Classical Greece is famous for its athletic art, particularly the image of the nude male athlete. But how did the Greeks understand athletic beauty? Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and others discuss athletes’ beauty, while the educational ideal of kalokagathia conceptually connects athletic beauty with the good. More questions need to be answered, however, if we are to understand ancient athletic beauty. We need to ask ourselves what the Greeks appreciated when they looked at athletic bodies. What did those qualities (...) mean to them? In what way was it erotic? How did it differ for females and males? In this paper I argue that the beautiful athletic body is framed in ancient Greek thought, not just as an aesthetically pleasing image, but as an ideal expression of a certain kind of soul. (shrink)

There is no doubt that a person's gender could make a difference to their role in Greek sacrifices. But did it normally make a difference in Greece? And why did it make a difference? Two inscriptions from the island of Thasos neatly illustrate the problem. First, one dated to around 440 and found in the sanctuary of Herakles: [ρα]κλε Θασωι [αγ]α ο θμισ, ο– [δ] χορον οδ γ– [υ]ναικ; θμισ ο– [δ]' νατεεται ο– δ γρα τμνετα– ι οσ' θλται1.

"For those of us who want to know what philosophers have said about beauty and the arts, this book will be especially useful.”—The Philosophical Review At once a treatise for professionals and a guide for newcomers to the subject, ...

The fate of war captives has been extensively explored, as, indeed, has the way that fate affects both the conduct and course of hostilities. Nevertheless, little research has been conducted on the link that connects the two, namely the act of surrender, and this is especially true of classical Greece. This article seeks to remedy this situation by answering three interlinked questions, namely: how men attempted to surrender on the battlefields of classical Greece; in what tactical (...) conditions they did so; and finally, what prospects they had of surviving the process. (shrink)

Cette monographie, soigneusement reliée et bien présentée, interpelle dès l’abord par le libellé de son titre : si l’A. peut affirmer qu’il n’existe aucune monographie récente qui traite de manière combinée de l’art grec et de la religion (p. 1), c’est peut-être bien que les deux termes choisis ne sont pas les plus évidents à utiliser. Le lecteur s’attend dès lors à une analyse réflexive de ces deux notions et de leur combinaison. Mais en guise de définition de « religion (...) », on n’aura à se me... (shrink)

While the vocabulary of sacrifice has been the subject of detailed studies, the terms of votive offerings in ancient Greece still lack a semantic survey of their own. I am here interested in a particular type of offering, the so-called ‘first-fruit’ offerings, in Archaic and Classical Greece. It was a common practice in different parts of the Greek world for individuals and cities to bring an offering termed ἀπαρχή to the gods using a portion of the proceeds (...) from a variety of human activities; and this act is described by the verb ἀπάρχεσθαι. And yet the word ἀπάρχεσθαι is not limited to making dedications; it is also used in sacrificial procedures and cult payments. This study aims to give a semantic analysis of these terms, examining their religious applications in different contexts. It appears that the values attached to the notion of ἀπάρχεσθαι are rather different in the cases of sacrifices, of bringing first-offerings and of cult finance. The ways in which the usages of these terms overlap with and diverge from each other constitute one of the most interesting results. (shrink)

This is a succinct yet remarkably incisive study of the complex interplay between language, and modes of thinking as observed in the surviving literature of classical Greece and the roughly contemporary corpus inherited from the age of Confucius in China. The aim of the volume is to identify some characteristics of the way we think - about ourselves and the world around us. These attitudes are not the inevitable furniture of the human mind. They are our inheritance from (...) the Greeks. (shrink)

In this provocative book, Edward Schiappa argues that rhetorical theory did not originate with the Sophists in the fifth century B.C.E, as is commonly believed, but came into being a century later. Schiappa examines closely the terminology of the Sophists—such as Gorgias and Protagoras—and of their reporters and opponents—especially Plato and Aristotle—and contends that the terms and problems that make up what we think of as rhetorical theory had not yet formed in the era of the early Sophists. His revision (...) of rhetoric’s early history enables him to change the way we read both the Sophists and Aristotle and Plato. Schiappa contends, for example, that Plato probably coined the Greek word for rhetoric; that Gorgias is a “prose rhapsode” whose style does not deserve the criticism it has received; that Isocrates deliberately never uses the Greek work for "rhetoric" and that our habit of pitting him versus Plato as “rhetoric versus philosophy” is problematic; and that Aristotle "disciplined" the genre of epideictic in a way that robs the genre of its political importance. His book will be of great interest to students of classics, communications, philosophy, and rhetoric. (shrink)

This very interesting collection, long awaited, represents the proceedings of a 1986 conference sponsored by the Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science. The conference grew out of the Institute's concern that scholars of the histories of philosophy, the exact sciences, biology, and medicine have been insufficiently familiar with each other's work. "So," writes Alan C. Bowen, director of the Institute, in his Preface.

Beardsley's exposition of his large subject shows lucidity, objectivity, deftness, and a good sense of proportion; and these virtues become more apparent the closer his history approaches the complex diversity of contemporary aesthetic speculation. Especially skillful are the succinct accounts of those aspects of each philosopher's thought which, though not directly concerned with aesthetics, are necessary for a full understanding of his aesthetic theories. Beardsley himself remains neutral, arguing neither for nor against the theories he analyzes. Some may feel that (...) the visual arts are slighted, but this is a minor criticism of a very informative and illuminating book.—W. B. K. (shrink)

Beardsley's exposition of his large subject shows lucidity, objectivity, deftness, and a good sense of proportion; and these virtues become more apparent the closer his history approaches the complex diversity of contemporary aesthetic speculation. Especially skillful are the succinct accounts of those aspects of each philosopher's thought which, though not directly concerned with aesthetics, are necessary for a full understanding of his aesthetic theories. Beardsley himself remains neutral, arguing neither for nor against the theories he analyzes. Some may feel that (...) the visual arts are slighted, but this is a minor criticism of a very informative and illuminating book.—W. B. K. (shrink)

The ancient science of harmonics investigates the arrangements of pitched sounds which form the basis of musical melody, and the principles which govern them. It was the most important branch of Greek musical theory, studied by philosophers, mathematicians and astronomers as well as by musical specialists. This 2007 book examines its development during the period when its central ideas and rival schools of thought were established, laying the foundations for the speculations of later antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (...) It concentrates particularly on the theorists' methods and purposes and the controversies that their various approaches to the subject provoked. It also seeks to locate the discipline within the broader cultural environment of the period; and it investigates, sometimes with surprising results, the ways in which the theorists' work draws on and in some cases influences that of philosophers and other intellectuals. (shrink)

Sôphrosunê ("self-discipline") is the often-forgotten sibling of justice, wisdom, courage, and piety in discussions of canonical Greek virtues. Christopher Moore shows that during the classical period it was the object of significant debate--about its scope, its feel, its practical manifestations, and its value. By interpreting sôphrosunê as a commitment to norm-following, we see that these pointed discussions of the virtue, previously ignored as parodic moralizing or expressions of political propaganda, are in fact concerned with the ideal of human agency. (...) These discussions query the way we become fully responsible for our actions. Greek thinking about sôphrosunê becomes thinking about self-constitution, our crucial capacity to act on the general reasons that we come to identify with as our own. This perspective explains sôphrosunê's inclusion in Plato's canon of virtues, and before that its frequent appearance in funerary inscriptions, elegiac poetry, tragic drama, and historiography. It also explains the analytic attention given to it by Heraclitus, the Sophists, the historians, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato. Moore deals principally with the classical period, though the book includes one chapter addressing earlier poetry and another addressing the virtue in two gender-sensitive post-classical works. An appendix deals with the epigraphic material. For the Greeks (and perhaps for us) there is a virtue of agency, an acquirable capacity to be guided by what's best. Hardly just a concern for reticence and reserve, commitment to sôphrosunê is a commitment to whatever it is that makes us truly ourselves. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Aristotle's Organon provides an ingeniously systematic way to identify the discrete nature of disciplines that concern human thought and expression. While such an approach helps to understand the unique properties that warrant the recognition of disciplines as discrete, Aristotle's system of classification does not capture well the dynamics, synergy, and symbiotic relationships that appear when disciplines intersect. Perhaps, in fairness to Aristotle, his task was not to explore such relationships, but that does not mean that we should not try to (...) better understand the nature and impact of disciplines such as rhetoric by examining their interplay within the dynamics of social interaction. It is this dynamism of... (shrink)

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on (...) a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

This book examines how ancient authors explored ideas of kingship as a political role fundamental to the construction of civic unity, the use of kingship stories to explain the past and present unity of the polis and the distinctive function or status attributed to kings in such accounts. -/- It explores the notion of kingship offered by historians such as Herodotus, as well as dramatists writing for the Athenian stage, paying particular attention to dramatic depictions of the unique capabilities of (...) Theseus in uniting the city in the figure of the ‘democratic king’. It also discusses kingship in Greek philosophy: the Socratics’ identification of an ‘art of kingship’, and Xenophon and Isocrates’ model of ‘virtue monarchy’. In turn, these allow a rereading of explorations of kingship and excellence in Plato’s later political thought, seen as a critique of these models, and also in Aristotle’s account of total kingship or pambasileia, treated here as a counterfactual device developed to explore the epistemic benefits of democracy. -/- This book offers a fascinating insight into the institution of monarchy in classical Greek thought and society, both for those working on Greek philosophy and politics, and also for students of the history of political thought. (shrink)

Aux périodes archaïques et classiques, les femmes grecques pourvoyaient des soins aux moments les plus importants de la vie, comme la naissance et la mort : pourtant ce n’est pas ce care qu’a mis en avant l’historiographie de la médecine, mais bien le cure masculin des médecins hippocratiques. À rebours, cet article met en avant ce care féminin. Fondée sur les documents textuels, épigraphiques et iconographiques, l’étude aborde la figure d’Hécamède, femme pourvoyeuse de soins efficaces mais non techniques aux guerriers (...) de l’Iliade d’Homère. La deuxième partie analyse le travail de care invisible et dévalué des femmes libres et esclaves au sein de l’oikos. Le soin des malades, des enfants et des vieilles personnes y échoit aux femmes adultes. Une troisième partie s’intéresse aux soignantes aux fortes compétences techniques parfois rémunérées, à mi-chemin entre care et cure : sages-femmes et femmes médecins de la période classique, jamais très éloignées du care puisque spécialisées dans les soins d’entretien de la vie : accouchement, soin des enfants et des femmes. (shrink)

Basileia and tyrannis: exploding myths -- Arete and the right to rule -- Ruling families -- Rulers in the polis -- Epilogue: Athens, ruling and arete.