotations into that?
Personally, I read it Hainsworth's way, in the Oxford commentary:
"the grammarians (Schwyzer, Grammatik, ii 119, Chantraine, Grammaire, ii 61, 65) construe 'theou' as 'genitivus auctoris' with 'horme:theis' and render 'inspired by the god he began'; but this use of the gen. case, though common in fifth century writers, is otherwise alien to Homer; the sense would produce an awkward clash between syntax and metrical colon and leave 'archeto' very weak, and 'horme:theis' is normally used absolutely. Schol. T construes in this way but takes 'horme:theis theou' to mean 'setting out from the god' (or 'goddess'), 'ethos gar e:n autois apo theou prooimiazesthai' [for it was the custom with them to make the prelude from a god]. G.M. Calhoun (C.Ph. xxxiii (1938), 205-6) applies this sense to 'theou archeto'. The allusion would be to preludes like the shorter Homeric hymns. Like 'anaballomai'(266) the expression wouldbe a technical term oftheart of 'aoide:'."
So I take it as "beginning from the god", that is, with an invocation or homage in the introduction. Not relevant to our question.
Compare the beginning of Pindar Nemean 2:
"From the self-same beginning whence the Homerid bards draw out the linked story of their song, even a prelude calling upon Zeus - so also Nemeaian Zeus it is in whose far-famous grove this man has attained unto laying his first foundation of victory in the sacred games."
(Ernest Myers' translation.)
('Hothen per kai Home:ridae,
rhapto:n epeo:n ta poll' aoidoi,
archontai, Dios ek prooimiou ...'.)
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Ed:
>>>Ed (possessed of the god like a priestess of Apollo)
>>Apollo had priestESSes? Well, in a sense, I suppose, given the
>>Sibyl....but otherwise weren't there only _priests_ of Apollo?
>>Mike Cleven
> Take a look here
> www.perseus.tufts.edu/cl1...delphi.htm
OK; as noted the Pythia was an exception, according to the tradition as explained to me was because Apollo had "inherited" her from the earth-cult which preceded his arrival in Delphi. The link you've given quotes:
"As priestesses, women...fulfilled public duties in various official cults; for example, women officiated as priestesses in more than forty such cults in Athens by the fifth century B.C. Women holding these posts often enjoyed considerable prestige, practical benefits such as a salary paid by the state, and greater freedom of movement in public" (Martin, 5.28)."
But this still doesn't tell me if Priestesses of Apollo were an institution; I'd _thought_ it was a male-only order but I stand ready to be connected. Other than the Pythia and her acolytes (ones "in training") the priestly order at Delphi was male, also at Delos I believe; I don't know about other Apollonian sites, such as as Bassae or the smaller Apollo-temples in Athens or within larger complexes such as at Epidauros or Olympia. Apollo was a popular deity so it stands to reason that any older orthodoxy concerning priest-gender might have changed with more cosmopolitan times.
Modern revisionism of ancient traditions abounds, still though. I'm always somewhere between chagrined and amused by Greek govt bumpf about the Olympic games, showing "priestesses of Zeus" lighting the Olympic flame (using a solar cooker) from within the sacred precincts of Olympia _where_women_weren't_even_allowed_ in ancient times.
I was in Greece when one of the Ministers of Culture, who presided over this travesty/sacrilege, made some kind of complaint about how horrible and a-historical the various movie scripts and novels were that portray Alexander and Hephaistion as homophile lovers; while at the same time pointing to the Ministry's pet "priestesses of Zeus" as examples of historical orthodoxy. That Zeus had a thing for Ganymede and Hebe himself seems to have escaped his attention......
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
There _were_ games held for women, but NOT in the sacred precincts. Women were NOT allowed across the Alpheus but competed in a separate area. Even the webpage you've cited says quite clearly:
"The only woman allowed to attend was the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, who received this honorary position every 4 years and sat on an altar inside the stadium, opposite to the seats of the judges."
Notice that word "only". There was a famous instance of a woman who had coached one of the athletes and dressed as a man, only to accidentally reveal herself by leaping over a railing/fence; can't remember what happened to her but it was very controversial; I think her life was spared but the athlete she'd coached was disqualified.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Oh yes. Quite agree. Women had very restricted roles in classical Greece. Spartan girls seem to have been pretty liberated, though. Yet I doubt they were as liberated as Amazon warriors. Notice how Amazons are depicted with some fear by ancient male writers, a bit like Suffragettes in the early 20th century. I think there were even some philosophers during the Renaissance who granted that men had souls, but not women and animals. Women's full emancipation is a very modern thing.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Ted:
>In English, poetry (traditionally) has rhythm and rhyme.
> In Japanese haiku, we count syllables.
> In ancient Hebrew (e.g. Psalms), we look for parallelism.
> Let's try this again. I'm trying to learn about
> ancient Greek poetry. Surely, there is some standard
> against which literature can be compared, so that
> we may say "X is poetry", but "Z is not poetry".
>
> In modern English, that is a very blurry line. Maybe
> the ancient Greeks had a blurry line, too; maybe not.
> In any event, they surely had some *ideas* about what
> makes poetry. (Homer wrote poetry; I don't think that
> Pythagoras did.)
>
> I asked:
>
> > What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
>
> And unfortunately, I can't sort out all the answers. I
> suspect that some of the answers were written as a joke: ...
> Okay, the poetry is first-rate. But what makes it poetry?
Looks like you are asking which technical device is exclusively reserved to poesy in Greek. Classical poetry had a complex rhythmic system based on vowel lengths, syllable counts and pause location. You easily get the idea by reading aloud in the ancient style. For the nitty-gritty you'll need to study a lot (many books on the subject, look under "prosody"). The technical side is complicated enough to need a subspecialist group among the classicists. Koine poetry in part tried to follow it (but couldn't bring it off, having lost syllable length), in part, with popular poetry, went to rhyme and syllable count like the West. Modern devices are comparable to those used in Western Europe (rhyme, free verse, etc). You'll need a book.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Ted:
> Hello,
> What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
> In English, poetry (traditionally) has rhythm and rhyme.
> In Japanese haiku, we count syllables.
> In ancient Hebrew (e.g. Psalms), we look for parallelism.
>
> What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
>
> Thank you,
In terms of structure -- Greek alternated long and short syllables (syllables with long and short vowels) in various patterns. That is what they meant by "meter" in classical
Greek poetry.
The use of rhythm (stressed syllables, unstressed syllables) showed up much later ... after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
Western musicologists looking at texts of Byzantine church music (most of it written after c. 750) once thought it was prose, because it didn't fit the classical definitions of meter: it didn't have regular patterns of long and short syllables.
Their discovery that the texts used patterns of rhythm *rather than* "quantity" (of the syllables/vowels) revolutionized the field of Byzantine musicology. (Cardinal J.-B. Pitra published his finding in 1867, and it was accepted fairly soon thereafter.)
And AFAIK that's about it. Rhyme doesn't mean much in Classical (and Koine) Greek, likewise in Latin and in Italian: when a language depends heavily upon suffixes to define a word's use (accusative noun, present indicative 2nd person singular verb, and so forth) what's the challenge in rhyming words?
One thing often used in Koine Greek is the acrostic, in which the initial letter of each line is used to spell a word or a name. It's used in the Hebrew Psalms too (usually, to spell the aleph-bet) -- Hebrew also doesn't get very far with rhyme. I can't recall examples of its use in Classical Greek, but I'm open to correction on that. (Perhaps Christianity might have introduced the Hebrew acrostic into Greek-language poetry? Again, I'm open to correction.)
Ted:
>What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
>In English, poetry (traditionally) has rhythm and rhyme.
>In Japanese haiku, we count syllables.
>In ancient Hebrew (e.g. Psalms), we look for parallelism.
>What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
Greek poetical metre is based on the quantity of syllables, long or short. A closed syllable (one ending in a consonant) works like a long one. So 'Agamemno:n' is short short closed long (the o: representing omega).
Some types of metre are made up of units known as feet: for example, dactyl (long short short) or spondee (long long); six feet of these kinds make up a hexameter or epic line.Drama mostly uses the trimeter, made up of three 'metra', each short long, short long (with variations). Lyric metres add to the complexity.
Re: What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
Robert:
> Ted:
> >What constitutes ancient Greek poetry?
> >What qualifies as poetry in classical or koine Greek?
> Greek poetical metre is based on the quantity of syllables, long or
> short. A closed syllable (one ending in a consonant) works like a long
> one. So 'Agamemno:n' is short short closed long (the o: representing
> omega).
> Some types of metre are made up of units known as feet: for example,
> dactyl (long short short) or spondee (long long); six feet of these
> kinds make up a hexameter or epic line.Drama mostly uses the trimeter,
> made up of three 'metra', each short long, short long (with
> variations). Lyric metres add to the complexity.
> I hope this contributes to what you want!
I read all posts of the issue and I am very glad ( and, forgive me, very proud ) .
This answer of Robert Stonehouse is the one I liked most.
In some cases that a short vowel belongs to a syllable that contains two or three consonants, that syllable counts as long one: in the second line of Odyssey in the word "ptolie8ron", "e8r" is a long syllable.
I like to add that Greeks still having the same poetical metres BUT based on accented and not-accented syllables:
Ston psarOn thn olOmavri rAxi, that is tataTA tataTA tataTA ...
I also like to add that Thucydides in order to express his big regret for the catastrophe of the Athenian army in Assinaros' river, uses Homer's metre, dactyl hexameter but in prose !!!!!!!!!!!! Is that passage poetry or prose ?? That is the question !! :))
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