Abstract The article explores how Plutarch uses Dionysiac mythology in The Life of Alexander (2-3) to portray Alexander as the archetype of Neos Dionysos —an ideal ruler destined for universal dominion. Allusions to Theban, Orphic, and Cybele-associated myths surrounding Dionysus’ birth appear in the narrative of Alexander’s own birth, forming a mythological subtext alongside historical fact. This subtext, the article argues, allows readers to interpret Alexander through a symbolic lens—not as the literal son of Zeus, but as the embodiment of a model of kingship inspired by Dionysus, who in antiquity was seen as a triumphant leader bringing civilisation to the world’s remotest regions. In Plutarch’s view, Alexander emerges as the paradigmatic ideal ruler, whose conquests foreshadow the rise of the Roman Empire. The ephemeral nature of his own empire is presented as a prelude to Rome’s enduring power, rooted in the same Dionysiac ideal.
Abstract This article explores late antique ideas about the collective dimensions of mind and emotion and proposes a new approach to their study, by placing them in dialogue with modern cognitive approaches to group dynamics. Selected homilies of John Chrysostom are used as a case study that offers a valuable intellectual-historical perspective on the collective nature of human cognition. The study shows how Chrysostom encouraged believers to conceive of themselves as members of an interdependent whole (i.e., the Church’s body), united through their faith and life in Christ, communal goals, and a we-mode of thinking and feeling, thus cultivating what might be described as a “collective mind”. It further argues that Chrysostom’s several analogies between ecclesial unity and the functioning of the human body reflects an understanding of co-suffering, sympatheia and love as intersubjective and distributed qualities emerging only within a relational and communal mode of existence.
Abstract This article explores ancient Greek arguments against and in defense of misanthropy. In the Demosthenic first speech Against Stephanus , Plato’s Phaedo , and Diodorus Siculus, misanthropes are criticized for withholding the material and emotional resources that they owe to their fellow human beings. That criticism is answered by Menander’s Dyscolus , ps.-Heraclitus’ seventh letter, and ps.-Hippocrates’ seventeenth letter. The protagonists of these texts insist that misanthropy is the correct affective reaction to the evils endemic to Greek society. Their hatred constitutes a claim that societal practices such as warfare, retributive justice, and slavery are ethical problems for every individual. Misanthropes reconceptualize these practices as the self-defeating, self-contradictory actions of humanity as a collective agent. In this sense, misanthropy achieves a distinctive moral critique by regarding humanity holistically, from an outsider’s standpoint. The misanthropic perspective is therefore a valuable complement to cosmopolitanism, which universalizes the model of community without critiquing its undesirable consequences.
Abstract The article questions the “Gothic” elements and their transformations from one medium to another in archaic and classical Greek culture. It considers some particularities of this narrative in Classical Greek drama, pointing out that the playwrights used the transmediality of these gloomy stories to bridge the spheres of politics, ritual, and culture on a popular level, to make complicated issues accessible to a mass audience, and thus to shape the opinion of the “masses” and in this way to participate in the social formation of reality. The interplay of humour, laughter, and the transmission of knowledge in Old Attic comedy is in focus of this article.
Abstract Archytas of Tarentum was a prominent philosopher of the Classical period from whom regrettably limited genuine material is preserved. The scholarly community accepts only four fragments to be the genuine work of Archytas and regards the vast majority of the Archytean corpus as pseudo-Pythagorean forgeries. In this paper, I challenge this majority view and argue for the Archytean origin of On Law and Justice , five fragments handed down in Stobaeus’ fifth-century CE Anthology . In the course of my demonstration, I produce three compelling textual arguments, overlooked by classical scholarship, suggesting strong agreement with the genuine fragments and testimonia. I also propose an alternative reading for the fragments, according to which On Law and Justice ought to be regarded as a treatise predominantly concerned with moral psychology.
