Although recent scholarship has focused on the city-state as the context for the production of Greek poetry, for poets and performers travel was more the norm than the exception. This book traces this central aspect of ancient culture from its roots in the near Eastern societies which preceded the Greeks, through the way in which early semi-mythical figures such as Orpheus were imagined, the poets who travelled to the brilliant courts of archaic tyrants, and on into the fluid mobility of imperial and late antique culture. The emphasis is both on why poets travelled, and on how local communities used the skills of these outsiders for their own purposes. Wandering poets are also set within the wider context of ancient networks of exchange, patronage and affiliation between communities and are seen as one particularly powerful manifestation of a feature of ancient life which is too often overlooked.

• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1. Introduction Richard Hunter and Ian Rutherford
• 2. Hittite and Greek perspectives on travelling poets, texts and festivals Mary Bachvarova
• 3. Thamyris the Thracian: the archetypal wandering poet? Peter Wilson
• 4. Read on arrival Richard P. Martin
• 5. Wandering poets, archaic style Ewen Bowie
• 6. Defining local communities in Greek lyric poetry Giovan Battista D'Alessio
• 7. Wandering poetry, 'travelling' music: Timotheus' Muse and some case-studies of shifting cultural identities Lucia Prauscello
• 8. Epigrammatic contest, poeti vaganti and local history Andrej Petrovic
• 9. World travellers: the associations of Artists of Dionysus Sophia Aneziri
• 10. Aristodama and the Aetolians: an itinerant poetess and her agenda Ian Rutherford
• 11. Travelling memories in the Hellenistic world Angelos Chaniotis
• Bibliography
• Index.