Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and Theognis' Elegies I.15-18

Abstract

1815 saw the publication of the first modern edition of Theognis’ Elegies (Vetta LIX),1 and we can be reasonably certain that most classical scholars in England would have been aware of it – among them Benjamin Bailey, with whom Keats stayed in Oxford during the September of 1817. Whether Bailey ever mentioned these Elegies to Keats, and, in particular, I.15–18, is not a matter of historical record, but there is a prima facie case that he might have done. Consider the text in question: Muses and Graces, Daughters of Zeus, who came of yore to the wedding of Cadmus and sang so fair a song, ‘What is fair is dear, and not dear what is not fair’ – such was the song that passed your immortal lips. (Elegy and Iambus I, 231)2 1 Theognis, Elegiarum Liber Secundum, ed. Maximus Vetta (Rome: Edizione dell’Ateneo, 1980). 2 Elegy and Iambus, trans. J. M. Edmonds, 2 vols (London: William Heineman, 1968). 3 Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 2 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955).