The passage in the Chronicle of the Successors dealing with the year Phil.07 (=317/316 BC; ABC 10 Obv. 14–18 = BCHP 3 Obv. 33–37) is often used as a marker to favour the low-chronology hypothesis for the early Hellenistic period and Second Diadoch War. This in-depth study of this passage deals with the nature of the troops mentioned there (lúeren2.meš lugal, ‘royal troops’, and lúḪa-ni-i šà lugal, ‘royal Ḫanû troops”) and the possible implications for the chronological debate. The result is that the passage is not pivotal for the low chronology because it is not only in a low-chronology scenario that it is possible. The use of ‘royal (Ḫanû) troops' in the Chronicle does not exclude the high chronology for the Second Diadoch War.

SGO I 01/01/07 is a highly refined 20-line elegiac epitaph from Cnidus which probably dates to the first century BC. Despite the poem's striking formal features and poetic qualities it has received almost no attention since its first publication by Sir Charles Newton in 1863. The first four sections of this article demonstrate that the inscription represents an important witness to certain epigraphic practices and epitaphic traditions, including those of inscribed dialogue and lament. The final section then presents a reading of the poem which centres on the competing poetics of consolation, memory and forgetfulness proposed by the epitaph's two speaking voices.

Scholarship on the late fifth-century BC New Music Revolution has mostly relied on the evidence provided by Athenaeus, the pseudo-Plutarch De musica and a few other late sources. To this date, however, very little has been done to understand Athenaeus' own role in shaping our understanding of the musical culture of that period. This article argues that the historical context provided by Athenaeus in the section of the Deipnosophistae that cites passages of Melanippides, Telestes and Pratinas on the mythology of the aulos (14.616e–617f) is not a credible reflection of the contemporary aesthetics and strategies of the authors and their works. Athenaeus is both following the structure of Aristotle's discussion of the topic of the aulos in Politics 8.1341a-1342b and accepting the élite ideological position given there. Athenaeus' text thus does not provide evidence for the historical context in which late fifth-century authors were composing, but rather constitutes an attempt to illustrate Aristotle's argument with poetic examples from late fifth-century poets.

The comic poet Pherecrates does not appear to have been active after the mid 410s. I suggest that he is to be identified with an epigraphically-attested war-casualty from a few years later.

This paper analyses one aspect of Xenophon's representation of space, focusing on the famous stages-and-parasangs formula employed by Xenophon in the Anabasis. It starts by discussing the meaning of his terms, and then explores patterns of repetition and variation in his account of the march, split into three sections (the marches upcountry, to the sea and along the coast). Rather than explaining Xenophon's usage in terms of sources, it suggests that variations in the marching formula elaborate the successive stages of the Greeks' encounter with the spaces of the Achaemenid Empire.

This article re-evaluates the 22 so-called Tabulae Iliacae. Where most scholars (especially in the English-speaking world) have tended to dismiss these objects as ‘trivial' and ‘confused’, or as ‘rubbish’ intended for the Roman ‘nouveaux riches’, this article relates them to the literary poetics of the Hellenistic world, especially Greek ecphrastic epigram. Concentrating on the tablets' verbal inscriptions, the article draws attention to three epigraphic features in particular. First, it explores the various literary allusivenesses of the two epigrammatic invocations inscribed on tablets 1A and 2NY; second, it examines the Alexandrian diagrammatic word-games on the reverse of seven Tabulae (2NY, 3C, 4N, 5O, 7Ti, 15Ber, 20Par), relating these to the pictorial-poetic games of the Greek technopaegnia; third, it discusses the possible hermeneutic significance of associating six tablets with ‘Theodorean techne’ (1A, 2NY, 3C, 4N, 5O, 20Par), comparing a newly discovered epigram by Posidippus (67 A-B). All of these allusions point to a much more erudite purpose and clientele: the tablets toyed with Hellenistic visual-verbal relations at large.

This article treats the figure of the fox that appears as one of the members of the embassy sent by the animals to Zeus in Callimachus' second Iamb. By exploring previous appearances of the fox in the poetic repertoire, I identify a series of Archaic and early Classical works that Callimachus uses by way of ‘intertexts’, and argue that the Hellenistic author draws on the animal's place within the interconnected iambic and fable traditions that inform his poem. Already visible in these earlier texts, and anticipating Callimachus, is a concern with literary as well as ethical polemics.

A well-known relief pithos in the Louvre (CA 795) shows Perseus confronting a Gorgon whose human torso terminates in the body of a horse. Her equine features have proven difficult to explain, and earlier discussions of the scene have appealed to lost narratives, seventh-century artistic conventions and broad symbolic associations between Gorgons and horses. Focusing on her combination of equine and maidenly characteristics, this article interprets Medusa's unusual form with reference to a series of ancient Greek metaphors connecting maidens, horses and Gorgons. It argues that recognizing the metaphorical logic of the image allows us to understand Medusa's form as a sympathetic comment upon her death, which has parallels in the sacrifices of maidens in Greek art and literature.

This article examines the compilation known as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. More usually mined for the material it preserves from the sophist Alcidamas, here I advance a reading that seeks to make sense of the compilation as a whole and situates the work ideologically in its Imperial context. An anecdote early in the compilation depicts the emperor Hadrian enquiring about Homer's birthplace and parents from the Delphic Oracle; he is told that Telemachus was Homer's father and Ithaca his homeland. When the text says that we must believe this self-evidently absurd response on account of the status of the emperor, its author is satirizing Hadrian's ambitions to participate in the Greek intellectual world and the pressures on scholars to accept Hadrian's authority in their field. Moreover, the compiler has linked this anecdote to the long account of the poetic contest between Homer and Hesiod in order to draw an unflattering parallel between Hadrian and King Panedes, who, as writers such as Lucian and Dio Chrysostom suggested, exposed his ineptitude in choosing Hesiod over Homer as the victor of the contest.

This paper deals with Plato's use of poikilos and cognates to describe democracy. It does not argue that Plato's Republic contains empirical analyses of some contemporary event, but supposes that an historical reading of the book is possible and legitimate. Post Peloponnesian War Athenian society experienced profound socio-economic changes. Echoing the aristocratic élite's circumspect anxiety when faced with the nouveaux riches, Plato clearly regards obsessive greediness as one of the root causes of the corruption of any political system. Referring to democracy, the philosopher invents the himation poikilon or ‘embroidered coat of many colours' metaphor. By materializing the multifaceted concept of poikilia, this metaphor gives a single and palpable form to the principal topoi of anti-democratic rhetoric: the himation poikilon evokes the motley constitution of the Athenian regime, the tyrant's ostentatious opulence, aped by the demos turannos, the inconstancy of the demos, the deceitful character of democracy and, last but not least, its penchant for spectacles.

This paper suggests that two much-discussed passages in Pericles' Funeral Speech in Thucydides Book 2, the first in 2.35.2, the second in 2.45.2, are more closely related than has previously been recognized: both express a negative view of praise - praise of the fallen; and of their widows. It proposes new interpretations of the passages in question: in the first sentence of 35.2 Pericles is contrasting the splendour of the funeral ceremony with the necessary restraint of a funeral speech (which Pericles does not in this chapter imply was a later addition to the former); in the second sentence of 45.2 he seeks to hearten the widows of the fallen by reminding them, first, that marriage has brought them fulfilment as women and, secondly, that they, as Athenian women, can be relied upon to conduct themselves fittingly – in implicit contrast to the most celebrated, and notorious, of Greek women: Helen.

This article examines the place of tragic poetry within the early history and development of ancient literary criticism. It concentrates on Euripides, both because his works contain many more literary-critical reflections than those of the other tragedians and because he has been thought to possess an unusually ‘critical’ outlook. Euripidean characters and choruses talk about such matters as poetic skill and inspiration, the social function of poetry, contexts for performance, literary and rhetorical culture, and novelty as an implied criterion for judging literary excellence. It is argued that the implied view of literature which emerges from Euripidean tragedy is both coherent and conventional. As a critic, Euripides, far from being a radical or aggressively modern figure (as he is often portrayed), is in fact distinctly conservative, looking back in every respect to the earlier Greek poetic tradition.