This article examines the philosophical significance of nature (ϕύσις) in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The word is used in the protasis of the conditional clause at 515bc where Socrates proposes to inquire into ‘what the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly would be if in the course of nature (ϕύσϵι) something of this sort should happen to them’. This instance of ‘nature’ has been a matter of philological and philosophical debate, with attention paid principally to the narrow passage of the allegory for reconstructing Plato’s meaning. This article argues from the standpoint of the argument of the dialogue as a whole, showing that a particular reading of ϕύσις coheres with the conception of human nature in the Republic’s moral psychology. The discussion begins with consideration of the difficulties presented by the manuscript tradition, which sees variation in the recording of the clause in question. Then the attempts by scholars to resolve the problem—or else to express their inability to resolve it—are addressed and shown to be unsatisfactory. Finally, an interpretation that connects the mention of ϕύσις with Plato’s conception of the philosophic nature, described in Book 6 of the dialogue, is offered.

Among occultists, Hermetic writers, modern Templar groups, and conspiracy theorists, Michael Psellos has been imagined as a guardian of occult Hermetic knowledge, the secret founder of the Knights Templar, and a key figure in global conspiracy narratives. This article traces the development of this alternative reception in the West and explores its adoption by Turkish conspiracy theorists who, despite their anti-Western stance, have integrated it into their narratives about the New World Order. The dramatic reconstruction of Psellos’ scholarly pursuits in this modern underground reception has created a ‘double reality’ that diverges radically from academic interpretations of Psellos.

The controversy over the confiscation of church vessels during the reign of Alexios I is referred to as ‘the Komnenian Iconoclasm’. However, its salient feature is the reluctance of both parties to accuse their opponents directly of iconoclasm. Instead, Alexios’ supporters and adversaries mastered the art of periphrasis and allusion so that the shadow of Iconoclasm loomed more dimly over the debate. As long as the disputed word was not pronounced, there remained a chance of reconciliation. In the broader context of cultural memory about Iconoclasm, this debate is a turning point after which accusations of iconoclasm were no longer connected to iconoclastic practices.

This article argues that a new stylometry of Hermann’s Bridge identifies unexpected metrical trends in authors, eras and speakers. Using computational and statistical means, it provides the first comprehensive survey of breaks and quasi-breaks of Hermann’s Bridge and analyses them according to corpus, formulaic constructions and the narratology of character speech. This approach both complements previous studies of the Bridge and enables future research into its potential literary effects.

This paper will explore the relationship between Theophilos and the generation of the 1930s on the basis of two parameters. On the one hand, an attempt will be made to reconfigure the image of Theophilos as a ‘spontaneous’ bearer of an immaculate and uninterrupted national tradition; on the other, the paper will address the reasons that determined this interest in the ‘illiterate’ (even ‘lunatic’) painter from Lesbos. It will be argued that what impressed the young intellectuals of the 1930s generation was not only Theophilos’ ‘primitive’ visual idiom but his idiomatic modernist idiom, precisely because it found an echo in their own contradictions as bearers of European modernity.

‘The Generation of the Thirties’ is a term that has been widely applied to Greek artists active in the interwar years and their artistic production. This article argues that the term is misleading due to its conceptual ambiguity. By focusing on Greek artists in Paris during the 1920s, it contends that the concept of the network, describing a dynamic cluster of historical actors sharing common ideologies, aesthetic ideas and interests, elucidates the formation and evolution of artists’ styles, aesthetic ideas, professional interests and cultural identities in a more meaningful way.