Contents of JHS 124 (2004)
Articles
Alastair
J.L. Blanshard, ‘Depicting democracy: an
exploration of art and text in the law of Eukrates’
Giovan
Battista D’Alessio, ‘Textual fluctuation and cosmic streams: Ocean and Acheloios’
Guy Hedreen, ‘The return of Hephaistos, Dionysiac
procession ritual, and the creation of a visual narrative’
Sian Lewis, ‘“ kai saphos
tyrannos en ”: Xenophon’s account of Euphron of Sicyon’
Michael
Lloyd, ‘Off-record
conversation strategies in Homer’
C.W.
Marshall and Stephanie van Willigenburg, ‘Judging Athenian dramatic competitions’
Jean-François Pradeau, ‘L’ébriété démocratique. La critique platonicienne de la démocratie
dans les Lois’
David
Sansone,
‘Heracles at the Y’
Marek
Wecowski, ‘The
hedgehog and the fox. Form and meaning in the prologue of Herodotus’ Histories’
Shorter contributions
Korinna Pilafidis-Williams, ‘No Mycenaean centaurs yet’
Ione Mylonas-Shear, ‘Mycenaean
centaurs still’
Notices of books
Review articles
James Davidson (
Warwick ), ‘Liaisons dangereuses: Aphrodite and the Hetaera’
Tania Gergel ( London ), ‘Plato as literature’
Language and literature
Political and cultural history
Gender and the body
Art and archaeology
Philosophy
Modern Greek
Reception
Abstracts
Alastair
J.L. Blanshard:
Depicting democracy: an exploration of art and text in the law of Eukrates
This paper examines the range of symbolic associations surrounding the
relief sculpture (Democracy crowning the Athenian people) that accompanied the
law proposed by Eukrates against the establishment of tyranny. It examines some
of the investments made in it by various communities and individuals. The role
of personifications in political allegory is examined. This analysis shows both
the potency of personifying representations of the Athenian people and the
interpretative complexities that they create.
Giovan
Battista D’Alessio:
Textual fluctuation and cosmic streams: Ocean and Acheloios
According to the ancient commentaries, Iliad 21.195 was omitted by
some sources, thereby making Acheloios, instead of Ocean, the origin of all
waters, including the sea: the reasons for and the date of such a version of
the text have been debated. In this paper I argue that the version without line
195 actually represents the earlier textual stage. This role of Acheloios is
paralleled in the poem interpreted in the Derveni papyrus, and some features of
Acheloios’ cosmological function, as well as his iconography, find interesting
parallels in the Near East . As a ‘cosmic’ figure,
Acheloios was in competition with Ocean, and is only rarely so represented in
later preserved texts. His function as the origin of all fresh water and the
source of all springs was more persistent, probably due also to his cultic role
in Dodona : this, too, is probably reflected in
another ancient variant for the text of Il. 16.234.
Guy
Hedreen: The return
of Hephaistos, Dionysiac procession ritual and the creation of a visual
narrative
The return of Hephaistos to Olympos, as a myth,
concerns the establishment of a balance of power among the Olympian gods. Many
visual representations of the myth in Archaic and Classical Greek art give
visible form to the same theme, but they do so in a manner entirely distinct
from the manner in which it is expressed in literary narratives of the tale. In
this paper, I argue that vase-painters incorporated elements of Dionysiac
processional ritual into representations of the return of Hephaistos in order
to articulate visually the principal theme of the myth. The vase-painters
structured the myth along the lines of epiphanic processions in which Dionysos
was escorted into the city of Athens . Like Dionysiac
epiphanic processions, the procession of Hephaistos, Dionysos and the
wine-god’s followers is distinguished visually by drunkenness, ostentatious
display of the phallus and obscene or insulting behaviour. To judge from the
aetiological myths associated with them, the epiphanic processions symbolized
the triumph of Dionysos over, and his belated acceptance by, those who denied
his status as a god. By structuring the visual representations of the return of
Hephaistos along the lines of such Dionysiac processions, artists conveyed
visually the idea that the myth also concerned the triumph of a god over those
who rejected him, and his acceptance among the Olympians. It is not necessary
to assume that the vase-painters relied on a detailed poetic account of the
myth to create their representations of it, because they employed elements of
religious spectacle, an inherently visual phenomenon, to convey the essence of
the story.
Sian
Lewis: kai
saphōs tyrannos ēn : Xenophon’s account of Euphron of Sicyon
Xenophon’s account of Euphron, tyrant at Sicyon from 368 to 366, appears to
present him as a typical fourth-century ‘new tyrant’, dependent on mercenaries
and concerned solely with his own power. But why did Xenophon choose to recount
Euphron’s actions and fate at such length, and why does he insist so strongly
that he was a tyrant? Xenophon’s interest in Euphron is part of his general
approach to tyranny in the Hellenica, which depicts a series of
individuals and regimes, all described as tyrannies. The model of tyranny with
which Xenophon operates is broader and more inclusive than we would expect,
contrasting with the narrow, constitutional idea of tyranny defined by
Aristotle. Understanding this has two consequences. It allows us to appreciate
Euphron in a new light, giving credit to the positive tradition about his
support for the Sicyonian democracy and his posthumous heroization; we can see
the debate which existed in his own time about his role and position. It also
raises the question of why Xenophon recognized tyranny in so many places, and
was so keen to emphasize his construction of these regimes. We need to situate
him within the evolution of ideas about tyranny, since the concept of tyranny
is largely constructed by historians: Herodotus ‘created’ tyranny in the
aftermath of the Persian Wars, while Thucydides developed the concept from the
individual to the general, as this better fitted his Athenocentric model.
Xenophon, in contrast, was reflecting contemporary debates over the
interpretation of different types of ruler and regime, and developing his own
theory of tyranny. Therefore to see a ‘new tyranny’ movement in the fourth
century is misplaced: an examination of Euphron reveals the complexities of
self-presentation in fourth-century Greek politics.
Michael
Lloyd: The politeness
of Achilles: off-record conversation strategies in Homer and the meaning of kertomia
This article examines social interaction in
Homer in the light of modern conversation analysis, especially Grice’s theory
of conversational implicature. Some notoriously problematic utterances are
explained in terms of their ‘off-record’ significance. One particular
off-record conversation strategy is characterized by Homer as kertomia,
and this is discussed in detail. The article focusses on social problems at the
end of Achilles’ meeting with Priam in Iliad 24, and in particular on
the much-discussed word epikertomeōn (24.649).
C.W.
Marshall and Stephanie van Willigenburg: Judging Athenian dramatic competitions
This paper presents a new model for how the voting
worked at the Athenian dramatic competitions, and demonstrates its viability
mathematically. Previous proposals have either failed to take full account of
the ancient sources or have not considered all the possible permutations of
judging results. As is generally recognized, ten votes were cast, but in most
circumstances not all were counted. Sections I-IV consider
the tragic competition at the Dionysia, in which three competitors vied for the
prize. For the questions we consider, two likely cases are examined (when the
votes are divided 4-3-3 and 5-3-2), then a random distribution covering all
possible cases, and finally the situation when two competitors are favoured
against a third (when the votes are divided 5-5-0, 5-4-1 and 4-4-2). Section I presents the proposal and situates it within the Athenian
cultural context. Section II asks how many lots are
typically drawn before a victory is obtained. Section III considers how other
places are determined. Section IV introduces the question of ‘fairness’: does
the person who receives the most votes actually win? Section V considers
adjudication for comedies and at the Lenaia. Section VI considers dithyrambic
competitions.
Jean-François
Pradeau: L’ébriété
démocratique. La critique platonicienne de la démocratie dans les Lois
The aim of this study is to challenge the current scholarly consensus
depicting Plato as having renounced the political ideal of his Republic,
and modified it in favour of a ‘mixed constitution’ in his last work, the Laws.
The study shows that Plato’s critique of democracy remains as firm in the Laws
as it was in the Republic and the Statesman, refusing to
concede any room to any form of popular sovereignty that could threaten the
government of knowledge.
David
Sansone: Heracles at
the Y
The article seeks to show that, contrary to the standard view, the ‘Choice
of Heracles’ preserved at Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-33
is not a summary or paraphrase, but is a very close approximation to the actual
wording of Prodicus’ epideixis. The language and style are shown to be
uncharacteristic of Xenophon, and the fact that Prodicus’ original was known to
exist in both written and orally performed versions serves to explain why the
piece is framed by language that disclaims strict accuracy in reproducing it.
It is further shown that the way in which near-synonyms are used in the piece
is not necessarily inconsistent with other evidence for Prodicus’ practice: it
is rather the personified character Vice whose usage conflicts with that of
Prodicus himself and with that of the personification of Virtue. Finally, it is
proposed that the ‘Choice of Heracles’ represented the contents, not of
Prodicus’ advanced teaching, but of the popular, cut-rate lecture intended for
a general audience.
Marek
Wêcowski: The
hedgehog and the fox: form and meaning in the prologue of Herodotus
The paper focuses on Herodotus’ authorial
self-representation, and on the problem of the intellectual tradition and
genre(s) behind the Histories. The main assumption is that the opening
sections of the work are a natural place to present its subject and principles
to the public. Despite and beyond the notoriously loose grammatical structure
of the first sentence, this paper offers a formal analysis of the whole
‘extended preface’ (incipit through 1.5.4), a carefully organized
large-scale ‘pedimental composition’. A detailed examination of this structure
yields the following results: (1) the stories about the abductions of women
form an ironic attack against a peculiar model of causality of some
contemporary Greek poets and writers, whose pragmatic outlook deprives the
world of its ethico-religious dimension. (2) Conversely, Herodotus himself
propounds a symbolic view of the world and seeks a monistic principle
encompassing the past and the whole range of human experience. He ultimately
finds it in the idea of the ‘cycle of human affairs’. This idea is the
carefully stated subject of the Histories. (3) Although he belongs to
the agonistic and display-oriented intellectual world of the sophistic era,
Herodotus poses as a ‘sage’ capable of penetrating the whole variety of ‘all
things’. Thus, he refers his reader to the tradition of wisdom literature. (4)
Not unlike Thucydides, Herodotus’ research into the greatest military conflict
thus far forms in his view the best possible paradigmatic diagnosis of the
human condition – much better than that of his fellow wise men (poets,
philosophers, etc.) because based on the firm ground of verifiable historical
data. (5) Although Herodotus is intent upon seeing the world from the standpoint
of a single organizing principle, one of the most salient features of the Histories
is the notion of the ‘marvellous’ (thômaston), which clearly elicits
the pragmatic or factual attitude of the thinkers he dislikes. Many problems we
experience when interpreting this author are due to the tension between the two
attitudes. (6) This inherent breach in Herodotus’ mind should be seen as a
result not of a development or evolution of his work and thought, but of the
contemporary debate between two diametrically opposed types of knowledge, viz.
between the exponents of polymathiê, or Vielwisserei, and
those of sophiê, or ‘wisdom’. Herodotus’
contemporaries active in the field of arkhaiologia (including
mythography, genealogy, etc.) and periêgêsis (geography, ethnography,
etc.) were widely considered ‘polymaths’. Herodotus’ ambition to apply
the monistic (and symbolic) bent of wisdom literature to the subject-matter
dominated thus far by the ‘pluralistic’ (and pragmatic) way of thinking was at
least partly responsible for this discontinuity in his thought, but also
accounts for the originality of the Histories.