bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Prayer
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

A sermon on the futility of petitionary prayer. § § 1- 2 set out an allegory of ordinary (materialistic) prayer, backed up by a series of celebrated instances from Herodotus and Homer. § 3 explains how such appeals imply a fundamentally mistaken view of the divinity to which they are addressed, and § § 4-7a how, when the totality of factors conditioning human fortunes is surveyed, no role at all can be found for petitionary prayer. § 7b, returning to the territory of § 3, declares that if material goods are to be pursued at all, it should be through the efforts of the individual alone. However (§ 8, mirroring § § r - 2 ), the only truly valuable pursuit is the cultivation of Virtue (philosophy); those who indulge in this (the few true).
Diseases of Mind and Body
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

Another ‘psychological’ lecture. Though the accent is now more on moral psychology than on epistemology, points of contact with both the previous and succeeding lectures can easily be found: with the picture of the disordered soul offered here, compare Or. 6. 4-5 on the potential confusion held in check by ; and with the vision of escape from the body in § 5, compare Orr. 9. 6, 10. 10,
Learning and Recollection
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

Introduction

Another ‘psychological’ lecture, on a central point of Platonic epistemology, thematically linked both with Orr. 8-9 and with Or. II (compare especially IO. 9 with 8. 8, 9. 6, and II. 10). Maximus begins and ends his exposition with accounts of the soul’s flight, both in philosophical contemplation and after release from the body at death (§ § 1-3 and 9). In between, in no very conscientious order, he explains the process of recollection, and its implications for our understanding of the soul’s nature.
Friendship and Flattery
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

35. §§ 1 -2 introduce the issue of Friends and Flatterers by summarizing and then rewriting Prodicus’ famous myth of Heracles; §§ 3-4 formulate the question of how to distinguish between them, and dispose of some unsatisfactorily simple attempts to answer it; §§ 5-6 provide the true answer, on the level of personal relationships, and §§ 7-8 show how the same distinction can be drawn in the wider worlds of politics and the arts and sciences.
The Active and Contemplative Lives
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

A pair of lectures devoted to a further issue in practical ethics and politics which raises questions both of individual choice and of civic organization. Or. 15. 1-2 sketch the problem at its broadest (the immense variety of styles of life available to choose from), before narrowing it down to the choice between action and contemplation. The remainder of Or. 15 (§§ 3-10) is a speech by an advocate of the active life, seeking to prove the perversity of the contemplative’s choice in depriving the state of the benefits of his wisdom (3-5), turning his back on the best examples from history and myth (6), leading a life that fails to realize his potential as a human being (7), neglecting the best examples in philosophical tradition too (8-9), and exposing himself to needless danger into the bargain (9). In Or. 16.
Socratic Love
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

These four lectures on Love address another ethical topic that has both a personal and a civic dimension, seeking to answer both the question ‘how should we as individuals behave?’, and the question ‘what kind of behaviour (and practitioners) do we want in our community?’ Compare in general Orr. 16, 17, and 26, and for the focus on the specific case of Socrates, Orr. 3 and 8-9; just as 8-9 are presented as a response to one of the two principal charges on which Socrates was tried (the introduction of ‘new divinities’), so 18-21 are presented as responding to the other, corruption of the young. There are thematic connections also with Orr. 14 (Friendship) and 10-11 (the human soul’s perception of transcendent reality; the link here is particularly with the final, Platonic analysis of eros offered in Or. 21. 7-8).
True Beauty of Speech
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

This argument that true beauty of speech (or true eloquence) is to be identified with morally improving philosophical oratory is closely comparable in its message to Orr. 1 and 22. More generally, as a discussion of a valued activity, it belongs with the group of civic-ethical lectures that also includes Orr. 3, 4, 12, 14, 15-16, 17, 18-21, 23-4, 26, and 37.
Virtue and Science
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

With this lecture, the focus shifts from civic and practical ethics to theoretical ethics: to questions concerning the nature of Virtue and of the Human Good, the correct choice of ends, and the proper evaluation of possible means to those ends. These will be the concerns of all but three or four of the remaining pieces.
The Benefits of Adverse Circumstances
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

A further lecture on Ends and the Good Life. Orr. 29-33 have argued that Pleasure is no part of the Human Good; Or. 34 now argues the complementary case that pursuit of the true Good, Virtue, cannot be separated from toil and effort, and, correspondingly, that toil and effort (and the harshness of the world that necessitates it) are no evils. The lecture is thus also, implicitly, a vindication of divine Providence: note particularly §§ 1 and 3, but contrast the more overt theodicy of Orr. 38. 7 and 41.
On Degrees of Good
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

Two further lectures on the End and the Human Good, operating on very much the same level of abstraction and generality as Orr. 29-33, and arguing opposite theses: the first, that the Good for man is one and homogeneous, and admits of no degrees; the second, that there is a hierarchy of distinct goods that jointly constitute the End.
God and the Sources of Evil
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

For this final lecture, Maximus returns to the territory of Orr. 5, 8-11, and 13: God, man, the structure of the cosmos, and the place within it of the human soul (cf. again Soury 1942, esp. ch. 4). As a vindication of the goodness and benevolence of a provident God, however, the lecture also has thematic links with Orr. 34 and 38.
The Ostracism of Hyperbolus
Authors: Rhodes P J
Published: November 2023

Ostracism at Athens is one of the many subjects in which David Lewis has taken an interest, but as far as I know he has not written on Athens’ last ostracism, that of Hyperbolus. It is a subject which presents a fascinating mixture of problems —in the interpretation of different kinds of text. and in the reconstruction of an episode in history. This is the episode in which, according to a story told three times by Plutarch, Hyperbolus proposed an ostracism, hoping to get rid of either Nicias or Alcibiades (or, according to Theophrastus, either Phaeax or Alcibiades), but the two men joined forces so that the supporters of each voted not against the other but against Hyperbolus, with the result that Hyperbolus himself was ostracized-but afterwards the people were disgusted and abandoned the institution of ostracism.
The Law of Gratitude: Reciprocity in Anthropological Theory
Authors: Wees Hans Van
Published: November 2023

Travellers are struck by nothing so much as by the generosity of strangers, and so it was with many early anthropologists in the field. Reports of lavish hospitality, extensive gift-giving, and generous chieftains accumulated and eventually led Karl Poanyi to declare that the primitive spirit of exchange was radically different from our own.
The Continuator of Marcellinus
Authors: Croke Brian
Published: November 2023

Marcellinus wrote his chronicle as a continuation of that of Jerome from 379 to 518 and later updated it to 534. Just as Marcellinus continued Jerome, Marcellinus was himself continued by an unknown author, at least to 548 and probably into the 550s. This author is usually called the ‘Continuator’ of Marcellinus and his work the Additamentum. The Additamentum is preserved in the arche-typal manuscript T (= Auel. T. 2. 26, Bodleian Library, Oxford) and the fourteenth-century manuscript descended from it called R (= Cod. Par. La,t, 4870, Paris) which breaks off slightly before the end of T which itself breaks off in 548. As was the pattern with chronicle manuscripts, the manuscript sequence of Jerome Marcellinus-Continuator constituted a continuous universal chronicle, created in the late sixth century, covering the totality of human history right up to the 550s. Earlier editions of Marcellinus also contain a continuation of the Additamentum itself to 558, but this was attributed in error to Marcellinus by Onophrio Panvinio in his edition (1558). It is actually part of the twelfth-century chronicle of Hermann of Reichenau.’ The Additamentum is a significant document in so far as it pro vides a representation of recent history to be set beside other con temporary representations, most notably those of Procopius and Jordanes. Indeed, the scholarly attention it has so far attracted has been mainly because of its evident correspondence to the Romana of Jordanes which was written in Constantinople in 55r. The relation to the texts of Jordanes has brought the Additamentum into the centre of research on the Vivarian manuscripts of Cassiodorus, as well as on the political stance of the Italian emigres in Constantinople in 550-1.2 Yet, it has never really been examined in its own right.
Money: Politics, 1. 8–10
Authors: Meikle Scott
Published: November 2023

Joseph Schumpeter considered Aristotle’s treatment of money in Politics, l. 8-10 to be ‘the basis of the bulk of all analytical work in the field of money’.1 Schumpeter was among Aristotle’s shrewdest economic commentators and in some ways the most critically hostile, yet he regarded the analysis as penetrating and precocious. But it is perhaps more penetrating than he thought and more deeply and interestingly flawed. The analysis is ethical as well as economic, and these two aspects are in a tension which leads Aristotle to attribute two natures to money, that of a means and that of an end. His official position is that it has only one of these natures, that of a means of exchange, and he ignores the other without giving a reason. Modern condescension should not be precipitate, however, because the tension is not one that can easily be avoided from what might be thought the high vantage-point of modern economic thinking about money, which is just as deeply divided and in just the same way.
Cities of Alexander the Great
Authors: Fraser P M
Published: November 2023

The cities founded by Alexander the Great are an essential part of his overall achievements. The problems concerning them, however, are many - and some incapable of solution. This book is the first to unravel thoroughly the tradition, explaining how it originated in a tendentious political pamphlet of the third century BC, which in turn originated in Ptolemaic Alexandria in the context of the development of the earliest version of the Alexander Romance. The author explores the ramification of this reconstruction from a lost Greek original through to the Persian and Arab tradition, and concludes that the number of cities claiming to be Alexander's as recorded in ancient sources needs to be considerably reduced. The book also includes some more general new considerations regarding Alexander's policies and achievements.
Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture
Authors: Flower Harriet I
Published: November 2023

In the first comprehensive study of Roman ancestor masks in English, Harriet Flower explains the reasons behind the use of wax masks in the commemoration of politically prominent family members by the elite society of Rome. Broadening her approach from the purely art historical, Flower traces the functional evolution of ancestor masks, from their first appearance in the third century BC to their last mention in the sixth century AD, through the examination of literary sources in both prose and verse, legal texts, epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, and art. It is by putting these masks, which were worn by actors at the funerals of the deceased, into their legal, social, and political context that Flower is able to elucidate their central position in the media of the time and their special meaning as symbols of power and prestige.
Introduction
Authors: Flower Harriet I
Published: November 2023

IT is now around sixty years since a book was dedicated largely or wholly to Roman ancestor masks (imagines) with the result that the present re-examination is not in need of a lengthy justification. Since then new evidence has come to light and critical methods have changed considerably. Much has been written about the imagines more recently, but either in brief or as part of larger studies with their own separate concerns. Most attention has come from archaeologists and students of Roman portraiture. However, the evidence we have for the imagines is not physical, and their relationship with Roman portraits in other media remains obscure and disputed. Historians, meanwhile, are in general agreement that the imagines were indeed a vital part of Roman culture. Usually this fact is simply noted without further elaboration. The present study aims to explore why and how the imagines were important in Roman society. I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible in treating the development of the imagines from their first mention in Plautus to their last in Boethius over 700 years later.
Imagines and the New Principate: Augustus and Tiberius
Authors: Flower Harriet I
Published: November 2023

THERE is not enough evidence to write the history of the imagines in any detail after the death of Tiberius. Many scholars have come to believe that imagines vanished rapidly from aristocratic funerals under the Julio-Claudian emperors, whereas the sources indicate that they were not restricted to funerals of the ruling house until the third century AD. The present study has concentrated largely on the imagines in their original, republican setting, rather than as symbols of the values of an earlier political and social system. However, as the S.C. de Cn. Pisone patre shows, evidence from the imperial period, and especially from the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, is vital to any general understanding of the imagines in Roman culture. Much of this chapter aims to explore Augustus’ use of imagines for his own special purposes. The first princeps borrowed and adapted traditional aristocratic ancestor masks to create an iconography for his new political order and to design a series of magnificent funerals which reflected his family’s leading position within the community. The precedents he set shaped reactions both by successors and pretenders to the throne, in the Julio-Claudian period and beyond.
Imagines in the Later Empire: The Last Imagines
Authors: Flower Harriet I
Published: November 2023

As has been argued in detail in the previous chapter, the imagines did not die out under the early Empire, nor were they replaced by busts carried in aristocratic funeral processions. Rather they continued to be powerful symbols of rank and political aspiration, both within and outside the aristocratic home. Changes in electoral practices and the growing influence of the princeps removed much of the basic function of imagines as advertisements aimed directly at the electors. Nevertheless, their long and venerable history during the Republic and their place in the iconography developed by Augustus himself assured that the imagines did not quickly become obsolete. Indeed, they need to be understood as part of the trappings of the Republic which were tolerated and even encouraged under the Julio-Claudian emperors. The above considerations raise two questions about imagines in the imperial period: how long were they still made and what were they used for? What follows attempts to give an answer on the basis of the available evidence, which is very thin after the early third century AD.
The Diachronic Development of Athenian Bastardy Law
Authors: Ogden Daniel
Published: November 2023

A number of laws relating to bastardy are ascribed to the semilegendary lawgivers Draco (who reputedly established his lawcode in 621) and Solon (archon in 594). However, it would be wrong to assume that the bastardy laws ascribed to the two figures derive from unitary and coherent lawcodes implemented in the said years, as the Athenians subsequently ascribed to the two men laws that did belong or may well have belonged to them, laws that did not belong to them but were none the less genuinely archaic Athenian laws, and indeed laws that belonged to periods much later than either man, or to no period at all.
Roman Historical Myths
Authors: Fox Matthew
Published: November 2023

This book offers an enlivening and sophisticated analysis of the pervasive use of historical myth in some of the best-known writers of the Late Republic and Augustan periods - from Cicero in the De Republica and the first book of Livy to Propertius IV and Ovid's Fasti. The chapters on prose narrative uncover an uneasy tension between the desire for accurate historical representation and the legendary character of traditional stories. In the light of modern theories of historical truth, the book argues that the narrative itself expresses a kind of belief in myths, and that this belief is in turn conditioned by historical circumstance. In this way, the accounts of Rome's regal period in both prose and verse bear witness to the uncertainties and upheavals at the end of the republic. At the same time, Dr Fox argues for a more sophisticated relationship between political and textual reality, and concludes that interpretations of political subversion need to be balanced by the sense of destiny and desire for the reinterpretation inherent in recounting the origins of Rome.
The Regal Period in Cicero’s De Republica
Authors: Fox Matthew
Published: November 2023

Cicero’s fragmentary treatise on government, the De Republica, includes a short narrative account of the regal period. As background to the examination of Augustan accounts of the regal period, it is important for a number of reasons. First, it is the most substantial evidence from the late republic of attitudes to the regal period and monarchy generally, and as such acts as a counterbalance to the defamatory accusations of regnum in rhetorical polemic, which are anyway quite distinct from the narrative presentation of Rome’s regal period. Second, because narration of the regal period forms only part of the De Republica, the main purpose of which is not the retelling of Roman history, we can observe how that narrative is shaped to a specific end, to illustrate the development of the Roman res publica. The result is an idealization of the regal period, based upon its particular function in the work. The same process can be observed in other authors; Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Ovid. The unique value of the De Republica is that because it is a work of political theory, the forces that shape the idealization are not far to seek. Third, Cicero was a sophisticated thinker, and not content simply to idealize the distant past. As a result, this idealization itself becomes an object of scrutiny, and we can observe Cicero’s assessment of and response to the difficulties of writing this part of Rome’s early history. It is for this that I include the work, and in the next chapter, I shall be extrapolating its theoretical implications. In isolating the problems of regal historiography the De Republica greatly facilitates entry to the Augustan texts.
The Regal Period in Propertius 4
Authors: Fox Matthew
Published: November 2023

In Propertius’ last book, his poetry takes subjects incongruous to the love-elegy of his earlier work. This new variety can be thought of as the major concern of the book. The bond between the elegiac metre and the figure of the love-poet marginal in society, preferring love to war in poetry as in life, dominated the earlier books. In book 4 this bond is dissolved as the poet broadens his scope to include Rome’s history. That history is the history of early Rome, and we shall see that the regal period has a particular place in the elegist’s conception of Rome’s past. Propertius explores in book 4 the dilemma of how the elegist can treat subjects which he had previous shown required a bombast and grandeur to which he was unsuited. This dilemma is recalled in Ovid’s Fasti, which is the subject of my next chapter. Ovid builds on Propertius 4, and there again, the regal period becomes the medium in which the elegist can celebrate Rome’s history.
The Regal Period in Ovid’s Fasti
Authors: Fox Matthew
Published: November 2023

It is with Ovid that we encounter most forcefully the problem of irony and politics in the interpretation of Augustan literature. Wide acceptance of the historical model of the poet oppressed by autocracy has, speaking generally, imparted a lack of ambiguity to the interpretation of irony. While the subtlety of Ovidian irony is not in question, doubt tends not to be expressed about the object or intention of that irony, universally thought to be a flippant or subversive attitude to Augustus. Although the simplistic division between pro- and anti-Augustan is now becoming obsolete, it has not been replaced by a sophisticated way of interpreting irony, but instead by an interest in the workings of subversion, attempting to ground literary interpretation in historical circumstance. In its newest manifestation, this involves reconstructing the possible pluralism of Ovid’s original readership. The critic can invest this original audience with the responsibility for responding to poetic ambiguity, abdicating acknowledgement of the subjectivity or instability of his own judgements. More adventurously, Barchiesi has recently made the continuity of Augustan ideology a central issue.
Conclusion
Authors: Fox Matthew
Published: November 2023

When we look back, most striking is the great variety of uses to which the regal period was put. The extreme rationalized, hellenified modernism of Dionysius, and the atmospheric poverty of Propertius 4. 1 represent the extremes. The tendency to find in the regal period the origins of later Rome, and the fertile traditions of aetiologies which surrounded them, explains why the period was open to so many interpretations. This tendency to aetiology, however, also provides the principle which unifies all accounts of the regal period. In Cicero’s account the tradition of the kings as founders gains a political dimension, with the kings becoming ideal rulers. The concept of the innovating founder is transmuted slightly, so that he comes to act as a model.
Rural Piety, Witches, and Snake-Charmers: Religion in the Central Apennines
Authors: Dench Emma
Published: November 2023

In this chapter, I explore the processes of Roman selection and construction of images of religious practices amongst peoples of the Central Apennines. In pursuit of this aim, I do not consider Roman discourse alone. To some extent, archaeology can tell us more about the Roman process of selection by showing what was left out of Roman constructions of religion in the Central Apennines. For example, the Greek and Roman literary sources tend to emphasize the marginal and sinister aspect of the religious activity of peoples of the Central Apennines, such as their role as witches and indigent seers. The archaeological record of the Central Apennines on the other hand provides us with abundant examples of architecturally impressive sanctuaries in which, all the indications are, nothing but ‘mainstream’ Central Italian cult practices were performed, and with which, the epigraphic record tells us, the local elites were closely associated.
Rome and Baetica
Authors: Fear A T
Published: November 2023

This book examines the development of urban units and their relationship to the adoption of Roman cultural forms in the province of Baetica (roughly modern Andalusia) in the Early Imperial period. Its starting point is a general examination of the notion of `Romanization' followed by a discussion of whether a positivistic interpretation of this concept can be inferred from the development of various sorts of towns found in the province. The nature, implications, extent, and results of Vespasian's Latinitas in the Iberian peninsula are discussed in depth in this respect. The material remains of the province are also examined to see what light they can cast on the problem of `Romanization'. Finally, the degree to which non-Roman cultural forms persisted in the province is discussed with the implications that this may have for the cultural dynamics of the region. The conclusions attempt to draw together the results of these analyses and suggest that Roman Imperialism is best seen through a model which envisages the creation of new synthetic cultural forms rather than through the traditional model of Romanization and resistance.
From Caesar to Vespasian: Problems of City Status
Authors: Fear A T
Published: November 2023

As has been seen, in the republican period there were very few communities possessing a Roman legal status in the south of Spain. The number of such towns gradually increased from the time of Caesar onwards. Unfortunately our records of this development are small in number, the most extensive account being the Elder Pliny’s summary of the types of community in the province. This lists the total number of towns (oppida) as 175; a figure which included 9 coloniae, IO municipia civium Romanorum, 27 (oppida? municipia?) Latio antiquitus donata, 6 free towns, 3 treaty towns, and 120 tribute-paying towns.
The Survival of Non-Roman Cultural Forms in Baetica
Authors: Fear A T
Published: November 2023

As has been seen, the link between urbanization and the adoption of one or more Roman customs by a non-Roman community is a complex one. Understanding this relationship is made all the more complex in the case of Baetica because the two largest indigenous population groups in the province, the Punic and Iberian, already possessed their own urban traditions prior to the arrival of Rome. The mere fact of urbanization alone therefore cannot be used as a marker of acculturation towards a Roman way of life by these groups. Instead it is necessary to look at how contact with Rome changed the nature of urban settlement in the region, and to determine in what areas such changes occurred and the depth to which they penetrated native society. Two potential models present themselves: the first is that Rome took active steps to change the structure of native towns, in which case we would expect a low rate of survival for nonRoman customs; the other model suggests that a much looser approach was employed, with Rome’s concerns centring more on the need for efficient revenue-raising, administration, and the use of towns for these purposes-more because this was the unit with which she had habitually dealt in these areas than because she felt an ideological imperative to impose her own pattern of urban life on subject groups.
Early Rome and Latium
Authors: Smith Christopher John
Published: November 2023

The first full account in English of the archaeological material from early Rome and the surrounding region of Latium, from the Late Bronze Age down to the end of the sixth century BC. The book sets for the first time the region of Latium in its proper context as the hinterland of Rome, and as participating in the major developments in central Italy, including Campania and Etruria, and as a witness to the radical transformation of the Mediterranean as a whole in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. Dr Smith presents the most recent evidence from the whole region as well as Rome itself, and discusses the reliability and usefulness of the literary accounts of early Latium, as well as applying theoretical models of regional economy and archaeological interpretation.
Latial Period IVA
Authors: Smith Christopher John
Published: November 2023

This period is often called an orientalizing phase in Latium, as well as in Campania and Etruria, because of the influence of eastern models on the style of pottery and metalwork. Although there is little firm evidence for the permanent presence of Greeks or others from the eastern Mediterranean in Etruria or Latium, luxury objects from the east and imitations of them are frequently found in tombs, and there can be little doubt that contacts between the east and the west were close. Interpretation of the evidence remains difficult though. On the standard chronology, Period IVA is very long (c.730 to 630 BC), certainly when compared with Period III (which the standard Italian chronology may have left too short), but it is hard to trace development through the period. It seems that all the most important aspects of the period as regards rich burials and the first stone buildings occur at the end, from 650 BC on, which makes it difficult to define the transition to IVB. Moreover IVB, with its limited material evidence, is itself very much a transition to the sixth century, clearly a quite different sort of world. The division between IVA and IVB is rather arbitrary, and the end of IVB is defined only by the cessation of burial evidence, which had already become scarce, and not by a dra matic change in material culture.
The Derveni Papyrus*
Authors: Funghi Maria Serena
Published: November 2023

The Derveni papyrus was discovered in Greece in 1962 at iJEp/3/vi, a locality a few kilometres from Saloniki, probably near Lete (A17r ). a known ancient settlement. The archaeological data indicate that the site cannot be more recent than 300 BC; it is made up of a group of tombs, some with funeral apparatus, belonging to members of the military class. The completely charred top part of a rolled up papyrus roll was found among the remains of the funeral pyre of tomb A; more than 200 fragments were recovered from this roll and once they were put together they yielded more than 24 columns of text. About 15 lines per column are preserved, around 7-8 cm., perhaps a bit more than a third of the height of the roll2; the number of letters per line varies from 30 to 45, as the text is written out to the full length of the hexameters and words are divided only in the case of preverbs (except in col. xn. 4 Jtaµaplra.vovcn). After the last column there is a blank space-of about 16 cm.
The First Columns of the Derveni Papyrus and their Religious Significance
Authors: Tsantsanoglou K
Published: November 2023

The text of the first seven columns of the PDerv. is given above without a diplomatic transcription or any palaeographical notes or other auxiliary details. The letter-number combinations under the heading of each column (G 17, G 8, etc.) indicate the papyrus fragments out of which the column was reconstructed. Many supplements are no doubt provisional and are published here merely for the sake of discussion; all, however, take strict account of the existing ink traces and the length of the gaps.
The East Face of Helicon
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

Ever since Neolithic times Greek lands lay open to cultural imports from western Asia: agriculture, metal-working, writing, religious institutions, artistic fashions, musical instruments, and much more. Over the last sixty years scholars have increasingly become aware of links connecting early Greek poetry with the literatures of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Canaan, and Israel. Martin West's new book far surpasses previous studies in comprehensiveness, demonstrating these links with massive and detailed documentation and showing that they are much more fundamental and pervasive than has hitherto been acknowledged. His survey embraces Hesiod, the Homeric epics, the lyric poets, and Aeschylus, and concludes with an illuminating discussion of possible avenues of transmission between the orient and Greece. He believes that an age has dawned in which Hellenists will no more be able to ignore Near Eastern literature than Latinists can ignore Greek.
Of Heaven and Earth
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

We are now ready to begin comparing the poetic traditions of early Greece with those developed in the Near East. At a later stage we shall be focussing on specific Greek authors, poems, and myths. The present chapter will be concerned with the wider framework of ideas about the gods, the world, and man’s place in the world, that are not peculiar to particular poets but form a common ground stock of conviction or convention. In Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Hurro-Hittite poetry and myth, as in Greek, the gods appear as a society of individuals, some male, some female, similar to human beings in form, speech, psychology, and social arrangements, but far surpassing them in power. Each has his or her own name, character, and special sphere(s) of activity. For example, we find—admittedly not all in any one text or tradition—the weather-or storm-god, the sun-god, the god of war, the goddess of love, a goddess (who may or may not be the same one) who delights in battle, a divine messenger, and a divine smith, corresponding respectively to the Homeric Zeus, Helios, Ares, Aphrodite, Athena, Hermes, and Hephaestus.
Ars Poetica
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we shall compare the literary techniques employed in Greek poetry of the Archaic period, especially epic, with those found in the Near Eastern literatures. The similarities, or some of them, have not gone unremarked by classicists who have looked at these literatures or by orientalists with a classical training. Walter Burkert has recently put together a succinct but striking list of resemblances. But they deserve to be explored at length and in greater detail. Burkert’s first point is that Near Eastern narrative poetry, like Homeric, employs a long verse which is repeated indefinitely, without strophic division. This needs some qualification. The usual Semitic verse (we can use this collective term, since we find similar verse forms in Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew) is rather flexible in length as measured by syllables. Most lines divide easily into two balancing cola, separated by a ‘caesura’; some, however, seem to consist of three cola. Each colon normally contains two accented words or word-groups, but in some cases only one, or three. There is often parallelism of sense between paired cola or a pair of lines, or between couplets.
A Form of Words
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

Here and there in the last chapter we encountered cases where Greek and Near Eastern poets not only do things in the same way but, in doing them, use very similar verbal formulations. Now we will look more generally at parallelisms of idiom and expression between the different traditions. We shall find that Homeric and other Greek poetic diction is characterized by many turns of phrase that do not correspond to normal Greek idiom as we know it from Classical prose, but do correspond to oriental idiom. It will emerge that ‘Semiticisms’ are not something that first appear in Greek in the Septuagint: there are Semiticisms in Homer. In addition to idioms we shall be considering noun-epithet formulae, similes and metaphors, figures of speech, a series of distinctively poetic interjections, and the language of hymns and prayers.
Hesiod
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

If I take Hesiod before Homer, it is not simply because I believe the Hesiodic poems to have been composed somewhat earlier than the Iliad and Odyssey—that issue is not important in the present context-but also because Hesiod is the one Greek poet in whose work the presence of substantial oriental elements is already generally admitted. No one nowadays would write a commentary on the Theogony or the Works and Days without referring to them. Hesiod, therefore, should provide something like an agreed point of departure, a safe launching pad, for the following discussions of the Homeric epics and other poetry. The earlier of Hesiod’s two authentic extant works, the Theogony, is a narrative poem preceded by a hymnic proemium addressed to the Muses. The narrative begins at the beginning of the world and follows the births of the gods in their generations down to the youngest, the children of Zeus and their coevals. Interleaved with the genealogies is what has come to be called the Succession Myth, an account of how the first divine father figure, Ouranos or Heaven, was displaced from his dominant position by his son Kronos, and how Kronos, the king of the Titans or Former Gods, was in turn overthrown by Zeus with the younger gods, who now rule the world and may be expected to continue doing so.
The Question of Transmission
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

We have seen that the Greek poets of the Archaic age were profoundly indebted to western Asia at many levels. They were indebted for mythical and literary motifs, cosmological and theological conceptions, formal procedures, technical devices, figures of speech, even phraseology and idioms. The debts continued to mount between the seventh century and the fifth. Clearly there is no prospect of accounting for them by reference to any narrowly defined factor such as, for example, eighth-century Greek patronage of north Syrian marts, or the occasional arrival in Greece of a poet or seer from abroad. Actually, there is no prospect of accounting for them at all in any decisive or final way. We shall never have the evidence that would enable us to pin down the exact moments at which and processes by which eastern influences became operative. But we can at least reflect on some of the more obvious possibilities and aspects of the problem.
Death, Burial, Memorial, And Renewal
Authors: Archibald Z H
Published: November 2023

The First Millennium Bc Represents A New and highly distinctive phase in terms of Thracian funerary and cult practice. This above all else marks the change in social attitudes which justifies a clear chronological caesura with the preceding period. Burials loom large across the perspective of Early Iron Age society. Tumuli are naturally a prominent feature of the land scape, but their locations indicate that they were deliberately selected to be as visible and significant as possible. Dolmens, though covered by earthen mounds, were located in very similar positions, on low spurs, hills, and upper terraces, like distant beacons if not actually dominating the skyline.
The Rise Of The Odrysian Kingdom C.480-C.389 Bc
Authors: Archibald Z H
Published: November 2023

The Emergence Of State Organization Is A phenomenon which is often easier to identify than to explain. The Odrysian kingdom incorporated most of the characteristics by which sociologists and social anthropologists define ‘state’ formation: a supra-regional unit with a formal administrative hierarchy within a ranked society, specialization of crafts and social functions (the existence of a bureaucratic elite, priesthood, or ritual caste), regional control centres, literacy, and monumental art or architecture. It is usually assumed that such early polities were articulated by networks of exchange, between one social group and another, between one family or clan and another, and that the centralized organs of government were maintained through some form of tribute, in goods or in kind. In the Odrysian kingdom such reciprocal relationships are documented in Greek sources.
The archaeological evidence, c.480-c.400 BC (excluding burials)
Authors: Archibald Z H
Published: November 2023

Contemporary Written Sources Give No hints of the extensive contacts enjoyed by the Odrysian kings and their followers with various parts of the Aegean. The earliest evidence comes from burials at Duvanli (modern Zhitnitsa, c.30 km north of Plovdiv) close to the main road from Plovdiv to Karlovo and the Troian Pass. Individual gifts such as the Persian amphora from Koukuva Mogila are difficult to date with any accuracy but there is no reason to doubt that this found its way into the interior no later than 479 BC.
Princely Burials And Funerary Customs
Authors: Archibald Z H
Published: November 2023

Although The Number Of Settlement Sites contemporary with the rise of the Odrysians is increasing, burials still form the principal body of evidence for the study of Thracian culture in the fifth century BC. Tumulus burial became widespread in Thrace and Macedonia at the beginning of the first millennium BC. Mound cemeteries abound in the east Balkan peninsula, usually in small scattered groups on riverter races or on low hills and spurs, chosen for their prominence in the landscape. A survey of tumuli in Turkish Thrace begun in 1980 has so far covered more than 3,000 mounds, thought to represent no more than IO per cent of the total in this region. There are no accurate figures for Bulgarian mounds, but even surviving numbers are likely to be several times greater than those of Turkish Thrace. Only samples have been excavated, often un systematically, so that details of the manner of burial are often vague. Area studies of dolmen cemeteries have shown that figures for presently surviving structures show a marked reduction since records began a century ago. The same is true of later tumuli in populated areas.
Epilogue: An Early Hellenistic Kingdom
Authors: Archibald Z H
Published: November 2023

With The Annexation Of Thrace To Macedon comes a distinct change in the nature of the sources. The tension created by rival Athenian and Macedonian claims for the possession of key sites disappears and with it a wealth of documentary evidence. This is compensated for by a series of inscriptions and archaeological and numismatic finds. In the planned city of Seuthopolis we have direct confirmation of the new Odrysian line founded by Seuthes III and ample evidence of urban sophistication on many levels.
History and Epic: Civil War
Authors: Lowrie Michéle
Published: November 2023

The conflation of epic, tragedy, and history in C. I. 6 sets the stage for Horace’s political voice. History, ancient or contemporary, entails a stylistic elevation Horace flags with generic terms, citations of high style predecessors, or the like. Homer, the paradigm for epic and praise poetry, is a prime candidate for this role. History, like epic, departs from lyric as narrowly construed in subject matter, style, and mode of discourse. The narration of events falls away from the idealized eternal present into linear time. Tragedy makes the trauma of civil war (almost) utterable. Writing history is a political act that could not for any ancient be divorced from praise or blame — wherein lies its danger.
Narrative Seduction
Authors: Lowrie Michéle
Published: November 2023

The Roman Odes are the climax of several developing strands in Odes 1-3, but after them, Horace returns to the conventional topics of lighter lyric. The poems that narrate or are about narrative reflect this shift: C. 3. 7, 3. 11, and 3. 27 have to do with women and love, if they fail to make of Horace a conventional erotic lyrist. As expected of our intellectual poet, the issue is less about love per se than poetry’s role in seduction and particularly the eroticism of telling stories. These narratives, like the rest, reach out to other genres, here elegy and epyllion, in a gesture that both expands the limits of lyric as narrowly conceived and argues for its superiority. While epic and tragedy colour most of Horace’s inset stories, the turn to the predominant rival genres in these poems balances the picture. Where Horace’s exhortations to the elegists turn eventually toward epic and praise poetry (Ch. 3), his own narratives revert to the concerns of elegy after exploring in some depth the possibilities of epic. C. 2. 9 anticipates the Roman Odes, but the golden mean reasserts itself with the opposite motion in their aftermath. Beyond generic realignment, these poems ask the question of narrative interpretability.
Plutarch’s Lives
Authors: Duff Tim
Published: November 2023

The Parallel Lives of Plutarch (c. AD 45-120), a vast retrospective series of biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen, have always been one of the most widely read of the works which survive from classical antiquity. They were written when Roman imperial power was reaching its height, and are sophisticated examples of a renaissance classicism, both linguistic, literary, philosophical and historical, which formed a Greek reaction to Roman domination. The Parallel Lives thus offer us a unique insight into the reception of Classical Greece and Republican Rome in the Greek world of the second century AD. They also explore and challenge issues of psychology, education, morality, and cultural identity. In this new study discussions of Plutarch's literary techniques and moral conceptions are combined with case studies of a number of paired Lives (Pyrrhos - Marius, Phokion - Cato Minor, Lysander - Sulla, and Coriolanus - Alkibiades). As the author demonstrates, the parallel structure of the Lives is not only vital to their interpretation but also reflects a Greek attempt to appropriate and make sense of the pasts of both Greece and Rome.
The Lives of Coriolanus and Alkibiades
Authors: Duff Tim
Published: November 2023

Two pairs of Lives have been examined where Plutarch seems to make it difficult for the reader to extract moral lessons. The third example is the Coriolanus-Alkibiades, a pair which seems both to reinforce and to challenge moral norms: it is no surprise that Plutarch regarded both of these men as having ‘ great natures’.
Crocodile Love
Authors: Hoffmann Herbert
Published: November 2023

It was suggested in the Introduction that Dionysos was more than the god of wine and the symposium and that the reasons remain to be explored why he and his company of satyrs and maenads appear on Greek vases as often as they do. This chapter addresses that question: the meaning of Dionysiaka-the ‘Dionysian connection’-in the work of Sotades.
Dulce Et Decorum Pro Patria Mori
Authors: Hoffmann Herbert
Published: November 2023

Asotadean ram’s-head rhyton in Boston (Figs. 38-9, Cat. L2) shows a youth seated immobile on a rock by an olive tree. His curly hair is held by a fillet. His body is tightly wrapped in his himation, a fold of which he has drawn over the back of his head. Before him stands a woman holding a shield and a spear with a serpent blazon. She extends the shield toward the youth seated before her, apparently addressing him.
Astragalos
Authors: Hoffmann Herbert
Published: November 2023

IT is a treasure of the British Museum (Figs. 60-3, Cat. Xi), one of the loveliest and Jl at the same time one of the most curious objects in the corpus of ancient Greek vases. What is pictured on it is evidently a kind of thiasosor sacred procession-an air borne thiasos-of graceful young women seen drifting weightlessly through the air, feet trailing, like figures in a dream or hallucination.
Nostoi
Authors: Anderson Michael J
Published: November 2023

In the formulaic diction of the Iliad the theme of persis, destruction, is often intertwined with the theme of nostos, the return to the fatherland which will follow the conquest of the city.
Introduction
Authors: Anderson Michael J
Published: November 2023

The episodes of the Trojan saga supplied fifth-century Athenian tragedians with narrative ingredients for a long list of dramas. Aischylos composed approximately twenty plays based on Trojan myths, Sophokles more than thirty, and Euripides nearly a dozen. The figures are more impressive still when compared with the total number of plays produced by each poet. The Trojan plays of Sophokles constituted approximately one-quarter of his entire output, while for Aischylos and Euripides the proportion is slightly lower, about one-fifth for each. The Ilioupersis--material drawn from the narrative span between the implementation of the wooden horse and the final departure of the Achaians-must have appeared frequently.