In a brief digression near the end of the Euthydemus (305 b ff.), Socrates describes one of his anonymous critics, who rejects philosophy in general but imagines himself to be both an accomplished thinker and a successful politikos. Clearly, the portrait is that of Isocrates. The similarity between Isocrates' real character and Plato's stylization is so pronounced that we are tempted to describe 305 b ff. as one of Plato's intentional anachronisms (the dramatic date of the dialogue is earlier than the death of Alcibiades, 275 b). The portrait includes several noteworthy points. First, 305 b-c refers to Socrates' opponent as a writer of forensic speeches. To judge from the tone of the entire passage, which is not markedly hostile to the anonymous person (cf. 306 c 6 ff.), that would be an unfair description of Isocrates if written after the publication of the Panegyricus c. 380 BC. Second, Plato defines the unnamed person as both a speechwriter and a practical politician (306 b: ή πολιτικὴ πρᾶξις ‘the statesman's business’). The latter part of the definition does not square with Isocrates' career as schoolmaster and political adviser or, later on, as the author of political pamphlets. Unless it is assumed that 305 b ff. aims at Isocrates' dealing with Realpolitik, he would not have deserved Socrates' criticism that he ‘partakes’ of two different things. In that case, the same reproof for being ‘the border-ground between philosopher and politician’ might have been addressed to Plato himself as a dialectician and, concerning his other activities, as the head of the Academy and the author of such political dialogues as the Gorgias.

The Greeks of the polis, most of them with hands dirty from the earth and animals they worked with and struggled against every day, knew that there was a thin line that separated their own humanity from the life of the beast. Hesiod provides the first explicit testimony to the difference between the two worlds:

But you, Perses, deliberate on this in your heart (φρεσί) and listen now to right (δίκη), forgetting violence (βίη) altogether. For the son of Cronus drew up this law for men, that fish and beasts and flying birds eat one another, since right (δίκη) is not in them. But to mankind he gave right (δίκη) which is by far the best. For if anyone knows the right (τὰ δί καια) and is willing to speak it (ἀγορεῦσαι) to him far-seeing Zeus gives prosperity. (WD 274-81)

Any list of the most eminent Greek physicians must inevitably include the late Hellenistic doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia. He was both extremely successful during his lifetime, and highly influential after his death. His revolutionary pathology and therapeutic method were the objects of much discussion. His importance, however, goes beyond the history of medicine as such. In spite of the fact that most current handbooks of ancient philosophy ignore him altogether, philosophy does appear to have been a major interest of his. He was an uncompromising opponent of providentialism and teleology. He challenged the idea, at the time the dominant one, that matter is continuous. He accounted for the functioning of the body in purely mechanistic and quantitative terms, and also developed an account of the soul, unique in its time, which arguably provides the closest ancient antecedent to modern reductionism.

This paper discusses the interpretation of an important historical document: IG XII, 5, 608, a victory list from Iulis on ancient Keos. Since its discovery in 1883 it has always been described as a chronologically ordered official victory list of Kean athletes who have won at each of the major games. The surviving portion contains one complete list prefixed by the words ‘these won at Nemea’, and preceded by fourteen other names, which must, following the usual order, belong to Isthmian victors. Since the two lists together name two athletes for whom Bakchylides wrote victory songs, Argeios (odes 1 and 2) and Lachon (odes 6 and 7), it has long been used as a means of dating the first pair of poems, as well as the victories mentioned on the inscription not celebrated by Bakchylides. More recently, it has been used to fix the death of that poet to just after 452, in spite of a clear reference to him in Eusebios' Chronicle under the year 431. It is the contention of this paper that this unique victory list has been misclassified and misinterpreted. It is not a chronologically ordered official victory list; it is rather an honorific victory list in which the entries are arranged by decreasing order of importance. This interpretation, and its various repercussions, destroys many of the currently accepted views about the dating of Bakchylides.

The structures along the west side of the Athenian Akropolis have long delighted visitors approaching the site and have challenged scholars for generations. By happy coincidence a variety of different studies has recently been published which emphasized different aspects of the approaches to the citadel and once again remind us of the many problems still remaining to be solved.

Ira S. Mark concentrated on the shrine of the Athena Nike. He dealt primarily with the Mycenaean bastion enclosed within the later ashlar masonry of the classical podium, the various early remains of the shrine, which lie roughly 1.30 m. below the floor level of the classical temple, and the historical background of the temple itself. He published a few of the many early drawings of the bastion made by Nikolaos Balanos and his associates and re-examined the early walls crowning the archaic bastion, which he divided into various stages. Although, in my opinion, his chronology needs adjustment, his division of the walls built along the edges of the basion into different phases helps us to understand in more detail the history of the site and is a welcome addition. One of these earlier walls, which had long been considered to be Mycenaean, was dated by Mark to a much later phase (Fig. 1, 15). He suggested that the wall was a post-Mycenaean addition built in this position to enclose the east side of the shrine. This wall lies parallel to the West Cyclopean Wall and had been thought to represent the eastern limit of the bastion. The fragmentary remains of this wall, which are no longer visible, were originally recorded by Panagiotis Kavvadias and Georg Kawerau and its existence has bedeviled all attempts to restore a Mycenaean gate in this area.

In the 460s BC an unnamed artist painted an unusual oinochoe with a unique scene–a Greek chasing an Oriental archer–that marks an important stage in the development of symbolic imagery in the arts of early Classical Greece. This oinochoe of unusual shape (Plate 8a-b), now in Hamburg, was first published by Konrad Schauenburg. On side A, a bearded Greek hunter, running ¾-view to the right, clutches his phallos in his right hand and reaches his left arm toward an Oriental archer, on side B. The archer stands ¾-view to the right, bent at the hips, with his upper body in a rare frontal pose, and his hands raised to his head. A curious inscription fills the space between the two characters. Two equally plausible restorations of the inscription, each of which carries its own divergent interpretation of the images, have emerged: the original publication by Schauenburg and a response by Gloria Pinney.

The short dialogue entitled Nero or on the digging of the Isthmus, preserved in the manuscripts of Lucian, is an intriguing piece. The contents are quickly summarised. Nero's abandoned attempt to dig through the Isthmus of Corinth is discussed by the two interlocutors, a certain Menecrates and the philosopher Musonius Rufus, who is said to have taken part in the digging (1). The scene is apparently the rugged Aegean island of Gyara to which the historical Musonius was exiled. The discussion broadens out to include Nero's tour of Greece, with a particular focus upon his singing; and it concludes as the news breaks of Nero's death (11). Menecrates' role in the discussion is limited to that of ‘prompter’, while Musonius assumes the authoritative, pedagogic role in the dialogue. Is there any unified meaning to this text? And why the dialogue form (given that Menecrates' role in it is so perfunctory)? This paper proposes one set of answers to these questions, by siting the Nero in the context of the cultural history of Greco-Roman relations, an area that has attracted much attention over the years (and has been further reinvigorated in the light of post-colonial theory).

The definitive history of incipient vanishing point perspective in the antique world has yet to be written. It may be that the fixation on the fully developed centralized ‘Renaissance perspective’ has led scholars to neglect signs of early, still tentative explorations of the principle in Late Classical/Early Hellenistic art. It is my thesis that the evidence is there but has been overlooked in the search for more accomplished manifestations than the nature of the sources would indicate.

This passage forms the climax of the first part of Alexander's speech at Opis in which he described the achievements of Philip. In the next sentence Alexander began to compare ‘these achievements of my father’ with his own services.

The first part is carefully structured. It begins with Philip's achievements in Upper Macedonia, which over many years had suffered from raids by its neighbours. It then proceeds to Thrace, Thessaly, Phocis, Athens-and- Thebes, and the Peloponnese. This sequence is not temporal, but geographical. Then comes the climax, the command against Persia which was entrusted to Philip.

We have been fortunate enough to witness in our own time the launching of a reconstruction of an ancient trireme. Questions about the trireme's architecture that had been debated for centuries were definitively resolved by the research that preceded the building of the reconstruction. However, certain aspects of the care and handling of triremes remain to be examined. Among them is the notion that triremes in commission were customarily hauled up onto the beach at night.

In 426/425 BC the Athenians purified the island of Delos: they removed all the graves, and for the future forbade either dying or giving birth there; those involved were to be removed to Rheneia. They also instituted the penteteric Delia after the purification. Whatever the Athenians' initial motivation, the interdiction on burial seems to have been taken seriously, for there were few if any licit burials on the island for the rest of antiquity. It must have been very difficult for the people of Delos to conform to this law, as it affected both the burial of the dead, and the performance of the regular, customary, rites of tendance of family tombs. This paper suggests how they may have found a way to adapt normal Greek practice to fit the circumstances peculiar to Delos.