Ancient Greek Lists

Ancient Greek Lists brings together catalogic texts from a variety of genres, arguing that the list form was the ancient mode of expressing value through text. Ranging from Homer's Catalogue of Ships through Attic comedy and Hellenistic poetry to temple inventories, the book draws connections among texts seldom juxtaposed, examining the ways in which lists can stand in for objects, create value, act as methods of control, and even approximate the infinite. Athena Kirk analyzes how lists come to stand as a genre in their own right, shedding light on both under-studied and well-known sources to engage scholars and students of Classical literature, ancient history, and ancient languages.

• Illuminates Greek literary and epigraphic lists, catalogues, and inventories by analyzing them as a single cultural phenomenon
• Gives an overview of inscribed inventories with examples from several corpora, examining many under-studied texts
• Theorizes list texts as capable of expressing infinite value