Chapter 7: Pausanias in Athens. Here we see what statues stood in Athens during the second century AD – those that Pausanias saw on his walk through the city, from the Piraeus to the Agora to the Akropolis. We can picture those portraits that he mentions that are today well-known types. But we can only imagine the appearance of many of the gods and heroes whose images he mentions. Sometimes his narrative matches reports by other writers. Sometimes surviving inscriptions can be linked to texts or to actual sculptures. Even where material evidence parallels what Pausanias remarks upon, almost no freestanding sculptures are visible in Athens today.

This chapter analyzes historical declamation as an advanced stage of fiction training in the Roman rhetorical curriculum. It argues that rhetorical exercises, especially controversiae and suasoriae, fostered the skills of fictionalization through revisionist reimaginings of the Greek past. Exploring a wide corpus of exercises about Alexander the Great, the chapter demonstrates how students were trained to compose plausible fictions within recognizable historical frameworks. Drawing on rhetorical handbooks, school papyri, and declamations, it reconstructs four dominant themes: impersonations of Alexander and his circle; inter-polis disputes in the shadow of Macedonian conquest; “travel advisories” debating the limits of Alexander’s empire; and “postmortem” scenarios reflecting Alexander’s legacy. These exercises strengthened students’ command over the techniques of impersonation, pseudo-documentarism, and meta-exemplarity. The chapter also shows how historical declamations modelled indirect reflection on imperial power. Rather than transmitting historical truth, revisionist fictions taught students how to manipulate exempla and construct immersive alternatives to the Roman present.

The chapter begins with the basic nomenclature of our periodization and asks the question: what is Protogeometric? From there it tackles the issue of where were mechanically drawn circles first invented – which is now clearly somewhere in the north Aegean – but stresses that determining the place where circles were first invented probably does not matter a great deal when formulating broader conclusions of political, social, economic, or ethnic importance, and it leaves open the possibility that although Athens was not the first place to invent mechanically drawn circles, it may have been the place that gave rise to the Protogeometric style of pottery. The conventional periodization of Protogeometric is reviewed, as is the issue of regional styles of Protogeometric pottery in the Greek world, before the thorny issue of the relative and absolute chronology of Protogeometric is tackled. The chapter ends by asking whether we can speak of a Protogemetric Aegean, and the conclusion is that this is not really possible. A coda discusses doing away with the highly problematic notion of a “dark age.”

What marks out Athens in the Early Iron Age (EIA) is not only clear continuity from the Bronze Age but a steady rise of population through the EIA into the Archaic period. Following a brief topographical overview and a summary of Athens before 1200 BCE, this chapter focuses on the evidence of tombs, including an account of five and a half Athenians: a putative warrior aged 35–45 years at death, an old man aged 70, a young woman in her early 20s accompanied by terracotta model boots, a slightly older woman with her unborn child, and a social outcast. This is followed by what evidence there exists for the settlement of Athens. A major theme is the resilience of the population from the Bronze Age into the EIA and Archaic period. Whether it is cast as a village or town, the urban nucleus of the settlement was the Athenian Acropolis. What played out in the EIA in Athens was the formation of what was to become one of the largest and most successful city-states of the ancient Greek world.

After defeating Licinius in 324, Constantine ruled as senior emperor with his sons and a nephew as junior emperors. In the eastern provinces dedications honored the emperors. At Orcistus in Phrygia a famous set of inscriptions commemorated Constantine’s patronage. Dedications celebrated the emperor’s support in the new capital of Constantinople, as well as at Ephesus, Antioch, and Athens. At Aksum in Ethiopia inscriptions celebrated the victories of king Ezana.

An overview of what is known about the life and times of Hipparchus. Ancient testimony shows that he was born in Nicaea in Asia Minor, and worked latterly in Rhodes, but other details of his life can only be inferred from considerations of the intellectual milieu of his time, together with an examination of his astronomical observations, as detailed by Ptolemy. From these a possible timeline of his life is sketched out.

Book 1 of the CPAE. Introduction. Aratus and Eudoxus compared. The northern constellations. The constellations of the tropics and the equator. Aratus and Attalus compared. The axial tilt of the Earth. The northern constellations 1. The northern constellations 2. The northern constellations 3. Aspects of the zodiac. The southern constellations. The circles of the sky. The constellations of the tropics and the equator. The constellations of the ‘arctic circle’. Analysis by colures.

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 celebrated the centennial of Tennessee’s admission to the United States. This chapter argues that the use of Greek and Grecian architecture at Nashville was connected to Nashville’s reputation as a city of learning and culture. During the nineteenth century, Nashville was known as the Athens of the South and of the West. A life-sized replica of the Parthenon was the fair’s premier building. Archaeological accuracy and color were also essential to creating the fair’s Parthenon. Other buildings incorporated classical motifs from different periods, demonstrating the flexibility and fluidity of ancient architecture and embodying the neo-antique. This classical architecture embodied Nashville’s arrival as a city, but it also celebrated the New South and reflected the codification of the racist Jim Crow laws. Thus, the appropriation of classical architecture to justify institutional racism is examined. Egyptian architecture played a prominent role here. Shelby County erected a pyramid for its pavilion, which was an exceptional use of Egyptian architecture at United States fairs. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the enduring importance of the rebuilt Nashville Parthenon (and its Athena statue) as a symbol of culture and democracy for the city.

Focusing on Plato’s literary craft and philosophical method, this chapter explores the Republic and especially the Allegory of the Cave to elucidate Plato’s vision of education, truth, and reality. Rather than isolating arguments in abstraction, it emphasizes the dialogical form of Plato’s works and the exemplary character of Socrates as a model of philosophical life. Set against the backdrop of Athenian democratic decline and the execution of Socrates, the chapter interprets the cave allegory as a meditation on the soul’s ascent from illusion to truth – a journey of intellectual habituation requiring ethical transformation. The analysis shows how Plato fused literary beauty with metaphysical depth, presenting philosophy as both a rational and existential undertaking. The chapter further demonstrates how Socratic inquiry – marked by aporia and dialectic – encourages readers to examine their assumptions, seek truth, and reflect on their moral formation. Plato’s theory of Forms is introduced not as a rigid metaphysical doctrine but as part of a broader vision in which education, justice, and contemplation all point toward transcendent reality. In this framing, philosophy becomes a way of life rooted in example, narrative, and spiritual aspiration.

The long-lasting impact of Pheidias, antiquity’s master of religious art, especially his Zeus at Olympia, is considered in the context of the theme of personal religion. The chapter adopts a broad chronological perspective and explores how the great master was perceived during the centuries following his lifetime, with a focus on his chryselephantine masterpiece, which he completed in the later decades of the fifth century BCE. It considers how later generations have conceived of his personal religious life, its relation to his famed artwork, and the position his figure has come to occupy within broader cult practices and devotional experiences. Close analysis of Pausanias’ Description of Greece alongside other evidentiary materials shows that by the second century CE, Pheidias was a figure of religious significance in his own right. Greco-Roman authors ascribed to him the qualities of a visionary endowed with unparallel access to Zeus. He left his detectable trademarks in his masterpiece, and his presence was felt in communal cult practices. Centuries after his departure from Olympia, his artmaking has come to be understood as a form of devotional practice.

A prevalent idea in scholarship on Athenian politics of the classical period is the assumption, based on figures like Pericles and Demosthenes, that political leadership depended on the ability to give good advice and communicate well with fellow citizens in the Council and Assembly. Without necessarily challenging this assumption, the present chapter focuses on a mechanism for attaining political leadership that has received less attention: gift-giving to both individual citizens and the entire community. Athenians with political ambitions built networks of followers (clients) through private gifts, but the phenomenon has not been fully appreciated because of the supposition that nothing comparable to the Roman patron/client relationship existed in the Greek polis. This chapter focuses on the case of Demosthenes.

The Peloponnesian War affected how mass and elite interacted at Athens and how the public sphere worked there. The Athenians themselves thought in terms of two ruptures, one at the death of Perikles, one at the end of the war. But the degree of rupture in both cases has been exaggerated, and it is better to think in terms of how power was exercised. Here we see various ways in which the people’s control of the elite was strengthened during the war, and indeed the use of exile and atimia (disenfranchisement) as penalties fatally weakened Athens by causing factional strife. The Peloponnesian War concentrated the people inside Athens and the Long Walls and increased the number of spaces in which Athenians were mixed up with metics and enslaved people, enhancing the deep politicisation of Athenian culture, which affected the wealthy as well as the poor and promoted the hetaireiai and, eventually, concentration of political factions into particular spaces. War enhanced the Athenians’ emotional investment, and this came out in particular over the Sicilian Expedition. It was because war affected the Athenians in a variety of different ways, each with their own timescale, that the traumatic effects emerged only after fifteen years.

Mostly, Greek historians treat going to war as something that Greek states do, without there needing to be much account of why they do it. Different were epic wars – the Trojan War and then the Persian War – and Thucydides’ long treatment of the causes of the Peloponnesian War is a direct product of his insistence that this was the greatest war. What his account shows us is what he thought needed explanation, and it is as much his identification of factors as the scale of his discussion of causation that makes Thucydides’ account stand out. His is an account peculiar for the failure to point the finger at individual political leaders, something that elsewhere in his History Thucydides is not reluctant to do. Thucydides never asks whether different action by Athens might have avoided war, avoiding discussing either Athenian policies or politics. The reasons for that are best sought not in Thucydides’ politics, but in his determination that this should be seen as an epic war.

This chapter explores the ways in which the Athenian Empire influenced and was influenced by the Peloponnesian War. First, it investigates the ways in which the Athenians made use of allied military resources, arguing that there was no formal system which governed this practice. The Athenians drew on allied manpower when it was convenient to do so, perhaps for punitive reasons, and perhaps as a way of encouraging or allowing visible demonstrations of loyalty to the Empire. The impact of military service on allied communities is hard to reconstruct, but it is likely that it was very unevenly felt: some states might have had little or no active involvement in the war; some might have lost significant proportions of their (male, fighting-age) populations. The second part of the chapter explores Athenian representations of allied military service. For the most part, the Athenians consistently under-represent the contributions made by allied states, or by individual allies. However, some changes in this approach might be visible in the final phase of the war and should perhaps be connected with a wider shift in Athens’ style of imperial leadership, one which becomes based less on coercive force and more on cooperation and concession.

The pressure of war often drives change. This was no less true of the Peloponnesian War in its effect on constitutional thinking at the end of the fifth century. While Thucydides in his analysis of the Peloponnesian War suggests that it was differences between constitutional types that lay behind the conflict (democracy versus oligarchy), it was in fact the war that clarified these differences. Thus it was that ideas around democracy became more clearly defined. However, it was thinking about oligarchy which experienced the most radical changes. Earlier in the fifth century, oligarchy had been recognised as a constitutional form but had been fairly loosely defined. By the end of the war, however, some Athenians in particular, who wanted to effect regime change, played with ideas of oligarchy in a fairly imprecise way based on number, wealth or class. Initially, this lack of clarity worked in the favour of the reformers, but eventually it led to the downfall of both the oligarchies of 411 and 404/3. Nevertheless it was the war itself which ultimately forced the conceptual opposition between oligarchy and democracy, which Thucydides was then able to write retrospectively into his analysis of the Peloponnesian War.

Cicero and his brother, Quintus, went on a two-year study tour of Greece and Asia Minor, visiting major centers such as Athens and Delphi and seeking training from the leading teachers of rhetoric and philosophy. This enabled Cicero to rebuild his oratorical technique so that he could speak with less exertion. Upon his return, Cicero resumed his career at the bar and then stood for the office of quaestor. Duly elected, he was allotted a post in Sicily, where he served for a year. When he returned to Rome, he took his seat in the senate and continued pleading in the courts, mostly for unimportant clients, and publishing his speeches.