CHAPTER 17
Timothy Power
Rutgers University
Poetry in Puzzle Pieces
Fragments from the song texts of Alcman, who was active in Sparta in the later seventh century BC—he was probably a younger contemporary of Tyrtaeus and Archilochus and slightly older than Sappho and Alcaeus—represent the earliest Greek choral poetry we have, and perhaps the earliest monodic melic poetry as well.1 What remains is not much. Of the nine canonical lyric poets whose works were edited by Alexandrian scholars, Alcman is among the least well preserved and attested. On one estimate, we have only about 3% of the texts that were in the Alexandrian edition of his poetry (Hinge 2009: 215). No complete poems survive.
The majority of the fragments are transmitted as quotations in prose works composed centuries after Alcman’s time. These are brief, none more than eight lines, many not more than a single verse or even a word or two (frr. 14–157).2 Rarely is a book quotation accompanied by useful or reliable information about its original context. The remaining fragments survive on Roman-era papyri (frr. 1–13 + S1–5). Of these, most yield only scraps of words or phrases; many are quotations embedded in prose commentaries on Alcman, which occasionally contain recoverable information on context or reception (e.g., frr. 5, 7).
The First and Second Partheneia
Some papyri give us more continuous, coherent passages of poetry, in particular the two extended fragments from two separate partheneia, songs Alcman composed for choruses of parthenoi, unmarried girls (“maidens”), to sing at festivals in Sparta (frr. 1 and 3).3 The first of these, known as the Louvre or First Partheneion, was discovered in Egypt in 1855 and published in 1863; the papyrus containing it, held in the Louvre Museum, also preserves marginal comments (scholia) on the text (another set of scholia is preserved in a separate papyrus). The second, far less extensive fragment (the Second Partheneion) was first published in 1957 (Lobel 1957).
Both songs contained over 100 lines arranged in metrically identical stanzas. They may have had similar structures—two self-referential sections concerned with performance and occasion bookending mythical narrative—though lacunae make certainty impossible. The opening stanzas of the First Partheneion are lost; the text, at this point full of gaps, begins in the middle of what may be the third stanza with the name “Polydeuces” (1)—Pollux, twin brother of Castor. A list of slain heroes follows, sons of the Spartan king Hippocoon, their names enumerated in the epithet-rich style of an epic catalog (e.g., “swift-footed Sebros,” 3). The chorus is apparently relating a “foundational event in the myth-history of Sparta” (Ferrari 2008: 22): the defeat of the Hippocoontids by Pollux and Castor, whose father, Tyndareus, had been unjustly stripped of his kingship and exiled by Hippocoon, his brother.4 Choral song typically treated myths that, through both negative and positive exemplarity, provided grounding for the traditional values of the community in which the chorus performed (Kowalzig 2007). This story of feuding between Spartan brothers and cousins (ending, at least implicitly, in the restoration of a peaceful state) is no exception. Its telling, through the collectively disciplined medium of choral music and dance, which itself had paradigmatic value (Too 1997), must have affirmed the premium placed by Spartan society on eunomia, good sociopolitical order, which aimed above all at the avoidance of civil strife, and at the core of which was Sparta’s hereditary kingship. Such order, as a closing reflection on the narrative seems to imply, is cosmically ordained and divinely protected (13–15).
A further cluster of gnomic statements frames the myth’s message as an admonition against transgressing accepted limits of erotic desire: “Let no man fly to heaven or attempt to marry Aphrodite” (16–18). Sexually motivated violence may have played an explicit part in Alcman’s account of the dynastic conflict; the Hellenistic poet Euphorion suggestively called the Hippocoontids “rival suitors” to the Tyndarids (fr. 29 Powell). Certainly, erōs, with its threat of excess and disorder, was an matter of concern to parthenoi, who stood at the threshold of sex and marriage, and to the broader community, which had a stake in their productive transition into wives and mothers.
In the largely illegible lines 22–33, the chorus returns to myth. The subject seems to be mortal combat—an arrow, a boulder, and Hades are mentioned—but we cannot tell whether the Tyndarids again fight the Hippocoontids or new characters have been introduced. In either case, the narrative prompts further reflections on transgression and divine punishment: “They suffered unforgettably (?), since they contrived evil deeds. There is such a thing as divine vengeance” (34–36).
The gnōmē that follows, “Blessed is he who cheerfully weaves the day through without weeping” (37–39), effects a crucial structural and tonal transition. The focus moves from the mythical past, with its deadly conflicts, to the lively here-and-now of the performance occasion, where it will stay for the remainder of the fragment (39–101; the poem ended four lines later). Authoritative narration and formal pronouncements give way to a theatrical immediacy in the self-presentation of the chorus. The parthenoi now play themselves, as it were, in a ritual drama; their song expresses, in an emotive and deferential voice appropriate to their gender and age, their feelings and perceptions as the drama unfolds.
From the first lines of the occasional section (which is better preserved than the mythical section), we are visually immersed in the ambience of the performance:
I sing the light of Agido; I see her like the sun, which Agido calls to shine for us as a witness; but our glorious chorus leader (χοραγός) in no way allows me to praise or to criticize her, for she herself [the χοραγός] appears outstanding….
(39–46)
Two key figures are introduced here: Agido and the “glorious chorus leader,” identified in line 53 as Hagesichora, a name meaning “leader of the chorus.” The chorus, using vivid metaphors and erotically tinged language, praises the charisma and beauty of each in scrupulously equal measure (39–59). These young women obviously play leading roles in the ritual event, but their relation to the chorus and one another are (for us) enigmatic. Both appear detached from the execution of the choral song, seeming rather to flit across the perceptual field of the chorus, pursuing ritual activities and offering prayers (in a separate performance?) of their own (78–83).
Yet the text emphasizes their authority, especially Hagesichora’s, over the chorus. In the penultimate stanza, the chorus makes a conspicuous show of deference toward its χοραγός, first apologizing to her for being so bold as to sing at all, then attributing the success of its performance to her guidance: “I myself, a parthenos, screech in vain, an owl from a rafter (?). Yet I long especially to please Aotis … but because of Hagesichora girls set foot upon (ἐπέβαν, which may connote dancing) lovely peace” (85–91). The lacunose final stanza, in which Hagesichora seems to be compared to a trace-horse and helmsman (92–95), further articulates this dependent relationship. The close connection between Hagesichora and chorus is underlined by its calling her “cousin” (52), which may indicate a familial or tribal relationship. The appellation also recalls the feuding cousins of Spartan myth, against which the willing subordination of chorus to leader stands in positive contrast.
Aotis, whom the chorus longs to please, is presumably the same divinity as Orthria (61). Since both names may be related to words for dawn, it is possible that this divinity, otherwise unattested, was a Laconian dawn goddess; certainly, she holds a position of honor on this ritual occasion, which perhaps takes place around sunrise (cf. 42–43).5 In addition to its song, the chorus also offers her a robe (φᾶρος, which a scholion glosses, however, as “plough”). The practical and temporal relation of the choral performance to the ritual offering is unclear; perhaps the two were coordinated in a choreographed procession. The lines in which the offering is described are some of the text’s most challenging. One translation might be: “The Peleiades, rising through the ambrosial night like the star Sirius, fight (μάχονται) us as we carry a robe to Orthria” (60–63). Though some scholars have thought the Peleiades—the name can mean “Doves” or designate the Pleiades star cluster—to be a rival chorus that competed against Alcman’s, more now take the Peleiades either to be the actual stars, whose rising is figuratively opposed to the ritual activity of the chorus, or, as the ancient scholiasts thought, in reference to Hagesichora and Agido, whose beauty notionally overpowers the chorus. The antagonism of the Peleiades echoes the violence in the mythical section, but the echo is reparative; fighting is rendered as poetic conceit, a metaphor for the harmonious tensions animating the ritual.
The conceit is elaborated in the following stanza (64–77), which puts the spotlight on the chorus itself; the effect is simultaneously one of self-display and self-deprecation. Neither its luxurious costume—purple garments, a golden bracelet, a Lydian headband—is sufficient to ward off opposition to the chorus, nor is the attractiveness of its individual members—eight girls are named, probably all chorus members, plus the mysterious Aenesimbrota (1.73), perhaps a chorus trainer (Ferrari 2008: 82 n. 25). “But,” the stanza concludes, “Hagesichora wears me down (με τείρει),” presumably in an erotic sense. That is, the chorus’ ardor for its leader is overwhelming—a reading that suits the identification of Hagesichora and Agido with the Peleiades. Some, however, read the line with με τηρεῖ “she watches over me,” which would suggest that Hagesichora protects the chorus from baleful stars or a rival chorus. In either case, the dominant position of the χοραγός is again affirmed; whether mock-antagonist or protector, it is she who will lead the chorus to “lovely peace.”
The opening of the Second Partheneion is partially preserved: an invocation of the Muses and the introduction of the chorus’ performance in the agōn “assembly” (3.1–10). After a gap of some 50 lines, in which one or more myths were probably narrated, the text resumes with a “mixture of erotic colouring and ritual action” (Segal 1985: 178) similar to, though more amorously expressive than, that in the Louvre Partheneion. This persists through the rest of the lacunose text (61–85; remaining stanzas are lost). Here, there is only one “it girl” praised by the chorus, Astymeloisa. “Holding the πυλεών” (a garland offered to Hera: Athen. 678a; Alc. fr. 60), she “moves among the crowd (κατὰ στρατόν)” (65, 73–74), the cynosure of chorus and community alike.
These two fragments demonstrate how responsive Alcman’s choral poetry was to its own cultic-ritual occasions, more so perhaps than that of any other archaic lyric poet. Yet the insights they yield are matched by the interpretive impasses they present. Textual challenges aside, the same pragmatic, “meta-ritualistic” (cf. Hutchinson 2001: 77) quality that brought these songs alive before first audiences, to whom the ceremonial context of the ritual performance was evident, has rendered their occasion-detached texts enigmatic to readers, ancient and modern (though this inscrutability has in part made them enduring objects of scholarly contemplation; cf. Budelmann 2013b: 92; Most 1987: 5 n. 35).
The First and, less so, Second Partheneion have dominated scholarship on Alcman, generating a vast bibliography. Key works, on which the foregoing discussions have relied, are listed in the Further Reading section. But here it is worth mentioning the influential study of Claude Calame (2001; originally published in 1977), in which he presents anthropologically informed reconstructions of the ritual-institutional contexts of Alcman’s parthenaic songs. Calame argues for the pedagogical and initiatory functions of the partheneia—their performance represents a rite of passage, linked to certain Spartan cults, from childhood to adulthood and marriage—which are reflected in the homoerotic dynamic between chorus and leaders. While not all aspects of his model have found wide acceptance, Calame’s insistence on the centrality of the transitional status of parthenoi to the poetics and performance of the partheneia has remained fundamental. For instance, on the persuasive account of Eva Stehle (1997: 38–39, 73–93), frr. 1 and 3 were presented at public festivals (not the segregated initiatory occasions Calame imagined), where they worked to situate the emerging sexuality of parthenoi within Sparta’s civic community, advertising the desirability of the chorus and its leaders as future wives—thus the accent on both visual beauty (cf. Swift 2016b) and modesty—while also modeling proper expressions and limits of erotic desire. A complementary analysis of fr. 3 detects in the representation of Astymeloisa’s solo movement away from the chorus and “among the crowd” traces of a ritual choreography symbolizing her liminality: song and performance position her “on the cusp between the inner world of the female chorus and the outer world” that awaits her maturation (Peponi 2007: 354).
A Choral Poet in Archaic Laconia
Of Alcman’s life, little of value is reported. The biographical tradition is largely consumed by a debate over Alcman’s ancestry: was he a native Laconian or an émigré from Lydia (TA1–9)? The debate, perhaps initiated by Aristotle (fr. 13a.11–12; cf. Beecroft 2010: 123–129), turned on whether some lines from a partheneion (fr. 16) should be read as autobiographical:
He was a man neither rustic nor uncouth, not even in the eyes of the sophoi “skilled” (?), nor Thessalian by birth nor an Erysichaean shepherd, but from lofty Sardis….
As evidence for Alcman’s life the passage is dubious. Alcman elsewhere refers to himself in the third person (frr. 17, 39, 95b), but in those passages he names himself, which he does not seem to have done here; additionally, “was” seems more fittingly said of a dead man (Tsagarakis 1977: 62). Yet the idea that Alcman was Lydian—if we take “from Sardis” as indicating birthplace, which it need not necessarily mean—is not without some appeal. Seventh-century Sparta, unlike the isolationist, militaristic society it would become in the Classical period, was outward looking, cosmopolitan. Its festival contests attracted foreign poets and musicians; its prosperous elite appreciated Asiatic culture and had the means to import and emulate its luxury goods. Alcman’s poetry evinces a romance with such goods (Krummen 2013): there is the Lydian headband mentioned in the Louvre Partheneion (1.66–67); in the Second Partheneion, a description of the perfumed hair-oil worn by Astymeloisa, “the moist grace of Cinyras”—the name belongs to a legendary Cypriote king associated with exotic luxury—conjures up the Eastern glamour of the product it describes (3.71). Alcman’s frequent references to far-flung peoples and locales (frr. 148–157) may have flattered his audience’s sense of “global reach.”
If the question of origins is irresolvable, it is also somewhat irrelevant, since Alcman’s activity was firmly based in Sparta and its surrounding territory. Unlike later choral poets who pursued international commissions and itinerant careers, Alcman was apparently content to remain within the borders of Laconia, where there was a robust choral culture. In the Odyssey, Sparta receives the epithet εὐρύχορος “with wide dancing places” (13.14; 15.1), an indication that choruses had long been central to its civic identity. Seventh-century Sparta witnessed an efflorescence of choral song. Tyrtaeus was attributed the establishment of the trichoria (Pollux 4.107), coordinated performances by choruses of boys, adult men, and old men at Apollo’s festival of the Gymnopaidiai. An influential group of choral songmakers, Thaletas of Gortyn, Xenodamus of Cythera, and Xenocritus of Locri, were active at Sparta in the years before, and probably overlapping with, Alcman’s career. Their names are connected too with the Gymnopaidiai, but the learned disputes about the genre of their songs—were they Apolline paeans, or hyporchemes, or dithyrambs?—suggest the possibility that they were composed for a broader range of festival occasions (Ps.-Plut. De mus. 9–10.1134b–e).
A papyrus commentary on Alcman calls him a “poet-trainer (διδάσκαλος) for the ancestral choruses of the daughters and ephebes” of the Spartans (TA 2.32–34), a description implying a broad scope of activity within an established structure of choral rituals. The diversity of deities and sanctuaries mentioned or implied in the fragments and testimonia certainly points to choral production across an extensive network of Laconian cults (Calame 2001: 141–206). Since the first two of the six books of the Alexandrian edition contained partheneia, and many fragments include verbal and thematic elements appropriate to partheneia (e.g., 29, 35, 60, 94, 115, 117), there is good reason to believe that Alcman specialized in maiden song, for which there was doubtless high demand. Papyrus commentaries appear to attest to the organization of girls’ choruses by the Spartan tribes—the Dymainai, for whom Alcman composed songs, may have been a tribal chorus (frr. 5.2 col. ii.24–25; 10b.8–9; 11.5, 17)—and perhaps too by the villages (ōbai) composing the polis (fr. 11.3, 17–21). Details are uncertain, but this testimony speaks to the integration of parthenaic performance into the sociopolitical as well as the religious structures of Sparta (Calame 2001: 219–221).
There are fainter traces of production for male choruses. The exiguous pieces of fr. 10b mention male χοραγοί, one of whom, Hagesidamus, is called to “lead the Dymainai” (8–12), perhaps the same (maiden) chorus that performs the song itself. Like Hagesichora, Agido, and Astymeloisa, these chorus leaders are praised for their beauty—they are “lovely … young men our age, dear and beardless” (15–18)—but also like their female counterparts the nature of their involvement in the performance is unclear.6
At the Gymnopaidiai, we are told, male choruses performed “songs by Thaletas and Alcman and the paeans of Dionysodotus the Laconian” (Athen. 15.678c; Hinge 2009, 224). The Alcmanic songs sung at this festival may also have been paeans. Several fragments invoking Apollo (frr. 45–50a; probably too S1, “golden-haired song-and-dance lover”) may be paeanic; one might present a male choral speaker (“Son of Leto, beginning from (ἀρχ <όμεν> ος) you, the chorus”), but the masculine participle depends on an uncertain emendation (48). Female choruses in Laconia could also sing for Apollo. At Ar. Lys. 1299, from what appears to be a parody-pastiche of Alcmanic partheneia, a Spartan calls on the Muse to celebrate “the god of Amyklai,” the site of a major Laconian festival for Apollo, the Hyacinthia (cf. Bierl 2011). A papyrus commentary may connect Alcman to the Hyacinthia (fr. 10a.5–8; cf. Stat. Silv. 5.3.153), where both female and male choruses performed (Calame 2001: 174– 177, 184– 185; Hinge 2006: 287–288).
Other Genres, Performers, Occasions
Some fragments suggest that the performance of Alcman’s poetry was not limited to cultic occasions, or indeed to choruses. For instance, the speaker of fr. 98 declares that “at feasts and meetings of andreia it is proper to strike up a paean among the banqueters.” Andreia were the men’s dining clubs of archaic Sparta, antecedents of the large public messes (syssitia) of classical Sparta, yet akin to the symposia of other Greek cities (van Wees 2018: 249–251). Since it was customary for symposiasts to sing a paean before commencing their drinking (Xen. Symp. 2.1), it is conceivable that the song from which fr. 98 comes was itself a choral paean composed for the andreion.7 Yet, like the symposion, the andreion (and related commensal occasions such as the “common suppers” (συναικλίαι) mentioned in fr. 95a) must also have been a venue for solo song in Alcman’s time, and it is tempting to consider fragments with convivial content (and no explicit indices of choral execution) under that rubric. Fr. 19, evoking “seven couches and as many tables topped with loaves of poppy-seed, linseed, and sesame, and in (full?) bowls chrysocolla,” sets a scene that may have reflected the sympotic context of the song’s performance, a context more typically home to monody. The speaker of fr. 17 tells someone,
And at some time I will give you a tripod bowl…not yet has it been over fire, but soon it will be full of soup such as Alcman, who eats everything, loves hot after the solstice. For he does not eat sweet confections (?), but seeks out common things, just as the people do.
Interpretive debate attends all aspects of this fragment: Who is the implied speaker—Alcman, probably, but we cannot be sure—and who the addressee? What is the significance of the tripod? Does Alcman’s “populist” preference for basic soup over sweet delicacies carry a political charge? Performance mode and occasion, too, are uncertain, but it is a reasonable conjecture that Alcman sang the song at a commensal occasion of the sort imagined by the song itself.8
Other fragments manifest as potentially monodic and sympotic. Language and imagery familiar from the erotic monodies of Sappho and Anacreon appear in frr. 58 (“It’s not Aphrodite, but bold Eros, who plays like (a boy), coming down over the tops of the galingale flowers—please don’t touch them!”) and 59a (“Once again, Eros, thanks to Cypris, sweetly pouring down warms my heart”) (Easterling 1974; Davies 1988a: 54–55). The assertion made in fr. 41, “For in opposition to the iron [of weapons] goes fine lyre-playing (τὸ καλῶς κιθαρίσδην),” finds an echo in the topos of the harmonious symposion as antithesis to war (Quattrocelli 2002: 30).
Yet choral contexts are not inconceivable for these same fragments. Fr. 41 is perhaps a gnomic statement from a choral song, a variation on traditional idealizing about the complementarity of musical and martial order (cf. Plut. Lyc. 21), or a chorus’ praise for its accompanist (cf. fr. 38). As for those fragments with gastronomic references, food played an important part at most public gatherings where choruses performed.9 It has been argued, for example, that fr. 17 comes from a choral song composed for a theoxeny, a festival at which gods were welcomed with food, and fr. 19 from one sung at the kopis, a large outdoor banquet held during the Hyacinthia (Calame 1983: 363, 370). If, as another reading has it (Bowra 1961: 68), the repast described in 19 indicates a wedding party, the fragment may have belonged to a choral wedding song, a hymenaion. (Alcman is called “the swan-singer of hymenaia” by the Hellenistic poet Leonidas (AP 7.19); cf. Griffiths 1972: 10–11.) A different approach has been to read food references as metapoetic metaphors for Alcman’s choral songs, which are feast-like offerings for public consumption (Pizzocaro 1990).
Furthermore, given the erotic language evidenced in the First and Second Partheneia, the identification of frr. 58 and 59a as monody cannot be certain. Such language led to generic confusion already in Alcman’s ancient reception, perhaps deepened by a tradition of solo sympotic reperformance of erotically toned passages drawn from the partheneia (Carey 2011: 449–452). Chamaeleon, a late classical biographer of archaic poets, demonstrates how misinterpretation could arise (Athen. 13.600f–601a). To illustrate the claim of the musicologist Archytas that Alcman was a “leader in erotic songs,”10 Chamaeleon cites both fr. 59a and another fragment, 59b, “Blonde-haired Megalostrata, blessed among maidens, displayed this gift of the sweet Muses.” For Chamaeleon (and possibly for Archytas before him), the latter verses express Alcman’s own longing for the talented girl, a reading that implicitly casts him as amorous monodist. But there can be little doubt that these lines belong to a partheneion: Megalostrata resembles other leading figures such as Hagesichora whose beauty and musical skill are admired by a chorus. Fr. 59a may similarly have been excerpted from a partheneion and subject to reclassification as erotic monody (Marzullo 1964). Compare the amatory pathos in the Second Partheneion: “with limb-loosening longing, and she gazes more meltingly than sleep and death … if only coming closer she would take my tender hand” (3.61–62, 80).
As should be obvious, any attempt to reconstruct the modes and contexts of performance for brief fragments such as these is a speculative endeavor at best. Ambiguity prevails; rarely can we be confident that the scenarios we read them to imply match the actual settings in which they were originally delivered. Nevertheless, there is little reason to assume that Alcman’s entire corpus was choral (cf. Davies 1988a: 54–55). The Alexandrian edition of Alcman comprised six books of songs in addition to, or perhaps including, one entitled Kolumbōsai (Swimming Women or Girls; TB1 = fr. 158), the contents of which are a mystery.11 Even if the first two books were devoted solely to partheneia (Davison 1968: 180–181), this still leaves at least four books that could have contained songs, both choral and monodic, intended for diverse occasions. We know practically nothing about the arrangement and contents of these books, but it is notable that two of the fragments whose convivial themes may point to performance in a sympotic or banquet setting were, according to Athenaeus, who quotes them, transmitted in the third and fifth (frr. 17, 19).12
Alcman the Composer
Alcman was active near the end of a period in which Sparta had become the “musical ‘capital’ of Greece” (Barker 1984: 214 n. 65), attracting musicians who would advance and define its musical culture. The developments of this period are detailed in a section of the pseudo-Plutarchan treatise On Music (9.1134b–c). Terpander of Lesbos initiated the first organization (katastasis) of musical life in seventh-century Sparta, having won, in the 670s, the first contest in lyre-singing (kitharōidia) at the Carneia. Lesbian citharodes would compete victoriously at this festival for at least another century (Power 2010: 317–322). The foreign choral poets mentioned above, whose activity was primarily connected to the Gymnopaidiai, were responsible for the second musical katastasis. Associated with this group were two aulodes (singers to auloi “pipes”), Polymnestus of Colophon and Sacadas of Argos.
There can be little doubt that the music Alcman composed for his choruses (and for non-choral songs as well) was responsive to the musical currents that had long flowed into Sparta from other regions. We are told that Alcman mentioned Polymnestus in one of his songs (fr. 145).13 It has been argued that the subject of some sparsely preserved lines from an Alcmanic partheneion, “they revealed to men marvelous (?), delicate utterances (or sounds, γαρύματα), new ones (νεόχμ’) … delight(ful?) … intricate” (fr. 4.1.4–7), are Alcman’s musico-poetic predecessors.14 The mystery man from Sardis in fr. 16 is, if not Alcman himself, perhaps another musician to have arrived at Sparta from Lydia. The legendary Phrygian piper Olympus has been put forward (Fairweather 1983: 341), but he is not otherwise linked with Sparta. Other candidates may be Terpander, whom Pindar imagined to have been a guest at “the Lydians’ banquets” (fr. 125 S-M), or Polymnestus: Ionian Colophon was located in Lydian territory, and its elites embraced Lydian culture (Xen. fr. 3).
Alcman’s fragments are full of “metamusical” language, references in song to the vocal (e.g., 3.3–5; 35; 138), choreographic (e.g., 3.9–10; 32; 33), and instrumental aspects of the song’s performance—Alcman does not let us forget that his texts are “the bare bones of productions that fused poetry and music with dance” (Ferrari 2008: 1). These references show that Alcman employed both pipes and lyres as accompaniment. In fr. 37b, the chorus sings that the aulos-player “will pipe an accompanying melody for us” (cf. fr. 87b). Athenaeus says that the names of three Phrygian pipers (Sambas, Adon, and Telus) appear in Alcman (fr. 109). Since we do not otherwise find choral accompanists named in choral lyric, it is possible that these musicians were sympotic pipers, named in monodic songs. Theognidean sympotic elegy, which refers to, but does not name, the auletic accompanist (941, 1041), would offer a partial parallel. Yet Alcman’s choruses name names in self-referential statements to an extent other poets’ do not (Budelmann 2013b: 91). Alcman, we saw, names himself in three fragments, one or more of which may be choral. In fr. 38, a lyric accompanist is placed in the spotlight: “as many girls as there are among us praise the kitharistēs ‘lyre player’.” It has been argued that Alcman himself was the kitharistēs, and is here calling attention to his own role in the performance. But Phrygian pipers—luxury imports of a sort—conceivably had cachet in seventh-century Sparta, and by naming them Alcman perhaps sought to heighten the glamour of his choral spectacles.
Fr. 126, “he (or she) piped a Phrygian tune, the Cerbesian,” might refer to the music supplied by one of these auletes. The specification of the Phrygian tune as “Cerbesian”—Cerbesians were a Phrygian tribe—seems significant, perhaps highlighting Alcman’s familiarity with Eastern musical cultures and appealing to his audience’s orientalizing taste. Alternately, past-tense “piped” could indicate a mythical narrative featuring a piper, possibly Olympus or Marsyas, or even Athena or Apollo, the latter of whom, we are told, Alcman depicted as an aulete (fr. 51). Myths of the invention and early fortunes of the aulos were related by other melic poets. A song of Corinna, for instance, narrated the story of Athena’s teaching Apollo the pipes (PMG 668, attested in the same passage of On music as Alc. fr. 51). Such myths were not infrequent in the aulos-accompanied classical dithyramb (Kowalzig and Wilson 2013: 21–22). Fr. 126 indeed may come from a Dionysian cult song, as may fr. 56, a scene of seemingly Bacchic festivity in which a female figure, perhaps a Bacchant or divinity, makes lion’s milk cheese.15
String accompaniment for Alcman’s choral songs is attested by fr. 38, discussed above; fr. 41, with its praise of “fine lyre playing,” might also refer to a lyric accompanist, as might frr. 140, 141, and 34 (on 34 see Gallavotti 1978: 187–189). Prooimia attributed to Terpander—citharodic preludes to longer narrative songs called nomoi—were composed in hexametrical or near-hexametrical dactylic meters (Ps.-Plut. De mus. 4.1132d). It has been accordingly argued that some of Alcman’s hexametrical fragments come from solo citharodic prooimia prefacing choral songs, performed by Alcman himself or a proxy kitharistēs.16 (Alcman’s choral songs began with their own embedded choral prooimia. Citharodic prooimia were detachable and likely transmitted separately; cf. Dale 2011a: 35 n. 88.) In Alcman’s reception we find suggestive points of contact with kitharōidia: the Lesbian citharode and choral composer Arion was said to have been his student (Suda Α 3886); a dactylic line quoted by Aristophanes (590 K-A), “The swan [sings] to his wings’ accompaniment,” was attributed to both Alcman (fr. S2) and Terpander (fr. 1); Plutarch relates that the Helots were forbidden by their Spartan masters to sing works of Terpander and Alcman (Lyc. 28.10).
One prime candidate for a citharodic prelude is fr. 26:
No longer, honey-sounding, holy-voiced maidens,
are my limbs able to carry me. Would that I were a cerylus,
who flies with the halcyons above the wave’s flower,
his heart steadfast, the sea-purple, holy bird.
These hexameters are quoted by Antigonus of Carystus, who read as autobiographical the wish to become a cerylus, a legendary seabird, flying free with the halcyons: the aging Alcman laments his inability to join “in the maidens’ dancing” (Mirab. 23). Yet it seems unlikely that even a young Alcman would have danced with his maiden choruses. Rather, the lines may involve a conceit: the reduced mobility and maturity of the kitharistēs relative to the youthful, dancing chorus are figured as infirmity and senility. Similarly, the speaker of Sappho fr. 58 Campbell, playing the role of kitharistēs (2), complains to a group of girls (παῖδες, 1)—implicitly a chorus—that advancing age makes her unable to dance (cf. Bierl 2016a: 323–326). While this fragment too may be read autobiographically, the same conceit, dramatizing the relationship between chorus and lyric accompanist—or the persona of poet-trainer assumed by the accompanist—may be operative here as in fr. 26. The hexametrical fr. 107, “Speak-a-lot is the man’s name, Pleased-with-all is the woman’s,” perhaps represents another proemial dramatization, more playful than melancholy, of the division of roles between accompanist and chorus: the male kitharistēs sings the prelude while the female chorus waits silently to begin its song.17
Figures of Poetic Authority and Creativity: Birds, Muses, Dreams
Birds and birdsong are recurring motifs in Alcman’s musical poetics. The girls of his choruses sing like owls (fr. 1.85–87), swans (1.100–101; cf. S2), nightingales (3.98, 10a.6; cf. 142, AP 9.184.9), perhaps swallows (11 fr. 35 ii.6; Calame 1983: 392); they dance like halcyons (26). The speaker of fr. 40, perhaps a chorus, boasts, “I know the tunes (νόμως) of all birds.” In fr. 39, birdsong is the inspiration for Alcman’s own musico-poetic activity: “These verses and melody Alcman invented, observing (συνθέμενος) the tongued (?) voice (ὄπα) of partridges.” Imitation of birdsong is well attested across folk and tribal music; the likening of poets and singers to birds is a topos widespread in ancient Greek poetry. Yet in fr. 39, at least, Alcman’s appeal to birdsong may represent a rhetoric of innovation: by framing his song as a direct mediation of birdsong, Alcman implies his status as a musical first inventor, transcending the cultured traditions of mousikē and allying his words and melody to the primacy of nature’s “voice.”18 Though I follow Campbell in translating the participle συνθέμενος as “observing” (1988: 425), it may be understood too as “composing, arranging,” which suggests Alcman’s active, creative translation of the partridges’ song, not merely its passive imitation (cf. Gentili 1971). (This reading coexists with another, lighter possibility, that the partridges are Alcman’s very chorus, whose melodious “girl-talk” he has translated into song.)
Alcman’s summary of his creative process notably bypasses the agency of the Muses, whose authority in the production of song he arguably minimized, and certainly rendered ambiguous. While Alcman can describe songmaking as a “gift of the sweet Muses” (fr. 59b; see Nikolaev 2012: 544–545), in his invocations of the Muse—Alcman more often invokes a singular Muse than a Muse-collective—she is not, as in epic and much other lyric, the absolute source of information, words, and music, but an auxiliary to their delivery in performance.19
The proemial invocation in fr. 27 is paradigmatic: “Muse Calliope, come, daughter of Zeus, begin (ἄρχε) the lovely verses; put desire upon the song and make the chorus graceful.” In instigating performance—Aelius Aristides observes how Alcman (though he likely means the chorus) seeks to become “active (ἐνεργός) under the Muse’s influence” (Or. 28.51 = fr. 30)—and making it attractive, the Muse takes on the role of virtual chorus leader.20 In fr. 14a, the “clear-voiced (λίγηα), many-tuned Muse, singer always” is likewise requested to “begin (ἄρχε) a new song for maidens to sing.” This could be read to mean that the Muse will impart a song from her store, but again, the more explicit image is of a performance collaboration through which song emerges.21 This collaboration, however, involves a remarkable temporal recursion: since “beginning” (ἄρχειν) belongs to the poetics of the prooimion (cf. fr. 29; Pind. Nem. 2.1–5), the chorus asks the Muse to begin, that is, to prelude, the very prelude in which she is invoked.
An analogous strange loop informs the proemial opening of the Second Partheneion (1–10), a passage that has confounded readers (e.g., Page 1959: 16–17). The text has significant gaps, but the sense seems clear enough; I translate in brackets the supplements in Campbell 1988: 378:
Olympian [Muses, fill] my heart [with desire for a new] song: I [am eager] to hear the [maidenly] voice of girls singing [to heaven] a beautiful tune … (the song?) will scatter sweet [sleep] from my eyelids… and leads me to go to the assembly (agōn), [where soon] I shall shake my blonde hair … soft feet.
It is not unusual for a chorus to sing of its intent to sing—the so-called “performative future” (Stehle 1997: 89). But the dislocation here between the virtual time of enunciation and the actual time of performance is radical, and looks forward to the temporal and situational convolutions of some of the more elaborate framing devices through which Pindar represents choral performance (D’Alessio 2004: 276–278). Alcman’s chorus retrojects itself to a time just before the Muses spur its wish to hear the very song it now sings (though conceivably the chorus sang these lines as it processed to the dancing grounds proper).
The chorus in fact speaks as if still unawake—“sweet sleep” has not yet been scattered from its eyes—and the song thus notionally emerges from, or exists within, a dream; the performance, which may have occurred at night or near dawn, is staged as a kind of “waking dream” (cf. Peponi 2004: 313–316). Dreams were associated with poetic inspiration, divine epiphany, and desire (Rosenmeyer 1992: 65–66), themes obviously relevant to any Muse-invoking prooimion. But there is something oneiric about the Second Partheneion as a whole: the chorus feels “limb-loosening longing” for Astymeloisa, who “gazes more meltingly than sleep and death,” eluding with dreamlike frustration the chorus’ attempts to engage her, a fugitive vision (3.61–81). Alcman elsewhere evokes dreams: fr. 47, “Did I behold Apollo in a dream?”; at fr. 1.49, Hagesichora is compared to a horse “of rock-shadowed dreams”; fr. 89’s nocturne hypnotically catalogs a sleeping world.
Such dreaminess seems of a piece with the “phantasmagorical” character of Alcman’s choral texts (Budelmann 2013b: 92). Running alongside the visual deixis of the partheneia, their emphasis on realistic self-description, is a current of imagistic, dreamlike fantasy, which channels the potential for wonder and transformation immanent in the multisensory performance of ritual song and dance. Describing its leaders, the chorus of the Louvre Partheneion conjures up imaginary visions as if they were really apparent, while rendering these girls wondrously irreal: “I sing the light of Agido; I see her like the sun” (1.39–41; cf. 3.66–68, Astymeloisa is like “a star flying through bright heaven or a golden branch”). It draws the audience too into the collective hallucination. After comparing Hagesichora to a dream-horse, the chorus sings,
Don’t you see? The race horse [Agido] is Enetic, but the hair (or mane, khaita) of my cousin Hagesichora blooms like undefiled gold. And her face is silvery. Why am I telling you what’s obvious? Hagesichora’s right here!
(1.50–7)
Poetry notionally fails in the visible presence of Hagesichora, the “real thing.” But the chorus leader presented to the spectators is also a product of the poetic imaginary, a “construction, a spectrum of constant visual metamorphoses” (Peponi 2004: 302).
Contexts of Competition?
In fr. 31, “You will destroy (καταύσεις) the Muse,” “Muse” seems to mean simply “music, song,” as it often does in later texts (Maslov 2016: 430 n. 67). Beyond that, it is difficult to know what to make of the fragment. Its derogatory tone, even if ironic, stands out against the generally eulogistic character of the fragments. (Ael. Ar. Or. 45.32 calls Alcman “praiser of parthenoi.”) Plutarch describes an ancient Spartan tradition of girls’ choruses “at certain festivals” doling out jibes as well as praise to the boys in attendance (Lyc. 14)—a possible context, though no testimony connects Alcman to it. We might think instead of monodic lyric, which occasionally assumes the abusive posture of iambic poetry; Sappho’s rebuke of an unmusical woman in fr. 55 Campbell offers a rough analogy to 31. Without speculating about its performance genre, J.A. Davison raised the intriguing question of whether Alcman directed the fragment’s invective against a competing poet (1968: 175 n. 1). We do in fact have reference to a rival of Alcman, though no definite conclusions can be drawn from it: an unattributed poetic fragment quoted in a papyrus commentary mentions a “rival (ἀντίφαριν) to Laconian Alcman, craftsman of skillful partheneia” (fr. 13a.8–10). Davison assigned this fragment to Alcman himself, but attribution to Pindar or another post-Alcmanic poet seems more likely (Prodi 2017b: 570–571). In the latter case, the rival mentioned need not be Alcman’s contemporary, but rather a later emulator of his partheneia, perhaps the author of the fragment itself.
It is possible that at least some of Alcman’s songs, like those of later choral poets, were performed in agonistic contexts, whether formal contests at festivals such as the Carneia or in a more informal atmosphere of rivalry between poets and choruses. As with the fragments just discussed, however, firm evidence is elusive. The Peleiades of the Louvre Partheneion (1.60–63), we saw, may refer to a rival chorus, but that can be only conjecture. In the biographical discussion on papyrus mentioned earlier (TA 2.32–35), we find ἀγωνίζεσθαι suggestively near the description of Alcman as choral διδάσκαλος, but there the verb may simply mean “perform” rather than “compete.” It is possible too that ἀγῶν’ in fr. 3.8 means “contest” (Rosenmeyer 1966: 336), but “assembly” seems the more likely meaning. Finally, some have seen a reference to a choral prize in fr. 17.1, “I will give you a tripod bowl” (cf. AP 7.709), though that, like much else in this puzzling fragment, is uncertain (Boterf 2017: 209–10).
The question of competition bears upon the larger matter of Alcman’s livelihood. Prizes may have been one source of income (and prestige). Another may have been support from state authorities, who took an active role in musical culture, apparently viewing it as a means to maintain civil order (van Wees 1999: 4–6). Alcman possibly found private patrons in the families of his choral dancers, among whom numbered scions of Spartan royalty (frr. 5.2 and 10b, with Calame 2001: 140–142; West 1992). Furthermore, the expressive names of the lead figures in frr. 1 and 3—Hagesichora (“leader of the chorus”); Agido (suggesting leadership and relation to the Agiads, one of Sparta’s royal lines); Astymeloisa (“care to the city”)—whether belonging to actual girls or generic characters impersonated by different girls in serial reperformances of the choro-ritual drama, indicate the elite status of their bearers.22 Their wealthy families may have assumed the costs of choral performance, including pay for the poet (cf. Wilson 2000: 280; Hubbard 2011: 357).
Local Poetry, International Horizons
Though Alcman did not pursue an itinerant career abroad, any perceptions of parochialism are unfounded. The “local color” of his poetry was exaggerated early in its reception: Hellenistic editors (or perhaps already Spartan reperformers) added anachronistic Laconian dialectal features to the text, most notably the orthography of sigma for theta (e.g., παρσένος for παρθένος; see Cassio 2007: 33, and de Kreij (Chapter 10) in this volume). Though it did include some arguably Laconian diction and morphology (including Μῶσα—the Muse is appropriately marked as local, with broad ω for ου (Ruijgh 1996: 480)), Alcman’s language was likely closer to the cosmopolitan literary idiom of the later choral poets—a generic West Greek/Doric substrate with Lesbian-Aeolic and epic-Ionic overlays—than to Laconian vernacular (Carey 2011: 442–443; Hinge 2006: 319–348).23
It has been argued that Alcman oriented his songs toward panhellenic reception, even as they remain rooted in local cults and institutions (Podlecki 1984: 115; Carey 2011; Spelman 2018: 149–153). This positioning is evident in the linguistic form of the fragments as well as their content. We find domestic toponyms (e.g., fr. 92, naming Laconian wine regions) as well as exotic ones (e.g., 1.51, 59: chorus leaders compared to Enetic, Ibenian, and Kolaxaian racehorses; 1.100–101: the chorus (or Hagesichora) singing like a swan on the Xanthus, probably the river in Lycia). Local myths, such as the battle of the Hippocoontids and Tyndarids, are told alongside those more widely known. Alcman’s poetic persona now is “down-home” demotic (fr. 17.4–8; cf. 119), now boasts of fame in all corners of the world (fr. 148).
Alcman’s supralocalism should not surprise. Seventh-century Sparta was a magnet for poet-composers from all over Greece; its festivals must have been crucibles of panhellenism, expanding the horizons of local poets and audiences (Hinge 2006: 339–340; Ferrari 2008: 8–9). Beyond music, Alcman surely absorbed poetic influences from abroad. His use of the Lesbian-Aeolic feminine participial ending –oisa has been thought to derive from Lesbian kitharōidia sung at the Carneia (Cassio 2005). So too may his telling of myths from the Trojan Cycle. While ancient and modern commentators alike have assumed that Alcman borrowed from the Iliad and Odyssey, interaction with actual Homeric texts is unlikely (Davison 1968: 84–85; Kelly 2015: 31–34). Alcman diverges in narrative detail from Homeric epic (and the broader Cycle) as we know it (frr. 80, 68); verbal resemblances (e.g., 1.45–49 ~ Il. 9.123–24 = 9.265–66; 81 ~ Od. 6.244–45) likely represent independent deployments of traditional themes and diction inherited by both melic poets and rhapsodic performers of epic. A more probable scenario for Alcman’s engagement with Trojan epic locates it within Sparta’s multimedia performance culture, where epic traditions will still have been fluid. The influence of Ionian rhapsodes on Alcman has been posited (Sbardella 2014: 66–67). A more obvious source, however, would be the well-attested melic poets and performers who visited Sparta, the choral composers, aulodes, and above all citharodes, whose progenitor, Terpander, sang “Homer”—that is, lyric-dactylic accounts of heroic myth (cf. Gentili and Giannini 1995: 39–40)—“in the contests” (Ps-Plut. De mus. 3.1132c; cf. 6.1133c).
Alcman told or referred to episodes from the Trojan Cycle that will have resonated with local concerns. Helen, who with Menelaus received cult in Sparta (fr. 7), seems to have been the subject of a local myth related by Alcman (fr. 21), but he also treated her role in Trojan saga. Fr. 77, “Ill-Paris, dread-Paris, evil for man-nurturing Hellas,” conceivably belongs to a sympathetic account of Helen’s abduction, as might 70b and 91. Carneus, a Trojan, was named in an etiological account of the Carneia (52), which perhaps linked this high-profile local festival with the prestige of panhellenic epic.
The parthenaic genre may also have determined the selection of epic material. The meeting of Nausicaa and Odysseus, to which a number of fragments have been thought to refer (70c, 81–85b; S5b), is “most suitable content for a maiden song” (Bergk 1883: 234; cf. Peponi 2012: 88). A compelling argument has been made that fr. 5, a song that an ancient commentator interpreted as relating a cosmogony in which the goddess Thetis shaped the world, was actually a partheneion containing the generically appropriate myth of Peleus’ courtship of Thetis (Most 1987). It is tempting also to connect fr. 80, “And Circe once anointing the ears of stout-hearted Odysseus’ companions,” with evocations of Siren-song in the partheneia (1.95–96; 30; 142).
Further fragmentary glimpses of Trojan and other extra-Spartan myths elude contextualization. Alcman names Priam’s mother (71), and perhaps too Ganymede (S4). Ajax is twice mentioned, once in otherwise unattested combat with Memnon (68, 69; “a certain Cepheus” in 74 is perhaps Memnon’s ancestor rather than the Tegean king of local lore). Xanthus, the horse of either Achilles or Castor, speaks (76; cf. 25). There are references to Heracles, who straddles the Spartan and panhellenic (72, 87a; perhaps 15); Hippolochus, father of Glaucus (73); Niobe’s brood (75); Tantalus (79); Melampous (87d), either the Argive seer or one of Actaeon’s hounds (Hyg. Fab. 181; the Actaeon-Artemis story might suggest a partheneion). This is all “the merest flotsam and jetsam, casual wreckage of poetry” (Bowra 1961: 35). But it points to Alcman’s treatment of a wide range of myth, which was likely aimed not only at potential audiences in wider Greece, but foremost at poetically sophisticated first audiences in Laconia.
FURTHER READING
Calame 1983 is the standard commentary on the complete fragments of Alcman. Segal 1985: 168–185, a survey of the most significant fragments, is still very useful.
For the two major parthenaic fragments, see now the commentary on fr. 1 in Budelmann 2018b: 57–83 (detailed discussion of text, meter, and language, with up-to-date review of scholarship on performance and occasion) and Hutchinson 2001: 71–113 (on frr. 1 and 3). Page 1951, Puelma 1977/1995, and Pavese 1992, comprehensive studies of the Louvre Partheneion, remain essential, as do Calame 2001 and Stehle 1997: 30–39, 73–93 (on frr. 1 and 3). See also Robbins 1991, Too 1997, and Ferrari 2008, on interrelations between myth, ritual, and choral performance in fr. 1, and their sociopolitical relevance; Ingalls 2000 and Luginbill 2009, on pedagogy and initiation; Clay 1991, Priestley 2007, and Bowie 2011, on φᾶρος and Peleiades; on visuality and embodiment, Clark 1996, Peponi 2004 and 2007, Swift 2016b; D’Alessio 1994: 119–120, Klinck 2001, and Lardinois 2011a, on choral voice; Tsitsibakou-Vasalos 2001, on wordplay and names. Tsantsanoglou 2012: 112–134 revives older arguments, based on papyrus scholia and paragraphoi (for which see Schironi 2016), that two semi-choruses performed fr. 1 (or, in his view, semi-choruses and soloists); see Rosenmeyer 1966: 336–337 for related views on fr. 3.
For the reception of Alcman’s poetry and persona down through the Hellenistic period, see Kousoulini 2019.
Notes
1 Pausanias’ attribution of two dactylic verses from a Messenian choral song to Eumelus of Corinth, an eighth-century poet, is dubious (4.33.2 = PMG 696; D’Alessio 2009a). Alcman’s date: Hutchinson 2001: 71.
2 Alcmanic fragments (fr.) and testimonia (T) are cited from PMGF.
3 It is conventional to call these texts partheneia, though the use of partheneion to denote a song genre is not securely attested until the end of the fifth century BC (Ar. Birds 918). In post-Classical eidography, partheneia could be applied widely to choral songs sung by parthenoi, although not every such song was so called (Calame 2001: 149–166). Fr. 1 was probably transmitted in the first book of the Alexandrian edition of Alcman (Sch. Clem. 1.308), which, with Book 2, contained songs labeled partheneia. A scholion to fr. 3 claims that this song was misplaced in Book 5, presumably meaning that it belonged in Book 1 or 2 (cf. Hutchinson 2001: 104–106), but Alexandrian editors may have intentionally put it under another generic rubric.
4 Later versions of the myth emphasize the role of Heracles in killing the Hippocoontids and restoring Tyndareus to the Spartan throne. It is possible that this was a post-Alcmanic innovation, but Alcman may have mentioned Heracles earlier in the narrative. See Page 1951: 26–33.
5 As early as the Hellenistic period, readers have wanted to identify Orthria as Artemis Orthia, whose Spartan cult is securely attested (cf. Davison 1968: 154–157). But that epithet, in early inscriptions spelled Ϝορθεία/-αία, will not easily fit the meter. Yet another reading would make the papyrus’ ΟΡΘΡΙΆΙ an adjective (“at daybreak”) modifying the Peleiades in line 60.
6 See Calame 2001: 58–63, comparing Pind. fr. 94b, a partheneion that includes praise of a boy chorus leader.
7 Fr. 98 was known outside of Sparta by at least the mid-fourth century BC, as its citation by Ephorus of Cyme (ap. Strab. 10.4.18) shows; cf. Hinge 2009: 226–227. Perhaps its early transmission was through sympotic reperformance in different cities. On the question of Alcman’s ancient transmission, see Carey 2011, who posits an earlier oral and written diffusion beyond Sparta than Hinge, for whom the choral songs, at least, remained local and oral phenomena, reperformed exclusively in Laconian cults until their Hellenistic “discovery” and textualization (2006: 282–314; 2009).
8 For frr. 17 and 19, see now Boterf 2017.
9 Foodstuffs could be directly integrated into choral ritual. According to the Spartan historian Sosibius in his treatise On Alcman, kribanai, breast-shaped cakes mentioned in fr. 94 (by the name kribanōtoi), were carried around by men as a chorus of Laconian women sang (Athen. 3.114f–115a).
10 The statement in Suda Α 1289 (= TB1), that Alcman was “an inventor of erotic songs,” is presumably also derived from Archytas via Chamaeleon.
11 The title may suggest a song or songs for female chorus (Krummen 2013: 21–29). Skepticism has surrounded its authenticity; see Davies’ note to fr. 158.
12 See Davison 1968: 179. The ascription of fr. 19 to Book 5 depends on an emendation of Athenaeus’ text. Haslam 1977: 3 n. 2 thinks Athenaeus wrote “in the sixth book.” The papyrus containing fr. 4a (= 4 C Campbell) indicates that the song from which that fragment comes was the last in Book 6. Like fr. 19, 4a has been thought to belong to a wedding song (Campbell 1988: 387).
13 Polymnestus “composed verses for the Spartans” about Thales (a.k.a. Thaletas) of Gortyn (Paus. 1.14.4). Perhaps Alcman “cited” Polymnestus only in referring to Thaletas, though more significant engagement should not be ruled out.
14 Segal 1985: 185; Davies 1986; see Nikolaev 2012: 546 n. 14 for a different view.
15 Other fragments present Dionysian elements: 7.13–15; 63, 93, 124(?). Hesychius identifies the Dymainai (cod. δυσμαιναι) as “choral Bacchants at Sparta.” See D’Alessio 2013 on female dithyrambic performance in Sparta.
16 Bowra 1961: 22–25, Vestrheim 2004: 13, Kousoulini 2013: 436–437.
17 Nissen 1935 offers a different view: the fragment satirically describes a married couple and belongs to a wedding song.
18 While μέλος νεοχμόν “new song” in fr. 14a is probably on its surface rhetorically neutral—“another song, one unheard before” (D’Angour 2011: 192)—a claim to artistic novelty is arguably implicit, as seems true of νεοχμά in 4.1.6. Perhaps on the basis of these and similar passages, Alcman is called a musical innovator in De mus. Ps.-Plut. 12.1135c.
19 Cf. Maslov 2016: 430; Finkelberg 1998: 162–65. Singular Muse: frr. 5.2 col. ii.22–23, 14a, 27, 28 (but see Barnes 2016: 36), 30; collective: frr. 3.1, 8.4 col. ii.9–10; cf. 46, 67.
20 Cf. “Stes.” fr. 327 F; Pind. Nem. 3.10–11.
21 Alcman’s choruses in turn assimilate themselves to their Muse: “Muse, daughter of Zeus, I shall sing clearly (λίγ’)” (fr. 28, though this hexameter may come from a citharodic prelude); “I shall sing, beginning (ἀρχομένα) from Zeus” (fr. 29). Aristides’ commentary on fr. 30, ‘The Muse has cried aloud, that clear-voiced Siren,” seems to suggest that the chorus sings this verse self-referentially; cf. Peponi 2012: 86–88.
22 Characters: Nagy 1990a: 345–349; Hinge 2009. But the names are arguably real ones, projections of aristocratic ambition and self-regard (Bowie 2011: 57).
23 Maslov 2013: 18 cogently warns, however, against over-assimilating Alcman’s idiom into a delocalized choral lyric koinē. It has peculiarities suggestive of the spoken language (Nöthiger 1971: 119–123; Page 1951: 114–115). Additionally, it was less susceptible to distinctly Homeric influence, and exhibits more Aeolic features (Nöthiger 1971: 126–127; but see also Cassio 2007: 39–40).