Anachronism-hunting has been out of fashion with scholars in recent times, for the good reason that it can easily seem like a rather trivial sort of parlour game. But given that Greek tragedy draws so heavily on the past, a close look at some examples may perhaps throw light on a far from trivial subject, the dramatists' perception of the heroic world.

So long as anachronism was treated as an artistic failing the debate was bound to be unproductive; one can symphathise with Jebb's view (on Soph. El. 48 ff.) that Attic tragedy was ‘wholly indifferent’ to it. And one can see why later scholars have objected to the very idea of anachronism as irrelevant and misleading. Ehrenberg, for example, wrote in 1954: ‘It is entirely mistaken to distinguish between mythical and thus quasi-historical features on the one hand and contemporary and thus anachronistic on the other. There is always the unity of the one poem or play, displaying the ancient myth, although shaped in the spirit of the poet's mind and time.’

In the Classical Quarterly, 1944, I have dealt with the slender evidence for the Genesia, a public festival of the dead in Athens which was mentioned already in Solon's Axones. Whether or not my suggestion is right that it was introduced by Solon himself as a part of his programme of uniting the classes into the new citizen state by abolishing the festivals of the single clans, or whether the public festival reached farther back, the heortological fact is not in dispute: there existed in Athens, and as far as we know only in Athens, a public festival of the dead, called Genesia, and celebrated in late autumn on the fifth of the month Boedromion with a sacrifice for Mother Earth. That is all we know about it, and in going beyond these clear facts we have to be aware that we pass the border-line into the realm not (I hope) of fiction but of hypothesis, and partly even of pure guesswork. It will depend on the inherent probability of these guesses whether it is worth while to risk them. In my opinion it is worth while, because in the course of our investigation we shall get one unexpected result: namely, the time at which the specifically Athenian custom of burying at home the men killed in action was introduced. And this date, which I believe can be established, will throw some light on the perhaps most famous section of the work of Thucydides, and incidentally on his historical principles.

The Greeks under Roman rule suffer from a double prejudice. On the one hand, Hellenists lose interest in the Greeks after the classical period; on the other, Roman historians find it hard to avoid a Romanocentric perspective. This double prejudice becomes particularly acute when the issue is the religious language used by the Greeks to refer to the Roman emperor. For example, the Greeks called the living emperor both theou huios (‘son of god’) and also theos (‘god’). The language looks odd from the perspectives both of classical Athens and of imperial Rome. One way to make sense of it is to treat it as a translation out of Latin. Thus the bizarre practice of calling the emperor theou huios is seen as perfectly natural because it is simply the translation of divi filius. Why natural? Because, as the heirs of Rome, we can attempt to ignore the cultural differences between us and the ancient world. But the tactic of treating Greek as a translation out of Latin does not always work. Calling the living emperor theos cannot be seen as a translation of divus, a term which applies only to dead emperors. Modern scholars are therefore forced to treat the usage as ‘deviant’, the product of either folly or flattery. In fact the failure of theos to translate divus undermines the first assumption that theou huios is a translation of divi filius.

In the standard handbooks on the techniques of Greek architecture, the problem of lifting heavy architectural members is considered mainly in terms of the various cranes and hoists based on compound pulley systems which are described by Vitruvius and Hero of Alexandria. It is assumed that the same basic method was employed also in the Archaic period, and that the use of an earth ramp by Chersiphron to raise the architraves of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos in the mid-sixth century was exceptional. If this is true, it is a matter of some interest in the history of technology. The simple pulley, used not to gain mechanical advantage but just to change the direction of pull, is first known from an Assyrian relief of the ninth century B.C., and may well have been known to the Greeks before they began to build in megalithic masonry in the late seventh century B.C.; but the earliest indisputable evidence for a knowledge of compound pulley systems is in the Mechanical Problems attributed to Aristotle, but more probably written by a member of his school in the early third century B.C. This is a theoretical discussion of a system which was already used by builders, but it is not so certain that practice preceded theory by three centuries or more. It is therefore worth looking again at the evidence for the use of cranes, hoists and pulleys in early Greek building.

Among the greater monuments or actual structural remains of the Mycenaean world hitherto made known, it is remarkable how little there is to be found having a clear and obvious relation to religious belief. The great wealth of many of the tombs, the rich contents of the pit-graves of Mycenae itself, the rock-cut chambers, the massive vaults of the bee-hive tombs, are all indeed so many evidences of a highly developed cult of departed Spirits. The pit-altar over grave IV. of the Akropolis area at Mycenae, and the somewhat similar erection found in the Court-yard of the Palace at Tiryns, take us a step further in this direction; but it. still remains possible that the second, like the first, may have been dedicated to the cult of the ancestors of the household, and it supplies in itself no conclusive evidences of a connexion with any higher form of worship.

The scene carved in relief on a Middle Minoan III-Late Minoan I serpentine footed conical cup or chalice from Ayia Triada has attracted the attention of numerous scholars since its discovery and initial publication. The cup is 11·5 cm in height with a maximum diameter of 9·9 cm. Two male figures are depicted facing each other (Plate VIIa). The figure on the right (hereafter, figure A), stands before a rendering perhaps of a pillar with even, horizontal, divisions to indicate stone blocks. His hair is arranged in tresses that hang to his waist, one of which is pulled in front of his ear. He wears three necklaces, several arm bands and bracelets, and around his waist, a short belted kilt into which is inserted a dagger. On his feet he wears boots which reach up to his mid-calf and are decorated with horizontal incisions. In his extended right hand he holds a straight staff; his left hand is empty and is thrust back, bent at the elbow. The facing figure (hereafter, figure B), is shorter and more simply attired. His hair appears short and gathered in a top-knot. In his right hand he holds a long sword and in his left, a long-handled object with a curved top, interpreted by some scholars to be a ritual sprinkler. Around his neck he wears a simple collar, a short kilt is wrapped around his waist, and on his feet he wears undecorated boots which reach to his mid-calf. On the back of the cup are three male figures carrying large flattened animal skins, usually identified as ox hides or shields. Only the heads of these males are visible above the ‘hides’. Their hair is worn short in the front and hangs freely behind their ears.

During a consultation at Delphi, one of Apollo's servants imagined, heard, intuited, or feigned Apollo's presence and then uttered Apollo's divine response to the human client who made inquiry of the god. Such inspired mimicry appears incomprehensible to the non-believing distant observer to whom Apollo no longer speaks. Scholars hear nothing at Delphi and, steadfast in their faith in positivism, claim Apollo said nothing. In a similar fashion, scholars have pronounced that the Pythia, like Apollo, did not speak at Delphi, or that her attendant prophets reformulated her utterances and converted them into comprehensible prose or verse. Such a reconstruction of the divinatory consultation at Delphi, however, finds no support in the ancient evidence. Not one ancient source suggests that anyone other than the Pythia issued oracular responses.

The utensils which I am going to describe and discuss in the following pages are the ordinary utensils of Greek, mainly Athenian, households in the classical period; they have been found in abundance, are not special articles and may therefore serve to furnish a fairly complete picture of the classical batterie de cuisine. It is only in the last generation that material has come to hand which enables us to venture some way to understanding the methods of ancient Greek cooking. The Excavations of the Athenian Agora, in which the majority of the cooking pots on plates IV–VIII have been found, have produced evidence for the contents of Greek kitchens in most periods of Greek history, objects for the most part thrown away when broken as the result either of public or of private sacrifices. Rarely, in contrast with Pompeii, are the contents of the kitchen found in the places where they were used. Thus other evidence must be brought forward to supplement the archaeological, and this evidence is of two kinds: literary and artistic. Our literary knowledge of Greek cookery is derived in the main from the quotations preserved by Athenaeus; other authors refer to cookery incidentally and rarely provide a straight description.

It is now a commonplace view that fine pottery may not have formed the major part of any cargo in antiquity. The archaeological evidence of shipwrecks seems to confirm the view held by most students of the ancient economy that pots—both fine and coarse—were merely ‘parasitic’ on the main items of trade, staples, metals and slaves. However there are some who plead a special case for the fine wares—especially the figure-decorated—during the archaic and classical periods. J. Boardman, for example, though in principle in agreement with the general view that pottery accompanied ‘more important materials’, still seems to hold the view (which he formulated in 1964) that ‘Corinthian vases were being carried for their own sakes, as objets d'art, or at least best plate’. This paper will examine the recent claim—in response to those who, it is maintained, have ‘demoted the consignments of Greek pottery, plain or decorated, to “space-fillers” or “profitable ballast”’—viz., that ‘Athenian decorated pottery was not cheap and … was as valuable and profitable a trade commodity as most that any classical ship took on board’.

For much of the first millennium BC, the number of Greeks increased considerably, both in the Aegean core and in the expanding periphery of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. This paper is the first attempt to establish a coherent quantitative framework for the study of this process. In the first section, I argue that despite the lack of statistical data, it is possible to identify a plausible range of estimates of average long-term demographic growth rates in mainland Greece from the Early Iron Age to the Classical period. Elaborating on this finding, the second section offers a comprehensive rebuttal of the notion of explosive population growth in parts of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. In the third section, I seek to determine the probable scale and demographic consequences of Greek settlement overseas. A brief preliminary look at the relationship between population growth and the quality of life concludes my survey. The resultant series of interlocking parametric models is meant to contextualize the demographic development of ancient Greece within the wider ambit of pre-modern demography, and to provide a conceptual template for future research in this area.

In RA 1972, 57–72 (‘Herakles, Peisistratos and Sons’) I tried to demonstrate that the exceptional popularity of Herakles in Athenian art of the Peisistratan period was due to some degree of deliberate identification between tyrant and hero, both appearing as special protégés of the goddess Athena, and that this association was mirrored by certain changes and innovations in the iconographic tradition of Herakles as represented on Athenian, and only Athenian, works of art of those years. The most explicit association was expressed in Peisistratos' return to Athens after his second exile, in a chariot accompanied by a mock Athena (Hdt. i, 60). This episode was mirrored by or inspired a change in the usual iconography of Herakles' Introduction to Olympus by Athena, on foot, to a version in which the hero is shown with the goddess in a chariot. Taken with other evidence of Athenian interest in the hero, their priority in accepting him as a god and promotion of his worship, which can plausibly be attributed to this same time, and a number of other scenes which seemed likely to reflect some political rather than purely narrative interest, the case appeared to the writer strong, though circumstantial, and in the total absence of any indications in surviving literary sources it was not possible to judge, except in the light of common sense, which parts of the case were strongest, which better discarded.

In an earlier article, I argued that six of the Roman Lives—Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Brutus, and Antony—were prepared as a single project, and rest upon the same store of source-material. If this is so, it affords a unique opportunity to investigate Plutarch's techniques. There are substantial variations among these six versions, both crude inconsistencies of fact and subtler differences of interpretation. It no longer seems adequate to assume that these are simply inherited from differing source-material; they must arise from Plutarch's individual literary methods. Their analysis should therefore illuminate those methods. How much licence did Plutarch allow himself in rewriting and manipulating detail for artistic ends? And what considerations would lead him to vary his treatment in these ways?

In the first part of this paper, I examine the literary devices which Plutarch employed in streamlining his material: conflation of similar items, chronological compression and dislocation, fabrication of circumstantial detail, and the like. In the second, I turn to the differences of interpretation and emphasis among these Lives. These suggest some wider conclusions concerning Plutarch's biographical practice, which are developed in the final section: in particular, the very different aims, interests, and conventions which are followed in different Lives, and the flexible nature of this biographical genre.

While the simplistic thesis of Greek progress from mythos to logos in the form stated by Wilhelm Nestle is rightly rejected, some aspects of the emerging new consensus are open to challenge. ‘Mythos’ corresponds in important ways to modern ‘myth’ and Greek logos, with which it is contrasted, stands at the beginning of an unbroken tradition of Western rationalism. The semantic history of the terms is freshly analyzed, with particular attention to the contribution of pre-Socratic philosophers, Herodotos and Sophists, but looking forward also to Hellenistic and Imperial writers. The ‘invention of mythology’ is dated to the middle of the fifth century, not the end. Plato's complicated stand on the issue is interpreted as a reaction to Sophistic views.

To generalize about Aischylos is difficult; to generalize about Euripides is almost impossible; but to generalize about Sophokles is both possible and potentially rewarding. With Sophokles—or, rather, with the Sophokles of the seven fully extant tragedies—we can sense a mood, a use of language, and a style of play-making (‘dramatic technique’) which are largely shared by all seven works. Of these characteristics it is surely the mood which contains the quintessence of Sophoklean tragedy. My aim in the first section of this paper will be to open the way to an appreciation of that mood by following up one of the most important motifs in Sophokles: blindness. In the second section the scope of the enquiry will be widened: I shall show that, in using the blindness motif, Sophokles was drawing on a theme which was fundamental to a large number of mythical narratives told by Greeks from the time of Homer to that of Pausanias, and beyond. In the final section we shall return to Sophokles, placing him this time not against the background of the whole Greek mythical tradition but rather within the specific context of the fifth century B.C., and attempting to overhear the individual dramatic ‘voice’ used by him as he explored the implications of blindness.

In his ‘Essay on the value of applying the ethnic criterion to the study of Greek history and civilisation’, Edouard Will examined the two most numerous and politically important ethnic divisions of the Greek race in Classical times, the Dorians and the Ionians, and came to the conclusion that they inspired no true ethnic feeling amongst the Greeks. Other historians have tended towards a similar view. Although some writers have felt unconvinced of the thesis, no one has analysed the sources used by Will and his supporters to suggest why they may not after all imply the conclusions which Will drew. This article will attempt to do so. In particular I shall try to show first that there is good evidence for the importance of ethnic feeling at the time of the Peloponnesian war, and, secondly, that we should not regard Peloponnesian war propaganda as the sole cause of this feeling. The article will concentrate upon the treatment of this subject by Thucydides and Herodotus, the interpretation of which is, I think, most in need of revaluation. Their evidence seems to me most important because they frequently document and in some cases give their own analysis of occasions where ethnic feeling seems to play a part, many of which are either contemporaneous with them or lie in the fairly recent past. I shall, however, also consider to what extent their evidence is supported by other sources.

‘Only the naïve or innocent observer’, says Sir Moses Finley in his book Politics in the ancient world, ‘can believe that Pericles came to a vital Assembly meeting armed with nothing but his intelligence, his knowledge, his charisma and his oratorical skill, essential as all four attributes were.’ Historians of the Roman Republic have been assiduous in studying clientelae,factiones and ‘delivering the vote’, but much less work has been done on the ways in which Athenian politicians sought to mobilise support. There have been studies of family connections and of links between individual politicians; there have been studies of the associations known as hetaireiai; but many questions remain unanswered. W. R. Connor in The new politicians of fifth-century Athens contrasted an old style of politics, based on ties of philia within the upper classes, with a new style, which spurned philia and appealed directly to the people. Even in his old style, the votes of the ordinary, middling-to-poor citizens counted for more in the straightforward Athenian assembly than in the Roman comitia with their complex systems of block votes. Connor limits political friendship to the upper classes; he pours cold water on Sealey's suggestion that rich families might have brought pressure to bear on their tenants and other dependants (saying, ‘The proud and independent Athenian might be expected to resist intimidation’); but apart from general references to largesse he does not really explain how an old-style Cimon or a new-style Cleon would ensure that the assembly was full of voters willing to elect him as general or approve a motion which he proposed. J. K. Davies has tried to take the matter further in Wealth and the power of wealth in classical Athens.

The aim of this paper is to establish the existence of a significant difference, in a number of respects, between the style of the narrated portions of Homer and that of the speeches which are recorded in the two epics; and to offer some explanations for this fact. It will require the presentation of some statistics: I suspect that not all of the figures are absolutely accurate, but I feel confident that such inaccuracies as they may contain will not affect the validity of the inferences drawn from them. The mere fact of differences in vocabulary, while not without interest, is not extremely interesting or surprising. The hope of this paper is that patterns will appear, and that the ‘reticence’ or ‘objectivity’ of Homer, more often praised than investigated, will be illuminated by them; that particular passages in the poems will be shown to be stylistically interesting or unusual; and that some general considerations will emerge which suggest that the difficulties confronting the oral theory of Homer are rather more complex than is often supposed.

The so-called ‘Cyrenean Foundation Decree’ describes and paraphrases what appears to be the oath of the seventh-century Theran colonists who founded the city of Cyrene in Libya. This oath contains a conditional self-imprecation, a common enough feature of many Greek oaths, but one which in this case involves wax effigies in what can best be described as a ritual employing ‘sympathetic magic’:

Few problems in the Oresteia have been more debated in recent times than that of why Artemis sends the calm which detains the Achaean fleet at Aulis. ‘The main problem, a much vexed one’, wrote Eduard Fraenkel, ‘… arises from the fact that we are not told anywhere in the ode why the wrath of Artemis is directed against the Atreidae’. By ‘the ode’ Fraenkel means, of course, the parodos of the Agamemnon; he might have written ‘in the play’ or ‘in the trilogy’. He believed that Aeschylus had in mind the story, told in the Cypria and in the Electra of Sophocles, that Agamemnon had angered Artemis by boasting that he surpassed her as an archer, but that he made no allusion to it because it seemed to supply a motive too petty to accord with his great theme.

Others have protested that in a trilogy concerned with guilt and retribution it is strange that so important an action should be left unmotivated. Sir Denys Page revived the view of Conington and others that Artemis is angry with the Atreidai because they are symbolised by the eagles which appear at Aulis, and these eagles kill a pregnant hare, an animal under her protection. That is to confuse the world of the portent with the world of reality which it symbolises, besides assigning to the goddess a motive of a still more objectionable pettiness. In pointing this out, twenty years ago, I contended that since the eagles stand for the Atreidai the hare must stand for Troy, and deduced from this that Artemis must be angry at the prospective massacre of the Trojans. In Homer and in the later tradition, Artemis takes the Trojan side against the Greeks, and I argued that since the hare stood for Troy the partiality of Artemis for wild animals and their young must stand for her partiality for the Trojans.

In this paper I contest the usually accepted terminus for the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, namely, just prior to the production of the Acharnians in February 425. I argue instead that Herodotus survived the Archidamian War—basically a return, this, to the position taken until the middle of the last century, especially in Germany, before the work of Schoell, Kirchoff and then Meyer and Jacoby. Further, I suggest that he published at a date close to 414 B.C. or, at least, that his Histories reached the Athenian public at around that time. Since even the orthodox date for his publication (426 or so) figures in the constructions of modern scholars merely as a literary curiosity devoid of significance—such are the preconceptions dominating our notion of Herodotus' ‘era’—a reconsideration of this question needs no apology if it serves the purpose of directing attention to a matter vitally affecting our interpretation of this author.

First, a general observation. In seeking for external evidence to establish the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, we need to distinguish between possible and certain echoes of Herodotus in the works of others. The question must constantly be asked whether any allusion we have isolated presupposes and requires the knowledge of Herodotus' work on the part of the contemporary audience. For otherwise we could be misled by a coincidence or we could reach a false conclusion because some point of specific knowledge eludes us. Of the latter the famous parallel in the Antigone of Sophocles (909 ff. with Herodotus iii 119) provides a notable example. If Herodotus had been just a little more strict with himself in avoiding allusions to his own time, who would not suppose that his work had been published prior to 441? What we require, therefore, is material which is calculated to evoke Herodotus himself—the special characteristics of the man and his Histories—so as to leave in no doubt a general familiarity with his work on the part of others.