Ancient Greek History

The rollout of the euro as a hard currency involved
unprecedented logistical organization oriented toward security, yet just as central to its success was the pedagogical project of enlisting those within the euro-zone to be competent with the new currency. This paper explores two forms of euro competence in Greece: the accurate recognition and use of the currency and the learned refiguring of the values of everyday products. These competencies were, however, only partially anticipated and targeted by the institutions involved in the rollout; in key respects these competencies were generated by the rollout event itself. These competencies can furthermore be seen as epistemic practices; they came to serve as the grounds for truths about the monetary system itself, about Greeks as Europeans, and about the morality of economic transactions.

Lakatos argued that a proof, when presented in the usual ‘Euclidian’ style, may leave the choice of theorem, definitions and proof-idea mysterious. To remove these mysteries, he recommended a ‘heuristic’ style of presentation. This distinction was already present in the work of Polya. Moreover, Polya was directly concerned with teaching and consequently paid attention to the emotional and existential experience of the student. However, Polya lacked Lakatos’s account of proof analysis and was not a fallibilist. Therefore, the question of whether Lakatos advanced pedagogy from where Polya left it reduces to two questions: 1) does proof analysis have a place in the classroom? and 2) does fallibilism have a place in the classroom? In this paper, I argue that the answers are 1) Yes and 2) No.

HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) employs the latest digital technology to develop an innovative methodology to the study of spatial data in Herodotus’ Histories. Using a digital text of Herodotus, freely available from the Perseus on-line library, to capture all the place-names mentioned in the narrative, we construct a database to house that information and represent it in a series of mapping applications, such as GIS, GoogleEarth and GoogleMap Timeline. As a collaboration of academics from the disciplines of Classics, Geography, and Archaeological Computing, HESTIA has the twin aim of investigating the ways geography is represented in the Histories and of bringing Herodotus’ world into people’s homes.

Herodotus begins his enquiry (‘historia’) into why Greeks and Persians came into conflict with the figure of Croesus, ‘the first man whom we know enslaved Greeks’ – the archetypal eastern despot. In the subsequent narrative of his reign, Herodotus explores the reasons behind Croesus’s actions, and the consequences following on from them, through a series of consultations that Croesus seeks with the Delphic oracle, which he tries to enlist in support of his imperial project. This paper argues that Herodotus frames these consultations in such a way that not only challenges the king’s power but also puts the oracle’s famed ambiguity to service in a way that obstructs complacent reading of his narrative. From the beginning of Herodotus’ narrative, the oracle is represented as a key site in and over which the competing claims of knowledge and power are played out. Croesus courts the oracle with a display of riches beyond measure, but fails to interpret correctly its responses, which raises several important issues. First, it shows that the oracle cannot be put at the personal service of a powerful individual, who, by showering the god with gifts, had expected a simple transaction of knowledge. Second, it undermines the power of that individual, whose downfall is expressly precipitated by virtue of having got the oracle wrong. Third, it raises the possibility that the reason for the failure of interpretation is institutional: because Croesus is solely responsible for posing the question and interpreting the response, the likelihood of him getting it wrong is greatly increased. Herodotus not only emphasises the importance of working out the oracle, but also indicates the cultural context in which correct interpretations may be made. Throughout the narrative, kings fall because they fail to interpret divine signs correctly or because special advisors, out of deference, tell their masters what they want to hear. In contrast, different Greek communities are presented as having the possibility at least of getting interpretation right precisely because difference is allowed, even promoted, within the institutional polis framework. Moreover, by leading its readers through a process of interpreting the oracle Herodotus’s narrative presents itself as an alternative venue for political decision-making: thus they may not only feel superior to the king, whose attempts to exert control over his fate demonstrably fail; they may also perform that superiority by approaching the material with a self-reflexive, critical attitude that the king (inevitably) lacks. In this way, readers not only learn about the limits of authority and what it means to be free, but in doing so enact their difference as an independent, free-thinking agents.

In this paper we analyse Oedipus’ appearance during Odysseus’ tale in book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey in order to outline and test a methodology for appreciating the poetic and thematic implications of moments when ‘extraneous’ narratives or traditions appear in the Homeric poems. Our analysis, which draws on oral-formulaic theory, is offered partly as a re-evaluation of standard scholarly approaches that tend to over-rely on the assumed pre-eminence of Homeric narratives over other traditions in their original contexts or approaches that reduce such moments to instances of allusions to or parallels with fixed texts. In conjunction with perspectives grounded in orality, we emphasise the agonistic character of Greek poetry to explore the ways in which Odysseus’ articulation of his Oedipus narrative exemplifies an attempt to appropriate and manipulate a rival tradition in the service of a particular narrative’s ends. We focus specifically on the resonance of the phrases algea polla and mega ergon used by Odysseus as a narrator to draw a web of interconnections throughout Homeric and Archaic Greek poetry. Such an approach, in turn, suggests to what extent the Homeric Oedipus passage speaks to the themes and concerns of Homeric poetry rather than some lost Oedipal epic tradition and illustrates the importance of recognizing the deeply competitive nature of Homeric narratives vis-à-vis other narrative traditions.

Polybius’ views on the writing of history differed a great deal from his contemporaries as well his more predecessors. His work was to be purely political and military, and not follow the previous methods of story-telling which by creating illusion in were fashioned to thrill the audience.  The strongest theme that his work produces is clearly attempt to necessitate history writing as a medium that would inform people about past events and past actions, as well as to show the importance of Fortune and personal prowess as integral aspects for the growth and success of individual people and of entire states.  In essence, he wished to create a useful, universal history that could be utilized functionally, rather than an epic story, based on the imagination of the author rather than actual events.
Polybius’ Histories is a history that discusses the contemporary events of his time, with his narrative spanning 264 B.C. to 146 B.C., and Rome’s continuous warring with Carthage during the Punic Wars. The events that he wrote of were limited to a much smaller period of time than previous historians, and thus were more tangible, and as such can to some extent be classified as more reliable due to the plethora of sources and primary material that Polybius would have been able to access.

À partir d’une enquête de terrain au sein d’un mouvement évangélique, l’Iglesia filadelfia, implantée depuis les années 1960 chez les Tsiganes du Portugal et d’Espagne, on discute ici du rôle du Diable dans les doctrines et les rhétoriques des croyants et des musiciens qui en font partie. On cherche à démontrer comment l’invocation du Diable – en tant que promoteur de territoires d’ambiguïté et d’ambivalence – permet de débattre et de négocier simultanément des notions d’identité religieuse et d’identité ethnique.

"Arguing From Silence" briefly overviews the main theoretical constructs used in the historiography of the emergence of Israel. From this discussion, methodological considerations related to historical reconstruction using the biblical text are adduced.

In this paper I offer a tentative reappraisal of the claim that the Terror is best explained as the result of a fatal infatuation with ancient Sparta. It argues that the Terror was suffused with the ethos of Sparta, but that this ethos manifested not in specific personalities or policies, but in the institutions of the Terror itself and the laws which established them. Sparta’s shadow looms over the Law of Suspects, which resurrected the surveillance apparatus of the ancient republic. It looms over the levée en masse, by which the French people were enlisted to wage war on their enemies and themselves. Most of all it looms over the revolutionary government Robespierre demanded to preserve France and the Revolution. Revolutionary government would wield terror to rescue virtue, destroy its enemies, and complete the regeneration of humanity. Terror was innate in revolutionary government because virtue was; in Robespierre’s imagination they became inconceivable apart. And if these were innate, so too was Sparta. For terror is virtue applied with what Saint-Just hailed as Lycurgus’ “merciless inflexibility.” Terror is the principle of a society imperiled by an existential threat which has neither beginning nor end, and will persist as long as it does. Such was Sparta, such was the Republic during the Terror. Thus it was the specter of Sparta that Sieyès saw menacing civilization when he denounced the Jacobins for resurrecting in France, for the first time since antiquity, his dreaded ré-totale. Both Sparta and the Terror were attempts to create totalized societies. This, I argue, is where the affinity between them is to be found. It was embedded at the most abstract, most fundamental level. They shared the same spirit. Ancient Sparta was a society eternally at war with itself for the sake of its self-preservation. And so, during l’An II, the fatal second year of the Republic, was France.

This article demonstrates the overlooked contribution of the ancient Near East to the development of constitutional law. The legal corpus of Deuteronomy provides a utopian model for the organization of the state, one that enshrines separation of powers and their systematic subordination to a public legal text—the “Torah”—that delineates their jurisdiction while also ensuring their autonomy. This legislation establishes an independent judiciary while bringing even the monarch under the full authority of the law. Deuteronomy’s implicit model for a political constitution is unprecedented in legal history. Two of its cornerstones are fundamental to the modern idea of constitutional government: (1) the clear division of political powers into separate spheres of authority; and (2) the subordination of each branch to the authority of the law. This legislation was so utopian in its own time that it seems never to have been implemented; instead, idealism rapidly yielded to political pragmatism. Nonetheless, Deuteronomy’s draft constitution provides an important corrective to standard accounts of constitutional legal history.

Keywords:
Constitutional theory; rule of law; separation of powers; Deut 16:18-18:22; Laws of public officials; Law of the king; independence of the judiciary; Deut 17:14-20; Ämtergesetze; Verfassungstheorie; Torah monarchy; Sophocles Antigone law; Herodotus Demaratus; Greek kingship; Mishnah King; mishnah Aboth 1:1; American constitution; Josephus πολιτεία [politeia]; origin of judicial system; Hammurabi; founding myth; independent judiciary.

Notice:
Antiquity 78.302 (2004) 962.

Reviews:
1. American Journal of Archaeology 112 (2008) 181–82 [Z. Papakonstantinou];

2. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.04.20 [S. Evans].


Table of Contents:

1. Eleanor Loughlin, 'Grasping the Bull by the Horns: Minoan Bull Sport' 1-8

2. Tyler Jo Smith, 'Festival? What Festival? Reading Dance Imagery as Evidence' 9-24

3. Gráinne McLaughlin, 'Professional Foul: Persona in Pindar' 25-32

4. Eleanor OKell, 'Orestes the Contender: Chariot Racing and Politics in Fifth Century Athens and Sophocles' "Electra"' 33-44

5. Arlene Allan, 'From Agonistes to Agonios: Hermes, Chaos and Conflict in Competitive Games and Festivals' 45-54

6. Greta Ham, 'Dionysiac Festivals in Aristophanes' "Acharnians"' 55-64

7. Nick Fisher, 'The Perils of Pittalakos: Settings of Cock Fighting and Dicing in Classical Athens' 65-78

8. Geoffrey Sumi, 'Civic Self-Representation in the Hellenistic World: The Festival of Artemis Leukophryene' 79-92

9. Clemence Schultze, 'Roman Games and Greek Origins in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' 93-106

10. Helen Lovatt, 'Epic Games and Real Games in Statius' "Thebaid" 6 and Virgil's "Aeneid" 5' 107-114

11. Francesca Garello, 'Sport or Showbiz? The "naumachiae" of Imperial Rome' 115-124

12. Ergün Lafli, 'Dionysiac Scenes on Sagalassian "Oinophoroi" from Seleuceia Sidera in Pisidia' 125-136

13. Julia Burman, 'Christianising the Celebrations of Death in Late Antiquity' 137-142

14. Elizabeth Tobey, 'The Sala dei Cavalli in Palazzo Te: Portraits of champions' 143-153.""

Five items of silver plate from tomb II at Vergina are inscribed with their ancient weights. The inscriptions, using the acrophonic and alphabetic systems, suggest that the pieces were made to a drachma weight of ca. 4.2 g. This weight of drachma was introduced to Macedonia by Alexander the Great and does not appear to have been used by Philip II. The inscriptions on the silver add to the cumulative evidence provided by the cremated remains, black-gloss saltcellars, and iconography of the lion-hunt frieze that tomb II was the final resting place not of Philip II, but of Philip III Arrhidaios and Adea Eurydike.

Heretofore little attention has been paid to the speech of the Alcibiades at Sparta (Thuc. 6.88-91), which he gives following his escape en route to Athens to stand trial. Alcibiades' speech is a remarkable construction, serving as a counter oration to Pericles' funeral oration. This paper explores Alcibiades' effective use of the rhetoric of authority to convince the Spartans to attack Athens. His oratorial acumen enables Alcibiades to win the support of the Spartans by defending his actions, including his (very recent) efforts to advance Athens and harm Sparta through the Sicilian expedition and in earlier events.

This paper puts forth a new etymology for the name of Ionians. It is suggested that this ethnicon is based on a (self-proclaimed?) assertion of a physical strength and goes back to a preform *wiH-eh2won- (with a dissimilatory loss of the first /w/, the existence of which is now confirmed by the new reading wi-ja-wo-ne KN Wm 1707). The base noun *wiH-eh2 ‘strength’ is related to the root noun *wiH- in Homeric ἶφι, Latin uīs as ἀλκή to Dat. Sg. ἀλκί. In this connection the derivational process that produces possessive nouns in *-won from *-h2- stems (of the type ὀπάων ‘companion’) is discussed. It is suggested that since both *-won-stems and *-h2- stems are substantives, one should assume an adjectival stem *sekweh2-u- ‘having companionship’ as an intermediate stage (probably indirectly reflected in Lithuanian (at)sakõvas); *sekweh2-u- ‘having companionship’ results in *sekweh2-won- ‘that one who has companionship’ by addition of the individualizing Catō-suffix.

Drawing its title from William Blake, this essay explores the question of friendship in Iain Pears’s novel, The Dream of Scipio (2002). Using three overlapping historical narratives, Pears traces how the classical understanding of friendship, grounded in a logic of commonly held values, has given birth to a civilization that is both exclusionary and unethical. He makes his case by using the history of anti-Semitism to show how routine persecution of the Jews culminating in the Holocaust became a way to solidify communities in the face of such crises as barbarian invasions, the Black Death, and economic decline. The purpose of this essay is to examine Pears’s critique of the limitations of civilization and to outline his vision of a new perception of friendship that understands and values the ethical and pragmatic importance of difference.

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The result of our investigation is twofold. We have to admit minimally that the view that in F 223 EK Posidonius postulated a kind of universal east-west climatic differentiation does not stand up to the close scrutiny. We may also conclude with an equal degree of confidence that the theory which Posidonius referred to in F 223 EK was the same by which he sought to explain the climatic difference between the equatorial and the tropical zone. After that, we suggest a possible explanation of how Posidonius could have used this theory to prove that ‘east’ is wet and ‘west’ is dry. Posidonius’ idea becomes perfectly intelligible, provided that he was speaking not of the whole oikoumene, but only of the western and eastern parts of the inner Libya.
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This book proposes a significant reassessment of the history of Iraq, documenting democratic experiences from ancient Mesopotamia through to the US occupation. Such an analysis takes to task claims that the 'West' has a uniquely democratic history and a responsibility to spread democracy across the world. It also reveals that Iraq has a democratic history all of its own, from ancient Middle Eastern assemblies and classical Islamic theology and philosophy, through to the myriad political parties, newspapers and protest movements of more recent times. This book argues that the democratic history of Iraq could serve as a powerful political and discursive tool where the Iraqi people may come to feel a sense of ownership over democracy and take pride in endorsing it. This could go a long way towards mitigating the current conflicts across the nation and in stabilizing and legitimating its troubled democracy. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and referring to some of the most influential critical theorists to question ideological assumptions about democracy and its history, this book will be useful to those interested in political and legal history, human rights and democracy.Reviews: 'This book is a serious and in-depth reading of Iraqi political history. Isakhan's argument, bolstered by an impressive array of source material, is a direct affront to the use of violence to impose a wholesale American "democracy" on a society that has its own rich history of egalitarian and collective forms of governance.' Muhsin Al-Musawi, Columbia University, USA 'Democracy in Iraq expertly excavates democratic traditions that have long been buried in Western Orientalism and Bathist totalitarianism. In demonstrating that a will towards collective and participatory governance has existed over the centuries, Benjamin Isakhan rescues assessments for Iraqi democratisation from the kind of negative determinism, deracinated from history and local culture, that has dominated scholarly and policy debates.' James Piscatori, Durham University, UK

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

This chapter seeks to delve deeper into the ancient history of democracy than is normally permitted, back to a time preceding the developments of classical Athens, when the earliest signs of organized society and complex governmental systems emerged across the ancient Middle East. It then seeks to compare and contrast these ancient Middle Eastern examples with those of classical Athens and to offer new insights into, and questions about, the nature and history of democracy. Building on some recent work (Fleming, 2004; Isakhan, 2007a; Keane, 2009: 78–155), this chapter also hopes to move the discussion beyond the phrase usually associated with ancient Middle Eastern democracies, that of ‘primitive democracy’. This chapter also argues that, while the Middle Eastern experiments were less rigid and formalized, they were in no measurable sense more ‘primitive’ than the later example offered by classical Athens. However, this essay also cautiously notes that, while not all of the elements which made ancient Athens significant occurred in the same way and at the same time in the ancient Middle East, all of them did exist at varying times and in varying guises across these earlier civilizations. To demonstrate this thesis, the remainder of the chapter utilizes several of the key criteria by which we commonly measure Athenian democracy – the functioning of its assembly, the mechanisms of justice and of the law, the varying voting and elective procedures, the rights and freedoms of the citizens, and the systematic exclusion of ‘non-citizens’ – and discusses precedents and parallels drawn from the extant evidence concerning the ancient Middle East.

Many of the works on Middle Eastern democracy, whether from the neo-Orientalist camp or from those who avidly detail and support the region’s democratic developments, are based on a Western conception of democracy. This is the result of a discursive lineage that has its antecedents in the erroneous belief that democracy miraculously sprang out of Greek civilization in the fifth century B.C. This superior system of governance was later utilized by the Roman Empire and arguably gave rise to those great moments in the construction and propagation of Western civilization. Democracy, in its modern, representative form, resurfaced later as a result of the major social upheavals that transformed Europe and America during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, many of the scientific methods, literary motifs and political systems that have formed the major cultural discourses of Western civilization ironically have their origins in the ancient Afro-Asiatic world. By placing the emphasis on the common heritage of both parts of wider Eurasia in the urban revolution of the Bronze Age, these scholars are not only able to undo the longstanding binaries between East and West, but are also able to gain new insights into the origins of some of humankind’s greatest achievements. Specifically, as is detailed below, these achievements include the earliest political mechanisms for human governance, “primitive democracy.”

Nearly every major philosophy, from Plato to Hegel and beyond, has argued that democracy is an inferior form of government, at best. Yet, virtually every contemporary political philosophy working today - whether in an analytic or postmodern tradition - endorses democracy in one variety or another. Should we conclude then that the traditional canon is meaningless for helping us theorize about a just state? In this paper, I will take up the criticisms and positive proposals of two such canonical figures in political philosophy: Plato and Hegel. At first glance, each is rather disdainful, if not outright hostile, to democracy. This is also how both have been represented traditionally. However, if we look behind the reasons for their rejection of (Athenian) democracy and the reasons behind their alternatives to democracy, I believe we can uncover a new theory of government that does two things. First, it maps onto the so-called Schumpeterian tradition of elite theories of democracy quite well. Second, perhaps surprisingly, it actually provides an improved justification for democratic government as we practice it today than rival theories of democracy. Thus, not only are Plato and Hegel not enemies of modern democratic thought after all, but each is actually quite useful for helping us develop democratic theory in a positive, not negative, manner.

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Κεντρικός στόχος του κειμένου αυτού είναι να μελετήσει την πορεία ομοιογενοποίησης των συστημάτων μεταβίβασης των αγαθών στις επόμενες γενεές. Ιδιαίτερο βάρος δίνεται στην περιγραφή των τυπολογικών χαρακτηριστικών των τριών παλαιότερων συστημάτων που παρατηρήθηκαν στον ελληνικό χώρο και στις δημο-οικονομικές εξελίξεις που προσδιόρισαν την πορεία ομοιογενοποίησης.

The purpose of this article was to describe the prevalence of drowning as a cause of death in the mythology of ancient Greek history and under what circumstances it occurred. From all the names and references (n= 40,000) recorded in a database of the ancient and mythological Greek literature (Devouros, 2007), the number of drowning incidents was identified (n=37, 17 males (45.94%), 6 females (16.22%), and 14 reports of multiple casualties (37.84%). The review of the database confirmed that drowning was attributed to ‘acts of demigod’ but was more often due to human accidental submersion or to ‘acts of God’ such as disasters like heavy rain, flooding, or tsunamis. Based on this review, the causes and rates of drowning (down from 57.5 to 2.69 per 100,000 population) may have changed through the centuries, but death by drowning remains a major health problem in Greece.

In 403 BC the official script of Attica was changed by official decree from the Attic to the Ionic alphabet. Why then, and why in this way? This article pulls together the available evidence to illuminate the intellectual, political, and personal motivations that led to the decree.

Cet ouvrage présente une approche originale des textes épigraphiques évoquant les guérisons miraculeuses en Grèce antique. L'union des connaissances d'une philologue spécialiste du grec ancien et d'un médecin paléopathologiste permet de mieux saisir la richesse de ce corpus. Chaque texte est suivi d'une traduction moderne et de commentaires lexicaux et médicaux qui nous plongent directement au cœur des pratiques curatives dans les grands sanctuaires de Grèce comme Epidaure ou Lébèna.
Thérapies divines ou humaines ? Grâce à un diagnostic rétrospectif fiable et pondéré des maladies décrites et grâce à l'étude des soins apportés aux patients qui venaient s'endormir dans les temples d'Asclépios, les auteurs démystifient souvent l'idée de guérisons spontanées par la seule intervention du dieu. Leurs recherches réfutent également les anciennes théories qui faisaient passer tous les malades pour des hypocondriaques ou des « hystériques ».
Intégrant systématiquement les données paléopathologiques les plus récentes, et en les comparant aux données épigraphiques et aux descriptions cliniques fournies par ce choix de textes, cet ensemble permet de reconstituer un tableau relativement fourni et objectif de l’état sanitaire de ces populations mais également des pratiques médico-chirurgicales contemporaines, dans une perspective prudemment synchronique.
Du IVe siècle av. J.-C. au IIIe siècle de notre ère, ce parcours dans des sources textuelles parfois peu exploitées jusqu'à présent est une petite contribution à la compréhension de l'histoire de la médecine, de la religion et de la société.

This note contains information about job search for DPhil graduates. The first -and longest --part is devoted to the American job market, a large organized clearing house that meets once a year. The second part covers the European market. The emphasis is on academic and research jobs, although useful information is also provided on nonresearch jobs in the internet section. A list of Oxford resources appears at the end, as well as references to journal articles on the job market for economists and the ranking of various departments.