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Abstract. Ring-composition dominates the structure of Ode 5 in ways which are subtle, complex, and crucial to the poem's interpretation. At all levels of the poem, ring-structure provides thematic links and contrasts as well as serving the formal articulation of the ode. The myth apparently eschews forms of ring-composition common in lyric narrative, but in fact manipulates the conventions even as it departs from them.
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The impulse for this paper arose first from surprise that the secondary literature on Bacchylides' fifth Ode seems, as far as I can see, to ignore much that is obvious about the way the ode is constructed, and secondly from a conviction that study of the form and structure of archaic poetry, despite the current tendency to stigmatize such study as 'formalist' (i.e., deeply unfashionable) and 'ahistorical', is still worth undertaking. Understanding of form will always be an indispensable part of the study of literature, and the form of epinician is a tangible aspect of the poem as a culturally embedded artefact. In studying the form of occasional poetry such as epinician one can legitimately claim to be investigating the poet's presentation of his material in relation to the expectations of his original audience, a fundamental aspect of the genre as the product of a particular society at a particular period.2
My aim here, however, is not to undertake a complete defence of the importance of literary form, but a more modest one, namely to concentrate on Bacchylides' use of ring-composition in his fifth Ode, and to show first that the technique dominates the form and structure of the poem to an extent greater than hitherto realized,'' and secondly that Bacchylides' use of the technique in this poem gives the lie to the view that ring-composition is necessarily a simple or naive feature of the archaic poet's craft.4 But all this would be arid if it did not aid our understanding of the poem as a whole, and so I aJso suggest ways in which the form of the poem contributes to an appreciation of its meaning for an audience which knew how to be guided by the use of ring-composition.
The overall structure of the ode is straightforward enough; a beginning (proem...