At Iliad 13.751-3, Hector heeds Polydamas' advice to rally the Trojans by gathering their best fighters together and debating their next move (13.736-47). The speech is followed by a simile that has puzzled some commentators, in which Hector is compared to a snowy mountain as he moves through the Trojan ranks. The passage runs as follows:

‘Πουλυδάμα σὺ μὲν αὐτοῦ ἐρύκακε πάντας ἀρίστους,
αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ κεῖσ’ εἶμι καὶ ἀντιόω πολέμοιο·
αἶψα δ’ ἐλεύσομαι αὖτις ἐπὴν εὖ τοῖς ἐπιτείλω.’
ἦ ῥα, καὶ ὁρμήθη ὄρεϊ νιφόεντι ἐοικὼς
κεκλήγων, διὰ δὲ Τρώων πέτετ’ ἠδ’ ἐπικούρων. 755
οἳ δ’ ἐς Πανθοΐδην ἀγαπήνορα Πουλυδάμαντα
πάντες ἐπεσσεύοντ’, ἐπεὶ Ἕκτορος ἔκλυον αὐδήν.

ὣς φάτο, τοῦ δ’ ἤκουσε Μέδων πεπνυμένα εἰδώς·
πεπτηὼς γὰρ ἔκειτο ὑπὸ θρόνον, ἀμφὶ δὲ δέρμα
ἕστο βοὸς νεόδαρτον, ἀλύσκων κῆρα μέλαιναν.

A proper understanding of any military establishment is predicated on a sound understanding of the distinctions of its various components, including the relationship of elite units to those of lesser standing. The infantry of Achaemenid Persia has been given increased attention in recent years, especially in my three recent articles on (a) the permanent Achaemenid infantry, these being the 10,000 so-called Immortals (ἀθάνατοι) and the 1,000 Apple Bearers (μηλοφόροι), (b) the κάρδακες, whom I identified as a kind of general-purpose infantry of indeterminate ethnicity, and (c) the defensive equipment of Achaemenid infantry. In these articles, the Persian cavalry, or asabāra in Old Persian, was mentioned in passing, yet a thorough appraisal of elite Achaemenid cavalry is still required. For example, in his overview of Xerxes' army, Barkworth pays particular attention to the elite infantry, but the cavalry is mentioned only in passing, while Shabazi, in his entry on the Achaemenid army or spāda, does not mention elite cavalry at all. In a recent important study, Tuplin looked carefully at the evidence for Achaemenid cavalry and the degree of importance attached to cavalry among the Persians, but only mentioned what might be termed elite cavalry twice – he did not offer any in-depth commentary on their relationship to other cavalry units.

There is a major problem in connection with the wrath of Poseidon in Homer's Odyssey. We are told by Homer and Zeus (Od. 1.20-1, 1.68-75) that Poseidon raged continually against the hero from the time that the Cyclops was blinded until Odysseus reached Ithaca; and, when back on Ithaca the man complains to Athena about her absence and lack of help during the whole period of his wanderings after the fall of Troy, she says at 13.341-3 that she was avoiding confrontation with her angry uncle during all that time. But the only specified manifestation of that anger is the storm roused by the sea-god after Odysseus leaves Calypso in Book 5, in the tenth year after Polyphemus’ prayer to his father for revenge. It seems extraordinary that Poseidon should have waited so long before acting against him, and then have attacked him only once, merely causing him difficulty before he reached Scheria, and not (since it was fated for him to get home, and troubles there are already assured thanks to the suitors) ensuring his late return in a miserable plight on another's ship after losing all his companions, as his blinded son had requested (at 9.532-5).

The month name Ἀγαγύλιος is attested in Thessaly and Achaia Phthiotis. Recently, excavations at a Thessalian temple of Apollo in Pythion, at the foot of Olympus, have brought to light numerous ex-votos dedicated to Apollo, Poseidon and to an Artemis whose epiclesis is Agagylaia. Neither the month name nor the epiclesis, which is certainly to be connected with the month name, has yet received an explanation.

Following the idea first expressed by Heinrich Swoboda, there is a general perception that the meaning of ἀτιμία in Athens eventually evolved from the original ‘outlawry’, when an ἄτιμος was liable to being deprived of his property and slayed with impunity if he returned to the land from which he had been banished, into a certain limitation on civic status, which has often been rendered as a ‘disfranchisement’. Specific outcomes of this later form of ἀτιμία varied depending on the dating and circumstances of individual cases, thereby giving rise to theories of a so-called full – or ‘total’ – and partial ἀτιμία. Still, whether it was viewed as ‘full’ or ‘partial’, this ἀτιμία did not inflict the death penalty. The precise dating of the transformation of ἀτιμία has also been debated, with opinions ranging from pre-Solonian times (L'Homme-Wéry) to the late sixth (Swoboda, Hansen, Manville) or the late fifth century (Scafuro). While the exact dating is unknown, this transformation was definitely over in the fifth century, when inscriptions and literary texts mentioned punishment by ἀτιμία alongside the death penalty and the confiscation of property. Thus, according to Raphael Sealey, ἀτιμία evolved ‘from a more severe to a milder sense’, and Alick R.W. Harrison pointed to the evidence that, by the fourth century, any willing Athenian could seize an ἄτιμος who happened to be in Athenian territory and surrender him to the θεσμοθέται, instead of killing him.

In chapter 12 of Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes Socrates as the new Orpheus, who rises up against Dionysus and murders tragedy:

At Euripides' Heraclidae 630, an anonymous character arrives onstage to report the arrival of Hyllus' army, and returns at 928 accompanying the defeated Eurystheus. He is generally identified by editors as a therapōn, following the dramatis personae of the hypothesis. Mastronarde briefly challenges this assumption, stating that ‘he is a soldier, not a servant’. There are, however, four reasons to identify the character as neither a soldier nor a therapōn, but as Hyllus' herald. Although none of these reasons is conclusive on its own, the cumulative weight of the evidence is compelling. This identification contributes to the structural coherence and thematic development of the play, and gains special significance from the play's interest in the representation of absent characters.

Among the many points of interest in N.G. Wilson's admirable new text of Aristophanes is his handling of the closing scene of Lysistrata, and in particular the question of the heroine's role in that scene. In the new OCT we find the short speech 1273–8 ascribed to Lysistrata, while the apparatus notes ‘legato tribuunt quidam’ (in other words, to one of the Athenian males already on stage). The song which follows (1279–90) is also given to Lysistrata, but the apparatus comments ‘quis canat incertum est.’ Finally Lysistrata is presumed to speak the single line 1295 inviting the Spartan ambassador to sing a fresh song.

Novelties introduced into traditional myths are an essential characteristic of Greek tragedy. Each and every play demonstrates, in different ways, how tragedians were versatile and innovative in handling mythic material. Modern prefaces to individual tragedies often discuss the possible innovations in the dramatization of a myth compared to previous or subsequent versions. Innovations advanced in a play sometimes became so familiar that they came to be regarded as ‘standard’. Such examples include the condemnation and death of the protagonist in Sophocles’ Antigone and, in all likelihood, Medea's filicide in Euripides’ Medea.

Two fragments of the Lydiaca attributed to Xanthus of Lydia (mid fifth century b.c.) preserve a curious claim that a king of Lydia (either the famous Gyges or the mythical Adramytes) was the first person to make eunuchs of women. In an attempt to make sense of these passages, it has been suggested that εὐνουχίζειν here refers not to castration, but rather to female genital cutting. If correct, this would provide our first evidence of this practice in Lydian culture or indeed anywhere in Anatolia. However, the assumption that what Xanthus describes somehow related to real practices is highly questionable. Instead, we should re-contextualize this story in terms of other fifth-century representations of luxury and eunuchs and in terms of Xanthus’ own exemplary portraits of other Lydian kings.

Plato makes explicit references to Corybantic rites in six of his dialogues, spanning from the so-called early Crito to the later Laws. In all but one of these an analogy is established between aspects of the Corybantic rites and some kind of λόγος: the words of the poets in the Ion, Lysias' speech in the Phaedrus, and the arguments of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, the personified Laws and Socrates in the Euthydemus, Crito and Symposium respectively. Plato's use of Corybantic analogies is thus quite extensive. Indeed, according to Ivan M. Linforth, whose 1946 article is still the most rigorous treatment of our sources on Corybantic rites in classical Athens, Plato is our ‘principal witness concerning Corybantic rites and their function’.

The people of classical Athens did not regard suicide as a crime committed by the victim. Instead, the Athenians regarded suicide as a crime committed by the instrument that the victim used, or by the victim's hand as opposed to the victim himself. This non-human agent was culpable, just like non-human agents were blamed for accidental deaths. Although suicide victims were innocent, inanimate agents were guilty. In Sophocles' Ajax, for example, the sword that the hero turned upon himself was blamed for his death. The Athenian response to suicide was more about objects than it was about people.

Unlike tragedy, Old Comedy openly acknowledges its own festival context and the existence of a world beyond the one created for and occupied by its masked characters. Admission of the theatrical setting is a standard well-documented feature and was an effective way of drawing spectators into the drama's fiction. To the same end, speaking directly to the audience formed an integral part of Aristophanes' plays and very probably of the comic genre as a whole. We can therefore think of comedy as an ‘inclusive’ art form, one that (self-)consciously attempted to involve and engage its consumers, in particular via explicit verbal address. On the other hand, the evidence is much slimmer for actors moving outside of the performance area or otherwise physically bringing the audience members and the fictional cast into contact and, regardless of how attractive it might seem, this type of spatial negotiation is far from established. It may well be the case that in spite of comedy's relative liberty, certain barriers continued to exist, including the invisible barrier that divided the acting area from the auditorium.

In this paper, I intend to explore three examples of ekphrasis – narrative scene painting – in Demosthenes 18 and 19: the first is Demosthenes' depiction of the announcement in Athens of the capture of Elatea by Philip (18.169–73), while the second and third are descriptions of Aeschines' (allegedly) failed theatrical performances (18.262 and 19.337–8). Scholars have paid insufficient attention to these descriptive accounts: there have been a few limited discussions of 18.169 in commentaries but, otherwise, the use and purpose of these accounts as part of Demosthenes' rhetorical strategy have not been widely appreciated. This article aims to show that ekphrasis, when skilfully deployed as in Demosthenes 18 and 19, is a powerful weapon in the speaker's arsenal that merits thorough investigation. By instructing the audience as to what and how to think, imagine and remember, orators seek to engage the audience, elicit their verbal or non-verbal reaction in the law court, create a certain disposition in them towards the litigants, stir up and manipulate their emotions, and thus affect their verdict.

Diogenes Laertius' list of Aristotle's works includes a Homeric Puzzles (Ἀπορημάτων Ὁμηρικῶν) in six books (5.26, no. 119), as does the list in the biography of Aristotle attributed to Hesychius (no. 106). This latter also includes a Homeric Problems (Προβλημάτων Ὁμηρικῶν) in ten books (no. 147), which appears to be the same as an item in the biography (extant in Arabic) attributed to Ptolemy al-Gharib (no. 104). The later and more derivative Vita Marciana attributes to Aristotle a Homeric Questions (Ὁμηρικὰ ζητήματα). The only other reference to the title of such a work by Aristotle is from the anonymous Antiatticista, a second-century a.d. lexicon (s.v. βασίλισσα): ‘They say Alcaeus the comic poet and Aristotle in Homeric Puzzles said this.’ Finally, Poetics 25 – which begins περὶ δὲ προβλημάτων καὶ λύσεων – is a summary, with examples, of just such a work, and a description of how to undertake such an inquiry.

Revising Clouds for publication some five years after its third-place showing in the City Dionysia of 423 b.c., Aristophanes retooled the first parabasis (lines 510–626) to praise the play's propriety, omitting as it did distasteful matter and gratuitous buffoonery, which—along with the judges’ crassness—accounted, he says, for its failure.

This article argues that Aristophanes' Clouds treats Socrates as distinctly interested in promoting self-knowledge of the sort related to self-improvement. Section I shows that Aristophanes links the precept γνῶθι σαυτόν (‘know yourself’) with Socrates. Section II outlines the meaning of that precept for Socrates. Section III describes Socrates' conversational method in the Clouds as aimed at therapeutic self-revelation. Section IV identifies the patron Cloud deities of Socrates' school as also concerned to bring people to a therapeutic self-understanding, albeit in a different register from that of Socrates. Section V discusses a sequence of jokes connected to ‘stripping’ that give a concrete image to the search for self-knowledge. Both the action of the Clouds and the tales of cloak-stripping provide models for understanding self-knowledge in a Socratic key. Section VI argues that Socrates' other interest in the phrontistērion, myth-rationalization, is consistent with the promotion of self-knowledge. Section VII supports the claim that Plato's Phaedrus alludes constantly to the Clouds, and because the Phaedrus pays careful attention to self-knowledge, Plato must think that the Clouds does too. It notes in particular that we can explain the Platonic Socrates' famous self-knowledge-related curiosity about his similarity to Typhon (230a) as Plato's allusion to Aristophanes, an allusion made apt by Aristophanes' coordination of Socrates with self-knowledge. Section VIII concludes the paper.

In the Politics, Aristotle maintains, contrary to his predecessors, that there is a distinctive mode of authority that husbands should exercise over their wives. He even coins a word for it: γαμιϰή, ‘the marital art’ or ‘marital rule’ (Pol. 1.3, 1253b8–10; 1.12, 1259a37–9). Marital rule is supposed to differ from the authority that fathers have over their children and from the kind of rule that citizens exercise over one another. Yet it is not clear whether there is any conceptual space between political and paternal rule for marital rule to occupy. Where fathers rule and children are ruled, citizens take turns ruling and being ruled. Husbands, however, either share their rule with their wives, or they do not. If they do not, then marital rule seems indistinct from paternal rule; if they do, then it seems indistinct from political rule. To add to the confusion, Aristotle says that husbands properly rule their wives politically, but without alternating in positions of ruling and being ruled. On its face, this idea seems flatly contradictory. Political rule just is shared, reciprocal rule, and so if the husband rules permanently and his wife is merely ruled, then his rule cannot be political. So Aristotle's own description of marital rule appears inconsistent, and in any case it is difficult to see how marital rule could have the distinctive character that he insists it does.