Studies in Attic Epigraphy, History, and Topography


Book Description

Twenty-six papers on the epigraphy, history, and topography of ancient Greece presented to the famous scholar by his eminent students and friends. The contents are: A Lid with Dipinto (Alan L. Boegehold); Athenians, Macedonians, and the Origins of the Macedonian Royal House (Eugene N. Borza); Koroni and Keos (John L. Caskey); Epicurus in the Archives of Athens (Diskin Clay); The Nature of the Late Fifth Century Revision of the Athenian Law Code (Kevin Clinton); Theseus and the Unification of Attica (Steven Diamant); Onesippos' Herm (Colin N. Edmonson); Gennadeion Notes v. the Journal of Thomas Whitcombe, Philhellene (C. W. J. Eliot); A Lekythos in Toronto and the Golden Youth of Athens (Henry R. Immerwahr); The Leasing of Land in Rhamnous (Michael H. Jameson); Writing and Spelling on Ostraka (Mabel L. Lang); Some Attic Walls (Merle K. Langdon); Dodwellopolis: Addendum to "Fortified Military Camps in Attica" (James R. McCredie); Athens and Hestiaia (Malcolm F. McGregor); Thucydides and the Decrees of Kallias (Benjamin D. Meritt); Arrian in Two Roles (James H. Oliver); The Dedication of Aristokrates (Antony E. Raubitschek); The Pnyx in Models (Homer A. Thompson); The Alleged Conservatism of Attic Epigraphical Documents: A Different View (Leslie Threatte); Agora I 7181 + IG II, 2, 944b (Stephen V. Tracy); An Interpretation of Six Rock-Cut Inscriptions in the Attic Demes of Lamptrai (John S. Traill); PARADEIGMA (John Travlos and E. L. Smithson); Regulations for an Athenian Festival (Michael B. Walbank); The Final Battle at Plataia (Paul W. Wallace); An Attic Farm near Laurion (Livingston Vance Watrous); Sepulturae Intra Urbem and the Pre-Persian Walls of Athens (F. E. Winter).




Sacred and Public Land in Ancient Athens


Book Description

Landed wealth was crucial for the economies of all Greek city-states and, despite its peculiarities, Athens was no exception in that respect. This monograph is the first exhaustive treatment of sacred and public - in other words the non-private - real property in Athens. Following a survey of modern scholarship on the topic, Papazarkadas scrutinizes literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence in order to examine lands and other types of realty administered by the polis of Athens and its constitutional and semi-official subdivisions (such as tribes, demes, and religious associations). Contrary to earlier anachronistic models which saw sacred realty as a thinly disguised form of state property, the author perceives the sanctity of temene (sacred landholdings) as meaningful, both conceptually and economically. In particular, he detects a seamless link between sacred rentals and cultic activity. This link is markedly visible in two distinctive cases: the border area known as Sacred Orgas, a constant source of contention between Athens and Megara; and the moriai, Athena's sacred olive-trees, whose crop was the coveted prize of the Panathenaic games. Both topics are treated in separate appendices as are several other problems, not least the socio-economic profile of those involved in the leasing of sacred property, emerging from a detailed prosopographical analysis. However, certain non-private landholdings were secular and alienable, and their exploitation was often based on financial schemes different from those applied in the case of temene. This gives the author the opportunity to analyze and elucidate ancient notions of public and sacred ownership.




Athenian Officials 684-321 BC


Book Description

A fundamental reference for the study of Athenian magistracies and official life.




The Cattle of the Sun


Book Description

Though Greece is traditionally seen as an agrarian society, cattle were essential to Greek communal life, through religious sacrifice and dietary consumption. Cattle were also pivotal in mythology: gods and heroes stole cattle, expected sacrifices of cattle, and punished those who failed to provide them. The Cattle of the Sun ranges over a wealth of sources, both textual and archaeological, to explore why these animals mattered to the Greeks, how they came to be a key element in Greek thought and behavior, and how the Greeks exploited the symbolic value of cattle as a way of structuring social and economic relations. Jeremy McInerney explains that cattle's importance began with domestication and pastoralism: cattle were nurtured, bred, killed, and eaten. Practically useful and symbolically potent, cattle became social capital to be exchanged, offered to the gods, or consumed collectively. This circulation of cattle wealth structured Greek society, since dedication to the gods, sacrifice, and feasting constituted the most basic institutions of Greek life. McInerney shows that cattle contributed to the growth of sanctuaries in the Greek city-states, as well as to changes in the economic practices of the Greeks, from the Iron Age through the classical period, as a monetized, market economy developed from an earlier economy of barter and exchange. Combining a broad theoretical approach with a careful reading of sources, The Cattle of the Sun illustrates the significant position that cattle held in the culture and experiences of the Greeks. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.




Synchrony and Diachrony of Ancient Greek


Book Description

This collective volume contains thirty six original studies on various aspects of Ancient Greek language, linguistics and philology written by an international group of leading authorities in the field. The essays are organized in five thematic groups covering a wide variety of issues of ancient Greek linguistics, ranging from epigraphy and the study of individual dialects to various other aspects of the structure of the language, such as phonetics and phonology, morphology, lexicon and word formation, etymology, metrics as well as many syntactic matters and problems of pragmatics and stylistics of the language; a number of essays move in the middle ground where language, linguistics and philology crosscut and cross-fertilize each other with the application of linguistic theory to the study of classical texts. The work is of special relevance to scholars interested in Greek linguistics in general and in particular aspects of the Greek language.




Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition


Book Description

Hellenism is the living culture of the Greek-speaking peoples and has a continuing history of more than 3,500 years. The Encyclopedia of Greece and the HellenicTradition contains approximately 900 entries devoted to people, places, periods, events, and themes, examining every aspect of that culture from the Bronze Age to the present day. The focus throughout is on the Greeks themselves, and the continuities within their own cultural tradition. Language and religion are perhaps the most obvious vehicles of continuity; but there have been many others--law, taxation, gardens, music, magic, education, shipping, and countless other elements have all played their part in maintaining this unique culture. Today, Greek arts have blossomed again; Greece has taken its place in the European Union; Greeks control a substantial proportion of the world's merchant marine; and Greek communities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa have carried the Hellenic tradition throughout the world. This is the first reference work to embrace all aspects of that tradition in every period of its existence.




A Companion to Ancient Macedonia


Book Description

The most comprehensive and up-to-date work available on ancient Macedonian history and material culture, A Companion to Ancient Macedonia is an invaluable reference for students and scholars alike. Features new, specially commissioned essays by leading and up-and-coming scholars in the field Examines the political, military, social, economic, and cultural history of ancient Macedonia from the Archaic period to the end of Roman period and beyond Discusses the importance of art, archaeology and architecture All ancient sources are translated in English Each chapter includes bibliographical essays for further reading




Ancient Greek Agriculture


Book Description

The initial focus of Ancient Greek Agriculture is firmly on the art of agriculture proper, the tools and the technique, the plants cultivated and the animals reared. Thereafter, Isager and Skydsgaard focus on the position of agriculture in the society of gods and men in the Greek city-states . The arguments of Ancient Greek Agriculture are strengthened by the book's close adherence to contemporary Greek sources, literary as well as archaeological, avoiding the use of later as well as Roman material.




Pericles on Stage


Book Description

Since the eighteenth century, classical scholars have generally agreed that the Greek playwright Aristophanes did not as a matter of course write "political" plays. Yet, according to an anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to know about the government of Athens, Plato sent him a copy of Aristophanes' Clouds. In this boldly revisionist work, Michael Vickers convincingly argues that in his earlier plays, Aristophanes in fact commented on the day-to-day political concerns of Athenians. Vickers reads the first six of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays in a way that reveals the principal characters to be based in large part on Pericles and his ward Alcibiades. According to Vickers, the plays of Aristophanes—far from being nonpolitical—actually allow us to gauge the reaction of the Athenian public to the events that followed Pericles' death in 429 B.C., to the struggle for the political succession, and to the problems presented by Alcibiades' emergence as one of the most powerful figures in the state. This view of Aristophanes reaffirms the central role of allegory in his work and challenges all students of ancient Greece to rethink long-held assumptions about this important playwright.