If you look up οκος in Liddell and Scott, you find the instances classified in three main divisions: first those meaning a house, or sometimes other kinds of building; secondly ‘one's household goods, substance’, for which I shall generally say ‘property’, though Liddell and Scott do not actually use that word; and thirdly ‘family’. This threefold distinction is sound, and I shall adhere to it here. Admittedly one sometimes finds an instance where it is not easy to decide which sense (...) the word has. Two of the senses, occasionally even all three, may overlap. But in the great majority of instances it is clear which sense is meant. (shrink)

The problem of the genuineness of Antigone's lines Ant. 904–20 has never been satisfactorily resolved. The passage has been vehemently impugned for more than a century and a half; yet the majority of editors print it without brackets, and probably the majority of scholars accept it. This stalemate is aggravated by the manner in which the argument has traditionally been conducted.

When Cicero uncovered and suppressed the Catilinarian Conspiracy as consul in 63 B.c., supporters hailed him ‘father of his country’ and proposed that he be awarded the oak crown normally given to a soldier who had saved the life of a comrade in battle . Our sources connect these honours with earlier heroes such as Romulus, Camillus and Marius, but the Elder Pliny writes as if Cicero was the first before Caesar and the Emperors to be given the title pater (...) patriae. Pliny's point may revolve around Senatorial initiative, and assuming this to be the case he really should have stressed that Cicero received the informal support of a limited number of Senators only, whereas Caesar and the Emperors were honoured by formal vote of the entire Senate. Perhaps Pliny was fooled by the prominence of those who spoke on Cicero's behalf, such as Cato, Catulus and Gellius Publicola. Opponents, on the other hand, angrily rejected calls that Cicero be recognised as the saviour of the state. In their eyes his execution of the Catilinarians marked him as a cruel tyrant. Metellus Nepos proposed Pompey's recall from the East in order to free Rome from Cicero's tyranny. Aside from echoes of patria potestas, it seems obvious that the Romans were thinking in terms of the conventional Greek antithesis between the good king who is like a father to his people and the selfish tyrant who treats his subjects as slaves. The Younger Pliny employs the same basic ideas in his Panegyricus: the cruel tyrant Domitian suppressed freedom and desired honour as a god ; the gentle Trajan is a citizen and father not a tyrant and master . Tacitus has this basic distinction in mind too. Nevertheless, as is well known, Pliny regularly addresses Trajan not as ‘father’ but as ‘master’ in Book 10 of his Letters. This was plainly an acceptable practice on the social plane, if not quite yet on the political. Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius indicated their opposition to dominus as a title for themselves, evidently for its connotations of autocracy and servitude. Domitian, damned as a tyrant, was accused of demanding to be addressed as dominus et deus. The title dominus existed from at least the first century A.d. as a common form of polite address between inferiors and superiors of free birth, not only between masters and slaves. It gradually gained acceptance as an official title of the Emperor through the second century and was advertised widely by the Severi. And yet its tone throughout this period could also be critical when understood in terms of the good king/tyrant antithesis. (shrink)

When Cicero uncovered and suppressed the Catilinarian Conspiracy as consul in 63B.c., supporters hailed him ‘father of his country’ (pater patriae) and proposed that he be awarded the oak crown normally given to a soldier who had saved the life of a comrade in battle (corona civica). Our sources connect these honours with earlier heroes such as Romulus, Camillus and Marius, but the Elder Pliny writes as if Cicero was the first before Caesar and the Emperors to be given the (...) titlepater patriae. Pliny's point may revolve around Senatorial initiative, and assuming this to be the case he really should have stressed that Cicero received the informal support of a limited number of Senators only, whereas Caesar and the Emperors were honoured by formal vote of the entire Senate. Perhaps Pliny was fooled by the prominence of those who spoke on Cicero's behalf, such as Cato, Catulus and Gellius Publicola. Opponents, on the other hand, angrily rejected calls that Cicero be recognised as the saviour of the state. In their eyes his execution of the Catilinarians marked him as a cruel tyrant. Metellus Nepos proposed Pompey's recall from the East in order to free Rome from Cicero's tyranny. Aside from echoes ofpatria potestas, it seems obvious that the Romans were thinking in terms of the conventional Greek antithesis between the good king who is like a father to his people and the selfish tyrant who treats his subjects as slaves. The Younger Pliny employs the same basic ideas in hisPanegyricus: the cruel tyrant Domitian suppressed freedom (libertas) and desired honour as a god (deus, numen); the gentle Trajan is a citizen and father not a tyrant and master (dominus). Tacitus has this basic distinction in mind too. Nevertheless, as is well known, Pliny regularly addresses Trajan not as ‘father’ but as ‘master’ (domine) in Book 10 of hisLetters. This was plainly an acceptable practice on the social plane, if not quite yet on the political. Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius indicated their opposition todominusas a title for themselves, evidently for its connotations of autocracy and servitude. Domitian, damned as a tyrant, was accused of demanding to be addressed asdominus et deus. The titledominusexisted from at least the first centuryA.d.as a common form of polite address between inferiors and superiors of free birth, not only between masters and slaves. It gradually gained acceptance as an official title of the Emperor through the second century and was advertised widely by the Severi. And yet its tone throughout this period could also be critical when understood in terms of the good king/tyrant antithesis. (shrink)

There have been numerous attempts to understand the role and importance of the Great Dionysia in Athens, and it is a festival that has been made crucial to varied and important characterizations of Greek culture as well as the history of drama or literature. Recent scholarship, however, has greatly extended our understanding of the formation of fifth-century Athenian ideology—in the sense of the structure of attitudes and norms of behaviour—and this developing interest in what might be called a ‘civic discourse’ (...) requires a reconsideration of the Great Dionysia as a city festival. For while there have been several fascinating readings of particular plays with regard to thepolisand its ideology, there is still a considerable need to place the festival itself in terms of the ideology of thepolis. Indeed, recent critics in a justifiable reaction away from writers such as Gilbert Murray have tended rather to emphasize on the one hand that the festival is a place of entertainment rather than religious ritual, and on the other hand that the plays should be approached primarily asdramaticperformances. (shrink)

A familiar theme in Greek myth is that of the deadly gift that passes between a man and a woman. Analysis of exchanges between men and women reveals the gendered nature of exchange in ancient Greek mythic thinking. Using the anthropological categories of male and female wealth , it is possible to arrive at an understanding of the protocols of exchange as they relate to men and especially to women. These protocols, which are based in part on the distinction between (...) metals and other durable goods as "male" and textiles as "female," are closely related to the gendered division of labor. Anxiety about women as exchangers derives in part from their status as objects exchanged in marriage , and partly from a misogynist and pessimistic strand of Greek thought that discounts any female economic contribution to the oikos. Indeed, the majority of destructive exchanges take place within the context of marital crisis. While some texts, beginning with the Odyssey, show the positive side of women's economic role, tragedy tends to follow the Hesiodic distrust of women as exchange partners. Passages from the Agamemnon and the Trachiniai are analyzed to show how in situations of perverted reciprocity brought about by marital discord, even women's traditional gifts of textiles may become deadly. (shrink)

In this paper it is demonstrated how the understanding of resilience is enhanced and shaped when using the concepts of oikos and life-modes. Instead of applying a rather problematic welfare capitalism model, which partially provides a negative social reproduction and production, it is suggested to apply a household/family model. The household/family model outlines that positive social reproduction and production, including real and productive values, potentially creates an essential bond between viable household, family, work, socialisation, and network based communities, resulting in (...) socially, economically, mentally, and ecologically sustainable survival of families and livelihoods over generations. Furthermore, it is stressed that serious fallacies will occur if resilience is solely understood and explained in terms of individual resources and characteristics. Nonetheless, it is recognised that non-cognitive traits such as persistence are important. Offspring is more strongly socialised and positioned in intact and viable families by transmitting and practicing a set of long-term reproduction and production strategies, which compared to upper strata are less common in the lower and middle strata. Thus, resilience is unequal. (shrink)

Writing of Terence'sAndria(‘The Girl from Andros’) in 1952, Duckworth said: ‘In theAndriathe second love affair is unusual; Charinus’ love for a respectable girl whose virtue is still intact has been considered an anticipation of a more modern attitude towards love and sex. More frequently in Plautus and Terence the heroine, if of respectable parentage, has been violated before the opening of the drama (Aulularia, Adelphoe), or she is a foreigner, a courtesan, or a slave girl' (Duckworth (1952), p. 158). Perhaps (...) in 1993 it does not seem quite so ‘modern’ that Charinus is not only in love with a respectable virgin but wishes to marry her. (shrink)

To Professor E. R. Dodds, through his edition of Euripides'Bacchaeand again inThe Greeks and the Irrational, we owe an awareness of new possibilities in our understanding of Greek literature and of the world that produced it. No small part of that awareness was due to Professor Dodds' masterly and tactful use of comparative ethnographic material to throw light on the relation between literature and social institutions in ancient Greece. It is in the hope that something of my own debt to (...) him may be conveyed that this paper is offered here, equally in gratitude, admiration and affection.The working out of the anger of Achilles in theIliadbegins with a great scene of divine supplication in which Thetis prevails upon Zeus to change the course of things before Troy in order to restore honour to Achilles; it ends with another, human act in which Priam supplicates Achilles to abandon his vengeful treatment of the dead body of Hector and restore it for a ransom. The first half of theOdysseyhinges about another supplication scene of crucial significance, Odysseus' supplication of Arete and Alkinoos on Scherie. Aeschylus and Euripides both wrote plays called simplySuppliants, and two cases of a breach of the rights of suppliants, the cases of the coup of Kylon and that of Pausanias, the one dating from the mid-sixth century, the other from around 470 B.C. or soon after, played a dominant role in the diplomatic propaganda of the Spartans and Athenians on the eve of the Peloponnesian War. (shrink)

If you look up οἶκος in Liddell and Scott, you find the instances classified in three main divisions: first those meaning a house, or sometimes other kinds of building; secondly ‘one's household goods, substance’, for which I shall generally say ‘property’, though Liddell and Scott do not actually use that word; and thirdly ‘family’. This threefold distinction is sound, and I shall adhere to it here. Admittedly one sometimes finds an instance where it is not easy to decide which sense (...) the word has. Two of the senses, occasionally even all three, may overlap. But in the great majority of instances it is clear which sense is meant. (shrink)

The idea that the household was the fundamental building block of ancient Greek society, explicit in the ancient sources, has now become widely accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that ancient Athenians would have found it almost inconceivable that individuals of any status existed who did not belong to some household; and the few who were in this position were almost certainly regarded as anomalous. In ancient Athens, as elsewhere, households ‘are a primary arena for the expression of age (...) and sex roles, kinship, socialization and economic cooperation’. It has been suggested for modern Greece that our own cultural biases, along with the Greek ideology of male dominance, have led to the assumption that the foundations of power in Greek society lie solely in the public sphere, and that domestic power is ‘less important’. In a less simple reality the preeminent role of the household cannot be underestimated. Here I hope to question similar assumptions about ancient Greece, focusing in particular on the relationships that existed between Athenian households and the property of the individuals, particularly women, within these households. (shrink)