This volume in The Edinburgh Leventis Studies series collects the papers presented at the sixth A. G. Leventis conference organised under the auspices of the Department of Classics at the University of Edinburgh. As with earlier volumes, it engages with new research and new approaches to the Greek past, and brings the fruits of that research to a wider audience. Although Greek historians were fundamental in the enterprise of preserving the memory of great deeds in antiquity, they were not alone in their interest in the past. The Greeks themselves, quite apart from their historians and in a variety of non-historiographical media, were constantly creating pasts for themselves that answered to the needs - political, social, moral and even religious - of their society. In this volume eighteen scholars discuss the variety of ways in which the Greeks constructed de-constructed, engaged with, alluded to, and relied on their pasts whether it was in the poetry of Homer, in the victory odes of Pindar, in tragedy and comedy on the Athenian stage, in their pictorial art, in their political assemblies, or in their religious practices. What emerges is a comprehensive overview of the importance of and presence of the past at every level of Greek society.
In the final chapter the three discussants present at the conference (Simon Goldhill, Christopher Pelling and Suzanne Said) survey the contributions to the volume, summarise its overall contributions as well as indicate new directions that further scholarship might follow."

PROFESSOR E. KERR BORTHWICK (1925-2008) studied Classics at Aberdeen University and at Christ's College Cambridge before being appointed Lecturer, first at the University of Leeds and then, in 1955, at Edinburgh University, where he remained for the rest of his career. He headed the Greek Department at Edinburgh from 1980 until his retirement in 1989 and was appointed to a Personal Chair in Greek in 1983. Ancient music and Greek drama were the main focuses of E.K. Borthwick's academic output, and he had a particular flair for pinpointing, elucidating, and solving textual difficulties. But his interests ranged much further, as the works collected in this volume demonstrate; and his papers intrigue and entertain where a less lively pen might have made the points at issue seem dry and abstruse. Taken together, his articles constitute a stellar example of what a classicist with professional training as a philologist, an enquiring mind, an exact eye for detail, and the ability to communicate enthusiasm, can achieve in a life's work. The volume opens with Professor Borthwick's inaugural lecture on Homer,`Odyssean Elements in the Iliad' (Edinburgh, 1983). The editor, Dr. Calum Maciver, has then arranged Borthwick's 63 scholarly articles, published between 1959 and 2003, thematically under six headings: Ancient Music, The Pyrrhic Dance, Drama, Zoologica, Ancient Sport, Miscellanea. The volume includes a consolidated bibliography of all works cited, a general index, an index of Greek words, and an index locorum. A selection of the titles under each of the headings indicates the range and variety of Kerr Borthwick's scholarship: Ancient Music: - a Neglected Technical Term in Greek Music Notes on the Plutarch De Musica and the Cheiron of Pherecrates `Music While You Work'in Philodemus De Musica, The Pyrrhic Dance: Trojan Leap and Pyrrhic Dance in Euripides' Andromache The Dances of Philocleon and the Sons of Carcinus in Aristophanes'Wasps P. Oxy. 2738: Athena and the Pyrrhic Dance; Drama: Two Scenes of Combat in Euripides A Phyllobolia in Aristophanes'Clouds? Euripides Erotodidaskalos? A Note on Aristophanes Frogs 957 Zoologica: A Grasshopper's Diet- Notes on an Epigram of Meleager and a Fragment of Eubulus Limed Reeds in Theocritus, Aristophanes, and Propertius Seeing Weasels: The Superstitious Background of the Empusa Scene in the Frogs Starting a Hare: A Note on Machon, Fr. 15 Bee Imagery in Plutarch Bees and Drones in Aristophanes, Aelian and Euripides Ancient Sport: The Gymnasium of Bromius- a Note on Dionysius Chalcus, Fr. 3 Death of a Fighting Cock The Cynic and the Statue Miscellanea: Notes on"The Superstitious Man" of Theophrastus Dio Chrysostom on the Mob at Alexandria The Scene on the Panagjurischte Amphora: A New Solution A Note on Some Unusual Greek Words for Eyes Aristophanes and Agathon: A Contrast in Hair Styles A`Not Too Severe' Epigram of Gaetulicus Socrates, Socratics, and the Word