Greek Dialogues - A new verse-inscription from Teos: Anacreon on stone?

Date and Time: Thursday 4th November, 2025 at 17:00h GMT

Venue: Room G.21, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA

A new verse-inscription from Teos: Anacreon on stone?

Professor Andrej Petrovic (University of Virginia)

Introduced by Professor Renaud Gagné

For this Greek Dialogues seminar, we are delighted to welcome Professor Andrej Petrovic, whose work continues to illuminate the intersections of epigraphy, poetics, and religion in archaic and classical Greece. In this talk, Professor Petrovic turns to a remarkable new find from Teos—a verse-inscription that promises to reshape our understanding of poetic self-presentation and the porous boundaries between inscription, performance, and song culture in the archaic world.

The talk will present an intriguing new verse-inscription from late Archaic Teos composed in a combination of hexameters and elegiacs, followed by a protective clause in prose. The new find is the longest hitherto preserved verse-inscription before the 4th c. BC. Given its unique character and form, the poem invites questions about its socio-cultural context, authorship and place in Greek literary history.