The last two decades have seen a welcome erosion of traditional dogmas of Alexander scholarship, and a number of hallowed theories, raised on a cushion of metaphysical speculation above the mundane historical evidence, have succumbed to attacks based on rigorous logic and source analysis. The brotherhood of man as a vision of Alexander is dead, as is (one hopes) the idea that all Alexander sources can be divided into sheep and goats, the one based on extracts from the archives and the other mere rhetorical fantasy. One notable theory, however, still flourishes and has indeed been described as one of the few certainties among Alexander's aims. This is the so-called policy of fusion. As so often, the idea and terminology go back to J. G. Droysen, who hailed Alexander's marriage to Rhoxane as a symbol of the fusion (Verschmelzung) of Europe and Asia, which (he claimed) the king recognised as the consequence of his victory. At Susa the fusion of east and west was complete and Alexander, as interpreted by Droysen, saw in that fusion the guarantee of the strength and stability of his empire. Once enunciated, Droysen's formulation passed down the mainstream of German historiography, to Kaerst, Wilcken, Berve and Schachermeyr, and has penetrated to almost all arteries of Alexander scholarship. Like the figure of Alexander himself the theory is flexible and capable of strange metamorphoses. In the hands of Tarn it developed into the idea of all subjects, Greek and barbarian, living together in unity and concord in a universal empire of peace. The polar opposite is an essay of Helmut Berve, written in the heady days before the Second World War, in which he claimed that Alexander, with commendable respect for Aryan supremacy, planned a blending of the Macedonian and Persian peoples, so that the two racially related (!) Herrenvölker would lord it over the rest of the world empire. On Berve's interpretation the policy had two stages. Alexander first recognised the merits of the Iranian peoples and placed them alongside the Macedonians in his court and army hierarchy. Next came the ‘Blutvermischung’, the integration of the two peoples by marriage.

To generalize about Aischylos is difficult; to generalize about Euripides is almost impossible; but to generalize about Sophokles is both possible and potentially rewarding. With Sophokles—or, rather, with the Sophokles of the seven fully extant tragedies—we can sense a mood, a use of language, and a style of play-making (‘dramatic technique’) which are largely shared by all seven works. Of these characteristics it is surely the mood which contains the quintessence of Sophoklean tragedy. My aim in the first section of this paper will be to open the way to an appreciation of that mood by following up one of the most important motifs in Sophokles: blindness. In the second section the scope of the enquiry will be widened: I shall show that, in using the blindness motif, Sophokles was drawing on a theme which was fundamental to a large number of mythical narratives told by Greeks from the time of Homer to that of Pausanias, and beyond. In the final section we shall return to Sophokles, placing him this time not against the background of the whole Greek mythical tradition but rather within the specific context of the fifth century B.C., and attempting to overhear the individual dramatic ‘voice’ used by him as he explored the implications of blindness.

It is some years now since the Oxford anthropologist Edwin Ardener in his article ‘Belief and the problem of women’ drew attention to the striking lack of progress that had been made in understanding traditional societies as they are seen from the point of view of women: ‘the models of a society made by most ethnographers tend to be models derived from the male portion of that society’. The result, as he pointed out, is that, in considering social structure, ‘we are, for practical purposes, in a male world. The study of women is on a level little higher than the study of the ducks and fowl they commonly own.’ He went on to put forward an explanation of the fact, by suggesting that, since the dominant structure of society is articulated and communicated in terms of a male world-position, women constitute a ‘muted group’, made inarticulate by the lack of a language in which to communicate their particular sense of society and its relationship to the totality of experience.

En divers passages de ses Vies des philosophes et des sophistes, Eunape de Sardes livre des indications autobiographiques qui ont permis à certains historiens de dater plusieurs événements de sa vie. Dans sa seizième année (63.24–25=485B; 79.14–15=493B), Eunape fut envoyé par sa famille à Athènes pour étudier la rhétorique. A son arrivée, il fut enrôlé parmi les disciples du sophiste Prohérésius (64.8–65.14=485–6B; 79.15–16=493B). Le maître était alors, ainsi qu'il l'apprit lui-même à Eunape, dans sa quatre-vingt-septième année (63.25–64.1=485B). ‘Après une cinquième année’ (79.17=493B), Eunape ‘avait envie d'aller en Égypte’ (ἠπείγετο…εἰς τὴν Αἲγυπτον), sans doute pour poursuivre ses études, ‘mais ses parents en le rappelant en Lydie l'en empêchèrent’ (οἱ δὲ πατέρες καλοῦντες ἐπὶ Λυδίας ἐξεβιάσαντο); en fait, ‘une chaire de sophiste lui était proposée’ (κἀκείνῳ μὲν σοϕιστκὴ προὔκειτο) (79.17–20=493B). Prohérésius mourut quelques jours plus tard (79.20–21=493B).

Historians have found the battle of the Granicus River the most puzzling of Alexander's battles. For this there are three reasons. First, the ancient sources are at variance over the time and purpose of Alexander's crossing of the river. Second, the purpose and the effect of Alexander's sideways movement in the river-bed have not been satisfactorily explained. Third, the topographical indications in the sources do not correspond fully with the present lie of the ground. It will be well to treat these matters in the same order.

In JHS xcix (1979) 103–14 Dr Rhodes published an article, ‘Eisangelia in Athens’, which is primarily a detailed and profound criticism of some conclusions in my Eisangelia. The Sovereignty of the People's Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. and the Impeachment of Generals and Politicians (Odense 1975). His objections have forced me to reconsider the subject. In ‘Demos, Ecclesia and Dicasterion in Classical Athens’, GRBS xix (1978) 127–46, I have already dealt with the part of Rhodes' article based on the assumption that the Solonian Heliaia was a judicial session of the ekklesia. Here I discuss the eisangelia itself.

Fustel de Coulanges' thesis that ancient society was founded upon the cult of ancestral tombs has had, for a thoroughly self-contradictory argument, a remarkably successful career. Neither Fustel himself nor the many subsequent scholars who have quoted his views with approval faced clearly the difficulty of deriving a social structure dominated by corporate descent groups from the veneration of tombs placed in individually owned landed property. On the whole, historians have tended to play down Fustel's insistence on the relation between ancestor-cult and property and to exaggerate the role of the corporate kin group. This tendency, which assimilates Fustel to Sir Henry Maine and other lawyers interested in the reconstruction of Indo-European institutions (e.g. Bonfante) has in my view considerably impeded understanding of the role of kinship in early Greek society; it also obscures one of the most individual aspects of Fustel's work which, thanks to the researches of Philippe Ariès (II) on the development of the modern tomb-cult in the nineteenth century, can now be placed in its historical context.

In an earlier article, I argued that six of the Roman Lives—Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Brutus, and Antony—were prepared as a single project, and rest upon the same store of source-material. If this is so, it affords a unique opportunity to investigate Plutarch's techniques. There are substantial variations among these six versions, both crude inconsistencies of fact and subtler differences of interpretation. It no longer seems adequate to assume that these are simply inherited from differing source-material; they must arise from Plutarch's individual literary methods. Their analysis should therefore illuminate those methods. How much licence did Plutarch allow himself in rewriting and manipulating detail for artistic ends? And what considerations would lead him to vary his treatment in these ways?

In the first part of this paper, I examine the literary devices which Plutarch employed in streamlining his material: conflation of similar items, chronological compression and dislocation, fabrication of circumstantial detail, and the like. In the second, I turn to the differences of interpretation and emphasis among these Lives. These suggest some wider conclusions concerning Plutarch's biographical practice, which are developed in the final section: in particular, the very different aims, interests, and conventions which are followed in different Lives, and the flexible nature of this biographical genre.

The purpose of this paper is to discover the origins of a political catchphrase, ‘the freedom of the Greeks of Asia’. The opening section presents and analyses first the evidence of Herodotus for the period from the Lydian conquest to the Mycale campaign, then that of Diodorus, where extant, for the same events. The contrasting usage of these two authors poses the question: when did the Greeks of Asia first come to be regularly thought of as a corporate body? That question is studied in the second section through the evidence of Thucydides and later writers for the period of the Athenian empire and that of Xenophon for the Ionian War and the campaigns of the Spartans, especially Agesilaus, in Asia Minor, and an answer is suggested: that the Greeks of Asia first came to be consistently thought of as a unit, and their freedom to be regularly exploited as a slogan, in the years between 400 and 386. The third section attempts to answer the further question which at once arises: why should this have been so?

‘Without exaggeration and oversimplification little progress is made in most fields of humanistic investigation.’ With this disarming quotation from A. D. Nock, Albert Henrichs begins his book-length interpretation of P. Colon, inv. 3328. In the same spirit of humanistic progress, I would like to reconsider some aspects of the text and to offer a different assessment of its place in the history of religion and literature.

The fragments are from three pages of a hitherto unknown Greek novel, Lollianos' Phoinikika. Frags A and B luckily include book-ends, from whose subscriptions we know the author and title of the work. Frag. C is just scraps which yield no continuous sense. Frag. A brokenly and confusedly mentions youths, women dancing, (furniture?) being thrown off the roof, sobriety, kissing, and then, in a slightly more intelligible scene, the male narrator's loss of virginity with a woman named Persis, her gift to him of a gold necklace which he refuses, the assistance of one Glauketes in taking the necklace elsewhere, and finally what seems to be a confrontation between Persis' mother and the two lovers. This last is similar to Achilles Tatius ii 23–5. Achilles Tatius also offers the closest parallel to frag. B, a ghastly description of human sacrifice and cannibalism. This scene is the focus of most of Henrichs' interpretation and I will limit myself to it in the present article.

The central question raised by this new novel fragment is how to assess the relative importance of religious and literary parallels. Is the Phoinikika to be regarded as a document in religious or in literary history, or perhaps somewhere on the borderland of both? There has been a lively discussion in the last half century of the thesis that the ancient novels were written and read as religious documents, deriving their basic structure and many details from the myths and cults of particular religions. Henrichs devotes most of his book to arguing that the sacrifice scene in Lollianos is inspired by an actual rite, probably of a Dionysian character, and that the Phoinikika serves to illuminate a little-known corner of religious history. His views are based on an extensive collection of liturgical, mythical and ethnological parallels concerning oath rituals, the sacrifice of children, cannibalism, and face-painting. Of all the parallels cited, the two which are closest in every way to Lollianos are Achilles Tatius iii 15 and Cassius Dio lxxi 4. On the strength of these Henrichs asserts that Lollianos' description of a ritual murder represents, more or less directly, the cultic practice of the Egyptian Boukoloi. Without postulating a religious message for the Phoinikika as a whole, Henrichs does claim that this scene yields valuable information about the structure of ancient mystery rituals (78 n. 6) and that these new fragments support the methodological correctness of Kerenyi's and Merkelbach's approach to the ancient novels.

Lucian's Timon accuses Zeus of negligence: even his statue at Olympia has not punished the temple-robbers who despoiled it, although it had a δεκάπηχυν κεραυνὸν ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ(Tim. 4). But according to Lucian’s contemporary Pausanias (v 11.1), the Zeus at Olympia possessed no such weapon; it held a Nike in the right hand, a sceptre in the left. A. M. Harmon (LCL Lucian ii 331) notes that since Pausanias’ testimony is confirmed by numismatic evidence, Lucian must be wrong and ‘the error is odd in so good an observer’. In fact Lucian could be rather careless over such details; but in this case we can hope to account for his mistake. While he must have seen the Zeus at Olympia at some stage, the statue was also an obvious subject for rhetorical ecphrasis and literary elaboration: one thinks of Dio Chrysostom’s Olympicus (Or. xii); and Lucian may well have been as bookish in his approach to works of art as he was in so many ‘cultural’ subjects. In this case the error would easily have arisen if he had read, misread, or misrecollected an accusative of σκηπτός (‘thunderbolt’) for σκῆπτρον (‘sceptre’) in a previous written source; he would then only have had to supply a synonym κεραυνός for the wrong object. The fact that the thunderbolt is in the wrong hand would then have followed easily from the initial error: one does not hurl thunderbolts with the left hand! The obvious risk of confusion between σκηπτόν and σκῆπτρονσκῆπτρον is illustrated by the problem at Plutarch, de Alex. fort.ii (Mor. 338b), where Clearchus becomes tyrant of Heraclea, takes to carrying a σκῆπτρον and calls his son Κεραυνός. The Teubner editor rightly adopts Valckenaer’s σκηπτόν for MSS σκῆπτρον: a tyrant sufficiently uninhibited to call his son Thunder would also be uninhibited enough to carry a replica of a bolt.

παρθένος ἀργυρόπεζος ἐλούετο, χρύσεα μαζῶ
ν χρωτὶ γαλακτοπαγεῖ μῆλα διανομένη
πυγαὶδ᾿ ἀλλήλαις περιηγέες εἱλίσσοντο
ῦδατος ὑγροτέρῳ χρωτὶ σαλευόμεναι
τὸν δ᾿ ὑπεροιδαίνοντα κατέσκεπε πεπταμένη χείρ
οὐχ ὅλον Εὐρώταν ἀλλ᾿ ὅσον ἠδύνατο.

An interesting poem, though not without its difficulties. Eurotas in the last line has traditionally been regarded as an obscene synonym for the female genitals. Sir Denys Page, however, challenged this in his recent edition of Rufinus. Other matters of language and style are also worth discussing for the light that they may throw on the techniques of a late Greek epigrammatist. Hence the following analysis takes the form of a commentary.

The subject of the poem is a girl bathing. Page claims that it has no parallel in the Anthology. That overlooks the adumbration of this same theme by Antiphilus (AP v 307) instructive, in that it describes Leda bathing in the Eurotas.

In connection with a temple of Artemis Eukleia at Plataea, Plutarch tells us that Eukleia was commonly identified with Artemis: τὴν δ᾿ Εὔκλειαν μὲν πολλοὶ καὶ καλοῦσι καὶ νομίζουσιν ᾿´ Αρτεμν(Plut. Arist. 20.6). His testimony is supported by Pausanias, who mentions a temple of Artemis Eukleia at Thebes (Paus. ix 17.1). Plutarch goes on to tell us that the cult of Eukleia was widespread, at the same time giving us a glimpse of its followers: βωμὸς γὰρ αὐτῇ καὶ ἄγαλμα κατὰ πᾶσαν ἀγορὰν ἴδρυται καὶ προθύουσιν αἵ τε γαμούμεναι καὶ οἱ γαμοῦντες(Plut. ibid.). He has himself already mentioned Eukleia's temple at Plataea and we may add the festival of Eukleia at Corinth reported by Xenophon. More important perhaps for the present discussion, Pausanias mentions a temple of Eukleia situated in the agora at Athens: ἔτι δὲ ἀπωτέρω ναὸς Εὐκλείας, ἀνάθημα καὶ τοῦτο ἀπὸ Μήδων, οῖ τῆς χώρας Μαραθῶνι ἔσχον φρονῆσαι δὲ ᾿ Αθηναίους ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ ταύτῃ μάλιστα εἰκάζω (Paus. i 14.5).

There have been several recent discussions concerning the text of the Athenian Treaty with Samos (IG i2 50+ 102, ML 56, IG i3 48) and the reconstruction of its fragments. The discussions have dealt largely with inadequacies of the restoration offered ‘exempli gratia’ by Wade-Gery in 1931, but too little attention has been paid to the stones and the evidence they offer the historian. Three of the four stones associated with the Treaty were edited in IG i2 50+102; the fourth was there mentioned but not identified until Wade-Gcry’s article. Wade-Gery’s transcription of the stones has become the foundation of all recent discussion and only Bradeen and McGregor have contributed observations on the stones themselves.

An examination of the fragments conducted in June 1978 and in April 1979 uncovered in Wade-Gery’s transcription an error which served as the basis for his reconstruction of a list of generals attributed to the year 439/8 B.C. The incorrect reading is the next-to-last letter of the word presumed to be Κεκροπίδ]ος in line 31 of the ML text. Wade-Gery presented in his article first a dotted omicron in that space and later an undotted one; in his commentary he stated ‘The first letter in line 2 [line 31 of fragment d in the ML text] is almost certainly 0’. He did not mention that this contradicted the readings of both editions of IG, nor did he state any grounds for deciding the letter to be omicron. Bradeen and McGregor placed the omicron in brackets, thus disagreeing over whether the letter had ever been readable on the stone, but they retained Wade-Gery’s restoration, presumably to declare their approval.

When Achilles asks Thetis to plead his cause before Zeus, he urges her to remind the god of her past favours towards him (II. i 396-406):

πολλάκι γάρ σεο πατρὸς ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἄκουσα
εὐχομένης , ὅτ᾿ ἔφησθα κελαινεφέϊ Κρονίωνι
οἴη ἐν ἀθανάτοισιν ἀεικέα λοιγὸν ἀμῦναι,
ὁππότε μιν ξυνδῆσαι ᾿Ολύμπιοι ἤθελον ἄλλοι,
῾῾ ´ Ηρη τ᾿ ἠδὲ Ποσειδάων καὶ Παλλὰς ᾿ Αθήνη
ἀλλὰ σὺ τόν γ᾿ ἐλθοῦσα,
θεά, ὑπελύασο δεσμῶν,
ὦχ᾿ ἐκατόγχειρον καλέσασ᾿ ἐς
μακρὸν ᾿ ´ Ολυμπον, ὅν Βριάρεων καλέουσι θεοί, ἄνδρες δέ τε πάντες Αἰγαίων᾿—ὁ γὰρ αὖτε βίην οὖ πατρὸς ἀμείνων—
ὅς ῥα παρὰ Κρονίωνι καθέζετο κύδεϊ γαίων
τὸν καὶ ὑπέδεισαν μάκαρες θεοὶ οὐδ᾿ ἔτ᾿ ἔδησαν

A major problem attends the phrase ὁ γὰρ αὗτε βιην οὗπατρὸς ἀμείνων(11. i 404). It has been suggested that the name Αἰγαίων represents a patronymic in -ῖων based on Αἰγαῖος. The suggestion is unexceptionable in itself, in view of the close connexions between Poseidon and Aegae; but it does nothing to resolve the difficulty of supposing that Poseidon was Aegaeon’s father and, above all, it does not tell us how the name Αἰγαίων is explained by the phrase ὁ γὰρ αὖτε. . . In a note on these words, M. M. Willcock accepted the common view that they give an ‘etymological’ explanation of the name Αἰγαίων, but suggested that they would be more easily intelligible as anexplanation of the giant’s other name, Βριάρεως (after βριαρός etc.). Willcock was right to raise this objection. There is no reason to suppose that the father of Aegaeon/ Briareos was different from the father of the other giants, and Hesiod specifically says that his father was Uranus (Th. 147-9). The paternity of this giant might therefore be a scholarly invention; and not a happy invention, for however strong Aegaeon may have been he could hardly be said to be mightier than Poseidon.

In the Coma Berenices (fr. 110.44-6 Pfeiffer) Callimachus mentioned Mount Athos and the canal dug for Xerxes at the northern end of the Akte peninsula:

ἀμνά]μῳ[ν Θείης ἀργὸς ὑ]περφέ[ρ]ετ[αι,
βουπόρος ᾿Αρσινόης μητρὸς σέο, καὶ διὰ μέ[σσου
Μηδείων ὀλοαὶ νῆες ἔβησαν ᾿´ Αθω

Two problems require solutions in these lines: (1) Why is Athos called the ‘ox-piercer of Arsinoe’? (2) Who is the descendant of Theia? The second of these problems, I shall argue, is solved by the solution to the first.

Arsinoe, wife of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, is here given the courtesy-title ‘mother’ of Berenike. There is no difficulty in the poet’s association of her with Mount Athos: she had formerly been married to King Lysimachos of Thrace, who won Macedonia and Thessaly from Demetrius, and her ties with the northern Aegean world were close. As queen in Thrace she had made a dedication to the Great Gods of Samothrace;’ it was to Samothrace also that she came after Ptolemy Keraunos had murdered her sons by Lysimachos. Callimachus has these northern Aegean connexions of Arsinoe in mind in another poem, the Ektheosis Arsinoes, in which Chans sees from Athos the funeral smoke of the queen’s pyre at Alexandria (fr. 228.57), having been sent from Lemnos to the mountain by the spirit of Arsinoe’s dead sister Philotera (fr. 228.44-7).

An inscription of major importance, now in the New Museum of Adana, contains an epigram on Apollonius of Tyana. Almost simultaneously, a preliminary text has been provided by E. L. Bowie, and a full publication with discussion and photograph by G. Dagron and J. Marcillet- Jaubert. I offer here a text, translation, and commentary, and look for a historical and cultural setting.

The inscription is cut on a single large block, now damaged on the left, which originally served as an architrave or lintel. The photograph (PLATE Ib) makes detailed comment on the palaeography superfluous: but it is worth noting the sign of punctuation (:) after ἐπώνυμος and of elision (∾) after τὸ δ᾿; the leaf filling the vacant space at the end of line 4; and generally the very affected script, notably the rho shaped like a shepherd's crook, the complicated xi and the lyre-shaped omega. This strange lettering makes it more than usually hazardous to date the inscription from this feature alone. A date in the third or fourth century seems roughly right, and would accord with the content of the epigram.

Professor R. T. Hallock generously allows me to publish here his text and translation of the hitherto unpublished Persepolis Fortification Tablet Q-1809, to which he has referred in Cahiers de la delegation francaise en Iran viii (1978) 115.