The Callimachus In Alcman's Partheneia

Dale (2011, p. 30-31) remarks that the deities that the speaker mentions (Apollo, Eros and Aphrodite) often appear in Alcman’s partheneia. It is also plausible that here we had a schema alcmanicum. It is possible that there was a similar performative context to that of Alcman’s partheneia. This fragment -probably- belonged to a paroinion, and thus to a sympotic song that appeared after the performance of a maiden chorus.
One of the literary sources of Callimachus in epigram 5 must be Alcman’s 26 PMGF. Although the halcyon was already a symbol of unmarried girls in the Iliad, in the Hellenistic times the halcyon becomes a symbol of marital devotion and a paradigm of desirable female behavior. We can assume, at least, that the image of

The description of the beauty of many Greek heroes in this epic, and especially Jason’s, takes place by reference to some features such as the color red, astral imagery, and the arousal of the desire of unmarried girls. One of his models could have been Alcman. Calame (1983b, p. 572) enlists lines 744-754 of the third book, where Medea’s anxiety is described, to the parallels of Alcman’s 89 PMGF, although he notes that this was a traditional

Modern scholars often put great emphasis on the figure of Helen, which links Theocritus with Alcman’s poetry and with the Ptolemaic court. Helen’s figure, which is so prominent in this Idyll, is compared by contemporary scholars with that of Hagesichora, the chorus leader in 1 PMGF. Helen in Idyll 18 is compared to a horse (line 30), she is distinguished among a chorus, described as a parthenaic chorus consisting of twelve maidens of the same age. The effect she has on others is to provoke ἵμερον (line 37). Alcman’s Hagesichora has similar traits. We get a similar description for Astymeloisa, another chorus leader of Alcman’s partheneia (3.61-75, 80-81