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Journal articles on the topic 'Greek literature'

Author: Grafiati
Published: 4 June 2021
Last updated: 15 June 2025

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1

Masarwah, Nader. "Greek folklore: a literature sourc." Journal of Language and Literature 5, no. 2 (2014): 117–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.7813/jee.2014/5-2/18.

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2

Masarwah, Nader. "Greek folklore: a literature source." Journal of Language and Literature 5, no. 2 (2014): 117–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.7813/jll.2014/5-2/17.

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3

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 68, no. 2 (2021): 294–300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383521000085.

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When I reviewed Daniel Harris-McCoy's text, translation and commentary on Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (G&R 60 [2013], 318–19), I never dreamed that eight years later I would be reviewing two more books on Artemidorus – or, rather, a co-ordinated pair of them. It would be an uncharitable joke to describe Harris-McCoy's translation as a nightmare: even so, I was not alone among reviewers in judging it unidiomatic and often defective. Martin Hammond's characteristically fluent, lucid, and (importantly) accurate translation is supplied with notes on the Greek text and an outstandingly useful sixty-two-page index; Peter Thonemann contributes an informative introduction and explanatory notes on the content.
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4

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 68, no. 1 (2021): 114–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383520000285.

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I begin with a warm welcome for Evangelos Alexiou's Greek Rhetoric of the 4th Century bc, a ‘revised and slightly abbreviated’ version of the modern Greek edition published in 2016 (ix). Though the volume's title points to a primary focus on the fourth century, sufficient attention is given to the late fifth and early third centuries to provide context. As ‘rhetoric’ in the title indicates, the book's scope is not limited to oratory: Chapter 1 outlines the development of a rhetorical culture; Chapter 2 introduces theoretical debates about rhetoric (Plato, Isocrates, Alcidamas); and Chapter 3 deals with rhetorical handbooks (Anaximenes, Aristotle, and the theoretical precepts embedded in Isocrates). Oratory comes to the fore in Chapter 4, which introduces the ‘canon’ of ten Attic orators: in keeping with the fourth-century focus, Antiphon, Andocides, and Lysias receive no more than sporadic attention; conversely, extra-canonical fourth-century orators (Apollodorus, the author of Against Neaera, Hegesippus, and Demades) receive limited coverage. The remaining chapters deal with the seven major canonical orators: Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Isaeus, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. Each chapter follows the same basic pattern: life, work, speeches, style, transmission of text and reception. Isocrates and Demosthenes have additional sections on research trends and on, respectively, Isocratean ideology and issues of authenticity in the Demosthenic corpus. In the case of Isaeus, there is a brief discussion of contract oratory; Lycurgus is introduced as ‘the relentless prosecutor’. Generous extracts from primary sources are provided, in Greek and in English translation; small-type sections signal a level of detail that some readers may wish to pass over. The footnotes provide extensive references to older as well as more recent scholarship. The thirty-page bibliography is organized by chapter (a helpful arrangement in a book of this kind, despite the resulting repetition); the footnotes supply some additional references. Bibliographical supplements to the original edition have been supplied ‘only in isolated cases’ (ix). In short, this volume is a thorough, well-conceived, and organized synthesis that will be recognized, without doubt, as a landmark contribution. There are, inevitably, potential points of contention. The volume's subtitle, ‘the elixir of democracy and individuality’, ties rhetoric more closely to democracy and to Athens than is warranted: the precarious balancing act which acknowledges that rhetoric ‘has never been divorced from human activity’ while insisting that ‘its vital political space was the democracy of city-states’ (ix–x) seems to me untenable. Alexiou acknowledges that ‘the gift of speaking well, natural eloquence, was considered a virtue already by Homer's era’ (ix), and that ‘the natural gift of speaking well was considered a virtue’ (1). But the repeated insistence on natural eloquence is perplexing. Phoenix, in the embassy scene in Iliad 9, makes it clear that his remit included the teaching of eloquence (Il. 9.442, διδασκέμεναι): Alexiou only quotes the following line, which he mistakenly assigns to Book 10. (The only other typo that I noticed was ‘Aritsotle’ [97]. I, too, have a tendency to mistype the Stagirite's name, though my own automatic transposition is, alas, embarrassingly scatological.) Alexiou provides examples of later Greek assessments of fourth-century orators, including (for example) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes, and the author of On Sublimity (the reluctance to commit to the ‘pseudo’ prefix is my, not Alexiou's, reservation). He observes cryptically that ‘we are aware of Didymus’ commentary’ (245); but the extensive late ancient scholia, which contain material from Menander's Demosthenic commentaries, disappointingly evoke no sign of awareness.
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5

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 69, no. 1 (2022): 135–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383521000280.

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The influence of Greek poetry on Latin poetry is well known. Why, then, is the reciprocal influence of Latin poetry on Greek not so readily discernible? What does that reveal about Greek–Latin bilingualism and biculturalism? Perhaps not very much. The evidence that Daniel Jolowicz surveys in the densely written 34-page introduction to his 400-page Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novel amply testifies to Greek engagement with Latin language and culture on a larger scale than is usually recognized. That this engagement is more readily discernible in Greek novels than in Greek poetry is no reason to dismiss the evidence that the novels provide. On the contrary, the seven main chapters provide ‘readings of the Greek novels that establish Latin poetry…as an essential frame of reference’ (2). In Chapters 1–3 Chariton engages with the love elegy of Propertius, Ovid and Tibullus, with Ovid's epistolary poetry and the poetry of exile, and with the Aeneid. In Chapters 4–5 Achilles Tatius engages with Latin elegy and (again) the Aeneid, and also with the ‘destruction of bodies’ (221) in Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca. In Chapter 7 Longus engages with Virgil's Eclogues and the Aeneid. The strength of the evidence requires only a brief conclusion. Jolowicz's rigorously argued and methodologically convincing monograph deserves to be read widely, and with close attention.
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6

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 69, no. 2 (2022): 307–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383522000080.

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Lucian figured twice in the previous set of reviews, for better (Peter Thonemann's scintillating Alexander, or the False Prophet) and for worse (a posthumous completion of Diskin Clay's True History marred by a slew of editorial errors). Now Joel Relihan has furnished us with a trilogy of Menippean fantasies: Menippus, or The Consultation of the Corpses; Icaromenippus, or A Man above the Clouds; and The Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead). Relihan's brief reflective Foreword reminds us that his deep and long-cultivated knowledge of the tradition of Menippean satire extends well beyond the Lucian of the second century. A slightly longer General Introduction explains the specific goals and general principles of Relihan's translation. Then each of the three Lucianic texts is given its own (longer and illuminating) introduction, with footnotes providing a modest commentary. It soon becomes clear that Relihan's ideal interlocutor is not Lucian but Menippus the Cynic. Lucian's subordinate status becomes even clearer when Relihan makes reference to ‘Lucian's evolving (in fact, ever more constricted) understanding of the potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus the Cynic’ (xiv, my emphasis). Relihan's seven-page Afterword is still more disparaging: ‘Lucian drained the blood out of Menippus’ (156). His conclusion is that ‘Menippus in Lucian is good for telling Menippus stories but, after a while, Menippus needs to be put in his place and left there’ (159). On the assumption that the Menippus in question is not the Cynic but Lucian's Menippean puppet, I concur. And as I worked my way through the thirty vignettes of The Colloquies of the Corpses I realized that I was confronted with an entirely unexpected phenomenon: Lucianic tedium.
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7

Canevaro, Lilah Grace. "Greek literature." Greece and Rome 71, no. 2 (2024): 287–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383524000068.

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In the books reviewed there is a cumulative resistance to the normative discourse, shifting our attention away from the centre and to the margins. This might mean listening to marginalized women, from the poets themselves to characters in poetry, or people today who relate to those female characters’ experiences. It might mean pushing beyond spatial boundaries and encountering dislocation and disjunction in the hazy hinterland of the non-elite. It might mean moving the human to one side, so that nature and the nonhuman can come to the fore (and teach us about what it means to be human, along the way). These books give voice to suppressed groups including women, animals, and the land. They highlight axes of oppression, and give us tools to shift the balance of power: from the language we use to the way we relate to the world around us. And with stories of prophetic horses, sympathetic lions, and pensive pigs, their interpretations – as well as the classical tales they recount – are not to be missed!
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8

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 40, no. 1 (1993): 81–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500022634.

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9

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 40, no. 2 (1993): 221–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500022828.

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10

Hopkinson, N. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 38, no. 1 (1991): 82–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500023020.

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11

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 41, no. 1 (1994): 82–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500023251.

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12

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 41, no. 2 (1994): 220–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500023433.

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13

Hopkinson, N. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 38, no. 2 (1991): 233–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500023639.

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14

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 39, no. 1 (1992): 80–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500024013.

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15

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 39, no. 2 (1992): 216–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500024219.

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16

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 42, no. 1 (1995): 79–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500025274.

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17

Van Wees, Hans. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 42, no. 1 (1995): 88–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500025298.

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18

March, Jenny. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 42, no. 2 (1995): 221–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500025675.

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19

Halliwell, Stephen. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 46, no. 1 (1999): 80–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500026115.

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20

Rutherford, R. B. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 34, no. 1 (1987): 86–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s001738350002773x.

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21

Rutherford, R. B. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 34, no. 2 (1987): 214–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500028163.

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22

Rutherford, R. B. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 35, no. 1 (1988): 89–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500028813.

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23

Hopkinson, N. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 37, no. 2 (1990): 232–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500029004.

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24

Rutherford, R. B. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 36, no. 1 (1989): 95–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500029399.

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25

Hopkinson, N. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 37, no. 1 (1990): 101–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500029600.

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26

Rutherford, R. B. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 36, no. 2 (1989): 230–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500029818.

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27

Parker, Robert. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 33, no. 1 (1986): 85–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500029995.

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28

Parker, Robert. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 32, no. 1 (1985): 84–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500030163.

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29

Parker, Robert. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 33, no. 2 (1986): 203–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500030369.

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30

Parker, Robert. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 32, no. 2 (1985): 209–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500030539.

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31

Rutherford, R. B. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 35, no. 2 (1988): 203–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500033131.

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32

Halliwell, Stephen. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 45, no. 2 (1998): 235–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383500033775.

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33

HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 53, no. 1 (2006): 110–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383506000076.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 53, no. 2 (2006): 252–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383506000313.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 54, no. 1 (2007): 111–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383507000071.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 54, no. 2 (2007): 254–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383507000186.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 55, no. 1 (2008): 111–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383507000344.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 55, no. 2 (2008): 274–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383508000570.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 56, no. 1 (2009): 97–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383508000715.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 56, no. 2 (2009): 247–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383509990088.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 57, no. 1 (2010): 122–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383509990362.

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42

HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 57, no. 2 (2010): 387–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383510000094.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 58, no. 1 (2011): 104–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383510000550.

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HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 58, no. 2 (2011): 240–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383511000064.

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45

HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 59, no. 1 (2012): 104–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383511000283.

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46

HEATH, MALCOLM. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 59, no. 2 (2012): 245–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383512000101.

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47

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 60, no. 1 (2013): 153–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383512000319.

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Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Iliad was first published in 1951, to great acclaim: ‘The feat is so decisive that it is reasonable to foresee a century or so in which nobody will try again to put the Iliad in English verse.’ That testimonial is reproduced on the back cover of the latest reprint, even though Robert Fitzgerald falsified his own prophecy less than a quarter of a century later. Richard Martin's introduction ends by comparing Lattimore's rendering of 9.319–27 with three older and three more recent verse translations. Lattimore's superiority to Fitzgerald, Fagles, and Lombardo emerges clearly – but that's in a short excerpt. I've always felt a stiffness, and a lack of variety and narrative drive, in Lattimore's version that makes it intolerable for reading at length. In a long epic, that's a serious failing.
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48

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 60, no. 2 (2013): 313–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383513000120.

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In Cosmology and the Polis Richard Seaford carries forward the trajectory of Reciprocity and Ritual (1994) and Money and the Early Greek Mind (2004), extending his analytical resources with (not exactly Bakhtinian) chronotopes – socially constructed cognitive models, in which space and time are congruently conceived (i.e. as ‘the same’ in certain respects: 22, 39). He distinguishes three chronotopes: reciprocal, as found in Homer; aetiological, related to ritual and the emergent polis (and containing an ‘antideterminate’ sub-chronotope, which expresses the space–time from which the aetiological transition is made); and monetized (4–5). ‘In the genesis of drama at the City Dionysia the reciprocal chronotope has been replaced by the aetiological’ (75). Monetization then contributes to tragedy's content by isolating powerful individuals from the collective: ‘tragedy frequently ends with the demise of the powerful individual(s)’ (113), and ‘tragic isolation derives in part from the self-sufficiency imposed on the individual by the new phenomenon of monetisation’ (169). Monetization ‘contributes also to its form’, since ‘the establishment of the second actor…may have arisen out of tension – between Dionysos and autocrat at Athens’ (111). The slide from indicative (‘contributes’) to hypothetical (‘may have’), with its long train of speculative attendants (‘it is tempting…hypothesise…seems likely…it is possible…may well have…’, 111) is, despite the desperately optimistic adverb, an index of the fragility of the construction. What is the exegetical pay-off? Seaford is capable, it must be said, of pure fantasy. He detects an allusion to incest in Aristotle's use of the phrase ‘currency from currency’ in Pol. 1258b1–8 (333). Aristotle objects to profit from purely financial transactions, not because it resembles incest (which would be silly), but because it has become disconnected from the real economy. In any case, ‘X from X’ has nothing to do with incest. The formula sums up an obvious feature of the natural course of reproduction (horses come from horses, and so on: Ph. 191b20–21, 193b8, 12; Gen. Corr. 333b7–8; Metaph. 1034b2, 1049b25–6; Pol. 1255b1–2; Pr. 878a27), and is applied to currency in a parenthetic explanation of the metaphorical use of tokos for interest. Aristotle is not the only victim of exegetical extravagance. The gold-changer to whom Aeschylus compares Ares (Ag. 438–9) exchanges gold dust for goods; Seaford knows this (200 n. 43, 247) but still assimilates the passage to currency exchange and monetized commercial transactions (200). Though his claims for the unique powers of monetization ought to make the importance of the distinction salient to him, mentions of silver are treated indiscriminately as references to money (201, on Aesch. Ag. 949, 959). Similarly, it is Seaford who associates insatiable prosperity with monetization (201), not Aeschylus’ text (Ag. 1331–42); and when Antigone speaks of death as kerdos (Soph. Ant. 461–4), it is Seaford who insists that Creon's single mention of coined silver (296) makes ‘the association of kerdos with monetary gain…inevitable’ (328). Why should our understanding of Antigone's patently non-monetized gain be determined by Creon's ‘obsession’? If it is an obsession, what marks it as such is its irrelevance: his grounds for complaint would be just as strong if a guard were suborned by non-monetary incentives. No other character has reason to share Creon's irrationality; nor has the audience; nor have we. This is a dazzlingly clever book; but its foundations are unstable, and its superstructure fragile.
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49

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 61, no. 1 (2014): 114–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383513000272.

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‘Who, pray, had previously collected literary references to cucumbers?’ Martin West once again hits highly quotable form in his commentary on the Trojan poems of the Epic Cycle (50). (The answer, of course, is no-one – so Athenaeus’ evidence is unlikely to be derived from a secondary source.) A characteristic boldness of hypothesizing is also on display. For example, West puts a name (Phayllus) to the (pre-Aristotelian) compiler who assembled and summarized the epics of the cycle. Since he credits Phayllus with conjectures about the names of the poets (27), one might expect a certain fellow-feeling on the part of West. But the naming of the poets, ‘not based on any established consensus or firm tradition’ and drawn from sources that ‘cannot have been unanimous or decisive’, is described in terms that sound reproachful: ‘bluff assertiveness…bold constructionism’. καὶ κεραμεὺς κεραμεῖ κοτέει καὶ τέκτονι τέκτων, / καὶ πτωχὸς πτωχῷ ϕθονέει καὶ ἀοιδὸς ἀοιδῷ (‘So potter is piqued with potter, joiner with joiner, / beggar begrudges beggar, and singer singer’). Which of Hesiod's rivalrous professions (Op. 24–5) has most affinity to scholars engaged in conjecture is, perhaps, open to debate; but the ἀοιδός (‘singer’) peeks out from West's own exercises in creative writing. Admittedly, he provides only one extended piece of Greek verse composition (201–11), but prose summaries are supplied on at least ten occasions (e.g. 183: ‘It is possible to imagine a defiant speech on these lines: “Leaders of the Achaeans…”.’). Acknowledging that his ‘imaginative reconstructions’ are ‘highly speculative, a flight of fancy’ (281), West pleads that they ‘serve to illustrate how the thing could have been done’. But since it could have been done otherwise, these reconstructions also serve to plant in readers’ minds an insidiously vivid but possibly misleading image. As West observes in another context, ‘the reconstruction of Wilamowitz…goes too far beyond the evidence’ (94). The same could be said, for example, of West's identification of passages in the Iliad and Aethiopis that are ‘variants on the Iliad poet's original, unwritten account of Achilles’ death’ (149): West's own confidence in this hypothesis fluctuated in The Making of the Iliad (G&R 59 [2012], 245–6) between confidence (‘doubtless’, 346) and caution (‘may have’, 390). On a point of detail: Aristotle does not describe the Cypria and Little Iliad as ‘episodic’ in Poet. 1459a37 (60): he explicitly says that they are about ‘a single action’, a judgement which excludes ‘concatenation…without organic connection’ (166). Yet, whatever one's reservations, West's scholarship is, as always, profound, original, and indispensably provocative. Moreover, this book provides an added bonus in the form of an exercise in another of West's areas of expertise: readers must become textual critics, transposing a misplaced line of text (308) and emending the puzzling reference to an ‘undermined species of stingray’ (309).
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50

Heath, Malcolm. "Greek Literature." Greece and Rome 61, no. 2 (2014): 261–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383514000096.

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Geoffrey Bakewell finds in Aeschylus'Suppliants‘an invaluable perspective on Athenian attempts at establishing their own identity in the late 460sbce’. The play presents a ‘displaced self-portrait of Athens’, and the ‘ambivalent welcome to exotic immigrants’ and ‘wariness towards outsiders’ makes that portrait ‘not entirely flattering’ (ix). I am not sure whether this judgement is meant to express a modern perspective, or that of Aeschylus' audience. Bakewell claims that metics ‘by their very nature constituted an existential threat to the democratic city and its self-understanding’ (8), and that they were perceived as ‘threatening’ (19), but provides no supporting evidence. To illustrate Athenian attitudes to metics he appeals to the Old Oligarch (not, perhaps, the most representative of witnesses), citing his frustration at not being allowed to assault foreigners; there is no mention of Dicaeopolis (Ach. 507–8). It is, of course, true that inSuppliantsArgos is imperilled by the refugees' arrival: but that is because they are pursued by an army determined to enforce a legal claim on them, which Athenian metics typically were not. The view that tragedies gave spectators a ‘mental license to think through a pressing issue in an extended way, and at a safe remove’ (123) is widely held, and may be right. But its application ought not to depend on disregarding crucial features of a play's distinctively tragic scenario.
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