Situating a Lost Greek Historian: The Works and Days of Hippias of Erythrae
By Matthew Simonton
I propose a historical context for the fragmentary historian Hippias of Erythrae by identifying an allusion in his text to a famous honorary decree of Athens from the late fourth century BCE. By linking Hippias’ historical project to the wider circumstances of the decree, I illuminate the ways in which local historiography could serve the ends of an author and his community while maintaining connections with broader political trends.
Thucydides’ History and the Myth of the Athenian Tyrannicides
By Sarah Miller Esposito
In his proem, Thucydides blames both the tellers and the hearers of history for perpetuating errors: while carelessness and apathy perpetuate even innocuous mistakes, the exaggerations of poets and the flattery of logographers are aimed at their audiences’ desire for grandeur, gratification, and affirmation (1.20-1.21).
Pausanias, the Serpent Column, and the Persian-War Tradition
By David Yates
Within a few years of the Greek victory at Plataea the most conspicuous monument to the Persian Wars, the Serpent Column at Delphi, was quite literally rewritten. Its dedicatory inscription had originally attributed the victory to the Spartan Pausanias, the supreme Greek commander at Plataea and the man charged with overseeing the construction of the monument: “When the leader of the Hellenes destroyed the army of the Medes, / He, Pausanias, dedicated this monument to Phoebus” (Thuc. 1.132.2). Reaction was swift and negative.
From Resolving Stasis to Ruling Sicily: Herodotus on the Hereditary Priesthood of the Chthonic Goddesses
By Virginia M. Lewis
At the beginning of Herodotus’ account of the Greek embassy’s visit to Gelon (7.153-164), Herodotus tells how Telines, the ancestor of Gelon and the Deinomenid tyrants, secured the priesthood of the Chthonic goddesses for his descendants: when a stasis broke out in Gela, Telines led the defeated faction back to the city taking with him only the ἱρά of the goddesses (and no manpower) for protection. He restored the exiles to the city on the condition that his descendants would be the ἱροφάνται of the goddesses.
Hippokleides, Dirty Dancing, and the Panathenaia
By Brian M. Lavelle
Renowned for dancing away his marriage, Hippokleides is an intriguing, but obscure figure in early Athenian history. There are only two testimonia about him. He was archon when the Greater Panathenaia was established in 566 BCE (Euseb. Chron. 102a-b Helm; Pherykydes FrGrHist 3 F 2), a fact that has been taken to imply his connection to the festival. And of course he stars in Herodotos’ famous “marriage of Agariste” tale (6.126-30) until his disreputable dancing undoes him at the exact moment of triumph.