The word ‘tyrant’ was not originally Greek, but borrowed from some eastern language, perhaps in western Asia Minor. On the other hand, tyranny as it developed in the Greek cities in the archaic age would seem to have been initially an indigenous growth, independent of any intervention by foreign powers. It then became a constantly recurring phenomenon of Greek political and social life, so long as the Greeks enjoyed an independent history.

Bruno Snell has made familiar a certain thesis about the Homeric poems, to the effect that these poems depict a primitive form of mindedness. The area of mindedness concerned is agency, and the content of the thesis is that Homeric agents are not agents in the fullest sense: they do not make choices in clear self-awareness of what they are doing; choices are made for them rather than by them; in some cases the instigators of action are gods, in other cases they are forces acting internally on the agent and over which he has no control. Homeric heroes act in the way Descartes thought an animal acts: agitur, non agit. Such agents ‘handeln nicht eigentlich (d.h. mil vollem Bewuβtsein eigenen Handelns), sondern sie reagieren’. The model of the agent which we nowadays have is roughly of a self which determines, rather than is determined to, action; the self arrives at this determination by considering available reasons for action in the light of its overall purposes, and it moves to action in full self-consciousness of what it is doing, and why. This model of action, Snell claims, is not met in Greek literature before the tragedians. I think anyone ought to concede that there is some difference between the way Homer portrays decision-making and the way it is portrayed in tragedy (with further differences among the tragedians themselves); but has Snell located the difference in the right place? I shall argue in this paper that he has not.

At Iliad 1.355–6, Achilles, calling upon his mother, reports the injury to his honour done him by Agamemnon:

ἦ γάρ μ᾽ Ἀτρείδης εὐρὺ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων

ἠτίμησεν ⋯λὼν γ⋯ρ γέρας, αὐτ⋯ς ⋯πούρας.

The formulaic line 356 is repeated by Thetis to Zeus at 507 and by Thersites to the assembled Achaeans at 2.240; the problematical phrase αὐτ⋯ς ⋯πούρας is repeated in a variant form with finite verb by Agamemnon at 19.89, αὐτ⋯ς ⋯πηύρων.

Hieron of Syracuse was the most powerful Greek of his day. He was also, and the two facts are not unrelated, the most frequent of Pindar's patrons. A singular feature of the four poems for this Sicilian prince is their obsession with sin and punishment: Tantalus in the First Olympian, Typhoeus, Ixion, and Coronis in the first three Pythians – all offend divinity and suffer terribly. But even in this company, where glory comes trailing clouds of pain, the Third Pythian stands out. The other three odes are manifestly epinician and celebrate success, both athletic and military. The Second Pythian, for instance, is a sombre canvas, and a motif of ingratitude dominates the myth. Yet it rings at the outset with praise of Syracuse and of Hieron's victory. The Third Pythian, by comparison, is not obviously a victory ode.

Since the Persian Wars, the Areopagus had allegedly usurped certain ‘additional functions’. By removing them, and assigning them instead to the Council, the assembled People, and the jury-courts, Ephialtes undid the last institutional bastion of aristocratic political authority, and set the copestones on Athens' democratic order.

The following texts and comments are a supplement to ‘Democritus on Politics and the Care of the Soul’, CQ 39 (1989), 307–31 (henceforth ‘Democritus on Politics’). The Democritean fragments there were quoted only in translation; detailed commentary on them would have taken up too much space and clogged the argument. They make their appearance here in the same order as they did there, preceded by a thumb-nail résumé of that argument and of their place in it. Text, spelling and numbering is that of the standard edition: H. Diels, W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1951–2). Reference will also be made to collections by P. Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos (Marburg, 1893), S. Y. Luria, Democritea (Leningrad, 1970) and G. Ibscher, Demócrito y sus sentencias sobre ética y education (Lima, 1983–4), as well as to translations by V. E. Alfieri, Gli Atomisti (Bari, 1936), K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Presocratics (Oxford, 1948) and J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth, 1987).

About the extent of the trouble and the suitability of the remedies that have been advanced, there have been some differences of opinion; everyone, however, has recognized that there is something amiss in the lines 984–6. At the very least few would deny these difficulties:

(1) ξυνεμβ⋯λοιс is suspect.

(2) ψαμμ⋯αс must be regarded as seriously corrupt.

(3) χρ⋯νοс … παρ⋯βηсεν must be emended as a whole so that either the indispensable constituents of two complete clauses appear or ⋯πε⋯ disappears.

(4) ψαμμ⋯αс ⋯κ⋯τα παρ⋯ and εὔχομαι δ᾽ ⋯ξ ⋯μ⋯с (998) must be brought into metrical correspondence.

Philostratos records that the ephebes of Athens wore a black χλαμ⋯ς to commemorate their murder of Kopreus in defence of the Herakleidai. Both the Herakleidai and a herald of Eurystheus appear in Herakleidai of Euripides, but the murder of the herald is not at issue, nor indeed is there any reference to ephebes or ephebic practice. This state of affairs will cause no surprise, for tragedy regularly selects its story-line from the wider range of the myth, and later uses to which that myth may be put have no necessary bearing on the play. It is however the contention of this article that the religious and social context of Herakleidai has been neglected, and that careful reconstruction of that context from later sources, restoring to us the associations that Euripides could assume in his own day, is an essential prerequisite to any aesthetic or dramatic interpretation of the play.

The first choral ode of Euripides' Supplices, or the Parodos if that term can be used for an ode which is not an ‘entry’, ends with two stanzas of lyric-iambic threnody, following four stanzas of supplication in ionic metre (42–70)

As Collard comments, this structure is broadly similar to, and very possibly modelled upon, A. Pers. 65–114, 115–39. But there is an important difference here: prima facie, the ‘further∕different concerted lament’ in 71ff. is sung and performed by the πρ⋯сπολοι mentioned in 72, ‘taking over’ in a kind of antiphon to the Seven Mothers'lamenting ἱκεс⋯α

The problem of the genuineness of Antigone's lines Ant. 904–20 has never been satisfactorily resolved. The passage has been vehemently impugned for more than a century and a half; yet the majority of editors print it without brackets, and probably the majority of scholars accept it. This stalemate is aggravated by the manner in which the argument has traditionally been conducted.

The friendly expatriate ladies of the chorus in Helen enter having heard loud lamentation issuing from the palace, while engaged, like the Φ⋯λα of the chorus in Hippolytus 125ff., in spreading laundered crimson textiles to dry in the sun. The central theme of ‘hearing cries’, with the verb ἒκλυον and nouns of utterance (185–6), is reminiscent also of Medea 131ff., where the opening words of the Parodos ἒκλυον Φων⋯ν, ἒκλυον δ⋯ βο⋯ν… allude to Medea's loud utterances ἒсωθεν in 96ff. (ἰώ…) and 111ff. (αἰαî…): here, as there, the Parodos exploits the familiar motif of βοηδρομ⋯α.

Thucydides the Historian identifies himself as the son of a certain Oloros (4.104.4) and, since Thucydides was by birth an Athenian (1.1.1), and Oloros is a Thracian name, the question arises how he acquired this Thracian patronymic. According to the view which has gained almost general acceptance, Thucydides of the deme Halimous in Attica owed his Thracian patronymic to a connexion by marriage. The hypothetical reconstruction of the family tree is that Thucydides' Athenian grandfather had married a daughter of Miltiades the Athenian and Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian ruler Oloros, and a son of this marriage was called Oloros after his maternal great-grandfather. This Athenian Oloros became, as shown in Figure, the father of Thucydides the historian – an Athenian with a Thracian patronymic.

I cite manuscripts from my own collations. Information about most of these manuscripts, and explanation of the symbols by which I designate them, may be found in A. Turyn, The Byzantine Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Euripides (Urbana, 1953), K. Matthiessen, Studien zur Textüberlieferung der Euripideischen Hekabe (Heidelberg, 1974), and D. J. Mastronarde and J. M. Bremer, The Textual Tradition of Euripides' Phoinissai (Berkeley, 1982). I shall discuss the affiliations and the relative value of these manuscripts on a later occasion. For the present no knowledge of these matters is needed. I refer to modern editions by the names of their editors: Wecklein = N. Wecklein (Leipzig, 1890), Wecklein (1906) = N. Wecklein (Leipzig and Berlin, 1906), Di Benedetto = V. Di Benedetto (Florence, 1965), Biehl = W. Biehl (Leipzig, Teubner, 1975), Willink = C. W. Willink (Oxford, 1986, 1989 [with Addendis Addenda]), West = M. L. West (Warminster, Aris and Phillips, 1987). Studies refers to my Studies on the Text of Euripides (Oxford, 1981).

When Athens settled the Messenians at Naupactus, the Athenians (so Thucydides is said to tell us) had only just captured the city from the Locrians, who had been in possession of it. This, in fact, is all that Thucydides tells us of these important events, and it has (inter alia) caused grave difficulties for those who believe that Thucydides tells all the events he records in strict chronological order. The interpretation of this passage is taken for granted and has not (to my knowledge) been discussed. Crawley, Smith (Loeb edition), Romilly (Budé), Landsmann (Artemis) will suffice to represent translation into various Western languages. It also seems to be accepted by all historians, certainly as far back as Grote (iv. 420), where their language is sufficiently specific to enable us to judge how they understand the passage.

In the authoritative new collection of the Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (TrGF), a five-trimeter passage appears as No. 624 in the second volume which contains the ‘Fragmenta adespota’. Whereas Nauck placed the lines among the ‘Fragmenta dubia et spuria’ of Euripides (Eur. fr. 1131), Kannicht and Snell separate them totally from the Euripidean fragments and associate them with various pseudepigraphical pieces of tragic poetry which are commonly thought to have originated in the ‘workshop of a Jewish forger’. The purpose of my article is to challenge this decision and to show that TrGF 2.624 may well be genuine poetry by Euripides if we restore the lines to their probable original form. An attempt to reconstruct the original context of the fragment will also be added.

One of the most ingenious arguments in all of Attic oratory is to be found in the speech Lysias wrote for Euphiletus to deliver at his trial for the murder of Eratosthenes (Lys. 1.30–5). In his speech Euphiletus first describes to the court how his wife was seduced by Eratosthenes, then recounts how he discovered the affair, caught the adulterer in the act, and, despite an offer to pay compensation, slew him. Euphiletus defends his action by citing the law of the Areopagus that whoever kills an adulterer caught in flagranti with his wife cannot be convicted of murder. Euphiletus further points out that the same exemption applies to the man who catches someone seducing his pallakē. If the lawgiver regarded the seduction of a pallakē as so serious that it merited the death penalty, Euphiletus argues, he must have regarded the seduction of a wife as even more reprehensible, deserving a penalty worse than death.

The Euthydemus presents a brilliantly comic contrast between Socratic and sophistic argument. Socrates' encounter with the sophistic brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus exposes the hollowness of their claim to teach virtue, unmasking it as a predilection for verbal pugilism and the peddling of paradox. The dialogue's humour is pointed, for the brothers' fallacies are often reminiscent of substantial dilemmas explored seriously elsewhere in Plato, and the farce of their manipulation is in sharp contrast to the sobriety with which Socrates pursues his own protreptic questioning. But the strategies of this text are complex: the Euthydemus may be a playful satire of the desire to confound, yet beneath its knockabout humour a serious purpose is also visible.

In the opening lines of Aristophanes' Acharnians, Dicaeopolis counts first among his greatest joys ‘the five talents Cleon coughed up’, and he professes his love of the Knights for this service ‘worthy of Hellas’. The ancient scholiast gave what he thought an obvious explanation from Theopompus (F 94): he tells us that Cleon was accused of taking bribes to lighten the tribute of the islanders, and he was then fined ‘because of the outrage (ὑβρ⋯ζειν) against the Knights’. Evidently Theopompus connected the charges against Cleon with some earlier proceedings instigated by Cleon against the Cavalry. There is, as often, some difficulty in determining what Theopompus said and what the scholiast inferred, and, aside from that editorial problem, the scholiast's all-too-simple solution faces at least three major objections regarding the legal and political implications of such a trial. On the strength of such objections it was long ago supposed that Dicaeopolis rejoices not at a recent political defeat for the demagogue, but in recalling a theatrical expose in Babylonians of the previous year. This theory of a stage trial, however, encounters obstacles of its own in any reconstruction of the lost play. In recent work there have been many comments but no altogether satisfactory solution on this problem. It is the view of many that Cleon indeed suffered some political defeat in the year preceding Ach.; but, by this approach, ingenious solutions are required to make sense of the scholia. The assumption of a stage-trial, involving the Knights and Cleon in Babylonians, is still found persuasive by others, but if we are to discount the fragment of Theopompus, which has supporting testimony elsewhere in the scholiastic tradition, we would like to have something more than mere inference that Cleon was tried and convicted in Babylonians. The purpose of this paper is to find a more cogent explanation for these lines in Ach. and the equally puzzling scenario in Theopompus. It will be helpful to begin with the broad outlines of the problem (section I), and then proceed to re-examine the prevailing views, the stage-trial theory (II) and historical theories based upon the scholia (III).

There are two basic objections to Plato's account of love in the Phaedrus, both raised by Gregory Vlastos, both metaphysically important in their own right, and both still unanswered. The first is that the Phaedrus sees men as mere images of another world, making it folly or even idolatry to treat them as worthy of love for their own sakes. The other is that it considers the love that we bear for our fellow men to be the result of human, temporal deficiency. If only we could be free of this deficiency, the objection runs, we would have no reason to love anything or anyone except the Forms: seen face to face, these by themselves would absorb all our love.

On the face of it, Plato's treatment of aisthesis is decidedly ambiguous. Sometimes he treats aisthesis as a faculty which, though distinct from all rational capacities, is nonetheless capable of forming judgments such as ‘This stick is bent’ or ‘The same thing is hard and soft’. In the Theaetetus, however, he appears to separate aisthesis from judgment, isolating the former from all prepositional, identificatory and recognitional capacities. The dilemma is easily expressed: Is perception a judgmental or cognitive capacity, or is it a non-judgmental, non-cognitive capacity? If the former, how does perception differ from belief? If the latter, is perception a faculty of the rational or irrational soul? Not surprisingly, the topic has received much scrutiny over the years. And equally unsurprisingly, the debate has turned as much on what it means for a capacity to be judgmental, cognitive, non-judgmental or non-cognitive, as on whether Plato says that it is of either kind.