Classica - Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos

9-29

Authors: Lucia Athanassaki

This paper explores the melic poets’ take on art and its sponsors. Since much has been written on the relationship of epinician poets with their patrons, this paper broadens the focus of enquiry to include other melic genres and, in addition to the verbal, to look at the visual arts as well, i.e. melic representations of communities that sponsor songs and of communities or individuals that sponsor other art-forms such as sculpture, architecture, and precious objects. Taking as starting point Xenophon’s depiction of Simonides in Hiero, I discuss epigrams XXVII and XXVIII Page and relevant testimonia that show Simonides’ keen interest in Athenian dithyrambic contests; Bacchylides’ Ode 19, probably composed for the Great Dionysia; Pindar’s Pythian 7, Paean 8, and fragment 3 in conjunction with Homeric Hymn to Apollo 281-99, Herodotus 1.31, Cicero, De oratore 2. 86. 352-353, [Plutarch] Consolatio ad Apollonium, and Pausanias – all of which offer precious insights into Pindar’s views on sponsoring monumental sculpture and architecture; and Bacchylides’ description of the golden tripods that Hieron offered to Apollo in Ode 3. On the basis of this evidence I argue that whatever the nature and the range of remuneration of poets and artists may have been, melic rhetoric shows that it was the relationship of poets, artists and their sponsors with the gods that was ultimately at stake. This is why both the poetry and the traditions about Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides privilege the divine favour that poets, artists and patrons alike either obtained or were hoping to obtain by offering masterpieces to the gods.

45-63

Authors: Luigi Galasso

Augustan poets have a complex attitude towards public ceremonies. In some of his Odes, especially in the fourth book, Horace wants to be seen as one among many in his celebration of the princeps. These are multi-layered poems, which show a subtle dialectic public/ private and an interesting relationship with Lyric and Hellenistic Greek models. Ovid develops these suggestions in his exile elegies to give life to a new panegyrical poetry.

75-88

Authors: Marcus Mota

The analysis of the plays that were attributed to Aeschylus enable us to understand some tendencies both in his dramaturgy and in the Ancient Greek Theatre. Among them, there are the exploration of questions of gender, cultural identity, and theatrical hybridity.

101-112

Authors: Joaquim Pinheiro

In the biographical literary genre, the narrative usually ends with the description of the circumstances of the hero’s death. As Plutarch, in his Lives, does not always follows this pattern, in this study we will identify the main forms of the conclusion of the biographies. Then, starting from a selection of bioi sufficiently representative of the different typologies identified, we will analyze the variations and the sense that the death of the hero confers to its ethical and moral characterization.

129-145

Authors: Guilherme Moerbeck

This article was organized in three parts. In the first one, a concise introduction to the History of Greek Culture and its historical environment is presented. The focus of the second part lies on Burckhardt’s ideas on the emergence of the polis in Ancient Greece, and how the main thoughts of the Swiss historian tend to materialize in the Ancient past some theoretical conceptions of the nineteenth century. The Athens of Burckhardt is analyzed in the final part of this paper; the core of the author’s approach, and the way he built the idea of the“state as evil”tothedemocraticAthensofthefifthandthesixth centuries BC are explained. At last, the very meaning of Burckhardt’s Athens – a city-state degenerated by the government of its demoralized mob rule –, is discussed.