bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Death Ritual in the Iliad
Authors: Seaford Richard
Published: November 2023

I will argue in this chapter that we may detect in the tradition of Greek epic poetry a development, culminating in our Iliad and Odyssey, that was influenced by the development of the city-state. In this preliminary section I state in summary fashion my views on the dating of the Homeric epics. Roughly speaking, I accept Nagy’s ‘evolutionary model of Homeric poetry culminating in a static phase that lasts about two centuries, framed by a relatively formative  stage in the latter part of the eighth century and an increasingly definitive stage in the middle of the sixth.’ My argument does not require chronological precision, which is anyway impossible, but does cohere with the view that the epic tradition remained in certain respects changeable, and in particular that the Iliad and the Odyssey did not necessarily acquire their definitive shape and their predominance over other epic poetry, until the sixth century BC. That the undoubted influence of polis development on the epic tradition continued into the sixth century seems much more likely than that it ended as early as the eighth. I am therefore concerned to combat two popular views that often go together. One is that the Iliad and Odyssey achieved the form in which we have them in the second half of the eighth century, soon after the introduction of the alphabet into Greece, with only minor change occurring thereafter. The other is that the organic sophistication, early fixation, and predominance over other epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey can all be neatly explained by recourse to a ‘genius’.
Transformations of the Dionysiac Sacrifice
Authors: Seaford Richard
Published: November 2023

The emergence of tragedy as the central and characteristic genre of the Athenian city-state was a synthesis of elements from various other genres, in particular Homeric epic, choral lyric, and iambic verse. But the dramatic representation of myth before a mass audience was something new, and the nucleus of this development was Dionysiac ritual. Chapter 7 described various features of Dionysiac cult that helped it to be this nucleus: Dionysos comes from abroad; his cult is for the whole polis, and unites periphery with centre; his power over women transcends the autonomy of the household; to enter his sphere may mean to dress as one of his mythical followers; at the centre of his cult are mysteries that inspire curiosity. In this chapter we will look more closely at the imagined practice of Dionysiac ritual, as a basis for understanding the tragic perversion of ritual in Chapters 9 and 10.
The Dionysiac in Homer and in Tragedy
Authors: Seaford Richard
Published: November 2023

Tragedy, the Homeric recitations, hero-cult-all three, uniting as they do non-kin in the public celebration of heroes, were of central political importance for the sixth-century tyrant of Sikyon. In Athens competitions in Homeric recitation and in tragedy were instituted in public cult at about the same time, the former during the sixth-century tyranny and the latter either during it or just after its overthrow (7 §b). The final form of the Iliad, made definitive by the Athenian recitations, is-both in the theme of isolated wrath and in the reintegration of Achilles-influenced by the increasing importance of hero-cult and its aetiological myths in the city-state (Chapter 5). And yet the mass of Homeric poetry is the cumulative product of a long process of transmission, and the world it implies of powerful households in which bards sing heroic narratives seems to predate the developed city-state. Tragedy on the other hand is a product of the developed city-state, of cult (heroic and Dionysiac) in which the growth of public participation in death ritual had contributed to the process of political unification. Accordingly tragedy, unlike epic, is tied to the present, expressing and elaborating the heroic and similar cults of the polis by dramatizing their myths (Hippolytos, lphigeneia, the Eumenides, Dionysos, etc.) in plots at the culmination of which the foundation of the cult is implied, prophesied, or announced (7 §f). These aetiologies are not merely incidental to the drama. Tragedy dramatizes the mythical expression of the kind of cult that shaped its earliest development, and so tends to be centred around extreme individual suffering lamented by the chorus and audience of citizens.
Introduction
Authors: Lawton Carol L
Published: November 2023

The term ‘document relief’ is used in this book to refer to reliefs carved above public records inscribed on free-standing marble stelai; the German term ‘Urkundenrelief’ has the same sense. As a general designation, ‘document relief’ is preferable to the more common terms ‘decree relief’ and ‘treaty relief’ because in Attica reliefs are also found on other types of documents, on accounts and inventories of the treasurers of various deities and sanctuaries, on lists and dedications of such bodies as the phylai and ephebes, and on at least one law. Reliefs on decrees, however, account for by far the largest number of document reliefs. Most are decrees of the boule and demos of the Athenians, but there are also reliefs on decrees of the Attic demes, phylai, orgeones, and at least one phratry.
Style And Chronology
Authors: Lawton Carol L
Published: November 2023

Document reliefs are regularly used to provide a dated framework for discussions of the stylistic development of Attic sculpture of the second half of the fifth and fourth centuries. Such discussions often fail to recognize, however, that document reliefs, like architectural relief or the various types of grave relief, constitute a distinctive class of Attic sculpture with characteristics of its own. Any attempt to describe the stylistic development of the reliefs or to use them as comparanda for dating must take into account the traits that set them apart.
Burning the Brambles: Rhetoric and Ideology in Pliny, Natural History 18 (1–24)
Authors: Beagon Mary
Published: November 2023

There has been a tendency for literary critics of the Elder Pliny to denigrate the frequent rhetorical flourishes in the Natural History: Pliny was trying, inexpertly, to brighten up his work in accordance with the increasingly rhetorical literary tendencies of his age; he was in effect haphazardly ransacking his own Studiosus, the training handbook for aspiring orators which Gellius tells us included a selection of clever sayings to use in speeches; the addition of rhetorical baubles to a shambolic collection of facts only exacerbated the work’s undisciplined nature. More recent assessments have been more positive. Pliny can be seen to have grafted factual material on to a coherent ideological structure based on his concept of Nature. The rhetorical material, far from being irrelevant, is integral to this strong thematic structure, articulating the ideals of a crusading and committed individual. I have argued at length elsewhere for this view of the Natural History and in the present chapter will therefore take it for granted.
Introduction
Authors: Rhodes P J , Lewis David M
Published: November 2023

The catalogues omit Athens (there are catalogues of Athenian decrees in my book The Athenian Boule). They cover the rest of the Greek world in more or less the same order as the most recent volumes of SEC: region by region, beginning with the regions included or intended for inclusion in JG, in volume order, and continuing into the rest of the Greek world, in clockwise order; within regions by alphabetical order of states, with units larger than states listed after the states contained in them.
Doris
Authors: Rhodes P J , Lewis David M
Published: November 2023

Because of the volume of material I present this list in summary form, and I give one reference only for each text (samples will be found in Michel 204–16).
Paphlagonia
Authors: Rhodes P J , Lewis David M
Published: November 2023

Here and in 128 (below) the man who ‘introduces’ is probably the proposer, and is distinguished from the man who puts to the vote. The archai are to decide where the statues are to be set up.
Lycia
Authors: Rhodes P J , Lewis David M
Published: November 2023

Rescripts to cities are always addressed to the archontes , council and people; letters may be addressed to the council or council and people or all three (examples of each for Rhodiapolis: 4; 10; 1, 16). Rescripts and letters to the koinon are normally addressed to the koinon of the Lycians, but one letter is addressed ‘the common electoral assembly of the ethnos ’ (14).
Cyprus
Authors: Rhodes P J , Lewis David M
Published: November 2023

Mitford at I. Kourion , p. 219, comments: ‘A grateful Kourion, permitted to spend her own money on a minor embellishment of her own temple, credits the whole construction to Caesar. Even this must be scrutinized by the provincial governor.’
The Fifth Century: Democracy and Empire
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

In the fifth century, the history of religion overlaps to a rare degree, at least in its externals, with the history of events. In Greek eyes, the supreme offence of the Persian invaders who ravaged Attica in 480 was that they ‘burnt the temples of the gods’. To commemorate the crime, the Athenians built a number of the desecrated members into a conspicuous position high in the restored north bastion of the acropolis, where they can still be seen. Several of these temples, in fact, had only recently been built or were still incomplete when the barbarian came; the most ambitious, the ‘pre-Parthenon’, was per haps an offering of gratitude for the repulse of the earlier invasion at Marathon in 490.
The Trial of Socrates: And a Religious Crisis?
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

In 399 BC, Socrates was condemned and put to death on a charge of impiety, having declined to suggest that counter-penalty of exile which the jury would doubtless have preferred to impose. Around that bizarre and tragic event cluster a series of quite fundamental questions about the character of Athenian society, and the historical development of Greek religion. Perhaps no execution has been as much discussed as Socrates’, except that of Jesus; and a detailed discussion of the related issues would spring the bounds of this book by far. All that can be offered is a sketch-map of the terrain.
Dionysus the Civic Viewer
Authors: Lada-Richards Ismene
Published: November 2023

If ‘playing the other’ in his liminal transition has already introduced Dionysus into civic space (4.11), in the agon the god mingles imaginatively with an audience of tragic plays. In this respect, the agon brings Dionysus into another metatheatrical position, that of an ‘internalized’ spectator, a role culminating in the highest function reserved for him within the play, namely, the role of a civic judge.
The Palatine Secretaries
Authors: Corcoran Simon
Published: November 2023

It is the achievement of Tony Honore to have pioneered a new approach to the imperial constitutions, seeking to treat them not as uniform chancery products issued in the name of an imperial college, but as literary texts produced by individual authors.1 His argument is that imperial laws and rescripts (despite later editing) can be read with an eye to style and attitude, and that doing so with the texts assembled into a chronological palingenesia enables the detection of stylistic changes over time. Constitutions, therefore, can be divided not only by the reigns of emperors, but also by the succession in office of the ultimate authors of imperial pronouncements, the palatine secretaries. Thus a form of anonymous stylistic fasti can be created for certain offices, followed by identification in some cases with appropriate figures known from other evidence.
The Role of the Governor
Authors: Corcoran Simon
Published: November 2023

The role of the governor as portrayed in the private rescripts is of the utmost importance. This is not surprising. The emperor in his rescript is not hearing the case, either as judge of first instance or judge of appeal. Most rescripts apply to particular cases that are either under way or about to be initiated away from the imperial court. Thus most of the onus of a case falls on the judge, who is normally the provincial governor. Indeed, with the separation of military and civil offices and the subdivision of provinces, which reached its climax under Diocletian, the governor should have been able to devote more time than ever to his judicial functions and the term iudex is often interchangeable with that of praeses. Appendix G gives a complete list of the occurrence of the word praeses, its equivalents, and of other terms for office-holders in the private rescripts. The title praeses or praeses provinciae (plus the ad jective praesidalis) is the standard term employed. Next in frequency comes the term rector provinciae. The term iudex appears in three forms. Alone, it often denotes the governor. The term iudex competens is sometimes thought to be a Justinianic emendation of some term anachronistic by the sixth century.1 However, since it occurs in both the Consultatio and the Vatican Fragments, which appear to have more faithful versions of original constitutions, it should be a term proper to our period. It covers all possible judges. Iudicesdati or pedanei are inferior judges appointed by the governor in his stead, and are rare in our material.2 There are a handful of periphrases and a single occur rence of the term moderator provinciae. Finally, there are other office-
The Emperor in Action
Authors: Corcoran Simon
Published: November 2023

The texts so far examined represent three categories of document—edicts, letters, and private rescripts—documents issued in the emperor’s name, which were signed by him and then posted or dispatched. But some imperial pronouncements require imperial activity of a different sort and a handful of texts from the codes show the emperor in action, making pronouncements in the most direct possible form, by oral delivery.1 The emperor, therefore, has a more immediate control over the words he says. The necessity for some minimum facility at public speaking was part of the imperial office. This directness does not mean, however, that what is said has not been prepared with the advice of others, either beforehand or during these occasions.
The Powers of the Lesser Tetrarchs
Authors: Corcoran Simon
Published: November 2023

The martyr Procopius criticized the tetrarchic multiplicity of rulers by quoting Homer; ‘It is not good that there should be many lords; let there be one lord, one king’1 Certainly, the existence of multiple co-rulers creates problems in understanding the constitutional com plexities involved, as regards both the relationship of the Augusti to one another, and the relative powers of Augusti and Caesars. There are two questions to ask: who could and did issue the different types of pronouncement, and can these be identified in our surviving mater ial? Where were they enforced? The view of Mommsen and Seeck was that only the senior Augustus possessed full legislative competence.
Conclusion
Authors: Corcoran Simon
Published: November 2023

The tetrarchic period displays a richness and variety in the pronounce ments of its emperors, which the preceding chapters have attempted to explore, assembling together this wide range of material. What conclusions can be drawn about the nature of tetrarchic government, and its ideology and ambition? First, the private rescripts themselves, despite their predominance in the material, were not strictly speaking fulfilling a legislative function nor were they for the most part intended to be innovative (Chapter 3 Section iii). Rather they are a good illustration of how the emperor responded to requests from below. The tetrarchic emperors remained highly approachable and the system served even those of traditional low status in the ancient world, such as women and slaves (Chapter 5). This is also shown by a few examples of direct interaction between emperor and subjects in face-to-face encounters (Chapter 10).
An Introduction to Sicily
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

Incidental reports about Empedocles’ cosmology by later writers help to place this brief fragment in a wider context. They add the information that the subterranean fires which he refers to were viewed by him not only as the cause of hot springs but also as responsible for the formation of stones, rocks, crags, and cliffs.2 In the first instance this emphasis on the significance of underground fire needs, of course, to be understood in the context of the remarkable volcanic phenomena both on and in the neighbourhood of Empedocles’ home island of Sicily. We have already seen (Ch. 3) how interested in these phenomena Empedocles was, and how naturally he incorporated them in his cosmology.
The Phaedo Myth: The Sources
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

As we have seen, at its most basic level the myth at the end of the Phaedo is Sicilian in origin. The next step is to isolate the means by which this mythical material reached Plato—or he reached it. That proves to be no problem. The Phaedo is the most overtly Pythagorean of all his dialogues, in both its ideas and its setting. But nowhere is the debt to Pythagoreanism more evident than in the closing myth. As Plato makes perfectly clear, the ultimate point and purpose of the myth is its eschatology: its message about what happens to the soul after death. On the one hand, there can be no doubting that for the main source of Plato’s eschatological myths in general, and particularly of the eschatology in the Phaedo, we must look to the Pythagoreanism of southern Italy and Sicily. On the other hand, we have already seen that there are no grounds whatever for cutting off the specifically eschatological or other-worldly passages in the Phaedo myth from their ‘physical’ or topographical foundations-while there are sound reasons for refusing to do so. Stating the matter in this way only serves to highlight what should already be becoming obvious: that the coincidence of a Sicilian topography combined with an eschatology of evidently Sicilian or Italian origin is no mere accident.
The Mixing-Bowl
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

Apart from the Descent to Hades by Orpheus of Camarina, and Timocles of Syracuse’s Salvation, there is another Orphic poem worth mentioning in connection with the Phaedo myth-and for two separate reasons. This is a poem called the Krater: a word which originally meant a mixing-bowl used for mixing water and wine, but later acquired its by now more familiar sense through being applied metaphorically to hollows in the earth and volcanic ‘craters’. It will be noted that even in Roman times the original meaning of the word was still very palpable behind the metaphorical usage. We have already found this applied sense of the word in the myth at the end of the Phaedo, and a few brief comments on it will not be out of place.
‘Wise Men and Women’
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

About Zopyrus’ dates we can be fairly specific. Under Diels’s influence the convention has been established of dating him to the period between 400 and 350 BC. This is much too late. To begin with Aristoxenus: a date as late as 350 has been allowed on the basis of the general conclusion that the names recorded in his list of Pythagoreans, as preserved for us by Iamblichus, ‘take us down to the first half of the fourth century’. But we can be more precise than that. According to Aristoxenus the ‘last’ of the Pythagoreans were contemporaries of Plato and Archytas, and active in around 365.
Central Fire
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

From examining the Phaedo myth one point has become clear: the idea of massive fires inside the earth was held not just by Empedocles but also by western Pythagoreans living later on in the fifth century BC. This conclusion, in tum, brings us face to face with one of the most vexed questions in the history of Greek philosophy-the problem of the—Pythagorean ‘central fire’.
The Magus
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

Empedocles’ equation of Hades and fire has turned out to be a key capable of opening many doors. Ideas, themes, and philosophical tendencies which on the surface might seem unrelated or even divergent prove to be linked with each other at a deeper level; apparently unconnected doctrines turn out to derive from a common mythological source. And in tracing these links we repeatedly find ourselves drawn back into the orbit of ancient Pythagoreanism. Often in the modern literature it is emphasized how little we know about Pythagorean ideas before Plato’s time. But on closer analysis one of the major reasons for this lack of knowledge proves to be, very simply, that we have not been looking in the right direction: into the literary, mythological, and geographical substratum underlying the supposedly ‘philosophical’ ideas.
From Sicily to Egypt
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

The ancient Greeks invented a number of different stories about Empedocles’ death. They had him drown, hang himself: it is easy to forget how snide Greek writers could be about the philosophers in whom they claimed to show an interest. However, there is one particular version of his death which stands out from the rest. For one thing, it was by far the most famous of them all; with the inevitable malicious comments and innuendoes it survived down to the end of antiquity. But it also attracted a different kind of attention: already in the first century or two after Empedocles’ lifetime it had become a focus of intense criticism from people who otherwise could hardly agree on anything. For the realist it was too fantastic and romantic. For the romantic it seemed too trivial and ignoble.
The Hero
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

When Empedocles’ biographers presented him as always going around wearing sandals of bronze, they were generalizing falsely from some much more specific data. As so often, they were falling in with the tendency among Greek writers to rationalize and so misinterpret the details of magic, ritual, and myth. Again, when they turned the detail about the discovery of the single bronze sandal-symbol of Hecate, magical sign of the ability to descend to the underworld-into a proof that Empedocles was a fraud they either did not understand the ritual symbolism or, for the sake of their parody, deliberately chose to ignore it.
Sandals of Bronze and Thighs of Gold
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

IT is time to see just where we stand and start to draw out some of the main implications of the material considered so far. First, there is the question of Empedocles’ leap into Etna. There is no point in denying that he could have died by jumping into the volcano: he could have. But by now it should be clear that whether or not he did so is more or less immaterial. What is important is that, interpreted rightly, the legend introduces us to a world of esoteric ideas and practices characteristic of certain mystical circles in southern Italy and Sicily. Paradoxically, Empedocles’ unique talents and special charisma made him a perfect vehicle for conveying themes and possibilities which were by no means restricted in scope or relevance to one individual alone.
‘Conceal My Words in Your Breast’
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

Even though it is possible to guess fairly safely at who she was, the identity of Empedocles’ Nestis remains—significantly enough—shrouded in uncertainty. And yet, Nestis apart, we have already seen the need to situate Empedocles’ teaching about his elements in the context of Sicilian mythology, mystery, and magic: that is, to understand his teaching in an initiatory context. We have also seen that it is not just a question of generously making allowances for this mythical and magical background by portraying it as some kind of primitive mire which Empedocles tried, but ultimately failed, to rise out of in his aspiration to become a rational philosopher. On the contrary, the very framework as well as the purpose of Empedocles’ poetry was clearly initiatory and magical. We are faced here with a choice of either making Empedocles a pawn in the simplistic game of interpreting early ancient philosophy as a one-directional evolution from so-called ‘irrationality’ to ‘rationality’, from mythos to logos; or of attempting to understand him in his own context and on his own terms. This second option is for the historian and scholar; the first is for the fiction-writer or speculative philosopher.
From Empedocles to the Sufis: ‘The Pythagorean Leaven’
Authors: Kingsley Peter
Published: November 2023

At first sight it may seem astonishing that mysteries, embedded in riddling secrecy, and philosophy, which on the contrary raises—or at any rate should raise—everything into the clear light of rationality, could have anything at all to do with each other. So begins a recent paper on the overlap between philosophy and mysteries in the ancient world. Its author goes on to acknowledge the significance as well as the existence of this overlap in the period of late antiquity, and traces the origins of such an apparently paradoxical phenomenon back to one particular person: Plato. Yet again one finds Plato endowed with the attributes of a Prometheus or Palamedes: if a late antique idea or phenomenon can be traced back to him, then he must have originated it.
The Philosopher and his Teaching
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

Introduction

An introductory address, which once headed the written version of the Orations (see Introduction, p. lix), and could have been delivered viva voce on any number of separate occasions. In it, Maximus seeks to persuade his audience both that they need philosophical instruction, and that he is the man to provide it. §§ r- 5 develop the first point: philosophical teaching is essential to bring order and stability into the confusion of human life, by directing humanity to the only truly satisfying and worthwhile goal (Virtue); this goal is both practically attainable, and endorsed by the best Greek traditions; in order to realize it, philosophical teaching itself will take many different forms, and present itself on many different occasions. An element of implicit self-advertisement and self-justification is already detectable in this: ‘do not look for your philosophical instruction only in a narrowly defined set of situations; occasions like this have their part to play too’. In § § 6-ro the advertisement becomes open and direct, as Maximus simultaneously boasts of his oratorical skill and challenges his audience to react to his moral message instead. At the same time he seeks to reassure them that his and their (high) social status is no barrier to claiming the title ‘philosopher’: impressions to the contrary spring from an ignorant misreading of the historical record (§ § 9-ro).
Socrates’ Daimonion
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

Introduction

After two lectures devoted to the powers and experiences of the embodied soul, the focus now shifts to the nature and role of those disembodied souls known to philosophical cosmology as daimones. The particular case of Socrates’ famous divine sign (daimonion) provides the point of entry, as his erotic experience will to the discussion of Love in Orr. 18-21, but the bulk of the discussion is more general. § § 1 -6 of Or. 8 constitute a leisurely introduction, arguing that the ubiquity of daimonic powers, in the operation of oracles and in Homer’s poetry, ought to make Socrates’ individual daimonion entirely unproblematic, provided that one has a clear conception of the daimonic to start with. The remainder of Or. 8 (§ § 7-8) begins the business of providing such a conception by sketching the general providential role of daimones, and the features of human life that make that role necessary. This is explicitly marked as preliminary (§ 7 init.); it is left for Or. 9 to provide hard details of the daimones’ nature and status.
Plato on God
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

Introduction

This lecture continues the cosmological-theological theme of Orr. 2 and 5-10; the thematic connections with 8-9 (the cosmic hierarchy) and 10 (the human soul’s ascent to knowledge of transcendent realities) are particularly close. The core of the lecture (§§ 7-12) is an exposition of the (Middle) Platonic doctrine of God as supreme, transcendent Intellect and the incorporeal source of all Beauty, combined with an exhortation to the listener-reader to cultivate such awareness of his nature as he can. This is preceded in §§ 1-6 by an elaborate prologue, in which Maximus establishes first the propriety of consulting expositions of Platonic doctrine, rather than simply referring back to the works of the Master himself, and then—as propaedeutic to specifically Platonic theology— the universality of belief in a supreme and unitary God of some kind or another. Considerable care is taken to ensure overall symmetry and thematic coherence between and within the two main divisions of the lecture. The whole is framed by references to God and his subordinate daimones; the prologue by images for Plato’s pre-eminence as a source of enlightenment (sun, goldmine, oracular spokesman). Moreover, the relationship depicted in §§ 7-12, between God the source and the beauty and order of the physical world deriving from him, parallels that implied in § 1 to hold between Plato and his (inferior, derivative) interpreters.
Soldier and Farmer
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

This contrasting pair of lectures debates another civic-ethical issue, to do with the kind of people and activities that the good State should contain and encourage. It is thus comparable (though on a less philosophical level) to Orr. 1, 3, 4, 12, 14, 15-16, 17, 18-21, 25, 26, and 37. Or. 23 puts the case for supposing that soldiers are of superior value to farmers, arguing successively from the evidence of Homer’s poetry (§ 1), the histories of the great Greek and barbarian states (§§2-4a), the animal kingdom (§4b), divine mythology (§ 5a), and the myth of the golden age (§ 5b), before carrying its assault to the enemy camp with the observation that farming, far from being an alternative to fighting, is in fact one of its most fertile causes (§§6-7).
The True End of Life: Virtue or Pleasure?
Authors: Trapp M B
Published: November 2023

A sequence of lectures (of the same overall length as Orr. 18-21, but made up of five items, not four) devoted to the question of the Human Good, conceived as a debate between the competing claims of Virtue (perfected Reason) and Pleasure. The whole (allowing for the difference in scale) might be described as Maximus’ De Finibus: Cicero too presents the essential issue as the choice between Virtue and Pleasure (De Fin. 2. 14. 44, 3. 1. 1), and gives a large proportion of his treatise to the exposition and criticism of Epicurean hedonism.
The Creation of Belief
Authors: Bosworth A B
Published: November 2023

The complex process of interaction with the conquered peoples produced more than information. It had a direct impact on Alexander’s view of his kingship and personal divinity. It can, I think, be shown that his staff conveniently reinterpreted local legends and integrated them into Greek mythology. Conversely the native peoples supplied information which they thought would attract the interest and approval of their conquerors. The result was a growing conviction in Alexander’s mind that he was following in the footsteps of Heracles and (still more) Dionysus. This conviction was nurtured by the circumstances of campaigning. What can hardly be over stressed is the cultural isolation of Alexander and his staff, particularly in the period of the Sogdian and Indian campaigns. It was not merely that he was further from the Mediterranean than any western army had ever penetrated, not merely that he was surrounded by culturally alien peoples with whom he could communicate only through interpreters—in some instances relays of interpreters. For long periods he was isolated from his own headquarters and the coterie of Greek intellectuals which had followed him to Central Asia. For weeks or even months his companions were his troops and immediate staff, and the range of perspectives available to him was limited. It would hardly be surprising if his thinking lacked balance and took directions which appear bizarre to modern minds.
Children’s Rights, Children’s Speech and Agamemnon
Authors: Golden Mark
Published: November 2023

In South Africa, as in many other countries, the voting age is 18. Recently however, Nelson Mandela proposed to give 14-year-olds the vote. ‘They say a person under the age of 14 can’t think correctly and make wise choices,’ Mandela told an audience in Natal. ‘We reject that.’ Mandela’s announcement apparently took the rest of the ANC leadership by surprise; the reaction of the National Party government was simply hostile. ‘If 14-year olds can vote, one may as well ask why not 12-year-olds or even 10-year olds,’ said Home Affairs Minister Danie Schutte. The idea, he went on, would not receive serious consideration in any civilized country.1 We need not linger over Schutte’s response. After all, his civilized country long resisted recognizing the democratic rights of even adult South Africans unless their skins were white, but was willing to treat demonstrators as young as 8 the same as grown-ups: police shot them too. And in fact, there are nation<s whose citizens vote before 18. North Koreans may vote at 17, Nicaraguans at 16. In Afghanistan, at least before the establishment of an Islamic Republic in April 1992, voting was restricted to males only, between 15 and 50 years of age.
Introduction: Analysing Chronicles
Authors: Croke Brian
Published: November 2023

In the early 520s, before Justinian began his long tenure of the Roman throne, one of his officials was a fellow-Illyrian named Marcellinus. He has become better known as Count Marcellinus or Marcellinus comes. Resident in the imperial capital of Constantinople, Marcellinus wrote a number of works on historical and topographical subjects. All that survives, however, is his chronicle. It was produced as a continuation of the chronicle of Jerome from AD 379 to the death of the emperor Anastasius in 518, was later updated to 534 in the reign of Justinian and was subsequently continued by others. The chronicle has always been considered a significant historical record for the period it covers, especially the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Yet this study is the first extensive treatment of Marcellinus and his chronicle. As such, it aims to set the chronicler and his work in their full contemporary and historiographical context.’ At the same time, this study both offers a model for investigating and evaluating the late antique chronicles in general, and also provides the basis for a more wide-ranging analysis of the nature and function of chronicles as a mode of both interpreting and presenting the past.
Marcellinus and Constantinople
Authors: Croke Brian
Published: November 2023

Marcellinus came to Constantinople from his native Illyricum around the turn of the sixth century and spent the rest of his life in the capital and wrote his chronicle originally for the Illyrian community there. Constantinople was the city and the society he knew best. Indeed, he was sufficiently familiar with the imperial capital to write a detailed description of the city (Inst. 1. 25. r). Although his two volumes on Constantinople do not survive there is an abundance of material in his chronicle to bear witness to his observation of, and reaction to, the physical, social, and mental environment of the capital. The world of Marcellinus is essentially that of the Byzantine chronicle tradition as we see it the latter part of the chronicle of his contemporary John Malalas, for example; that is to say, the city and life of Constantinople itself largely circumscribe the focus of the chronicler, who devotes a disproportionate amount of space to the imperial capital. This chapter, like that on Illyricum (Chapter 2), is based on the conviction that Marcellinus’ information on Constantinople (and its role in the story which the chronicle unfolds) can only be properly understood in its broader contemporary context. The general approach is therefore to take a cross-section view of the city in the time of Marcellinus. Unfortunately, most extant accounts describe Constantinople as it was seen at a particular later time. For the fifth and early sixth century no first-hand account of the ‘patriographer’ type survives, except for Hesychius’ description of the foundation of the city.1 Instead, there is only the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae which reflects the city of the 430s although it was once thought to be the work of Marcellinus him self.
Constructing the Chronicle
Authors: Croke Brian
Published: November 2023

The chronicle of Marcellinus, like any similar work, represents its author’s attempt to constitute a picture of the past which is meaningful for his contemporaries. In producing his chronicle Marcellinus read earlier historiographical texts such as Orosius’ History from his present perspective and purpose. Out of the documents which he chose to use, and guided by both the dictates of the genre and the expectations of the audience at which he was aiming, Marcellinus configured and formatted his story. For the most part, he does not so much engage directly with the past as indirectly through the records to which he had access. The chronicle is a textually mediated outline account of events from 379 to 534, as they were commonly understood at the time of writing, and his picture of the previous 140 years is captured in the language of his day. Consequently, to view, utilize or judge the chronicle as merely a mine of facts for modern researchers is to misconstrue it seriously. The chronicle is essentially a literary text, constructed for a particular purpose and for a particular audience so it lends itself to all the different ways a text can be analysed; that is to say, one can investigate its language and style as well as its method of construction and its sources of information. This chapter addresses the formal textual aspects of the chronicle as another means of illuminating the nature of the document, its author and its audience. The discussion proceeds from identifying the sources of information used by Marcellinus in the chronicle to analysing how the chronicle was assembled from those sources. In addition, it attempts to clarify the nature and development of the putative (and controversial) ‘City Chronicle’ of Constantinople, long acknowledged as one of the chronicle’s main sources of information.
Chreia and Demand: Nicomachean Ethics, 5. 5
Authors: Meikle Scott
Published: November 2023

The most favoured of the economic interpretations of Aristotle portrays him as the father of subjective, utilitarian, or neoclassical value-theory. The utilitarian interpretation itself will be dealt with in Chapter 6, but its main textual basis, the role of chreia in Aristotle’s analysis, must be dealt with here because it depends on the interpretation of the text of NE 5. 5, which the previous chapter has been concerned with.
Exchange: Politics, 1
Authors: Meikle Scott
Published: November 2023

In Politics l. 9 Aristotle looks at exchange in a different way. On the face of it he seems to be listing and distinguishing different forms of exchange: barter, or exchange without money; the use of money in exchange as a way of getting something that is needed; buying and selling to make money; and usury, or the lending of money at interest. This discussion of the types of exchange is usually treated as if it were a series of discrete discussions lacking proper theoretical cohesion. This is certainly wrong, because there is a strong theoretical unity in the chapter. Alternatively, if any kind of unity is perceived, it is thought to be a unity brought about solely by Aristotle’s ethical concerns, and particularly by his concern with what is natural and unnatural. There is an important element of truth in this, but it cannot be clearly expressed, or the proper place of Aristotle’s overriding ethical concerns rightly identified, unless the logic and structure of his analysis of exchange are correctly grasped in the first place.
Classics m Nineteenth-Century England: Nature and Origins
Authors: Stray Christopher
Published: November 2023

In this richly evocative word-picture, Poe drew on his classical reading to capture the idealized memory of a woman he had loved, Mrs Jane Stanard, who had died in 1824. The classical references begin with the first word of the poem and multiply in its second stanza. The final stanza portrays Helen standing at her window, ‘statue-like’, carrying a lamp. We may think her agate lamp is the beacon which guides the ‘weary, way-worn wanderer’ to safety, but in the closing lines ‘Helen’ becomes ‘Psyche’ (and thus the writer, by implication, is Eros, for whom Psyche searched at night with a lamp). The ending is in accord with Poe’s account of poetic inspiration: ‘the Poet ... recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul ... he feels it in the beauty of woman ... but above all ... he kneels to it, he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty of her love.’
Competition, Challenge, and the Erosion of Classical Authority
Authors: Stray Christopher
Published: November 2023

This chapter surveys a range of challenges to the authority of classics which were gathering strength in the mid-Victorian decades. Victorian classics, as we have seen, was a high-status formation situated in a social and cultural market relatively unregulated by the State and manned by amateur gentlemen; but by 1870 a range of challenges had begun to erode its authority both as a cultural exemplar and as an elite social formation. Direct social challenges were made to its domination of high-status curricula; the market of cultural goods began to be affected by State intervention; and as a result of both these processes, a classical near-monopoly gave way to curricular pluralism.
Culture and Specialization m Cambridge
Authors: Stray Christopher
Published: November 2023

The emergent outlines of academic organization brought with them problems as well as opportunities. The declining numbers of fellows leaving colleges for preferment to church livings created blockages in the system. Many of the new fellowships lasted only six years, after which, if no permanent post was available, incumbents were obliged to leave. This was the fate in the 1880s of J. W. Headlam and W. H. D. Rouse, who after several short-term jobs became an HMI and a headmaster respectively. J. C. Stobart, who held a three-year lectureship at Trinity College Cambridge while writing his books on Greece and Rome, afterwards became an HMI and ended up as first Director of Education for the BBC. J. W. Mackail went straight from Balliol to the Education Office and stayed there until his retirement in 1919 from what had become the Board of Education.
Class, Schools and the State, 1870–1902
Authors: Stray Christopher
Published: November 2023

In this chapter I turn from the universities to the secondary schools. The period opens with Forster’s Act of 1870, which introduced State elementary schooling (free after 1891), and ends with Balfour’s Act of 1902, which extended the principle into secondary education. It was this intervention of the State in secondary schooling which prompted the organized defence of classics, conducted by the Classical Association, which is dealt with in Chapter 9. The two previous chapters were concerned with institutional and ideological changes in the relatively coherent and bounded arenas of Oxford and (especially) Cambridge. With the schools, we are dealing with a more fluid and larger-scale social and political context. The relationships on which I concentrate in this chapter are those of State intervention, class distinction, and curricular content. The educational legislation of this period was powerfully affected by the contemporary advance of social incorporation through which the working classes were admitted to civil society. In a straight-forward sense, Forster’s Act of 1870 was a response to the enlargement of the franchise in 1867: in Robert Lowe’s much-quoted words, ‘It will be absolutely necessary to teach our future masters to learn their letters.’
Redefining the Classical: Varieties of Hellenism and the Rise of Discipline
Authors: Stray Christopher
Published: November 2023

This chapter deals with the ideological reformulations produced in response to the changes and challenges described in the last three chapters. Two general points need to be made about the reworking of such idealistic formulations. The first is that the challenges which provoked them were very often made within social and institutional arenas, and were in fact challenges to specific institutional variants of classics. Reformulated notions of the classical were often the products of situated strategies which were linked not only to the symbolic field and its conflicts and competition, but also to the defence of jobs, hierarchies, and institutional status; in short, to social interests. The second point is a related one: that ‘ideal’ formulations—cultural absolutes detached from the everyday world of action and interest—are in fact often the product of precisely such action and interest. The detachment of the absolute reflects the detached status of absolutism. Thus, as we have seen already, the ‘free play of the critical intellect’ advocated by Arnold became, in the hands of the humanistic civil servants of the later Victorian decades, a crucial legitimating device for the dominance of their own Oxbridge culture over the ‘crabbed routine’ of municipal officialdom. This ‘freedom’ went with a generalizing authority which had very specific social and institutional roots.
Ancestors at the Funeral: The Pompa Funebris
Authors: Flower Harriet I
Published: November 2023

THE primary use of the imagines, which it is the concern of this chapter to examine, was in the funeral procession of a Roman office-holder. Their raison d’ être was to allow the ancestors to be represented as living and breathing Roman magistrates at the height of their careers, who had reappeared in the city to accompany their newly-dead descendant on his last journey. On this occasion they welcomed and received him as one of their number.1 Polybius (6. 53−4 = T61) is our main source for the Roman funeral. For him the masks of the ancestors are the most characteristic and important part of the funeral spectacle. He repeatedly stresses the realism of the masks themselves and the dramatic quality of the ancestors appearing as magistrates in procession. Their parade was the largest group of magistrates, accompanied by their symbols of office and rank, which a Roman citizen was ever likely to see.
Conclusions
Authors: Flower Harriet I
Published: November 2023

THE present study has attempted to explore the role played by traditional imagines which contributed to the social standing and influence of office-holding families. A striking feature of the Roman republican constitution was the consistency with which certain leading families could be elected to the highest magisterial offices over several generations. Any student of Roman life must try to account for this pattern, which shaped the character of Roman oligarchy. In a basic sense political power depended on a series of election victories, which defined rank and precedence within the nobility of office. These victories, in turn, were influenced by the impression of a candidate’s family created by the masks of his ancestors, which explained and justified his election to Roman citizens of all social levels.