THE SUCCESSION TO THE SPARTAN KINGSHIP, 520–400 BC

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
BRENDA GRIFFITH-WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Formal Procedure ◽  
Fixed Order

Abstract According to ancient Greek historiographers, succession to the Spartan kingship in the sixth and fifth centuries BC followed a fixed order based on the principle of male primogeniture. A king who left no son was succeeded by his oldest surviving brother or closest collateral kinsman. If the deceased king left only a daughter, his male heir was probably expected to secure the succession by marrying her; and, if the new king already had sons by a previous wife, it is possible that they were excluded from the succession in favour of his sons by the deceased king's daughter. At least by the fifth century, Sparta had a formal procedure for the adjudication of a contested succession, or the deposition of a reigning king who was found not to be a legitimate descendant of Heracles. It may be that physical or mental incapacity could also disqualify a contender from the kingship.

Patterns of Politics in Ancient Greek Athletics

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-123
Author(s):  
Panos Valavanis
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Political Capital ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Elite Status ◽  
The Status ◽  
Group A ◽  
Chariot Racing

Greek athletics were of high political significance in view of their place in religion and communal festivals. This is reviewed in terms of votive offerings; the status of a group, a ruler, or an individual within a community; interstate rivalries, colonization and state formation; elite status, kudos, and political capital, especially in chariot-racing. The examples of Cleisthenes of Sikyon and the Alcmaeonids of Athens, among others, are discussed. The rivalry of Athens and Sparta in athletics and chariot events is also examined, e.g. the cases of the Spartans Lichas, Cynisca, and Agesilaus, and the Athenian Alcibiades. The participation of ‘peripheral’ Greek cities (Italy, Sicily, Cyrene) in Panhellenic games bolstered their Greek identity and served their rulers too. Macedonian rulers, e.g. Alexander I, Philip II and Alexander the Great, notably took part in Greek games for the fifth century on, and so asserted their Greek identity and their domain. The Panathenaic Games served political aims not only for Athenian elite, but also for Ptolemies and Macedonians.

‘Do you Think you’re Clever? Solve this Riddle, then!’ The Comic Side of Byzantine Enigmatic Poetry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Beta
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Old Comedy ◽  
The Many

‘Comic’ is not an adjective one would normally use in connection with or ancient Greek Byzantine riddles. Yet Greek riddles began to show their comic side after the fifth century BCE, when they became typical sympotic pastimes. At some point, ainigmata turned into griphoi and, according to the definition given by the Peripatetic philosopher Clearchus of Soli, became a ‘a problem put in jest’. The comicality we see in in the many griphoi Athenaeus took from Attic comedy in the tenth book of the Deipnosophists is more evident, and less dangerous; and it is generally agreed that such drollery is mostly absent from Byzantine riddles. A survey shows how the unknown Byzantine authors who took pleasure in composing these little conundrums were even able, in some circumstances, to jest with Holy Scripture and to linger on topics more suitable for Old Comedy.

Urban Patterns in the Greek Period: Athens, Paestum, Morgantina, Miletus/Priene, and Pergamon as Formal Types

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora P. Crouch
Keyword(s):  
General Rule ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Period 2 ◽  
Urban Patterns ◽  
Residential Quarters ◽  
The Impact

In order to assess the impact of the delivery and drainage of water on the urban pattern in the ancient Greek world, it is necessary to have clear ideas of what forms their cities took. Thus a brief discussion of urban patterns will be useful. Traditional descriptions of ancient Greek cities characterize them by typical street patterns, usually two major types: the Hippodamean grid of Miletus of the fifth century, and the terraces like the blades of a fan found at Pergamon of the late third and second centuries, called “scenographic urbanism.” Yet a more careful examination of the evidence suggests that for different centuries B.C., there are many more urban types than two. Examples standing for both the repertory of physical patterns and the changes in those patterns over time that we may cite are: 1. 7th century B.C.—Akragas (frontispiece): irregular hill-top site of the archaic period 2. 6th century—Paestum (Fig. 5.IB): “bar and stripes” 3. 5th century—Athens (Fig. 5.1A): organic, focused on central acropolis and agora, similar to Akragas pattern 4. 5th century—Morgantina (Fig. 5.1C): typical West Greek pattern of two flat hills with residential quarters grid platted and lower agora between them 5. 4th and 3rd centuries—Priene (Fig. 51.D): based on prototype grid at Miletus (early 5th century—Fig. 22.4) and refinement of grid as used at Rhodes (mid to late 5th century—Fig. 8.3), an adaption of Hippodamean regularity to a small plateau 6. 3rd and 2nd centuries—Pergamon (Fig. 5.1E): scenographic urbanism, with wedge-shaped terraces It is difficult to classify urban plans solely by pattern or by century. This is because the changes did not go together in any simple fashion. Inspection of the street patterns of ancient Greek cities, and the relation of those patterns to the sites, allows them to be classified into five basic types, which for easy remembrance I name after representative cities of each type: 1. Athens-type. A general rule for cities of a[n ancient] culture states that “the capital city is unlike the others in form.” Athens, a seemingly formless, organic city, is quite unlike the well-regulated cities (many of them colonies) of the other types.

UNE SCIENCE ATHÈNIENNE DE LA NATURE. LA PROMESSE ET LE TESTAMENT D’ANAXAGORE

Méthexis ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-43
Author(s):  
ARNAUD MACÈ
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Divine Mind

Anaxagoras brought to Athens the hope that becoming, despite the tradition of the Eleatic school, might still be intelligible, not only because he sees it as the effect of an order crafted by a divine mind, but also because he opposes the Parmenidean claim that there is no point in trying to know the ϕύσις (i.e. essence) of things that need to grow (ϕύεσθαι). Anaxagoras finds in the growth (ϕύεσθαι) of vegetais a principle of identity that makes becoming intelligible. Using parts of animals to which ancient Greek also applies the same verb (we grow flesh, nails and hair), Anaxagoras extends the consistency of vegetal becoming to all beings, all of them now coming from seeds. The essence (ϕύσις) of things, can now be explained through its origins -that from which it grows (ϕύεσθαι). The new philosophical fifth century meaning of ϕύσις, as origin, could have stemmed from such a new impulse to inquire about the seeds of all things.

scholarly journals The Diorisis Ancient Greek Corpus

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Vatri ◽  
B. McGillivray
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Digital Libraries ◽  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Computer Programme ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Digital Collection ◽  
Linguistic Analyses

The Diorisis Ancient Greek Corpus is a digital collection of ancient Greek texts (from Homer to the early fifth century ad) compiled for linguistic analyses, and specifically with the purpose of developing a computational model of semantic change in Ancient Greek. The corpus consists of 820 texts sourced from open access digital libraries. The texts have been automatically enriched with morphological information for each word. The automatic assignment of words to the correct dictionary entry (lemmatization) has been disambiguated with the implementation of a part-of-speech tagger (a computer programme that may select the part of speech to which an ambiguous word belongs).

LYKOPHRON AND EPIGRAPHY: THE VALUE AND FUNCTION OF CULT EPITHETS IN THEALEXANDRA

2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Local Origin ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Function

The subject of this paper is a striking and unavoidable feature of theAlexandra: Lykophron's habit of referring to single gods not by their usual names, but by multiple lists of epithets piled up in asyndeton. This phenomenon first occurs early in the 1474-line poem, and this occurrence will serve as an illustration. At 152–3, Demeter has five descriptors in a row: Ἐνναία ποτὲ | Ἕρκυνν' Ἐρινὺς Θουρία Ξιφηφόρος, ‘Ennaian … Herkynna, Erinys, Thouria, Sword-bearing’. In the footnote I give the probable explanations of these epithets. Although in this sample the explanations to most of the epithets are not to be found in inscriptions, my main aim in what follows will be to emphasize the relevance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscurity of Lykophron. In this paper, I ask why the poet accumulates divine epithets in this special way. I also ask whether the information provided by the ancient scholiasts, about the local origin of the epithets, is of good quality and of value to the historian of religion. This will mean checking some of that information against the evidence of inscriptions, beginning with Linear B. It will be argued that it stands up very well to such a check. TheAlexandrahas enjoyed remarkable recent vogue, but this attention has come mainly from the literary side. Historians, in particular historians of religion, and students of myths relating to colonial identity, have been much less ready to exploit the intricate detail of the poem, although it has so much to offer in these respects. The present article is, then, intended primarily as a contribution to the elucidation of a difficult literary text, and to the history of ancient Greek religion. Despite the article's main title, there will, as the subtitle is intended to make clear, be no attempt to gather and assess all the many passages in Lykophron to which inscriptions are relevant. There will, for example, be no discussion of 1141–74 and the early Hellenistic ‘Lokrian Maidens inscription’ (IG9.12706); or of the light thrown on 599 by the inscribed potsherds carrying dedications to Diomedes, recently found on the tiny island of Palagruza in the Adriatic, and beginning as early as the fifth centuryb.c.(SEG48.692bis–694); or of 733–4 and their relation to the fifth-centuryb.c.Athenian decree (n. 127) mentioning Diotimos, the general who founded a torch race at Naples, according to Lykophron; or of 570–85 and the epigraphically attested Archegesion or cult building of Anios on Delos, which shows that this strange founder king with three magical daughters was a figure of historical cult as well as of myth.

The Body of Western Embodiment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The Relationship

Much of western philosophy, especially ancient Greek philosophy, addresses the problems posed by embodiment. This chapter argues that to grasp the early history of embodiment is to see the category of the body itself as historically emergent. Bruno Snell argued that Homer lacked a concept of the body (sōma), but it is the emergence of body in the fifth century BCE rather than the appearance of mind or soul that is most consequential for the shape of ancient dualisms. The body takes shape in Hippocratic medical writing as largely hidden and unconscious interior space governed by impersonal forces. But Plato’s corpus demonstrates that while Plato’s reputation as a somatophobe is well grounded and may arise in part from the way the body takes shape in medical and other physiological writing, the Dialogues represent a more complex position on the relationship between body and soul than Plato’s reputation suggests.

Therapy of the word and other psychotherapeutic approaches in Ancient Greek medicine

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 741-752
Author(s):  
Chiara Thumiger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological State ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Medicine ◽  
Pharmaceutical Substances ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Greek Medicine ◽  
Systematic Knowledge

One of the most distinctive aspects of contemporary psychiatry is its firm grounding in a neurological and biochemical framework for the interpretation of mental life and its disturbances. In the absence of any strong neurological understanding or systematic knowledge of active pharmaceutical substances, one might expect that early ancient medicine readily resorted to non-somatic approaches to healing mental suffering. Instead, what is usually labelled “therapy of the word” and other forms of what one may call psychotherapy emerge relatively late in Greek medicine, only in the first centuries of our era. This paper provides an overview and analysis of this development in ancient history of psychology, philosophy and medicine, covering a broad period of time from the fifth century BCE to the end of the late-antique period, the fifth century CE. The focus is on the very idea (or lack thereof) of the curability of mental disturbance, and on the particular branch of therapeutics which addresses the psychological and existential condition of the patient, rather than his or her physiological state.

scholarly journals The Story of Dr Stella (1927-2006)

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-128
Author(s):  
Richard Van Praagh
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Surgical Repair ◽  
Venous Drainage ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Septal Defects ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First Time ◽  
Survival Of The Fittest ◽  
Heterotaxy Syndromes

A life of professional caring, research, teaching, and inspiration—this is the legacy of Dr Stella Zacharioudaki Van Praagh, MD. Among her many outstanding contributions, only a few are recorded here: (1) a new surgical operation for closing apical muscular ventricular septal defects, (2) a newly discovered form of anomalous pulmonary venous drainage and its surgical repair, (3) a new understanding of sinus venosus defects and their surgical repair, (4) the realization that the concept of atrial-level isomerism (mirror-imagery) in the heterotaxy syndromes of asplenia, polysplenia, and single right-sided spleen is erroneous, (5) the understanding that it is possible to diagnose the atrial situs in the majority of cases of the heterotaxy syndromes, and (6) the fact that the concepts of evolution, natural selection, and survival of the fittest were described by Empedocles, an ancient Greek philosopher, in the fifth century bc, and that these concepts were not discovered and published for the first time by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in the 19th century (1858 ad). Dr Stella was conversant with ancient Greek and read it frequently in an ancient Greek study group that she headed. Dr Stella translated from ancient Greek into English a portion of Aristotle’s The Physics in which Empedocles’ understanding is cited at length. There is no doubt about what Empedocles thought.

SEEKING ADVICE FROM ZEUS AT DODONA

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Parker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Greek Life ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Important Evidence

The consultation of fixed oracles was a central and well-documented feature of ancient Greek life; Greece ought therefore to be able to contribute important evidence to anyone interested in the function of divination in different cultures. But, although no oracle is more famous than that of Apollo at Delphi, so many central questions about its operations are unanswerable that it provides a very shaky basis for comparison. A few points are secure: not only individuals but also states put enquiries to the oracle; and public enquiries related to matters of religious practice and cult, but also on occasion to colonizing projects, alliances, or declarations of war. Beyond these generalities, however, almost everything is contestable. Even the statement just made about public enquiries requires some hedging. On matters of cult they certainly never ceased: in a religion without revelation and specialized religious institutions, the direct access to divine will supposedly provided by the oracle was indispensable to authorize change, or to suggest ritual remedies in a time of crisis such as plague. But the extent to which public enquiries on military and political matters continued to be made after the fifth century is very uncertain.

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