Surveying the various analyses of time in Greek literature, a first observation immediately offers itself: most narrative texts display an order that is chronological. This phenomenon is hardly surprising, since the very definition of a narrative is to some extent built on the notion that time progresses. Most narrators will proceed in an order that is essentially chronological, with the result that their texts are recognizable as a narrative. Even the narratives of Pindar, which have generally

more »

... been treated as anachronical because they seemed to be structured according to the principle of ring-composition, upon closer examination appear to be mostly chronological too. What seemed to be temporal ringcomposition often turns out either to be thematic ring-composition, or the narrator makes use of the device of 'initial summary with subsequent elaboration': he first gives the gist of the story in summary form and then narrates it in more detail in essentially chronological order. A text that is not strictly chronological is Hesiod's Theogony: while the general sequence of the genealogies is chronological, within the single genealogy the narrator regularly pushes ahead and narrates the birth and experiences of characters who belong to later generations of the same family branch. The demands of genealogy here prevail over strict chronology. For genuinely anachronical narratives we must turn to those of secondary narrators (in epic or drama). Thus, while some of the narratives embedded in drama are chronological (especially prologue narratives and messenger-speeches, but also, for example, Atossa's report of her dream in Aeschylus' Persians), choral narratives and narratives recounted in dialogue form often display very different orders. A notorious example of temporal complexity is the parodos of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. A recurrent type of anachronical order is first to move backwards in time and then forward again (so-called 'epic