Sixteen international contributors offer the first comprehensive examination of the life, works and reception of Ion of Chios, the prolific and innovative fifth century BC writer (variously prose and poetry) on classical Greek mythology, history and society.

Sixteen international contributors investigate the life, works and reception of Ion of Chios (490/80-420s BC), the prolific Greek writer famed in antiquity for his polyeideia. His extraordinary range of writings in prose and poetry across multiple genres include tragedy, elegy, history, biography, mythography and philosophy. Ion is important to any study of Classical Greece because of the literary innovations which he pioneered. He is significant to the history of Athens and Chios as a contemporary of and commentator on Aeschylus, Cimon, Sophocles, Pericles, Themistocles and Socrates. This book is the first to examine how this fascinating but neglected man interacted with his peers and conceptualized himself and his world during one of the most exciting periods of ancient history.

What warranted the skewering of Richard Bentley (whom Rhodri Lewis called “perhaps the most notable—and notorious—scholar ever to have English as a mother tongue”) by two of the literary giants of his day? Kristine Haugen offers a fascinating portrait of Europe’s most infamous classical scholar and the intellectual turmoil he set in motion.

A “provocative, intriguing and cogently argued” exploration of the collapse of the Spartan-Athenian alliance (David Stuttard, Classics for All). During the Persian Wars, Sparta and Athens worked in tandem to defeat what was, in terms of relative resources and power, the greatest empire in human history. For the decade and a half that followed, they continued their collaboration until a rift opened and an intense, strategic rivalry began. In a continuation of his series on ancient Sparta, noted historian Paul Rahe examines the grounds for their alliance, the reasons for its eventual collapse, and the first stage in an enduring conflict that would wreak havoc on Greece for six decades. Throughout, Rahe argues that the alliance between Sparta and Athens and their eventual rivalry were extensions of their domestic policy, and that the grand strategy each articulated in the wake of the Persian Wars and the conflict that arose in due course grew out of the opposed material interests and moral imperatives inherent in their different regimes. Praise for the series “Persuasive.” —New York Times Book Review “[Rahe] has an excellent eye for military logistics.” —Wall Street Journal

Fifth-century Athenian musical and political theorist Damon was the first to study music's psychological, behavioural, and political effects, profoundly influencing debates on music theory throughout antiquity. Considered by Isokrates to be the most intelligent Athenian of his age, Damon worked alongside Perikles during the most vibrant decades of Athens' democracy. Probably using fourth-century BC sources, Olympiodoros records that 'Damon taught Perikles the songs through which Perikles harmonized the city'. However, musical and political entanglements caused this teacher-theorist to be ostracized from Athens for ten years, at the height of Perikles' power. Reconstructing Damon is the first comprehensive study of the most important theorist of music and poetic meter in ancient Athens, detailing his extensive influence, and providing the first systematic collection, translation, and critical examination of all ancient testimonia for him. In doing so, this volume makes an important contribution to a number of key fields, including classical Greek music and music theory, fifth-century philosophy (particularly the sophists), political history including the growth of democracy, and the life and career of Perikles.

Greek tragedy is one of the most important cultural legacies of the classical world, with a rich and varied history and reception, yet it appears to have its roots in a very particular place and time. The authors of the surviving works of Greek tragic drama-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-were all from one city, Athens, and all lived in the fifth century BC; unsurprisingly, it has often been supposed that tragic drama was inherently linked in some way to fifth-century Athens and its democracy. Why then do we refer to tragedy as 'Greek', rather than 'Attic' or 'Athenian', as some scholars have argued? This volume argues that the story of tragedy's development and dissemination is inherently one of travel and that tragedy grew out of, and became part of, a common Greek culture, rather than being explicitly Athenian. Although Athens was a major panhellenic centre, by the fifth century a well-established network of festivals and patrons had grown up to encompass Greek cities and sanctuaries from Sicily to Asia Minor and from North Africa to the Black Sea. The movement of professional poets, actors, and audience members along this circuit allowed for the exchange of poetry in general and tragedy in particular, which came to be performed all over the Greek world and was therefore a panhellenic phenomenon even from the time of the earliest performances. The stories that were dramatized were themselves tales of travel-the epic journeys of heroes such as Heracles, Jason, or Orestes- and the works of the tragedians not only demonstrated how the various peoples of Greece were connected through the wanderings of their ancestors, but also how these connections could be sustained by travelling poets and their acts of retelling.

This book provides a groundbreaking reassessment of the prehistory of Homeric epic. It argues that in the Early Iron Age bilingual poets transmitted to the Greeks a set of narrative traditions closely related to the one found at Bronze-Age Hattusa, the Hittite capital. Key drivers for Near Eastern influence on the developing Homeric tradition were the shared practices of supralocal festivals and venerating divinized ancestors, and a shared interest in creating narratives about a legendary past using a few specific storylines: theogonies, genealogies connecting local polities, long-distance travel, destruction of a famous city because it refuses to release captives, and trying to overcome death when confronted with the loss of a dear companion. Professor Bachvarova concludes by providing a fresh explanation of the origins and significance of the Greco-Anatolian legend of Troy, thereby offering a new solution to the long-debated question of the historicity of the Trojan War.