The recent discovery in Bahrain of a Greek inscription, dating to the 120s BC, transforms our understanding of the Arab-Persian Gulf in the Hellenistic period. The inscription, recording the dedication of a shrine to the Dioskouroi on behalf of the first independent king of Characene, indicates that Bahrain was a garrisoned node within the Seleucid Empire and the centre of the previously unknown archipelagic administrative district . Seleucid and Characenian control of Bahrain is placed within the longue durée political (...) history of relations between southern Mesopotamia and Dilmun. The cultic dedication to the Dioskouroi traces the consciously Hellenizing modalities of Characenian emancipation from the Seleucid Empire and the development of a coherent maritime religious network in the Gulf. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the Manisa MuseumKent J. RigsbyHasan Malay. Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the Manisa Museum. Vienna, 1994. 192 pp. 99 plates. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Denkschriften 237, Ergänzungsbande zu den Tituli Asiae Minoris 19)For well over a century, inscriptions found in the Hermus Valley in Lydia have been making their way to the museum at Manisa. Hasan Malay presents (...) here a full inventory of this rich collection, stones deriving from the great cities (Sardes, Philadelphia, Daldis, Hierocaesarea, etc.) and from the numerous villages [End Page 167] within their territories. Malay has himself contributed substantially to the building of this collection through his explorations, and his familiarity with the region and its monuments is an essential component of this catalogue.In recent years the inscriptions of Lydia have received work of very high quality which is readily available to readers, and Malay has made the laudable decision to include only what must be included in order to complete the published record on the museum holdings: new texts are given description, text, commentary, and photograph; already published texts with no photograph in print have a brief description, lemma, and photograph but no text; others, only a description and up-to-date lemma without photograph or text (except where Malay has improved the readings, e.g., nos. 39, 368, 380). Malay has shown admirable discipline in not filling our libraries with redundant matter.The material is organized by type of text, except for a twenty-page addendum of stones that arrived during the year that publication was in progress. The statistics: 561 entries, of which 190 are new texts; twelve of these have been held for impending separate publication; four texts are in Lydian; there is little Latin (no. 470; bilingual, nos. 231, 520 [a new illustration of the bilingualism of Imperial freedmen; cf. Robert, Laodicée 325-26], and 523, an edict). Metrical texts are few (nos. 51, 318, 354). Dates range from the fourth century B.C. (no. 515, fragment of an Aeolic decree, nearly stoichedon) to the twelfth A.D., but are mostly Roman Imperial; for many stones the exact provenance is uncertain. The lemmas, while not genetic in form, are thorough and current; the commentaries address essentials with efficiency. Careful indexes are provided (only to the texts actually printed), also a detailed concordance to past publications, and two clear maps showing known provenances. Some of these texts will be taken up in the course of the completion of TAM V by Georg Petzl. Note that Petzl's "Beichtinschriften" (= EpigrAnat 22) appeared simultaneously; a number of those inscriptions are in the Manisa Museum, and Petzl was able to consult and cite Malay's manuscript in completing his own work.The photographs are uniformly excellent (nos. 360 and 362 have been badly cropped, cutting off some text) and constitute an important new body of evidence for the history of art in western Anatolia in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. These mostly are reliefs (no. 161 is especially rich, and obscure owing to weathering; no. 58 is a Nike in the round; no. 336 is incised and perhaps unfinished).The volume offers pleasures for diverse agendas. New villages are attested (nos. 38 and 184, 48, 51), a known one located (no. 31); a new phratry inscription (no. 244) joins others from the northeastern part of Lydia. We have a new sundial (no. 25), and a woman who lived to be a hundred (no. 465). Foreign ethnics are few. No. 536, from Dareioukome, is a grave monument for Apollonius set up by his wife, Tyche, perhaps in the second century or earlier, ' ΤΩ[... ]ΔOYPHNΩ; the majuscules are properly cautious, and Malay cites Dura only in the commentary; there is scarcely space but consider Τω[βίου], whatever the likelihood of a Jew from Parthian Dura settling by the Hermus. [End Page 168]A number of new cults and divine epithets are revealed. Zeus Antigoneios (nos. 69-74, variously spelled) Malay traces to the Antigonid dynasty and Macedonian soldiers settled in Lydia in the Hellenistic period. This seems to me unlikely, in an area never under Antigonid rule even briefly, and I suspect rather that the epithet... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.1 (2002) 136-140 [Access article in PDF] P. M. Petsas, M. B. Hatzopoulos, Lucrèce Gounaropoulou, and P. Paschidis, eds. Inscriptions du sanctuaire de la Mère des Dieux autochtone de Leukopétra (Macédoine). Meletemata 28. Athens: Kentron Ellenikes kai romaikes archaiotetos ethnikon idryma erevnon, 2000. 365 pp. Cloth, price not stated. The Macedonian sanctuary of the Autochthonous Mother of the Gods at Leukopetra, near Beroia, was (...) discovered by earth-moving equipment and emergency excavation in 1965, when a segment of the new national highway was being built. Although the site itself has never been fully excavated, many architectural pieces, four altars, three offering tables, stelai, and plaques were rescued and taken to the Beroia Museum. The original excavator, Photias Petsas, helped recently by a younger generation of accomplished epigraphists, has labored over the years and through many vicissitudes to publish these finds. For this was not [End Page 136] merely a sanctuary, not merely a small marble temple, but a sanctuary and temple covered with inscriptions, most of them (161 of 170 complete enough to categorize) recording the cession or consecration of slaves or children to the service of the goddess. Many of the inscriptions (127 of 194) are virtually complete and dated by local and imperial era, the earliest from A.D. 141-42 (?), the latest from A.D. 313.This handsomely produced and meticulously edited volume therefore publishes a corpus of material that contributes to a number of important topics: to the debate over the legal and actual status of the persons ceded to gods here and elsewhere; to the administration and health of a small sanctuary in the territory of a larger city in Roman Macedonia; and to the religious beliefs that may have undergirded all of the above. It also provides evidence of the erratic but apparent diffusion of Roman legal status, legal concepts, and legal practices even in the backcountry of a larger city, and thereby also sheds interesting light on what happens before and after the Constitutio Antoniniana in one specific place. All this should interest historians of Greece under the Empire, or students of the phenomenon of "Romanization," or historians of Greece keen to track continuity and change in the practices of sanctuaries and slaves.The volume itself is a pleasure to use. The lengthy introduction covers the mythical and actual history of the area (20-23); the geographical and social backgrounds of the dedicators (23-28); the goddess, her multiple names, and her financial dealings (28-33); the legal status of the consecrated (33-60, with a clear summary of a hundred-year-old controversy); onomastics (61-63); and language (63-73)--the Lefkopetra inscriptions constitute a "unique dossier" (63) for how Greek was spoken for centuries during the High Empire. How each lemma is to be laid out is then discussed (74), and the architectural and other pieces described (75-78); for the last, the drawings (figs. 37-51) are indispensable. All that is missing is a discussion of letter forms, itself noted as reserved for further study by J. Touratsoglou (75).The 194 inscriptions (plus five incerta) are clearly presented, restored when need be, translated, and discussed; all but three (nos. 79, 191, and 193) have pictures as well. Because the inscriptions themselves are also very (if not uniformly) formulaic, their readings seem relatively straightforward to me and I can make no suggestions for corrections in what seem to me to be well-read and well-restored texts except to suggest that numbers 136 and 160 belong to the same monument--a suggestion in which I have been anticipated by Marijana Ricl, who was kind enough to send me an article (forthcoming in Tyche 16, 2001) in which she discusses these inscriptions and suggests different supplements or explanations in only thirteen other cases (nos. 5, 26, 45, 46, 51, 53, 58, 63, 78, 90, 93, 115, and 150). In short, these inscriptions have been published by people who know what they are doing, and with all the proper aids and... (shrink)

Five medieval Sanskrit-language descriptions of a fabulous technique for extracting mercury from the “wells” in which it naturally resides are shown to be remarkably similar to accounts preserved in Chinese and Syriac. Whereas the Sanskrit and Chinese versions date from no earlier than the thirteenth century C.E., the Syriac version dates from no later than the tenth century. The present article first compares and contrasts these three alchemical narratives, and then suggests that all three are perhaps related to a broader (...) and far more ancient Indo-European mythic tradition of a deity associated with the phenomenon of “Fire in Water,” as attested in Vedic, Avestan, Roman, Irish, and Greek sources. All eight of these witnesses appear to attest to ancient religious and scientific traditions relative to geothermal phenomena. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.2 (2000) 320-324 [Access article in PDF] David M. Lewis. Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern History. Edited by P.J. Rhodes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xii 1 418 pp. 4 pls. Cloth, $89.95. David Lewis's death in 1994 deprived the world of scholarship of one of the leading ancient historians of our time. His books include a revision of Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic (...) Festivals of Athens (with John Gould, 1968), A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (with Russell Meiggs, 1969; 2d ed. 1984), Sparta and Persia (1977), Inscriptiones Graecae I3 (editor-in-chief), fasc. 1 (1981), fasc. 2 (1993), and Cambridge Ancient [End Page 320] History, 2d ed. (co-editor), IV (1988), V (1992), VI (1994). Many of his most original ideas are to be found in his articles and reviews, however, and so the Cambridge University Press planned, before his death, a book of his short papers.The volume under review presents a total of thirty-eight papers, four previously unpublished, ranging from the 1950s to 1993. The general contents, notes, and final editing by P.J. Rhodes were discussed with Lewis; some of the notes simply give references, but there is representation of Lewis's words in the longer ones. His passion for precision, reconciling the testimony of inscriptions with the literary references, shows him to care, like Thucydides, for "exact knowledge."The four previously unpublished papers perhaps deserve summary. "On the Dating of Demosthenes' Speeches," read to the Oxford Philological Society in 1970, evaluates critically the testimony of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The dates for Orations 22 (Against Androtion) and 24 (Against Timokrates) given in Ad Amm., relied upon by scholars for Demosthenes' career (e.g., Cawkwell, Sealey), are shown to be unlikely. The dates from Dionysius would be 355/4 for 22 and 353/2 for 24. More likely, however, are 358/7 or 357/6 for 22 and 354/3 for 24. Lewis patiently assesses the evidence of inscriptions for Androtion's career and for the documents cited in Oration 24, which he does not believe to be forgeries. He shows reasons for not putting confidence in the dates of Dionysius. Principally, this involves an analysis of Deinarchos, where his statements can be checked. Dionysius cannot be checked on his Demosthenes, but Lewis argues that his statements cannot be accepted outright. The analysis of Deinarchos is new, but part of Lewis's view there is anticipated in his "Notes on Attic Inscriptions," ABSA 49 (1954) 32, 39-49. Rhodes cites a text from the Agora excavations, soon to be published by John Camp and M.B. Richardson, which will support the date 354/3 for Oration 24.In "The Financial Offices of Eubulus and Lycurgus" (written ca. 1957) Lewis addresses two questions: "When did Eubulus hold the office of treasurer of the theoric fund (), and, with it, control of Athenian finances?" and "When was Lycurgus officially made controller of Athenian finances?" Generally held opinions would be in the 350s and 340s for Eubulus, with specific dates variously suggested, in relation to Demosthenes' speeches. For Lycurgus, either 342-330 or 338-326 is the tenure previously accepted. The decree honoring Lycurgus in [Plut.] Vit. X Or. has Lycurgus serve as treasurer of the public finance for three penteterids. Lewis argues that specific evidence is lacking for Eubulus, but that his moral authority in the reorganization of finances is likely in the 350s and 340s. He examines closely Aeschines 3.25 in assessing Eubulus' authority and argues that the office of controller of the public finance was created in 336, its term defined by the law of Hegemon: hence the period 336-324 should be understood for Lycurgus' tenure."Aristophanes and Politics" was delivered to the Oxford Branch of the [End Page 321] Classical Association in 1957 and had been given earlier in France. Lewis seeks a position that is not so minimalist as that of Gomme (in CR 1938), who had argued that Aristophanes is a dramatist, seeking... (shrink)

In an earlier paper Christopher Tuplin and I attempted to establish the date and circumstances of the emergence of the concept of ‘the Greeks of Asia’ and the consequent appearance of ‘the freedom of the Greeks of Asia’ as a political slogan. It was there suggested that concept and slogan first crystallized shortly before the Peace of Antalcidas, and that the freedom of the Greeks of Asia first acquired its full force as a catchword when that freedom had been signed (...) away, apparently for ever. The present paper traces the further history of the slogan, first under Alexander and the Diadochi, then at the time of the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean. No attempt is, however, made to deal with every unanswered question raised by either Macedonian or Roman dealings with Greece. The Greeks of Asia languished under Persia till the time of the Macedonian invasion. Yet when that invasion came, the freedom of the Greeks of Asia was to play little part in Macedonian propaganda, still less in Macedonian practice. The expedition was conceived by Philip as an act of revenge for the Persian invasions of Greece. This theme of revenge was taken up by Alexander at the time of his appointment to command, and recurs in his letter to Darius and his words to Parmenio after the taking of Persepolis. The even broader theme of a crusade of Greeks against Persians to achieve the conquest of Asia is still more frequent. It dictates the sedulous manufacture of parallels with the Trojan war and the inscription on the spoils sent to Athens after the battle of the Granicus; it was also used to justify Alexander's hatred of Greeks who fought on the Persian side. By comparison with these motifs the freedom of the Greeks of Asia receives little attention. When Philip sent out his advance expedition under Parmenio and Attalus, his instructions to them were to free the Greek cities. But just how flexibly that order could be interpreted is shown by Parmenio's treatment of Grynium. Alexander too showed himself ruthlessly pragmatic in his attitude to Greek cities, until the appointment of Alcimachus to liberate the Aeolian and Ionian cities. Yet this development receives little attention in the sources, and the only trace of it in subsequent propaganda is the claim ascribed to Alexander when he was on his way from Miletus to Caria that he had undertaken the war for the sake of the freedom of the Greeks, the only occasion in the surviving evidence on which Alexander makes this assertion. (shrink)

The inscription that is the subject of this article was discovered in October 2005 and enables us to identify a new sanctuary on Thasos that came to light in 2003 not far from the Thesmophorion, but which has hitherto remained anonymous. It is a Delion, dedicated to 'Delian' Apollo and Artemis. The text, which is dated fairly early in the first half of the 4th century BC, consists of two successive decrees: the first forbids women from entering the sanctuary (...) during the Thesmophoria, and the second forbids the grazing of cattle in it. The punishment for those who contravene is of a moral and religious order, the ενθυμιστόν, which, in this form, is attested epigraphically only on Thasos on two occasions. The study of the text affords an opportunity to draw up a list of the Delia known in the ancient Greek world and to touch upon the subject of the relations between Thasos, its mother city Paros, and the Delian sanctuary. The role played by the Delion on Thasos in the defensive system of the city in the Archaic period is also emphasised. (shrink)

The inscription published here, found in 1985 at Haliartus in Boeotia, is a three-sided stele, broken from top to bottom, bearing lists of proper names. It can be dated to about the middle of the 3rd c. BC from the engraving, and particularly from the majority presence of patronymic adjectives. In spite of the lack of a title, due to the break in the stone, it may be said with probability that it concerns one or more lists of conscripts. (...) If a prosopographical study does not permit a sure conclusion, an onomastic analysis is rather more rewarding. Thus it is possible to distinguish three layers of names: the first comprises names current throughout the Greek world, the second names that were properly Boeotian, in particular theophoric ones like Πτωιόδωρος, and the third rare names, like Πέρμιχος and Πέρμων. (shrink)

Two inscriptions, one found at Tylissos on Crete, the other found at Argos, both dated about 450, concern relations between Argos and the Cretan towns of Knossos and its smaller neighbour, Tylissos. The close relationship between the treaties of fragment A and fragment B – and therefore the interconnection among Argos, Knossos, and Tylissos – seems generally recognized by scholars. The articles of the agreement lay down a diverse and complex set of arrangements among the three parties, but (...) as a whole, the treaty has been interpreted in two ways: the three πóλεις have entered into some sort of federal union; only Argos and Knossos are signatories to the treaty, while Tylissos is a dependency of Argos. The former interpretation has gained wider acceptance than the latter, and if it is correct, just such a federal union would represent a remarkable advance in the development of Greek political institutions. In this paper we shall press a philological point based upon the information we have both from the treaty and from contemporary sources, and in so doing, we shall attempt to show that a federal union is unlikely. We shall then offer our own interpretation of the regulations governing the insular cities with regard to the formation of alliances and the declaration of friends and enemies. (shrink)

The current use of animals to test for potential teratogenic effects of drugs and other chemicals dates back to the thalidomide disaster of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Controversy surrounds the following questions: 1. What was known about placental transfer of drugs when thalidomide was developed? 2. Was thalidomide tested on animals for teratogenicity prior to its release? 3. Would more animal testing have prevented the thalidomide disaster? 4. What lessons should be learned from the thalidomide disaster regarding animal (...) testing for teratogenicity? We review the literature in order to address these questions. (shrink)

This article offers a re-examination of the theoi (‘gods’) heading which appears regularly on inscriptions in the ancient Greek world. Long noted, the heading has also long been passed over, often considered so formulaic as to lack much significance. This paper explores the consequences of taking theoi seriously as a reference to the divine, by investigating the function and meaning of the heading in the classical period. It makes use of two case studies, the financial building inscriptions (...) from the Athenian Akropolis and the epigraphic corpus from Oropos, to set out the most important characteristics of the formula. By placing the theoi heading in a broader context of other types of divine formula found on inscriptions, and by paying particular attention to the crucial aspect of the heading’s non-specificity, this article contends that the theoi or theos formula should not be understood as a prayer or appeal to the gods. Instead, it is a statement of presence of the divine and a recognition of divine power. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.4 (2002) 629-633 [Access article in PDF] Phiroze Vasunia. The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Classics and Contemporary Thought 8. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. xiv + 346 pp. Cloth, $45. Alexandre Tourraix. L'Orient, mirage grec: L'Orient du mythe et de l'épopée. Edited by Evelyne Geny. Paris: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2000. 165 pp. Paper, fi24.39. Professor (...) Tourraix is an optimistic reactionary. He sets out his aim with refreshing clarity. He seeks to challenge "l'orthodoxie provisoirement établie," which denies that the Greeks were "tributaires de la représentation du monde véhiculée par leur langue... indo-européenne." Tourraix accuses the "adepts" of this "orthodoxy" of citing Dumézil when he excluded Greece from the regularity of Indo-European patterns of thought, while they reject his basic trifunctional theory. This, Tourraix insists, is not a "doctrine" or an "ideological credo," but the result of a "rational elaboration" (15-16).Tourraix is not concerned with radical outsiders. He dismisses the whole of Said's Orientalism because of the latter's blunder in referring to the chorus of the Persae as women. He warns that Bernal should not be taken seriously because his works are not founded on a "scientific hypothesis but on ideological presuppositions" (75). Tourraix's opponents are the professional classicists, notably Martin West, Walter Burkert, and Ruth Edwards. These promote the idea of a substantial Southwest Asian influence on Greek civilization but are unconcerned with Egypt. In the terminology of this reviewer, Tourraix's polemic is not against the "Revised Ancient Model" but as a supporter of the "Extreme" version, he opposes the "Broad Aryan Model."Tourraix's two centers of concern are Troy and Thebes. Troy interests him as a marginal entity between Greek and Barbarian. He admits that pottery and Hittite texts indicate that there were Mycenaean influences in the Troad. On the other hand, he rightly points out that Homer Hellenized the Trojans more than evidence from other sources can sustain. It has also been impossible to correlate the Homeric version of the city's fall with the date and scale of the destructions of Troy VI, VIIa, and VIIb. Tourraix therefore follows the hypothesis of Paul Wathelet that the destruction described in the epics was not that of an unimportant settlement on the Dardanelles but was really that of the great Greek city of Thebes, which was undoubtedly destroyed in the thirteenth century B.C.E.This is just one example of Tourraix's general approach, which is not to accept things at face value but to probe more deeply. On the central theme of his [End Page 629] book, he agrees that many Greek myths and legends would suggest "Oriental" connections and origins and that much Greek iconography appears to be "Oriental" or Egyptian (75). But he knows that such symbols were devoid of content (23). Unfortunately for his scientific credentials, however, he frequently has to rely on the words probablement or peut-être to see Indo-European essences behind the Oriental forms (e.g., 22-23).Clearly Tourraix has always been concerned with Indo-European "cultures." He has published extensively on both Greeks and Persians and the relations between them. When looking at Greek culture, he sees three main indicators of "l'héritage indo-européen." The first is language: He takes a Whorfian view of its determining power and is unconcerned that less than 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has known Indo-European cognates. The second indicator is trifunctionalism: Tourraix sees the Indo-European base whenever he encounters a triple. Three, however, is an attractive number to speakers of many languages. The Christian Trinity appears to have originated among Aramaic speakers, and Mesopotamian and Phoenician cities had the same tripartite division of the male inhabitants into citizen, resident alien, and slave that later occurred in the Greek poleis. Thus, besides its vagueness, trifunctionalism is not an... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Athens from Alexander to AntonyArthur M. EcksteinChristian Habicht. Athens from Alexander to Antony. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. ix 1 369 pp. Cloth, $39.95.Among his several areas of expertise in ancient studies, Christian Habicht is one of our profession’s authorities on the history and monuments of Hellenistic Athens; and he is a writer of crystal-clear style in both German and [End Page 646] (...) English. He is thus the ideal candidate to have produced a successor to W. S. Ferguson’s magisterial narrative of post-Classical Athenian history. Ferguson’s Hellenistic Athens (London 1911) is itself a work of great learning and insight, but of course it is terribly out of date because of the vast number of archaeological discoveries at Athens (both of buildings and especially of stone inscriptions) since its publication. Those discoveries, continuing to this day, have been primarily the work of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens—which did not even begin its massive archaeological project in the Agora until some twenty years after the publication of Ferguson’s book. Habicht’s Athens from Alexander to Antony (published in German in 1995) will rank with Ferguson as a milestone in post-Classical Athenian studies. It is a synthesis of all the technical work done by archaeologists and historians (not least Habicht himself) since Ferguson’s day, and it will no doubt be the standard text on Hellenistic Athens for decades to come. Moreover, Habicht’s Athens is not only a work of careful technical expertise, useful for professional scholars; because it is written (and translated) clearly and elegantly, it will also make the newest discoveries and arguments concerning Hellenistic Athens easily accessible to the general public. All in all, it is a splendid achievement, and one could hardly ask for more. (Though in fact I will: see below.)Habicht’s theme is that the struggle of the Greek city-states for political freedom did not end with the victory of Philip II of Macedon at Chaeronea in 338 b.c. It is true that in the world of Macedonian super-states that developed in the wake of the conquests of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great, the individual poleis that had played dominant roles among the Greeks in the Classical age (including Athens) had much less political-military weight, because the scale of politics and of political units was now so much larger. But most city-states (including Athens) “remained viable and vital organisms” (366; cf. 4), capable of inspiring intense traditional patriotism in the elites necessary to run them—even when these poleis were forced to live under the hegemony of a Macedonian king. In the case of Athens specifically, Habicht continually stresses the continuity of institutions, and that this continuity existed because the institutions (Council, Assembly, courts) succeeded in regulating Athenian internal affairs “in an exemplary fashion” (2). It was a situation which the Athenians recognized, and in which they took great pride.But Athens, unlike most other poleis, also had its own imperial past, and so it naturally strove for a long time under often very difficult circumstances to assert not merely local autonomy but its true independence—including freedom of action in foreign relations. Here too one can see the powerful perseverance of the city’s tradition, and the long Athenian struggle for freedom is Habicht’s true theme. Thus he chronicles the energetic military improvements undertaken by the Athenians in the fifteen years after Chaeronea (16–17, 22–24); the serious preparations for war against Alexander the Great in 324 (!) over his decision to deprive Athens of Samos (31–32); the leading role played [End Page 647] by Athens in the Greek rebellion against Macedonian hegemony that followed Alexander’s death (the Lamian War), which ended in defeat and the eventual Macedonian-imposed dictatorship of Demetrius of Phalerum (36–41, 53–66); the successful Athenian self-defense after the city was liberated by Demetrius the Besieger in 307 (74–75); the successful rebellion against Demetrius himself in 287 by “the freedom-loving citizens of Athens” (93), achieved with heavy Athenian casualties in the Piraeus (124... (shrink)

There is no doubt that a person's gender could make a difference to their role in Greek sacrifices. But did it normally make a difference in Greece? And why did it make a difference? Two inscriptions from the island of Thasos neatly illustrate the problem. First, one dated to around 440 and found in the sanctuary of Herakles: [ρα]κλε Θασωι [αγ]α ο θμισ, ο– [δ] χορον οδ γ– [υ]ναικ; θμισ ο– [δ]' νατεεται ο– δ γρα τμνετα– ι (...) οσ' θλται1. (shrink)