Desert Fragments

The Sotadean meter, a catalectic Ionic tetrameter, gets associated with the figure of the kinaidos throughout antiquity, yet the surviving Greek fragments in this meter are rather diverse in type and tone. This chapter presents the development of this verse beginning from its associations with two Hellenistic poets, Cleomachus (said to have adopted his poetic form from a kinaidos with whom he was in love) and Sotades the verse’s namesake (whose invective verse apparently cost him his life). It then explores how in a wide range of texts—Alexandrian poetry, verses from Stobaeus’ Anthology, theatrical parodies, a novel, and two dedicatory inscriptions from Egypt and the Nubian border—Sotadeans, although expressing several tones such as invective, didactic, quasi-religious, and solemn, in all cases share some sense of ludic wordplay or of hidden knowledge.