Some variations on the theme of a recomposed performer in ancient Greek prose and poetry

Abstract

This essay is inspired by a most admirable comment made in an article by Johanna Hanink (2015) about nostalgic attempts, in the early fourth century BCE, at recovering the charisma associated with the former glory days, as it were, of the Athenian Empire as it once had flourished, during most of the fifth century. At one point in her article, in referring to the Menexenus of Plato, she comments on a glaring anachronism in the text, which she explains as a fanciful way of imagining Socrates as speaking from the dead. Others before Hanink, duly acknowledged by her—and they happen to include Nicole Loraux (2006) and Zoe Petre (2009), two sorely-missed friends of mine who are no longer living—have offered comparable explanations, but Hanink is unique, I think, in the way she folds into her analysis the idea of reperformance. In my essay here, I hope to build on her analysis by adding the idea of a recomposed performer, complementing the more familiar idea of a reperformed composer.