The motif of song thus expresses a desire for continuity with earlier Greek culture and an ironic awareness of the different media in which poetry can be appreciated. Earlier Greek poetry was regularly composed and experienced as song. We know something about the music to which this poetry was set, and even possess a few fragments of musical scores. Epic was evidently sung or chanted by a single performer who accompanied himself on a harp. Homer represents a number of epic performances, and the language in which he speaks of his own poetry is the language of song.
Hellenistic poetry treats the idea of song as a convention.
Some actually insists on its specifically literate character. The Aeneid Vergil's Contemporaries Many of Vergil's contemporaries also use this motif, as do many later epic poets. After Vergil Go to the directory page of the text of Vergil's works, or to his pagina domestica .