Greek Melic Poets

by Herbert Weir Smyth

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

712 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 401

About the author

Herbert Weir Smyth was an American classical scholar. His comprehensive grammar of Ancient Greek has become a standard reference on the subject in English, comparable to that of William Watson Goodwin, whom he succeeded as Eliott Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University.

Reviews

[Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though it overlapped a fair amount, this was a great companion to the Oxford Classical Texts I have been reading lately (Lyrica Graeca Selecta and Delectus ex Iambic et Elemis Graecis). The main difference is that this book includes extensive notes and commentary. There are many upsides to this approach: Smyth clearly labels the meters, something that I am often struggling to pick up on my own. He gives historical context to the poets and poems. This is especially helpful in grasping mythological allusions, etc. And the poems are given in roughly chronological order, which allows one to see how styles evolved and how later poets developed the ideas of their predecessors. In fact, Smyth's commentaries err on the side of illustrating too many parallel examples from Homer or Pindar et al. The main downside to this book is that the texts are presented as if pristine. The OCT editions give a better sense of how these poems have often come down to us in fragmentary condition, requiring much speculation.

I really benefited from re-reading some of the same poetry I struggled through the first time. I still don't completely have the "feel" of many of the meters, but I had the realization it may be because we are missing an essential ingredient, namely the music that these melic (melodic) texts were sung to. That was why it was really interesting to see two hymns set to actual music in an appendix. I am rather dubious that they are accurate but I will have to learn more about the ancient musical notation to see how Smyth arrived at these realizations. I played through both hymns and let's just say it is hard to imagine that music like this affected the Greeks the way Plato and others describe.

In addition to the familiar texts, the book included my first exposure to Pindar and to Bacchylides, who similarly composed victory odes for winners of the Olympic games and other pan-Hellenic competitions. I have been building up to reading full-fledged Pindar, which I hope to get to soon. But first I want to catch up on a backlog of secondary scholarly books for a while.

[stew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating collection and translation of some of the greatest poets to ever live. Nothing less than provocative and excellent scholarship from HWS.