The concept of news that we have today is not a modern invention, but rather a social and cultural institution that has been passed down to us by the Greeks as a legacy. This concept is only modified by the social, political, and economic conditions that make our society different from theirs. In order to understand what was considered news in Ancient Greece, a lexical study of ἄγγελος and all of its derivatives attested in a representative corpus of the period spanning from the second millennium BC to the end of the fourth BC has been conducted. This piece of research provides new contributions both to studies in Classics (there are hardly any studies on the transmission of news in Antiquity) and in journalism. This study also reveals an interesting point: the presence of false news – similar to current fake news – in ancient Greek literature, especially in tragedy and historiography when it comes to the use of the derivatives of ἄγγελος.

Scholars have recognized that fake news is not a phenomenon peculiar to the 21st century. While efforts for a more focused approach to fake news in the ancient world have been carried out in the field of Roman history, the phenomenon of fake news in ancient Greece has received limited attention. The contributions in this volume offer a selective approach to this phenomenon by applying media and cultural studies instruments to ancient texts. They pinpoint parallels and differences between ancient and modern fake news by employing methods of literary and cultural studies, as well as historical-documentary analysis of ancient sources. In particular, they explore questions such as: To what extent does reflection on the concepts of truth, lie, and opinion influence ancient Greek political-rhetorical discourse? What is the political or social function of embedding ‘misleading information’ in ancient Greek historiographical texts or pamphlets? Which intentions are pursued with the help of fake news in literary and documentary texts? Can parallels be drawn with modern approaches to fake news? Thus, the volume investigates the mechanisms that historically lay behind the creation, dissemination, and adaptation of ‘misleading information’.

This book shows that the concept of news that we have today is not a modern invention, but rather a social and cultural institution that has been passed down to us by the Greeks as a legacy. To understand what was considered news in Ancient Greece,

Sources and methods -- Rulers and rivers -- Female feck -- Dietary entanglements -- Resisting luxury -- After the encounter -- Transformation in the natural history museum.

Ancient Greek Lists brings together catalogic texts from a variety of genres, arguing that the list form was the ancient mode of expressing value through text. Ranging from Homer's Catalogue of Ships through Attic comedy and Hellenistic poetry to temple inventories, the book draws connections among texts seldom juxtaposed, examining the ways in which lists can stand in for objects, create value, act as methods of control, and even approximate the infinite. Athena Kirk analyzes how lists come to stand as a genre in their own right, shedding light on both under-studied and well-known sources to engage scholars and students of Classical literature, ancient history, and ancient languages.

In this book, Tim Whitmarsh offers an innovative new introduction to ancient Greek literature. The volume integrates cutting-edge cultural theory with the latest research in classical scholarship, providing a comprehensive, sophisticated and accessible account of literature from Homer to late antiquity. Whitmarsh offers new readings of some of the best-known and most influential authors of Greek antiquity, including Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Aristophanes and Plato, as well as introducing many lesser-known figures. Unlike conventional narrative histories, this volume focuses on the profound effects of literature within Greek society. Whitmarsh shows that literature, distributed via a range of social institutions, such as festivals, theatres, symposia and book production, played an important role in the legitimization – and challenging – of ideologies of gender, class and cultural identity. The volume also addresses the legacy of Greek literature: how the Victorian cult of Hellenism and its successors have structured the reception of ancient texts, and how and why the modern West has adopted the Greeks as its ancestors. This book will be important reading for undergraduates, in their first year and above, of ancient Greek literature and culture. All texts in the volume are translated, and no knowledge of ancient Greek literature is assumed.

“One of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read.” —Vivian Gornick, New York Times Book Review Mary Norris, The New Yorker’s Comma Queen and best-selling author of Between You & Me, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In Greek to Me, she delivers a delightful paean to the art of self-expression through accounts of her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, and reveals the surprising ways in which Greek helped form English. Greek to Me is filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine—and more than a few Greek men.