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The New Simonides

Contexts of Praise and Desire

David Sider editor Deborah Boedeker editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:5th Jul '01

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The New Simonides cover

Over the course of his life (550-460 BC), the Greek poet Simonides produced poetic work of every kind then extant: elegies, threnodies, choral odes, countless epigrams, even a small epic. Unfortunately, Simonides' corpus has survived only in fragments, though classical scholars have been studying his work for generations. In 1992, a new fragment of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri was discovered to contain a substantial and previously undiscovered chunk of Simonides' work, and this fragment enabled papyrologists to attribute an earlier unearthed fragment to Simonides as well. Together, the two fragments revolutionized the study of Simondies, casting particular light on the epic of Plataea. Boedecker and Sider's edited volume gathers the best of the recent research on Simonides' newly expanded oeuvre into a single collection which will be an important reference for scholars of Greek poetry.

Possessors of this book will often in years to come take their copies from shelf to desk. Noble poetry, as Simonides proclaimed, outlives a leafy mortality; but so also does fine scholarship. * Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review *
... the present volume deserves a warm welcome. The editors have brought together, with skill, tact, and accuracy, eighteen essays ... the book has a certain coherence, aided by judicious cross-referencing; and the quality of editing has been high. * Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review *
This book provides an excellent appraisal of the state of scholarship on the "New Simonides". It surpasses most edited volumes in the degree to which the contributors are clearly aware of one another's essays and provide cross-references to sustain the course of the questioning about the text. It has launched some important new challenges about the historical and literary traditions represented by the text. * American Journal of Philology *

ISBN: 9780195137675

Dimensions: 152mm x 229mm x 22mm

Weight: 649g

328 pages