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Department of Classics and Ancient History

Staff

Publication details for Dr Andrej Petrovic

Image: Kommentar zu den simonideischen Versinschriften.Petrovic, Andrej (2007). Kommentar zu den simonideischen Versinschriften. Leiden: Brill.

Author(s) from Durham

Abstract

Kommentar zu den simonideischen Versinschriften, a revised version of a 2004 dissertation, comprises a historical study of archaic and classical epigram (1-109), an edition of the text of, and a historical, philological and archaeological commentary on, the verse-inscriptions ascribed to Simonides of Ceos (110-280), and a conclusion (281-99), followed by appendices, bibliography, and indices (300-45). Part I includes chapters on methodology, on epigram as a genre of display, on problems of authorship, on the sources of the oldest Simonidean verse inscriptions, and on their transmission. The commentary in Part II deals with 15 epigraphic and/or verse inscriptions, handed down from the writers of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Each commentary is preceded by a text, a brief apparatus criticus, and a review of the relevant secondary literature. Due attention is also given to historical, literary, and, when possible, architectural contexts. The concluding observations deal with epigrammatic competitions and with the historical reception of the verse inscriptions in public spaces.
More generally, this study treats the genre of epigram as a public artefact in its socio-historical, literary and material contexts. As historical sources, these inscriptions do not only, or even primarily, inform us about historical events, but also about the ways a community wished to remember such events and pass them down to future generations.
By analyzing the interplay of diverse contexts, the book tries to explain the meanings these poems had for the recipients, with a focus on their significance for the groups and communities for which they were initially composed. The verse-inscriptions thereby emerge as important testimonies of the historical consciousness and sense of identity that individual poleis developed in the period after the Persian Wars.