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What happened to fifth-century theatrical costumes and properties after their initial production? This paper surveys the textual evidence of a market for theatrical materials in fifth-century Athens and sketches out some of the practicalities and ramifications of such an exchange. Specifically, it considers how the theatrical reuse of tragic equipment from past performances—what Marvin Carlson (2001) has labeled “ghosting”— would have constituted a unique form of paratragedy which could claim not only semiotic reference to, but also phenomenological identity with, the parodied model.

The satyr dramas of fifth-century Athens share many features with their better-known theatrical counterparts, tragedy and comedy. In the use of costume and stage properties, however, satyr drama exhibits a distinct approach that stems from the form’s most essential attribute: its chorus of half-human, half-equine satyrs.

For somewhat obvious reasons theorists of tragic effect often privilege spectacle when analyzing what constitutes its complex aesthetics, but it alone cannot account for all of the conflicting sensations generated onstage and induced in the audience. Although an emphasis on other senses may be expected in the plays that center on the blind Oedipus (especially in Oedipus at Colonus), my paper focuses instead on Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Electra and Orestes.

The urn in Sophocles’ Electra may be the most affectively fraught object in Greek tragedy, but it is also presents an epistemological question: what truth can objects convey? Electra’s lament over the urn that she believes to contain the ashes of her dead brother – but the audience knows to be empty – confronts viewers, onstage and off, with a troubling conjunction of genuine emotion and acknowledged falsehood.

“Ashes … annihilate or threaten to annihilate even the possibility of testifying to annihilation itself.” (Derrida 2000:183)

In this paper I investigate the reception of Plato’s Phaedrus, and especially the famous myth of the soul ( Phaedrus 246-249)from the 1^st to 6^th centuries CE. I analyze the phenomenon of this text’s migration into exegetical or speculative traditions or even languages far removed from the original site of Plato’s dialogue in terms of the theory of textual networking.

Subject Matter

In the fourth century CE, the extremely learned Didymus of Alexandria, also known as Didymus the Blind, the director of the Didaskaleion of Alexandria, wrote the first commentary – unfortunately lost – on Origen’s masterpiece of Christian Platonism, On First Principles (Περὶ ἀρχῶν), thereby conferring to Origen’s treatise the same status enjoyed by Plato’s dialogues.

Often used as a supporting text for understanding Neoplatonic hermeneutical
practices, the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy has received little
attention in its own right. In this short text the anonym offers an enriching portrait of the
life of Plato and Platonic philosophy, arguing for Plato’s mastery over all other schools of
thought while further defending Plato’s artful choice of presenting philosophy in dialogue
form. In doing so, this anonymous author answers many important questions that saddle

As head of the Platonic school in Alexandria in the middle of the 6th Century AD, Olympiodorus is often viewed as a conserver of ancient learning in an environment which had become less and less congenial to it. Such conservation efforts, however, called for considerable creativity, since the tradition in which Olympiodorus saw himself was not monolithic. The genre of the commentary allows Olympiodorus to strengthen the Platonic tradition by weaving together different voices of his predecessors.