I propose to demonstrate the clinical plausibility of the ‘psychotherapy scene’ of the Bacchae, which is subjected here to a purely psychiatric analysis: all my interpretations and conjectures are based on clinical data and psychiatric theory only. Euripides' objective and rational treatment of the irrational, the accuracy of his descriptions (not theories) of abnormal behaviour, which are compatible, down to the last detail, with descriptions found in modern psychiatric texts, and his capacity to present not simply a partial list of symptoms, but a coherent clinical picture (syndrome) are taken for granted and will not be discussed further in the present context. The focus of my enquiry is exclusively the psychiatric plausibility of Euripides' description of the psychotherapeutic process.

It goes without saying that, since ‘instant cures’ are impossible, Euripides condensed a normally fairly long procedure into a single scene, selectively high-lighting only what would be the crucial moments of a real psychotherapy. His summary of the psychotherapy is as satisfactory as that of a modern psychiatrist. In fact, Euripides' masterly selectivity actually facilitates the understanding of the psychodynamics of Agave's recovery. This enables me to comment on the Euripidean text in exactly the same way as I commented on the verbatim transcript of the psychotherapy of one of my Plains Indian patients.

In his lost essay περὶ ἰδεῶν Aristotle retailed and rebutted a number of Academic arguments for the existence of Ideas. Several of these, together with Aristotle's objections to them, are preserved in Alexander's commentary on A 9 of the Metaphysics. The first object of the following discussion is to show the sense and the provenance of one, the most complex and puzzling, of these surviving arguments. For several reasons it seems to deserve more consideration than it has yet had. 1. Its length and technicality make it singularly fitted to illustrate the sort of material on which Aristotle drew in his critique. 2. Moreover, Alexander reports it by way of amplifying Aristotle's comment that, of the more precise arguments on Ideas, οἱ μὲν τῶν πρός τι ποιοῦσιν ἰδέας , ὧν οὔ φαμεν εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γένος (Met. 990b15–17 = 1079a11–13); condensed and allusive form of this remark and its immediate neighbours in the Metaphysics can be taken to show that here Aristotle is epitomising parts of his περὶ ἰδεῶν that are independently known to us only through his commentator. We shall not understand the objection if we misidentify its target; and another purpose of this discussion is to show that the objection is not the disingenuous muddle that one recent writer labours to make it. 3. But Alexander's report of the argument is a nest of problems, and the same recent writer brands it as almost incredibly careless. To this extent, the success of our explanation will be a vindication of the commentator. But on all the heads of this discussion I am well aware that much more remains to be said.

More light is thrown on the poetic art of Stesichorus by the papyrus-text of his Geryoneïs than by all his other fragments together. I published some thoughts about it in the Oxford Classical Text Lyrica Graeca Selecta in 1968, and I now give the detail of the work on which that publication was based, together with the results of work which I have done since. Some of the most important of these results are not mine but Mr Barrett's, and I have been careful to acknowledge my debt to him in detail throughout.

I. The Text

A. PMG 184

Were the poleis of Classical Greece state-based or stateless communities? Do their political structures meet standard criteria for full statehood? Conventional wisdom maintains that they do not. According to a broad consensus, the Classical polis was neither state-based nor stateless as such, but something somewhere in between: a unique, category-defying formation that was somehow both ‘state’ and ‘society’ simultaneously, a kind of inseparable fusion of the two. The current paper offers an alternative perspective on this complex but fundamental issue. It questions prevailing views on theoretical grounds, suggesting that the consensus ‘fusionist’ position rests ultimately upon a misunderstanding of what Thomas Hobbes would call the ‘personality’ of polis political structures. Focusing on the case of Classical Athens, it then proceeds to present a new account of the Greek ‘state’, an account that aims to be both theoretically satisfying and heuristically useful. Even if all those who performed state functions were simultaneously constituents of polis ‘society’, the state was nevertheless perceived to function as an autonomous agency, possessing a corporate personality that was quite distinct from the individual personalities of the living, breathing citizens who happened to instantiate it at any particular time.

In the Late Geometric and Orientalizing periods, storage vessels with elaborate relief decoration were produced in several Aegean islands, most notably the northern Cyclades, Crete and Rhodes. This article interprets the amphora-shaped relief pithos as a function of prevailing social, economic and living conditions. It is argued that rather than being inspired by funerary or votive uses, the relief pithoi of the Tenian-Boeotian group are the material expression of the vital importance of food storage, which not only ensured subsistence but was an essential prerequisite for social differentiation. Relief pithoi were a form of conspicuous storage. Against this background, the unique iconography of the Tenian-Boeotian pithoi is revisited and the enigmatic fallen warrior on the Mykonos Pithos identified as a possible role model for seventh-century aristocrats.

Abdera and Teos have been brought into prominence recently by the discovery of the new inscription of Public Imprecations from Teos, the provisions of which refer not only to Teos but also to its great colony. But there are additional reasons why these two cities deserve fresh consideration. The excavations at Abdera, which have now been conducted over many years, may in some respects seem disappointing; no temples and, apart from the theatre, no public buildings have come to light; but they nevertheless require important changes in our interpretation of the history of the city. Secondly, there are many allusions to the early history of Abdera in Pindar's Second Paean, composed for that city. Their use by historians was long hindered, not only by their inherent obscurity, but also by unsatisfactory reading and interpretation of the Greek. The second of these hindrances was removed by the fine edition of the poem published by S. L. Radt in 1958. Even so, this important evidence seems in general not to have entered the consciousness of ancient historians.

Despite the discussions of a hundred years, the unity of Euripides' Herakles remains a problem. Most scholars have distinguished in the play three parts whose limits are marked by the apparition of Lussa with Iris (814) and by Herakles' recovery from madness (1088): but over the relationship of these three parts to each other and to the whole there has been little agreement. It is this relationship which I propose to consider.

The problem is baldly stated by Müller who contented himself with complaining of the lack of unity involved in the ‘combination in one piece of two actions so totally different as the deliverance of the children of Herakles from the persecutions of the blood-thirsty Lykos, and their murder by the hands of their frantic father’. Wilamowitz, followed with elaborations by Verrall, sought to diminish the shock by looking for some continuity between these two events and suggested that the madness developed naturally and gradually, and is already discernible in the earlier utterances and actions of Herakles. This view—Herakles the Megalomaniac—finds its way into Murray's Oxford Text and is accepted apparently by Dodds and certainly by Grube. But this shock of inconsequence is essential to the drama, and later scholars—Parmentier, Kitto, Ehrenberg—have quite rightly repudiated the megalomania theory. Müller was wrong in the first place to consider the relationship of two parts of a drama without the third. This sort of procedure leads to conclusions like that of Murray who in his discussion begins with part iii, alludes briefly to part ii and not at all to part i: he pronounces the play ‘broken-backed’. Kitto on the other hand looks for ‘one unifying idea’. But though he suggests one, he does not satisfactorily solve the difficulties he himself finds in part i (‘Dramatic feebleness like this … the scenes are flat … dramatising a negative’, etc., 240–2), and of Stasimon ii he concludes that it is ‘neither itself a unity nor has it any connexion with the action or the thought’ (265 cf. 244); and it is understandable that Norwood is unconvinced and reverts to the verdict of Murray.

During the summer of 1897 I had the opportunity of making extensive exploration in Phrygia, and the following paper gives, as a first instalment, an account of the more important results of the season's work there. I have given a map (Plate XII) based on the Ottoman Railway Survey to illustrate the watercourses of the Laodiceian district, but I regret that a map to show the new sites has had to be deferred. At the outset I must make acknowledgment of the valuable help I have received from Prof. W. M. Ramsay, who has kindly sent me some criticisms and suggestions. For the numerous references to his volumes on Phrygia no apology is necessary. Every student of its history must use his brilliant pages as the basis of his study; and the work of the explorer in the districts which they cover must naturally be to endeavour to amplify the information, and to confirm or correct the views, which he finds there.

The object of the present article is to bring the evidence of coins to bear upon a type of Greek state which has received comparatively slight attention at the hands of historians, the federal union of cities or tribes.

A preliminary survey of Greek federal money was made some fifty years ago by the Hon. J. B. L. Warren. More recently important additions to our knowledge of the coin-systems of individual leagues have been made by several expert writers on numismatics. But certain aspects of federal coinage have hardly yet been considered.

In particular, no systematic attempt has yet been made to use their evidence to illustrate one crucial problem of federal politics, the relation of the federal government to the confederate states. In the following pages an endeavour will be made to throw light upon this problem by means of a survey of the various federal coinage systems.

This study of the Ten Thousand on their way home will consider, with regard to some important aspects of their social behaviour, whether they were adopting and adapting the Greek city way of life, or that of a mercenary army, and whether other possible models may help us to understand their problems and their success.

The Ten Thousand had been part of an army and many of them would form part of one again. The assumption that in the meanwhile they were really just like an army justifies the space given to them by Parke, by Marinovich and by Griffith in books which are studies of Greek mercenary warfare. Of course the men's aim when they were Cyrus's mercenaries (like the aims of other mercenaries) had been to follow what instructions had come to them from above and to take home, individually, what pay and profit they could. But once Cyrus was killed they were no longer mercenaries nor employed by any authority, and their aim, decided by themselves, was to find a way home. Their entirely different status, and their ability to succeed in these new circumstances, mean that it is unwise in investigating the patterns of behaviour either of mercenaries or of the Ten Thousand to assume without question that the two patterns will be the same.

Sir William Tarn devoted some of the best pages in his Alexander the Great to Alexander's Macedonian troops. He has made many improvements on the account given by H. Berve. Yet doubts may be voiced or amendments suggested.

I. Prodromoi

It is known that the Companion cavalry at Gaugamela were formed in eight squadrons or ilai (Arr. iii 11.8), of which one was the royal squadron par excellence or the ‘agema of the Companions’. It is unlikely that the number of ilai had been reduced since 334, as reinforcements had probably more than compensated for losses (section V). Plutarch, however, says in his life of Alexander (16.2) that at the Granicus Alexander plunged into the stream with 13 ilai. His account of the battle closely resembles Arrian's, and he cites Aristobulus on the number of Macedonian casualties. The statement quoted probably then corresponds to Arrian's (i 14.6) that Alexander ordered the prodromoi and Paeonians under Amyntas, son of Arrhabaeus, into the river, together with one foot regiment which was preceded by Socrates' cavalry squadron, and that he himself followed with the whole right wing. Plutarch's 13 squadrons may thus be identified with the 8 squadrons of the Companions plus 5 of prodromoi and Paeonians. The Paeonians themselves can be classified, perhaps by error, as prodromoi (Arr. iii 8.1) or distinguished from them (i 14.1 and 6; ii 9.2; iii 12.3); they could have formed only a single squadron, distinct from 4 squadrons of prodromoi under command of the same Amyntas (Arr. i 12.7) or sarissophoroi (iv 4.6) of whom we hear elsewhere.

The literature is now full of references to the scientific achievements (so-called) of the Presocratics, and the earlier the figure (and consequently the less information of reliable authenticity we have of him) the more enthusiastically do scholars enlarge his scientific knowledge—a proceeding which, of course, has plenty of precedent among the doxographers and commentators of antiquity. The classic example is Thales, whom I have discussed in an earlier article; it is chastening (but hardly surprising) to find that the views there expressed have had very little influence on the traditional, vastly exaggerated estimate of Thales as the founder of Greek mathematics and astronomy and the transmitter of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian wisdom. Professor Guthrie, in a work obviously destined to be the standard English textbook on early Greek philosophy for decades to come, can still say (p. 58) ‘…according to an unchallenged tradition, [Thales] had himself visited Egypt’ (my italics), despite my demonstration that nowhere in the primary group of sources is Thales' name linked with Egypt, and that the whole story of his introducing Egyptian mathematical knowledge to the Greeks is a mere invention (probably by Eudemus) based on separate, unrelated statements by Herodotus. One must, however, be thankful that the uncritical acceptance of Thales' alleged prediction of a solar eclipse is now discountenanced.

HELIODOROS' Aithiopika is the story of Theagenes and Charikleia: of their falling in love, their elopement from Delphi where Charikleia lives as the adopted daughter of the priest of Apollo, their encounters with pirates, bandits and unwanted suitors, and finally of their arrival in Ethiopia, land of Charikleia's birth, where she is recognised as the daughter of the king and queen, and the lovers' union is sanctioned, sanctified and implicitly consummated after the conclusion of the narrative. It is a commonplace of discussion of the novel to draw attention to the artfulness with which the story is presented, to the temporal dislocations occasioned by beginning the plot (or narration) in the middle of the story, and to the consequent shift which the author has been able to effect from the straightforward, linear, proairetic mode of simple storytelling to a hermeneutic mode which draws the reader into a quest, shared with the characters of the novel, for true understanding of facts of which he is already in possession.

In Kreon's famous edict in Sophokles' Antigone the punishment for attending to the dead Polyneikes is death by public stoning (36). In the event,at the climax of his bitter argument with his son Haimon, who is betrothed to Antigone, Kreon threatens to have Antigone killed in front of Haimon's eyes (760–1). But when Haimon then angrily departs, Kreon orders Antigone to be imprisoned in a deserted place, underground in the rock, with a little food (773–5). Various motives have been suggested for this change of penalty, e.g. that the city may not want to cooperate in the stoning of Antigone. But the main factor must be the aptness of imprisonment underground for the specific case of Antigone. As Kreon himself ironically puts it, ‘there she can ask Hades to save her from death, Hades who is the only god she reveres’ (777–8). Imprisonment underground, in what is described as a tomb, suits the crime of one who has seemed too devoted to Hades, and produces the complementary inversions described by Teiresias (1068–71): the dead Polyneikes is above the earth, while the living Antigone is below, in a tomb.

A recent article has observed, with particular reference to the Homeric poems, that ‘divine intervention <cannot> be simply removed from the poems to leave a kernel of sociological truths’. I agree; though I should interpret the words in a manner different from their author. I shall endeavour to show in this article that not merely divine intervention, but divine behaviour as a whole in the Homeric poems, is governed by the same values as human behaviour in the poems; so that the ‘sociological truths’—or whatever they should be termed—can encompass divine as well as human behaviour in Homer. Nor, it seems to me, is this even prima facie surprising. True, the conversations on Olympus recorded in Homer are in one sense entirely free composition, since no bard in the tradition had ever met an Olympian or attended an assembly of the gods. But the bards lived in a society which—like later Greek societies that we are better able to observe—believed itself able to discern the hand of gods in the events which befell it or its several members; which, not surprisingly, attributed pleasant events to the favour of its gods, unpleasant events to the anger of its gods; enquired why the god or gods concerned was pleased or angry; and ascribed reasons for divine pleasure or anger analogous to those for which a powerful human being in the society might have been expected to become pleased or angry.

For students of Athenian private and public law it is a painful, but undeniable fact that there is still grave uncertainty as to the precise methods by which statutes, one of the most important sources of law, were made at the most formative period of the history of the system from the middle of the fifth century B.C. onwards. There have been two fairly recent and conflicting attempts to clear up some of the main points, those of Kahrstedt and of Mrs. Atkinson. Neither treatment seems wholly satisfactory, and in particular neither seems to take any account of J. H. Oliver's publication of additions to the code or of Ferguson's paper on these same additions. It may therefore be worthwhile re-examining the evidence for one chapter at least of the story, the chapter covering roughly the twenty years beginning in 411 B.C.

I cannot avoid a word on sources, in the historical not the legal sense. In the literary field historians and political theorists are very unhelpful. The problem does not seem to have interested them. Here therefore we have to rely mainly on two other classes of authority, firstly, grammarians and lexicographers, who were interested in the archaisms of the laws of Drakon and Solon, secondly, and most fruitful of all, the orators. In the orators we must distinguish between the documents cited in the texts and the orators' own words. I do not discuss the validity of the cited documents, but must content myself with saying that with regard to the more important documents which are here relevant there is now fairly general agreement among scholars that they are genuine. Statements of the orators themselves must always be examined under the microscope and allowance made for possible distortions due to the speaker's desire to support the particular point which he is making.

The shadow of Hecataeus, magni nominis umbra if ever there was one, constantly obstructs our attempts to assess and understand Herodotus' principles, objectives and achievements. Perplexing and elusive as the details of Hecataeus' work may be, no-one disputes his importance as an intermediary between catalogue-poetry such as we associate with Hesiod, with its clear subordination of geography to genealogy, and the more sophisticated method of synthesising knowledge about the oikoumene demonstrated by Herodotus; some have even argued that the great Milesian has a better claim than Herodotus to the title of pater historiae.

The work of Cherniss on Aristotle's criticism of the Presocratics may be compared with that of Jaeger on the development of Aristotle's own thought as contained in his Aristoteles of 1923. Jaeger modestly described that epoch-making work as a Grundlegung or foundation for the history of the philosopher's development, and as such it has been of value not only for itself but in the stimulus it has given to further study, in the course of which the balance of its conclusions has been to some extent altered. Cherniss's own study is of the same pioneer kind, and if I confess to a feeling that it goes rather too far, the comparison with the now classic work of Jaeger will, I hope, make clear my general admiration and appreciation of the fact that it is a permanent contribution with which all future scholarship will have to reckon.

I cannot at this stage even begin to discuss in detail the mass of erudition on which Cherniss's case is built up. Nevertheless, the very widespread acceptance of his strictures on Aristotle's historical sense suggest that anyone to whom they seem extreme should lose no time in giving voice to his misgivings, even in general terms, before they become irrevocably canonical. This thought has been prompted by the recent monograph of Mr. J. B. McDiarmid, Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes, at the beginning of which we read simply that ‘the question of Aristotle's bias has been dealt with exhaustively by H. Cherniss’, whose views then become, without further remark, the starting-point of the younger scholar's own inquiry into the reliability of Theophrastus. Since in what follows I may speak critically of McDiarmid on several points, let me say that his main thesis, the dependence of Theophrastus on Aristotle in much of his φυσικων δόξαι and the consequent danger of regarding him as a separate authority for Presocratic thought, seems true enough. The derivation of Theophrastus's judgments from those of his master was already beginning to be recognised with fruitful results, and the time was ripe for a general review of the evidence.

On 12th March, 1800 Charles James Fox wrote thus to Gilbert Wakefield, imprisoned for seditious libel in Dorchester Gaol. ‘I have lately read Lycophron, and am much obliged to you for recommending it to me to do so: besides there being some very charming poetry in him, the variety of stories is very entertaining. … There remain, after all, some few difficulties, which if you can clear up to me, I shall be much obliged to you. … The most important of these is, that which belongs to the part where he speaks of the Romans in a manner that could not be possible for one who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, that is, even before the first Punic war.’ Fox accordingly inferred that either the Roman passages (1226–80, 1446–50) were interpolated (which he thought the more probable hypothesis) or the poem as a whole was not the work of the author to whom it was traditionally ascribed, Lycophron the tragedian, who organised the texts of comedy for the Alexandrian library under Philadelphus. Wakefield, though normally a far from conservative critic, was not convinced: ‘Is it incredible, that an attentive observer of the times, and the rising greatness of the Romans, might venture to predict the extent of their future sway in the general terms of ver. 1229?’ Fox thought this ‘morally impossible’, and the subject continued to occupy their letters during the remaining months of Wakefield's incarceration. In this remarkable correspondence we find clearly adumbrated the main lines on which the Lycophron Question was to develop. If our hearts sink before the considerable bibliography generated by this controversy, we may find reassurance in the characteristic air of invincible common sense with which its initiator, having hit on a peculiarly happy expedient for cheering the enforced leisure of his imprudent friend, steadily maintained his position, armed against Wakefield's superior erudition by better judgement and a stronger sense of style.

The term Tabulae Iliacae is conventionally applied to twenty low reliefs scattered through museums from Warsaw to New York. The common name conceals a bewildering artistic farrago: the earliest Tabula, the Tabula Iliaca Capitolina (1 A; Plate II; Fig. 3), is mid-Augustan (cf. p. 48), the latest (19J) late Antonine (Sadurska 94). Five of the Tabulae bear the name Theodorus and I shall argue (p. 27) that he is the craftsman responsible for their execution. Where provenance is known, it is always Rome or the Roman Campagna. The materials of the Tabulae vary widely: most, but not all, are of some sort of marble, white, yellow, and Giallo Antico (Sadurska 13). Little can be said of their size, for not one survives complete. It would appear, however, that the largest rectangular Tabula, the calcite 1 A, was originally c. 25 cm by 42 cm (Sadurska 14). Two, portraying the Shield of Achilles, were circular (4N and 5O) and 5O may have had a radius of 20 cm (Sadurska 47). The name Iliacae is appropriate only in as much as eleven out of twenty Tabulae portray episodes from the Iliad (Sadurska 15 + 20Par.) and six the Sack of Ilium; others, however, represent (e.g.) Alexander's victory at Arbela and the apotheosis of Hercules. What the Tabulae do display in common is a combination of low reliefs in miniature and inscriptions, often extensive and not always on the same topic as the reliefs (see Plate II). In ancient art, only the Megarian bowls (cf. p. 47) stand comparison, and their ratio of text to illustration is substantially lower.