Defending the indefensible and praising the unpraiseworthy were staples of Greek declamation in the Roman imperial period. Lucian’s Phalaris I and II have generally been considered as undemanding rhetorical exercises, inverting the standard tropes of anti-tyrant invective to produce a paradoxical encomium of the proverbially wicked tyrant Phalaris of Akragas. This paper argues that Phalaris I and II are in fact considerably more sophisticated and caustic texts then they appear at first sight. Phalaris’ letter to the Delphians in Phalaris I is carefully crafted to show that Phalaris is indeed, despite his protestations, a self-deluding psychopath; he now wishes to dedicate his notorious bronze bull to the Delphic Apollo in order to whitewash his terrible reputation. The speech of the anonymous Delphian in Phalaris II makes a radically cynical case for welcoming the gift of the bull with no questions asked, in full knowledge that Phalaris may be just as wicked as he is reputed to be. The texts are an ironic commentary on the murky ethics of Delphic patronage in the second century CE, and the venality of oracular shrines more generally; Lucian may specifically have in mind the lavish Delphic patronage of the Roman emperor Domitian.

This chapter discusses Plutarch’s On the Oracles at Delphi, and in particular the account of the grammarian Theon as to how prose came to replace verse, not just in the delivery of the Delphic oracle, but in literary discourse as a whole. Theon’s account of the history of Greek literate culture is an important document of how learned Greeks in the Roman empire imagined how their world had changed, along with the literature in which it was represented. The first part of the chapter considers another Plutarchan account of cultural and intellectual change, namely the opening of On the Obsolescence of Oracles, which tells the foundation story of Delphi. Both texts lay weight upon the fact of change itself, rather than on any detailed plotting of that change, let alone a chronology for it; so too, both illustrate a tendency to see recurrent patterns of change, by which the outlines of Greek literary history are found already adumbrated in classical literature itself. Among the classical texts which are central to this appropriation of past models are the programmatic chapters of Thucydides and Aristotle’s account of the development of poetic language.

If there is a Greek tragedy that is not often associated with choral song this must surely be Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. The play has become synonymous with the story about the young Oedipus’ fate made famous by Sigmund Freud, and as such it has been canonized as the founding myth of psychoanalysis. As Freud first put it, in the fourth of his Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis: ‘The child takes both of its parents, and more particularly one of them, as the object of its erotic wishes … the child reacts to this by wishing, if he is a son, to take his father’s place, and, if she is a daughter, her mother’s … The myth of King Oedipus, who killed his father and took his mother to wife, reveals, with little modification, the infantile wish, which is later opposed and repudiated by the barrier against incest.’

Like names, the ‘physiognomy’ attributed to the gods by the Greeks helps to differentiate divine entities from one another or, conversely, to link them together, making explicit the nature and the scope of their powers. This chapter addresses the meaning of the adjective khruskomas, ‘with golden hair’, frequently attributed to Apollo: does it mean that the Greeks had in mind a blond god? The analysis of texts and images shows that it is much more complicated. First, onomastic attributes and iconographic attributes do not necessarily coincide. Depending on the media, craftsmen may represent a dark-haired Apollo without this being seen as a contradiction with the images conveyed by the poets. Immortals, unlike humans, take on any appearance they want. Second, the colour of gold is not exactly equivalent to blondness (for example, that of Demeter xanthe): the brilliance of the incorruptible metal expresses the radiance that emanates from the young god, notably through his eternally young hair. Khrusokomas thus expresses one of the manifold facets of Phoibos by summoning the image of his delphic sanctuary, where opulence reigns. The chapter thus shows that the colour of Apollo’s hair deserves to be taken seriously.

Nobody hates like a Greek neighbour does, to paraphrase Simon Hornblower. But did this reflect a genuine inimical attitude, or are there more layers to commemorative practices? An analysis of the neighbourly commemorative practices reveals a different reality. Looking at dedications, festivals and literary sources provides a more nuanced insight. Rather than a preference for Panhellenic arenas to propagate a warring rivalry to the largest audience, local venues and spaces were preferred. The thinking behind this localised commemoration are the intentions to strengthen local cohesion vis-à-vis a known ‘other’, in this case the neighbouring polity. Dedications at sanctuaries like Olympia or Delphi were inspired by a desire to proclaim credentials for leadership over all of Greece, rather than stress the localised interactions. Often these were made with or in relation to the Spartans, meaning these sanctuaries provided a different audience for other goals. This becomes clearest by looking at a local sanctuary, the Amphiareion at Oropos. Here both polities aimed to promote their ownership by mostly targeting local audiences. This example demonstrates the potential of contested sanctuaries for understanding local rivalries and commemorative practices and how they acted as mirrors for neighbourly relations.

This paper focuses on three famous hexameters allegedly uttered by Apollo in Delphi for Emperor Julian by means of the emperor’s physician Oribasius. Since the nineteenth century, this text, in which Apollo announces the destruction of his temple and the silence of the oracle, has been the subject of numerous interpretations. Some scholars regard it as a genuine oracle produced in Delphi and intended for the pagan Emperor Julian while he was in Antioch (362–3). Others argue that it is a Christian forgery and piece of anti-pagan propaganda written shortly after Julian’s death. In this chapter, I first discuss the literary context of this oracle’s quotation in the Artemii Passio, an anonymous and fictitious seventh-century hagiographical work. I argue that we cannot date the text to the fourth century, because its attribution to the lost Church History of Philostorgius appears to be spurious and is not grounded. Second, I analyse the anonymous hagiographer’s construction of this episode and compare it to similar late Byzantine pseudo-oracles about the fate of pagan temples in order to provide a new interpretation of this prophecy.

This chapter traces the different uses of the term φοῖνιξ / Φοῖνιξ, the cognate adjectives φοινικός and φοινικοβαφής, and verb φοινίττω, running from this last’s allusive use to describe Theagenes’ bloodstained cheek at the beginning of Book 1 to the revelation at the novel’s close that its writer is a Φοῖνιξ, ‘Phoenician’. Ι noted how these uses span the word’s range of meanings – crimson, date, palm, Phoenician – and how Phoenicia’s importance is augmented by the mysteriously unnamed Tyrian’s victory at Delphi and by the description of the ship on which the trio escape as Φοινίκιον … φιλοτέχνημα, ‘a Phoenician masterpiece’ (5.18), a mis-en-abyme of the literary masterpiece which transports the couple from Delphi to Meroe.

This chapter compares Philicus’ Demeter of ca. 275 BC (which, at the time of writing, I followed all scholars since Medea Norsa in classifying as a hymn) with the Delphic paeans of Philodamus (ca. 340 BC) and Limenius (between 128 and 108 BC). It argues that Philicus’ poem locates the exchange between Iambe and the Demeter not at Eleusis but at Prospalta, where a cult of Demeter and Persephone is attested, and that it may have proposed a role for that cult in the development of ritual αὶσχρολογία in Attica. The interest in Attic cults shown by a Corcyrean domiciled in Alexandria matches Callimachus’ decision to compose his very Attic Hecale. By contrast the Delphic paean of Philodamus is focussed chiefly on its place of performance and monumental inscription, albeit setting Dionysus’ arrival at Delphi, where he is be honoured alongside Apollo with cyclic choruses, in a wider geographical frame. Geography is important for the paean of Limenius too, offering a very Athenian version of Apollo’s reaching mainland Greece and proceeding to Delphi, a version appropriate for the Pythais from Athens by which we know it to have been performed.

The Introduction situates Plutarch in his literary context, as a vivid and original thinker and writer whose popularity remains enormous, as well as his historical context as an innovator in the writing of biography. Some authors discuss Plutarch’s role in the development of the biographical tradition and his relationship to the classical Greek past. Others examine his Roman context as a Greek living in an occupied country, and his views on politics, particularly those involving barbarians or "others." Multiple essays illuminate Plutarch’s relationship to Plato and Platonism, often in the context of his influence on education, while other essays look at Plutarch in his everyday life, investigating his thoughts on gender, sexuality, wealth, and animals. Five essays focus on reception.

Though a priest at Delphi, Plutarch resolutely refuses to give us what we would most like to have: an insider’s view of the oracular shrine and an account of the religio sacerdotis. What he does tell us about varieties of religious belief is largely negative (On Superstition), and the corresponding positive account is difficult to reconstruct. He has, however, a commitment to inquiry and to the interrogation of the polyvalent symbols of religion and of myth. Reductive solutions are rejected, along with any interpretations that would lead to a decrease of piety. In the myths that he creates for his own dialogues, in imitation of Plato, he generates his most characteristic and memorable rhetorical exercises in the sublime.Once misleadingly branded "theosophical essays," these myths are in fact virtuoso display pieces that show Plutarch at his best as a writer and educator.

Chapter 3 focusses on the temple of Hera at Foce del Sele north of the Greek colony of Poseidonia-Paestum in southern Italy. New archaeometric analysis on the metopes from the Hera sanctuary near the mouth of the river Sele has made it possible to propose a new reconstruction of the oldest Hera temple on the site, which belongs to the first generation of Doric stone temples. The study of the architectural elements confirms the decorative nature of the first Doric friezes. Moreover, by analyzing the mythological subjects on the frieze and comparing them with other early Doric temples in Selinous, Delphi, and Athens, it can be shown that the tendency to choose Panhellenic themes over local traditions is a general feature of early Doric temples. Because of the detachment of the imagery from local traditions, the Doric temple is described as a “non-place” according to the definition of the French anthropologist Marc Augé. Conceiving temples as standardized “non-places” that could be set up in any given local environment was crucial to the agendas of Greek elites, who needed to reorganize agricultural and urban landscapes to regulate population pressure and social tensions – both in the colonies and in homeland Greece.

The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi offers an example of how an ancient cult site was transformed into a Panhellenic sanctuary as a result of political and military conflicts involving some of the leading city-states of the region. After the so-called First Sacred War in the 590s/80s BC, Delphi was launched as the center of the Greek world with its oracle and its Panhellenic games. The Doric style of the Apollo temple and other buildings on the site helped to communicate the ambitions and values of the amphictyony that was in charge of the administration of the sanctuary after the war. The standardization of architecture and sculpture was an important feature in the elite competition that took place in Panhellenic sanctuaries like Delphi, where cities from all over Greece set up costly treasuries and votive statues. Ionic monuments such as the sphinx of the Naxians alternated with Doric buildings. On the basis of recent scholarship, the Ionic order can be interpreted as a regional variation of the “Panhellenic” Doric order. As can be shown, the Ionic order corresponds with cultural values such as abundance, variety, multilingualism, and openness toward Near-Eastern and Egyptian influences that are also characteristic of Ionian poetry, philosophy, and culture.

This chapter targets the local horizon of sanctuaries whose scope and spheres of influence transcended the local. Variously labelled as ‘regional’ or ‘Panhellenic’ sanctuaries, Funke’s contribution challenges the implicit dichotomy between these descriptors and the local. He begins with the observation that religious conduct in the polis was always subject to diverse spatial dynamics, articulated, for instance, in the different reach of urban and liminal cult sites. A similar spatial and functional diversification is pitched for Panhellenic sites. Rather than being elusive or purely notional, Panhellenic perspectives manifested themselves in the evocation of Greek gods and in cult practices that were considered genuinely Hellenic in nature. As shared points of reference, Panhellenic commodities were not only commonly accepted by the Greeks but, in fact, were substantiated through hardwired regulations that assured availability to all.

This chapter targets the local horizon of sanctuaries whose scope and spheres of influence transcended the local. Variously labelled as ‘regional’ or ‘Panhellenic’ sanctuaries, Funke’s contribution challenges the implicit dichotomy between these descriptors and the local. He begins with the observation that religious conduct in the polis was always subject to diverse spatial dynamics, articulated, for instance, in the different reach of urban and liminal cult sites. A similar spatial and functional diversification is pitched for Panhellenic sites. Rather than being elusive or purely notional, Panhellenic perspectives manifested themselves in the evocation of Greek gods and in cult practices that were considered genuinely Hellenic in nature. As shared points of reference, Panhellenic commodities were not only commonly accepted by the Greeks but, in fact, were substantiated through hardwired regulations that assured availability to all.