SOURCE: Kurke, Leslie. “Crisis and Decorum in Sixth-Century Lesbos: Reading Alkaios Otherwise.” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica n.s. 47, no. 2 (1994): 67-92.

In the following essay, Kurke contends that certain “critical ruptures of decorum” found in Alcaeus's poetry may be read as indications of crisis in the aristocracy.

1. Decorum and Its Discontents1

It is a truism that history is written by the winners, but in the case of the late-seventh/early-sixth-century Lesbian poet Alkaios inveighing against his enemy Pittakos, we have an extraordinary instance of history written by the “losers”. For Pittakos, the “winner”, has become a shadowy figure, one of the Seven Sages, to whom we can attribute little more than an aphorism, while Alkaios has left us a substantial number of poetic fragments. Yet Alkaios represents in its purest form the aristocratic power monopoly which was fast disappearing in Mytilene and throughout the archaic Greek world. The...