My dissertation, Explaining The Poets: Greek Literary Exegesis from The Sixth to the Fourth Centuries BCE, studies how the Classical audience interpreted Archaic poetry.Scholars usually regard literary criticism as a Hellenistic or Aristotelian product. Earlier exegesis, as a result, has received little and often misguided attention. By contrast, my project demonstrates that poetry was not merely utilized as a repository of moral and stylistic norms; rather, it emerged as an autonomous object of study. Explaining The Poets is organized around two broad and historically productive modes of approaching literary texts: problems-and-solutions inquiries, ζητήματα, (chapters 1–3) and the practice of interpreting texts allegorically, “allegoresis” (chapters 4–6). Zetematic texts first appear in the fourth century BCE, yet the origins of this mode of inquiry are much older. Literary challenges framed as problems and solutions were widespread, particularly in the archaic symposium, and their productive influences can be detected in such diverse works as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod (chapter 2) and Against Homer’s Poetry by Zoilus of Amphipolis (chapter 3). The practice of interpreting texts allegorically is as old as the sixth century BCE. After a methodological introduction (chapter 4), in chapter 5 I focus on two forerunners of allegoresis: Theagenes of Rhegium and Pherekydes of Syrus. Finally, the bulk of chapter 6 deals with the oldest allegorical treatise preserved to a significant extent: the Derveni papyrus. In contrast to previous scholarship, I claim that there is strong continuity between the exegetical attempts of literalist and allegorist readers. Ancient allegorists, in fact, viewed their efforts as readings from within the text and employed the same exegetical techniques that will later be sanctioned by literalist critics such as Aristotle. Overall, my work provides new insights on well-studied texts (the Contest and the Derveni Papyrus) and brings attention to neglected but influential grammarians such as Theagenes and Zoilus. By shifting the focus from the Hellenistic and later periods to the Classical Period, my dissertation re-imagines the “invention” of criticism in Greece and contributes to the recent scholarly interest in hermeneutics and exegetical texts.