Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry: Myth, History, and Identity in the Fifth Century BC

This collection of essays by notable scholars from a variety of disciplines deals with different aspects of the history and culture of the Greek island of Aegina in the fifth century BC. The island is well known as the home of magnificent architecture and sculpture; as the patron of impressive lyric poetry composed by Pindar and his contemporaries; and, from the pages of Herodotus, as a significant trading power, and military threat to her great neighbour Athens. The book brings together experts on choral lyric poetry, myth, art-history, and historiography, with the aim of offering a broad view of the island's significance in some of the major trends in fifth-century Greek history and culture, and situating the island's patronage of some of the greatest Classical poets within broader cultural and historical frames.