During the necromantic ceremony in Odyssey 11 Odysseus slits the throats of two sheep and then proceeds to drain their blood into the βόθρος, or pit, which he has dug in the ground (Od. 11.35–6). At this point in the ceremony the dead swarm up from the Underworld, displaying an innate attraction to the blood (Od. 11.36–7). Such is the overwhelming response of the dead that Odysseus must draw his sword in order to hold back the multitudes who clamour to drink the offering (Od. 11.48–50). Odysseus refuses to allow the dead to approach the blood until Tiresias has drunk the offering and offered a prophecy for the future (Od. 11.95–6). After Tiresias has concluded his prophecy for Odysseus some of the other dead step forward and drink the blood, but to what end? Odysseus does not seek prophecies from these figures, nor do they produce any, which means that their reason for desiring and drinking the blood must lie elsewhere.

It is well known from the sources that three Athenian factions were organized after Solon's reforms. Herodotus writes as follows:

In the course of time there was a feud between the Athenians of the coast under Megacles son of Alcmeon and the Athenians of the plain under Lycurgus son of Aristolaides. Pisistratus then, having an eye to the sovereign power, raised up a third faction. He collected partisans and pretended to champion the hillmen (συλλέξαՏ δ­ σταƣώταՏ ĸαì τѽ λóγω τѽν ύπεραĸρíων προστάЅ). (Her. 1.59, trans. A.D. Godley [Loeb])

Anyone familiar with Greek literature knows at once that this can describe no author but Herodotus. As readers have long recognized, travel is a crucial element of Herodotus’ persona not only as an historian and ethnographer but also as a narrator, to the extent that he has been called a tourist and a guide. Pohlenz draws his vivid metaphor from Herodotus himself, who assimilates movement through his narrative to movement through space by several well-known narratorial habits: he points out ‘paths’ of logoi (1.95.1: λόγων ὁδούς), goes out of his way to justify so-called ‘digressions’ (or Exkurse) and frequently uses verbs of movement to return to earlier narratives or to preview upcoming ones. However, most scholars have overlooked one important feature by which Herodotus creates this sense of progress through his logoi, although it appears in the programmatic sentence that begins his whole network of narrative signposts and recurs in his voice in the first half of the Histories and in important speeches in the second.

Paideia – i.e. Greek culture, comprising, amongst other things, language, literature, philosophy and medicine – was a constituent component of the social identity of the elite of the Roman empire: as a number of influential studies on the Second Sophistic have recently shown, leading members of society presented themselves as such by their possession and deployment of cultural capital, for example by performing oratory, writing philosophy or showcasing medical interventions. As the ‘common language’ of the men ruling the various parts of the empire, Greek culture became a characteristic of, and thus a de facto condition for, leading socio-political positions. Whilst most elite men would have taken for granted a good cultural education no less than a leading position, an outstanding command of the classical Greek language, literature and tradition as displayed in epideictic performances allowed some orators, philosophers and doctors to move distinctively up the social ladder, sometimes reaching the ears of, and thereby wielding influence over, the emperor himself.

The manuscript of Andocides' speech On the Mysteries contains a series of documentary inserts culminating in the decrees of Patroclides (§§77–9), Tisamenus (§§83–4) and Demophantus (§§96–8). These decrees seem to fit their historical context and they are presented at length, with at least a few of the formalities that we would expect to find in the official record. Modern commentators have relied upon them as substantially genuine, allowing for the usual errors in transmission, but now their authenticity is contested. A close reading by Mirko Canevaro and Edward Harris rejects all three of these documents as products of feckless ‘forgery’. Alan Sommerstein responded with a strong defence of Demophantus' decree, and Mogens Hansen has recently defended Patroclides' decree and Tisamenus' as well. On many points the defenders are persuasive, but the sceptics make a good case, and so it seems reasonable to reconsider how these documents took shape.

Ἀσέβεια is one of Greek religion's vexatious topics. It was a crime, or γραφή, as well as a religious wrong according to ‘sacred law’. It happened to be the charge in the most famous Greek trial, that of Socrates, and thus became part of a locus classicus, with the result, as Kenneth Dover showed, that later reports of ἀσέβεια trials were often distorted by the influence of Socrates' example. Focussing mostly on the sources found reliable by Dover, this article proposes that ἀσέβεια sometimes resembled μίασμα, which was contagious religious pollution. An impious person could sometimes spread his or her ἀσέβεια, and others could catch it.