Chapter 5: Performance as Evidence Far from being a small town where everybody kept everybody else under continual surveillance, Attica was a large territory with a large population, and it would be exceptional for a juror to know the people involved in a trial, unless perhaps they lived in the same deme or had served together in the army. Hence the outcome of a trial often depended… Read more
Chapter 6: Appeals to Pity and Displays of Anger Appealing to Pity Several very well-known descriptions of court speakers and actual passages of court speech have lead many scholars to conclude that litigants wallowed in emotion as they made appeals to the jury’s pity (in older terminology, appeals ad misericordiam). This might have been true of many amateurs, but very seldom, as I see it, of… Read more
Chapter 7: Tactics, Amateur and Professional In remarking on the style of classical Greek authors, moderns usually leave denigration to the ancients. [1] Criticisms such as MacDowell’s remarks on Andocides’ stylistic lapses (1962:20–22) are exceptional. [2] And there is an obvious reason for us to be slow to censure: we have very little poorly written literature from… Read more
Appendix. Instances of Trickery in Herodotus’ Histories Trick Trickster Vocabulary Manipulation of signs? Successful? Sign Type Stage of Signification Process 1.21.1–22.3 Thrasyboulos tricks Alyattes into thinking Miletos has plenty of food μηχανᾶται 1.21.1 no yes 1.59.3–6 Peisistratos mutilates himself as if attacked μηχανᾶται τοιάδε 1.59.3ὁ… Read more
Works Cited Commentaries and Translations with Commentary Aeschines Carey, Christopher. 2000. Aeschines . The Orators of Classical Greece 3. Austin. Fisher, Nick. 2001. Aeschines : Against Timarchos. Oxford. Alcidamas Muir, J. V. 2001. Alcidamas : The Works and Fragments. London. Antiphon … Read more
Preface: Doing Anthropology with the Greeks [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.] Our history begins… Read more
Chapter 1. The Art of Founding Autochthony: Thebes, Athens, and Old-Stock French [*] Yes, there is an art in founding what some call their roots and others autochthony. I have chosen this approach, valid both for the present and the past, for two reasons. These have to do with two complementary lines of inquiry, two systems of collective thought which concern both… Read more
Chapter 2. Being Born Impure in the City of Cadmus and Oedipus [*] Human vanity is a limitlessly entertaining subject, and if I have chosen to ask myself, “how can one be autochthonous?” it is because the pride of being rooted or of believing oneself to be of cleansed blood is a sickness as laughable as chicken pox. Its consequences, however, can… Read more
4. The King of Sacrifice From its outset, the Iliad connects Agamemnon’s power to sacrifice. Sacrifice serves simultaneously as a display of his status-based hierarchy over the Akhaian army and, contextualized in the Panakhaian society at Troy, as a show of timê ‘honor’ toward the gods. It is this principle of timê that guides the actions of Iliad I: Agamemnon slights Akhilleus’ timê when he publicly asserts… Read more
Bibliography Adkins, A. W. H. 1960. “Honour and Punishment in the Homeric Poems.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 7:23–32. ———. 1969. “EUXOMAI, EUXWLH, and EUXOS in Homer.” Classical Quarterly 19:20–33. ———. 1972. “Homeric Gods and the Values of Homeric Society.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 92:1–19. ———. 1997. “Homeric Ethics.” In Morris and… Read more
