This article discusses the rationale of adeia in the fifth-century Athenian legal system. It argues that adeia was designed to grant a temporary suspension of the effect of a law in exceptional circumstances without allowing for any permanent legal change. This article explores the origin of adeia and the relevant ideology underpinning the legal procedure. It provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the legal procedure and analyses the extensive use of adeia for collecting information during the investigation of the profanation of (...) the Mysteries and the mutilation of the herms in 415 BC. This article also discusses the implications of the use of adeia for public investigation and emergency powers in Classical Athens. (shrink)

Amongst the varied literary output of the fifth-century empress Aelia Eudocia is a hexameter paraphrase of the martyrdom of Saints Cyprian and Justina. The opening lines of the poem, which were rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century, describe the conversion of Justina to Christianity through the preaching of a deacon named Praulius. Even as Eudocia remains close to her prose model, she imposes her own interpretation upon the text through subtle variation and careful choice of poetic vocabulary. (...) In her version, she depicts the preacher Praulius as a Christian counterpart to the traditional singer of hexameter poetry, linked also to her own poetic activity. This description of Praulius’ transformational preaching, prominently placed at the outset of the poem, constitutes another programmatic passage in late antique Christian verse. (shrink)

Modern studies have emphasized the contradictory nature of the ancient traditions concerning the aftermath of the Battle of Sepeia, in which the Argive army was destroyed by the Spartans. This article tackles the most significant point of agreement in these traditions: the theme of Argive ‘oligandry’, the demographic crisis caused by the battle. An analysis conducted on the basis of Ansley J. Coale and Paul Demeny’s Model Life Tables shows that the real impact of the demographic crisis was felt in (...) the age structure of Argos’ population rather than in the sheer size of its citizen body. Consequently, this article argues that the political ramifications of the battle originated not from the demographic crisis alleged by the tradition, but from the state of powerlessness and regional isolation into which Argos was plunged by the defeat of 494. This argument, which supports a reappraisal of Plutarch’s version of Argos’ response to Sepeia, also helps explain why Argos embraced a markedly aggressive foreign policy towards the towns of the plain in the following decades. (shrink)

In this paper, I address one characteristic of Classical Greek votive reliefs that has troubled scholars: the size of the gods. The reliefs depict mortal worshippers approaching gods and goddesses who are, almost invariably, larger in stature than the mortals. Scholars have generally explained the difference in scale to be art historical, rather than theological, in significance. Either the larger scale is a visual expression of the hierarchical superiority of the gods or the images of the gods represent over-life-size statues. (...) In addition, it is widely accepted that votive reliefs are products of unsophisticated religious belief, ignorant of the conceptualization of an imperceptible, non-corporeal deity in Classical philosophy. In this paper, I accept the artistic proposition of votive reliefs at face value: in this genre, the gods are living, visible, material bodies, most often anthropomorphic in form and always larger in magnitude than mortals. I identify one significant parallel for this interpretation within Greek and Roman thought, namely, the conception of gods within the materialist theology developed by the late Classical writer Epicurus and, in part at least, by the fifth-century BC writer Demokritos. In the writings of the Epicureans and, it appears, the atomists, as in the votive reliefs, gods are human in form, very beautiful, self-sufficient, larger than humans in size and known by mortals through visual perception. (shrink)

Roman patronage was known to the Greeks in various contexts even in the period of the Third Macedonian War. The reference to it in an Abderan decree can be dated to the 160s BC as part of this process. Although this date is chronologically isolated from the other instances of the term πάτρων in Greek inscriptions, in the light of our historical sources as a whole it is reasonable to treat Syll.3 656 as evidence of how the Greeks were gradually (...) trying to respond to Roman culture and institutions through changes in their own language and terminology even before the period when Rome ruled them directly. Supplementary material is available online and comprises two appendices. (shrink)

This article offers a new, ironic reading of the false narrative of Orestes’ chariot accident in Sophocles’ Electra. It argues that the speech exploits an established connection between the ancestral evils of the Atreids and the thematic nexus of horses, chariot racing and disaster to evoke Orestes’ flight from the Erinyes following the matricide. Focusing on the language and structure of the narrative as well as drawing on other versions of the story, the article demonstrates, in contrast to previous readings, (...) that the speech is much more than an over-elaborate means to an end. Instead, in an ominous and profoundly ironic twist, the Paedagogus’ fictional narrative of the chariot race offers a possible vision of the trials awaiting the real Orestes. The matricide and murder, far from ending the ancestral woes of the Atreids, may well bring about Orestes’ pursuit by the Erinyes. (shrink)

Community (κοινωνία) is one of the most fundamental and distinctive concepts in Aristotle’s writings on human action; the political species of community (alongside spousal community, household community, and the community of friendship) is probably the most complicated iteration of the concept. Thus, scholars of Aristotle’s Politics (the primary audience of the volume under review) are much indebted to the publication of Riesbeck’s revised doctoral dissertation (University of Texas, Austin, 2012) that successfully and persuasively elucidates political community by showing both its (...) likenesses and differences from the other forms of community Aristotle analyzes. The question that Riesbeck uses to explore these concepts in Aristotle’s writings: Is Aristotle’s praise for the constitution (πολιτεία) of kingship (which in places the Politics identifies as the ‘best constitution’ [(Pol. 3.17.1288a15-19, 28-29]) philosophically compatible with his theory of community and commonality? (shrink)

The Iberian archaeological record is particularly rich in asynchronous assemblages including Athenian pots that predate the other items by a couple of decades or even a few centuries. Recent scholarship on keimëlia, or ‘curated objects’ in modern parlance, has shown the potential of such objects to investigate questions of identity, agency and history-making among the receiving communities, but also to shed light on the role of Athenian pottery among them. This article analyses this phenomenon within the Iberian peninsula, focusing on (...) drinking cups, both black-gloss with inset lip and red-figure type B cups. Using case studies from necropoleis and settlements of the southeast and east of the peninsula, the article explores the reasons and meaning of this consumption practice. It is argued that the occurrence of ‘heirloom’ vases in Iberian tombs and their extraordinary survival in some settlements is the result of a conscious and deliberate choice indicating the existence of mechanisms of social distinction based on a diacritical use of material culture. It is further argued that different motivations might lie behind their delayed deposition: when the chronological gap between production and disposal dates is small, one or two human generations, curated Athenian vases worked similarly to non-curated ones, being emblematic of economic success, social affiliations and political rank. But when the interval is longer, Athenian pots became symbols of ancestry and elite status, possibly acquiring the same legitimizing role earlier bestowed upon Orientalizing artefacts. Supplementary material is available online and comprises a catalogue of case-study objects. (shrink)

While Greeks called the ecstatic musical mode ‘Phrygian’, there is no evidence of high-arousal musical performances in Phrygia, and the musical characteristics of this mode were distinctively Greek. The image of wide-ranging excited celebrations practised in Phrygia seems to have existed only in the imagination of the Greeks and Romans. This paper suggests that the uneasiness felt by some Greeks facing high-arousal cults was assuaged by attributing them foreign origin, which was often fictitious. By culturally dissociating themselves from the ecstatic (...) practices, the Greeks resolved the cognitive inconsistency between their self-perception as citizens of the decorous civilized world and their surrender to the irresistible allure of high-arousal cults and music. These false attitudes allowed cognitive consonance and attained the status of indubitable truth. Upheld throughout antiquity, they persuaded many modern scholars, who still mistakenly consider the Phrygian musical mode as an Oriental borrowing. (shrink)

This paper addresses the following questions about Plato’s concept of ‘history’: is there a ‘philosophy of history’ in Plato’s thought?; if this concept exists, do the dialogues lay out a single, cohesive understanding of ‘history’ or does it vary from text to text?; how does Plato understand the word ‘history’? This inquiry also addresses the role of ‘progress’ in some of the main Platonic dialogues. An in-depth analysis of these texts can also help us find a solution to the problem (...) of the end of ‘history’, when a civilization either physically collapses or morally decays. I argue that Plato’s ‘philosophy of history’ is not necessarily Sisyphean, but that it attempts to work out how to avoid the entropic decay of civilization and to preserve cultural – almost ‘genetic’ – ‘memory’ in order to counter the danger of cyclical regression. (shrink)

Interpretations of metal graters and pottery tripod bowls as Leitfossils of a trans-Mediterranean ‘orientalizing’ culture of spiced-wine consumption have of late become a staple of scholarship on sympotic banqueting, shaping our perception of ancient wine-drinking and its role in cross-cultural interaction in the first half of the first millennium BC. Yet a closer look at the evidence for spiced wine and the use of graters casts serious doubt on assumptions of a widespread practice of adding ‘spices’ to wine during the (...) Greek symposion and of the use of graters or tripod grinding bowls for such a purpose in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. A more plausible scenario, it is argued, arises from the well-attested association of graters with cheese and other primarily culinary commodities. It sees the grater’s prime function and symbolic significance shift from a use in Early Iron Age ‘Homeric’ hospitality to becoming a tool in the increasingly complex cuisines associated with the Archaic and Classical banquet – an indicator of evolving Mediterranean commensality with no less of an international horizon, but a commensality that involved interaction and shared consumption beyond the narrowly sympotic. (shrink)

This paper uses a textual decision at Iliad 9.394 to argue for irregularity as a functional and meaningful principle in the constitution of the Homeric text. In contrast to almost all recent major editions, I argue that the ‘irregular’ MSS γαμέσσεται should be preferred to the Aristarchaean conjecture γε μάσσεται. Aristarchus’ widely adopted emendation, I suggest, is the product of a drive towards standardization that is still operative in Homeric text-critical practice. This paper opposes that standardization with the evidence of (...) ancient, perhaps pre-Alexandrian, responses to Iliad 9.394, in which the ‘irregularity’ of γαμέσσεται is embraced as an interpretive opportunity. The formal disruptions of γαμέσσεται, I propose, can be understood by locating them both within the immediate context of Iliad 9 and within the wider thematics of irregularity that mark the character of Achilles. This paper thus attempts to reframe our approach to the role of irregularity in the Iliad as an integral feature of meaning rather than grounds for suspecting the integrity of the text. (shrink)