'Sex and the city' en andere metaforen: de stad als metafoor in de archaïsche Griekse lyriek

Although the archaic polis is much discussed from a historical point of view, research on its literary presentation is largely lacking. Attempting to fill this lacuna I demonstrate that in contrast to its exclusively literal presentation in the Homeric epics the polis is also presented as a metaphor for men in archaic Greek lyric. By discussing polis metaphors in poems by Archilochus (fragment 23) and Theognis (949-54 and 233-6) I argue that martial diction is taken over from the Iliad, but charged with a metaphoric sense and used as a ‘frame’ in a martial-political and an erotic context. Moreover, particular attention is being paid to the use of a specific metaphor in archaic lyric in comparison to other Greek and Latin poetry (for example, the war as love metaphor in archaic Greek lyric paving the way for the Latin, elegiac militia amoris), and to the reasons why these metaphors are used in these poems (for instance, as a means of persuasion). Applying insights gained from cognitive metaphor studies (Lakoff and his colleagues), I eventually highlight certain problems in the study of metaphors in general, and I argue that more research needs to be done on the way metaphors work within as well as across cultures.