The function of direct speech in Bacchilydes’ poetry. The case of Ode 5 and Ode 18

This paper is aimed at analysing Bacchylides’ narrative choices and the role played by and the effects of direct speech in two poems of his, namely ode 5 and ode 18. These odes are among the best conserved poems in the Bacchylidean corpus, and all their features have been deeply investigated. Despite wide differences in terms of genre, content and structure, the use of direct speech makes them comparable. The use of direct speech in these odes allows the poet to achieve narrative effects that would be unthinkable by resorting only to an extradiegetic narrator and to pure narrative. These effects rely on a ‘narrative’ similar to the one used by drama’s authors, by which the primary narrator and the primary narratees, that is the poet and the spectators, know more than the characters who are speaking. Actually, the audience knows the fabula of the whole narrated myth and the poet skilfully exploits this situation to create an effect of dramatic irony. The investigation of narrative structures can therefore help to understand in depth the aims of Bacchylides’ poetry and how he achieves them, thereby highlighting his close relation with the authors of fifth-century Attic tragedy.