7. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Tradition and Rhetoric, Praise and Blame [1] I. Introduction The Homeric hymn is a traditional form of praise poetry. Employing traditional diction, theme, and structure, the hymn presents an epiphany of the god and an aetiology of his or her powers. [2] The traditional rhetoric of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite… Read more
8. The (Re)Marriage of Penelope and Odysseus [1] In the (re)marriage of Odysseus and Penelope, the Odyssey initiates a dialogue with the Western traditions of architecture, gender, and philosophy. [2] Although defined conceptually by discourses “invented” as different from mythology, [3] these three modes function actively in Archaic Greek culture and thought. Read more
9. Architecture Gender Philosophy [1] εἷς, δύο, τρεῖς· One, two, three. Timaeus 17a1 I broach the topic of architecture and gender and philosophy first because of an exchange that took place in the fall of 1987 in Chicago. During the meeting of the Associated Collegiate Schools… Read more
10. Female Fetish Urban Form [1] I. Introduction Female, fetish, and urban form are mutually fashioned in Aristophanes’ comedy Ecclesiazusae, in which the women of Athens, under the leadership of their new στρατηγός “general” Praxagora, disguise themselves as men in order to infiltrate the ἐκκλησία, the male-only “legislative assembly,” where they vote in a new order, one… Read more
V. The Emergence of Pisatis Maurizio Giangiulio Emergence, or Re-emergence? At the end of the nineteenth century probably no ancient historian would have doubted that the Pisatans had been the inhabitants of the Alpheios’ valley, which in the first decades of the sixth century BCE the Eleans subdued and stripped of control of the Olympic Games. Many would have shared the opinion expressed by Georg… Read more
VI. Arcadia: Ethnicity and Politics in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE [*] Maria Pretzler The emergence of Arcadian identity, and its culmination in the foundation of an Arcadian state in 370 BCE, was a crucial factor in the disintegration of the Peloponnesian League. With very few exceptions Arcadia becomes visible in the ancient literary sources only in the late archaic… Read more
VII. Messenian Ethnicity and the Free Messenians [*] Nino Luraghi The birth of an independent polity in Messenia, in what used to be the western part of the Spartan state, represents the most conspicuous change that the ethnic revival of the early fourth century brought to the political map of the Peloponnese. Although both its extension and its internal structure varied in the… Read more
VIII. Ethnicity and Democracy in the Peloponnese, 401–362 BCE Eric Robinson In 370 BCE civil strife broke out in Tegea between a conservative party favoring Tegea’s traditional laws (patrious nomous) and a popular, nationalistic party in favor of all Arcadians coming together en tô koinô to make common decisions. The populists won, but only after they armed the dêmos and gained the aid of Mantineans who… Read more
IX. The Archaeology of Ethnê and Ethnicity in the Fourth-Century Peloponnese Catherine Morgan It is nowadays hardly controversial to view poleis and ethnê not as distinct forms of state, but as tiers of identity with which communities identified with varying enthusiasm and motivation at different times. [*] States were palimpsests of social action, and behaviour enacted over different social and/or physical… Read more
X. Subjection, Synoecism and Religious Life Robert Parker The Eleans have bought Epeion for thirty talents (Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.30); the Eleans refuse to surrender the Marganeis and Skillountians and Triphylians, claiming that “these cities are ours” (6.5.2); the Eleans capture Lasion, which “of old had belonged to them, but at present was enrolled in (συντελεĩν εἰς) the Arkadikon” (7.4.12). The Spartans force the Mantineans to “dioecize… Read more
