7 Simonides’ Personal Elegies David Sider (New York University) This paper investigates the relationship between early elegy and epigram at a time when epigram was firmly linked by its etymology to being written on stone (or another hard surface) and elegy was strictly oral and recited from memory, if not ad libitum. Although, as we shall see, this distinction was blurred in the Greeks’ own terms for these compositions, it was real enough so that, for the most part (the part we are least interested in here), elegy and epigram dealt with different subjects. Despite this dichotomy, for Simonides, who com- posed in both forms (as well as in lyric metres), it proved easy to bridge—and for us occasionally to blur—this gap by incorporating epigrammatic passages within his longer recitations. Unfortunately, however, because of the fragmentary nature of our texts, this has led to later editorial problems in classification. First, the one Greek word elegeion applied to lines, stanzas, and poems in both genres, especially when they were composed in elegiac couplets. Second, a short ‘epigrammatic’ passage within a longer elegy could be excerpted by Meleager and other anthologists to be published, if not also specif- ically identified, as epigrams. 1 An investigation into some Simonidean passages relating (an intentionally vague word at this early point in the discussion) to two rival poets, Timocreon and Lasus, suggests that this was a regular element in Simonidean elegies. Simonides further, I argue, told stories about himself into which he incorporated epigrammatic 1 On these and related questions, see Meyer (2005), whose overall goal is to set the Hellenistic epigram against its background in both inscribed epigram and oral elegy. See in particular 2–9 and (with attention paid to Simonides) 96–101. Iambus and Elegy. Laura Swift and Chris Carey. © Oxford University Press 2016. Published in 2016 by Oxford University Press. Laura Swift & Chris Carey (eds), Elegy & Iambus: New Approaches. Oxford 2016 Bibliography, below, p. 16.