Contents of JHS 123 (2003)
Articles
M.F.
Burnyeat, ‘Apology 30b 2-4: Socrates, money, and the
grammar of g…gnesqai’
P.M. Fraser, ‘Agathon and Kassandra (IG ix.12
4.1750)’
Peter
Gainsford,
‘Formal analysis of recognition scenes in the Odyssey’
Barbara
Graziosi & Johannes Haubold, ‘Homeric masculinity: ºnoršh and ¢ghnor…h’
David
Kovacs, ‘Toward a
reconstruction of the Iphigeneia Aulidensis’
P.J. Rhodes, ‘Nothing to do
with democracy: Athenian drama and the polis’
Walter
Scheidel, ‘The
Greek demographic expansion: models and comparisons’
Richard
Seaford,
‘Aeschylus and the unity of opposites’
Julia L.
Shear, ‘Atarbos’
base and the commemoration of tribal victories at the Panathenaia’
Shorter Contributions
Daniel
Riaño Rufilanchas,
‘Dionysius Chalcus, fr. 3
again’
A.M.
Snodgrass, ‘An
early reader for Pausanias?’
Abstracts
M.F.
Burnyeat: Apology
30b 2-4: Socrates, money, and the grammar of
gignesthai
The framework of this paper is a
defence of Burnet’s construal of Apology 30b 2-4. Socrates does not
claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that
virtue makes money and everything else good for you. This view of the
relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period,
and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My
philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends
recent scholarly work on e‰nai in Plato and Aristotle to gignesthai, which is
the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both
verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a
statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The
important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the
meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a
lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and
Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a
verb that corresponds to modern verbs of existence. I conclude that even
when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate
what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use
(e‰nai, Ípãrxein, Ífesthk°nai) can be said to have existential meaning.
P.M.
Fraser: Agathon and
Kassandra (IG IX.12 4.1750)
The author discusses an
inscription of the late fourth or early third century BC carved on a bronze
plaque found in the first excavations at Dodona, on which a Zakynthian, by name
Agathon, records a link of proxeny between himself and his family and the
Epirote koinon of the Molossians, through Kassandra, the Trojan
prophetess. The plaque is decorated by a prominent phallus with
testicles, which the author interprets as referring to the continuity, past and
future, of the geneã of Agathon. Other explanations of the whole piece
have been proposed, and the present essay is intended only to explore the
possibility of this interpretation.
Peter
Gainsford: Formal
analysis of recognition scenes in the Odyssey
Type-scenes have been studied and
analysed for over seventy years. This paper presents a more detailed
analysis of one type-scene, the ‘recognition scene’, than has previously been
attempted, with the aim of moving towards a better-structured understanding of
the ‘syntax’ of type-scenes generally. The structure of the recognition
scene is dissected into motifs and ‘moves’, all of which are tabulated; this is
the core of the analysis. The ensuing points of clarification elaborate
on the definitions and assumptions built into the analysis. Following
this is an assessment of the ‘syntax’ and quantifiable elements of the
recognition scene. The discussion closes with a general assessment of the
more literary face of recognition scenes, discussing them in the context of the
plan of the second half of the Odyssey.
Barbara
Graziosi & Johannes Haubold: Homeric masculinity: ±nor°h and éghnor¤h
This article investigates concepts
of masculinity in the Homeric poems by focusing on two words: ±nor°h and
éghnor¤h. We argue that whereas ±nor°h is a positive quality best
understood as ‘manliness’, éghnor¤h denotes ‘excessive manliness’ in a
pejorative sense. By comparing the use of these two terms we claim that
it is possible to explore what constitutes proper, as opposed to excessive,
masculinity in the Homeric poems.
Our analysis of ±nor°h and
éghnor¤h suggests that some current views of Homeric masculinity need to be
reconsidered. Whereas much recent scholarship has emphasized the individualism
of ‘the Homeric hero’, we suggest that individualistic behaviour on the part of
men is presented as a serious problem in the Homeric poems. As well as
the use of the terms ±nor°h and éghnor¤h, the frequent injunctions to ‘be men’
found in the poems confirm that solidarity with other men is an important
aspect of Homeric masculinity.
Our analysis also shows that the
language of masculinity is employed very differently in the Iliad and the
Odyssey. In the Iliad, excessive manliness is typically displayed by an
individual who fails to show solidarity with other men on the
battlefield. In the Odyssey, the suitors are standardly designated as
‘excessively manly’ for coveting another man’s wife. In both poems,
normative definitions of masculinity seek to regulate proper relationships
among men.
David
Kovacs: Toward a
reconstruction of Iphigenia Aulidensis
Iphigenia Aulidensis was produced after the poet’s death,
probably in 405 BC. The aim of this paper is to recover the text of
this production, which I call FP for First Performance. Probably
Euripides left behind an incomplete draft, which was finished by Euripides
Minor, the poet’s son or nephew. The text we have contains, as Page
showed in 1934, material added for a fourth-century revival and other still
later interpolations. Diggle’s edition tries to separate original
Euripides from all later hands on the basis of style. But if we want to
recover the amalgam that was FP we need to be attentive to the plot that is
implied by the most clearly genuine portions: we can’t confine ourselves to
what appears to be Euripidean since more than one hand contributed to FP.
A discovery about the plot
gives us some objective basis for reconstructing FP. Our transmitted text
contains two different conceptions of Calchas’ prophecy, only one of which
belonged to FP. Several passages scattered throughout the play imply that
it was public, made to the entire army, but other passages say that it was
private, restricted to Agamemnon’s inner circle, with the army left in the
dark. The secret prophecy motif, I argue, is the work of a fourth-century
producer, whom I call the Reviser. Its purpose was to introduce into the
play scenes where Greek soldiers, ignorant of the real reason for Iphigenia’s
coming to Aulis, might make naive comments or ask questions that are highly
ironic in view of the actual situation, this being an emotional effect he found
congenial. We find two such passages in places that are under grave
suspicion: the entrance of Clytaemestra, where there is a chorus of Argives who
felicitate Iphigenia on her wonderful prospects, and the first messenger, who
reports naive questions from the soldiery. Both these passages have
linguistic and dramaturgical features that make it virtually certain that neither
Euripides nor Euripides Minor wrote them. Working from these we can
detect the Reviser’s hand at other places in the play and reconstruct its
original lineaments. One satisfying result is that the business of baby
Orestes, played by a doll, can be shown to be the work of the Reviser.
The play ended with Iphigenia’s departure for the altar, and there was no
substitution of a stag. Like Menoeceus, Macaria and their kin, Iphigenia
pays for the victory of her country with her blood, and there is no happy
ending.
P.J.
Rhodes: Nothing to do
with democracy: Athenian drama and the polis
A fashionable approach to the
interpretation of Athenian drama concentrates on its context in performance at
Athenian festivals, and sees both the festivals and the plays as products of
the Athenian democracy. In this paper it is argued that, whereas the
institutional setting inevitably took a particular form in democratic Athens,
that was an Athenian version of institutions found more generally in the Greek
world, and even in the Athenian version many features do not seem distinctively
democratic. Similarly in the interpretation of particular plays themes
have often been said to be democratic which are better seen as concerns of
polis-dwelling Greeks in general, and the notion that plays questioned Athens’
democratic values because the democratic ethos of Athens consciously encouraged
the questioning of Athens’ democratic values is far from certain.
Walter
Scheidel: The Greek
demographic expansion: models and comparisons
For much of the first millennium
BC, the number of Greeks increased considerably, both in the Aegean core and in
the expanding periphery of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. This
paper is the first attempt to establish a coherent quantitative framework for
the study of this process. In the first section, I argue that despite the
lack of statistical data, it is possible to identify a plausible range of
estimates of average long-term demographic growth rates in mainland Greece from
the Early Iron Age to the Classical period. Elaborating on this finding,
the second section offers a comprehensive rebuttal of the notion of explosive
population growth in parts of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. In the
third section, I seek to determine the probable scale and demographic
consequences of Greek settlement overseas. A brief preliminary look at
the relationship between population growth and the quality of life concludes my
survey. The resultant series of interlocking parametric models is meant
to contextualize the demographic development of ancient Greece within the wider
ambit of pre-modern demography, and to provide a conceptual template for future
research in this area.
Richard
Seaford: Aeschylus
and the unity of opposites
The idea of the ‘unity of opposites’
allows one to see important connections between phenomena normally treated
separately: verbal style, ritual, tragic action and cosmology. The
stylistic figure of Satz-parallelismus in lamentation and mystic ritual
expresses the unity of opposites (particularly of life and death) as
oxymora. Both rituals were factors in the genesis of tragedy, and
continued to influence the style and action of mature tragedy. The author
advances new readings of various passages of the Oresteia, which is seen to advocate
the replacement of a Herakleitean model of the unity of opposites with a
Pythagorean model of their reconciliation.
Julia L.
Shear: Atarbos’ base
and the Panathenaia
Re-examination of the well-known
Atarbos base in the Akropolis Museum shows that the monument had two distinct
phases which have generally been ignored in previous discussions: it originally
consisted of a pillar supported by the extant right block decorated with the
relief of purrhikhistai; subsequently, the pillar was removed, the base was
doubled in size, and three bronze statues were erected. Close examination
of the remains and the style of the reliefs indicates
that the original period dates to 323/2 BC with the second phase following
within a year. In light of this chronology, the prosopography of the
family is reviewed and new restorations are suggested for the base’s
inscriptions. In its first phase, the monument belonged to a newly
identified series of memorials consisting of rectangular bases with pillars
supporting either a relief or a Panathenaic amphora. Such structures
commemorated victories in various tribal events of the Panathenaia and were set
up both by individuals and by tribes. The earliest known example appears
in a vase painting of c. 430-420 and the type continued to be used until
at least 323/2. The identification of this series also provides further
evidence for history of the purrhikhê, the cyclic chorus, the anthippasia, and
the apobatic race at the Panathenaia, as well as the identities of specific
victors in these contests.
Daniel
Riaño Rufilanchas: Dionysius
Chalcus fr. 3 again
Dionysius Chalcus fr. 3 West
contains an elaborate metaphor for the cottabus game in which the dining room
and the symposiasts are compared to a gymnasium in which young pugilists are
training. The author suggests that the visual force of the central part
of the metaphor lies in the actual way in which
sfa›rai (used as a kind of boxing gloves) were wrapped around the hand and
forearm. In the problematic v. 4, §ke›non is identified as the symposiarch, and
the verse is seen to function as another part of this complex metaphor of the
symposium as agon.
A.M.
Snodgrass: Another
early reader of Pausanias?
It is argued that Athenagoras, Leg. 17, draws on Pausanias 1.26.4, and may
join Aelian, Pollux, Philostratus and Longus in the list of possible readers of
the periegete.