In recent years, our understanding of Archilochus has been transformed by the discovery of a major new fragment from the Oxyrhynchus collection (P Oxy. 4708), first published by Dirk Obbink. The new poem is not only the most substantial of Archilochus' elegiac fragments, but more importantly it is the first example we have of the poet's use of myth, for the surviving section narrates a mythological theme: the defeat of the Achaeans at the hands of Telephus during their first attempt to reach Troy. Scholars have found the choice and handling of the myth surprising, and the role that Telephus plays within the poem has been a subject of controversy. Yet this debate has tended to dwell on the Telephus myth in its general form, rather than focussing on the details of how Archilochus presents him in this particular context. This article will explore the significance that Telephus could have had for a Parian audience, and will use this to investigate the political and rhetorical impact of his presentation within the poem. I will argue that Archilochus highlights the aspects of Telephus' story which connect him most closely with Parian local myth, and that he does so in order to enhance the poem's central message: criticism and implicit mockery of the mythological battle and, by implication, of contemporary Parian military strategy.

During the necromantic ceremony in Odyssey 11 Odysseus slits the throats of two sheep and then proceeds to drain their blood into the βόθρος, or pit, which he has dug in the ground (Od. 11.35–6). At this point in the ceremony the dead swarm up from the Underworld, displaying an innate attraction to the blood (Od. 11.36–7). Such is the overwhelming response of the dead that Odysseus must draw his sword in order to hold back the multitudes who clamour to drink the offering (Od. 11.48–50). Odysseus refuses to allow the dead to approach the blood until Tiresias has drunk the offering and offered a prophecy for the future (Od. 11.95–6). After Tiresias has concluded his prophecy for Odysseus some of the other dead step forward and drink the blood, but to what end? Odysseus does not seek prophecies from these figures, nor do they produce any, which means that their reason for desiring and drinking the blood must lie elsewhere.

One of the most baffling inscriptions has come down to us from the so-called ‘Passage of the Theôroi’ at Thasos. Situated at the north-eastern entrance of the ancient agora, and consisting originally of two walls on either side of a path paved by marble, the monumental passage way had a long list of names inscribed on the inside of its western wall; this is the so-called ‘great list of Thasian theôroi’. Two of its constituent lists bear the headings ἐπὶ τῆς πρώτης ἀπαρχῆς and ἐπὶ τῆς δευ[τέρη]ς ἀπαρχῆς| οἵδε ἐθεόρεον. The meaning of the word aparchê and the nature of the theôroi in question have been the subject of disagreement among historians. The aim of this article is to contribute further suggestions to existing discussions.

The huge differences characterizing the main editions of the Greek epic poets of the Archaic period are well known. The sparse amount of information available poses serious problems; so too does the lack of unanimous acceptance of the same methodological principles with respect to the attribution of a citation to a given author and poem. The case of the Telegony is typical: Bernabé lists five fragments, Davies two (only one in common with Bernabé), and West six (four in common with Bernabé, one in common with Davies, and one published by Livrea ten years after the appearance of the editions of Bernabé and Davies). To alert the reader that the attribution of fragments 1 and 2 to the Telegony is conjectural and not based on ancient evidence, West attaches an asterisk to them. My aim is to discuss both what certain scholars have taken as one (and, for exactly 110 years, the only) of the two surviving lines from Eugammon's Telegony, that is fr. 1 (PEG 1, Bernabé = *1 West) = fr. 2 (Allen), and also what appears as fr. *2 in West's Loeb edition.

Plato's Hesiod is a neglected topic, scholars having long regarded Plato's Homer as a more promising field of inquiry. My aim in this chapter is to demonstrate that this particular bias of scholarly attention, although understandable, is unjustified. Of no other dialogue is this truer than of the Ion.

Nouns and personal names ending in –εύς –ῆϝος are unique to Greek, and have often been deemed pre-Hellenic in origin simply on account of the lack of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) correspondences. Our failure to find convincing etymologies for βασιλεύς, ἑρμηνεύς, and βραβεύς has itself contributed to this view. However, we should hesitate, for general reasons, to posit pre-Hellenic origins for these words, since viable explanations both of βασιλεύς and of ἑρμηνεύς (if not of βραβεύς) lie near to hand. Although the explanation of βασιλεύς that will be proposed below still presents difficulties, I believe that it improves on previous attempts.

The only reference to the Athenian general Lamachus in the Platonic corpus is at Laches 197c6 where Nicias compares Laches to him. In response to Laches' criticism that Nicias is embellishing himself with his words (κοσμεῖ τῷ λόγῳ, La. 197c3), and trying to deny that those agreed to be courageous are indeed courageous, Nicias says:

Reports of lunar and solar eclipses are of interest to students of both history and the history of science. Used with care, they can anchor significant historical events in time. Greek literature, like that of other civilizations, has its fair share of such reports. Often they motivate the actions of characters or expose aspects of belief. Sometimes they shed light on the assumptions of the writer. There are three places in the Histories of Herodotus where the author mentions darkenings of the sky (generally taken to be solar eclipses), which have narrative significance and which assist in dating the wars between the Lydians and the Medes (1.74) and between the Greeks and the Persians (7.37 and 9.10).

Mirko Canevaro and Edward Harris, in their recent CQ article (henceforth C&H), have rejected, as forgeries or reconstructions of post-classical origin, all the laws and decrees appearing in the text of Andocides' speech On the Mysteries (77–98) and purporting to be the documents which the speaker, at six points in that passage, directs the clerk to read out. I have no quarrel with their arguments (pp. 100–19) for rejecting the documents presented as the decree of Patroclides (§§77–9), the decree of Tisamenus (§§83–4), and a series of new laws passed in 403/2 b.c. (§§85–7) – though in this last case, with the exception of one phrase, the genuineness of the laws themselves is confirmed by the fact that they are cited verbatim by the orator in the surrounding text (§§88–9, 93, 94, 99). I shall be concerned here only with the last document of the group, a decree ascribed to Demophantus (§§96–8), which C&H discuss at pp. 119–25.

No consensus has been reached about the reconstruction of Euripides' fragmentary tragedy Bellerophon, but two suggestions have not received the serious attention they deserve. The first is that Stheneboea is a character in the play, and the second that Euripides does not depict Bellerophon as an atheist or an impious hero. In this paper, I shall reconsider both of these suggestions. In fact, the addition of Stheneboea to the dramatis personae allows us to correct the second problem, as I shall propose that Stheneboea, not Bellerophon, speaks the infamous atheistic fragment.

This paper aims to explain the very sharp contrast between the portraits of Critias found in Plato and Xenophon. While depicted as a monster in Xenophon's Hellenica, Critias is described with at most mild criticism in Plato's writings. Each of these portraits is eccentric in its own way, and these eccentricities can be explained by considering the apologetic and polemic aims each author pursued. In doing so, I hope to shed light not only on the relations between these portraits and the works that contain them, but also on the personal relations between Plato and Xenophon and their manner of expressing them in literary productions.

Philosophers who would do history of philosophy (which they must do in order not to impoverish themselves and the discipline they serve) must also occasionally do some philology. The meaning of the text interacts with the language in which it is spoken, and it is informed by it. One need not be a Whorfean to appreciate that there is no text without contexts, and one of the most important of these contexts is the language itself. To what extent the philologist must also become a palaeographer is a question seldom raised even among those who call themselves philologists. Taking our texts not only in written form, but in printed regularity, we tend to focus on the type of expression rather than the token, treating the latter as incidental, irrelevant and uninteresting. I want here to tell a tale of a text with attention to some palaeographic dimensions, hoping to open questions about their philological and philosophical worth. The palaeography may itself be superficial or amateurish, but if the point is well taken at this level, someone more expert may be able to unfold a richer tale.

In the last decades Orphic scholarship has found itself in rather fortunate circumstances: there have been not only spectacular finds such as the Derveni Papyrus and the so-called Orphic Gold Tablets, but these texts together with all the other fragments ascribed to the authoritative author-figure Orpheus have been made accessible in the new and extensive edition by Alberto Bernabé (2004–7). Understandably, recent discussions have focussed especially on the new material. Nevertheless, much work remains to be done on those fragments with which we have long been familiar. The present study puts a new complexion on a text long taken as evidence for an Orphic theogony.

In his second question of the Phaedrus, Socrates asks Phaedrus how he spent (διατριβή) his morning with Lysias. Phaedrus answers: ‘You'll learn, should you have the leisure (σχολή) to walk and listen.’ Socrates responds:

The subject of this paper is a striking and unavoidable feature of the Alexandra: Lykophron's habit of referring to single gods not by their usual names, but by multiple lists of epithets piled up in asyndeton. This phenomenon first occurs early in the 1474-line poem, and this occurrence will serve as an illustration. At 152–3, Demeter has five descriptors in a row: Ἐνναία ποτὲ | Ἕρκυνν' Ἐρινὺς Θουρία Ξιφηφόρος, ‘Ennaian … Herkynna, Erinys, Thouria, Sword-bearing’. In the footnote I give the probable explanations of these epithets. Although in this sample the explanations to most of the epithets are not to be found in inscriptions, my main aim in what follows will be to emphasize the relevance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscurity of Lykophron. In this paper, I ask why the poet accumulates divine epithets in this special way. I also ask whether the information provided by the ancient scholiasts, about the local origin of the epithets, is of good quality and of value to the historian of religion. This will mean checking some of that information against the evidence of inscriptions, beginning with Linear B. It will be argued that it stands up very well to such a check. The Alexandra has enjoyed remarkable recent vogue, but this attention has come mainly from the literary side. Historians, in particular historians of religion, and students of myths relating to colonial identity, have been much less ready to exploit the intricate detail of the poem, although it has so much to offer in these respects. The present article is, then, intended primarily as a contribution to the elucidation of a difficult literary text, and to the history of ancient Greek religion. Despite the article's main title, there will, as the subtitle is intended to make clear, be no attempt to gather and assess all the many passages in Lykophron to which inscriptions are relevant. There will, for example, be no discussion of 1141–74 and the early Hellenistic ‘Lokrian Maidens inscription’ (IG 9.12 706); or of the light thrown on 599 by the inscribed potsherds carrying dedications to Diomedes, recently found on the tiny island of Palagruza in the Adriatic, and beginning as early as the fifth century b.c. (SEG 48.692bis–694); or of 733–4 and their relation to the fifth-century b.c. Athenian decree (n. 127) mentioning Diotimos, the general who founded a torch race at Naples, according to Lykophron; or of 570–85 and the epigraphically attested Archegesion or cult building of Anios on Delos, which shows that this strange founder king with three magical daughters was a figure of historical cult as well as of myth.

Not very long ago, Plato's Sophist was often presented as a dialogue devoted to the problem of being and not-being, entangled with limited success in an inquiry into the nature of the sophist. Thanks to the renewal of interest in the dramatic form of Plato's dialogues, recent works have shown that this entanglement is far from ill-conceived or anecdotal. However, the inquiry into the sophist is itself introduced by another question, concerning the nature of the Stranger from Elea himself. I would like to show that this question and the way in which it is raised in the prologue may themselves shed light on the relations between the many threads which run across this very complex dialogue.

The concept of mimēsis was ‘shared by most authors, philosophers and educated audiences in the classical period, in antiquity as a whole, and even later’, although it has probably never been developed into a well-articulated theory. As far as we can judge from the extant evidence, the meaning of the expressions μίμησις and μιμέομαι differs from author to author and sometimes even from passage to passage. Ancient Greek views on mimēsis have often been discussed in modern scholarship, mainly within the field of history of art, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the traditional English translation ‘imitation’ is not always appropriate for the ancient texts and that in many contexts it is rather misleading. In the following study I aim to focus on this concept as it was employed in the oldest Greek cosmological and philosophical theories. As a rule, the study of these theories is complicated by their fragmentary state of preservation and by their distortion through the specifically Platonic views that were dominant among the later doxographers. I shall suggest that the Platonizing tendency still prevalent today, which tends to translate and interpret mimēsis as ‘imitation’ or ‘copy’, should be carefully revised in the light of the Hippocratic evidence and specifically in view of De victu, probably the oldest authentic, non-fragmentary, and non-Platonic document attesting the concept of mimēsis.

The most famous – and most discussed – ancient statement on speeches in historiography is probably Thucydides 1.22.1, but Polybius’ discussion of speeches in Timaeus in Book 12 of his Histories follows closely. Although Polybius’ criticism of Timaeus has been fruitfully studied from very different angles, the meaning and implications of many of his statements are still debated.

Among the poems of the Greek Anthology is one (Anth. Pal. 6.171) which purports to be the dedicatory inscription of the Colossus of Rhodes built to celebrate the Rhodians' successful resistance to the siege of their island by Demetrius Poliorcetes in the years 305–304 b.c. It has long been assumed by scholars that this epigram represents the authentic dedicatory inscription carved on the base of the Colossus, which was completed in the 280s and stood for some sixty years before being destroyed by an earthquake that rocked the island of Rhodes in the 220s. There are, however, strong reasons to doubt the epigram's authenticity, some of which come from considerations of the poem itself and others which come from a comparison with a closely related epigram (Anth. Pal. 9.518) composed by Alcaeus of Messene to celebrate Philip V's military successes during his Aegean campaign of 203–200. Verbal and thematic parallels between the two epigrams make a connection certain. It is the aim of the present study to re-examine the Rhodian epigram and its relation to Anth. Pal. 9.518 in order to propose a new date for the former in the context of Rhodes' defeat of Philip V and the advent of Rome in the affairs of the states ringing the Aegean.

Euclid famously stated that there is no royal road to geometry, but his use of δή does give an indication of the minimum level of knowledge and understanding which he required from his audience. The aim of this article is to gain insight into his interaction with his audience through a characterization of the use of δή in the Elements. I will argue that the primary use of δή indicates a lively interaction between Euclid and his audience. Furthermore, the specific contexts in which δή occurs reveal the considerable mathematical competence that Euclid expected from his audience.