This volume discusses the multidimensional aspects of the unique, and so far unprecedented for Macedonia, 191 sherds from Methone in Pieria, dated to ca 700 BCE, which bear inscriptions, graffiti, and (trade)marks inscribed, incised, scratched and rarely painted. The 191 vessels were unearthed during excavations in ancient Methone in Pieria, the oldest colony of Greeks from Eretria in the north according to tradition. The Methone find is unique for two reasons. First, most of the pottery dates between 730 and 700 BCE, a period from which very few examples of Greek writing survives. And second, inscribed ceramics, scratched or painted, are extremely rare in Macedonia. This new evidence of inscribed pottery from Methone is invaluable for classical studies, and the papers of this volume contribute notably to current discussions about: the Greeks and the Greek language in Macedonia; the Greek colonization; the pottery trade and the early Greek transport amphoras; trade, the symposium, and other contexts for the development of writing; the ‘alphabets’ of Methone and the introduction of the alphabet in Greece; the dialect(s) of Methone in relation to the Greek dialects; early Greek writing, literacy, and literary beginnings.

The studies in this volume share a focus on religion in the ancient Mediterranean world: How ritual, myth, spectatorship, and travel reflect the continual interaction of human beings with the richly fictive beings who defined the boundaries of groups, access to the past, and mobility across land and seascapes. They share as well the methodological exploration of the intersection between human sciencesthe integration of numerous disciplines around the study of all aspects of human life from the biological to the culturaland the study of the past. In so doing, they continue a long dialogue that engages with critical models derived from specializations within history, philology, archaeology, sociology, and anthropology, and addresses, increasingly, the potentialities and pitfalls of quantitative and digital analyses. Many of the threads in this long conversation inform these chapters: the comparative project, human social evolution, disciplinary reflexivity, religion as an embedded, functional, and structural system, and the role for agency, networks, and materiality.

Athenian Power in the Fifth Century BC offers a new study of a canonical topic in ancient Greek history, the fifth-century BC Athenian empire. While previous studies have largely focused on Athens and Athenian narrative history, this book brings the Athenians' imperial subjects to centre stage.

A delightful look at the epic literary history of the short, poetic genre of the epigram From Nestor’s inscribed cup to tombstones, bathroom walls, and Twitter tweets, the ability to express oneself concisely and elegantly, continues to be an important part of literary history unlike any other. This book examines the entire history of the epigram, from its beginnings as a purely epigraphic phenomenon in the Greek world, where it moved from being just a note attached to physical objects to an actual literary form of expression, to its zenith in late 1st century Rome, and further through a period of stagnation up to its last blooming, just before the beginning of the Dark Ages. A Companion to Ancient Epigram offers the first ever full-scale treatment of the genre from a broad international perspective. The book is divided into six parts, the first of which covers certain typical characteristics of the genre, examines aspects that are central to our understanding of epigram, and discusses its relation to other literary genres. The subsequent four parts present a diachronic history of epigram, from archaic Greece, Hellenistic Greece, and Latin and Greek epigrams at Rome, all the way up to late antiquity, with a concluding section looking at the heritage of ancient epigram from the Middle Ages up to modern times. Provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the epigram The first single-volume book to examine the entire history of the genre Scholarly interest in Greek and Roman epigram has steadily increased over the past fifty years Looks at not only the origins of the epigram but at the later literary tradition A Companion to Ancient Epigram will be of great interest to scholars and students of literature, world literature, and ancient and general history. It will also be an excellent addition to the shelf of any public and university library.

Discover the power of Greek lyric with essays from some of the foremost scholars in the field today Recent decades have seen a strong resurgence of interest in Greek lyric, resulting in this topic becoming one of the most dynamic areas of Classical scholarship. In A Companion to Greek Lyric, renowned Classical scholar Laura Swift delivers a collection of essays by international experts and emerging voices that offers up-to-date approaches on the methodology, contexts, and reception of Greek lyric from the archaic to the Hellenistic period. This edited volume includes detailed analyses of the poets themselves, as well as a reflection of the current state of play in the study of Greek lyric. It showcases the scope and range of approaches to be found in scholarly work in the field. Newcomers to the subject will benefit from the range of contextual and technical information included that allows for a more effective engagement with the lyric poets. Readers will also enjoy: Guidance on working with texts that are mainly preserved as fragments A selection of ways in which lyric poetry has influenced and inspired writers from Rome to the modern era Recommendations for further reading that offer a starting point for how to follow up on a particular topic Perfect for undergraduate and master’s students taking courses on Greek lyric or survey courses on classical literature, A Companion to Greek Lyric also belongs in the libraries of students of English or Comparative Literature seeking an authoritative resource for Greek lyric.

Despite the flourishing of epichoric studies on the Archaic Greek scripts in the 1960s, embodied by archaeologists Lilian Hamilton Jeffery and Margherita Guarducci, most scholarship on early alphabetic writing in Greece has focused on questions around the origin of ‘the Greek alphabet’ instead of acknowledging the diversity of alphabetic systems that emerged in Geometric and Archaic times. The present book proposes to bring back the epichoric approach by focusing on the different ways in which the earliest epigraphic evidence represents the spoken Greek dialects. However, instead of continuing the palaeographic methodology of previous studies, this analysis follows the latest trends in grapholinguistics, more specifically the methodology of comparative graphematics. By examining the grapheme-phoneme relationships across Greek-speaking regions, it is possible to recognize that diversity and to draw connections with neighboring contemporaneous alphabets, such as those for Phrygian, Eteocretan and Etruscan. This work, carried out within the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project, aims to contribute towards the conceptualization of the so-called epichoric scripts as independent alphabets, as well as their framing within the ecology of ancient Mediterranean writing systems. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

The birth of the Greek alphabet marked a new horizon in the history of writing, as the vowelless Phoenician alphabet was borrowed and adapted to write vowels as well as consonants. Rather than creating a single unchanging new tradition, however, its earliest attestations show a very great degree of diversity, as areas of the Greek-speaking world established their own regional variants. This volume asks how, when, where, by whom and for what purposes Greek alphabetic writing developed. Anne Jeffery's Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (1961), re-issued with a valuable supplement in 1990, was an epoch-making contribution to the study of these issues. But much important new evidence has emerged even since 1987, and debate has continued energetically about all the central issues raised by Jeffery's book: the date at which the Phoenician script was taken over and adapted to write vowels with separate signs; the priority of Phrygia or Greece in that process; the question whether the adaptation happened once, and the resulting alphabet then spread outwards, or whether similar adaptations occurred independently in several paces; if the adaptation was a single event, the region where it occurred, and the explanation for the many divergences in local script; what the scripts tell us about the regional divisions of archaic Greece. There has also been a flourishing debate about the development and functions of literacy in archaic Greece. The contributors to this volume bring a range of perspectives to bear in revisiting Jeffery's legacy, including chapters which extend the scope beyond Jeffery, by considering the fortunes of the Greek alphabet in Etruria, in southern Italy, and on coins.

The need for a "new" book on Greek colonization arose to analyse this phenomenon as a long-term process in a wide geographic area. The events related to individual cities and regions, although geographically very distant from each other, are linked through an articulated network of material and immaterial relations and have to be considered as part of a broader mobility process in a Mediterranean perspective. The intention of "Comparing Greek Colonies" is to bring geographically and culturally distant regions such as Southern Italy/Sicily and the Black Sea, closer together, not merely to find "similarities and differences", but to broaden the scholars’ perspective and overcome existing, generalizing, and biased models, that are often rooted in local scientific traditions. The proceedings of the international conference "Comparing Greek Colonies. Mobility and Settlement Consolidation from Southern Italy to the Black Sea (8th – 6th century BC)", 7.–9.11.2018 in Rome, are structured around three core topics (economic system; relationships with the indigenous populations; social and territorial systems) that constitute the cornerstones of the political formation of the polis in the Archaic period and for its development during the Classical and Hellenistic Ages.

Has any ancient figure captivated the imagination of people over the centuries so much as Alexander the Great? In less than a decade he created an empire stretching across much of the Near East as far as India, which led to Greek culture becoming dominant in much of this region for a millennium. Here, an international team of experts clearly explains the life and career of one of the most significant figures in world history. They introduce key themes of his campaign as well as describing aspects of his court and government and exploring the very different natures of his engagements with the various peoples he encountered and their responses to him. The reader is also introduced to the key sources, including the more important fragmentary historians, especially Ptolemy, Aristobulus and Clitarchus, with their different perspectives. The book closes by considering how Alexander's image was manipulated in antiquity itself.