An examination of Wealth 160-69 sheds further light on the portrayal of adulterers (moichoi) in ancient Greek comedy and oratory. The moichos is routinely presented as undermining the financial fortunes of a household as well as its domestic harmony. On the Greek comic stage, and in the Athenian courtroom, the moichos is less a Don Juan figure than a treacherous intruder, intent on exploiting his seductive charms to the detriment of another male citizen’s household. Such an understanding of the Greek (...) moichos helps to shed light on figures such as the Eratosthenes of Lysias 1, the youthful lover in the concluding scenes of Wealth, and Apollodorus’ presentation of the former slave Phormion. It also yields further insights into popular attitudes toward women and marriage. (shrink)

SummaryPausanias saw in the Athenian Stoa at Delphi an inscription, different from the one still visible on the Stoa’s stylobate, which he rightly connected with Phormio’s victories in the Corinthian Gulf in 429 BC (10, 11, 6). The not exact correspondence between its contents reported by Pausanias and some details of the narrative in Thucydides enables us to reconstruct with a greater precision the movements of Phormio after the two battles. On the other hand, the quite unnoticed exact correspondence between (...) the Spartan allies listed in the inscription as reported by Pausanias and the catalogue of Spartan naval allies in Thuc. 2, 9, 3, as well as the absence from these lists of Anactorion, although her ships had joined the Peloponnesian fleet at least in the earliest phases of that campaign, give grounds for the suggestion that Thucydides’ catalogue mirrors the make-up of the Peloponnesian fleet that actually fought in 429 and that just the inscription seen by Pausanias may have been (one of) his source(s). (shrink)