In this collection of new essays, an international group of experts explores the significance of reciprocity (the principle and practice of voluntary requital, of benefit for benefit or harm for harm) in ancient Greek culture. Reciprocity has been seen as an important notion for anthropologists studying economic and social relations. A key question has been whether reciprocity constitutes an alternative pattern to the commercial, political, and ethical relationships characteristic of modern Western society. This volume takes the question forward in connection with Greek culture from Homer to the Hellenistic period. Building on previous research on this topic (especially on Homeric society), it provides a wide-ranging examination of reciprocity inGreek epic and drama, historiography, oratory, religion, and ethical philosophy. It asks fundamental questions about the importance of reciprocity in different phases of Greek history, the interplay between reciprocity and the ideology of Athenian democracy, and between reciprocity and altruism in ethical thought. Clear and non-technical, with all Greek translated, this volume will make debate on this important subject available to a wide circle of readers in classical, literary, anthropological, and historical studies.

This book introduces the general reader, as well as the student of Classics, to one of the masterpieces of European literature, the Iliad of Homer, in the English translation of Richmond Lattimore. It offers the background that readers need to understand the poem's detail of story and characters, and it provides a step-by-step guide to the story's unravelling and to the literary features which have ensured its enduring popularity since its composition in 750 BC. The edition is designed specifically for the reader who has neither any previous knowledge of Greek nor of Homer and approaches the poem as a literary text, seeking to identify the poet's techniques and to assess their effects. It can be used both as a continous reading alongside Lattimore's (or any other) translation and as a reference work for specific points of textual understanding or interpretation. There is a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography and a guide to further reading.