The number of speaking actors in Old Comedy has been much discussed, but no consensus has been reached. The old assumption that the number was three, as in tragedy, was shaken when it was realized that some scenes of Aristophanes have four characters on-stage at once, all taking part in the dialogue: for example, in Lys. 77–253 we have Lysistrate, Kalonike, Myrrhine, and Lampito, and in Frogs 1414–81 we have Dionysos, Aiskhylos, Euripides, and Plouton. Rees therefore argued that there was (...) no fixed number, but that view was not generally accepted. A more widely held view is that there were three principal actors with additional performers for small parts. However, there is no evidence contemporary with Aristophanes which distinguishes three actors from the others in this way, and it is probable that writers of later periods who mention three actors are referring to their own times and did not have authentic information about the fifth century. The passage which DFA, p. 149, seems to regard as the most trustworthy is in a brief account of comedy attributed to Tzetzes: πιγενμενος δ Κρατνος κατστησε μν πρτον τ ν τ κωμδ πρσωπα μεχρ τριν, στσας τν ταξαν4 DFA paraphrases this as ‘Cratinus reduced the disorderliness and, in some sense, fixed the number of regular actors at three’. But πρσωπα means ‘masks’ or ‘characters’; it does not mean ‘actors’ . What the writer meant by saying that Kratinos settled the masks or characters in comedy at ‘up to three’ is not clear, but his statement is useless as evidence for the number of actors. (shrink)

Marriage is a subject of perennial interest, and we should like to be able to assess the exact degree of importance which the Greeks attached to this institution. One of the chief questions is how the formality of marriage, or the lack of it, affected the children of a union; above all, was illegitimate birth a bar to citizenship even in democratic Athens? Unfortunately there is still no general agreement about the answer to this question.

If you look up οἶκος in Liddell and Scott, you find the instances classified in three main divisions: first those meaning a house, or sometimes other kinds of building; secondly ‘one's household goods, substance’, for which I shall generally say ‘property’, though Liddell and Scott do not actually use that word; and thirdly ‘family’. This threefold distinction is sound, and I shall adhere to it here. Admittedly one sometimes finds an instance where it is not easy to decide which sense (...) the word has. Two of the senses, occasionally even all three, may overlap. But in the great majority of instances it is clear which sense is meant. (shrink)

When Kleomenes seized the Athenian Akropolis , he was forced to surrender and leave Attika. Why was he wearing a very short cloak? Wilamowitz thought it was because he had to give up part of his clothing when he surrendered. But in fact Spartans always wore scanty clothing; being unwashed for six years cannot have been a condition of surrender after a siege lasting only two days ; and clearly the whole of 278–80 is not an account of the conditions (...) of surrender, but an expression of the Athenians' amusement or disgust at the normal appearance of Spartans. (shrink)

The time-limits imposed by the κλεψύδρα on speakers in Athenian trials have been much discussed, but a valuable distillation of the ancient evidence and modern interpretations of it has recently been made by P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia , pp. 719–28. He prudently states his own conclusions in a cautious manner, but I find them convincing. One khous of water took 3 minutes to run out; this is indicated by the length of time taken by (...) the κλεψύδρα found in the Agora , which holds 2 khoes and takes 6 minutes, and it is also consistent with the evidence of Aiskhines about the διαμεμετρημένη μέρα. In a ‘measured-through day’, used only for public cases, the total amount of time allowed for the speeches in a trial was 11 amphoreis , equivalent to 132 khoes, taking 396 minutes; one third of this time was allocated to the prosecution, one third to the defence, and one third to the speeches on the assessment of the penalty . Time taken for other proceedings, including the allocation of jurors to courts, voting, and payment of jurors at the end of the day , was additional. (shrink)

The speech Against Euergos and Mnesiboulos describes a dispute over some naval gear. The dispute occurred early in the year 357/6 b.c. π' γαθοκλους ρχοντος, Dem. 47.44), when the speaker was a trierarch and supervisor of his symmory , and he refers to ‘the law of Periandros, by which the symmories were organized’ . There is no other specific reference to the law of Periandros. If 357/6 was the first year of its operation, it was probably passed in 358/7, but (...) that is not known for certain. The identity of the man is likewise uncertain, though it has plausibly been suggested that he was Periandros son of Polyaratos and that he was the Periandros who proposed an alliance between Athens and Arkadia in 362/1 . However, his identity is of no importance for the present article. Here I am concerned only to try to reconstruct what the law said about the symmories. Despite a great deal of modern discussion this question has still not been satisfactorily solved. The word συμμορα means ‘group’ or ‘division’ and does not necessarily have a technical or legal sense. But most of the Attic instances do have the special sense of a group of persons formed for the purpose of making payments of a compulsory tax or levy: either the property tax called εσορ, which was imposed at irregular intervals, or payments towards the maintenance of ships in the Athenian navy, which were required every year. A fragment of Philokhoros says that Athenians were divided κατ συμμορας for the first time in 378/7, and it is generally agreed that this means that symmories were first formed in 378 for the payment of eisphora. For the navy, however, there is no trace of symmories before the 350s, and everyone agrees that it was the law of Periandros which introduced the use of symmories for maintaining ships, which had previously been the sole responsibility of one trierarch or a pair of syntrierarchs for each ship. (shrink)

In 346 BC. the Athenians negotiated a peace treaty with King Philip II of Macedon, but afterwards one of the Athenian ambassadors, Demosthenes, accused another, Aiskhines, of accepting a bribe from Philip to contrive that the terms of the treaty should be favourable to him. The case came to trial three years later, and On the False Embassy is the speech which Demosthenes prepared for the prosecution. It is one of the most famous pieces of ancient oratory, and it is (...) also one of the principal sources of information about the politics of its period. This volume is on the same lines as Professor MacDowell's previous edition of Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias. It includes an introduction concentrating especially on the historical circumstances, a revised Greek text based on fresh study of the manuscripts, an English translation on pages facing the text, and the first detailed commentary on the speech for over a hundred years. (shrink)