Chapter 2. Epic as Music: Rhapsodic Models of Homer in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias [1] Plato’s Timaeus and Critias contain valuable references to the performative techniques of rhapsōidoi or ‘rhapsodes’ and to the compositional techniques of Homeric poetry. These techniques belong to the tekhnē ‘art’ known to Plato and his contemporaries as mousikē. [2] The word’s… Read more
Chapter 3 Humnos in Homer and Plato: Weaving the Robe of the Goddess [1] Pursuing an evolutionary model for the making of Homeric poetry, I have argued that this “making” needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically. An unexplored aspect of this “making” is “textualizing.” To develop the idea of textualization, let us turn to the metaphorical world of the… Read more
Appendix: Rhapsodes and Actors As argued in Ch. 1, there are parallelisms in the evolution of rhapsôidoi ‘rhapsodes’ and hupokritai ‘actors’. Even the terminology referring to rhapsodes and actors is parallel: for example, theatai ‘theater-spectators’ in Plato Ion 535d8 refers to the audiences who attend the performances of the rhapsodes. I disagree with Boyd 1994:112, who argues that Ion 535d1-5 refers not to epic rhapsodes but exclusively… Read more
Bibliographical Abbreviations BA = Best of the Achaeans, Nagy 1979/1999. DELG. See Chantraine 1968-1980. DELL. See Ernout and Meillet 1959 GP = Greek Mythology and Poetics, Nagy 1990b. HC = Homer the Classic, Nagy 2009|2008 HPC = Homer the Preclassic, Nagy 2010|2009 HQ = Homeric Questions, Nagy… Read more
Acknowledgments This volume originates from a workshop held at Harvard University on March 16-17, 2001. The majority of the essays in this book were there presented for the first time, in some cases in a significantly different form from that assumed in the end. In an attempt at countering the isolationist tendencies that so often plague ancient history, the organizers invited scholars from different fields to offer… Read more
[In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] Chapter 1. Researching the Helots: Details, Methodologies, Agencies Susan E. Alcock… Read more
Chapter 2. Raising hell? The Helot Mirage—a personal review [1] Paul Cartledge The first instalment of Larry Gonick’s idiosyncratic and insufficiently known Cartoon History of the Universe, entitled “From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great”, was published in the dynamic year of 1989. In one particularly teasing cartoon a sexy and uninhibited Spartan wife makes a prospective male Helot lover… Read more
Chapter 3. Conquerors and Serfs: Wars of Conquest and Forced Labour in Archaic Greece Hans van Wees In many parts of the Greek world, the typical agricultural labourer was neither a free man nor a slave, but something in between. The Greeks, for once, did not have a word for it, but we may call this status “serfdom”. [1] Such serfs… Read more
Chapter 4. Agreste genus: Helots in Hellenistic Laconia Nigel M. Kennell In the aftermath of the battle of Leuctra, Sparta lost a third of its territory, comprising over half its arable land, and the majority of its helots. While their fellows west of Taygetus soon established a free state, Laconian helots, with no similar collective identity invented or genuine to differentiate themselves from their masters, remained… Read more
Chapter 5. The imaginary conquest of the Helots Nino Luraghi In a previous paper, I have questioned the idea that the Helots who worked the land of the Spartiates in Laconia and Messenia were the descendants of free populations who had occupied those areas before the Dorian conquest of Laconia and the Spartan conquest of Messenia, respectively, and had been enslaved en masse by the Spartans… Read more
