I loathe everything to do with The People,’ writes Callimachus, and this (public) turning away from the public poetry of the fifth century is a stance, a gesture, repeated in a multiformity of guises throughout the texts of the Hellenistic period. Although the practices of literary production, performance and circulation are known in even less detail for this period than for the fifth century (and many questions about, say, the constitution of the public of Hellenistic literature are simply not answerable with any security), none the less there are much-discussed and highly significant shifts both in the conditions of literary production and in the presentation of the poet’s voice which require some brief introductory remarks.

Greek personal names are attested in the legal tablets from the city of Uruk, in the Astronomical Diaries, the Babylonian Chronicles, in royal inscriptions, and in documents from the cities of Babylon and Borsippa. After introducing the Greek language and its background, the chapter considers the types of Greek names attested in the cuneiform texts, the lexical items and theophoric elements used to form compounds, and the naming practices. Special attention is devoted to the rendering of Greek names with Babylonian script, especially because of the difficulties and constraints due to the use of a mixed logo-syllabic writing system to express onomastic items originally rendered in an alphabetic script and due to the differences between the Babylonian and Greek phonetic systems. The diffusion of Greek names in Babylonian is linked to the more general matter of the contacts between the Greek world and Mesopotamia, and to the debate on the significance of the Greek presence in Babylonia in the first millennium BCE; the chapter thus concludes – taking into consideration Greek royal names, Greek female names, and double (Greek and Babylonian) names in the sources – with a discussion of the social dimension of the use of Greek names in Babylonian society.

The concept of the single-entrance, courtyard house offers a means of exploring the relationship between cultural expectations about domestic life, and the physical form taken by the house itself. It re-focuses attention away from superficial aspects of the appearance of the buildings themselves and instead places the emphasis on how the spaces they created may have worked as lived environments. At the same time it also provides a frame for thinking beyond the space of the prosperous Classical urban-dweller, to encompass the houses – and the experiences – of other social groups and the residents of culturally Greek communities in other times and places. Broadening the perspective in this way while at the same time distinguishing between these different groups of evidence deomnstrates that although the Classical model is striking for its widespread use and for the variety of architectural forms through which it was materialised, it was actually a relatively socially-restricted and short-lived phenomenon.

The ecumenical synods of the Roman imperial period cannot be understood without understanding their forerunners, the Hellenistic artists’ associations. These were not organised on a pan-Mediterranean scale as the ecumenical synods were. Rather, they were regionally organised, reflecting the fragmented political world of the Hellenistic period. There were four major associations: the Athenian synod, the Isthmian-Nemean synod, mainly active on the Peloponnese and in Boeotia, the Ionian-Hellespontine synod in Asia Minor and the Egyptian synod connected to the Ptolemaic royal court. This chapter discusses their emergence in the third century bc and their involvement in festivals, politics and religion. In many respects their activities were a model for what would come later, for example their preoccupation with securing financial and honorific privileges for their members, their contribution to the organisation of festivals and their relations with political rulers such as Hellenistic kings and Roman generals.

This chapter bridges the gap between the disappearance of the Hellenistic artists’ associations in the first century bc and the emergence of the ecumenical synods at the end of that century. It begins with a discussion of the first attestations of the ecumenical synods. The ecumenical athletes’ association is first attested in a letter by Mark Antony from the 40s or 30s bc. The first clear evidence of the ecumenical synod of artists dates only from the reign of Claudius (AD 41-54), but there are indications that the artists were already banding together on a transregional scale in the 30s bc. Next, this chapter seeks to explain the emergence of the synods by looking at the broader context of Mediterranean integration. It argues that the synods’ emergence was connected to the development of an 'international' festival network, which was in turn made possible by the Roman unification of the Mediterranean. Moreover, it appears that the Roman takeover in the east created the right conditions for the establishment of associations that transcended the polis framework. Especially the province of Asia seems to have provided fertile soil for experimenting with new organisational forms.

The fifth chapter is chiefly concerned with the creative instantiations of Hyperborea in the Hellenistic and later periods, studied there as examples of a more thoroughly textualised, literary process of worlding. It looks at changing strategies of composing worlds through an archive of libraries and canons. The first section of the chapter starts with an overview of the transformations of the Hyperborean material in geographical literature after Herodotus, from Eratosthenes and Strabo to Pliny the Elder. The second section examines two equally productive, creative strategies of appropriation of the Hyperborean nexus in the post-Classical archive: Solinus' De mirabilibus mundi and the Philippica of Theopompus. The third section is concerned with the distinctive cosmographical usages of Hyperborea in early Hellenistic utopias, and their deep engagement with the archive: Hecataeus of Abdera's On the Hyperboreans, Callimachus' Hymn to Delos, and Simias of Rhodes' Apollo. All support the wider considerations of the chapter on the continued relevance of Hyperborea for thinking the worlds of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms. The fourth section brings us back to Athens, with detailed study of two cosmographical texts written over and through the archive: the Delian Oration of Lycurgus and the pseudo-Platonic Axiochos.

This chapter looks to one of the oldest Jewish writings outside of the Hebrew Bible, the Enochic Astronomical Book, and argues for its overlooked importance for the development of Jewish angelology. It considers the intertwining of angelology and astronomy in a Jewish scribal context that resonates with cross-cultural concerns with knowledge in the early Hellenistic age.

This chapter draws upon new evidence for the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls to make the case for situating the beginnings of Jewish angelology and demonology in the third century BCE. It considers the new views of scribes, books, and knowledge within sources like the Aramaic Levi Document, Admonitions of Qahat, and Visions of Amram in relation to broader cultural trends in the Hellenistic Near East.