The Transmission of the Theognidean Tradition as a Cultural Memory Practice

This paper seeks to determine how the oral tradition associated with the name of Theognis, retained in a collection known as the Corpus Theognideum , has been stabilized through its text. As a starting point, following Luigi Enrico Rossi’s observations, I assume that the survival of a given poetic work in antiquity was strictly dependent on the patronage and protection of a selected institution or a social group that, for whatever reason, was particularly keen on its preservation. Applying the perspective of the sociology of poetry’s reception and transmission, I attempt to show that the protection and maintenance of the Theognidean tradition in the classical period may thus be understood as a cultural memory practice, closely related to an elitist and oligarchic identity and the socio-political situation in the Athens of that time.