Map 8 Greece and the Aegean.
“For a long time Demeter sat upon the chair, grieving in silence, nor did she engage with anyone
either with words or actions. Instead she sat, without smiling, without tasting food or drink, wearing
herself out with longing for her richly girdled daughter, until, that is, keen-witted Iambe, with
mockery and much jesting diverted the mind of the august goddess, causing her to smile and laugh
and raising her spirits.” (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 198–204)The invective that is characteristic of iambic poetry appears to have a ritual origin, and the Greeks
considered the word “iambic” to derive from the name of a mythical character Iambe, a woman who
relieved the sorrow of the goddess Demeter by telling indecent jokes when Demeter was searching for
her abducted daughter. Other forms of Archaic poetry also have ritual origins, particularly those that
involve singing, either by a chorus or by an individual performer, at weddings or at communal festivals.
Again, our appreciation and understanding of this poetry is limited by the fact that it survives only in
fragments, but we are fortunate to possess, along with a number of smaller fragments, a fairly lengthy
portion of a song composed by the Spartan poet Alcman, born in the seventh century BC. This poem,
composed in the local Doric dialect, was written for performance by a chorus of 10 Spartan girls who
sang and danced to instrumental accompaniment at a festival in honor of one of the deities worshipped at
Sparta. The ritual with which the poem is connected appears to have been one of a number of festivals of