The title of Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana as it stands in all editions since Kayser’s 1844 edition, Tὰ ὲç τòν Tυανέα Ἀπολλώνιοώ is not correct. The genuine title of the work is Eἰç τòν Tυανέα Ἀπολλώνιον. The suggestion by Ewen Bowie, that the title of the work characterizes it as a novel, must therefore be dismissed. The meaning of the title is ambiguous: it means both ‘About Apollonius of Tyana’ and ‘In honour of Apollonius of Tyana’. This ambiguity may very well have been intended by Philostratus.

Discussion of Aphrodite’s epithet philommeidês/philommêdês in Hesiod Theogony 200. Hesiod’s aetiological account of this name suggests the meaning ‘wiles-loving’ as well as ‘genitals-loving’. This interpretation is supported by a number of episodes from Archaic poetry in which literary or mythical figures make use of a ruse to permit the fulfilment of their erotic longing, or conversely exploit someone else’s desire as a means to achieve supremacy in a power struggle.

The philosophical treatise of Melissus of Samos is often maintained to have a strictly deductive argumentative structure. This article attempts to confirm this thesis by establishing that such a structure is instituted beginning from its title and introductory sphragis. Extant paraphrases of Melissus’ treatise are examined and are argued (in line with some previous treatments) to provide a highly illuminating indication that the work began from the hypothesis that something is. Next, an account of how the first verbatim fragment (DK30B1) takes up this prefatory material is given along with a reconstructed text and translation of the title, preface and argument for the sempiternity of what-is.

This article investigates the scope and meaning of ancient Greek personal religion as an additional dimension - besides official (polis) religion - in which the ancient Greek religious experience articulates itself. I show how ‘personal religion’ is a rather broad and amorphous scholarly category for a number of religious beliefs and practices that, in reflecting individual engagement with the supernatural, do not fit into our conception of polis religion. At the same time, I argue that personal religion should not be seen simply as that which is not official Greek religion. Nor is personal religion simply ‘private’ religion, oikos religion or the religion of those who had no voice in the sphere of politics (metics, women). Rather, ‘personal religion’ combines aspects of public and private. It is a productive category of scholarly research insofar as it helps us to appreciate the whole spectrum of ways individuals in the ancient Greek city received and (if necessary) altered culturally given religious beliefs and practices. Indeed, the examples discussed in this paper reveal a very Greek conversation about the question of what should count as a religious sign and who was to determine its meaning.

In this article, I re-examine a little-studied stele from Thebes on Mount Mykale in Asia Minor for the light which it sheds on the position this minor community occupied as a territorial possession of Miletus. Two texts were inscribed on this stele in the early fourth century BC, on its front and back. Both are exceptional: IPriene 363 in delineating the territorial boundaries of Thebes for an internal audience; IPriene 362 in setting out an onerous schedule of sacrificial offerings which those who pastured sheep or goats were obliged to observe. After identifying another inscription, IPriene 361, as an additional fragment of the same stele, and presenting photographs, texts, translations and commentaries, I argue that the stele functioned as a coherent monument regulating the activities of pastoral producers and that it was probably erected by the Thebans themselves in order to reinforce their territorial integrity. As such it represents a unique case study for exploring issues of territoriality and communal dependence in the Greek world.

Among the fragmentary works of the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre are some reasonably substantial remains of his essay on the interpretation of cult images, On Statues (περì Ἀγαλμάτων). My study falls into two parts. Firstly, I assess the major source of our fragments, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praeparatio Evangelica, and argue that the full text of On Statues would have looked quite different, and in particular much less Stoic, than the surviving fragments would suggest. Secondly, I turn to consider what these fragments tell us about Porphyry’s thoughts on the interpretation of images and the place of these thoughts in the wider history of viewing.

The later Neoplatonic commentaries attributed to David and Elias are considered by many scholars to be the work of Christians who dominated the Alexandrian school in the latter half of the sixth century. Christian Wildberg has challenged this prevailing view: he argues that the commentaries are more likely the work of pagan philosophers. Scholars who support Christian authorship have appealed to the strict prohibition against suicide expressed in the parts of the commentaries that discuss Socrates’ characterization in the Phaedo of philosophy as the practice of death. But the proscription of suicide that the commentators read into the Phaedo is consistent with the teachings of pagan Neoplatonists and thus provides no basis for a rejection of Wildberg’s thesis. I discuss the literary and historical exempla that the commentators use and propose that these are drawn in part from Gregory of Nazianzus’ Invective against Julian. The connection between the discourses and Gregory’s text suggests that the commentators may have been deliberately responding to his accusations of pagan hypocrisy.

This article offers a re-edition of SEG 11:314, Argos inventory number E274, based on re-examination of the stone and of recently rediscovered squeezes preserving material now lost from the stone; these allow improved readings in numerous places. We also offer a reinterpretation of the disputed syntax of the last three lines, which we translate ‘As for the things with which a δαμιοργóς is to compel (him to make amends), the ἀμφίπολος is to give thought to these things’.

In this paper, it is proposed that the lake Lysimeleia, mentioned by Thucydides in his account of the latter part of the Sicilian Expedition and by Theocritus in his encomium of Hieron II of Sicily, is likely to have been a sacred lake to the two goddesses Demeter and Kore. This suggestion is integrated into a way of reading the relevant passages in Thucydides and Theocritus, and its possible implications in the context of early discourses concerning the Athenian campaign at Syracuse are explored. In particular, this episode is read as one which can help us to consider the significance of Thucydides’ tendency to downplay religious aspects of the events he describes and to speculate about what sorts of discourses about the Sicilian Expedition might have circulated among others, who would have been likely to consider such questions very differently.

In the second and third centuries AD, many of the cities in the eastern Mediterranean could boast about having their own athletic games. In the fourth century, however, these games quickly declined. In recent years, the traditional explanations for the end of athletic games, most prominently the supposed ban by Theodosius, have been proven unfounded. This paper proposes an alternative explanation: institutional and financial changes hindered the successful organization of athletic contests by the cities in the fourth and fifth centuries. In order to show the effect of these changes, this paper first offers a detailed analysis of how athletic contests were founded and funded in the early imperial period. It then examines how and to what extent these procedures and funds were affected by changes in late antiquity. The decline was not caused by a general financial crisis - in fact the estates (partially) funding the games remained a stable form of financing. Instead the shift of power to a centralized bureaucracy limited the cities in their administration of the games: they could no longer independently meet deficits in the agonistic budget from the city treasury and had to rely increasingly on elite sponsors, whose ambitions focused mainly on the provincial capitals and who gradually lost their interest in athletics.

This article reviews a range of important recent work on Greek religion. It looks first at the critique (common to a number of the books under review) of the polis-religion model associated with Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood and then attempts to draw out a number of emerging themes: a comparative approach, a focus on the gods or on individual worshippers and a cognitive perspective. It then examines in more detail the application of the terms ‘belief’ or ‘theology’ to the field of Greek religion and the extent to which any picture of Greek religious experience may be said to be logically coherent, before looking forward to possible future directions of study.