#alcman

[ithaca-my-beloved]

Who's your favourite of the nine canonical lyric poets?

Alcman

Sappho

Alcaeus

Anacreon

Stesichorus

Ibycus

Simonides

Baccylides

Pindar

The Alexandrians didn't know shit (leave your fave lyric poets in the notes!!)

Voting ended onJun 10, 2023

I feel like Sappho is probably going to come out on top here but I'm curious what everyone's Poetry Hot Takes are

[lionofchaeronea]

A Lullaby for Nature

Alcman fr. 89 PMG The mountain-peaks and gullies slumber, The headlands and the torrents slumber, All the creeping things the dark earth feeds Slumber; the mountain-haunting beasts And the race of bees, the monstrous things Deep in the seething sea; the tribes Of birds with far-stretched wings are all asleep.   Εὕδουσι δ' ὀρέων κορυφαί τε καὶ φάραγγες, πρώονές τε καὶ χαράδραι, ἑρπετά θ’ ὅσσα τρέφει μέλαινα γαῖα, θῆρές τ' ὀρεσκῷοι καὶ γένος μελισσᾶν καὶ κνώδαλ' ἐν βένθεσσι πορφυρέᾱς ἁλός. εὕδουσιν δ' ὀϊωνῶν φῦλα τανυπτερύγων.

Sleep, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, ca. 1867-70

[flores-et-dracones]

Her glance

more melting than sleep or death;

- Alcman 3, trans. West

[sepdet]

The Great Unbreakable Cheese

every once in a while I am seized with joy when I remember one of the greatest lines in all of classical literature

here is a translation i sent my mom over 20 years ago when I was earning my classics MA and could still read this stuff

Alcman, archaic Greek poet, Sparta, 7thc BCE

Often times upon the peaks of the mountains, when the many-torches festival is pleasing to the gods*

she, carrying a golden milk-bucket, a great drinking-cup such as the shepherd-men have, setting her hands to the milk of a lioness brews a great unbreakable cheese for the Argos-slayer [Hermes].

*or "godth." Spartans spelled "theos" as "sios," which to Athenians sounds like a lisp. Also the vowels are long/broad like a Yorkshire or drawled-out American Midwest accent.

[justanotherbisexualclassicist]

Having a gorgeous afternoon just for myself having been subjected to that vile Φάρμακον

[wine-porn]

Ancient

This feels like AV. Pretty sure it’s RRV, but oh man, does it feel like classic AV, like the Husch and Navarro and Lazy Creek stuff of old. It does NOT feel like RRV, who seem to be in a race to plump up their pinots into 99% comfort-levels. Likewise, AV has also gotten the lush-bug of late, and these gritty, briary, rustic-feeling bitter-fests are becoming few and far between. Big, warm, savory…

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[nathanielthecurious]

ideal girls’ night: staying up til dawn singing in worship to the pleiades with my best friends hagesichora and agido, whose beauty rivals the speed of an ibenian race-horse

[ululamque]

Thomas J. Nelson in ‘Most Musicall, Most Melancholy’: Avian Aesthetics of Lament in Greek and Roman Elegy. 

Alcman fr. 40 (tr. David A. Campbell)

Athenaeus, IX 390a (tr. S. Douglas Olson)