MUSES AND CICADAS: THE PUZZLE OF THE LILIED-VOICE FROM HOMER TO PLATO

The adjective (Greek text), first attested in the Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony, is transparently built on the noun (Greek text) “lily” but occurs repeatedly in relation to dew and also voices, specifically those of the Muses and of the cicada. The relationship between these three foci of meaning remains unclear. It is argued that the range of associations of (Greek text) forms a significant bundle of ideas in the linguistic heritage of Greek poetics and that the collocation (Greek text) encapsulates the entangled relationship between poetic renown, human selfhood, and the natural environment, envisaging this song as productive in a quasi-biological sense.