:No ancient source indicates when the agōnothesia, attested for the first time in 307/6 BC, was introduced in Athens. Scholars have long attributed its creation, along with the abolition of the liturgical chorēgia, to the government of Demetrius of Phalerum, motivated by oligarchic ideology and a desire to preserve the wealth of rich citizens. This traditional thesis has recently been challenged, with some scholars attributing the creation of the agōnothesia to the restored democratic government of 307 BC and others to (...) the government of Phocion. A new look at epigraphical and literary documents hitherto neglected or imperfectly understood allows the authors to establish that the liturgical chorēgia disappeared at the beginning of the government of Demetrius of Phalerum, around 316 BC. The institution of the agōnothesia had a precedent in Lycurgan Athens with the new festival of the Amphiaraia of 331 BC. Both measures were in fact consensual and must not be interpreted as strictly oligarchic in inspiration. The creation of the agōnothesia was above all a pragmatic response on Athens’ part to the major changes that occurred in the agonistic world in the late fourth century. (shrink)

This paper reexamines Theophrastus’ Metaphysics 11a18–26, an obscure testimony about Speusippus, the second head of the Platonic Academy. As opposed to the traditional interpretation, which takes this passage as Theophrastus’ polemic against Speusippus’ doctrine of value, I argue that he here dialectically takes advantage of, rather than launches an attack on, the Platonist. Based on this new reading, I further propose a revision and a reassessment of the ‘gloomy metaphysics’ of Speusippus which will shed new light on his ethics.

:This article introduces a new analytical framework, ‘mythographic topography’. This approach recognizes the materiality of mythographic writing as preserved by the manuscript tradition and the significance of the spatial dynamics it produces. Mythographic topography encompasses both the formal properties of textual organization and how these shape the reader’s imaginative experience of space and narrative. As an analytical framework, it involves interrogating a text according to three categories : its arrangement of textual passages, its use of space and its activation of (...) narrative tropes. Using the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis as a case study, we demonstrate how this text requires the reader to consider issues of order, disorder and reordering within a culturally familiar narrative paradigm. (shrink)

:Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca embody a colossal father-son military legacy. Yet their family – the so-called ‘Barcid’ dynasty – has a murky history. Modern scholars have presumed that Hamilcar, the first notable historical figure to bear the name Barkas, received it as a ‘nickname’ meaning ‘lightning’. The rationale is that the name derives from the Phoenician word brq and is thus the equivalent to the Greek epithet Keraunos. There is, however, no evidence in our classical sources, to which exclusively we (...) owe our knowledge of events, supporting this. Furthermore, the name Barca was passed on to Hamilcar’s sons, something suggestive of an inherited family surname. This article submits an alternative to the widely endorsed ‘lightning’ theory. This new perspective explores the possibility that the Barcid dynasty had roots in the city of Barce in Cyrenaica and was a relatively new addition to the Carthaginian aristocracy in the third century BC. Using textual evidence from Polybius, Diodorus and others, this fresh take clarifies other aspects of the Barcid dynasty’s tumultuous history, such as their animosity towards the Carthaginian Council of Elders and their departure to Spain in the 220s. (shrink)

:Anceps is not so free that either a long or a short syllable may be used on equal terms. In fact, some strong tendencies are observed in lyric iambics in tragedy. Long syllable is avoided especially at the final anceps in dimeter/trimeter, for instance. Frequencies are statistically calculated each in turn in various combinations of iambic metra, and irregular occurrences are examined in contexts. In contrast to iambics, anceps tends to be long in D/e. Sophocles employs long anceps more frequently (...) than the other two tragedians because his iambics sometimes verge on D/e. In general, long anceps is used in different ways from short. The effect it brought about would not have been felt unless long anceps was delivered differently from short, that is, at the same length as a true long. (shrink)

:The biography of Anaxagoras, the most brilliant scientist of antiquity, contains many unresolved contradictions, which are best explained as follows. After he ‘predicted’ the fall of the meteorite at Aegospotami in 466, he lived nearby at Lampsacus as the protege of its ruler Themistocles. In 460 Pericles became his patron at Athens, where he lived for the next 30 years. In 431, Pericles was taking part in an expedition to the Peloponnese when the sun was eclipsed; he tried to dispel (...) his helmsman’s fear by covering his face with his cloak, illustrating Anaxagoras’ correct account of eclipses. In 430 he led a second such expedition, which failed badly; its return coincided with the plague. The seer Diopeithes brought in a decree that targeted the ‘atheist’ Anaxagoras by banning astronomy. This enabled Thucydides son of Melesias and Cleon to attack Pericles by prosecuting Anaxagoras, on the ground that Pericles’ impiety had angered the gods, thereby causing the plague. Pericles sent Anaxagoras back to Lampsacus, where he soon died; Pericles was himself deposed and fined, in a first triumph for the Athenian populist reaction against the fifthcentury Enlightenment. (shrink)

:This article studies the inscription IG IV2 1.687, the only evidence for the historian Philip of Pergamon. The subjects considered include the text itself, the appearance of the stone and the layout in imitation of papyrus, the date as evidenced by the lettering, the use of the Ionic dialect and the references to ‘suffering and continuous mutual slaughter’. Finally, it is proposed that Philip may be ‘the historian Philip’ mentioned in a dialogue of Plutarch.

:This article reviews the historical accuracy of the account of the Spartan wedding ceremony in Plutarch’s Vita Lycurgi. It surveys the texts that are usually quoted in support of Plutarch’s account and argues that none offers a relevant parallel. It also suggests a different kind of wedding ceremony for Archaic and Classical Sparta.

:In this paper, I explore the literary aesthetics of Attalid Pergamon, one of the Ptolemies’ fiercest cultural rivals in the Hellenistic period. Traditionally, scholars have reconstructed Pergamene poetry from the city’s grand and monumental sculptural programme, hypothesizing an underlying aesthetic dichotomy between the two kingdoms: Alexandrian ‘refinement’ versus the Pergamene ‘baroque’. In this paper, I critically reassess this view by exploring surviving scraps of Pergamene poetry: an inscribed encomiastic epigram celebrating the Olympic victory of a certain Attalus and an inscribed (...) dedicatory epigram featuring a speaking Satyr. By examining these poems’ sophisticated engagements with the literary past and contemporary scholarship, I challenge the idea of a simple opposition between the two kingdoms. In reality, the art and literature of both political centres display a similar capacity to embrace both the refined and the baroque. In conclusion, I ask how this analysis affects our interpretation of the broader aesthetic landscape of the Hellenistic era and suggest that the literature of both capitals belongs to a larger system of elite poetry which stretched far and wide across the Hellenistic world. (shrink)

:T. Dorandi, who has previously proposed to read the book number included in the end-title of P.Herc. 1669 as a numerical ϝ-shaped digamma, has now advanced the same reading in the subscriptio of P.Oxy. 1176, where the editor princeps and all subsequent editors had unanimously read a stigma before. In this article, I argue not only that both readings are palaeographically untenable, but also that they historically contradict the graphic and functional evolution of digamma within the Greek alphabet. In particular, (...) in both Graeco-Egyptian and Herculaneum papyri, ϝ-shaped digamma is always attested as a merely phonetic element – never as a numeral symbol – whereas stigma, which represents the historical evolution of a variant of Archaic and Classical digamma, is the only form used as a numerical sign. (shrink)

:It has long been suspected that the eponymous heroine of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata was intended to evoke the historical Lysimache, priestess of Athena Polias at the time of the play’s first production. But the reasons for this identification have been relatively little discussed. This paper argues that the Lysistrata engages more closely than has traditionally been assumed with urgent political issues at Athens in late 412 and early 411 BC, in particular with the decision in summer 412 BC to broach the (...) ‘Iron Reserve’ of 1,000 talents set aside at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. A possible intervention of the historical Lysimache in the controversy over the appropriate use of the ‘Iron Reserve’ would help account for various otherwise surprising features of the Lysistrata. (shrink)