This paper examines the influence of Euripides on Plato, reflecting the intertextuality between Euripides‘ Antiope und Plato’s Gorgias (esp. the agon between Zethos and Amphion and the agon between Callicles and Socrates, then the deus ex machina in the Antiope and the myth of the afterlife in the Gorgias). It is argued that the final part of the Gorgias is a serious philosophical answer to the tragic aporias, which Euripides dramatically staged in his Antiope (that is the (...) aporia of supposed and real kinship as well as the aporia of traditional revenge ethics) and which the viewer should answer for himself according to the conception of Euripidean tragedy. (shrink)

In a recent article I drew attention to the fact that the well-known fable of the improvident cicada and the industrious ant has a close resemblance to the story of the twin brothers Amphion and Zethus and their classic debate on the respective merits of the artistic and practical life in Euripides' Antiope, which is reflected not only in the argument of Callicles and Socrates in the Gorgias and Horace, Ep. i. 18.

Proceeding from the premise that Lucilius’ hexameter Aetheris et terrae genitabile quaerere tempus (fr. 1 Marx - I 1 Charpin) was inspired by Euripides fr. 182a Kannicht (Αἰθέρα καὶ Γαῖαν πάντων γενέτειραν ἀείδω), sung by Amphion the musician in Antiope, the author advances two further propositions about the fragment: first, that Lucilius, influenced by the famous debate in that play between Amphion and his brother, associated satire with the active life and the genres of didactic poetry and tragedy with (...) the contemplative life ; and secondly, that Lucilius’ direct model may have been not Euripides’ tragedy, but Pacuvius’ Latin rendering of it. (shrink)

I. The Antiope.—The papyrus fragments of theAntiope, written in a small and crabbed hand of the third century B.C., were first published by Mahaffy in vol. 1 of the Petrie papyri in 1891, a time when the study of writing on papyrus was in its early days and there was not the abundance of other literary texts to provide practice and comparison that there is to-day. An advance in the study of the text was made by Blass in 1892, (...) whose readings were based on first-hand knowledge of the manuscript; he was followed by von Arnim, who in his text in the Supplementum Euripideum introduced several startling alterations, based on the autotypes alone and very rarely justified by the papyrus. A landmark in the history of the text was reached when Hans Schaal published his dissertation De Euripidis Antiopa; not only had he studied the papyrus closely in London, but he was able to make use of several readings of Wilamowitz. Though he left some of the major problems unattacked, perhaps too readily, his text represents a great advance on that of his predecessors, and I have found his readings in the majority of cases where he differs from Mahaffy or von Arnim confirmed by the papyrus, and consequently I have taken his text as the basis of my collation. That there was still a little more to be deciphered was suggested to me by the late Dr. Hunt, and I am indebted to him as the instigator of these notes if there is anything of value in them. (shrink)

The method of dissoi logoi in Pre-Platonic testimonies The paper analyzes some references to the method of "dissoi logoi" (which is called by Plato "antilogic") in Pre-Platonic testimonies such as Aristophanes’ The Clouds, fragments of Euripides' Antiope and The Phoenicians, and the anonymous work called "Dialexeis" (Dissoi logoi). The analysis of these Pre-platonic sources results in the following conclusions: (1) The method of dissoi logoi was the universal strategy adopted by the sophists to argue on both sides - for (...) and against any thesis. (2) The Sophists are pointed out by all the testimonies as those who invented this method. (3) the same as it is in Plato's dialogues the criticism of the method in these Pre-platonic sources is based on the conviction that the method can be used immorally. (shrink)

In my article ‘Two Textual Problems in Euripides’ Antiope, Fr. 188', in which I compared the debate of Amphion the unpractical musician and his industrious brother Zethus to the fable of the cicada and the ant, I drew attention to a passage of Olympiodorus' commentary on the Gorgias which had been overlooked in the testimonia to Euripides' play, and which begins.

Cecropids, grammatically masculine in one case and feminine in the other, occur in each of these pieces of poetry. I believe that the second passage can shed some light on the meaning of the term as it is used in the fragment from the Antiope of Eubulus. The question of the significance of the Cecropids in Eubulus has previously been discussed by E. K. Borthwick. A. B. Cook, noting the similarity of κερκώπη to the name of Cecrops and seeing (...) their associations with dew as a link between the insects and the names of Cecrops' daughters, had posited a connection between the autochthonous Athenian family of Cecrops and the earth-born cicadas, those symbols of Athenian autochthony. Borthwick applied Cook's theory to the passage from Eubulus and concluded that when the poet mentions the Cecropids that feed on the breezes he is alluding to the musical cicadas, who were believed to subsist on dew and/or air. It was this latter feature of their diet, Borthwick proposed, that inspired the last line of the fragment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of PhilosophyDavid EngelAndrea Wilson Nightingale. Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xiv + 222 pp. Cloth, $57.95.The old saw "Everybody's a comedian" has its counterpart in contemporary academia: "Everybody's a philosopher." Biologists. Psychologists. Linguists. Physicists. Anthropologists. Historians. Even jurists. Many scholars of comparative literature, English, and history can be heard describing what they (...) do, not as literary criticism or history, but as "philosophy." One may even wonder whether we need philosophy departments anymore. Philosophy's private domain has shrunk from what it was under Aristotle (just about every subject short of wagon repair) to its present emaciated condition: it can claim almost nothing for itself alone. The other disciplines have encroached upon it bit by bit. This book is a timely contribution to an important current issue: what is philosophy, [End Page 316] and what does it have to offer? Nightingale argues that Plato faced similar questions. Rhetoricians, tragedians, and comedians all peddled what they had to say as wise (sophon), while dismissing other claims and pursuits as foolishness or worse. Against them and their respective discourses Plato proposed a new candidate: philosophia.Prior to Plato, philosophia meant just "intellectual cultivation." According to Nightingale, it was Plato who made it into a full-blown discipline--or, as she says, invented the discourse. As a way of privileging philosophia (in Plato's new sense of the word) above rival discourses, he parodied them. Nightingale's claims about the parody of other genres and Plato's privileging of philosophia are novel, insightful, and very persuasive. Perhaps it is overstatement to credit Plato with inventing philosophy, but that hardly diminishes the overall impression of this fine book's main arguments.Among Plato's contemporaries, the foremost challenger for the title "practitioner (and teacher) of sophia" was Isocrates. Nightingale uses his Antidosis to show that (1) Isocrates wanted to claim philosophia for himself, and (2) his version of philosophia was significantly different from Plato's. She concludes that the term was still a subject of genuine contention: its meaning mattered to both Plato and Isocrates. As Isocrates advocates rhetorike as philosophia, Plato argues that philosophy is both different from rhetoric and better than rhetoric. Rhetoric aims, ultimately, at public utility as the public perceives that utility, and rhetoric's value is gauged only by the political influence of those who practice it. Plato rejects that entire value system. At bottom it is also the value system of the other genres which, as Nightingale persuasively shows, Plato also parodies.Plato's "parody" (Nightingale's use of the word is broad, but unexceptionable) is "a device for defining and privileging his own pursuits" (59). Moving from rhetoric to tragedy, she considers Gorgias' echoes of Euripides' Antiope. Plato's parody of tragedy subtly criticizes tragedy qua discourse. The tragedian is "ignorant of truth... imitating appearances... gratifying the multitude... fostering the inferior part of the soul," that is, he is precisely what the philosopher is not (67). Socrates and Callicles evoke Euripidean characters: respectively, Amphion (who advocates a private life devoted to the liberal arts) and Zethus (who argues for a life of political activity) (69-70). Plato's unambiguous allusions to Antiope juxtapose not only Socrates and Callicles (and, through them, two irreconcilable views of what philosophy is) but also the tragic hero and the philosophical one (72-73). Plato's "life of the mind for its own sake" orientation wins, ultimately, in both comparisons. Furthermore, just as Amphion's arguments fail to persuade Zethus in Antiope but are eventually vindicated by Hermes' appearance at the play's conclusion, so too Socrates' arguments fail to convince Callicles, and Gorgias' concluding underworld myth parallels Antiope's deus ex machina: affirmation that the view which had been rejected (Amphion's and Socrates') was right, after all (87-88). [End Page 317]Nightingale then examines encomium. Publicly performed epitaphioi and their fictive counterparts (e.g., Menexenus) influenced one another, and the techniques of the encomium, although salient in that genre, occurred elsewhere, including deliberative and forensic situations. In her view, Plato's concern is not narrowly with encomium... (shrink)

In Euripides' Hippolytus, Phaedra, wife of Theseus, king of Athens, falls in love with the unsuspecting Hippolytus, Theseus' son by the amazon Antiope. Phaedra's passion is the work of the goddess Aphrodite, who wants to revenge herself on Hippolytus because he has rejected her and devoted himself to the chaste Artemis. Through Paedra's nurse Hippolytus is made aware of her love and invited to her bed. He emphatically rejects her offer and violently abuses Phaedra and her nurse. To save (...) her honour Phaedra commits suicide and leaves a note accusing Hippolytus of raping her. Theseus, confronted on his return from an expedition with the suicide and the note, banishes Hippolytus and prays to his father, the seagod Poseidon, to fulfil one of the three wishes he has granted him and kill Hippolytus. Leaving Troezen, Hippolytus is killed when his horses are frightened by a monster thrown on shore by Poseidon from a giant wave. Theseus is brought to realize his mistake by the goddess Artemis who appears to him and reveals the truth. The play ends with the reconciliation of Theseus and the dying Hippolytus. This, in bare outline, is what happens in the play. It is what might be called its subject. The play is about these events and characters. Now it is also possible to give another type of description of Euripides' play. For the play does not merely have a subject but also a theme. While it is straightforward and unproblematic to give a description of the subject of the play a statement of its theme presents difficulties. The subject is, in an obvious sense, given for any competent speaker of the language in which the work is written. The theme, on the other hand, emerges from the subject in conjunction with other features of the work, and it emerges through the reader's constructive labour. There is no theme for the reader who is unwilling or unable to engage in this constructive labour. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne MayorAlison KeithAdrienne Mayor. The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. xiv + 519 pp. Cloth, $29.95.Adrienne Mayor is a historian of classical folklore and ancient science and the author of several books whose subjects lie at the intersection of classical myth and ancient history (...) with archaeology and the history of science: an exploration of monsters and heroes in the repertoire of classical myth as a response to the discovery of fossils in The First Fossil Hunters (Princeton 2000); a wide-ranging collection of evidence for biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs (New York: Overlook Press, 2003); and a sympathetic biography of Mithradates VI Eupator of Pontus in The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton 2009); as well as an investigation of indigenous North Americans’ accounts of fossils, in Fossil Legends of the First Americans (Princeton 2005). Like her earlier volumes, The Amazons brings together an extraordinarily wide array of evidence, uncovered through prodigious research across such diverse fields as classical mythology, ancient history, and contemporary archaeology of the central Asian steppes, and the results are presented with her trademark narrative brio. As with these earlier volumes, moreover, Mayor has an agenda in The [End Page 174] Amazons: here she seeks the historical reality that lies behind the ancient Greek myths of barbarian warrior women; and she finds it in the recent archaeological discoveries of female warriors interred on the central Asian steppes from the Caucasus to western China.Mayor sets out her premise in a prologue that takes its bearing from the myth of Atalanta, whom she dubs “the Greek Amazon” (1–13): her project is to investigate where the Greeks might have encountered real women warriors like Atalanta, capable of besting men in footraces, on the battlefield, and in the hunt. Her study falls into four parts: Part 1 (17–59) asks, “Who were the Amazons?” and identifies ancient Scythia, with its many horse-riding and horse-herding nomadic tribes, as the homeland of the Amazons. Part 2 (63–246) surveys the archaeological and scientific evidence for female warriors among the nomadic tribes of the central Asian steppes in prehistoric and historic times. In this section, Mayor considers the evidence afforded by the bones of buried nomad warriors misidentified as male (because of the weaponry and horses accompanying the burial) when they were originally excavated but recently recognized as female as a result of newer scientific techniques of examination (chap. 4); the body armor found in the steppe graves, in a discussion which has recourse to comparative ethnography, yielding a rich history of breast suppression (chap. 5); the tattooing practices of the historical nomadic tribes of the steppes in relation to the iconography of Amazons’ tunics and leggings on classical vase paintings (chap. 6); ancient accounts of Amazons’ dress (chap. 7), including their partiality for trousers (chap. 12), sexuality and reproduction (chap. 8), drugs, dance and music (chap. 9), hunting technologies (chap. 11), weapons and warfare (chap. 13), all in relation to the archaeological and historical evidence of steppe women’s practices in these arenas. She even presses into service ethnolinguistics in order to argue that the names of the Amazons can be traced back to a common origin in the Eurasian steppes (chap. 14; cf. Appendix of Names of Amazons and Warrior Women in Ancient Literature and Art from the Mediterranean to China). In Part 3 (249–353), Mayor turns back to “Amazons in Greek and Roman Myth, Legend, and History.” Here she retells the most famous Amazon myths, of Hippolyte and Heracles [sic] (chap. 15), Antiope and Theseus (chap. 16), Penthesilea and Achilles (chap. 18), and the Athenian Amazonomachy (chaps. 17, 19); and classical accounts of their historical counterparts—the dalliance of Thalestris and Alexander the Great (chap. 20) and the love of Hypsicratea and Mithradates (chap. 21). Part 4 (358–429) abandons the Hellenocentric perspective of Part 3 to investigate the evidence for Amazonian women “Beyond the Greek World... (shrink)