Table of Contents

1. Introduction; Part I. Clio polytropos: Non-historiographical Media of Memory: 2. Epinician poetry: Pindar, Olympian 2; 3. Elegy: the 'New Simonides' and the past in earlier elegies; 4. Tragedy: Aeschylus, Persae; 5. Epideictic oratory: Lysias, Epitaphios Logos; 6. Deliberative oratory: Andocides, De pace; Part II. The Rise of Greek Historiography: 7. Herodotus; 8. Thucydides; 9. Epilogue: historical fevers, ancient and modern; Appendix: lengthy historical narratives in Tyrtaeus and Mimnermus?

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Investigates literary memory in the fifth century BCE, covering poetry and oratory as well as the first Greek historians.

About the Author

Jonas Grethlein is Professor of Classics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He studied at Göttingen, Oxford and Freiburg before holding positions at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2006 he received the prestigious Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz award for junior scholars. In addition to numerous articles he has published Asyl und Athen. Die Konstruktion kollektiver Identität in der griechischen Tragödie (2003) and Das Geschichtsbild der Ilias. Eine Untersuchung des Geschichtsbildes der Ilias aus phänomenologischer und narratologischer Perspektive (2006) and edited (with A. Rengakos) Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature (forthcoming).

Reviews

'Grethlein has written a remarkably broad, erudite, and often original study.' Victor Bers, American Journal of Philology

'This is an ambitious, lucid, well-researched and well-organized book … [It] provides a stimulating argument and one based on much careful analysis of ancient texts and knowledge of the extensive relevant modern scholarship … One looks forward for more from Jonas Grethlein in the future on these and similar challenging topics.' Carolyn Dewald, Classical Journal

'… a valuable read on Hellenic memory as ideological tool.' Donald Lateiner, The Historian