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13 results

  • Chapter 6 - Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus

  • Claude Calame, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
  • Translated by Vanessa Casato, Universita Ca'Foscari, Venezia
  • Preface by Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Choral Tragedy
    Published online:
    25 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024, pp 135-159

  • Summary

    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.’

  • Chapter 6 - Strife and Concord

  • William Guast, Winchester College
  • Book:
    Greek Declamation and the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    22 June 2023
    Print publication:
    06 July 2023, pp 151-179

  • Summary

    This chapter looks at declamations on conflicts between cities, taking as its primary case studies Aristides' On behalf of making peace with the Lacedaemonians (Or. 7), in which an Athenian urges his fellow countrymen to accept the Spartan offer of peace in 425, and On making peace with the Athenians (Or. 8), in which a Spartan speaks in favour of preserving Athens in 404. The issues in such declamations are often the same as those in contemporary disputes between cities (territorial disputes, tax and trade, titles), and even discussed using the same discourses (freedom and oppression, envy, concord). From its use in real political oratory, we may conclude that the lesson drawn from the Peloponnesian War as presented in declamation was above all to pursue concord and avoid strife, with contemporary conflicts made to seem trivial. But approaching what was clearly a sensitive issue at one remove makes the lesson more palatable, and dramatizing it in the form of a declamation more memorable; the most reflective audiences, noticing how the same discourses were used by either side, might have concluded that a little more humility was needed in future disputes.

The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides
  • Edited by Polly Low
  • Published online:
    02 March 2023
    Print publication:
    09 March 2023
  • Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is one of the earliest and most influential works in the western historiographical tradition. It provides an unfinished account of the war between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies which lasted from 431 to 404 BC, and is a masterpiece of narrative art and of political analysis. The twenty chapters in this Companion offer a wide range of perspectives on different aspects of the text, its interpretation and its significance. The nature of the text is explored in detail, and problems of Thucydides' historical and literary methodology are examined. Other chapters analyse the ways in which Thucydides' work illuminates, or complicates, our understanding of key historical questions for this period, above all those relating to the nature and conduct of war, politics, and empire. Finally, the book also explores the continuing legacy of Thucydides, from antiquity to the present day.

  • The Plague of Athens Shedding Light on Modern Struggles with COVID-19

  • Jilene Malbeuf, Peter Johnson, John Johnson, Austin Mardon
  • Journal:
    Journal of Classics Teaching / Volume 22 / Issue 43 / Spring 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 March 2021, pp. 47-49
    • Article
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  • In 2020, we are facing unprecedented times, and as some form of lockdown continues with no signs of ending feelings of hopelessness are completely natural and understandable. Unprecedented times does not mean that these current issues and struggles have never been faced by humanity before, however. The Spanish Flu which took place after World War One and the Black Death that was rampant in Asia and Europe in the 14th century quickly come to mind as examples of past pandemics, but these are only two examples of devastating diseases throughout human history. The Plague of Athens that was raging during the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 430 BCE is another such example. Though removed from our current situation by many centuries, its symptoms and the effects it had on the population of Athens have been meticulously recorded by the general and historian Thucydides, giving us the opportunity to compare his account to our own experiences today. The disease may be different, and the image he portrays may be more violent and desperate than our own, but nonetheless we can see similarities in how these two separate societies have reacted to unforeseen hardships. In this comparison, we can come to understand at once our own good fortune at going through a pandemic with the support of modern technology and medicine as well as how universal our reactions are to this type of suffering, thereby making it natural rather than shameful. Humanity has faced a great deal of diversity before, and COVID-19 will likely prove to be no different.

  • ΔΗΛΟΣ ἘΚΙΝΉΘΗ: An ‘Imaginary Earthquake’ on Delos in Herodotus and Thucydides

  • Jeffrey S. Rusten
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Hellenic Studies / Volume 133 / 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    24 September 2013, pp. 135-145
    Print publication:
    2013

  • Thucydides' and Herodotus' comments on a portentous (and unique) Delian earthquake contain the same phrase, but date the event almost 60 years apart and mutually rule out each other's datings. Two additional problems in these passages – geology demonstrates that Delos has never in fact had an earthquake of any significance and κινεῖν is not the word for an earthquake – point to an explanation for the historians' treatment. They are based on the Delphic oracle quoted by Herodotus which promised to ‘move unmoved Delos’, a paradox based on the island's mythical transition from floating to fixed (Pindar), but liable to confusion with its equally well-known aseismicity. Normally κινεῖν τὰ ἀκίνητα is used of interfering with religious sites; but the oracle's prediction was interpreted as an earthquake, that was assumed to have occurred in due course (although it had not). Both historians accepted the interpretation, but followed different datings since they invested it with different symbolism, Herodotus of the evils of the Persian and subsequent Greek wars, Thucydides of excited anticipation on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, since for him κίνησις meant ‘mobilization’ (1.1).

  • 15 - War and society

  • from Part II - The Hellenistic World and the Roman Republic
    • By J. Lendon, Professor of History, University of Virginia
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    06 December 2007, pp 498-516

  • Summary

    In the Peloponnesian War Athens is found hiring barbarian specialists, light infantry from Thrace. The conception of warfare as a collation of crafts had, it is attractive to suppose, a number of historical consequences. Military excellence as craft could also undermine civic harmony by reducing the dependence of the rich citizen upon his neighbours. By the third century Rome was a full member of the Hellenistic cosmos, trading and treating and fighting with Greece, the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Hellenized maritime power of Carthage. The Roman cult of virtus manifests itself in the degree to which Roman society was adapted to the making of war. For war held a different place in Roman than in Hellenistic culture. If the Romans were like the shark, the Greeks were like the dolphin: both ravening predators, but the one morose and single-minded, the other playful and inquisitive.

  • 6 - War

  • from Part I - Archaic and Classical Greece
    • By Peter Krentz, W. R. Grey Professor of Classics and History, Davidson College, North Carolina
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    06 December 2007, pp 147-185

  • Summary

    An Attic inscription from the early Peloponnesian War records an expedition of thirty triremes, each with five volunteer marines, forty hoplites, ten archers and ten peltasts. Fleets mentioned in Thucydides often averaged more than thirty soldiers per ship, and in fact most of the land battles in the Peloponnesian War were fought against invaders who came by sea. This chapter treats land and sea campaigns in parallel. On campaign Greeks took their armour and weapons, provisions, camping supplies, tools, and medical supplies. In his Acharnians Aristophanes vividly describes what the scene leading up to a fleet's departure would have been like. Greek soldiers also liked camping in sanctuaries, which offered good practical advantages for military camps, since they were prepared to house large numbers of visitors. Naval battles were even rarer than battles on land. The circumvallation sieges were hugely expensive. Greek campaigns simply ended with a general dismissal and a rush to get back pay.

  • 12 - War

  • from Part II - The Hellenistic World and the Roman Republic
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    06 December 2007, pp 368-398

  • Summary

    War was a major source of income for Hellenistic monarchs. A remarkable number of innovative military figures arose in Greece in the fourth century: Iphicrates and Chabrias of Athens, Epaminondas, Pelopidas and Pammenes of Thebes, Agesilaus of Sparta and Bolis of Crete, to name only a few. It was, however, Philip II of Macedon who drew many of the new elements of fourth-century warfare together, creating a formidable military machine. The Macedonian king fashioned a true combined arms force, streamlined the logistics of his army, and fashioned an up-to-date siege train. Perhaps most significantly, Philip wrought a new form of political organization, the Greek monarchy, able to direct this new military machine with a single will. Hellenistic strategic decisions were generally based on military circumstances and the desire to defeat the enemy and secure victory. Beginning with the Peloponnesian War and continuing into the fourth century, one sees Greek logistics improving significantly.

  • 1 - Sources, chronology, method

  • Edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 March 1992, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    The source material of the first Classic age of European civilization, the fifth century BC, falls into three sections. For the period from 435 to 411 BC, Thucydides provides a firm framework. For the period from 478 to 435, he gives some relatively full narrative on special points and a sketchy narrative from 477 to 440; the only connected narrative of any size is that by Diodorus Siculus. For 411 to 404, there are two connected narratives, by Xenophon and Diodorus. Xenophon's own attempts at chronological accuracy are sporadic and inefficient. There are events in the Peloponnesian War for which very close dates in the Julian calendar can be plausibly argued on the basis of the inter-relationship between the two Athenian calendars and on epigraphic evidence. Problems do multiply after the end of Thucydides, because of the nature of the sources.

  • 5 - Mainland Greece, 479–451 b. c.

  • Edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies, M. Ostwald
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 March 1992, pp 96-120

  • Summary

    Spartans had commanded at the two great victories of 479, Plataea and Mycale. These victories pointed forward to the two main directions in which they could be followed up, the punishment of the medizers of northern Greece and the liberation of the eastern Greeks. Tegea, the first substantial community to come into contact with Sparta will always have had a focus in the cult of Athena Alea which goes back to Mycenaean times. The main evidence about Spartan troubles in the Peloponnese after 479 lies in a list of five battles. The first is Plataea, the second at Tegea against the Tegeates and the Argives, the third at Dipaea against all the Arcadians except the Mantineans, the fourth against the Messenians at Isthmus, the fifth at Tanagra against the Athenians and Argives. According to Thucydides, Themistocles, though living at Argos, had been making visits to the rest of the Peloponnese.

  • 6 - PERSIA AND THE GREEKS

  • Edited by I. Gershevitch
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Iran
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    06 June 1985, pp 292-391

  • Summary

    Before Cyrus marched against Croesus, he had made overtures to the Asian Greeks, of whom the Ionians were the most important. the tragic incompatibility and failure of understanding between Persia, the highest manifestation of oriental imperialism, and the still developing bourgeois culture of the Greek cities. Cyrus' son Cambyses, continuing his father's agenda, in 525 assailed Egypt, and as a prelude to this, a great matter, for which his courtiers praised him, he 'won the sea'. Mardonios pressed on to where his fresh army and fleet awaited him, at the crossing into Europe. Greek objectives were now to deny forward positions to the enemy, should Xerxes try again; to reopen trade-routes, and, in Homeric style, revenge. Even during the great wars, but much more as the dust of conflict settled, Greeks and Persians were getting to know each other as human beings. A new epoch opened after Athens lost an army and fleet before Syracuse in Sicily.