Strategies of Communication in Agonistic Epigrams

Inscribed agonistic epigrams of the archaic and classical time represent a privileged field of work on strategies of communication because they share topics and function with another major literary genre: the epinician ode. Victorious athletes, in fact, could choose to celebrate their victory either by dedicating a statue with an inscribed epigram or by commissioning an ode to a poet. The two forms had the same function (celebrating the victory), and shared some common topoi and expressions, but the results are radically different, not only because of the extension. The material support of inscriptions influences the poet, who pays great attention to the visual disposal of words and to the relationship of the epigram with the statue it accompanies. Agonistic statues, in fact, become from the fifth century B.C. more and more lifelike and epigrams gradually assume the function of expressing their words. First-person utterances thus become a mean to express victors’ own voice before the future generations with a continuous play on the absence/presence of the dedicator. Simonides plays a crucial in role in the relationship between the text and the material support, because he is the first author who gives literary dignity to a genre so far considered as “ancillary” like the epigram. As a lyric poet, author of epinician and encomiastic odes, he intends the epigram as a poetic product and not as a mere “complement” of the statue and its base. At the same time, he is well aware that the material support is a fundamental trait of this genre, which makes his art unique: this is the reason why he never forgets to obey to the laws of the stone and to the stylistic conventions which took place in the epigraphic field. The brevity imposed by the material support forces the poet to invent new modes in order to concentrate all the necessary informations in two lines and, possibly, find some artistic variations to the most essential lists. Another difference between agonistic epigrams and epinician odes is the context of performance: epigrams we know were mainly dedicated in Panhellenic sanctuaries, whereas the great part of epinicians were performed in the victor’s home town. This implies a different mode of self-presentation of the victor in accordance to the audience (local or panhellenic), which becomes particularly evident in those few lucky cases in which we possess both odes and epigrams of the same dedicator (e.g. Hieron of Syracuse).