Volume 8, Issue 1

Abstract: The theme of sight and vision is particularly pronounced throughout the Histories of Herodotus. It plays a privileged role in both the historian’s overt methodological remarks and the purely narrative sections of his work. But while Herodotus explicitly values sight as an important means of gaining knowledge and recognizes its centrality to historical research, in his narrative he often questions its reliability by having his characters develop inaccurate, grossly distorted pictures of reality through visual perceptions. On numerous occasions in the Histories , the characters are deceived by what they themselves see or what others show them. Aiming at resolving this tension, the present article explores the ways in which Herodotus thematizes and describes vision in his work. It argues that when Herodotus records failed attempts on the part of his characters to interpret visual evidence correctly, he generally locates the cause of the problem in the inadequacy not of sight itself but of its subject, the observer, and their intellectual and emotional dispositions.

Abstract: A well-known passage in Herodotus’ Histories  – about “tragic choruses” that took place in sixth-century Sicyon – contains the only explicit reference to tragedy in the historian’s work and also one of the earliest references to tragedy in the surviving literary record from ancient Greece. The reference and its surrounding context, often analyzed for what they reveal about the early history of tragedy and sixth-century Sicyonian musical culture, also provide insights into contemporary attitudes to tragedy in the fifth century. Herodotus offers here a particular conceptualization of fifth-century tragedy as a performance that was conducted in honor of Dionysus and whose content consisted of stories of suffering, or pathos .

Abstract: The final scenes of Aristophanic comedies have been usually interpreted as disconnected from the rest of the plot: as a pure expression of joy, a cheerful celebration of a successful comic hero. The present work offers an attempt to confute this interpretation. A systematic analysis of the exodoi of selected plays – especially Knights , Wasps , Acharnians and Peace  – shows that the final scenes are indeed well integrated into the dramatic structure, being prepared during the course of dramatic action, and that the allegedly festive atmosphere does not point to a happy ending in the true sense of the word. Instead of providing an istance of comic relief to the audience, the ending would leave them with an impression of “cheerful desperation”, expressing a deeply pessimistic view of the future of the Athenian Polis.

Abstract: Publication of Archeboule’s gold epistomion from Amphipolis, inscribed with a text dated to ca 300 BCE, in which Dionysus Bachchios is mentioned and purity is stressed.

Abstract: The abundance of citations of literary texts in erudite works originating from commentaries written by the philologists of the Hellenistic-Roman age is a highly important testimony of the exegetical activity of ancient scholars and the depth of their literary knowledge. Although a correct assessment of the proportions of this phenomenon is made difficult by the loss of a vast amount of erudite sources and quotations of passages during the transmission process, the importance of citations is crucial in order to properly appreciate the level achieved by ancient philology and its significance as a historical-cultural phenomenon.

Abstract: A detailed analysis of the scholiastic and Eustathian material concerning the variants δόσκεν / δόσκον / δῶκεν in Il . 14.382 is performed. Examination of the manuscripts and an investigation into the history of the modern studies suggests it is more plausible to conclude that the reading attributed to Aristarchus in the scholia was δόσκον and not δόσκεν. This assessment is congruent with the evidence from Eustathius. The dispute in the critical literature between the evaluation of δῶκεν as a variant or as an explanatory gloss is resolved in favour of the variant, by also considering the recurrent Didymean expression καὶ ἔστιν εὐφραδέστερον.

Abstract: This article asks what it takes to make the treatment of a given topic and thus a scientific or scholarly text ‘systematic’. After some remarks upon systems theory, the paper illustrates systematicity, the quality of being systematic, by readings of the Hippocratic On Breaths and De Morbis II , Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories , and Ps.-Galen’s Medical definitions . Systematicity turns out to be a result of epistemic and rhetorical practices to the same degree. It rests upon the authors’ ambition to transform the epistemic structure of the objects into equivalent rhetorical forms, which, in turn, become convincing because they hint at the objects’ epistemic structures.

Abstract: In antiquity, the Sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia at Palaipaphos was Cyprus’ most celebrated religious space. The high number of Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions discovered at the sanctuary reveals that it was an important environment for the celebration of the island’s rulers, high profile visitors, and its local elite. While the accompanying statues of these inscriptions, or the structures that they may have been fixed to, do not survive, their texts point to the visually impressive character of the sanctuary. This article will present new readings of two inscriptions discovered at this sanctuary which commemorate the poet Lucius Septimius Nestor of Laranda and a certain Sergia Aurelia Regina. The relationship between poet and benefactress, as it appears from the two inscriptions, is to be placed beyond doubt in the framework of female euergetism in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, during the second to third centuries AD. This study will reconsider the musical pun occurring in an inscription set up by Regina to honour Nestor as it sheds some new light on the nature of this relationship and may account for some puzzling features of the inscription, such as the self-celebrating tone in which Regina speaks of herself and the title of hypatē (hardly a substitute for the expected hypatikē ) with which she credits herself.