The Center for Hellenic Studies

Archive

Book Chapter

List of Abbreviations

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

Book Chapter

1. The Parian Marble

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

Book Chapter

11. Accursed from Birth

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

Book Chapter

12. Two Phases of Recognition in Sophocles’ Electra

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

Book Chapter

13. Reading the Cosmogonies

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

Book Chapter

14. Empedocles: A Single Project, Two Theologies

14. Empedocles: A Single Project, Two Theologies* Recent discussions, in part linked to the publication of the Strasbourg papyrus in 1999, [1] encourage a reconsideration of the relation between Empedocles’ two poems, On Nature, or The Origins, and The Purifications. [2] My own position on the issue had not yet been resolved when… Read more

Book Chapter

15. The Parmenidean Cosmology of Parmenides

15. The Parmenidean Cosmology of Parmenides* Cosmology has been treated as a poor relation. Here we shall study it for itself, according to its own logic—which is not exclusive to cosmology—without bringing in the question of the relation it necessarily maintains with the successive interpretations of ἔστι (“is”) in fragment 8. [1] The status that has been assigned… Read more

Book Chapter

16. Expressing Differences

16. Expressing Differences* If hermeneutics is critical, it must be historical; its task is to reconstitute a project in its own time. Precision remains forever inscribed in the letter of the text. Distinctive expression has the power to endure. This is the property of written works, and also oral works, works “written” orally before writing, and composed as if they were going to… Read more

Book Chapter

17. The Heraclitean Logos

17. The Heraclitean Logos* Historians of Greek thought have tended to begin by trying to read Heraclitus as a systematic thinker; they have tried to decipher a world-system in his work comparable to those of other archaic thinkers, and they have sought to reveal its place in a general cosmology. The repeated failure of these attempts at reconstruction finally convinced me that Heraclitus… Read more