The compositeness of his dialect may have helped to maintain the uncertainty of his origins, but the many references to Lydian and Asian culture in Alcman's poetry must have played a considerable role in the tradition of Alcman's Lydian origin. Thus Alcman claims he learned his skills from the "strident partridges" (caccabides),Alcman fr. 39 in Athenaeus 9, 389f. a bird native to Asia Minor and not naturally found in Greece. The ancient scholars seem to refer to one particular song, in which the chorus says:fr. 16, transl. Campbell (quoted in P.Oxy. 2389 fr. 9). "He was no rustic man, nor clumsy (not even in the view of unskilled men?) nor Thessalian by race nor an Erysichaean shepherd: he was from lofty Sardis." Yet, given that there was a discussion, it cannot have been certain who was the third person of this fragment.
The compositeness of his dialect may have helped to maintain the uncertainty of his origins, but the many references to Lydian and Asian culture in Alcman's poetry must have played a considerable role in the tradition of Alcman's Lydian origin. Thus Alcman claims he learned his skills from the "strident partridges" (caccabides),Alcman fr. 39 in Athenaeus 9, 389f. a bird native to Asia Minor and not naturally found in Greece. The ancient scholars seem to refer to one particular song, in which the chorus says:fr. 16, transl. Campbell (quoted in P.Oxy. 2389 fr. 9). "He was no rustic man, nor clumsy (not even in the view of unskilled men?) nor Thessalian by race nor an Erysichaean shepherd: he was from lofty Sardis." Yet, given that there was a discussion, it cannot have been certain who was the third person of this fragment.