Volume 9, Issue 1

Abstract: An on-going new critical edition is presented, designed to gather together for the first time all the scholia vetera to the Iliad transmitted by the manuscript tradition. A short introduction is followed by a sample of the new critical text (i.e. sch. in Iliadem A 6–11), compared to the corresponding part in Hartmut Erbse’s edition.

Abstract: Battle exhortations are found throughout the fighting books of Homer’s Iliad , primarily in the narrative of the great battle that spans books 11 to 18. The early examples of exhortations prefigure their increasingly important role in later books, especially 15 and 17. From the perspective of the macro-narrative, the frequency of exhortations and the choice of motifs they feature serve as indicators of the progress of fighting. On the level of micro-narratives, the exhortations of individual leaders highlight their strengths and weaknesses, and to an extent those of their respective camps, especially in the case of paired exhortations and those delivered by the same leader such as Hector or Ajax. The narrator employs exhortations as a means of illustrating the back and forth between personal, emotional commitments, or deluded expectations, and sober, collective pursuit of a strategic goal. Despite their seniority or prowess, the exhorting leaders do not present themselves as models the addressees, especially the rank and file, should emulate. This indicates that the narrative of exhortations privileges collectivity and cooperation over competitiveness, fostering the ideal of fighting in solidarity for the common goal. The failure to draw distinctions by stressing one’s achievements or advantages contrasts with several rebukes, and with the paraenetic speeches of Nestor off the battlefield. References to the all-important epic ideal of the pursuit or acquisition of glory, and even to the past, occur very rarely. This is noteworthy, especially as the past also looms large in paraenetic speeches delivered off the battlefield, primarily those of Nestor and Phoenix. Iliadic speakers on the battlefield are generally efficient, although naturally to varying degrees, but they run the danger of deviating from their goal because of their personal illusions and limitations. Exhortations show how the attempt to achieve the common goal, to do one’s duty as leader and comrade, and especially to fulfill one’s personal ambitions may sometimes shape an idiosyncratic or distorted view of past and future.

Abstract: It is argued that verse 491 of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter initially referred to the islands of Paros and Andros and not to Paros and the rare place name Antron. The author claims that this suggestion is supported by the absence of testimonies, archaeological and philogical alike, to a cult of Demeter in little known Antron, whereas the goddess’ cult in Andros is well known probably as early as the Geometric period.

Abstract: We analyze a group of literary motifs for building fictive interactions, recurring across one of the richest examples of affective communication in Greek literature: the expression of the causes and effects of love in terms of scenes between lover and beloved. In this thematic set, the poetic expression of love is articulated through a direct or indirect interaction between lover and beloved. We expose the main patterns for the integration of concepts that recur across such interactions, showing how entrenched cognitive templates interplay with different cultural contexts and aesthetic goals. Across different periods, authors blend a variety of conceptual elements, producing different levels of fantasy and mediation between the lover’s viewpoint and the beloved’s ‘reality’. Although there is significant variation in how these scenes are built across periods and genres, they all share a core structure and a number of flexible rules that are based on fundamental cognitive operations. Understanding this cognitive core allows us to model how the meaning is built by the different texts. Examining how particular texts use the template for their specific purposes shows us that cognitive structures with arguably a universal nature are not rigid patterns but fluid recipes, providing starting points for creating novel meanings through skillful usage.

Abstract: The Greek god Dionysos is often characterized by modern scholarship in a highly conceptualized way. From the perspective of such studies, Dionysos has become a metaphysical concept, a symbol of the primeval human impulses. For such hermeneutics, Dionysos’ relation to wine has been considered to be secondary and unessential. The present study is a reassessment of the role of wine in some of the main themes of Dionysiac mythology and cult. These include the ivy, the Theban myth of Dionysos’ birth, the Orphic myth of Dionysos, the main festivals dedicated to the god, the Dionysiac madness, the satyrs and the maenads as the main followers of Dionysos, the identification of Bakchos with the Eleusinian Iakchos, rituals such as those of Dionysos liknitēs, the aiōra (swinging), and the flood, the relation of the god to the sea, and the sacred wedding between the Athenian basilinna and Dionysos. I show that not only does wine not represent a secondary or derived aspect of Dionysos, but it can be found at the foundation of all these well-known aspects of Dionysiac cult and myth. Dionysos is essentially what the whole of antiquity recognized and celebrated in him, namely the god of wine. The mythology of Dionysos is the mythology of wine.

Abstract: The opening Act of Seneca’s Thyestes dramatizes the construction of a broader play within a play on the demise of the house of Tantalus, in which Furia is a meta-poet. The narrow plot in Thyestes proper, where Atreus appears as both instigator and inset poet, dramatizes only one aspect of the broader drama by Furia, thus functioning as an illustration of how everything foretold in her speech will come to pass. The open-ended closure of the narrower play with its reference to Thyestes’ prayer to the avenging gods brings to mind the theme of continuing revenge within the family, as outlined by Furia. This dialogical interaction between the beginning and end of Thyestes allows the audience to prefigure that Atreus will not be the eventual champion of tragic plot, as he arrogantly asserts at the play’s end, but that revenge will continue in the next generation of the same house, exactly as foreshadowed in the opening Act.

Abstract: An important ancient Athenian institution was the ephēbeia : an institution with a military character during the later fourth century BC, which eventually acquired a paideutic one during the Hellenistic and Roman ages. Two Byzantine lexica, the lexicon of Photius and the Lexeis Rhētorikai , inform us on the functions of an office connected with the classical Athenian ephēbeia , namely the sophronistēs . The article investigates the possible sources (Hellenistic, Roman-era, Byzantine) from which both Byzantine lexica received the entry. What arises is the role of a lost Roman-era lexicon of Attic realia, the Athenian Onomasticon , to the transmission of this entry. The article argues that the Athenian Onomasticon might have severely downplayed on the military character of the classical Athenian ephēbeia ; it also stresses the need for an edition of the fragments of the Athenian Onomasticon , a process that will shed light upon the working habits of its compiler.