PhD Student Seminar on Ancient Greek and Byzantine History: Abstract
Date: 28th March, 2019
Venue: Auxiliary Room, Occidental History Department, University of Tokyo.
Comment: Mirko CANEVARO (Edinburgh), Noboru SATO (Kobe)First Speaker: Yumi UCHIKAWA (Tokyo),
Title: Dikai phonou (homicide suits) in Ancient Athens
Traditionally, scholars thought that (1)homicide was usually prosecuted only by dike phonou (private suit forhomicide); (2)there was no graphe phonou (public suit for homicide); (3)dike and/or graphe traumatos ek pronoias
were somehow related to homicide trials but different from dike phonou; (4)in some special occasions, apagoge,endeixis were also used for prosecuting homicides in ancient Athens.
If we reexamine, however, historical sources such as Dem.23.22, 80; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 57.2-4, Dem.47.58-73 andothers, we could obtain considerably different picture of the Athenian homicide procedures.
That is; (1)there was no single dike phonou as a legal procedure but were many dikai phonou for various kinds ofhomicide such as dike phonou ek pronoias, dike phonou me ek pronoias, dike phonou bouleuseos etc., and dike phonou
was an abbreviated form for each of these legal procedures; (2)dike and/or graphe traumatos ek pronoias, dikepurkaias and dike pharmakon were subcategories of dikai phonou, therefore, dikai phonou included both dike (privatesuit) and graphe (public suit) and thus dikai should mean ‘lawsuits’ here; (3)for at least one of dikai phonou (dikephonou for unknown killer) might be prosecuted by non-relatives and procedural details of normal dikai and dikephonou are completely different, we should understand dike phonou either as ‘private suit for homicide’ which wasdifferent from usual dikai (private suits), or as ‘lawsuit for homicide’ which was totally unique in Athenian legal
procedure system;(4) apagoge and endeixis used for prosecuting homicides might be included in dikai phonou aswell.
In sum, Athenians understood various kinds of legal procedure for homicide as dikai phonou which included bothdike and graphe. And practically, they were not so much interested in distinguishing between dike and graphestrictly as categorizing which offences were phonoi in Athenian homicide law.

Second Speaker: Daiki SANO (Tokyo),
Title: Delivery of basilikoi logoi in the reign of Andronikos II (1282–1328)
Enkomion, or speech in praise of a ruler, took shape about the fifth century B. C. and was later codified
by Menander Rhetor. As his treatise circulated in Greek world as well as Latin world, enkomia were constantly
produced also in the late Byzantine period. In particular, we have twelve texts of imperial panegyrics from thereign of Andronikos II Palaiologos (1282-1328), who protected and supported cultural activities of intellectuals.
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Menander classified enkomia into two subcategories. The basilikos logos honours the emperor generally for hisorigin, birth, deeds etc., portraying him as a exemplar of various virtues, while the prosphonetikos logos does notfollow this regulation, focusing on certain aspects or policies of him. This classification can be applied to theenkomia under Andronikos II. Then, on what motivations or backgrounds the panegyrists who wished to express
their admiration to him (or were ordered to do so) chose either these two types?
In this presentation, we will analyze the twelve texts of enkomia, examining their classification, date, andcontext. The followings will be argued: the orators of that time preferred basilikoi logoi when they delivered
panegyrics in front of the emperor for the first time, though they had also an option to adopt prosphonetikoi logoi;
yet, they never choose such ‘mediocre’ format of the former from the second time.

Third Speaker: Shinʼichi KUBO (Tokyo),Title: How to Justify Hellenic Astronomy: Attempts by 14th-Century Byzantine Astronomers to Reconcile
Hellenic Learning with Christianity
Greek-speaking Byzantine Christians regarded Greek classics as pagan literature which was of ‘Hellenes’ anddifferent from ‘ours’. Nevertheless, elite intellectuals still needed Hellenic education, and some scholars wereso attracted to and proud of Hellenic learnings that they had to find pretexts to avoid criticism that theirstudy was contradictory to Christianity. Taking as an example astronomy which was the most flourishingsubject in the intellectual milieu of the 14th century Byzantium, this paper will try to illustrate how learned
literati who were participants in the reception and transmission of the classical literature justified the nonChristian erudition, exhibiting in detail their elaborate manipulations of texts to exonerate the greatest
astronomer Claudius Ptolemy from the charge of astrology, who was distinguished also in this questionable
field for his work Tetrabiblos. Citing names at the opportune moment and borrowing words to theadvantageous extent, they made so laborious efforts to accomplish this difficult enterprise that they made up
a striking harmony between Hellenic astronomy and Christianity on the surface of their writings.

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