Of the many accounts of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge ina.d.312 written soon after the conflict, only those of Eusebius of Caesarea have Maxentius cross the Tiber on a bridge of boats to face the forces of Constantine. This detail, it is here argued, suggests that Maxentius may be seen as a latter-day Xerxes, the Persian emperor who, in preparation for his invasion of Greece in 480b.c., famously spanned the Hellespont with a pair of boat-bridges. The article first (...) reviews the seminal accounts of Xerxes’ feat in Aeschylus’Persiansand Herodotus’Histories, and next discusses the story's long afterlife in subsequent Greek (and Latin) authors, including those of Late Antiquity. Close analysis of Eusebius’ battle narratives in hisEcclesiastical History(9.9.3–8) and in hisLife of Constantine(1.38) reveals that their vocabulary echoes the distinctive language used by Aeschylus, Herodotus and later writers in reference to Xerxes’ achievement. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this identification of Maxentius with Xerxes. It exemplifies two venerable tactics in Roman political propaganda: that of portraying a native rival as a foreign enemy and that of mapping the Persian Wars onto contemporary events. As Xerxesrediuiuus, Maxentius is cast as the quintessential barbarian tyrant, an Eastern despot resident in Rome. (shrink)

"Volume 16 of Transaction's acclaimed Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities series, continues the work of Project Theophrastus on the School of Aristotle. The subject of this volume is Strato of Lampsacus in Mysia on the Hellespont. Strato was the third head of the Peripatetic School after Aristotle and Theophrastus. He succeeded the latter in c. 286 BCE and was in turn succeeded by Lyco of Troas in c. 268. Diogenes Laertius describes Strato as a distinguished person who became (...) known as "the physicist," because more than anyone else he devoted himself to the careful study of nature. Strato's concern with the physical world is well attested by the titles of his books: On the Void, On the Heaven, and On the Wind. His other books point to a keen interest in human physiology, animal life and diseases. But it would be a mistake to think that Strato was uninterested in other areas of philosophic concern. Indeed, he wrote works on logic, first principles, theology, politics and ethics. None of this work survives intact, but the reports that have come down to us reveal much of present-day interest. Included is a new and complete edition of the ancient sources, together with a critical apparatus to the ancient texts, an English translation, and notes to the translation."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Depuis un siècle, l'inscription connue sous le nom de tarif d'Abydos excite la curiosité à cause des indications précises qu'elle nous livre sur le montant des taxes perçues au passage de 1' Hellespont ; cependant comme seule est conservée la fin du texte on ignore leur nature et en particulier la catégorie des bateaux qui devaient les acquitter. La mise en œuvre des sources épigraphiques, numismatiques, papyrologiques et législatives révèle que ce règlement exempte les naviculaires, commandant les bateaux chargés (...) de denrées annonaires, de toutes les taxes sauf deux, celles qui rémunèrent les agents chargés de contrôler la qualité des produits et de vérifier qu'aucun capitaine ne cherche à introduire en fraude des armes ou des personnes interdites de séjour dans la capitale. Le montant des taxes, identique pour tous les bateaux chargés d'une même denrée, permet en outre de déterminer la valeur du follis par rapport au sou et, ce faisant, la date du tarif. (shrink)

Ἀϱχέδημος ὁ τοῦ δήμου τότε πϱοεστηκὼς ἐν Ἀθήναις καὶ τῆς διωβελίας ἐπιμελόμενος Ἐϱασινίδῃ ἐπιβολὴν ἐπιβαλὼν κατηγόϱει ἐν δικαστηϱίῳ, ϕάσκων ἐξ Ἑλλησπόντου αὐτὸν ἔχειν χϱήματα ὄντα τοῦ δήμου· κατηγόϱει δὲ καὶ πεϱὶ τῆς στϱατηγίας. καὶ ἔδοξε τῷ δικαστηϱίῳ δῆσαι τὸν Ἐϱασινίδην.Archedemus, who at that time was leader of the dēmos in Athens and overseer of the diōbelia, brought an accusation before a jury-court that a fine should be imposed on Erasinides, claiming that he had in his possession money from the (...) class='Hi'>Hellespont which belonged to the dēmos; he also brought an accusation against him concerning his generalship. It was decided by the jury-court to fetter Erasinides. Moses Finley once remarked, apropos of Cleon, that ‘this man led Athens for several years after the death of Pericles, but Thucydides gives him four appearances only, one of them restricted to a single sentence and one a speech. The picture that emerges is complete and dramatic—but is it right? We do not know’. To penetrate beyond the Thucydidean portrait—and the Aristophanic caricature that buttresses it—is a complex and challenging exercise, but that has not stopped numerous scholars from attempting the task. (shrink)

There is a standard tradition in the ancient sources, which makes its first appearance at Thucydides 1.138.5, that, when Themistocles had fled into exile and been given the equivalent of political asylum by the Persian King Artaxerxes, he was ‘given’ the three Asiatic Greek cities of Magnesia, Myus and Lampsacus. There has been a fair amount of scholarly controversy over how the King could ‘give’ Themistocles Lampsacus, a city of great strategic importance on the Hellespont, which, by the mid-460s, (...) was almost certainly within the ambit of the Delian League, i.e. no longer his to give. My concern in this paper is not with that political problem, but rather with a different, though related, issue – whether valid conclusions can be drawn from the Thucydides passage and the subsequent tradition for the social and economic history of these three cities in the classical period. I suggest that they cannot. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 125.3 (2004) 456-459 [Access article in PDF] Jon D. Mikalson. Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xiv + 269 pp. 5 maps. Cloth, $45. One should pay attention to the title of this book. It is not primarily intended as a study of religion in Herodotus, like Lachenaud (1978), Harrison (2000), and others, to whom Mikalson (...) gives due credit throughout, but rather as an exploration of Greek religious practices and attitudes in a specific historical context. Herodotus is, evidently, our main source and an especially illuminating one because, says Mikalson, his approach to religion is less bound to the conventions of a particular genre than that of epic poets, tragedians, or even, for different reasons, Thucydides, who tends to exclude religion from his account. At the same time, Herodotus' religious views are in great part not peculiar to him but probably shared by many of his contemporaries.On this last point Mikalson agrees with Harrison, as he also does when he maintains that scholars have frequently underestimated the importance of religion in Herodotus' history. Religious causes and motivations represent, to be sure, only one level of explanation among several others that Herodotus uses. But they are important, and the supplementary sources on the topic (especially the later authors Plutarch, Pausanias, and Diodorus Siculus) uncover no evidence that Herodotus exaggerated general Greek notions about the role of the gods in the Persian Wars or the number and prominence of cultic acts connected with these events.The book is composed of three chapters. Chapter 1 is entitled "A Religious account of the Persian Invasions." Chapter 2, "Greek Gods, Heroes and the Divine in the Persian Invasions," discusses the role of individual divine figures. With chapter 3, "Some Religious Beliefs and Attitudes of Herodotus," the focus shifts from Herodotus as a major source for Greek religion to Herodotus' own views about the gods and their cult. This approach continues in the Appendix, "Herodotus on the Origins of Greek Religion," which provides a welcome and lucid examination of the more scholarly side of Herodotus' religious thought.There is a considerable degree of overlap among the three chapters, and more space is devoted to summary and compilation than to analysis. The first and longest chapter (ninety-five pages, almost half the text of the book) is a history from the fall of the Pisistratids in Athens to the aftermath of the battle of Mycale that foregrounds all attested religious actions and events as well as the character utterances and authorial comments that mention the gods or the divine. It follows for the most part a chronological order (or, sometimes, the order of Herodotus' narrative), with an abundance of direct quotations and frequent spacing between paragraphs. The overall effect is somewhat fragmentary, and there is very little discussion of individual items. We would like to hear more, for example, about the earthquake of Delos, with Herodotus' extraordinary interpretation (and Thucydides' conflicting report), or the role of the Aeacidae, who were ineffectual allies of the Thebans against the Athenians in 506 but helped the Greek coalition at Salamis (22-23, 77, 129-30). [End Page 456]Neither does Mikalson impose a logical order on the string of events, although his occasional syntheses along the way touch upon a number of general points. Most importantly, he argues that Herodotus treats religion in two different ways: in popular/cultic terms or, less frequently, according to the literary conventions of epic or tragedy (45-47). The latter form of discourse includes words such as atasthalos, "rash" (which Herodotus notably uses in lieu of the popular term anosios, "impious," to describe Xerxes' whipping of the Hellespont), dreams and monstrous omens as signs of misfortunes (41-44), pious prayers that are normally answered (47-49), and oracles that always come true. Conversely, the rejection of the literary conventions of epic helps to account for the fact that in Herodotus and other prose authors, as in artistic representations of battles of the Persian wars, divine intervention may feature the occasional epiphany of... (shrink)

In memoriam: Mira Balija PlanincEuripides's Hecuba is not one of the best-known tragedies. The story is vividly memorable, however. Troy has fallen. The Greeks have finished their killing and plundering and have begun their homeward journey. As soon as they cross the Hellespont and make camp on what some might call the European side, in Thrace, they bury Achilles. The Trojan queen, Hecuba, is enslaved, as are the only two of her daughters who remain alive, Polyxena and Cassandra, the (...) latter to Agamemnon himself. Her husband Priam was killed at Troy, and so too were all of their many sons—except one: the youngest, Polydorus, who years before had been sent for his protection, along with a substantial amount of Trojan... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Vol. II. Commentary on Books IV–VPhilip A. StadterBosworth, A. B. A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Vol. II. Commentary on Books IV–V. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.In books 1–3, Arrian’s Alexander rushed from the Hellespont to Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis. In books IV and V the story changes: Alexander finds himself on the frontier, and beyond. No longer (...) is he confronting the enormous armies of the Persian king in set battles, but pushing beyond the frontiers of empire, seizing impregnable heights, and most important, struggling with his own Macedonians while defining himself.Bosworth, continuing his commentary after a fifteen-year interval, brings an exceptional background of historical, source critical, and literary studies. B. notes that his evaluation is “perhaps more sympathetic” than in his first volume, in part because the quality of the work “improves as it progresses” (v). The thoroughness [End Page 140] of the discussion (360 pages on the two books) is justified by the importance and complexity of the material. The reader is well served by an excellent subject index, a Greek index, ten maps, and four figures. An appendix on Nearchus suggests that that author may have reported much more than the journey from the Indus to the Persian Gulf found in the Indike, and may be a significant source for Arrian in the last four books of the Alexander history. Like the first volume, the commentary has Greek lemmata, translated only when there is a specific difficulty, but even Greekless readers can use it with the help of Brunt’s new Loeb text.Although the commentary deals frequently with textual questions, it focuses on elucidating the historical, geographical, stylistic, and interpretative problems of the text. B. ably notes the constant verbal reminiscences of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, especially in the more elaborate passages, e.g., the speeches at the Hyphasis. Still more are undoubtedly to be found, such as the echo of Thucydides (1.110.1, 3.112.8, 87.87.6) in 5.27.6, ¹l¼goi ¨k poll©n. His elucidation of Arrian’s use of Megasthenes, Nearchus, and Eratosthenes in the digressions at the beginning of book 5 is a model of clarity and precision. Here as elsewhere he stresses Arrian’s purposeful blending of his sources: e.g., on 5.6.3–8: “It is an elaborately contrived passage, and the source material is carefully selected to fit the scheme of the argument. Arrian is not merely rewriting a passage of Eratosthenes.” Throughout, his comments on sources are precise and thoughtful.B.’s notes follow wherever the text leads, but he devotes special attention to the major focuses of Arrian’s attention: the great digression on Alexander’s orientalism, the murder of Cleitus, proskunesis, and the page’s conspiracy (4.7.4–14.4 5 45–101), the march to the Indus, with the siege of Massaga and the capture of Aornus (4.22.3–30.9 5 141–96), the series of digressions which begin book 5, (5.1.1–8.1 5 197–259), the battle on the Hydaspes against Porus (5.8.4–19.4 5 262–311), and the mutiny on the Hyphasis (5.24.8–29.5 5 337–60).Bosworth’s commentary on book 5 encompasses the multiple levels of the narrative: the reworking of Eratosthenes, Megasthenes, and Nearchus in the preliminary section; the topographical and tactical problems of the battle with Porus, and the rhetorical and stylistic subtleties of the debate at the Hyphasis. Throughout the book, Arrian shows Alexander going beyond his predecessors. By crossing the Indus he passes the limits of the Persian Empire. At Nysa he surpasses the mythical conquests of Dionysus (5.2.1). The digression on the Indus bridges recalls the bridges (and defeats) of Xerxes and Darius, as well as Roman imperial engineering (5.7.1–2). The crossing of the Hydaspes and great battle contrast with Cyrus’ disastrous battle with the Massagetae in Herodotus 1.204–14 (cf. 5.4.5). The description of the river systems of the Punjab (5.4.1–2) evokes Herodotus’ account... (shrink)

La récente découverte de l'inscription dévoilant l'existence d'un traité d'alliance entre Rome et Maronée confirme les textes de Polybe et de Tite-Live au sujet de la déclaration d'Amphipolis de Paul-Émile, sans doute le Leukios de l'inscription. Les peuples de Maronée, d'Aenos et d'Abdère, le nom de ce dernier étant restitué à partir d'un A bien lisible sur la pierre, se voient concéder le droit à la liberté et à l'auto-gouvernement en dehors des quatre républiques macédoniennes. Négociée probablement peu après Pydna (...) par l'ambassade de Maronée mentionnée au début du document, cette alliance avait pour but de mettre fin aux luttes pour la possession des cités thraces, sanctionnant ainsi l'état de disgrâce d'Eumène II auprès du Sénat, et d'assurer Rome du contrôle de la route vers l'Hellespont. (shrink)

Herodotus tells us that some Naxian oligarchic exiles approached Aristagoras who was then ruling Miletus as deputy for his father-in-law Histiaeus, and asked him to help them return to power. Aristagoras, who saw a possible advantage for himself in the request, was willing to oblige but, as the matter lay beyond his competence, he put the project before Artaphernes, who, he said, governed all the peoples of the sea-coast of Asia. Artaphernes, in turn, brought the plan to the attention of (...) Darius, who gave his consent. An army and a fleet of two hundred ships was made ready and placed under the command of Megabates. After a feint in the direction of the Hellespont the fleet put in at Caucasa preparatory to swooping on Naxos. There, however, a quarrel broke out between Aristagoras and Megabates over a disciplinary matter and the Persian, in a fit of pique, sent a message to warn the Naxians. As a result they were ready for the siege which proved to be a miserable failure. Aristagoras feared he would pay dearly for this débâcle and when a message urging revolt arrived from Histiaeus, he immediately acted upon it. (shrink)