This article is about the rules of succession in Bronze Age Greece as reflected in Greek tradition. The question as to whether or not the figures dealt with by this tradition are historical is of little relevance to the present discussion: what I seek to recover is not the history of one royal house or another but rather the recurring patterns according to which the members of these houses – no matter whether real or fictitious – were expected to behave (...) when it came to the question of accession to the throne and transmission of the kingship to their successors. (shrink)

The starting point of this brief discussion is the emendation in line 782 of Aeschylus' Septem proposed by M.L. West in his 1990 Teubner edition. In the fifth strophe of the second stasimon, the chorus recollects the misfortunes that struck Oedipus when he finally discovered the truth about his marriage. This severely corrupt passage, whose original meaning was lost at an early stage of transmission, runs as follows:ἐπεὶ δ' ἀρτίϕρων ἐγένετο [στρ. ε]μέλεος ἀθλίων γάμων,ἐπ' ἄλγει δυσϕορῶν 780μαινομέναι κραδίαιδίδυμα κάκ' ἐτέλεσενπατροϕόνωι (...) χερὶ τῶν†κρεισσοτέκνων δ' ὀμμάτων† ἐπλάγχθη.τέκνοις δ' †ἀραίας† ἐϕῆκεν [ἀντ. ε]ἐπίκοτος τροϕᾶς, αἰαί, 786πικρογλώσσους ἀράς.782 δίδυμ' ἃ West 784 κρεισσοτέκνων M2PKQ1Tr κρείσσω τέκνων rell. κυρσοτέκνων Herm. δ' ὀμμάτων HaQTr δ' ἀπ᾽ ὀμμάτων rell. δωμάτων Schütz χρυσοτέχνων πωμάτων Verrall κρεισσοτέρων γνωμάτων West 785 ἀθλίας Prien ἀρχαίας Wil.But when the miserable man became aware of his wretched marriage, vexed with pain in his frenzied heart, he committed double evil: with his parricidal hand †he wandered from his eyes, dearer than children†. But upon his sons he put bitter-tongued curses, angry on account of his †accursed† sustenance. (shrink)

Since being brought to light in 1853 by Adalbert Kuhn, the fact that the Homeric expressionκλέος ἄφθιτονhas an exact parallel in the Veda has played an extremely important role in formulating the hypothesis that Greek epic poetry is of Indo-European origin. Yet only with Milman Parry's analysis of the formulaic character of Homeric composition did it become possible to test the antiquity ofκλέος ἄφθιτονon the internal grounds of Homeric diction.It is generally agreed that the conservative character of oral composition entails (...) a high degree of correlation between the antiquity of a Homeric expression and its formulaic character. In other words, although not all Homeric formulae are necessarily of ancient origin, it is nevertheless in the formulaic stock of the epic diction that archaic and backward-looking expressions should be sought. Consequently, demonstration thatκλέος ἄφθιτον is a Homeric formula would constitute valuable evidence for its origin in Indo-European heroic poetry. Strangely enough, however, as Parry's analysis won the recognition of scholars,κλέος ἄφθιτονwas identified as a Homeric formula simply because of its agreement with the Vedicśráva ákṣitam. Yet examination ofκλέος ἄφθιτονfrom the internal standpoint of the Greek epic casts serious doubts on the formulaic and traditional character of this Homeric expression. (shrink)

Much effort has been invested by scholars in defining the specific character of the Homeric values as against those that obtained at later periods of Greek history. The distinction between the ‘shame-culture’ and the ‘guilt-culture’ introduced by E. R. Dodds, and that between the ‘competitive’ and the ‘cooperative’ values advocated by A. W. H. Adkins, are among the more influential ones. Although Adkins's taxonomy encountered some acute criticism, notably from A. A. Long, it has become generally adopted both in the (...) scholarly literature and in general philosophical discussions of Greek ethics. Objections to Adkins's approach have mainly concentrated on demonstrating that his denial of the cooperative values to Homer is untenable on general grounds and is not supported by Homeric evidence. Characteristically, Adkins's thesis concerning the centrality to Homer's ethics of the so-called ‘competitive values‘ has never received similar attention, probably owing to the fact that this is the point at which his picture of the Homeric society concurs with the influential reconstructions by W Jaeger and M. I. Finley. The present study oftimēandaretē, generally held to be the two competitive values central to the Homeric poems, purports to address this issue. (shrink)

The list of Helen's suitors in the Catalogue of Women, a late epic poem attributed to Hesiod, is directly related to the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2, in that it is in fact a list of future participants in the Trojan war. That the two catalogues treat the same traditional material is demonstrated above all by their agreement on minor personages: not only the protagonists of the Trojan saga, but also such obscure figures as Podarces of Phylace, Elephenor of (...) Euboea, Thoas of Aetolia, or Menestheus of Athens feature in both Homer and Hesiod, and are characterized by basically the same traditional expressions. But, though the Hesiodic catalogue is sometimes used as evidence that a given Homeric personage belongs to the authentic tradition,3 it seems that the exegetic potential of this poem has not yet been exploited in full. As I hope to show, the Catalogue of Women throws light on one of the most controversial issues in Homeric scholarship, that of the representation of Athens and Salamis in the Catalogue of Ships. (shrink)

Since being brought to light in 1853 by Adalbert Kuhn, the fact that the Homeric expression κλέος φθιτον has an exact parallel in the Veda has played an extremely important role in formulating the hypothesis that Greek epic poetry is of Indo-European origin. Yet only with Milman Parry's analysis of the formulaic character of Homeric composition did it become possible to test the antiquity of κλέος φθιτον on the internal grounds of Homeric diction. It is generally agreed that the conservative (...) character of oral composition entails a high degree of correlation between the antiquity of a Homeric expression and its formulaic character. In other words, although not all Homeric formulae are necessarily of ancient origin, it is nevertheless in the formulaic stock of the epic diction that archaic and backward-looking expressions should be sought. Consequently, demonstration that κλέος φθιτον is a Homeric formula would constitute valuable evidence for its origin in Indo-European heroic poetry. Strangely enough, however, as Parry's analysis won the recognition of scholars, κλέος φθιτον was identified as a Homeric formula simply because of its agreement with the Vedic śráva ákitam. Yet examination of κλέος φθιτον from the internal standpoint of the Greek epic casts serious doubts on the formulaic and traditional character of this Homeric expression. (shrink)

Plato’s Symposium has no less than three dramatic dates: its narrative frame is placed in 401 BCE; Agathon’s dinner party is envisaged as having occurred in 416; finally, Plato makes Socrates meet Diotima in 440 BCE. I will argue that the multi-level chronology of the Symposium should be approached along the lines of Socrates’ intellectual history as placed against the background of Greek ideas of age classes. As a result, the Symposiumfunctions as a retrospective of Socrates’ life, which uses the (...) traditional concept of ages of man to create a paradigm of philosophical life. (shrink)

In _The Gatekeeper: Narrative Voice in Plato’s Dialogues_ Margalit Finkelberg offers the first narratological analysis of all of Plato’s transmitted dialogues. The book explores the dialogues as works of literary fiction, giving special emphasis to the issue of narrative perspective.