Chapter 4 is in part an examination of a Mycenaean divine Potnia, one affiliated with the “labyrinth,” the Potnia of the dabúrinthos (δαβύρινθος). The labyrinthine space with which she is associated is an Asian cult notion introduced from Anatolia to Balkan Hellas. This chapter also examines the Rājasūya, a Vedic rite of consecration by which a warrior is made a king and a likely cult counterpart to the Mycenaean initiation of the wanaks.

Chapter 2 examines the Vedic sacrificial post called the yūpa and its role in ritual performances. A Mycenaean Greek cognate term and comparable ritual implement lies behind the Linear B form spelled u-po – that is, hûpos (ὗπος). Among other topics treated in this chapter are the Mycenaean deity called the po-ti-ni-ja, a-si-wi-ja, the Asian Potnia, and the u-po-jo po-ti-ni-ja, the Potnia of the u-po (that is, húpoio Pótnia [ὕποιο Πότνια]), a term matched exactly by Sanskrit patnī-yūpá-.

Chapter 6 examines Iranian cult and myth as evidenced in the Nart sagas of Transcaucasia, but also among Scythians as well as in Zoroastrian tradition, including the psychotropic cult substances Haoma (Iranian) and Soma (Indic). The Greek polis of Dioscurias in the Caucasus is explored as a place where Hellenic and Indo-Iranian divine-twin myth and cult affiliation meet, as indeed they do in the Pontic polis of Sinope. Aeolian connections are conspicuous at both locales.

Chapter 7 examines the sheep’s fleece filter used in the preparation of Soma. A cult ideology in which such an implement played an important role was preserved for some time in Iranian tradition in the Caucuses, ultimately giving expression to Greek ideas about the presence of fleecy filters impinged with gold in the vicinity of Dioscurias – rationalizing accounts of the Golden Fleece of Aeolian Argonautic tradition. Particular elements of the Golden Fleece myth find parallels in Indic poetic accounts of the performance of Soma cult. The common Hellenic and Indic elements constitute a shared nexus of ideas that earliest took shape in Bronze-Age communities of admixed Mycenaean and Luvian populations into which Mitanni Soma ideas had spread via Kizzuwatna. The Golden Fleece mythic tradition, with its geographic localization in Transcaucasia, is a Mycenaean Asianism that took shape in Asia Minor under Indic and Iranian influences and that continued to evolve among the Iron-Age Asian Greeks.

Chapter 5 considers the Indic divine twins, the Aśvins (Aśvínā), or Nāsatyas (Nā́satyā), their association with the Indic Dawn goddess Uṣas, and their place in the Indic Soma cult. Discussion then shifts to the kingdom of Mitanni in Syro-Mesopotamia, a place into which Indic culture was introduced as Indo-Iranian peoples migrated southward through Asia, as also at Nuzi. There is good lexical evidence for the presence of a Soma cult in Mitanni, and Soma-cult ideas appear to have spread out of Mitanni, through Kizzuwatna, into the Luvian milieu of western Asia Minor, where such ideas would almost certainly have been encountered by resident Mycenaean Greeks, intermingled biologically, socially, culturally, and linguistically with Luvian populations. With that spread certain elements of Soma-cult ideology were mapped onto Anatolian cult structures.

Chapter 3 examines the Mycenaean wanaks and lāwāgetās, figures responsible for leading Mycenaean society in specific ways and who correspond notionally to figures implicit in Indic and Iranian social structures – figures who descend from still more ancient Indo-European antecedents charged with the task of leading society through the spaces of the Eurasian Steppes and in migrations southward out of the Steppes.

This book shows that the development of Greek chronicle writing from the fourth to the seventh century was not linear. Whilst the impact of the chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea was great, subsequent writers corrected his errors and incorporated the third-century chronographies by Hippolytus and Julius Africanus into the framework shaped by Eusebius. As a consequence, chronographies and not chronicles dominate in Greek literature. One innovation of the fourth century was to link computus (the calculation of the Easter date) and chronography, first visible in the work of Andreas, brother of Magnus (352), and later in that of Annianus (412). The direct impact of Annianus has been overestimated: unique in some of its core ideas, his work resurfaced only in the 560s, in the context of Justinian’s attempt to impose the Christmas date of 25 December on the church of Jerusalem. This controversy caused a flurry of works of chronography and computus to be written in the early seventh century. Besides this tradition, the book also uncovers a tradition of chronicles with a local focus, which shaped the chronicle of John Malalas. We argue that the source indications of Malalas deserve more credit than they are usually granted.

Shelley’s translation of Plato’s Symposium as The Banquet, composed with great speed over ten days in July 1818, radically transformed the poet’s thoughts on love, translation, originality, and ancient philosophy. Shelley became Shelley through Plato. Rather than an arbiter of forms and banisher of poets from his ideal republic, Shelley’s Plato is himself a poet, as he claims in ‘A Defence of Poetry’. Through his reading and translation of the ancients – and particularly Plato – philosophy and poetry become concomitant for Shelley. Ultimately, Shelley is indebted to the philosopher’s use of literary forms over any straightforward adoption of his philosophy of forms. This chapter looks before and after Shelley’s translation of Plato’s Symposium to trace the poet’s reading of the ancients from 1812 until his accidental death in 1822, revealing the lasting, shifting influence of ancient philosophy on Shelley’s poetry.

This chapter reviews the ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish evidence to discern the marriage practices the early Christians would have known. It lays the foundation for tracing the antiquity of customs attested in the later Byzantine sources. In addition to ancient texts, this chapter examines Roman artistic depiction of marriage in frescoes and funerary art.

All his life, Hopkins was either student or teacher of the Classics. School, university, teaching posts, and finally a professorship in Dublin meant that he was engaged professionally with Latin and Greek almost without intermission. There are subjects, topics, or words in his writings which obviously derive directly from those studies, and there are approaches which were plainly learned from his experience. Specific examples of influence are betrayed by words and ideas, but the influence is perhaps more general; in word order, for example, or in the idea of poetry as speech, which connects with his discovery and use of Sprung Rhythm. His understanding of rhythm is the most important thing which his classical studies nurtured. In his university training and in his own teaching rhythm was a central concern. The Classics gave him models to follow, but they also freed him from some conventions of English poetry, which allowed him to write in an original style.

In early Islamic Egypt, “Arab-style” Greek (and later Coptic) letters employing religiously neutral monotheistic formularies were sent in the name of Muslim officials to Christian administrators. By analyzing old and new evidence of Egyptian Christians using this epistolary template, this paper argues that in the first decades of Arab rule, probably only a few beneficiaries of the new regime employed the “Arab-style” prescript in their letters written to other Christians to demonstrate their close connection to the new government and thus their social standing. Later, however, the “Arab-style” prescript became commonplace in communication between Christians and Muslims and among Christians only in everyday life. Thus, the religiously neutral template created by the conquerors for official top–down communication became a mechanism for facilitating not only the smooth functioning of administrative structures, but also, in the long run, the social cohesion of Christians and Muslims.

The first section of this introduction sets the scene for the volume as a whole by briefly considering the history of intertextuality within modern classical scholarship, both Latin and Greek, and then highlighting the special methodological and historical challenges that attend on comparative approaches to early Greek literature. As scholars increasingly agree on the need to read early Greek literature in a comparative way, it is argued, this only makes more urgent the question of how best to do so. The second section of the introduction highlights some of the core methodological, historical, and literary preoccupations of this book by exploring in chronological order two contrastive and complementary case studies from early elegy, one from Tyrtaeus and one from Simonides. Rather than providing a set of definitive answers about how these texts relate to epic tradition and/or particular epics, this section aims to give a sense of the sort of questions at stake in the following chapters. The introduction then concludes by summarising each of those chapters and highlighting interconnections between them.

This essay explores the role of the dictionary in religious history, specifically as a conduit of social and intellectual authority brought to bear in religious interpretation, sitting both upstream and downstream of the broader flow of history, culture, and forms of knowledge. Of particular interest is the history of three categories of reference works: the bilingual dictionary (or lexicon) focused on ancient biblical languages; the Bible dictionary, focused on biblical realia, geography, and similar topics; and the theological dictionary, focused on significant biblical ideas associated with particular words or the ancient speakers. The categories are situated historically in the development of biblical scholarship and philology in the West, from the pre-modern era through the contemporary and digital context. Two case studies demonstrate the intersection between dictionaries, biblical interpretation, and cultural ideologies: use of Bible dictionaries and lexicons in the antebellum period as a tool for attacking or defending slavery on biblical grounds in the American South; and the influence on theological dictionaries in the early twentieth century from the anti-Semitic context of Nazi Germany.

Scipio took the war to Africa, rather than destroying Hannibal in Italy as his enemies wanted. His temporary base was Sicily; at Syracuse, he incurred criticism by adopting Greek clothes and lifestyle. Leaving Hannibal behind was a gamble, compounded by the mere forty warships which accompanied him. Livy reports his ceremonial departure: liquid sacrifices poured from shipboard; the gods rewarded him with a favourable omen. In Africa, he won a dishonourable success, taking advantage of a truce. But it needed victory at Great Plains (203) before Carthage recalled Hannibal. Scipio’s battle tactics are analysed. Livy reports Hannibal’s departure contrariwise from Scipio’s, including bad omen on arrival. The two parleyed through interpreters. At Zama, Scipio defeated Hannibal comprehensively; tactics are analysed, including the decisive role of the Numidian Masinissa’s cavalry, Rome’s weakest arm. Hannibal persuaded his countrymen to accept the heavy peace terms, including annual indemnity, and territorial gains for Masinissa.

Chapter 15 details Goethe’s commitment to Greek and Roman art, demonstrating that it pervades all his activity, including his literary work. His interest was primed by his years as a student in Leipzig, but his Italian journey of 1786–8 was the turning point, for it enabled him to connect the theory which he had learned with his own creative practice. Moreover, Italy gave him access to both Roman and Greek heritage. The chapter also examines neoclassical tenets in Goethe’s writing on art and closes with an analysis of his characterisation of Winckelmann.

This chapter shows that the Slavic scripts roughly align with the cultural division between Slavia Orthodoxa and Slavia Latina. Although the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition of the Glagolitic script connected to the Old Church Slavonic language was originally not confined to either of the two areas and the Glagolitic script was used longest in Catholic Croatia, it is nowadays continued in the form of the Cyrillic script, whereas the Latin alphabet in Slavia Latina is based on a completely different, ‘Western’ tradition. However, mutual influences abound and can be seen in script changes and various instances of biscriptality as well as in the introduction of roman type in the West in the sixteenth century, the adoption of its design principles in the ‘civil type’ in the East in the eighteenth century, and the gradual replacement of both blackletter and Old Cyrillic, which was (almost) completed only in the twentieth century.