The northern coast of the Black Sea has produced an abundance of documentary texts dating from the sixth through fourth centuries BC. Of great value to the epigraphist and historian are dozens of Greek letters, receipts and curses inscribed on lead and ceramic media. When placed in dialogue with one another, these texts yield new insights into daily life and literacy in communities for which literary sources are scant or absent. They document the bustling trade in saltfish, enslaved persons and textiles, and the web of relations between Greek and non-Greek individuals in north Pontic cities, from marriage to commercial ties with indigenous groups of the Pontic interior. This article demonstrates how trade could drive literacy in non-elite communities of the northern Black Sea. Literacy and mercantile activity were very much entwined, and developed in parallel with one another and with other civic and social institutions within these port communities.

The tactics of Cretan citizen armies differed markedly from those utilized in most regions of the Classical and Hellenistic Greek world: instead of fighting in phalanxes, Cretans fought in open order, specializing in archery, skirmishing, ambushes and night actions. These tactics (and the cultural attitudes that went with them) were disparaged by mainland Greeks such as Polybios and explained in terms of moral deviancy: a sign of the duplicitous nature of the Cretans. This article demonstrates that these descriptions of Cretan tactics and behaviours are factual, but argues against the idea that they derive from moral deviancy. Rather, they represent the outcome of a different line of historical development than that followed in mainland Greece. Cretan tactics and attitudes stand far closer to those described by archaic poets (especially Homer, Archilochos and Kallinos); in this regard, Cretan city states displayed strong continuities with archaic social practices and values, detectable in other areas of Cretan society and culture. The stability of Cretan sociopolitical organization from the late seventh century down to the Roman conquest fostered the endurance of such practices and attitudes, leading to cultural divergence from mainland Greece and, accordingly, a generally hostile representation of Cretans in our main historiographical sources.

This paper offers a reassessment of the representation of Pittakos, tyrant of Lesbos, in Alcaeus’ verse. I begin by examining the textual evidence for Pittakos’ father, Hyrras, before progressing to re-evaluate the evidence for the aristocratic clans of Lesbos as attested in the Lesbian poets. Building on this, and with reference to the patronymic/gentilic Arkheanaktidās seemingly used of Pittakos in Alcaeus, I relate the preponderance of patronymic forms found in Alcaeus’ verse to the iambic and comedic use of ‘characterizing’ patronymics in -(ι)δᾱς. I then argue that both ῎Υρρας and Ἀρχϵανακτίδας are to be interpreted via a cross-cultural and bilingual rhetoric of kingship, with the latter being in essence a calque of a Lydian intermediary of the Luwian designation ura- handawati-, ‘great king’, with ὔρρας and its derivatives in Alcaeus a nominalization of the Luwian adjectival stem ura-, ‘great’. This argument is then related to the increasing evidence for Lesbos as a central locus for Graeco-Anatolian cultural exchange. The end result is a comprehensive reassessment of historical reconstructions emanating from the texts of Sappho and Alcaeus, as well as a reassessment of Alcaeus’ poetic objectives in his attacks on Pittakos, ‘son of Hyrras’.

Lysias 10 Against Theomnestos is the only surviving example of a classical Greek speech on a charge of slander (dikē kakēgorias). The case turns on establishing communal consensus in evaluation of meta-discursive claims: assertions as to what the law says about what citizens can say about their fellow citizens. I adapt Marmor’s account of the pragmatics of legal discourse to illuminate the litigants’ strategies as they seek to control interpretation of the legal question in this much-discussed case from 380s BC Athens. We see how each party used different assumptions about the law’s implicatures as well as its declarative meaning and presented these assumptions as grounded in common sense. The persuasive methods used by Lysias’ client are illuminated by means of cognitive narratology’s application of Lewisian possible-world logic to the creation of story-worlds and the relationships they generate between narrator and reader/audience. So understood, Lysias’ speech helps answer questions about the role and limits of free/frank speech (parrhēsia) in democratic Athens and about the relationship between individual agency and the collective agency of the dēmos, questions crucial to an understanding of the place of legal discourse and legal conflict in the ideology and day-to-day praxis of the democratic city.

Plutarch’s Table Talk asserts the ‘friend-making’ (φιλοποιός) character of the symposium seemingly unproblematically (612D, 621C). Yet it is not entirely clear how readers are to understand the dynamics of social variety in the work, or how its presentation of friendship relates to Plutarch’s formal pronouncements elsewhere on the subject. This article explores connections between Table Talk and aspects of On Having Many Friends and How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend. It also considers some ideas around poikilia in Plutarch in connection to discussions of complexity and simplicity in Table Talk, as a window onto the work’s presentation of amicable variety. I argue that social variety is often the implicit target in discussions of party pragmatics and gastronomic variety. Unlike the moral essays, Table Talk ultimately endorses a broad conceptualization of friendship’s and variety’s value, inviting readers to rethink Plutarchan ideas for the sympotic context.

This article argues that the ante mortem dreams of Alcibiades and Demosthenes articulate key themes of moral doubt in Plutarch’s biography of each man. Alcibiades’ dream of being dressed as a courtesan alludes to his uneasy stance between masculine and feminine postures; Demosthenes’ dream of himself as a failed tragic actor draws upon his lifelong concern with performance and insincerity. In these two Lives, Plutarch deploys the ambiguity and uncertainty of dreams to pose an interpretive problem for the reader which can never fully be resolved, particularly appropriate to these unpredictable and untrustworthy men.

Characters in the Greek novels comprise a dizzying array of identities, but one group of people who have received barely any attention are Spartans. They appear only in Chariton of Aphrodisias and Xenophon of Ephesus, where analysis of their presence sheds crucial light on the novels’ literary and sociocultural agendas. After an introduction (section I), section II discusses Chaereas’ self-characterization as the Spartan Leonidas in book 7 of Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe in the context of Imperial-period Sparta: its institutions (the Leonideia festival), prosopography (the Euryclid dynasty) and reputation for military greatness. I link these elements to the ‘kinsman of Brasidas’ in book 8, who can be directly connected to an Imperial-period descendant of Brasidas in Plutarch’s Sayings of Kings and Commanders, as well as to Thucydides’ Brasidas. Section III explores the Spartan identity of Aegialeus and Thelxinoe, the protagonists of an inset story told to Habrocomes in book 5 of Xenophon’s Ephesiaca. Details of their lives correspond closely to Spartan cultural phenomena familiar from Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, especially in connection with marriage customs. This has consequences for the evaluation of Xenophon as a witty and sophisticated novelist, and for his compositional date. Section IV draws out the significant parallels between the depiction of Spartans in Chariton and Xenophon, which form the basis of proposals regarding their literary and chronological relationships.

Aristophanes’ Frogs, first performed in 405 BCE, is an important milestone in Greek cultural history. The play is evidence of the beginnings of the establishment of a literary canon in Athens. The paper shows that the deaths of Euripides and Sophocles, in combination with the emergence of a reading culture, marked a break in the ways in which tragedy was perceived in Athens. It makes use of Jan Assmann’s concept of a transition from ritual to textual continuity to explore this capital step in the process of the canonization of ‘classical’ tragedy that would arrive at its fulfilment in the course of the fourth century BCE.

A variety of ancient sources suggest that there was more than one Aristophanic play entitled Πλοῦτος, and the scholia on the extant Plutus show that one ancient commentator erroneously thought that he was working on a comedy of 408 BC when in reality he had the comedy of 388 BC in front of him. This error, which most likely arose because there were two similar versions of the late Plutus, has often been attributed to the first-century BC scholar Didymus Chalcenterus. It is here argued that the basis for this ascription is weak and that there are in fact substantial counter-arguments. Instead of Didymus, a later commentator such as the second-century AD scholar Symmachus may have been responsible for the mistake, which probably had more to do with the evolving transmission history of Aristophanes’ comedies than with careless scholarship.

The rare word λάκος occurs in an oracular enquiry from Dodona. Although it is likely to mean ‘a (bundle) of rags’, some scholars believe that the consultation concerns the theft of a garment in good condition. However, the evidence for a semantic change ‘tatters’ > ‘garment’ or vice versa in ancient Greek is weak. In this paper, we assess the evidence of some nouns (Aeolic βράκος and poetic λαῖφος, λαίφη, σπϵῖρον) that allegedly combine the meanings ‘(bundle of) tatters, rags’ and ‘piece of clothing, garment’. Drawing from the evidence provided by papyri and inscriptions, we propose two alternative hypotheses for λάκος in the Dodonaean enquiry: it may refer either to a ragged garment kept as an offering in a temple or to some tattered cloth used for wrapping various valuable items.

This article examines the neglected evidence of the Greek Pentateuch for verbs of sexual intercourse. I aim to demonstrate the translators’ skilful application of their mimetic translation method and the native-speaker competence suggested by their vocabulary choices in the relevant sphere. With one exception manifesting Hebrew interference through semantic extension, all the verbs deployed to describe sexual intercourse represent natural Greek usage and are found in classical literature going back in some cases to early epic. This provides yet another indication that the evidence of the Septuagint should no longer be dismissed when considering the post-classical development of the Greek language.

Plotinus’ understanding of self is formulated largely in dialogue with the Stoics. In early works he categorically rejects the Stoic notion of the hēgemonikon (‘leading part’ or ‘commanding faculty’) of the soul. In this paper, I show how, in light of a general dissatisfaction with the Stoic account of self articulated in his early work, Plotinus deals with the Stoic notion of oikeiōsis (‘appropriation’). I argue that Plotinus’ understanding of oikeiōsis develops across the period during which he uses it. In his middle writings, Plotinus engages with Stoic oikeiōsis by exploring how it functions in contexts related to selfhood. In his later writings, he shows, on the one hand, how the concept of oikeiōsis can be Platonized, such as to account for the relation of the self to the Good, and, on the other, how the Stoic understanding of oikeiōsis is untenable for many of the same reasons that he rejects the Stoic notion of the hēgemonikon. Ultimately, Plotinus thinks that Stoic understandings of the hēgemonikon and oikeiōsis are untenable because they lead to something that could be characterized as ‘selfishness’.

As early as Plato and as recently as current scholarship, readers of Parmenides have diagnosed tensions of one sort or another between his ontological views and the language through which he expresses those views. In the first instance, this article examines earlier claims for such tensions and argues that they are predicated on problematic assumptions concerning Parmenides’ ontological commitments or his strictures regarding the use of language. In the second instance, however, it argues that Parmenides’ Way of Reality does indeed confront us with tensions between language and doctrine, that these tensions are more pointed and sustained than scholars generally recognize and that they can be identified independently of specific or determinate elaboration of Parmenides’ precise ontological views. This analysis discloses a reflective preoccupation with, and a consistent attitude towards, the scope and limitations of human language. Parmenides persistently evinces his awareness that his description of what-is proceeds through expressive measures that are imported with difficulty from a different domain and, consequently, are limited, indirect and often figurative. The article closes by pointing to a meaningful (but partial) affinity between Parmenides and those Platonists who placed their own ultimate philosophical and ontological principle beyond the expressive reach of words.

In his Imagines, Philostratus the Elder stages a scintillating play with several levels of representation and suggests that his verbal account can give the reader access to the pictures described and even the scenes depicted in the pictures. But does Philostratus actually immerse us in the paintings? This is a claim often made by scholars; however, an embodied and enactive analysis of the Imagines alerts us to various features that, instead of immersing us, highlight Philostratus’ rhetorical brilliance. The Imagines are not so much an ecphrasis in the sense of the Progymnasmata (that is, defined by enargeia) as a meditation on their ecphrastic practice. In general, the reference to another representation endows the ecphrasis of artwork with a reflexivity that tends to push the goal of making the hearer see something in the background.