5. Metre and Rhythm in Euripides' Medea

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we apply some of the lessons we have learned to Euripides’ Medea. In particular, we think about the opening scene of the play in which we have different rhythms for the Nurse’s opening speech and Medea’s opening song, the importance of the use of dactylo-epitrite later in the play, and the use of dochmiacs at the point where Medea has left the stage to kill her own children.

Course

In this course, Dr Armand D’Angour (University of Oxford) explores the use of music in ancient tragedy, thinking in particular about the kinds of musical instruments that were used, the metre, rhythm, and melodies of tragic poetry. The course ends by looking in more detail at Euripides’ Medea, showing how and understanding of metre can enhance our reading of the play.

Lecturer

Armand D’Angour is a Professor of Classics at the University of Oxford, having pursued careers as a cellist and businessman before becoming a Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College in 2000. He has published articles and chapters on the music, literature, and culture of ancient Greece and Rome, and regularly presents his research in the UK and abroad. He was commissioned to write Odes in ancient Greek for both the Athens Olympics in 2004 and the London Olympics in 2012. In 2013-2015 he won a British Academy Fellowship to conduct research into reconstructing the sounds of ancient Greek music, which led to a project that won him a Vice-Chancellor's Prize for Public Engagement with Research at Oxford and a widely-viewed video of a concert at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford 'Rediscovering Ancient Greek Music (2017)'.

Professor D'Angour's recent books include Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece (2018, co-edited with Tom Phillips), and an investigative biography of the philosopher Socrates, concentrating on his early life and links with the renowned woman intellectual Aspasia of Miletus (Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher, 2019).

How to Innovate: an Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking was published by Princeton in 2021; he is currently working on a book for the same series entitled How to talk about Love: an Ancient Guide to Eros, and at the same time he is investigating (for a future book) how the singing of Homer's epics can throw light on the vexed Homeric Question.