Books in the Hellenic Studies Series series

The Derveni Papyrus, discovered accidentally in 1962, is the oldest known European "book." Papers in Poetry as Initiation address many open questions about the papyrus, including its authorship, the context of the peculiar chthonic ritual described in the text, and the relationship of the author and the ritual to the so-called Orphic texts.

Wareh's study of the literary culture within which the works, schools, and careers of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek intellectuals took shape focuses on the role played by their rival Isocrates and the rhetorical education offered in his school. The book sheds new light on the participation of "Isocrateans" in fourth-century intellectual life.

Restraining and taming Nature was fundamental to the Hellenic urban quest. Classical Athens, with her utilitarian view of Nature, exemplified this ideal, which also informed the urban endeavors of Rome and was expressed through the domestication of Nature in villas and gardens, and through primitivist and Epicurean tendencies in Latin literature.

After a theoretical introduction that also serves as a general introduction to the dramatic chorus from the comic vantage point, a reading of Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae shows that ritual is present in both the micro- and macrostructure of Attic comedy as part of a still existing performative choral culture.

"What if truth were a woman?" asked Nietzsche. In ancient Greek thought, truth in language has a special relation to the female by virtue of her pre-eminent art-form-the one Freud believed was even invented by women-weaving. The essays in this book explore the implications of this nexus: language, the female, weaving, and the construction of truth.

Comparative Anthropology of Ancient Greece looks at the anthropology of the Greeks and other cultures across space and time, and in the process discovers aspects of the art of comparability. Marcel Detienne tries to see how cultural systems react not just to a touchstone category, but also to the questions and concepts that arise from the reaction.

This book probes the narratives of poets who are exiled, tried or executed for their satire. It views the scapegoat as a group's dominant warrior, sent out to confront predators or besieging forces. Both poets and warriors specialize in madness and aggression and are necessary, yet dangerous, to society.

This colloquium volume celebrates a new Hellenistic epigram collection attributed to the third-century B.C.E. poet Posidippus, one of the most significant literary finds in recent memory. Included in this collection are an unusual variety of voices and perspectives: papyrological, art historical, archaeological, historical, literary, and aesthetic.

John Curtis Franklin seeks to harmonize Kinyras as a mythological symbol of pre-Greek Cyprus with what is known of ritual music and deified instruments in the Bronze Age Near East, using evidence going back to early Mesopotamia. This paperback edition contains minor corrections, while retaining the maps of the original hardback edition as spreads.

First published in 1960, The Singer of Tales remains the fundamental study of the distinctive techniques and aesthetics of oral epic poetry-from South Slavic epic songs to the Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf, and beyond. This edition offers a corrected text and is supplemented by an open-access website with audio recordings.

This study by Helene Monsacre shows how Western ideals of inexpressive manhood run contrary to the poetic vision of Achilles and his warrior companions presented in the Homeric epics. Pursuing the paradox of the tearful fighter, Monsacre examines the interactions between men and women in the Homeric poems.

The once influential theory Neoanalysis held that motifs and episodes in the Iliad derive from the Aethiopis. Given its vast potential implications for the Iliad's origins, the recent revival of Neoanalysis in subtler form inspires this critical reappraisal by Malcolm Davies of that theory's more sophisticated reincarnation.

Inscribed after 264 BCE, the Parian Marble gives a chronological list of events, emphasizing literary matters. It has not been the subject of a comprehensive study for almost a century. Andrea Rotstein offers new analysis and updated information about the inscription, including a revision of Felix Jacoby's Greek text and a complete translation.

Scholars of the literary aspect of Plato try to reconcile his dialogue form with the expository imperative of philosophical argument. Classicists and philosophers explain this form in terms of rhetorical devices serving didactic goals. David Schur brings literary and classical studies into debate, questioning modern views of Plato's dialogue form.

Averil Cameron refutes an argument by some scholars that Christians did not dialogue after a wall of silence came down in the fifth century AD. Cameron shows that in late antiquity and throughout Byzantium Christians debated and wrote philosophical, literary, and theological dialogues, and she makes a case for their centrality in Greek literature.

Between Thucydides and Polybius focuses on the contribution of fourth-century authors such as Ephorus, Theopompus, and Xenophon to the development of Greek historiography. Essays examine the interface between historiography and rhetoric, while undermining the claim that historians after Thucydides allowed rhetoric to prevail over research.

Studies Homeric performance from archaic to Roman imperial times. This title argues that oracular utterance, dramatic acting, and rhetorical delivery powerfully elucidate the practice of epic rhapsodes. It shows that rhapsodic practice is best understood as an evolving combination of revelation, interpretation, recitation, and dramatic delivery.

Shubha Pathak explores a new way to connect the primary Sanskrit epics Ramaya?a and Mahabharata with their Greek analogues, the Iliad and Odyssey. This cross-cultural comparative study provides a more comprehensive perspective on the poems' religiosity than the vantage points of Hellenists or of Indologists alone.

Christian Jacob presents a completely fresh and unique reading of Athenaeus's Sophists at Dinner (ca. 200 ce), a text long mined merely for its testimonies to lost classical poets. Connecting the world of Hellenistic erudition with its legacy among Hellenized Romans, Jacob helps the reader navigate the many intersecting paths in this enormous work.

Katherine Kretler plumbs the virtues of the Homeric poems as scripts for solo performance. What is lost in the journey from the stage to the page? The book focuses on the performer not as transparent mediator, but as one haunted by multiple stories, bringing suppressed voices to the surface.

Gregory Nagy analyzes metonymy as a mental process that complements metaphor. If metaphor is a substitution of something unfamilar for something familiar, metonymy connects something familiar with something else already familiar. Nagy offers close readings of over one hundred examples of metonymy in the arts of Greek and other cultures.

In the second century, some Gnostic Christians used numerical structures to describe God, interpret the Bible, and frame the universe. The Theology of Arithmetic explores the rich variety of number symbolism used by gnosticizing groups and their orthodox critics, and shows how earlier neo-Pythagorean and Platonist thought influenced this theology.

This volume comprises the entire body of work by the artist widely considered a master of modern Greek poetry. Published in the original Greek, with a new English translation by Stratis Haviaris on each facing page, and with a foreword by Seamus Heaney, this is Cavafy, familiar and fresh, seen through new eyes, yet instantly recognized.

This book examines moments in the Iliad and Odyssey where Theban characters and themes come to the fore. By using evidence from Hesiod and fragmentary sources attributed to Theban tradition, Barker and Christensen explore Homer's appropriation of Theban motifs of strife and distribution to promote his tale of the sack of Troy and the returns home.

Despite their crucial role, the Helots of Sparta remain essentially invisible in our ancient sources and peripheral and enigmatic in modern scholarship. This book is devoted to a much-needed reassessment of Helotry and of its place in the history and sociology of unfree labor.

Oedipus's major handicap in life is not knowing who he is. Unlike the majority of modern and postmodern readings of Oedipus Tyrannus, Efimia Karakantza's text focuses on the question of identity. The quest to piece together Oedipus's identity is the long, painful, and intricate procedure of recasting his life into a new narrative.

As scholars have remarked, the word kleos in the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" alike refers to something more substantive and complex than 'fame' or 'glory'. This book presents a meditation on this concept as expressed and experienced in the adult society Telemachos find himself in.

Explores the superficially minor role of Thetis in the Iliad. This volume features six additional essays, which cover a range of topics in the study of the Greek Epic: the workings of genre in Hesiod and Homer; the poetics of exchange; and the nature of enmity and friendship. It also includes a study of the Hesiodic Catalog of Women.

The Art of Reading is the first-long overdue-collection of essays by the French classical philologist and humanist Jean Bollack to be published in English. As the scope of the collection shows, Bollack felt equally at home thinking in depth about both the classics of Greek poetry and philosophy and modern, including contemporary, poetry.