An examination of the Anatolian sources of Greek theogonic traditions, syncretistic myths that took shape in admixed Ur-Aeolian–Luvian communities in the Late Bronze Age, and descendent Aeolian assemblages of mythic and cult elements that persist into the Iron Age. Essential to many of these traditions is the presence of honey, especially honey having psychotropic properties of a sort that occurs naturally along the southern and eastern shores of the Black Sea.

In Satire 1.6, Horace depicts himself as a private citizen free to move around as he wishes in opposition to another character who does not enjoy such freedom of movement, owing to the fact that he is a politician. Seneca, in De clementia (perhaps recalling Horace), extols the freedom of movement he enjoys in the urban space thanks to the emperor, who, on the contrary, complains about the limitations imposed on him by his role. In Xenophon, Hiero, who was a private citizen before becoming a tyrant, is questioned by Simonides about the joys and woes of the two conditions: private citizens can go anywhere, while for tyrants everywhere they go is like travelling in enemy territory. In Horace’s sermo, the concrete space of the city refers to a potentially open political space: the figures we see moving around the streets of Rome are free to choose between political abstention and participation on the basis of their own personal inclinations. But the political and social situation was uncertain and unstable. Situations and characters tend in fact to transcend their immediate concreteness, referring to something else as well: something suited to satisfying the search for a principle of authority.

Fourth-century philosophy-aligned authors often present negative views of “sophistry” but more charitable views of those fifth-century individuals they call “Sophist” or include among “the Sophists.” This chapter attends to this often unacknowledged difference, giving evidence for it and offering several explanations. It reviews what fourth-century authors – Isocrates, Alcidamas, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle – said about the canonical fifth-century Sophists, Gorgias in particular but also Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, and Antiphon. It then assesses what they said about “sophistry,” which they usually presented atemporally, not specifically a phenomenon of a previous generation. Along the way, the chapter discusses how this later generation posited what is now seen as a “Sophistic movement,” the rise of a coherent group of paid teachers of rhetoric and civically valuable skills. Plato, long held responsible for this position, does play an important role, but for reasons connected to his dramatic presentation of Socrates.

The relation between the opening section of Plato’s Laws and Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians usually goes unnoticed. I draw attention to its importance for understanding Plato’s project in the dialogue. Section 1 shows that the view proposed by Plato’s Athenian Visitor that Lycurgus made virtue in its entirety the goal of his statecraft was anticipated in Xenophon’s treatise. It has to be treated as an interpretation of the Spartan politeia alternative to that advanced by the Athenian’s interlocutors, which Plato could hope to be taken seriously as such. The second section focuses on the legislative programme the Athenian says he had hoped to hear ascribed to the Cretan and Spartan lawgivers. Plato can expect recognition by the reader that the programme is properly Spartan and Cretan by virtue of its echoes of the programme attributed to Lycurgus by Xenophon. The third section argues that in making law primarily concerned with fostering the proper development, conduct, and treatment of human beings at every stage of the life cycle, above all by provision for sound customary practices and the like, Plato adopts the approach to law making taken by Xenophon’s Lycurgus.

This chapter offers arguments for dating Chariton between AD 41 and AD 62, Ninus between AD 63 and ca. AD 75, and Xenophon after AD 65. It suggests that the stylistic similarity of Metiochus and Parthenope to Chariton might point to proximity in date. I canvas a date between AD 98 and AD 130 for Antonius Diogenes, who might, like Chariton and the author of the Ninus, hail from Aphrodisias. Finally for Achilles Tatius I propose a date no later than AD 160. My footnotes in this volume take account of some important data from recently published papyri and of the valuable contribution of Henrichs 2011.

This chapter introduces important distinctions between intended and actual readership, and between the early novels, the ‘sophistic’ novels, and other known novels. It concludes that both the intended and actual readers of ‘sophistic’ novels were from the educated elite, and that Chariton probably envisaged such readers too, while perhaps writing in such as way that readers might also be found further down the social scale. Readers of this sort may also have been envisaged by Xenophon and some other writers of fiction, but in no case much further down.

This chapter explores the ways in which the five novels diverge in their representation of sounds. Chariton seems well aware of what can be achieved by briefly-sketched sound effects, but brief sketches are all we get: he does not suggest that the written word might find it hard to convey varieties of sound. Xenophon is apparently not concerned to communicate sound effects at all. Achilles Tatius offers elaborate rhetoric and sometimes striking imagery in compensation for the written word’s inability to render sound. Both Longus and Heliodorus push their readers (in different ways) to reflect on the problem of communicating sound, each offering a different solution. That of Heliodorus for the representation of sung poetry is a striking advance on anything in the earlier novels, apparently learning from (but also upstaging) Philostratus’ Heroicus.

This chapter documents the differences in the five novelists’ representation of the Greek past – mythical, archaic, classical and Hellenistic. I distinguished two groups: Xenophon and Longus each offer very little myth or history before the period of the events they narrate; Chariton, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, on the other hand, not only use much circumstantial detail to build up a classical or (in Achilles Tatius’ case) Hellenistic world in which their story is set, but also give that world temporal depth by exploitation of mythology, and occasionally by introducing events or persons from earlier Greek history. Xenophon’s and Achilles Tatius’ worlds are such that their similarity with that of readers can almost be taken for granted, with little incentive to ask in what way and to what effect these worlds are to any degree different from their own. Chariton and Heliodorus are different: the more or less determinable historical setting combines with a decidedly contemporary σφραγίς to give readers both a strong sense of Greek cultural continuity and the opportunity to identify features where their contemporary Greek world might be significantly different: the most important such difference is Roman control of the Greek world, which is also strongly hinted at by Longus despite his choice of a timeless, predominantly rural context.

This chapter turns to the social matrix of the local. Beyond spatial connotations, local communities are aggregations of people first and foremost who cultivate a particular identity of place. Since Greek communities typically included people from other locations, the social texture of the local was subject to varying degrees of cultural diversity. In the field of religion, corresponding negotiations between individual and communal practices were complicated by charged perceptions of what constituted the social core of the local, that is, who was part of it – and who was not. The chapter sets out to disentangle the threads of personal and communal agency. Polinskaya begins her discussion with examples that attest to cultic initiatives undertaken by individual citizens and foreign residents. Beyond well-known practices of turning private endeavours into communal ones (for instance by decree of the polis), Polinskaya unravels more hidden, non-linear processes of communal opting in and staying in. She traces the ways in which personal agency gradually inspired and received communal resonance and meaning.

This chapter turns to the social matrix of the local. Beyond spatial connotations, local communities are aggregations of people first and foremost who cultivate a particular identity of place. Since Greek communities typically included people from other locations, the social texture of the local was subject to varying degrees of cultural diversity. In the field of religion, corresponding negotiations between individual and communal practices were complicated by charged perceptions of what constituted the social core of the local, that is, who was part of it – and who was not. The chapter sets out to disentangle the threads of personal and communal agency. Polinskaya begins her discussion with examples that attest to cultic initiatives undertaken by individual citizens and foreign residents. Beyond well-known practices of turning private endeavours into communal ones (for instance by decree of the polis), Polinskaya unravels more hidden, non-linear processes of communal opting in and staying in. She traces the ways in which personal agency gradually inspired and received communal resonance and meaning.

This chapter explores the reception of Thucydides in later Greek and Roman historiography. It identifies three key themes in this reception. First, the tendency to avoid naming Thucydides, making him an ‘absent presence’ in later historical writing. Second, the adaptation and redeployment of Thucydidean themes in subsequent work. Third, the importance allotted to Thucydides’ Athenian context. These themes are discussed with reference to a number of ancient historical writers, including Xenophon, Appian and Sallust.

Like other literary genres in fifth-century Athens, such as tragedy and oratory, ancient historiography responded to the continuous wars of the Greek city-states with an intense literary effort, producing the first prose descriptions of warfare in the western hemisphere. This chapter examines the representation of warfare in fifth-century Athenian literature against an historical background, taking account of Homeric epic as well as of political and normative contexts, in order to clarify textual priorities and narrative strategies. It begins by analyzing representations of extreme conditions: death in battle, often cast as the ultimate test of manhood, and military defeat. It then backs up to look at representations of the course of warfare, analyzing the role of victorious leadership, intelligence, and courage together with the accompanying descriptions of bodily suffering and human error. Finally, the chapter examines representations of the human causes of war: greed, retaliation for insult, and the desire for power, profit, and rule over others. As a short coda, it reflects on the popularity of war as a literary theme, noting the emergence of war fiction with Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.

Chapter 9 synthesizes certain leading themes of the book and discusses some opinions of ancient intellectuals who reflected on the purpose and pleasures of music in convivial settings. The topics include musical self-display and public honor, social music as play, and the purpose of a symposion and its music. The chapter examines the philosophical opinions of Aristotle, Xenophon, Diogenes of Babylon, Philodemus, and Plutarch about various aspects of these topics, and concludes with a look at musical figures in the introduction to Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists (Learned Banqueters).

The non-agricultural economy of the ancient Greek world included crafts, trade, and services. Evidence for such, heavily biased towards Athens, is found via philosophical writing, comedy, forensic speeches, inscriptions, and archaeological finds. Elite attitudes, in which farming was the idealised citizen occupation, also impact the evidence. Nevertheless, at least 230 different terms for non-agricultural roles and occupations can be found in the sources (with many overlaps). Of these, fifty-three are for women. Workshops were generally small, with up to five or six craftsmen of low status, predominantly resident aliens (metics), freedmen or slaves. At least some rich citizens at Athens owned workshops, with a number of slaves perhaps able to live and work independently. Notable trades such as mining, marble-, bronze-, and metalwork, ceramics, and tanning seem to have clustered in common locations within cities and territories. Women’s non-agricultural economic roles seem to have been related mainly to textiles, retail of simple products, and provision of personal services.

This chapter further examines the ambivalent position that wonder occupies in Athenian culture in the late fifth and early fourth century BCE. It explores the place of wonder in Plato’s dialogues and offers a new reading of the Republic’s famous Cave Allegory through the specific lens of wonder to open up new perspectives on both the dialogue itself and on Plato’s broader conception of what philosophy is and what it does. Moreover, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the evidence for thaumatopoiia/thaumatourgia (marvel-making/wonder-working), a form of Greek performance tradition, and examines the uses of marvel-making in Xenophon’s Symposium to examine more fully the relationship between wonder and philosophy in this period.