The Partheneion

by Alcman, Denys L. Page (Editor)

The type of songs Alcman composed most frequently appear to be hymns, partheneia (maiden-songs Greek παρθένος "maiden"), and prooimia (preludes to recitations of epic poetry).
The First Partheneion consists of 101 lines, of which more than 30 are severely damaged. The choral lyrics of Alcman were meant to be performed within the social, political, and religious context of Sparta. These hymns are sung by choruses of unmarried women.

Earlier research tended to overlook the erotic aspect of the love of the partheneions; the papyrus has the more explicit τείρει, "wears me out (with love)". Calame states that this homoerotic love, which is similar to the one found in the lyrics of the contemporaneous poet Sappho, matches the pederasty of the males and was an integrated part of the initiation rites. At a much later period, but probably relying on older sources, Plutarch confirms that the Spartan women were engaged in such same sex relationships. It remains open if the relationship also had a physical side and, if so, of what nature.

Other scholars, among them Hutchinson and Stehle, see the First Partheneion as a song composed for a harvest ritual and not as a tribal initiation. Stehle argues that the maidens of the Partheneion carry a plough (φάρος, or, in the most translations, a robe, φᾶρος) for the goddess of Dawn (Orthria). This goddess of Dawn is honoured because of the qualities she has, especially in harvest time when the Greeks harvest during dawn (Hesiod, Works and Days, ll. 575-580). The chorus-members present themselves as women ready for marriage. Stehle doesn't agree with Calame about the initiation-rituals, but cannot ignore the 'erotic' language that the poem expresses.

Some scholars think that the chorus was divided in two halves, who would each have their own leader; at the beginning and close of their performance, the two halves performed as a single group, but during most of the performance, each half would compete with the other, claiming that their leader or favorite was the best of all the girls in Sparta. There is, however, little evidence that the chorus was in fact divided.
[Source: wiki (Alcman) March 2018]

Genres: Poetry

178 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 651

About the author

7th century BC Greek poet, citizen of Sparta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcman

Reviews

[Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I finished reading the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, I decided to turn next to Greek lyric poetry, on the grounds that it came next chronologically. The first poem that greeted me in the Oxford Classics edition of Lyrica Graeca Selecta was a 100-line poem, partly fragmentary, by Alcman. I had never heard of this poet, the language was strange (I later learned it was in the Laconian dialect of Sparta), the meter was new to me, and I had no idea what the poem was about. After a little searching on Wikipedia, I discovered that Denys Page, whose books on the Iliad and the Odyssey I have enjoyed, had written a monograph on this very poem, known as "The Partheneion" (roughly, the maidens' song). Sadly it was not easy to find a copy of this book, but I eventually procured one from a British bookseller.

By the time I started reading Page's book, I had gotten more comfortable with the language and style of Alcman and the other Greek lyric poets. But I still learned a tremendous amount about the poem, its context, and Alcman's language. The text of the Partheneion comes from a long papyrus roll found in the Egyptian desert. Page's book starts by giving the text as clearly as possible exactly as it stands on the papyrus, meaning without any punctuation, word divisions, or distinction between capital and lower-case letters. He also gives the various "scholia," comments written in the margins by scribes. This was all revelatory to me, as I had never fully considered all the decisions an editor faces in presenting an ancient text like this in a modern edition.

The next part of the book delves into the context of the poem. Page looks into other sources of Spartan myth, especially as recorded in Pausanias, a later travel writer. These help to make some sense of the list of names that begin Alcman's poem. Page also works through different hypotheses to arrive at a convincing argument that this poem was sung by a chorus of young women in competition with another chorus. Some details remain foggy, but I came away with a much better concept of what the Partheneion was "about."

The last section of the book is a thorough discussion of Alcman's language. Page argues that he essentially writes in the Laconian dialect, i.e. not in an artificial poetic language but in the language of his time and place. He goes through the various oddities compared with what later became standard Greek, and then gives a detailed line-by-line commentary on the poem itself.

All in all, this is a perfect companion to reading Alcman's Partheneion.

[Stephen Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fragments that remain of Alcman, the seventh-century BCE poet, present a different side of Spartan life than is commonly known: love between women and reverence for the natural world.

Here's the most beautiful passage I found in M. L. West's translation:

Muses of Olympus, my heart is rapt
with desire of hearing a new song
and the unison of girls in lovely melody
. . . will dispel
the sweetness of sleepy eyelids.
. . . draws me along to the piazza,
there where I'll be tossing my flaxen hair
. . . a dance for tender feet . . .

and with crippling longing. Her glance
more melting than sleep or death;
hers is a potent sweetness.

[Giorgos Lyc]

I want to read the Page's scholia.