Singing the skolion: A study of poetics and politics in ancient Greece

In Chapter One, I summarize previous scholarship, which I divide into two major trajectories: the philological and the historical. I show how and why previous scholars have not acknowledged the skolion as a distinct genre of Greek poetry, a position I refute by pointing out the inadequacies of their approach. I outline an alternative methodology based on theoretical approaches to ancient genre challenging latent assumptions that all sympotic poetry was necessarily aristocratic. In Chapter Two, I construct a working definition of the genre that adheres closely to the ancient concept of the skolion. I deconstruct late etymologies, correlating relevant information with earlier sources. I also demonstrate how the ancient generic concept solidified over time to become an established form within the musical tradition and was projected into the quasi-mythical past. In Chapter Three, I examine the corpus of extant skolia in relation to three major criteria. I show that the skolion's primary occasion was the formal symposion associated with public festivals and local socio-religious organizations. I also explore the genre's characteristic content and those songs dedicated to local gods, heroes, and martyrs, and show that the skolion's style was characterized by Aeolic and dactylo-epitrite meters and Lydian and Ionian harmoniai. I conclude by examining the ancient (and modern) debate surrounding the classification of Aristotle's skolion for Hermias. In chapter Four, I examine the skolion tradition, arguing that the genre's roots can be traced back to the interdiscursive speech acts of early "Homeric" society that combine praise and lament in sympotic contexts. I then explore the process of assimilation that occurred in later centuries when older songs were identified as skolia and included within the generic canon. In chapter 5, I focus on the Attic skolia and their place within Athenian political discourse. I argue that non-aristocratic hoplites were primarily responsible for their composition. I also show how Philocleon successfully mimics aristocratic behavior in the Wasps by singing a slanderous version of the Harmodios song. I identify a similar parody in the Acharnians, which represents a real practice common among elites who viewed the Tyrannicides in decidedly negative terms.