‘Glancing Seductively through Windows’

The Look of Praxilla fr. 8 (PMG 754)

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20056047
AutoresVanessa Cazzato (autor correspondente)
Ano2016
Páginas185-203
Data de publicação2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoThe Look of Lyric : Greek Song and the Visual (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004314849_008
OpenAlexW2501148351
ISBN9789004314849
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas10

This chapter advances a new interpretation of Praxilla fr. 8 (PMG 754) contradicting the traditional view that it is a racy sympotic song. This intriguing address to a woman gazing seductively through a window is preserved by Hephaestion. The beginning of the fragment is also commonly thought to recur on an inscribed drinking cup, so much so that the text of the manuscripts is sometimes emended to align with the inscription and the poem is interpreted as a racy skolion to fit the symposiastic context in which the vase shows the line being sung. The present paper questions the notion that Hephaestion’s couplet is related to the inscription and the related assumption that Praxilla’s poem was composed in the first instance for sympotic performance—with all its implications for the understanding the fragment as a lascivious utterance and of Praxilla as a hetaira. Instead, it is argued, the fragment is more likely to be the beginning of a wedding song

Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Materials Science