Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History

Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History 

Todd M. Compton

 

Hellenic Studies Series 

This book probes the narratives of poets who are exiled, tried or executed for their satire. Aesop, fabulist and riddle warrior, is assimilated to the pharmakos—the wretched human scapegoat who is expelled from the city or killed in response to a crisis—after satirizing the Delphians.

In much the same way, Dumezil’s Indo-European heroes, Starkathr and Suibhne, are both warrior-poets persecuted by patron deities. This book views the scapegoat as a group’s dominant warrior, sent out to confront predators or besieging forces. Both poets and warriors specialize in madness and aggression, are necessary to society, yet dangerous to society.

Cite this work

Compton, Todd M. 2006. Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History. Hellenic Studies Series 11. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Compton.Victim_of_the_Muses.2006.

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Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry

Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry 

Derek Collins

 

Hellenic Studies Series 

The interest in the performance of ancient Greek poetry has grown dramatically in recent years. But the competitive dimension of Greek poetic performances, while usually assumed, has rarely been directly addressed. This study provides for the first time an in-depth examination of a central mode of Greek poetic competition—capping, which occurs when speakers or singers respond to one another in small numbers of verses, single verses, or between verse units themselves. With a wealth of descriptive and technical detail, Derek Collins surveys the wide range of genres that incorporated capping, including tragic and comic stichomythia, lament, forms of Platonic dialectic and dialogue, the sympotic performance of elegy, skolia, and related verse games, Hellenistic bucolic, as well as the rhapsodic performance of epic. Further, he examines historical evidence for actual performances as well as literary representations of live performances to explore how the features of improvisation, riddling, and punning through verse were developed and refined in different competitive contexts.

Anyone concerned with the performance of archaic and classical Greek poetry, or with the agonistic social, cultural, and poetic gamesmanship that prompted one performer to achieve “mastery” over another, will find this authoritative volume indispensable.

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Collins, Derek. 2004. Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry. Hellenic Studies Series 7. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_CollinsD.Master_of_the_Game.2004.

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Le Caucase et la région circumpontique dans l’Antiquité : matériaux, recherches et hypothèseséd.

Le Caucase et la région circumpontique dans l’Antiquité : matériaux, recherches et hypothèseséd.

Publié le 26 février 2026 par Th. Castelli

Kleshchenko, A. A. et M. T. Kashuba.. (2025) : Кавказ и Циркумпонтийский регион в древности: материалы, исследования, гипотезы / Kavkaz i Cirkumpontijskij region v drevnosti: materialy, issledovanija, gipotezy, Moscou [Le Caucase et la région circumpontique dans l’Antiquité : matériaux, recherches et hypothèses].

Ce recueil en mémoire de Alexander Yu. Skakov rassemble 15 articles consacrés aux Âges du Bronze et du Fer et à l’Antiquité, dans le nord et l’est de la mer Noire. On trouvera notamment des article sur les Colques ou sur la céramique grecque classique dans les tombes du Don moyen.

Le livre en ligne : https://archaeolog.ru/el-bib/el-cat/el-books/el-books-2025/kavkaz-2025

 

New Open Access Journal: Sharjah Journal of Archaeological Studies

Sharjah Journal of Archaeological Studies 

Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, the Sharjah Journal of Archaeological Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Sharjah Archaeology Authority. The journal is dedicated to publishing original, multidisciplinary research in the fields of archaeology, civilization, and material cultural heritage of the Arabian Peninsula and its coasts, from prehistoric times through historical, Islamic, and modern periods.

The journal also opens horizons for regional comparative studies with geographically and culturally connected areas, such as the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean.

The journal is published twice a year, in May and December, in both print and electronic editions. It adopts an open-access policy, allowing free and immediate access to all published articles upon release, thereby promoting the widest possible dissemination of scholarly knowledge.

The journal aims to support and advance scholarly research in the fields of archaeological studies, conservation, and restoration, while providing an interactive platform for knowledge exchange among researchers and academic institutions both locally and internationally. It is committed to promoting the values of credibility, scientific openness, and knowledge integration, in line with the goals of sustainable cultural development.

Manuscripts are accepted for publication in both Arabic and English and are subject to a double-blind peer-review process conducted by a distinguished panel of professors and experts from within the country and abroad.

The journal fully adheres to the ethics of research and scholarly publishing, and authors are required to obtain all necessary official approvals before submitting their manuscript for double-blind peer review.

See AWOL's full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies 

Dialoguing in Late Antiquity

Dialoguing in Late Antiquity

Averil Cameron

 

 Hellenic Studies Series

Christians talked, debated, and wrote dialogues in late antiquity and on throughout Byzantium. Some were philosophical, others more literary, theological, or Platonic; Aristotle also came into the picture as time went on. Sometimes the written works claim to be records of actual public debates, and we know that many such debates did take place and continued to do so. Dialoguing in Late Antiquity takes up a challenge laid down by recent scholars who argue that a wall of silence came down in the fifth century AD, after which Christians did not “dialogue.”

Averil Cameron now returns to questions raised in her book Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), drawing on the large repertoire of surviving Christian dialogue texts from late antiquity to make a forceful case for their centrality in Greek literature from the second century and the Second Sophistic onward. At the same time, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity points forward to the long and neglected history of dialogue in Byzantium. Throughout this study, Cameron engages with current literary approaches and is a powerful advocate for the greater integration of Christian texts by literary scholars and historians alike.

Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.

Cite this work

Cameron, Averil. 2014. Dialoguing in Late Antiquity. Hellenic Studies Series 65. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_CameronA.Dialoguing_in_Late_Antiquity.2014.

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Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Roles, and Social Functions

Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Roles, and Social Functions 

Claude Calame

 

 Curated Books

New and revised edition, translated by Derek Collins and Janice Orion

In this groundbreaking work, Claude Calame argues that the songs sung by choruses of young girls in ancient Greek poetry are more than literary texts; rather, they functioned as initiatory rituals in Greek cult practices. Using semiotic and anthropologic theory, Calame reconstructs the religious and social institutions surrounding the songs, demonstrating their function in an aesthetic education that permitted the young girls to achieve the stature of womanhood and to be integrated into the adult civic community. This first English edition includes an updated bibliography. 

Originally published in 2001 by Rowman & Littlefield as a part of the series Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Copyright, Roman & Littlefield. Available for purchase in print via Roman & Littlefield.

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Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Calame.Choruses_of_Young_Women_in_Ancient_Greece.2001.

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Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism

Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism

Edited by, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

  

 Curated Books

Late Antiquity has attracted a significant amount of attention in recent years. As a historical period it has thus far been defined by the transformation of Roman institutions, the emergence of distinct religious cultures (Jewish, Christian, Islamic), and the transmission of ancient knowledge to medieval and early modern Europe. Despite all this, the study of late antique literary culture is still in its infancy, especially for the Greek and other eastern texts examined in this volume. The contributions here presented make new inroads into a rich literature notable above all for its flexibility and unparalleled creativity in combining multiple languages and literary traditions. The authors and texts discussed include Philostratus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Nonnos of Panopolis, the important St Polyeuktos epigram, and numerous others. The volume makes use of a variety of interdisciplinary approaches in an attempt to provoke discussion on change (Dynamism), literary education (Didacticism), and reception studies (Classicism). The result is a study which highlights the erudition and literary sophistication characteristic of the period and brings questions of contextualization, linguistic association, and artistic imagination to bear on little-known or undervalued texts, without neglecting important evidence from material culture and social practices. With contributions by both established scholars and young innovators in the field of late antique studies, there is no work of comparable authority or scope currently available. This volume will stimulate further interest in a range of untapped texts from Late Antiquity.

Originally published in 2006 by Ashgate Press. Available for purchase via Routledge. 

Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Johnson_ed.Greek_Literature_in_Late_Antiquity.2006.

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Copyright, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson. This online edition appears by permission of the editor.