Bodies and Social Class in Archaic Greek Invective (McDiarmid Lecture)

The seventh and sixth centuries saw the rise of a new form of poetry, namely “iambic” invective.  I argue that within this emerging genre, we can see two distinct strains: “elitist” and “middling” invectives, which demonstrate different strategies of negotiation with regard to social class.  In particular, elitist invective argues that social status is inborn, and therefore independent of changes to the physical body.  Middling invective, demonstrated most clearly by Archilochus and Hipponax, suggests that changes to the physical body bothrepresent and bring about changes in social class.

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