The vast majority of ‘fragments’ for Aristotle's lost Homeric Puzzles come from the Homeric scholia. Like other scholars studying this lost work, I do rely on them. But despite their value, it is important to recognize their limitations. This essay is an attempt to explain a set of Homeric scholia that attribute to Aristotle a surprising claim about the eagle in Iliad 21.252 (namely, that it is a black-boned eagle) and to argue that this attribution is erroneous. I conclude that the reports from these scholia in fact represent a mangling of another, more accurate, source, namely Porphyry's discussion (in his Homeric Questions) of the eagles in the Iliad. Further support for this conclusion comes from relevant passages in Eustathius and other scholia on Il. 21.252, as well as from POxy 221 (the remains of a commentary on Il. 21) and Aristotle's Historia animalium 3.9.

In Laws 3.680b–c the Athenian Stranger's positive evaluation of the Cyclopean ‘way of life’ (Od. 9.112–15) is deeply indebted to Antisthenes’ interpretatio Homerica of the Cyclopes as ‘just’ insofar they do not have the need of written law. Antisthenes’ equation of ‘need of law’ with ‘need of written law’ is then contextualized within the unresolved tension, in the legislative project of the Laws, between oral dissemination (‘proems’ to the laws) and the potentially coercive power of the written text. Finally, Megillus’ inept reply to the Homeric quotation by the Athenian Stranger allows us to gain a more nuanced view of the ‘readerly’ dynamics enacted by the internal audience of the Laws.

While scholars have long acknowledged the limitations of Herodotus’ Histories as a historical source, Herodotus’ topography of the Persian Wars is still usually seen as historically reliable information. This article, by contrast, aims to show that memory studies offers an attractive means to understand this layer of information, as the alleged locations of events do not, in many cases, necessarily reflect the historical situation. Instead, these places may, for various reasons, have been designated as such in local traditions in the ca. 50 years between the wars and Herodotus’ research. As a case in point, this article discusses the topography of Herodotus’ story of the Persian shipwreck along the coast of Thessaly before the Battle of Artemision in 480 BC (Hdt. 7.183, 7.188, 7.191–92). It argues that the attitude among scholars automatically to regard the locations in this account as historically correct has created various problems. In doing so, it identifies the elusive place of Sepias with the coast near the town of Veneto where a remarkable cluster of sea caves (the so-called ‘Ovens’) plausibly formed an ‘anchor’ for the myth of the abduction of Thetis by Peleus, as well as for the Persian shipwreck.

This article explores one of the remarkable legacies of the Hellenistic Greek world: the subsequent activity in the Indian Ocean of Greek-speaking Egyptians and certain people of India who called themselves Yavanas. But while doing so, it addresses certain vexing issues. One is whether merchants from Roman Egypt established stable residential communities in the ports of India during the first and second centuries AD. Another is how Yavanas living near the Gulf of Barygaza and the western Ghats in western India came to call themselves by a term borne centuries earlier by Greeks living in regions of northern India. By probing these issues, the article sheds light on how travellers and expatriates from Roman Egypt, and the Greek language and culture that they often carried with them, fit into the multilingual and multicultural web of a connected Indian Ocean. But it also formulates how a commercial network of Egyptians established residential settlements in the ports of India that generated and transmitted local knowledge to other members of the network. The author of the notable Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Periplus Maris Erythraei) was arguably both a participant in the network and a recipient of its knowledge.

The vividness of Homeric poetry has been admired since antiquity, but has been difficult to pin down with precision. It is usually thought to come about because readers are prompted to visualize the storyworld in the form of mental images seen with the mind's eye. But this cannot be right, both because there are serious scientific problems with the concept of ‘pictures in the head’ and because Homer does not offer many detailed descriptions, which are a prerequisite for eliciting detailed mental images. This article presents a different, and cognitively more realistic, take on the imageability of Homeric epic, which is based on recent reader-response studies inspired by the enactivist theory of cognition. These studies make a compelling case for readerly visualization as an embodied response, which does not depend on bright or detailed mental images. An analysis of the chariot race in Iliad 23 identifies specific features of what may be called an ‘enactive style’, notably the description of simple bodily actions. The final part of the article demonstrates that an enactivist take on Homer's vividness is not incompatible with the ancient concept of enargeia, the chief rhetorical term with which Homer's vividness is characterized in ancient criticism.

This paper proposes a new interpretation of the dimensions of the sun and moon wheels in Anaximander's cosmology. While the traditional reconstruction proposed by Tannery and Diels posits six measures for three different wheels (sun, moon and stars), it will be argued here that Anaximander gave only two basic measurements, one for the moon's wheel (19 times bigger than the earth) and one for the sun's (28 times bigger). These two values can be accounted for by their connection to the lunar month – a graphic representation of the wheels which includes motion accurately reproduces the relative positions of the sun and moon; in fact they are the smallest pair of figures from which a twowheel model can be made that represents the month correctly. Anaximander derived his two parameters by attempting to incorporate basic observational data into a cosmic model.

Greeks, unlike Romans, gambled with five not four knucklebones (astragaloi) in their dice games. As Pollux explains, the high number of an individual knucklebone was sometimes eight rather than six, and so when a dicer rolled ‘all eights’ they attained a sum of 40. This roll was called the ‘Euripides’. The confusion about this throw is due to a report found in Byzantine sources and attributed to Suetonius, where it is claimed that dicers of Greek antiquity used four knucklebones. Suetonius may have confused the Roman custom with the Greek one, but there are good grounds for questioning whether the report is from ‘Suetonius’ at all. Elsewhere ‘Suetonius’ reports that Greeks played with three rather than two cubic dice, but such a report cannot have been made before the seventh century AD.

Kubeia and its congeners are often translated as ‘playing dice’ or ‘dicing’ because kuboi are ‘dice’. But sometimes kubeia has nothing to do with ‘dice’ (kuboi) at all, and so ought often to be translated simply as ‘gambling’. Pollux explains the nature of the word clearly in book 7, and his position is supported by earlier authors such as Theopompus, Diphilus, Isocrates, Xenophon and Aeschines. Not only is it possible to ‘gamble’ (kubeuein) with knucklebones (astragaloi) as well as cubic dice (kuboi), it is also possible to ‘gamble’ (kubeuein) by folding leather straps, by spinning coins and by guessing about small objects hidden in the hand; it is even possible to ‘gamble’ (kubeuein) during a cock-fight. The mistaken belief that the word means ‘dicing’ has affected not only centuries of translations and interpretations, but also the editing of texts since at least the early 19th century, as is shown regarding a crux in Aeschines’ Against Timarchus.

This article argues that the ambiguity over whether certain characters are alive or dead during the second half of the Batrachomyomachia is not only deliberate, as previous scholars have suggested, but part of a complex intertextual relationship with Iliad 21 and Achilles’ battle in the Scamander. It concludes by suggesting that the poet's decision to stage this new battle in a ƛίμνη, a pool or pond, helps to articulate the ideas of life, death and resurrection which characterize this section of the poem.

This article analyses monodic reperformance of epinicians in the fifth century BC and argues that the musical and ethical dimensions of such performances were mutually reinforcing. Reperformances by solo singers would have strongly foregrounded the agency of the individual performer, while also enacting his understanding of musical conventions. This relationship forms a structural parallel with the function of ethical statements in epinicians, which are usually conventional in terms of their conceptual content and yet also emphasize the agency of individuals in responding to them. I argue that the parallelism between ethics and monodic reperformance is an important thematic strand in Nemean 4 and Isthmian 2, and prefigures the responses that the poems elicit from audiences.

The standard translation of μύΩΨ in Plato’s Apology of Socrates 30e is ‘gadfly’. However, this word was generally translated as ‘spur’ until the 1800s. This article re-evaluates the scholarship that led to the ‘gadfly’ translation and argues that the ‘spur’ translation is correct based on the use elsewhere in Greek literature of μύΩΨ and other significant words in the passage.

The exact days on which the Panathenaia was celebrated are not altogether clear, with the exception of Hekatombaion 28 (I 28), the day of the great πομπή honouring Athena. In two ancient scholia it is said that Athena's birthday was celebrated on this main day of the festival. This information has often been deemed false, owing to the existence of other, conflicting testimony according to which Athena's birthday was celebrated on the third of each month, a fact seemingly in accord with her epithet of Tritogeneia. The association between I 28 and Athena's birthday has been seen as the result of the confusion generated by I 28 being the third day from the end of the month (τρίτη ἀπιόντος). I argue that the information contained in the scholia is not the result of confusion. Athena's birthday was indeed celebrated on the main day of the Panathenaia. This date was set in stone by Pheidias on the Parthenon's east pediment.

The inscription CID II.34 presents a unique use of the word ἴασις, which commonly means ‘treatment mode’ or ‘therapeutic method’ in medical terminology. It is applied here to an archive box and has been accordingly translated, until now, as ‘repair’. However, a comparison with a passage from Theophrastus suggests that the term may refer, in this particular context, to a preventive measure designed to protect the box and the documents it contained from humidity and decay.

The Byzantine passion play Christus Patiens (Christ Suffering) is a cento: composed of quotations and borrowings from other sources, it takes Euripides’ tragedies as its main source for reworking the passion narrative. The genre, popular with Christian authors who usually transformed classical epics, enacts cultural exchange between canonical pagan literature and biblical narrative. Traditionally transmitted as the work of Gregory of Nazianzus, this drama showcases the tensions inherent in this reuse of Greek tragedy which threaten to collapse the original texts under the weight of their new meaning – or vice versa. While the afterlives of Classical texts, especially Greek tragedy, have been increasingly well explored, the scant attention afforded Christus Patiens has largely consisted of debating the disputed date and authorship. At the same time, scrutiny lavished on Virgilian centonic technique provides a helpful spring-board. This article focuses on the four tragedies most plundered in Christus Patiens: Rhesus, Medea, Hippolytus and Bacchae. It concentrates on interpreting the protagonist, Mary the Mother of God, through key passages which borrow most heavily from these plays. These stretch centonic conventions by almost exclusively reworking contiguous lines featuring the tragic mothers Medea, Agave and Musa; yet Mary is otherwise created from multiple conflicting voices. Analysis of these passages as frames for the cento author's own compositions and in the context of the prologue's invitation to identify specific Euripidean reworkings suggests that the author playfully flirts with creating a narrative of fragmentation through clashes between centonic form, tragic sources and Christian subject.

This article reviews several books published since the turn of the millennium that explore the role and representation of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman culture. Despite differences in focus and outlook, these books herald the arrival within classical studies of the questions, concepts and methods of human/animal studies as an emerging field of enquiry. This article takes their publication as an opportunity to take stock and to outline the relationship between these disciplines. I explore how current research on ancient animals resonates both in existing debates in classical scholarship and within the context of the larger interdisciplinary debate. I also suggest how this debate can point to productive avenues for further enquiry in classical studies. More specifically, I argue that the interdisciplinary debate sets an important agenda, which should be embraced more fully by classical studies. Classical scholarship on the role, function and perception of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman life can provide important insights into one aspect of the heritage – Western conceptions of humanity and the place of the animal within it – which has not yet received the attention it deserves. I conclude that classical scholarship can make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate, helping it deliver on its stated goal of examining and challenging Western concepts of self, as well as the ideologies of ‘the other’ underpinning them.