Early states functioned under entirely different circumstances from modern nation states, which politically and administratively require a capital city. The nature and extent of centralization in ancient societies is much harder to define. A comparative study of two similar geographical entities, such as islands, can shed light on the diverse and complex relationships between ancient polities and central places. Scholars have, at times, assigned capital cities to the Late Bronze Age island cultures of Crete and Cyprus – namely Knossos and Enkomi respectively. Differences in these cultures and settlements notwithstanding, this paper seeks to explore the multi-layered and diverse nature of past and present interpretations through a comparative approach. It is argued that we need to acknowledge the roles that recent politics and archaeological practices have had on previous and current narratives of the past. The often-troubled transformations undergone by modern nation states, and the expectation that such entities possess capitals, have coloured previous interpretations of the past more than is generally recognized. The categories constructed and models applied have guided our approaches but they have also imposed potentially anachronistic frameworks. This paper seeks further historical depth, and to better understand the complex and varied roles ancient central places had in their wider context.

This paper looks at a relatively neglected character in Greek tragedy: the people. I cannot claim to produce a complete survey of this issue; however, I shall identify some different ways in which a tragic poet could portray a city's population, and discuss some examples.

This is an important and interesting topic for two reasons, which are linked throughout, for behind my argument is the contention that a consideration of the original staging of a tragedy can help us to understand its politics. In the first place, it is instructive to ask how a poet could meet the challenge of representing the population of a city on stage; in the second, this exercise is likely to shed light on the political function of Greek tragedy. More specifically, it will shed light on the relationship between tragedy and democracy - a vexed question in recent years - for no consideration of democracy in drama can neglect the role of democracy's central player.

My epigraphs offer a stark contrast in their basic assumptions about the place of classical allusion in eighteenth century writing. The second, published only last year in a series devoted to classical reception, implies that allusion – whether conscious or unconscious – is always ‘significant’; the first, fifteen years old and from the first number of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition, suggests that it is largely incidental and superficial. To be fair to Kennedy, the passage quoted above comes from an abbreviated history of classicism from the Hellenistic period to the twentieth century which could not be expected to offer a nuanced account of the nature of classical allusion in the various periods it discusses; but the basic question remains: is classical allusion in the eighteenth century ornamental or essential?

There is a considerable body of literature concerned with the clarification of the role of the so-called ‘collectors’ in Mycenaean administration. In this article, a new interpretation will be proposed that offers a possible solution to the major points of dispute in the debate. This new interpretation has far-reaching consequences for our views of Mycenaean governance.

Although previous research has been summarized several times elsewhere—most recently and efficiently by Lupack (2008, 86–96) and before her by Bennet (1992, 65–89), we shall here review the key themes which are of particular relevance to the interpretation proposed below.

Diogenes Laertius lists in his catalogue of Epicurus' works (10.28) a treatise On Kingship, which is unfortunately no longer extant. Owing to the Epicureans' antipathy to politics, such a work might be viewed with surprise and presumed to be virulently negative in outlook. Indeed, Plutarch reports that the Epicureans wrote on kingship only to ward people away from living in the company of kings (Adv. Col. 1127a) and that they maintained that to be king oneself was a terrible mistake (Adv. Col. 1125c-d). However, the scattered evidence that remains suggests the Epicurean views on kingship were both nuanced and sophisticated. In this paper I seek to reconstruct a viable account of the Epicurean position on kingship.

Pity and the characters' response to it have always been recognized as one of the central themes of Sophocles' Philoctetes. In recent years scholarship on the play has mainly focused either on the cognitive aspects of the dynamics triggered by pity-related emotions (that is, how pity seems to activate and at the same time is triggered by rational reflection and experience) or on its self-conscious meta-theatrical dimension (what Halliwell has called the intrinsic ‘theatricality of pity’ and the audience's response to it). My intention is to contribute to this critical debate by focusing more narrowly on the semantics of pity-related words in the play: a linguistic analysis of the language of pity in Sophocles' Philoctetes will show that the seeming interchangeability of the words oiktos and eleos bears further investigation. The first section of this article will offer a brief diachronic survey of the semantics of oiktos- and eleos-related formations in Homer and the fifth century tragedians (with special attention to Sophoclean usage). Building upon recent studies on paradigmatic semantic relations, it will then be argued that the relation of eleos to oiktos is better described, from a synchronic perspective, in terms of ‘hyponymy’ or ’gradient synonymy.’

Euripides uses a variety of strategies to draw attention to the novelties in his dramatic myth-creation or mythopoiēsis. He does so, for example, through multiple allusions to earlier poets, distinguishing himself from predecessors by acknowledging their influence while simultaneously producing something distinctive. Euripidean novelties are legitimized in several instances through cultic aetiologies. These aspects of Euripidean drama have long been acknowledged. More recently, Matthew Wright has shown how the characters in several Euripidean plays discuss their own myths in a self-conscious manner, a process he terms ‘metamythology’. A technique which has been less studied, however, is Euripides' exploration of the motif of writing and its connection to the act of mythopoiēsis within his work. Scholars who discuss writing in Euripides have done so either within the general context of inherent tensions between oral and written communication in Greek tragedy (or Greek literature), or have focused on the use of letters as dramatic devices. This paper argues that Euripides exploits the motif of writing in a way which is entirely different from the other tragedians, and puts forward the central thesis that writing in Euripides is associated self-consciously and metapoetically with plot construction and authorial control.

It is widely held as uncontroversial that throughout the classical period male inhabitants of Attica were divided between three distinct categories – Athenian citizens, metics (regularly translated as ‘resident aliens’) and slaves – and that Athenian society had, therefore, a tripartite structure. The opportunities available to and requirements demanded of a man depended on his category. Those foreigners permanently resident in Attica – those with the legal status of ‘metic’ – were, unlike slaves, free, but, unlike citizens, they could not own land, vote in the Assembly, or serve as a dikastes or as a magistrate; in addition, metics were required to pay a poll tax (the metoikion) and to have a citizen sponsor (prostates). In this paper I seek to challenge not the nature of the distinction between citizens and metics but instead the assumption that the distinction was made throughout the classical period. I suggest that the growth of the Athenian citizen population after the Persian invasion of 480–479 demands that the origin of metic status be situated around the middle of the fifth century, and that the occasion on which the Athenian polis first defined metic status is likely to have been the occasion on which it first took an interest in restricting who might become a citizen: in 451/0, with the passing of Perikles' citizenship law.