Kalos-inscriptions identify historical individuals, gods, heroes, even horses, as objects of amorous attention in Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries bce. Missing from catalogues of kalos names is an inscription on a bell-krater attributed to a painter in the Group of Polygnotos and dated to c. 440-430 bce. This vase, now lost to the art market, shows the Return of Hephaistos and includes the misspelled phrase Kappa Alpha Lambda Omicron Sigma Eta Phi Alpha Rho Sigma Tau Omicron Sigma. In this brief article, I re-present this vase and offer possible avenues for its interpretation. I argue that the vase can contribute to discussions of kalos-inscriptions, the characterization of the god Hephaistos, and the relationship between Athens and Hephaistos in the fifth century BCE.
Urban redevelopment creates winners and losers. The monuments of ancient Rome are visually impressive, but they often overlie residential areas. Many Greek and Latin authors eulogize feats of construction, but others express uneasiness about, even hostility to, such works. While the double-edged sword of urban development in contemporary cities continues to be the focus of intense scrutiny, scholarship on the Roman world predominantly emphasizes the positive aspects of monumental architecture - baths, forums, temples, entertainment complexes. Yet what was the impact of these large structures on the people who actually lived around them? What was the opposition to such projects? Questioning the assumption that 'public' buildings necessarily benefit the 'public', this paper examines the harmful side of building activity in antiquity.
This article traces how changes in the depiction of atimia (loss of honour/citizen rights) in Athenian tragedy provide crucial information for understanding how the actual punishment evolved in the fifth century. Scholarship on the term has long agreed that the archaic personal form of atimia differed from the legal version of the fourth century, but has failed to explain why and when that change occurred. The tragedians' discussion of atimia reveals when the punishment took on its legal aspects and how its scope expanded after the restoration of democracy at Athens, when the Four Hundred were declared traitors and atimoi.
I argue that the scenes featuring Briseis and Xanthus in Iliad 19 are closely parallel. Each features a speech from an unexpected source, previously constructed in the epic not as a character but as a valued possession. The audience's brief access to their fresh perspectives is soon curtailed by the recentring of Achilles' corresponding speech and familiar point of view, and the enslaved woman and the horse are subsequently relegated to their former object status. These scenes form part of a broader pattern as a private counterpart to the public exchanges that constitute the Greek assembly. Together, the paired speeches throughout Book 19 produce a significant accumulation of unresolved tensions that underlie the superficial consensus of action and mark the limitations of Achilles' reintegration into the community. It is this dynamic, I suggest, that unifies the book and defines its primary function in the epic.
In Memoriam Ed. ChamplinIn this article, I argue that fictional stories about the Roman emperor are a fruitful avenue for excavating a multifaceted discourse about the sole ruler of the Roman world, who, in this case, is Tiberius. Edward Champlin, who worked on anecdotes about Tiberius in the last decade or so, attributes these negative impressions of the emperors to the pen of a single author (i.e. M. Servilius Nonianus). This argument, I argue, sells the wider meaning of these stories short. The anecdotes themselves are windows into a wider discourse about how the emperor seemed to his subjects. Fictitious or true, such stories inform imaginations about who Tiberius was seen to be, which make these the stories historically relevant. We must both embrace these stories as relevant historical evidence for how Roman emperors were scrutinized and criticized and recognize them as a crucial part of Roman understandings of who the emperor was.
The article considers unity and its counterpart, digression, as themes within Pindar's own poetry, rather than a 'problem' for criticism to 'solve'. The article considers Pindar's treatment of action, time, and place (the so-called 'Aristotelian unities') alongside the modern critical concept of deixis (temporal, spatial, and person deixis). The property of indexical statements of being centred on a certain person, place, or time ('me', 'here', 'now'; 'him', 'there', 'then') makes them naturally conducive to the creation of centripetal or centrifugal dynamics in a Pindaric ode, according to whether the implied deictic centre is constant or variable. It is argued that an important way of understanding Pindaric unity is as a complex equilibrium and counterpointing of competing and complementary principles of centripetalism and centrifugalism, not only acting within and across the areas of action, time, place, and person, but also observable in Pindar's handling of grammatical, metrical, and thematic structures.
This paper considers the processes that contributed to the creation of an Athenian red-figure rhyton in the form of an Amazon, signed by the potter Sotades, which was excavated in Nubia in 1921. Despite its secure archaeological provenance, the rhyton has not played a significant role in studies of trade or intercultural interaction because its unusual form and iconography - it features images of Persians defeating Greeks in battle - seemingly make it exceptional. Yet these features are best explained as the result of a feedback loop of information between Sotades and his Persian customers, relayed by merchants. This information was distorted, translated, and perhaps even manipulated in the course of transmission, which contributed to the rhyton's unusual appearance. Thus the rhyton does not represent a special circumstance, but rather is the culmination of a sustained period of tenuous yet persistent links between Sotades' workshop in Athens and Persians living in Egypt.
There is a long-standing controversy in Greek History about whether the othismos, or 'push', of the hoplite phalanx mentioned by classical authors was real or metaphorical. Experimental archaeology - structural and finite element analysis with both physical reconstructions and computer modelling (presented non-technically here) - suggests that the archaic Greek hoplite panoply of bell cuirass, Corinthian helmet, and large bowl-shaped shield (aspis), which seems at first to present contradictory design choices, in fact offered important mechanical advantages under compressive force; that cuirass, helmet, and shield were designed or evolved to work together to allow the Greek warrior to survive and fight in a pushing mass of men without being crushed or asphyxiated. The hoplite othismos was, then, real and was presumably practised from the earliest era to which this equipment can be dated, the late eighth century bc.
Inscribed Greek verse epitaphs were produced in relatively high numbers in the city of Rome under the Principate. Although many were made for slaves and freedmen, their use was not confined to them. The individuals who opted to use them made a deliberate choice to emphasize their Greek cultural identity. They may have had several motives, but often the deceased or their (grand)parents had migrated from the eastern parts of the Roman empire to Rome, voluntarily or involuntarily. By presenting themselves as Greek in their language and use of mythological exempla, they claimed the paideia ('education') and culture associated with the Greek literary past. Yet despite the heavy emphasis on Greekness, the epigrams also display an awareness of the Roman context in which they were set up. Greek epigrams formed excellent vehicles to navigate the cultural ambiguities of 'being Greek' in Rome, and this explains why Rome became a major production centre of Greek funerary epigram.
This article offers a reassessment of Varro's treatment of servile flight in his De Re Rustica. It analyses and contextualizes the pervasiveness of juridical echoes of slave runaways in Book 3, in a section on snails and bees. It thus suggests that the topic of slave flight is not neglected by Varro, as previously assumed. Varro presents the tangible prospect of slaves escaping from the estate in animal disguise. By revealing the apparent obscurity with which servile flight is handled by Varro, the article also shows the centrality of this concern in the minds of Roman slave owners - detectable even in a text on the ideal management of agricultural estates, where the topic does not belong.
This paper investigates Herodotus' allusions to democratic tenets dear to fifth-century Athens in Books 7 and 8 and how democracy is there suggested as an actionable possibility for all peoples. The paper also explores what Herodotus might have thought about democracy and how reflecting on it was a means for him to examine his own writing (section II). A discussion of Herodotus' broad meditations on democracy in 7.10, 7.101-3, and 8.140-3 considers their historiographic and practical implications, showing that the Athenian democratic tenets Herodotus may have had as references formed a nucleus from which he elaborated a complex view of democracy, i.e., as a peaceful counterpart to imperialism (section III). Section IV examines some trade-offs and implications one may derive from the intertwining of allusions to democracy and the writing of history. The paper's chief conclusions are summarized in section V: that the use of allusions allows Herodotus to discuss constituent parts of a democracy, not only those specific to the Athenian democracy, but also those appropriate to all possible forms of democracy.
This article investigates the curious motley in Plato's Statesman (291a-b) as a chorus of predators that threaten the statesman's singular identity to govern. It identifies those quasi animals and hybrids - lions, centaurs, satyrs, and - for the first time scientifically - octopuses. It also unmasks them by literary criticism and linguistic scholarship as guises of Odysseus, the wily arch-deceiver of the Homeric epics. It discovers their choral leader as the 'supreme wizard', the Archon Basileus, the king-priest by lot who supervised the Athenian religious festivals and personally appointed Plato a chorus master. By casting the Archon Basileus as a 'magician' amid the seers and priests, Plato assesses his traditional role as deceiving the populace. The motley and its leader embody Plato's distinction between mere appearances and the defined reality of the statesman. The article concludes that the motley was Plato's clever ploy to unmask sophists by sophistry.
The passage 10.185-8 in the Aeneid raises two difficult issues, which have not been satisfactorily resolved so far. The first issue is textual and concerns the word Cinyras/Cunarus in 185. The second vexed issue concerns the meaning of crimen amor vestrum in 188. The present paper summarizes the main discussions on this passage and tries to offer a new interpretation to it.
This paper situates Ptolemaeus Chennus’ treatment of Alexander the Great in the Kainē Historia within the miscellany tradition, and demonstrates how he engages directly in the discourse of his day concerning Alexander. The Alexander anecdotes furthermore reveal the parodic nature of the text: rather than to inform those seeking knowledge as the author claims in the preface, the Kainē Historia provides an opportunity for the already erudite reader to flaunt their own pre-existing knowledge that is necessary to unlock the jokes that sit at the heart of each anecdote. Consequently, the Alexander anecdotes should be understood as a means through which Ptolemy mocks not only the miscellany genre, but also the obstruse knowledge contained therein and the role it played in the performance of paideia .
Recent archaeological discoveries, as well as new readings of the epic, suggest that the poet of the Iliad was well aware of hero cult. The funeral of Patroklos in Iliad 23 has long been recognized as also representing the funeral of Achilles. But moving away from Neoanalysis and Neo-neoanalysis, I argue that the rituals Achilles performs on behalf of his friend point to the future establishment of Achilles’ own cult that will eternally link his name to that of Patroklos. Each action Achilles performs on behalf of his friend offers a blueprint or a script for the rituals intended to constitute the dromena of Achilles’ future cult. While no actual cult of Achilles may have followed this scenario, the Homeric audience would have understood its components – mourning, feasting, ritual impurity, hair offerings, holocausts, and funeral games – as an aition , a ritual foundation, inaugurating Achilles’ cult.
‘There is no well-known individual in all Greek mythology except Alcestis [original emphasis] who dies and is returned to human life without cosmic repercussions which are soon remedied’ (John Heath). The ineluctability of death is not just a feature of Greek myth in general but is also one of the most prominent themes in Euripides’ version of the story in his play Alcestis (438 bc ). A further problem is that Greek tragedy is a basically realistic genre which is not hospitable to violations of the laws of nature. Euripides thus set himself a remarkable challenge in Alcestis , to present an event which violates a law of nature which is so unbreakable that it is on the whole observed throughout Greek mythology as well as being repeatedly affirmed in the play. This article will examine how he succeeds in doing so in a way which is dramatically convincing.
Taking its start from an argument of H. S. Versnel, that Greek expressions of disbelief in the existence of the gods are evidence of the possibility of belief, this article reviews the evidence of such expressions, and of ascriptions of atheism in Greek sources, and suggests that there was a difference of type, not only of degree, between Greek ‘atheism’ and our understanding of the term today. Atheist discourse in Greek sources is characterized by frequent slippages: for example, between the charge of ‘existential atheism’ and the failure to give the gods due acknowledgement; between introducing new gods and disrespecting the old. Ascriptions of atheism to third parties are commonly based on inferences from an individual's actions, lifestyle or presumed disposition – which in turn are rooted in a network of theological assumptions. The phenomenon of ‘Greek atheism’ is, fundamentally, a scholarly mirage.
The Forum Augustum represents one of the most important examples of the public and material dissemination of Augustan ideology. This paper offers a new model for understanding how the Forum's spatial and architectural design communicated that ideology. Departing from scholarly emphasis on the Forum's statuary programme, it examines how the Forum's spaces set up a series of contrasts that structured visitors’ experiences. In the porticoes, the extensive statue programme granted viewers a wide range of choices about what they could see. In the central square and hemicycles ( exedrae ), however, visitors were compelled by the paucity of material to encounter certain images and ideas. This argument shows a new way of understanding the Forum, where movement into and between certain spaces structured how Augustan ideology was communicated, received, and understood.
Domitian, son of the war hero and emperor Vespasian and related to a large number of Roman soldiers, should logically have found himself as a young man in the army. His repeated requests to serve, however, were all denied, reportedly from fear of his political ambitions. A more immediate reason may have been physical inadequacy. Suetonius writes of Domitian's malformed toes, and of a lingering disease – here we suggest polio – that left Domitian with thin legs. Residual weakness and chronic pain could explain Domitian's preference for a litter and his perceived unsuitability for military service. His martial interests and desire to display virtus , manly courage, however, never wavered, and found their outlet in archery, a skill requiring dexterity of hand rather than fast footwork. Hostile writers played on this skill by relating it to an alleged habit of spearing flies for pleasure. Modern scholars may find the suggestion of a chronic disability useful in considering his character.
The Charles Keck reliefs on the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, portray the triumph of white settlers over Native Americans, who are depicted as stereotypically aggressive and ‘barbaric’. Keck's sculptures invite comparison to the metopes of the Parthenon, which depict the triumph of Greek and Athenian ‘civilization’ over ‘barbarism’. The central focus of Keck's reliefs is Fortitude, an allegorical figure whose image throughout art history is indebted to depictions of Athena and Minerva, and who serves for the Nelson-Atkins as a modern American proxy for the Athenian goddess. As the Periclean building programme proclaimed Athenian superiority and had long-term cultural and economic impacts for Athens, the Nelson-Atkins is intimately connected to the economic and urban development of Kansas City, including its history of racist real estate practices, engineered by a founding trustee of the museum, which became a national model.
