Introduction. The Evocative Power of Word-Making [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.] versicolored, adj. archaic… Read more
Chapter 1. The Cognitive Presence of the Absent Hero (Odyssey 1–4) The common thread of the first three chapters of this monograph is Odysseus and anaphoric references to him, in particular, (ἐ)κεῖνος and αὐτός. Rather than being merely technical and necessary linguistic devices that recall his person, such references offer a remarkable contribution to the poetic account of the Ithacan hero in his literary substance. By “literary… Read more
Chapter 2. Encounter, Visit, and Celebration: Homeric Layering (Odyssey 14) Table 1. Distribution of the occurrences of kenos with Odysseus as the referent in books 1 to 13 of the Odyssey. The following study of linguistic communication in Odyssey 14 started from an analysis of occurrences of κεῖνος referring to Odysseus (see Table 1). Book fourteen includes nine such instances, which is a relatively high… Read more
Chapter 3. Odysseus Who?: Polyphonic Marks of Identity (Odyssey 15–24) The interlacing of Odysseus κεῖνος and Odysseus αὐτός in book fourteen can be seen as the result of different and overlapping perceptions of the Ithacan hero. The sense of his physical absence and of his desired presence—which is cognitively marked in the words of various characters throughout the first four books of the poem—coexists with expressions of… Read more
Chapter 4. Visual and Narrative Functions of αὐ-Discourse Markers An epigram assigned to Pollianus (first or second century AD) in the Greek Anthology begins as follows: Τοὺς κυκλίους τούτους τοὺς “αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα” λέγονταςμισῶ, λωποδύτας ἀλλοτρίων ἐπέων. Greek Anthology 11.130.1–2 These cyclic poets who say “αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα,”I hate them; they are thieves of the poetic utterances of others. These lines… Read more
Chapter 4. Philosophical Politics, Tooth and Nail An Introduction to Philosophical Polemics What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? Herman Melville, Moby-Dick When we study the generation of Plato and Isocrates’ students, and their often polemical intercourse, across lines of genre and scholastic affiliation, we are presented with an unfamiliar picture of a… Read more
Speusippus’ Letter to Philip Epistula Socratica 30 Hercher, ed. Bickermann and Sykutris 1928 A complete translation of this text is offered here, since frequent reference will be made to it in the following chapter. [1] Antipater, the bearer of this letter, is a Magnesian by birth, but he has been writing his Greek History at Athens for some time, and he… Read more
Chapter 5. Preaching and Patronage: The Intellectual and the King Do the encounters of fourth-century intellectuals with the field of political power require us to change the terms of our analysis from “scholastic politics” to politics simpliciter? Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and numerous other Academics and Isocrateans had close dealings with powerful rulers in the Greek world. Yet our evidence for these episodes shows that it was inevitably… Read more
Conclusion: Isocrateanism in the Renaissance The controversies and contests of the Isocratean period left their mark, directly and indirectly, on later European culture. In the immediate, Hellenistic, wake of this period, we may well wonder whether the names “Isocrates,” “Plato,” and “Aristotle” still carried with them traces of their significance in the highly interested struggles—sometimes collaborative, sometimes polemical—of earlier fourth-century intellectuals. For how many Hellenistic Greek readers… Read more
Bibliography Aalders H. Wzn., G. J. D. 1978. “Die Meropes des Theopomp.” Historia 27:317–327. Abernathy, C. L. 2003. Akribeia: Isocrates and the Politics of Persuasion. MA thesis, University of Virginia. Acosta-Hughes, B., and S. A. Stephens. 2011. Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets. Cambridge. Alexiou, E. 2007. “Rhetorik, Philosophie und Politik:… Read more
