Investigation of the Bee-nymphs of Mt. Parnassus and the ancestral Indo-European strain and Anatolian strains of divination introduced into European Hellas by migrant pre-Aeolian communities.

Chapter four examines the Muses, the sole female divinities who are regularly depicted as musicians in the surviving visual material. The ambiguity inherent to their representation, where it is never clear whether they are goddesses or human women, allows for their bodies to become visual forms capable of taking on multiple identities. Laferrière considers the images within their original contexts, including the domestic sphere, the cemetery, the sanctuary, and the symposium, to examine how the images invited their viewers to imagine the sounds of divine music and what effect this visualized music had upon the viewing audience. In each instance, she argues that the depictions of the Muses respond to the spaces in which they are encountered, so that their visual interpretation becomes inherently multivalent and malleable. When representations of the Muses are considered within a range of possible contexts of use, the vases make a powerful statement about the Muses: not only may they appear in any context or work through any female figure, but as divinities who are flexible in their visual representation, the Muses become visual forms capable of taking on multiple identities.

This chapter explores coincidences and divergences between Hesiod’s conception of language and those found in Akkadian literature. First, it provides a synopsis of Hesiod’s ideas about language and the interrelation of these ideas with the poet’s broader poetics. Then it discusses how Hesiodic conceptions of language are deeply intertwined with the interpretation of divine names. The chapter also investigates how Hesiod’s particular ways of interpreting theonyms is used to endorse hermeneutic practices anchored in an oral tradition. It explores the differences between the Theogony and its cuneiform counterparts, especially by comparing how wordplay and etymology are deployed in the analysis of divine names.

The previous chapter locates Parmenides in his physical and linguistic contexts; this chapter locates him in his poetic, intellectual, and cultural milieux. It argues that we need to understand Parmenides’ poem in light of the late archaic revolution in the way that Homer was conceptualized. This chapter examines the epistemological framework Parmenides inherits from Hesiod and Xenophanes in considering the nature of human enquiry; the way that other poets in the late archaic period make use of the newly emergent figure of Homer and the corpus of Homeric poetry, especially with respect to their claims to knowledge and their relationship to the Muses; and the ways that scholars have characterized developments between Homeric poetry and the poetry of the late archaic period. I show how Parmenides uses the resources this Homeric tradition offers to launch a multipronged response to the challenges set down by Hesiod and Xenophanes. These include: reinitiating contact with a Muse-like figure in the proem; the use of crossroads imagery to articulate fundamental distinctions; ceding the voice of the poem to the unnamed goddess; the use of argument; and the return to the privileged poetic form of epic dactylic hexameter.

Seminal iconographic innovations in early Christian images of the divinely inspired evangelists reflect fundamentally changed attitudes toward the authenticity and authority of sacred texts. These portraits depart significantly from relevant pagan and Jewish imagery in that they emphasize the accurate documentation of the revealed texts in writing. The early Byzantine iconography of divine inspiration substantiates visually claims of Christianity being the only “true religion” that were expressed by late antique theologians and are also manifest in imperial legislation.

This chapter surveys archaic and classical Greek ideas about music and memory. It first asks why song-producers and audiences, while readily acknowledging the effectiveness and value of music’s verbal components as preservers and enhancers of memory, do not seem to recognize the purely musical elements as being especially “memorable.” Second, I turn toAristotle, seeking to piece together how he thinks music – along with “voice” and sounds in general – functions in relation to memory, primarily through the psychological-somatic workings of the human “imagination,” i.e., his notions of affect (pathos) and phantasia. Even while Aristotle does not address musical memory directly, his work provides a sophisticated account of the material and physiological processes whereby hearing and memory operate in humans and other animals – adumbrating modern accounts based on a more accurate understanding of neurology and cognition. At the same time, since ancient music was experienced live (rather than through recordings or broadcasts) and could never be exactly repeated, there existed a different relationship between present and past in music-listening than most of us are used to today.

Pliny, Gellius, Plutarch, and Athenaeus each give a religious frame to their miscellanies, and the most consistently cited deities are the Muses. This is no empty rhetorical convention but an attempt to connect their work to a tradition where the Muses preside over revelation of things hidden. Different strands of the Muse tradition are taken up, including revelation to the studious, solitary lucubrator and philosophical revelation where philosophy is the highest form of mousikê. The miscellanists develop forms of social and ascetic discipline to participate more deeply in the spirituality of this tradition, by refraining from sleep, food, or certain kinds of talk and by practising their labours by night or alone. Clement shows his intention to respond to this Classical tradition by framing his project in Christian paideia with allusions to the Classical tradition of mousikê. But he displaces Apollo (Muse-leader) with Christ, the bee (symbol of the Muses) with the Christ-Logos and either omits or debunks the Muses at every opportunity.

By exploring three issues which connect music with Platonic cosmology, I argue that, according to Plutarch, this connection was at the same time very important and severely limited. (1) In several passages of De animae procreatione, Plutarch compares the demiurge to a musician. These comparisons suggest a certain degree of similarity, but also a significant degree of difference between the two and, accordingly, between cosmic harmony and music. (2) Similarly, Plutarch’s reception of the notion of ‘music of the spheres’, as it emerges from a discussion in Quaestiones convivales, confirms the connection between music and the cosmos only to a limited extent. What the answers of the discussion have in common is that they all warn against excessive appreciation of music. (3) Finally, in Amatorius and De Pythiae oraculis, Plutarch distances musical experience from divine inspiration (enthousiasmos). In general, this persistent combination of importance and limitedness can be explained by Plutarch’s interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus.

This paper outlines some of the historiographical tools and perspectives the Annals may have received from Livius Andronicus’ Odyssey and Naevius’ Punic War. The topics of allegory and authority structure the discussion. Section 1 explores the Annals’ construction of the past in relation to that of its Latin epic predecessors, particularly their use of allegory in the representation of history. Section 2 argues that Ennius’ unique blend of auctoritas is an expansion of Naevius’ simultaneous evocation of Hellenic historiographical authority of first-hand experience (theōria, empeiria, autoptēs) and divine inspiration from the Muses. The analysis here brings Cato’s Origins into dialogue with the authorizing techniques that are central to the historiographical personae of Rome’s first epicists. I conclude by suggesting that the genealogies outlined in Sections 1 and 2 explain the generic hybridity of Ennius’ res atque poemata.