A vase fragment from Olbia has been recognized in recent years as a key piece of evidence for the tragic chorus in fifth-century Athenian drama, especially because it shows the use of masks by dancers in such a chorus. This article provides the first clear illustration of the fragment, revealing much detail about the dress of the dancers, with a range of further information about the object (its size, discovery etc.). The illustration shows for the first time that the scene on the fragment includes inscriptions which declare the central aulete and percussionist to be KALOS and each of the two dancers to be KALE. A survey of KALE tags and similar inscriptions shows that there is no direct parallel for these KALE inscriptions. Moreover, these KALE tags are all the more remarkable in that they are attached to dancers who are appearing in female dress and female roles, but who are also male in biological sex. That usage raises the larger issue of gender in the theatre, which is set beside other indications that actors might be treated as in some sense female.

In the first book of Hippocratic Regimen, an unclear excursus explains how the technai imitate, and thus allow us to understand, human nature. It is argued here that the new polysemy of the word organon at the beginning of the fourth century is utilized by the author in his comparison, that this observation allows new understandings of some difficult passages and that such polysemy applies to a specific organon, the glotta (‘tongue’ and ‘reed’).

I accept the general consensus that the transmitted end of Septem is not by Aeschylus; his play, as he wrote it, ends by giving an overwhelming impresssion that, while the brothers have killed each other, the city of Thebes has been saved. There are, however, three passages which seem to contradict that impression, by alluding to the usual version of the story in which the city will be destroyed by the Successors of the Seven in the next generation. I argue that all attempts by scholars to explain away this contradiction have been unsuccesssful. Aeschylus deliberately reminded his audience of the alternative version, and the question to be considered is why he did so.

Much of the debate over the authorship and composition date of the Alexandra has focused on the so-called ‘Roman Passages’ (lines 1226–82 and 1446–50). Though attributed to Lycophron, a scholar-poet in the court of Ptolemy II, many scholars, ancient and modern, have questioned whether the extravagant terms used to describe Roman power are appropriate for the early third century BC. Scholars have mostly either settled for the traditional date and assign the ‘Roman Passages’ to the aftermath of the Pyrrhic War or they have dated the passages to the time of the Second Macedonian War. This article offers a new context for the material on Rome, namely the Antiochene War. The new dating is based on the appearance of similar themes in the Alexandra and accounts, both historical and propagandistic, of the Antiochene War. These themes, which include Rome's Trojan origins, the conflict of Europe and Asia, and Rome's conquest of the world, are absent from accounts of the Pyrrhic and Second Macedonian Wars. After establishing a date in the aftermath of the Antiochene War, this article identifies the shadowy figures mentioned in the second ‘Roman Passage’.

An earlier article of mine, Kovacs (2009a), discussed OT 1424–1530, whose genuineness was impugned most recently by Dawe (2001; 2006). I argued that 1424–67 (which I call A) are genuine, but that 1468–1530 (which I call B) are spurious. Sommerstein (2011), accepting my defence of A, undertook the defence of all but a few lines of B as well, dismantling much of my case against it and adding the argument that the transmitted ending mirrors the play's beginning and is therefore presumptively Sophoclean. The present article, in part a reply to Sommerstein's reply, restates some of my earlier arguments and also presents new evidence for the spuriousness of B.

With few surviving Greek sources from Hellenistic Babylonia, we are often ill-informed about the details of Seleucid imperialism ‘on the ground’ — in particular, about the Seleucids' relationship with the Babylonian priestly elites and Babylonian cult and culture. This makes the cuneiform sources all the more important. One of the most intriguing is the Antiochus (or Borsippa) Cylinder, a clay cylinder in the form of a traditional Mesopotamian royal inscription recording Antiochus I's restoration of a Babylonian temple. Although the Cylinder was previously seen as evidence for the adoption of Babylonian cultural forms by the Seleucids, recent readings have analysed it as a product of interaction between Babylonian tradition and Seleucid imperial ideology. Yet the accuracy of such readings crucially depends on situating the Cylinder correctly within its cultural context. Here the inscription is reassessed with close reference to earlier and contemporary Mesopotamian sources. While evidence for ‘copy-and-paste’ redaction imposes significant methodological constraints on textual analysis, certain elements of the Cylinder which are non-traditional from a Babylonian perspective can persuasively be interpreted in terms of Seleucid royal ideology. Ultimately, however, we must question the extent to which the inscription's ideological maneouvres are broadly ‘Babylonian’ or ‘imperial’, rather than shaped by and targeted at a specific local context.

This article examines four connected aspects of Phemius' performance in Odyssey 1. The first section examines the poet's unusual technique in relating Phemius' music to other, simultaneous sounds in the ‘soundscape’ of Odysseus' hall. The second argues that the suitors' initial dancing develops into a theme of appropriate and inappropriate nimbleness which, in particular, creates significant connections between books 1 and 22. The third section shows that the poet is suggestive but studiedly vague on the politics of Phemius' first song which, in the final section, I interpret as a self-reflexive and open-ended ‘lesson’ in how to read epic.

Penelope's ‘stout hand’ (χειρί παχείηι) in Odyssey 21.6 has troubled readers with its implication that the 20 years Penelope has spent waiting, worrying and weaving have sapped her beauty. Attempts to redeem the verse have only been partially successful at best. By applying semiolinguistic models for jokes to both Odyssey 21.6 and Penelope's increase in stoutness at Odyssey 18.195, this paper pursues the possibility that both passages are humorous. Rather than deride Penelope, the humour celebrates her quintessentially human susceptibility to age and suffering, as well as the virtues she develops in parallel with her husband therefrom. The Odyssey regularly uses humour to similar effect by applying traditional epic formulaic structures to a broader range of subjects than they normally accommodate and thus redefining the heroic virtues that those structures encode so that they exalt mundane human experience.

Much has been written about Plato's accounts of pleasure in Republic 9 and Philebus, almost nothing about his account in Timaeus. But with respect to sense-perceptual pleasure specifically, the account in Timaeus is unique and extremely informative. This paper examines, in turn, the physiology and the psychology of sense-perceptual pleasure, focusing on the text at 64a2–65b3, but drawing on a wide range of passages from elsewhere in the dialogue. The paper concludes with a further suggestion: that Timaeus is implicitly committed to a distinction between two kinds of perceptual pleasure, sense-perceptual pleasure and ‘brute’ pleasure.

This review of recent books about Alexander the Great and related topics focuses in particular on how much attention scholars have paid to the eastern aspects of the history and historiography of the period. It traces the identification of Alexander as an essentially ‘western’ figure back to the period of the Enlightenment, and shows how the work of scholars in the 18th century set the terms of the subsequent debate. It goes on to show how work on the Alexander Romance displays a far broader and inclusive range of intellectual approaches than traditional Alexander historiography, and suggests that the study of the historical Alexander would benefit from seeing Alexander as belonging in a Near Eastern context as well as a Greek or Macedonian one.