Did any other classical Greek poets write alcaic stanzas except for Alcaeus himself, or are his stanzas all we have?
Interesting question. Apparently Alcaeus’ fragments are the sole representatives of Alcaic stanzas/strophes in Greek. M.L. West, Greek Metre, p. 149, mentions that while Hellenistic poets who experimented with archaic verse forms, Alcaic and Sapphic strophes are not attested in this period. West does not mention Alcaic strophes in later periods, either. But of course Horace made extensive use of Alcaic strophes in Latin. And it’s possible that other Greek Alcaics have vanished without a trace.
It’s quite likely that Sappho composed so-called Alcaic stanzas, just as Alcaeus composed so-called Sapphic ones, but all we have of these Lesbian poets is fragments. In Latin, as you may know, we have several poems by Horace which imitate the Alcaic stanza’s metrical form, and Horace will have known the Greek originals.
(Crossed with Hylander)
It says in the introduction to the Loeb edition of Theocritus that his idyll 18 and 19 (give or take 2) are written in the Aeolic dialect. So you might want to look into that.
Most of Theocritus’ Idylls are in dactylic hexameter, the traditional meter of epic, though the dialect is fake Doric. The only exceptions are ##28-30, fake Aeolic. The Alcaic stanza is a very different thing, and had to wait till Horace revived it in Latin, see Hylander’s and my posts above.
Well, how do we know it is fake doric? there are only 3 writers with large corpora who wrote in the doric of the 6th and 5th centuries: pindar and bacchylides. then in the 3rd century we have three writers who wrote in doric or tried to write in it: theocritus, moschus and bion. as for these latter 3, how do we know they weren’t writing in a doric dialect that was still in existence and had evolved slightly from the time of pindar? i’m not saying you’re wrong, i’m just curious as to how we know this.
Perhaps you meant to include Simonides in your first trio.
Anyhow, thanks to inscriptions, and authors such as Archimedes, there’s ample evidence of what real contemporary Doric dialects were like, and it’s clear that the language of the Theocritean poems is a literary artifact—as is the language of Pindar etc., for that matter.
But this is only marginally relevant to the so-called Alcaic stanza, which is a specific metrical structure in archaic Lesbian poetry, taken up by Horace in Latin some six centuries later—the ultimate in literary hommage.
Cool, thanks for clearing that up for me. I just assumed that Theocritus was writing in his native doric language. (I haven’t actually read the poems, I’m not up to that stage yet). Fortunately, I’m no longer under that illusion thanks to your helpful insight.