Appendix. The Tabulae Iliacae In dealing with the possibility that artifacts such as Greek vases reflect and preserve versions of myths that feature in now-lost epics, one must sedulously avoid (as I have in chapter 2) using the word “illustration,” with its host of anachronistic and misleading associations. But there does exist a body of artifacts to which that term could less misleadingly be applied. These are… Read more
Bibliography of Frequently Cited Works Allan, W. 2005. “Arms and the Man: Euphorbus, Hector, and the Death of Patroclus.“ Classical Quarterly 55:1–16. Andersen, Øivind. 1978. Die Diomedesgestalt in der Ilias. Symbolae Osloenses Suppl. 25. Oslo. ——. 1982. “Thersites und Thoas vor Troia.” Symbolae Osloenses 57:7–34. Bethe, Erich. 1922. Homer, Dichtung und Sage, 2: Odyssee. Read more
To Tamar Acknowledgements I never dreamt of writing a book on the Parian Marble, but intellectual adventures are not always foreseen. It was on the very soil of Paros, at a conference on Archilochus in 2005, that the inscription beckoned and the fields of poetry and chronology converged in my mind. My interests in ancient literary history found an appropriate channel. For encouraging me to… Read more
Preface For most philologists working on ancient Greek poetry, the Parian Marble is not usually a final destination, but a series of stopovers. Indeed, a chronological list is hardly the kind of thing that one reads from beginning to end. Hence, the common tendency to approach the inscription as a repository of information and to mine it for specific dates of people and events. Only the few… Read more
List of Abbreviations BNJ = I. Worthington, ed., Brill’s New Jacoby: The Fragments of the Greek Historians I–III (Jacoby Online), http://www.brill.com/publications/online-resources/jacoby-online. BNP = H. Cancik, M. Landfester, H. Schneider, Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, (New Pauly Online), http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/brill-s-new-pauly. CIG = Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin, 1825–1877). CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin,… Read more
Chapter 1. The Parian Marble 1. Introduction The Parian Marble is a monumental inscription written in Attic Greek on a stele that was originally over two meters tall, [1] dating from some time after 264/3 BCE. [2] It has reached us in two sections, ninety-three and thirty-three lines long. There is a gap of nineteen years… Read more
10. From Philology to Theater: The Construction of Meaning in Sophocles’ Antigone* The problem facing the contemporary translator of a Greek tragedy may be found in its historical dimension. I try to put myself in the playwright’s shoes: he wrote at a certain moment in time, he took a position within a certain tradition that prevailed at that time, so as to express… Read more
11. Accursed from Birth* Enigma and enigmatization The plot of Oedipus Tyrannus is the story of an unveiling, a “tragic analysis,” as Schiller calls it, [1] but the dénouement discloses that the play’s story has a prehistory in the form of a “myth”: the myth of the Labdacid family. Now, the dramatic unfolding contains gaps. Why… Read more
12. Two Phases of Recognition in Sophocles’ Electra* Preamble Electra hates her mother, Clytemnestra, and she does not hesitate to tell her so. Their confrontation will represent the play’s major contest (agōn), a merciless struggle between the two women, up to the point when the dramatic action sets Orestes’ plan in motion and at the same time brings about Electra’s downfall. She… Read more
13. Reading the Cosmogonies* There is not just one cosmogony, there are many, a whole typology of cosmogonies; every philosopher could have his own: a typical form could be taken up again and knowingly modified. It was a major step forward when, instead of constructing a fictitious continuity or evolution, I was able to differentiate, according to the doxography, between closed, unique worlds,… Read more
