Celebrating poetic victory: representations of epinikia in Classical Athens

Abstract

Although we are fairly well informed about the general organization and important events of the dramatic competitions in Athens, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge on many points of detail. In no place is this more true than with regard to the epinikian celebration honouring members of the victorious performance, about which scarcely any unambiguous testimony has come down to us. This study aims to provide new insights into the problem by demonstrating a connection between the iconography preserved in several sculpted reliefs of the Roman period commonly referred to as Dionysos' visit to Ikarios and the representation of a celebration for poetic victory in Plato's Symposium. Central to the combined testimony of these sources is the ideal of Dionysos' epiphany to the poet in order to acknowledge and honour his victory in person. So identified as an element of victory celebration, related articulations of this imagined moment can then be detected in several additional representations on vases and in Aristophanic comedy, in both of which other independent elements likewise suggest the activation of an epinikian syntax. Practical matters about the celebration still elude us; what we gain, however, is a clearer sense of the religious ideals that were conveyed through these celebrations in connection with the worship of Dionysos, which formed a nucleus for the dramatic festivals.1 Above all, doubt exists over the relationship between the chorus of Acharnian men and this earlier chorus. Dover (1987) 303 suggests that they speak as the generic chorus of comedy. 2 Wilson (2000) 102-3. 3 Dover (1965) dates the dialogue to the period 384-379.

A DITHYRAMB FOR AUGUSTUS: HORACE,ODES4.2

“…As it happens, one of the earliest dithyrambic records is an inscribed epigram recording an ex voto dedication by a victorious poet (though we cannot be certain that the vow was a component of the winning dithyramb); 112 and the discharge of votive obligations might well be envisaged at the Dionysiac epinikia celebrations for victory-dithyrambs. 113 …”