ODE 15 = DITHYRAMB

Performance

The first ode in the book of Dithyrambs had a double title which is partly preserved in the top margin of pap. A, above the first line: [Αν]τηνοριδαι [η Ελενη]ς απαιτησις, ‘Antenor's Sons, or the demanding of Helen’. This title was also written on a sillybos, a parchment tag attached to pap. O, but then washed out and replaced by Βακχυλιδου Διθυραμβοι, which confirms that this ode was, in fact, the first in Bakchylides' book of Dithyrambs. The sons of Antenor and Theano must have had a rôle to play in the part which is now lost. There seem to have been fifty of them: Schol. T on Iliad 24.496 says that whereas Hekabe's nineteen sons are credible, the fifty sons attributed to Theano by B. are not. This suggests that the fifty singers who formed the chorus that performed this dithyramb somehow represented the fifty ‘Sons of Antenor’; dithyrambic choirs consisted of fifty singers, see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic festivals 75 n.4; Dithyramb 32.

Athens seems the most likely performance context in view of Menelaos' speech which clearly and repeatedly echoes Solon and ends with a warning against Hybris that destroyed the Giants (59–63). Ever since the reorganization of the Panathenaic festival in 566/5 bce, the battle between the Olympian gods and the Giants had been the dominant theme of this festival.