bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
13. Olympian 8: Aiakos at the Walls of Troy
Authors: Burnett Anne Pippin
Published: January 2010

Olympian 8 is the only Aiginetan ode by Pindar that celebrates an Olympic victory. In 460 BC, Alkimedon, a boy of the Blepsiad tribe, sailed round the Peloponnese, probably in the company of his trainer, and after a month's preparation at Pisa, defeated all his opponents in the wrestling ring in the Olympics. Through this rare triumph, Zeus ‘exalted’ the boy's city and his tribe, the elder generations of which had also known major victories. Olympian 8 is a Zeus-filled song in which the god is four times formally named — as Zeus of the Silver Bolt, Zeus genethlios, Zeus Xenios, and Zeus the deep-thundering Son of Kronos — before a final prayer in which he is summoned as one who apportions splendid things among mortals. From an Aiakos set down on Aigina by his divine chauffeur, the chorus turns directly and with a rhetorical flourish to Alkimedon's trainer. The snakes and the Aiakid takers of Troy cannot really be reconciled, and Pindar covers the course of two long wars in ten words.
14. Pythian 8: A Phantom’s Dream
Authors: Burnett Anne Pippin
Published: January 2010

According to ancient scholars, Pythian 8 was performed in 446 BC, shortly before Pindar's death. Pythian 8 is the first Pindaric ode known to have been performed on Aigina since the island lost its freedom to Athens. A system of five triads produces a cleanly marked sequence of invocation, turn towards Aigina and victor, mimesis of mythic episode, prayerful precaution, and direct praise, but in every part there are anomalies and innovations. Here, Hesychia has nothing maternal or kourotrophic about her. Instead, she promises the kind of luxury that adults appreciate while she also carries a bitter threat of violence, for she is Janus-faced. Both personifications are closely associated with Apollo and through him with song and choral dancing, activities in which disorder and rebellion are unthinkable. The song turns directly to the actual triumphs of Aristomenes, a boy who has posted a victory each at Marathon and at Megara, and three wins at the local games for Hera.
15. Afternote: The Audience as Participant
Authors: Burnett Anne Pippin
Published: January 2010

Pindar meant that his odes for the young athletes of Aigina should bring audiences into the state of healing jollity that he called Euphrosyna. As distinct from the symposium, a victory celebration had a further and more complex aim, for the choral performance was meant to present the victor with his own triumph rendered imperishable, while it also offered that same permanent glory to his neighbours and friends. The audience, in all eleven odes, was essentially the same, a gathering of aristocrats united in wealth, commercial interests, cult duties, and devotion to the Aiakids. In all cases, however, this group was joined by an ‘outside’ element, for immature boys appeared among its active men and responsible elders. The celebration introduced this adolescent group to the ways of maturity, while the elders were led to accept the imminent newcomers, and spectators of all ages were brought to a common experience of the magic of success.
Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia
Authors: Kontogiorgi Elisabeth
Published: January 2010

Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the Convention of Lausanne in 1923 specified the first compulsory exchange of populations ratified by an international organization. The arrival in Greece of over 1.2 million refugees and their settlement proved to be a watershed with far-reaching consequences for the country. This book examines the exchange of populations and the agricultural settlement in Greek Macedonia of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Asia Minor and the Pontus, Eastern Thrace, the Caucasus, and Bulgaria during the inter-war period. It examines Greek state policy and the role of the Refugee Settlement Commission which, under the auspices of the League of Nations, carried out the refugee resettlement project. Macedonia, a multilingual and ethnically diverse society, experienced a transformation so dramatic that it literally changed its character. The author charts that change and attempts to provide the means of understanding it. The consequences of the settlement of refugees for the ethnological composition of the population, and its political, social, demographic, and economic implications are treated in the light of new archival material. Reality is separated from myth in examining the factors involved in the process of integration of the newcomers and assimilation of the inhabitants — both refugees and indigenous — of the New Lands into the nation-state. The author examines the impact of the agrarian reforms and land distribution and makes an effort to convert the climate of the rural society of Macedonia during the inter-war period. The antagonisms between Slavophone and Vlach-speaking natives and refugee newcomers regarding the reallocation of former Muslim properties had significant ramifications for the political events in the region in the years to come. Other recurring themes in the book include the geographical distribution of the refugees, changing patterns of settlement and toponyms, the organisation of health services in the countryside, as well as the execution of irrigation and drainage works in marshlands. The book also throws light upon and analyses the puzzling mixture of achievement and failure which characterizes the history of the region during this transitional period. As the first successful refugee resettlement project of its kind, the ‘refugee experiment’ in Macedonia could provide a template for similar projects involving refugee movements in many parts of the world today.
Introduction
Authors: Kontogiorgi Elisabeth
Published: January 2010

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of how the First World War brought about the disintegration of autocratic regimes in Europe and paved the way for the establishment of constitutional governments and the consolidation of nationalism. It then discusses the focus of this book, which is the settlement of refugees in rural areas of Greek Macedonia and on the role of the Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC), which, under the auspices of the League of Nations, supervised the project of refugee resettlement.
4 The Land Issue before and during the Refugee Resettlement
Authors: Kontogiorgi Elisabeth
Published: January 2010

This chapter begins with a discussion of the forms of land tenure in different parts of Macedonia in order to provide a better understanding of the practices of the rural resettlement of refugees and the dynamics of the receiving society. It then discusses land reform and categories of land assigned to the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC).
7 The Ethnological Impacts
Authors: Kontogiorgi Elisabeth
Published: January 2010

This chapter begins with a discussion of differences in emigration patterns and the underlying factors that contributed to people leaving Macedonia among various ethnic groups. It then considers the question of the number of Slav-speakers remaining in Greek Macedonia. The figures proposed by Greek, Bulgarian, and Yugoslav historians to date show great differences between them as the purported ‘number’ of Slav Macedonians in Greek Macedonia has been and continues to be the basic argument used by concerned parties in promoting irredentist claims.
2 The Impact of the Persian Wars on Classical Greece
Authors: Rhodes P. J.
Published: January 2010

This chapter examines some of the key ways in which the memory of Darius' and Xerxes' campaigns influenced subsequent events (and the ways in which those events were portrayed) until the final overthrow of the Persian empire by Alexander in 330 bc. After examining the background to the enmity between Greece and Persia, the chapter shows how the initial fear of Persian return and the later possibility of alliance with Persia impacted on the relations between individual Greek states. Crucially, the role that a state had played in the wars came to be manipulated for propaganda (most notably in Athens' justification for her imperial dominance). It also illustrates some of the ways in which ambiguity towards Persia manifested itself in the literature and politics of the classical period; seen variously as either potential allies or enemies still waiting to pounce, the Persians were also alternately portrayed as terrifying despotic invaders or effeminate eastern weaklings.
4 The View from Eleusis Demeter in the Persian Wars
Authors: Boedeker Deborah
Published: January 2010

This chapter explores another tradition in which Eleusinian Demeter played a particularly important role, especially at Plataea, where a fragmentary dedicatory inscription has been found in situ, but also at Mycale, Salamis, and Marathon. It argues that Demeter's role can be illuminated by her association throughout the Greek world not only with intransigent anger, but also with the defence of territory, and sovereignty. Moreover, her panhellenic status seems to have made her susceptible to the Athenians' desire to develop their Eleusinian goddess's importance in the theological explanation for the victory, a belief that developed in tandem with the better known Delphic tradition.
8 De Malignitate Plutarchi Plutarch, Herodotus, and the Persian Wars
Authors: Pelling Christopher
Published: January 2010

This chapter explores the complexities evident in the presentation of the Persian Wars, mediated heavily through the text of Herodotus, to be found in the Lives of Plutarch. Plutarch's contribution to the development and later reception of the Persian Wars narratives is extraordinarily important, and yet has elicited very little specialist scholarly discussion. Plutarch's Persian Wars are uniquely complex, since their author was a Greek intellectual writing at the site of some of the Persians' worst acts of vandalism. But many centuries after the Persian Wars, under the Roman empire, an administration for which the archetypal image of the heroic Greek repulse of the tyrannical eastern invader had acquired many new and complicated resonances, not least in respect of the Parthians.
9 Aeschylus’ Persians via the Ottoman Empire to Saddam Hussein
Authors: Hall Edith
Published: January 2010

Through a diachronic study of the uses to which Aeschylus' Persians has been put, this chapter argues that one of the most important factors underlying the longevity of the Persian Wars traditions has been the identification of the ancient Greeks' struggle against Achaemenid Persia with the Christian West's adversarial relationship with Islam. Although the image of the Ottoman Turk — with his turban, moustache, and curving sabre — certainly affected the iconography of other battles such as Marathon, the identification has been made most prominent culturally since the 16th century by authors revisiting the battle of Salamis. The facile identification of the entire Islamic world with the caricatured ancient Persians staged by Aeschylus has also been a factor informing the West's crude stereotype of the eastern tyrant, Muslim despot, and the polemical terminology of Freedom and Democracy that has often played an unhelpful role by fomenting aggression on both local and global scales.
12 From Marathon to Waterloo: Byron, Battle Monuments, and the Persian Wars
Authors: Rood Timothy
Published: January 2010

This chapter argues that if the 18th century was ‘the age of Thermopylae’, Marathon began to overtake its main competitor in cultural prominence during the 19th century, a trend that seems to have been inaugurated in Britain by its equation with Waterloo both in the poetry of Byron and in wider public discourse. The particular focus is on the way the two battles were united in an exhibition of new paintings by Benjamin Robert Haydon that opened in London in March 1830. Haydon's obsession can be traced back to the acrimonious national debate over the best form of public monument with which to commemorate the victory at Waterloo, when it was suggested that a replica of the Parthenon (believed by many to be a monument to the Persian Wars) should be erected on Primrose Hill. The failure of the London Parthenon campaign was followed, however, by the building of the ‘Calton Hill Parthenon’, in Edinburgh, the ‘Athens of the North’.
13 Enacting History and Patriotic Myth: Aeschylus’ Persians on the Eve of the Greek War of Independence
Authors: Steen GondaVan
Published: January 2010

This chapter examines the account written by the Comte de Marcellus, a French diplomat in Constantinople, of a reading of Aeschylus' Persians, in ancient Greek, that took place at a literary evening held in that city in the year before the uprising was launched in 1821. Marcellus' memoir describes a group of Greek intellectuals who embodied ‘classical’ nobility coming together to define a new Hellenism, through the regeneration of the spirit and glory of the Persian Wars. Marcellus' writing is dependent partly on the writings of the militant liberal philhellene Chateaubriand, but much more on the inspiration taken from ancient Greece by Greek intellectuals and revolutionaries including Adamantios Koraes, and especially, the Orthodox cleric and pedagogue Konstantinos Oikonomos, who was responsible for proposing the recitation of Persians in the first place.
14 The Persian Wars as the ‘Origin’ of Historiography: Ancient and Modern Orientalism in George Grote’s History of Greece
Authors: Lianeri Alexandra
Published: January 2010

This chapter considers the new trends in academic discussion of the Persian Wars in the wake of the reforms of the 1830s, articulated above all in George Grote's work in Greek history. It relates Grote's analysis of the Persian Wars not only to contemporary British legislation but also to German Idealism, in particular the Kantian notion of war as the supreme force bringing man to a state of civilization, and the Hegelian principle of historical dialectic. The Persian Wars, and the advances achieved through them, thus become the foundation text not only of Enlightenment notions of liberty, but of early Victorian civil-democratic society.
Questions in the Odyssey: Rhythm and Regularity
Authors: Minchin Elizabeth
Published: January 2010

This chapter begins a study of the question forms in Homer. It represents an attempt to identify some of the habits that a poet within an oral tradition had to develop, and some of the techniques on which he came to rely, in order to generate works on a monumental scale. The chapter offers an account of the observable regularities in question forms in Homer's Odyssey: exemplary adjacency pairs, careful use of explanatory material, a predictable range of options for the presentation of question-strings, whether double or multiple questions, and the answers they attract. Stylized rhythmical and structural patterns based on everyday talk have been developed by the tradition to facilitate and sustain poetic composition in an oral context.
Conclusion
Authors: Minchin Elizabeth
Published: January 2010

This chapter presents a number of conclusions about how a poet in an oral tradition may have formulated and generated the substantial stretches of speech that we encounter in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The first area of discussion is memory and discourse: the stylized speech-formats and question and answer patterns that we observe in Homer have their origins in the pre-patterned forms of everyday speech. The second area of discussion is discourse and gender. Here the evidence is not uniform. There are areas of consistency and inconsistency in Homer's representation of men's and women's talk in the worlds he describes.
Between Slavery and Freedom
Authors: Hezser Catherine
Published: January 2010

Distinctions between slaves and free persons were far from clear-cut as far as status, work, and lifestyle were concerned. In their dependence on the householder, women and minors often resembled slaves; many slaves worked alongside free persons or were even better educated, clothed, and nourished than the free. In antiquity, everyone had to reckon with the possibility that he or she could become enslaved, but slaves could also hope to obtain freedom. In ancient society, some people seem to have stood on the border between slavery and freedom, being part of both worlds but not properly belonging to either of them. This was the case with half-slaves, who worked for themselves as well as for their masters, and with freed slaves, whose former enslavement had left a lasting mark and who had to fulfil certain obligations towards their former master, at least as far as Roman society is concerned.
The Sources of Slaves
Authors: Hezser Catherine
Published: January 2010

The main source of slaves in antiquity was the enslavement of war captives, which accompanied conquest of foreign territories in the course of imperialist policies. Other forms of enslavement such as natural reproduction, debt slavery, child exposure and sale, and the theft of human beings seem to have been less common and dependent on particular socioeconomic conditions and behavioural patterns. They will have gained in significance in late antiquity, however, when new war captives became scarce. Slaves would be sold at slave markets but also on other occasions, on the basis of mutual sales agreements between owners. Since the category of the slave was markedly distinct from that of the free person in both Jewish and Roman society, the transition from one mode to the other was legally regulated, so that particular forms of enslavement were prohibited and others allowed. However, it is not clear whether and to what extent these legal limitations were actually followed by the populace.
Slavery and the Exodus Experience
Authors: Hezser Catherine
Published: January 2010

The biblical story about the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt and eventual liberation by God became significant in post-biblical Judaism as evidenced by the numerous paraphrases, allusions to, and creative adaptations of it in ancient Jewish writing. The Exodus became the paradigm not only for freedom from physical slavery, but also for political freedom, spiritual freedom, and freedom from oppressing desires and emotions. In the time after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kokhba revolt, rabbis sought for meanings behind the Exodus story which would explain their and their fellow Jews' oppression by the Romans and help them maintain their hope for an eventual end of foreign rule. By transforming the Temple-centred rite of the Passover sacrifice into a family gathering centred around a ritual meal they were able to give the annual remembrance of the Exodus a new form and meaning, suited to their own time and place.
5 Ending Marriage by Judicial Divorce under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857
Authors: Cretney Stephen
Published: January 2010

Divorce first became available in the ordinary courts as a result of highly controversial legislation passed in mid-Victorian times. The 1837 Matrimonial Causes Act was intended to promote respect for marriage by restricting divorce to what were described as a few extreme and specific cases. The Act was also based on the assumption that the person seeking divorce should be wholly innocent of any responsibility for what had happened, had not forgiven the ‘guilty party’ and that the parties had not come to an agreement that the marriage should be ended. These considerations had a strong influence on the law for a century or more.
6 The Campaign for Reform of the Victorian Divorce Law
Authors: Cretney Stephen
Published: January 2010

The 1857 Act was effectively restricted to the richer sections of society — the working classes had to seek a separation or maintenance order from the magistrates’ courts with their criminal overtones. Getting such an order did not allow either party to remarry. Over the years, there was increasing pressure for reform to allow those whose marriages had broken down to be allowed to remarry, whether or not the ‘innocent party’ agreed with this. There was a Royal Commission but it was split in its recommendations. Only in 1923 were women allowed to divorce on the same grounds as men, and only in 1937 was the law modified to allow divorce for cruelty and desertion. The pressures underlying these changes (and failures to allow change) are fully examined in this chapter.
7 The Ground for Divorce under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937
Authors: Cretney Stephen
Published: January 2010

The 1937 Act introduced some additional grounds for divorce, but the process was still complex and difficult — requiring for example strict proof that one of the specified ‘offences’ had been committed, and also evidence that the parties had not ‘colluded’ in concocting a case. All this gave rise to much legal difficulty and the courts had to grapple with issues such as whether the fact that a man was insane (and thus not liable under the criminal law) also meant that he could not be guilty of the ‘offence’ of cruelty. And what degree of bad behaviour would give husband or wife the legal right to leave his or her spouse? This had to be distinguished from the ‘ordinary wear and tear of married life’.
8 The Family Justice Process 1900–1970
Authors: Cretney Stephen
Published: January 2010

The decision to grant a divorce was regarded as so important that only the High Court had the power to do so. But while this not only made the process very expensive, increasing demand (especially in war-time) led to the High Court being over-loaded. At the end of World War II, the Denning Committee insisted that it would be wrong to allow ‘inferior courts’ (such as the county court) to have the power to deal with divorce, but recommended that country court judges should be appointed as ‘Commissioners’s itting in divorce cases as if they were in the High Court. At the same time, there was compelling evidence that orders made by Magistrates’ Courts led to great hardship, and measures were taken to introduce what was described as conciliation into those proceedings.
9 Irretrievable Breakdown as the Ground for Divorce: The Divorce Reform Act 1969
Authors: Cretney Stephen
Published: January 2010

In 1969, Parliament passed the Divorce Reform Act, which was supposedly based on the principle that the fact that a marriage had irretrievably broken down should be a sufficient and exhaustive ground for divorce. But the process which led to this legislation — still in force in the twenty-first century — was lengthy and complex. Firstly there was a Royal Commission (which, once again, was divided); then a group appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury gave its backing to the principle of ‘irretrievable breakdown’ as the only grounds for divorce; then the Law Commission considered that proposal, and a ‘compromise’ was reached. Eventually, after much manoeuvring, parliamentary approval was given, and the Bill was enacted. But what did it really mean? Did ‘easier divorce’ jeopardise the financial position of vulnerable women or the welfare of children? Criticism of the working of the law led to the passing of the Family Law Act 1996, but this has never been brought into force.
12 The Ending of Relationships by Death: The Financial Consequences
Authors: Cretney Stephen
Published: January 2010

Far more marriages end by death than divorce. But English law has traditionally adopted the principle of freedom of testation. What should happen if a testator’s will makes inadequate provision for family and dependants? Many people do not leave wills: the law prescribes how their property should be split up in that case. Only in 1938 did Parliament legislate to give the court powers to override the terms of a valid will or the statutory provisions for intestate distribution; but these proved inadequate to deal with the situations which could arise — especially post-World War II for non-marital families and in situations involving more than one marriage.
Cretan Women
Authors: Armstrong Rebecca
Published: January 2010

This book studies in detail the representations of Pasiphae, Ariadne, and Phaedra in Latin poetry. It investigates both the literary history of the myths (the Greek roots, the interactions between Roman versions) and their cultural resonance. In addition to close readings of the major treatments of each woman's story (in Catullus, Virgil, Ovid, and Seneca), the book offers extended thematic explorations of the importance of memory, wildness, and morality in the myths. By extending the net to encompass three women (all from the same ill-fated family), the book gives a clear picture of the complexity and fascinating interconnectedness of myths and texts in Ancient Rome.
Introduction
Authors: ARMSTRONG REBECCA
Published: January 2010

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of Cretan myths. It then turns to the subject of this book: the myths of the Cretan women, Pasiphae, Ariadne, and Phaedra. An outline of the myths, Cretan women and Greek poets, Roman poets and the appeal of Crete are discussed. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.
Ariadne and Ovid
Authors: ARMSTRONG REBECCA
Published: January 2010

This chapter focuses on the depiction of Ariadne by Ovid. Ovid gives extended attention to the story of Ariadne in three of his works, following later events along the narrative line in later poems, moving from Ariadne freshly deserted in Heroides 10, to the approach of Bacchus in Ars Amatoria 1, to a later moment when she finds herself deserted once more, this time by her divine husband, in Fasti 3.2 Although the same, or similar, elements naturally recur in all three episodes, there is a palpable sense of difference and of development which can be perceived in Ariadne's movement from a well-known mythical figure speaking for herself, through an incarnation as didactic exemplum, and into the realization of a future life which, it turns out, cannot escape from its troubled past even whilst theoretical happiness and immortality beckon.
Terminal Problems
Authors: West Stephanie
Published: January 2010

Closure has received increased attention since the publication of Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending (1967) and Barbara Herrnstein Smith's Poetic Closure (1968); many classicists owe to Don Fowler's work (Fowler (1989), (1997) = (2000), 239-83, 284-307) a heightened awareness of the topic's importance. This has led to some reluctance to acknowledge that quite a significant proportion of the major works of classical literature lack a marked conclusion. This chapter surveys lengthy narratives of various types and makes a few general observations. The desirability of unambiguous closure was plainly not self-evident. Early hexameter poetry exemplifies the unmarked ending; its techniques for concluding episodes are also appropriate for transitions. A listening audience would have only a very approximate idea when the bard might be expected to end his performance, and an experienced performer would himself be guided by the response of his audience in deciding when to stop and how to bring his performance to a close in a manner which would stimulate a desire for a further instalment. A strongly marked conclusion to a long narrative, summing up the significance of a long series of heroic actions, did not fit the circumstances in which our epics took shape and Herodotus pioneered European historiography.
The Monster and the Monologue: Polyphemus from Homer to Ovid
Authors: Hutchinson G. O
Published: January 2010

The colourful career of the Cyclops in literary history strikingly exemplifies the complexities of Homeric reception. This chapter illustrates the value of narratological strategies, which have made such a vast contribution to the understanding of classical literature. It also suggests the value of extending narratology, and integrating it further with other types of criticism.
Low Words in High Places: Sex, Bodily Functions, and Body Parts in Homeric Epic and Other Higher Genres
Authors: Bain David
Published: January 2010

This chapter examines six topics which, although they feature in higher literature, might be thought both beneath the dignity of their genres and to entail in consequence the use of indecorous vocabulary, for they involve passages in which cow dung, breasts, farting, animal sexuality, infantile incontinence, and urination are mentioned. It shows that writers in the higher genres were capable of dealing with such apparently intractable topics while both preserving the dignity of the diction and without having to resort to vulgarisms. In the case of those passages where epic is involved, the chapter scrutinizes Wackernagel's suggestion that epic, or more particularly Homeric epic, shows more ‘Dezenz’ than other branches of high literature. In his view of Homer he had a predecessor in Athenaeus (or a source of Athenaeus).
Smileumata Iliaka: Three Puzzling Verses
Authors: Burkert Walter
Published: January 2010

Martin West has rebuilt the foundations of Greek poetry from Homer and Hesiod through iambos and elegy to Aeschylus, not to mention his further contributions to some hundred other Greek authors. This chapter presents three suggestions for discussion from the thesauroi of his fundamental Homerus: Ilias.
Housman’s Greek
Authors: Diggle James
Published: January 2010

This chapter considers Housman's writings in Greek. Before his election to the Chair of Latin at University College, London, in 1892, Housman wrote as much on Greek as on Latin. In his candidature for the Latin Chair he offered himself, if he were unsuccessful, as a candidate for the Chair of Greek, which was also vacant. After 1892 he wrote little on Greek, and, when asked why, he replied ‘I found that I could not attain to excellence in both’. But the little that he did write fostered in the minds of some of his contemporaries a belief in the continued excellence of his Greek.
Greek Tragedy: Text and Context
Authors: Garvie A. F
Published: January 2010

Recent scholarship has insisted that, if we are to understand Greek tragedy correctly, we must get behind our own modern cultural assumptions, and recognize that it was written for an audience with a very different cultural background. That means that the proper way to study it is in the context of 5th-century Athenian civic democratic ideology. Few indeed have seriously questioned the ‘historicist’ approach to Greek tragedy. Conversely, the idea that it means almost as much to us in the 21st century as it did to the original audience, because human nature does not radically change from one generation to another, tends to be seen as old-fashioned, and ‘universalist’ has become almost a derogatory label. This chapter shows that there is still something to be said for the ‘universalist’ approach, and that the ‘historicist’ approach, if it is carried too far, can lead to wrong interpretations of a play. The two approaches can be combined, and the question is really one of priority.
‘Darkness, my Light’: Enigmatic Ajax
Authors: Instone S. J.
Published: January 2010

This chapter explores one dimension of the play, Ajax. The oddities of the play revolve around two central themes — life and death — or, more particularly, the value of being alive and the value of being dead. The cohesion of the play becomes more apparent, and some of the oddities mentioned less odd, if one sees Sophocles' depiction of Ajax as intending to suggest that a certain type of life is no better than death and that in some circumstances death can create a sort of ‘life’. Seen in this light, the apparently sharp distinction between life and death becomes less sharp, and Ajax's death becomes less of a dividing point in the play. The chapter shows how the text both of the Ajax and of other plays of Sophocles draws attention to this blurring of life and death.
Some Poetic Connections of Lycophron’s Alexandra
Authors: Hollis Adrian
Published: January 2010

It is not surprising that, of all the issues raised by the Alexandra, scholars should have devoted most time and effort to historical and geographical problems — to the identification of kings and political leaders lying behind the poet's riddles (e.g., 1441 ‘the Thesprotian and Chalastrean lion’, 1444 ‘the wolf of Galadra’), to Lycophron's account of the West and its relation to Timaeus, and, above all, his prophecy of Rome's future greatness (1226-30). All of these have been vigorously disputed, and three positions maintained: (a) the work should be ascribed in its entirety to Lycophron of Chalcis (first half of the 3rd century BC), said by external evidence to have been a member of the Pleiad, who came to Alexandria and helped to arrange the comic poets for the Library; (b) because of the historical references and the political understanding which it displays, the Alexandra could not have been composed before the second century BC, and therefore must come from the pen of ‘another Lycophron’, or else have been mistakenly ascribed to the famous Lycophron, so that we do not know the real author's name; (c) the main part of the Alexandra does indeed belong to the third century and Lycophron of Chalcis, but at least two passages (1226-80 and 1446-50) were added in the second century BC. This chapter attempts to place the Alexandra in the context of other Hellenistic poetry.
Thinking Responsibly about the Subject of Subjects
Authors: CLAPHAM ANDREW
Published: January 2010

This chapter revisits the question of what or who is a subject of international law. It suggests that the notion of subjects of international law is not helpful and proposes that international law is capable of granting rights and demanding obligations for any entity and the scope of those rights and obligations will depend in part on the capacity of the entity to bear them.
Non-State Actors in Times of Armed Conflict
Authors: CLAPHAM ANDREW
Published: January 2010

This chapter distinguishes rebels, insurgents, belligerents, and national liberation movements, and explains the different sets of legal obligations that apply. It explores the ways in which rebels may be held accountable in particular by non-governmental organizations.
National Legal Orders
Authors: CLAPHAM ANDREW
Published: January 2010

This chapter looks at how different national legal orders tackle the question of holding non-state actors accountable for human rights violations. The key jurisdictions under examination are: the UK, the US, Hong Kong, Canada, and South Africa. Questions of statutory interpretation and the role of a judge are examined and the reader is given a detailed analysis of certain recent cases.
Dignity and Democracy
Authors: CLAPHAM ANDREW
Published: January 2010

This chapter looks at the concepts of dignity and democracy and treats them as the foundational values behind human rights. It concludes that a simple appeal to these values is not enough; we have to understand how any one claim advances these values and what is the cost for those who may be advancing their claims appealing to the same values.
The Origins of Dispute: Blood and Earth
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

The distinction between material and symbolic or psychological factors in unravelling the genealogy of disputes in traditional societies is largely artificial. The word credit applied to both reputation and financial solvency; its essence is captured by the French proverb ‘A good name is sufficient treasure’. Credit is both real and imagined. Nevertheless, clarity requires the origins of conflict to be divided into material and cultural factors. This chapter looks at disputes and violence related to kinship, land and property, and inheritance in France, along with marriage and succession, litigation, prelates, benefices, and tithes.
The Origins of Dispute: Status and Honour
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

Honour is not simply a moral code regulating conduct, like magic or Christianity, it is a world view. Since physical courage and unwillingness to accept humiliation are essential to male honour, masculinity is closely associated with the right to violence. The French word for affront, injure, captures the sense of aggression and violence inherent in the impugning of honour: to take blood was an escalation of the exchange but it was not disproportionate to the initial offence. If pride and hubris were possessed in inverse proportion to wealth, then violence was often the only adequate means of gaining recognition of one's status. This chapter discusses disputes in France arising from social status and honour, honour as public property, and public proofs of status or recognition of honour among nobles.
Escalation: From Verbal Duel to Vindicatory Exchange
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

Feud is often used as a convenient shorthand for its most violent manifestation, the vengeance killing. In early modern France, however, feuding was concerned as much with lawsuits and arbitration as with bloodletting. Crucial to modern understandings of the feud has been the relationship of hostility between rival groupings that was characterised by exchanges of defiance, antagonism, and coldness that escalated over time into public insults and attacks on property. Feuding did not necessarily involve bloodshed between the parties: a response had to be carefully considered, balancing the obligation to repair an injury against the implications of excessive force. This chapter discusses the role of insult in the narrative of dispute and the escalation of verbal duelling to vindicatory violence. It examines how insults trigger threats, intimidation, and displays of force, and how the parties to a feud exchanged attacks on property and servants. Lordship and protection, maiming, and humiliation are also examined.
Conspiracy
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

Counsel is one of the most important, least understood, and most elusive elements of politics in early modern France. Table talk in all households revolved around plots and schemes designed to further the lineage at the expense of one's neighbour. Plots were disguised as fair duels or chance encounters. Behind much of the surviving evidence of face-to-face killing in this period lies the hidden history of calculation and conspiracy. One of the best documented vengeance killings of the 17th century involving two feuding families provides a good opportunity to explore the dynamics of family decision making and group solidarity. This chapter also discusses ambush and surprise attacks, use of disguise and concealment to commit crime, and escape of those who committed the crime.
The Rage of the Gods
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

Where vengeance killings or duels took place in the full glare of the public gaze they were thereby legitimised. The ritual elements of combat have been exaggerated, but it is undoubtedly true that public acts of vindicatory violence contained a performative element. In France, verbal duelling was often the preliminary to an act of violence and when combatants stood face to face exchanges introduced the action. The rules of mounted combat were different from those on foot. Flight was obviously more of a possibility on horse than on foot, and a good horse could be a life-saver — making the horse itself a target. The festive and ceremonial calendar provided other opportunities for highly public demonstrations of power through display, intimidation, and violence. This chapter also examines the tendency of the victor to deprive the victim of the comforts of faith and subject him to humiliation, along with the desecration of the loser's dead body.
Peace
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

The law was feared but widely despised, and not just because of its inefficiency and cost: peace was a Christian obligation and litigation best avoided. Repression had its limits and the law maintained order by promoting equilibrium: mediation and arbitration were encouraged by the ubiquity of royal letters of pardon. Mercy was a sovereign duty and a pillar of royal authority. Letters of remission proper were issued by the petty chanceries attached to Parlements for minor crimes and cases of accidental death and self-defence. Secondly, there were pardons or abolitions issued by the grand chancery under the aegis of the chancellor. Those who received remissions had immediate relief from criminal proceedings, which were suspended. This chapter also discusses reconciliation and settlement for cases except murder, along with reparation and satisfaction, in early modern France.
Violence and Royal Authority in the Seventeenth Century
Authors: Carroll Stuart
Published: January 2010

Unlike his predecessor, King Henri IV of France was a man whom even his enemies could respect; a fearless warrior and bon viveur who placed politics above religious scruple. Indeed after the final submission of the League in 1598, many former enemies became his comrades in debauchery. He was an active and efficient peacemaker, intervening personally in disputes, reviving the authority of the constable, promulgating two edicts against duelling, and sponsoring the idea of publicly funded attorneys for the poor. Yet there is compelling evidence for the continuation of feuding and the rise in the incidence of duels involving the nobles. This chapter examines violence and how royal authority in France intervened in feuds during the 17th century, violent acts committed by the noblesse de robe, violence against fiscal officials, and the king's concern for the repression of the injustice and oppression of the grandees.
The Plurinational State: A Normative Challenge
Authors: TIERNEY STEPHEN
Published: January 2010

Chapter 2 discusses the continued resilience of nationalism and national identity and explores how theorists of nationalism from the liberal tradition have constructed an argument to the effect that sub-state national societies constitute a discrete category of policy. The liberal nationalist argument defended in this first part of the book is that their historical and societal particularity, coupled with the dissatisfaction felt by many sub-state national societies with regard to their current institutional arrangements, entitles these societies to distinctive constitutional accommodation within the host states, in particular, by way of recognition, representation, and autonomy. This chapter develops two additional parts of this argument which build upon the notion of sub-state national societies as a particular type of polity. In constructing this argument, the chapter critiques the failure of traditional liberalism to recognize the role played by sub-state national societies in the lives of their members, and its tendency to stereotype sub-state nationalism in a negative way.
Sub-state National Societies and Contemporary Challenges to the Nation-state
Authors: TIERNEY STEPHEN
Published: January 2010

This chapter illustrates that sub-state national societies in states such as Canada, Spain, and the UK are fully engaged with the modern challenges which face any polity in the age of ‘late sovereignty’, where the power of the nation-state is declining but where it still retains considerable resilience. The chapter addresses the way in which contemporary sub-state national demands for better constitutional accommodation require to be located within the context of a global political and legal environment which is itself rapidly changing. It also considers the ways in which sub-state national societies challenge the normative underpinning of constitutional praxis in plurinational states, focusing on the controversy surrounding the question of ‘sovereignty’ in these states.
The Process of Constitutional Change in Plurinational States
Authors: TIERNEY STEPHEN
Published: January 2010

This chapter addresses the processes by which constitutions have recently been amended in plurinational states. It considers the process of constitutional change in terms of two sets of important relationships. The first, which recalls the principles of self-determination, representation, recognition, and reciprocity, is the set of relationships between the sub-state national society and the host state. The second set of important relationships concerns the interaction of government and citizen.
Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England
Authors: Shepard Alexandra
Published: January 2010

This book explores the diverse and varied meanings of manhood in early modern England, and their complex and often contested relationship with patriarchal principles, in order to add a new dimension to our understanding of gender relations. Using social, political, and medical commentary, alongside evidence of social practice derived from court records, the book argues that patriarchal ideology contained numerous contradictions, and that, while males were its primary beneficiaries, it was undermined and opposed by men as well as women. Patriarchal concepts of manhood existed in tension both with anti-patriarchal forms of resistance and with alternative codes of manhood, which were sometimes primarily defined independently of patriarchal imperatives. As a result the differences within each sex, as well as between them, were intrinsic to the practice of patriarchy and the social distribution of its dividends in early modern England.
Models of Manhood
Authors: SHEPARD ALEXANDRA
Published: January 2010

A survey of the domestic conduct literature and advice on marriage, this chapter re-examines the ways in which manhood was defined along the axis of gender. Although stark male/female dichotomies were frequently invoked in order to uphold assertions of patriarchal superiority (particularly in discussions of the duties of wives), they were considerably qualified by discussions of husbands' duties that primarily emphasised mutuality and the limits of their authority. Normative models of manhood in domestic advice were also drawn from comparing two further sets of male stereotype – the unmarried and the married, and the good and the bad husband – with conduct writers often conceding that bad husbands were more prevalent than good. As with the other works discussed in Part I of the book, the chapter concludes that while maleness as a cultural category was automatically celebrated in terms of superiority, men as a group of people were far less confidently endorsed.
Youthful Excess and Fraternal Bonding
Authors: SHEPARD ALEXANDRA
Published: January 2010

The boldest resistance to patriarchal concepts of order was performed by young men in the blatant rejection of ideals of manhood rooted in thrift, moderation, and self-control, in preference for a culture of excess. Youthful rioting, drinking, gambling, and sexual prowess was largely performed for, and validated by, their peers, and this chapter focuses on the fraternal bonds that facilitated young men's inversions of patriarchal norms. While these links were sufficiently important to overcome distinctions of social status, they were also brittle and fleeting because of fears surrounding male intimacy. It is argued that an element of competition was therefore present between men, even at this most homosocial phase of the life course.
The Violence of Manhood
Authors: SHEPARD ALEXANDRA
Published: January 2010

Violence was both a tool for enforcing the patriarchal imperatives of household and social order and one of the primary means of undermining them, either by lending weight to counter-codes of manhood, or, more commonly, featuring in assertions of manhood claimed independently of a patriarchal agenda. Violence was a form of discipline, a demonstration of male strength and authority, and a method of territorial demarcation. This chapter attempts to chart the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable violence, using cases of assault in order to show how male honour codes both bolstered and countered patriarchal codes of order, depending on the context of the dispute and the status of those involved.