Deborah Steiner
Biographic Data
| ID | 3875009 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah Steiner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah |
| FAMILY NAME | Steiner |
| SIGNATURE | STEINER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Columbia University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 89 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
More Than a Thing: Figuring Hybridity in Archaic Poetry and Art
This chapter starts by exploring the familiar scene at the end of Iliad 18, where the Homeric poet describes a sequence of artefacts that Hephaestus has manufactured: first the self-moving twenty golden tripods that he is in the process of completing, now fitting them out with ‘ears’, then the golden girls, automata, who are filled with ‘voice and strength’, then twenty self-blowing bellows that keep the fire strong, and finally Achilles’ wondrou…
Things That Sing: The Liveliness of Vessels in Early Greek Art and Poetry
At the outset of Olympian 7, Pindar figures the ode currently being performed to the phorminx and pipes as an all-gold phiale ‘plashing within with the dew of the vine’ (1–12); elsewhere, the poetic voice addresses his chorodidaskalos as a ‘sweet kratēr of loudly-sounding songs’ ( Ol . 6.91). This paper proposes that we take these equations between songs and cups, bowls, and containers more generally at the most literal level: as my discussion of…
Sappho and Archaic Greek Song Culture
Chapter 6 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho ponders Sappho’s relationship with her other archaic poets and contemporary poetic traditions, including iambic poetry (Archilochus and Hipponax) and choral poetry (Alcman and Bacchylides).
Choral Constructions in Greek Culture: The Idea of the Chorus in the Poetry, Art and Social Practices of the Archaic and Early Classical Period
Why did the Greeks of the archaic and early Classical period join in choruses that sang and danced on public and private occasions? This book offers a wide-ranging exploration of representations of chorality in the poetry, art and material remains of early Greece in order to demonstrate the centrality of the activity in the social, religious and technological practices of individuals and communities. Moving from a consideration of choral archetyp…
Choral Constructions in Greek Culture: The Idea of the Chorus in the Poetry, Art and Social Practices of the Archaic and Early Classical Period
Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought
Figuring choral lyric: Sappho, Stesichorus and the spectacular chorus in archaic Greek texts and images
This article explores relations between a series of archaic Greek vase images and select poems by Sappho and Stesichorus. It argues that reading the lyric works alongside both earlier and contemporary visual accounts can elucidate outstanding questions concerning the poems’ structure, contents, sensibility, and coherence, and help resolve the puzzles surrounding the performance context and audiences for whom the composers designed their songs. Af…
Tonio Hölscher: Visual Power in Ancient Greece and Rome. Between Art and Social Reality
As a critical journal for all classical studies, the GNOMON fosters the links between the distinct classical disciplines. It has thus an exceptional position among the classical review journals and allows familiarization with research and publications in neighbouring disciplines. The reviews address an international readership from all fields in classical studies. The GNOMON publishes reviews in German, English, French, Italian and Latin
Chorus Lines: Catalogues and Choruses in Archaic and Early Classical Hexameter Poetry and Choral Lyric
My discussion explores the coincidence between catalogues and choruses in the early poetic repertoire, observing how choral ensembles regularly perform lists in both hexameter and lyric sources. Drawing on representations of choruses in archaic and early classical texts and vase imagery, I suggest that this association may in large part depend on the morphology common to both phenomena; continuities exist in the makeup of the group, the interacti…
Dossier : Place aux objets !: Présentification et vie des artefacts en Grèce ancienne
Dossier : Et si, par-delà la dichotomie classique sujet-objet, les artefacts étaient appréhendés comme des agents voire des événements, et considérés dans leur rapport au temps et à l’espace ? Ce dossier propose l’étude des phénomènes, dispositifs et contextes par lesquels les objets adviennent en Grèce ancienne. Varia : Balles de fronde, noms barbares : la puissance des mots. Imaginaires du passé : la guerre lélantine, la figure de Solon. Le rôl…
Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture
Making Monkeys: Archilochus frr. 185–187 W. in Performance
This chapter offers a close reading of Archilochus frr. 185–187 W. that situates the fragments within the performative, political, and visual context of the archaic symposium where they would have been delivered. After considering the relationship that the lines set up between the speaker and the target of his mockery, and which can be aligned with such relations of ‘mimetic rivalry’ in interactions between archaic iambographers and their victims…
State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōriā and Theōroi by Ian Rutherford
Reviewed by: State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōriā and Theōroi by Ian Rutherford Deborah Steiner Ian Rutherford. State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōriā and Theōroi. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xxvii, 534. $120.00. ISBN 978–1-107–03822–6. For the Pump Room at Bath, where the heroine of Northanger Abbey goes eagerly to meet Mr. Tilney, the object of her growi…
Figures of the Poet in Greek Epic and Lyric
This discussion treats the various “figures” or personas adopted by poets in Greek epic and lyric poetry and explores some of the motives behind the varying self-constructions visible in the Archaic poetic repertoire. I focus on three such personas in particular: the poet as law-giver and statesman, as symposiast, and as the maker of a precious object dedicated to a divinity within a ritual frame. Also considered in each of these instances are th…
The Poetics of Sound: Callimachus’ Rereading of Pindar Fragment 70B S.-M
The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
Covering material as diverse as curse tablets, coins, tattoos, and legal decrees, Deborah Steiner explores the reception of writing in archaic and classical Greece. She moves beyond questions concerning ancient literacy and the origins of the Greek alphabet to examine representations of writing in the myths and imaginative literature of the period. Maintaining that the Greek alphabet was not seen purely as a means of transcribing and preserving t…
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture
This handbook explores key aspects of art and architecture in ancient Greece and Rome. Drawing on the perspectives of scholars of various generations, nationalities, and backgrounds, it discusses Greek and Roman ideas about art and architecture, as expressed in both texts and images, along with the production of art and architecture in the Greek and Roman world
The Priority of Pots: Pandora’s pithos re-viewed
Dans la lecture présentée ici de l’épisode du pithos qui conclut le récit d’Hésiode sur Pandora dans les Erga, je montre qu’une enquête, centrée sur le rôle de ce type particulier de réceptacle dans la société et l’économie de la Grèce archaïque, peut donner de nouveaux aperçus sur le choix narratif fait par l’auteur en même temps qu’elle éclaire les rapports entre la jarre et les événements précédents de l’épisode. Les moyens de production ainsi…
The Gorgons’ Lament: Auletics, Poetics, and Chorality in Pindar’s Pythian 12
This article offers a fresh reading of Pindar’s Pythian 12, an ode composed for a victorious aulete, which demonstrates its engagement in current musicological debates concerning innovations in instrumentation, relations between the musical and vocal elements in choreia , and the status of the pipes. In ways that intersect with these issues, Pindar anticipates a motif that resurfaces in later Attic drama and other texts concerning the origins of …
Lines of Demarcation: Aesch. Ag . 485–6
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Fables and Frames: The Poetics and Politics of Animal Fables in Hesiod, Archilochus, and the Aesopica
This article explores four animal fables in the Greek sources: Hesiod’s ainos at Works and Days 202–12, two fables of Archilochus (frags. 172–81 W and 185–87 W), and the eagle and dung beetle story attributed to Aesop (Perry 3), and demonstrates continuities between the stories’ concerns and framing narratives. I argue that these fables serve as point-scoring devices deployed by performers within agonistic situations; they promote their teller’s …
Dancing with the Stars: Choreia in the Third Stasimon of Euripides’ Helen
Pindar's Bestiary: The "Coda" of Pythian 2
This article explores connections between the final triad of Pindar's Pythian 2 and what precedes it. Foregrounding the motif of reciprocity, Pindar chooses the animals featured here with an eye to their role in the iambic poetry of Archilochus, offering a revisionary treatment of the figure of the Archilochean wolf. Cet article explore les rapports entre la triade finale dans la seconde Ode pythique de Pindare et ce qui la précède : plaçant au p…
Homer: Odyssey Books XVII-XVIII: Books XVII–XVIII
Books XVII and XVIII of the Odyssey feature, among other episodes, the disguised Odysseus' penetration of his home after an absence of twenty years and his first encounter with his wife. The commentary provides linguistic and syntactical guidance suitable for upper-level students along with detailed consideration of Homer's compositional and narrative techniques, his literary artistry and the poem's central themes. An extensive introduction consi…
Feathers Flying: Avian Poetics in Hesiod, Pindar, and Callimachus
This paper treats a topos found in Greek poetry from the archaic to the Hellenistic period, involving a confrontation between antagonistic and contrasting species of birds. Tracing the continuities and distinctions among the uses of the conceit in Hesiod, Pindar, and Callimachus, I argue that on each occasion it serves poets as a means of articulating their literary personae and the ethical, stylistic, and generic choices shaping their compositio…
The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
Covering material as diverse as curse tablets, coins, tattoos, and legal decrees, Deborah Steiner explores the reception of writing in archaic and classical Greece. She moves beyond questions concerning ancient literacy and the origins of the Greek alphabet to examine representations of writing in the myths and imaginative literature of the period. Maintaining that the Greek alphabet was not seen purely as a means of transcribing and preserving t…
The Gorgons’ Lament: Auletics, Poetics, and Chorality in Pindar’s Pythian 12
This article offers a fresh reading of Pindar’s Pythian 12, an ode composed for a victorious aulete, which demonstrates its engagement in current musicological debates concerning innovations in instrumentation, relations between the musical and vocal elements in choreia , and the status of the pipes. In ways that intersect with these issues, Pindar anticipates a motif that resurfaces in later Attic drama and other texts concerning the origins of …
Feathers Flying: Avian Poetics in Hesiod, Pindar, and Callimachus
This paper treats a topos found in Greek poetry from the archaic to the Hellenistic period, involving a confrontation between antagonistic and contrasting species of birds. Tracing the continuities and distinctions among the uses of the conceit in Hesiod, Pindar, and Callimachus, I argue that on each occasion it serves poets as a means of articulating their literary personae and the ethical, stylistic, and generic choices shaping their compositio…
To praise, not to bury: Simonides fr. 531P
Unresolved questions surround Simonides fr. 531, which eulogizes the Greeks who fell at Thermopylae. To what genre do these lines belong, what were the original conditions of their performance, and does Diodorus Siculus, who preserves the fragment, transmit just an extract (as seems most likely) or the complete piece? Commentators even differ as to where Simonides’ lines began: for some the words τŵυ ༐υ Θερμοπὐλαιζ θαυóυτωυ form part of the origi…
The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
Nautical Matters: Hesiod's Nautilia and Ibycus Fragment 282 PMG
For Want of a Horse: Thucydides 6.30–2 and Reversals in the Athenian Civic Ideal
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Indecorous Dining, Indecorous Speech: Pindar's First Olympian and the Poetics of Consumption
Indecorous Dining, Indecorous Speech:Pindar's First Olympian and the Poetics of Consumption Deborah Steiner In the opening lines of Book 18 of the Odyssey, the beggar Iros intrudes on the suitors' feast. With a few choice phrases, the poet characterizes the new arrival: he is notorious for his and for his insatiable appetite for food and drink (2-3). Even before the beggar opens his mouth, Homer endows him with one further attribute, prefacing hi…
Fables and Frames: The Poetics and Politics of Animal Fables in Hesiod, Archilochus, and the Aesopica
This article explores four animal fables in the Greek sources: Hesiod’s ainos at Works and Days 202–12, two fables of Archilochus (frags. 172–81 W and 185–87 W), and the eagle and dung beetle story attributed to Aesop (Perry 3), and demonstrates continuities between the stories’ concerns and framing narratives. I argue that these fables serve as point-scoring devices deployed by performers within agonistic situations; they promote their teller’s …
Pindar's Bestiary: The "Coda" of Pythian 2
This article explores connections between the final triad of Pindar's Pythian 2 and what precedes it. Foregrounding the motif of reciprocity, Pindar chooses the animals featured here with an eye to their role in the iambic poetry of Archilochus, offering a revisionary treatment of the figure of the Archilochean wolf. Cet article explore les rapports entre la triade finale dans la seconde Ode pythique de Pindare et ce qui la précède : plaçant au p…
The Poetics of Sound: Callimachus’ Rereading of Pindar Fragment 70B S.-M
Dancing with the Stars: Choreia in the Third Stasimon of Euripides’ Helen
The Crown of Song: Metaphor in Pindar
For Love of a Statue: A Reading of Plato's Symposium 215A-B
In her conversation with Socrates, Diotima explains that ‘all men are pregnant both in body and soul, and when they come of age, our nature desires to give birth; it cannot give birth in anything ugly, only in what is beautiful’ (206c). The man who has been pregnant with wisdom, moderation and justice in his soul since early youth, now wishing ‘to beget and give birth’ (209b), goes in search of a beautiful boy in whose company he may produce his …
The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
To praise, not to bury: Simonides fr. 531P
Unresolved questions surround Simonides fr. 531, which eulogizes the Greeks who fell at Thermopylae. To what genre do these lines belong, what were the original conditions of their performance, and does Diodorus Siculus, who preserves the fragment, transmit just an extract (as seems most likely) or the complete piece? Commentators even differ as to where Simonides’ lines began: for some the words τŵυ ༐υ Θερμοπὐλαιζ θαυóυτωυ form part of the origi…
Indecorous Dining, Indecorous Speech: Pindar's First Olympian and the Poetics of Consumption
Indecorous Dining, Indecorous Speech:Pindar's First Olympian and the Poetics of Consumption Deborah Steiner In the opening lines of Book 18 of the Odyssey, the beggar Iros intrudes on the suitors' feast. With a few choice phrases, the poet characterizes the new arrival: he is notorious for his and for his insatiable appetite for food and drink (2-3). Even before the beggar opens his mouth, Homer endows him with one further attribute, prefacing hi…
Nautical Matters: Hesiod's Nautilia and Ibycus Fragment 282 PMG
For Want of a Horse: Thucydides 6.30–2 and Reversals in the Athenian Civic Ideal
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Feathers Flying: Avian Poetics in Hesiod, Pindar, and Callimachus
This paper treats a topos found in Greek poetry from the archaic to the Hellenistic period, involving a confrontation between antagonistic and contrasting species of birds. Tracing the continuities and distinctions among the uses of the conceit in Hesiod, Pindar, and Callimachus, I argue that on each occasion it serves poets as a means of articulating their literary personae and the ethical, stylistic, and generic choices shaping their compositio…
Homer: Odyssey Books XVII-XVIII: Books XVII–XVIII
Books XVII and XVIII of the Odyssey feature, among other episodes, the disguised Odysseus' penetration of his home after an absence of twenty years and his first encounter with his wife. The commentary provides linguistic and syntactical guidance suitable for upper-level students along with detailed consideration of Homer's compositional and narrative techniques, his literary artistry and the poem's central themes. An extensive introduction consi…
Dancing with the Stars: Choreia in the Third Stasimon of Euripides’ Helen
Pindar's Bestiary: The "Coda" of Pythian 2
This article explores connections between the final triad of Pindar's Pythian 2 and what precedes it. Foregrounding the motif of reciprocity, Pindar chooses the animals featured here with an eye to their role in the iambic poetry of Archilochus, offering a revisionary treatment of the figure of the Archilochean wolf. Cet article explore les rapports entre la triade finale dans la seconde Ode pythique de Pindare et ce qui la précède : plaçant au p…
Lines of Demarcation: Aesch. Ag . 485–6
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Fables and Frames: The Poetics and Politics of Animal Fables in Hesiod, Archilochus, and the Aesopica
This article explores four animal fables in the Greek sources: Hesiod’s ainos at Works and Days 202–12, two fables of Archilochus (frags. 172–81 W and 185–87 W), and the eagle and dung beetle story attributed to Aesop (Perry 3), and demonstrates continuities between the stories’ concerns and framing narratives. I argue that these fables serve as point-scoring devices deployed by performers within agonistic situations; they promote their teller’s …
The Priority of Pots: Pandora’s pithos re-viewed
Dans la lecture présentée ici de l’épisode du pithos qui conclut le récit d’Hésiode sur Pandora dans les Erga, je montre qu’une enquête, centrée sur le rôle de ce type particulier de réceptacle dans la société et l’économie de la Grèce archaïque, peut donner de nouveaux aperçus sur le choix narratif fait par l’auteur en même temps qu’elle éclaire les rapports entre la jarre et les événements précédents de l’épisode. Les moyens de production ainsi…
The Gorgons’ Lament: Auletics, Poetics, and Chorality in Pindar’s Pythian 12
This article offers a fresh reading of Pindar’s Pythian 12, an ode composed for a victorious aulete, which demonstrates its engagement in current musicological debates concerning innovations in instrumentation, relations between the musical and vocal elements in choreia , and the status of the pipes. In ways that intersect with these issues, Pindar anticipates a motif that resurfaces in later Attic drama and other texts concerning the origins of …
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture
This handbook explores key aspects of art and architecture in ancient Greece and Rome. Drawing on the perspectives of scholars of various generations, nationalities, and backgrounds, it discusses Greek and Roman ideas about art and architecture, as expressed in both texts and images, along with the production of art and architecture in the Greek and Roman world
Figures of the Poet in Greek Epic and Lyric
This discussion treats the various “figures” or personas adopted by poets in Greek epic and lyric poetry and explores some of the motives behind the varying self-constructions visible in the Archaic poetic repertoire. I focus on three such personas in particular: the poet as law-giver and statesman, as symposiast, and as the maker of a precious object dedicated to a divinity within a ritual frame. Also considered in each of these instances are th…
The Poetics of Sound: Callimachus’ Rereading of Pindar Fragment 70B S.-M
The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
Covering material as diverse as curse tablets, coins, tattoos, and legal decrees, Deborah Steiner explores the reception of writing in archaic and classical Greece. She moves beyond questions concerning ancient literacy and the origins of the Greek alphabet to examine representations of writing in the myths and imaginative literature of the period. Maintaining that the Greek alphabet was not seen purely as a means of transcribing and preserving t…
Making Monkeys: Archilochus frr. 185–187 W. in Performance
This chapter offers a close reading of Archilochus frr. 185–187 W. that situates the fragments within the performative, political, and visual context of the archaic symposium where they would have been delivered. After considering the relationship that the lines set up between the speaker and the target of his mockery, and which can be aligned with such relations of ‘mimetic rivalry’ in interactions between archaic iambographers and their victims…
State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōriā and Theōroi by Ian Rutherford
Reviewed by: State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōriā and Theōroi by Ian Rutherford Deborah Steiner Ian Rutherford. State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōriā and Theōroi. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xxvii, 534. $120.00. ISBN 978–1-107–03822–6. For the Pump Room at Bath, where the heroine of Northanger Abbey goes eagerly to meet Mr. Tilney, the object of her growi…
Dossier : Place aux objets !: Présentification et vie des artefacts en Grèce ancienne
Dossier : Et si, par-delà la dichotomie classique sujet-objet, les artefacts étaient appréhendés comme des agents voire des événements, et considérés dans leur rapport au temps et à l’espace ? Ce dossier propose l’étude des phénomènes, dispositifs et contextes par lesquels les objets adviennent en Grèce ancienne. Varia : Balles de fronde, noms barbares : la puissance des mots. Imaginaires du passé : la guerre lélantine, la figure de Solon. Le rôl…
Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture
Chorus Lines: Catalogues and Choruses in Archaic and Early Classical Hexameter Poetry and Choral Lyric
My discussion explores the coincidence between catalogues and choruses in the early poetic repertoire, observing how choral ensembles regularly perform lists in both hexameter and lyric sources. Drawing on representations of choruses in archaic and early classical texts and vase imagery, I suggest that this association may in large part depend on the morphology common to both phenomena; continuities exist in the makeup of the group, the interacti…
Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought
Art (26 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (24 works) · Literature (22 works) · Poetry (17 works) · History (15 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (13 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Visual arts (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Classics (9 works)