The Greek calendar has not received as much attention from students of Greek religion as it deserves. The data have been collected by Bischoff. Nilsson has always appreciated its importance, and his contributions to the subject have laid a broad and solid foundation for further research. Both Farnell and Harrison neglected it, and Deubner's Attische Feste (1932) is less adequate in this respect than Mommsen's Feste der Stadt Athen (1898). The question of intercalation was raised in an acute form by Fotheringham, and has never been satisfactorily solved. Meanwhile progress has been made in the study of the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars, with results that have an important bearing on the Greek. This paper does not pretend to be exhaustive. It is merely a discussion of some of the wider issues that arose in the course of an attempt to solve a particular problem—the peculiar method adopted at Olympia for fixing the date of the Games.

By comparison with Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides makes remarkable use of young children in his tragedies. There are vocal parts, sung by individual children in Alcestis and Andromache, cries off for the two boys in Medea, and a song for a supplementary chorus of boys in Supplices. Important episodes concern silent children on stage in Heracles and Troades, lesser roles occur in Hecuba and Iphigeneia in Aulis, and suppliant children may be on stage throughout Heracleidae. No children figure in the extant plays of Aeschylus, and Sophocles gives them silent parts only in Ajax and Oedipus Tyrannus. It seems reasonable to suppose that children are proportionally more central to Euripides’ idea of tragedy, and that individual plays might be studied from this angle. Accordingly I propose to analyse the part of the children in Alcestis, not with questions of methods of performance in mind, but for what the presence, action, utterance or absence of children at any point can tell us about the issues and themes of the play.

Through the kindness of Mr. Newton I was informed that the British Museum is now the possessor of an inscribed gold tablet found on the site of the ancient Petelia, in Southern Italy, which had been considered as lost after the death of Millingen, to whom it first belonged. The inscription was published by Franz in 1836, and after him by Göttling; afterwards it appeared in the third volume of the Corp. Inscr. Gr. No. 5,772, and recently again in Kaibel's Epigrammata Graeca ex Lapid. No. 1,037. Franz's first reading, from the original, was not quite satisfactory, and the modified reading given by him afterwards, and by the others, was not founded on the inspection of the original, a fac-simile of which was never published. Recent discoveries having thrown a new light on this monument I was glad to hear of its existence in the British Museum, and Mr. Newton kindly favoured my wish of seeing it published again more completely and exactly, with a fac-simile. He entrusted this task to Mr. Cecil Smith, to whose skilful accuracy we are indebted for the fac-simile here published, representing the monument slightly larger than its real size, as well as for the following explanatory note on the reading of the inscription.

In JHS cv (1985) 108–28 M. Vickers makes far-reaching claims for the dependence of Attic fine pottery on metalwork. I take them more or less in his order. Bronze Age and not only in Greece, but perhaps he reckons such imitation a recurrent phenomenon. At any rate his principal concern is with mature Black-figure and Red-figure.

It is ‘commonly asserted’, says G. S. Kirk, and ‘almost universally assumed’, that Hesiod came ‘at the point of transition from mythopoeic to rational modes of thought’. H. Diller gives this ‘common assertion’ a more precise meaning: Hesiod represents ‘a bridge from mythical to philosophical thought (my emphasis). This view of Hesiod is justified in various different ways. Diller himself stresses the contrast Hesiod makes in the prooemion to the Theogony between what is true and what is false but resembles the true; this he interprets as the type of self-conscious rejection of rival accounts which is echoed in the work of the earlier Presocratics like Heraclitus. For O. Gigon this passage in the Theogony has a specific reference to Homer: Hesiodic ‘truth’ is there opposed to Homeric myth, Logos to Mythos. The Theogony is also philosophical both in so far as it is concerned with a search for beginnings, and because of the universality of its scope. In addition to these formal features, both Diller and Gigon find philosophical elements in the content of the poem, though on this point their conclusions differ sharply. Diller attributes to Hesiod himself that discovery which is often regarded as one of the main contributions of the Presocratics: the discovery that the world operates in accordance with impersonal laws. Gigon, by contrast, suggests that things in the Hesiodic world are seen as products of will, analogous to the products of human activity.

Glaucon's story about the ring of invisibility in Republic 359d-60b is examined in order to assess the wider role of fictional fabrication in Plato's philosophical argument. The first part of the article (I) looks at the close connections this tale has to the account of Gyges in Herodotus (1.8-12). It is argued that Plato exhibits a specific dependence on Herodotus, which suggests Glaucon's story might be an original invention: the assumption that there must be a lost ‘original’ to inspire Plato's story of the ring has never accommodated the possibility of Plato drawing, perhaps quite directly, from Herodotus. The next section (II) considers the function of that fable within the larger philosophical and aesthetic structure of the Republic. Appreciation of the entire dialogue as an exercise in fiction, as well as philosophy, helps to reveal the ways in which philosophical argument and fictional invention are closely bound up in the formation of Glaucon's fabulous anecdote. Finally (III), a reading of Cicero's treatment of the story in De Officiis confirms the degree to which philosophical reasoning and fiction can be quite generally interdependent. Although the arguments in Sections II and III are consistent with the opening contention that the ring story was invented by Plato, they do not presuppose it.

This article argues that several problems of character identification in the Batrakhomyomakhia should be considered not as matters of textual criticism, to be solved by emendation, excision or transposition, but as authentic features of the poem's parodic engagement with the text of Homer and its scholarship. This engagement comprises another reason for considering the Hellenistic period as the most likely terminus post quem for the poem.

According to Polybius, there took part in the battle of Ecnomus 680 quinqueremes and 290,000 men, i.e. crews 204,000 and troops 86,000; while in the next year, at the battle of the Hermaean promontory, 550 quinqueremes were engaged. The only figures comparable to these in Roman history, manifest absurdities apart, are those given by Appian for the battle of Naulochus, and perhaps those for Actium. At Naulochus 300 ships of all sizes are said to have been in action on either side, and no doubt Agrippa's fleet, at any rate, did amount to this large number; while at Actium Octavian may have had anything up to 400. But in Octavian's time the population of all Italy may have been 7 to 8 millions; the Mediterranean was almost a Roman lake, and its entire resources went to furnish the fleets for the civil wars.

Passages from Plato often inspired in late antiquity a speculative profusion of ingenuities that can scarcely have been intended by the author. Even in the Timaeus, however, few passages could be found which were to undergo so much elaboration as the sparse and incidental remarks in the Sophist concerning Being, Life and Mind. These terms are given some prominence in the Enneads of Plotinus, where it remains nonetheless very difficult to reconstruct a hierarchical order either of dignity or of procession, or to give the triad that cardinal place in his system which is certainly accorded to the triad One-Mind-Soul. If the term Life is to take a place between Being and Mind it must be sharply distinguished from Soul, which is always inferior to the intellect in the ontology of the true Platonist. Plotinus is one of the most exact of philosophers, and if he fails to make the discriminations which would be necessary to anyone wishing to understand this nomenclature, it is because he is not expounding such a triad even as a subordinate part of his system: at most it might be thought to be implied or presupposed.

In preparing an article on the Erinyes in the Oresteia, to be published in JHS 1983, I found it necessary to define my attitude to a number of subsidiary issues (whether or not I felt able to solve them). I shall discuss some of these issues here, under two general headings, by way of preface to the main article.

I wish to consider three questions: when and how the chorus appears, where Apollo enters, and whether Apollo is accompanied by Hermes.

Most scholars have supposed that the chorus, or some of it, is seen by the audience immediately after the Pythia's second exit at 63. Oliver Taplin, however, in his admirable book on Aeschylus, has argued that none of the chorus becomes visible until 140, immediately before the Parodos. His first argument for this later entry is that we have only one parallel, namely Euripides' Supp., for the chorus's presence in the orchestra well before its first song. True enough, but how many parallels do we need? There are only three extant tragedies in which the chorus is so much a party to the action that its silent presence could possess some dramatic point; two of these are Eum. and Euripides' Supp., and the third is Aeschylus' Supp., which, since it begins with the Parodos, cannot affect the issue either way. So the anomaly, such as it is, will merely be a by-product of the totally anomalous character of the chorus of Eum.; one could just as well point out that this is the only extant tragedy in which the chorus is addressed before its first song in an extended rhesis.

Few sections in the whole of Book ii of Herodotus' History present such difficulties as Chapter 91. The problems posed are: first, what and where was Neapolis? Second, who was the Perseus mentioned by Herodotus? Third, how could the Χεμμîται, Egyptians by Herodotus' own admission, have retailed to Herodotus so thoroughly Greek a story as the tale of the sandal of Perseus? Fourth, how could Egyptians have set up gymnastic contests in the Greek fashion as Herodotus claims that they did? The present article is intended to offer a solution to all of these problems.

Where uncertainty is so rife it is perhaps reassuring to find some data which can be regarded as beyond dispute. The geographical position of the city of Chemmis at least is certain. It was the capital of the Ninth Nome of Upper Egypt, usually called Πανὸς πόλις or Πανῶν πόλις by later writers, and stood, as the survival of the name proves, on the site of the modern town of Akhmîm.

Ancient authors often cited each other inaccurately through misunderstanding or carelessness; and this can cause problems in the collecting of fragments of authors of whose works some, but not all, survive. For a distinction has to be made between inexact citations of extant works and citations which, although resembling such works, do in fact seem to derive from material now lost. Such problems occur repeatedly in connection with the botanical writings of Theophrastus; and one particular group of problems stems from a section in the epitome of Bk ii of Athenaeus.

At the very beginning of the Delian Confederacy, in describing its organisation during the winter of 478–477 B.C., Thucydides records (i 96) that permanent arrangements were made for the collection of contributions in money from those cities which preferred to supply cash rather than ships for the furtherance of the new League's activities. These arrangements included the establishment of officials to receive, disburse, and be generally responsible for the cash funds, but Thucydides' brief account of their appointment has given rise to difficulties. He says, in the barest terms, The last four words are loosely attached to describe the office's function and are explicative of not what concerns us are the seven words before the comma.

Thucydides' phrase, with its emphatic clearly puts out of court the idea of E. M. Walker that the Hellenotamiae began when the tribute-lists began, i.e. in 454–453, when the treasury of the Confederacy was moved from Delos to Athens and Athenian control of it was more firmly secured. Walker's view was adequately refuted both by Gomme and by the authors of The Athenian Tribute Lists; it also runs contrary to the sense of Xenophon's remark (Poroi 5.5) about the acquisition of control of fleet and treasury by Athens. Since the Athenians commanded from 478, as the result of the treasurership must have been Athenian from the same date—or so, unless he be held to ignore all chronological distinctions, Xenophon clearly implies.

The starting-point of this article was Cornford's essay, ‘A Ritual Basis for Hesiod's Theogony’, recently published in The Unwritten Philosophy. He showed it to me soon after he had written it in 1942. It is only a sketch, but it struck me at once as important, because it opens a new approach to the conclusion he had reached many years before in From Religion to Philosophy. I told him this and begged him to pursue the subject, but he smiled and said, ‘I leave that to you’. Hence the title of this article, which is a tribute to his memory.

His From Religion to Philosophy appeared in 1913. In the same year Eduard Norden published his Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede. In this study, starting from the Sermon on the Areopagus, Norden shows that the Greek and Latin authors employ, in poetry and prose, certain forms of speech, liturgical in origin, which can be traced independently in the Old Testament. The two streams, the Hellenic and the Hebrew, drawn from Babylonia and Egypt, were reunited in Christianity, notably by St. Paul, who, in virtue of his birth and upbringing, was equally well versed in both. Later, in the Byzantine liturgy, they were reinforced by a third stream, the Syrian, of the same ultimate origin.

In a recent article which does much to enhance understanding of an important but neglected work, David M. Olster has drawn attention to the historical and political background against which George of Pisidia, panegyrist of the Emperor Heraclius (AD 610–641), composed his major surviving poem, the Hexaemeron. Olster rightly casts doubt on the validity of the distinct categories of ‘panegyrical’ and ‘theological’ into which George's poetry has traditionally been classified, and illuminates the significance of the Creation theme as a metaphor for political renewal at a time when the Byzantines achieved great victories against Persia after a prolonged period of disaster in the first decades of the seventh century. These observations lead him to the view that all of George's poetry should be interpreted in political and panegyrical rather than theological or religious terms.

This paper takes the Thirteenth Oration as a test case of many of the questions raised by the career and works of Dio Chrysostom. The speech's generic creativity and philosophical expertise are demonstrated. Historical problems are clarified. Analysis shows how Dio weaves seemingly diverse themes into a complex unity. New answers are given to two crucial interpretative problems. Exploration of Dio's self-representation and of his handling of internal and external audiences and of temporal and spatial relationships leads to the conclusion that he has a serious philosophical purpose: the advocacy of Antisthenic/Cynic paideia in place of the current paideia both of Romans and Athenians. Paradoxically, this clever, ironic and sophisticated speech deconstructs its own apparent values in the interests of simple, practical moralizing.

With disarmingly open conceit, the Younger Pliny tells Pontius Allifanus that ‘my hendecasyllables are read, are copied, are even sung, and Greeks (who have learned Latin out of love for my poetry book) make my verses resound to cithara and lyre’ (Epist. 7.4.9). By Pliny's time, Greek musicians (and actors) were widely distributed and organized in a worldwide guild centred at Rome, so it will not surprise us that Greeks are the ones setting the verses to music. But what sort of music? When Pliny went out to hear his beloved poems sung to cithara and lyre, what did it sound like? Or, more generally, what did Pliny, or Martial, or, in an earlier generation, Horace see and hear when out for an evening's musical entertainment at the hands of a Greek troupe? Until fairly recently, we have known precious little. Literary sources give the odd anecdote, such as the reports of Nero's performances, but in general tell us little specific about the content or style of musical entertainment in the Roman era. And sources speaking more technically about music itself lend the impression that nothing significant happened after the ‘New Music’ was introduced in the fourth century BC.

This short article concentrates upon a very small part of the material culture of Thasos in an attempt to show how knowledge and discussion of the local archaeology can not only elucidate the study of Greek ‘colonization’, but also is vital to a clear understanding of the process. The Greek colonization of Thasos, and indeed of Thrace, is currently written from a wholly Hellenocentric and text-based perspective, behind which lies an unspoken and pervasive comparison with Western European colonialism. Behind my discussion lies the opposing conviction that Greek colonization must be considered at the local level, and in the context of an understanding of social developments within the area settled. This discussion of the cave of Pan thus indicates both how an archaeology that concentrates only upon Greek material culture can miss important features, and how an awareness of the archaeology of local populations can elucidate the processes of Greek ‘colonization’.

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet's construal of Apology 30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything else good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on εἶναι in Plato and Aristotle to γίγνεσθαι, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modern verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use (εἶναι, ὑπάρχειν, ὑφεστηκέναι) can be said to have existential meaning.

When the Messenger in the Oedipus Coloneus looked back, he saw that Oedipus had disappeared and that Theseus was screening his eyes with his hand. Then Theseus made adoration to earth and to the Olympus of the gods, both at once: ὁρῶμεν αὐτὸν γῆν τε προσκυνοῦνθ̓ ἅμα καὶ τὸν θεῶν Ὄλυμπονἐνἐν ταὐτῷλόλῳ (1654 f.). There was nothing strange about such a salutation. The Sausageseller in the Knights was bidden to ‘adore earth and the gods’ (ἔπειτα τὴν πρόσκυσον καὶ τοὺς θεούς, 156), and did so, presumably with the same familiar ritual gestures which Theseus used. But the phrasing in the Coloneus is emphatic (ἅμα … ἐν ταὐτῷ λόγῳ), and Jebb has one of his percipient notes: ‘The vision which [Theseus] had just seen moved him to adore both the χθόνιοι and the ὕπατοι. This touch is finely conceived so as to leave the mystery unbroken.’ The mystery, that is, of the passing of Oedipus. οὐ γάρ τις αὐτὸν οὔτε πυρφόρος θεοῦ | κεραυνὸς ἐξέπαξεν οὔτε ποντία | θύελλα κινηθεῖσα τῷ τότ̕ ἐν χρόνῳ, | ἀλλ̕ ἤ τις ἐκ θεῶν πομπός, ἤ τὸ νερτέρων | εὔνουν διαστὰν γῆς ἀλάμπετον βάθρον.

The purpose of the following remarks is to suggest a close relationship of thought between the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles and the Oresteia of Aeschylus; to suggest, further, that both dramas performed, in terms of the same conceptions, a religious function which tragedy was peculiarly fitted to perform.