At Iliad 1.355–6, Achilles, calling upon his mother, reports the injury to his honour done him by Agamemnon: γάρ μ᾽ τρείδης ερ κρείων γαμέμνων τίμησεν λν γρ γέρας, ατς πούρας. The formulaic line 356 is repeated by Thetis to Zeus at 507 and by Thersites to the assembled Achaeans at 2.240; the problematical phrase ατς πούρας is repeated in a variant form with finite verb by Agamemnon at 19.89, ατς πηύρων.

This article focuses on a set of problems involving a controversial portion of the HHA that describes the performance of the Delian chorus in a rare instance of early performance criticism. First, the two variants for a key noun in line 162, bambaliastus and krembaliastus, are discussed. Skepticism is expressed about the applicability to this scene of the first variant . On the contrary, krembaliastus—the suitability of which has not been discussed in detail, even by scholars who seem to have (...) favored it—can make good sense. Literary and iconographic evidence makes it plausible that krembaliastus denotes the act of generating through percussion devices called krembala rhythmic patterns meant to govern stylized movement, what the Greeks called schêmata. The marked term krembaliastus was probably employed to evoke a characteristic trait of the highly skilled Deliades. Furthermore, as vocal and kinetic activities were inextricably linked in choral practices, they are ultimately conceptualized as part of the same unified expressive mechanism . The author also questions the conventional interpretation of mimeisthai as “mimicking,” instead reading it as “representation,” involving the evocation of the essence of an entity but not necessarily exact reproduction of its formal details. Finally the essay argues that the Delian chorus' art of “knowing how to represent the voices and the rhythmic patterns of all people” designates the perfection of choral performance, as an all-inclusive enactment that forms a powerful trans-local bond. (shrink)

Two themes, the elusiveness of wisdom and the distortion of speech, are traced through three important scenes of Herodotus' Lydian logos, the meeting of Solon and Croesus , the scene where Cyrus places Croesus on the pyre , and the advice of Croesus to Cyrus to cross the river and fight the Massagetae in their own territory . The paper discusses whether Solon is speaking indirectly at 1.29–33, unable to talk straight to Croesus about his transgressive behavior: if so, that (...) illuminates the dynamics of speech at a court. At 1.86–90 Croesus may not have fully understood what Solon earlier said to him. Cyrus may understand Croesus' report of Solon's words better than Croesus does himself. Herodotus' readers will also be uncertain what the response of Delphi will be to Croesus' indignant questioning: if a reader has failed to grasp the significance of Gyges' transgression five generations earlier, that reenacts the forgetfulness of figures in the text. At 1.207 Croesus' advice to Cyrus is of questionable wisdom: Croesus too cannot speak directly, and he has anyway learned the wrong lesson from his catastrophe, extrapolating too directly from his own experience. The conclusion suggests some reasons why Herodotus should have chosen to begin his History with Lydia, the kingdom that is on the cusp between East and West, and with Croesus, a figure that resists description in the easy formulations of Greek/barbarian discourse. (shrink)

The enduring fame of Aeschylus as the earliest of the ‘three great tragedians’ has made him in effect the first dramatist of the Western tradition, in chronological terms at least. At the same time it is worth noting that among the ancients he also enjoyed a reputation as a master of the satyr play, as Pausanias (2.13.6–7) and Diogenes Laertius (2.133) tell us. It is to this kind of drama, which comprised one-quarter of his output as tragedian, that I would (...) like to turn, with particular focus on hisTheoroiorIsthmiastai, and its treatment of another visual medium, the plastic arts. Our fragments of this play begin with a figure presenting a chorus of satyrs with artfully wrought images made in their likenesses which bring them a startled delight. In the second discernible scene of the fragment the chorus receivesνεοχμᾰ… θρματα ([c] col. ii 50), usually understood as athletic equipment, which the satyrs find rather more unsettling. The following piece is primarily concerned with the first scene in which the coryphaeus urges his companions to dedicate the depictions as votives on Poseidon's temple, relishing the prospect of the comical, terrifying effect these images would have on his own mother and travellers, the latter probably on their way to the Isthmian games. At least this much is clear from the papyrus (esp. lines 1–22). This part of the fragment has attracted a good deal of attention for the evident ‘realism’ of the images that excites the satyrs so much in the first place. (shrink)

The following notes concern textual problems in the prologue and parodos of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes. The text and apparatus criticus are based on those of M.L. West, Aeschylus: Tragoediae.

One of the most baffling inscriptions has come down to us from the so-called ‘Passage of theTheôroi’ at Thasos. Situated at the north-eastern entrance of the ancient agora, and consisting originally of two walls on either side of a path paved by marble, the monumental passage way had a long list of names inscribed on the inside of its western wall; this is the so-called ‘great list of Thasiantheôroi’. Two of its constituent lists bear the headings ἐπὶ τῆς πρώτης ἀπαρχῆς (...) and ἐπὶ τῆς δευ[τέρη]ς ἀπαρχῆς| οἵδε ἐθεόρεον. The meaning of the wordaparchêand the nature of thetheôroiin question have been the subject of disagreement among historians. The aim of this article is to contribute further suggestions to existing discussions. (shrink)

The fourth choral ode in Seneca's tragedyTroadesends thus :tum puer matri genetrixque natoTroia qua iaceat regione monstransdicet et longe digito notabit:‘Ilium est illic, ubi fumus alteserpit in caelum nebulaeque turpes.’Troes hoc signo patriam uidebunt.This ending provides a powerful conclusion to the Chorus’ Epicurean-inspired philosophizing in the ode. The image of the Trojan women ‘seeing’ the ‘smoke and squalid clouds creep[ing] high into the heavens’ recalls the Lucretian description of the soul, atomic in nature, leaving the dead body: compare especiallyet nebula (...) ac fumus quoniam discedit in auras,|crede animam quoque diffundi … andergo dissolui quoque conuenit omnem animai|naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aeris auras. The image and the Lucretian resonance also create an intratextual link with the second ode ofTroades. In that ode, the Chorus set out to develop a philosophical position about the question of death and the possibility of an afterlife. Their philosophizing is aided by Lucretian language and imagery, and the clear verbal echoes of Lucretius include the soul escaping into air like vapour: ‘the spirit, with fleeing breath, has mingled with the clouds and passed away into air’, which recalls the Lucretian lines above. At the end of the fourth ode, the Lucretian intertext of the smoke image is linked to another startling element that may point to philosophizing: Seneca's use ofsignum. (shrink)