This multiauthored volume, as well as bringing into clearer focus the notion of drama and oratory as important media of public inquiry and critique, aims to generate significant attention to the unified intentions of the dramatist and the orator to establish favourable conditions of internal stability in democratic Athens. We hope that readers both enjoy and find valuable their engagement with these ideas and beliefs regarding the indissoluble bond between oratorical expertise and dramatic artistry. This exciting collection of studies by worldwide acclaimed classicists and acute younger Hellenists is envisaged as part of the general effort, almost unanimously acknowledged as valid and productive, to explore the impact of formalized speech in particular and craftsmanship rhetoric in general upon Attic drama as a moral and educational force in the Athenian city-state. Both poet and orator seek to deepen the central tensions of their work and to enlarge the main themes of their texts to even broader terms by investing in the art of rhetoric, whilst at the same time, through a skillful handling of events, evaluating the past and establishing standards or ideology.

This volume is an accessible yet in-depth narratological study of Euripides' Alcestis - the earliest extant play of Euripides and one of the most experimental masterpieces of Greek tragedy, not only standing in place of a satyr-play but also preserving at least some of its typical features. Commencing from the widely-held view, so lamentably ignored within the domain of Classics, that a narratology of drama should be predicated upon the notion of narrative as verbal, as well as visual, rendition of a story, this unique volume contextualizes the play in terms of its reception by the original audience, locating the intricate narrative tropes of the plot in the dynamics of fifth-century Athenian mythology and religion.

The fact that aspects of witnesses and evidence put them in the centre of the institutional and cultural (e.g. religious, literary) construction of ancient societies indicates that it is important to keep offering nuanced approaches to the topic of this volume. To advance knowledge of the processes of presenting witnesses and gathering, or constructing, evidence is, in fact, to better and more fully understand the ways in which deliberative Athenian democracy functions, what the core elements of political life and civic identity are, and how they relate to the system of using logos to make decisions. For, witnesses and evidence were important prerequisites of getting the Athenian citizenship and exerting the civic/political identity as a member of the community. It is important, therefore, all the matters that relate to information-gathering and decision-making to be examined anew. Emphasis can be placed on a variety of genres to allow scholars recreate the fullest and clearest possible image about the witnessing and evidencing in antiquity. Chapters in this volume include considerations of social, political, literary, and moral theory, alongside studies of the impact of information-gathering and decision-making in oratory and drama, with a steady focus on the application of key ideas and values in social and political justice to issues of pressing ethical concern.

In the wake of recent advances in the treatment of longstanding problems pertaining to the interpretation of Homeric poetry, this volume brings together cutting-edge research from a cohort of acclaimed scholars on Homer and the Homeric Hymns. The variety of topics covered spans the entire field of Homeric philology: the methods and solutions provided for a new edition of the Odyssey, the puzzle of the relation between the festival of the Panathenaea and the Homeric text, the disclosure of the meaning of notorious cruces pertaining to arcane formulas, the two emblematic heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles and Odysseus, Homeric poetics, the range and use of repetition in a traditional medium, the composition of the Homeric epics, the Apologoi and 'Cyclic' Narrative, as well as the Homeric Hymns to Hermes and Aphrodite.

This volume explores the relationships between masterworks of Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes and critical events of Athenian history, by bringing together internationally distinguished scholars with expertise on different aspects of ancient theatre. These specialists study how tragic and comic plays composed in late fifth century BCE mirror the acute political and social crisis unfolding in Athens in the wake of the military catastrophe in 413 BCE and the oligarchic revolution in 411 BCE. With events of such magnitude the late fifth century held the potential for vast and fast cultural and intellectual change. In times of severe emergency humans gain a more conscious understanding of their historically shaped presence; this realization often has a welcome effect of offering new perspectives to tackle future challenges. Over twenty academic experts believe that the Attic theatre showed increased responsiveness to the pressing social and political issues of the day to the benefit of the polis. By regularly promoting examples of public-spirited and capable figures of authority, Greek drama provided the people of Athens with a civic understanding of their own good.

This book aims to offer a contemporary literary interpretation of the play, including a readable discussion of its underlying historical, religious, moral, social, and mythical issues. Also, it discusses the most recent interpretative scholarship on the play, the main intertextual affiliations with earlier Thebes-related tragedies, especially focusing on Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus, and the literature and performance reception of the play; it contains an up-to-date bibliography and detailed indices. Thebook won the Academy of Athens Great Award for the Best Monograph in Classical Philology for 2008.

This collection of essays, published in honour of Professor Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos, addresses topics which lie at the forefront of current research on the fields of Greek drama and classical reception studies. It brings together internationally distinguished scholars who provide fresh insights into issues pertaining to the origins of Greek tragedy and comedy, their generic identity, the structure, the morality or the divine and human characters emerging from individual plays, the presence of Greek drama outside Athens in post-classical times, the associations between drama and genres such as epic and oratory or even the reception of Greek drama in operatic works such as Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Related art forms, such as music, receive particular attention. Focusing on either broader topics or specific texts, the essays of this volume provide a wide range of theoretical perspectives often combining modern critical trends such as reception studies, narratology or cultural studies with close and acute readings of individual passages. The volume is of particular interest to scholars and students of Greek drama and its reception as well as to anyone interested in Greek culture and its various manifestations.

This study of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus demonstrates the applicability of narrative models to drama. It presents a major contribution not only to Sophoclean criticism but to dramatic criticism as a whole. For the first time, the methods of contemporary narrative theory are thoroughly applied to the text of a single major play. Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is presented as a uniquely rich text, which deftly uses the figure and history of the blind Oedipus to explore and thematize some of the basic narratological concerns of Greek tragedy: the relation between the narrow here-and-now of visible stage action and the many off-stage worlds that have to be mediated into it through narrative, including the past, the future, other dramatizations of the myth, and the world of the fifth-century audience.

In the wake of recent advances in the treatment of longstanding problems pertaining to the interpretation of Homeric poetry, this volume brings together cutting-edge research from a cohort of acclaimed scholars on Homer and the Homeric Hymns. The variety of topics covered spans the entire field of Homeric philology: the methods and solutions provided for a new edition of the Odyssey, the puzzle of the relation between the festival of the Panathenaea and the Homeric text, the disclosure of the meaning of notorious cruces pertaining to arcane formulas, the two emblematic heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles and Odysseus, Homeric poetics, the range and use of repetition in a traditional medium, the composition of the Homeric epics, the Apologoi and 'Cyclic' Narrative, as well as the Homeric Hymns to Hermes and Aphrodite.

This multiauthored volume, as well as bringing into clearer focus the notion of drama and oratory as important media of public inquiry and critique, aims to generate significant attention to the unified intentions of the dramatist and the orator to establish favourable conditions of internal stability in democratic Athens. We hope that readers both enjoy and find valuable their engagement with these ideas and beliefs regarding the indissoluble bond between oratorical expertise and dramatic artistry. This exciting collection of studies by worldwide acclaimed classicists and acute younger Hellenists is envisaged as part of the general effort, almost unanimously acknowledged as valid and productive, to explore the impact of formalized speech in particular and craftsmanship rhetoric in general upon Attic drama as a moral and educational force in the Athenian city-state. Both poet and orator seek to deepen the central tensions of their work and to enlarge the main themes of their texts to even broader terms by investing in the art of rhetoric, whilst at the same time, through a skillful handling of events, evaluating the past and establishing standards or ideology.