Chapter One. Aristides And Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac And Iambic Poetry

Abstract

This chapter investigates Aristides' quotations of and allusions to early Greek lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry. One reason for its restriction to these poets is that the author has been looking at their citation and other ways they are drawn upon in a number of imperial Greek texts. A quite different agenda drives Pausanias the periegete, hence the remarkable range of his poetic quotation, which includes some very rare figures. If Aristides is compared only with those second- and third-century figures to whom his rhetorical activity brings him closer, Dio of Prusa, Maximus of Tyre and Philostratus of Athens, he begins to look less odd. The chapter examines some aspects of these three writers' habits of quotation for comparison. After these comparisons the thinness of the harvest from Aristides looks less surprising. Keywords: Aristides' quotations; Dio of Prusa; early Greek lyric; elegiac poetry; iambic poetry; Maximus of Tyre; Philostratus of Athens