Lucia Athanassaki

The Afterword (Chapter 18) picks out significant points of contact between the seventeen essays and draws attention to aspects of the study of cities that might fruitfully be explored further, namely: (a) the importance of autopsy and the impact of the emotions it catalyses on Plutarchan composition; (b) the political significance of religious and secular rituals; (c) the very wide range of sources Plutarch used for the reconstruction of the history of cities; (d) the role of civic art in the representation of cities and characterization of individuals; and (e) the seeming contradictions that upon scrutiny are best interpreted as different, covert, perspectives resulting from the complexities of civic life and socio-historical dynamics.

tripartite soul) as it appears in the Republic, Timaeus and Phaedrus. Renaut’s central thesis in this middle section of the book is that Plato identifies thumos as a psychic function of valuation that mediates between the opposed functions of reason and desire in the soul, and between the body and the soul. Finally, Renaut shows how Plato’s psychological theory makes it possible – indeed, necessary – for thumos to play a central role in moral education. The book makes a number of valuable contributions to the existing literature. To begin with, it represents the most thorough treatment of Plato’s ideas on thumos to date. While a few other recent authors have offered studies of topics closely related to thumos – such as Angela Hobbs on courage (Plato and the Hero, Cambridge 2000) or Douglas Cairns on shame (Aidôs, Oxford 1993) – Renaut’s work is distinctive in being a comprehensive examination that focuses on thumos itself. Beyond the novelty of its subject matter, Renaut’s book is also rich with insightful and original perspectives on the role of thumos in Platonic philosophy. Renaut’s treatment of the pre-Platonic understanding of thumos, for example, is particularly beneficial in this regard. By examining the way thumos is conceived by earlier thinkers like Homer, Hesiod, Euripides and Thucydides, Renaut is able both to contextualize Plato’s own positive account of thumos as well as to elucidate the philosophical motivation for some of the most distinctive features of that account. Renaut also offers a promising new framework for interpreting the Socratic intellectualism of the early dialogues: he makes a compelling case that we should understand many of Socrates’ intellectualist arguments as strategic and pedagogically motivated reactions against the emphasis placed by his interlocutors (such as Protagoras or Laches) on the role of irrational emotions and feelings in human virtue. Another highlight is Renaut’s fruitful discussion in the final chapters of the book of how thumos serves as a psychological foundation for virtue, or at least virtuous dispositions, in non-philosophers. Many readers are likely to find the middle chapters of the book (where Renaut lays out his interpretation of tripartite theory) to be the most controversial, and perhaps for that reason also the least persuasive on some points. For instance, one of the most arresting claims Renaut defends in this second section of the book is that the three elements of soul each engages in one and only one psychic activity or function. In particular, reason only engages in deliberation, appetite only 285

THE FIRST part of this report offers a selective update on research involving both a research seminar and an international colloquium that I co-organized with Frances B. Titchener at Rethymnon in 2017, whereas the second offers a sample of my own research on the subject.
The purpose of the 2017 colloquium (27–30 April) and the graduate seminar that Frances Titchener and I team-taught along with other faculty members at Rethymnon during the spring-term of that year was to explore ritual in Plutarch’s works by asking a series of questions, specifically: how Plutarchan representations of rituals contribute to the characterization of individuals and/or communities? What do they tell us about the way individuals relate to their peers or to their community
at large and/or the ways cities or other forms of community relate to one
another? How do rituals interact with politics (personal and communal, local and inter-state)? How do they affect individual and communal identities?
The second part explores Plutarch’s representation of Nicias’ exploitation of the performative and communicative nature of ritual as it emerges from four key episodes: (a) his decision to free one of his servants in the theatre of Dionysus on the spur of the moment; (b) his innovative improvement on the Athenian theoria to Delos as architheoros; (c) his striking provision to worship the Delian god(s) in
perpetuity and (d) his daily private sacrifice and divination at home in Athens. Taking into account the persistent emphasis on Nicias’ fear of gods and men throughout the Life, it is argued that these four episodes show that ritual offered Nicias an outlet for coping with his fear of men without abandoning his political ambitions.

This paper explores the melic poets’ take on art and its
sponsors. Since much has been written on the relationship of epinician
poets with their patrons, this paper broadens the focus of enquiry to
include other melic genres and, in addition to the verbal, to look at the
visual arts as well, i.e. melic representations of communities that sponsor songs and of communities or individuals that sponsor other art-forms such as sculpture, architecture, and precious objects. Taking as starting point Xenophon’s depiction of Simonides in Hiero, I discuss epigrams XXVII and XXVIII Page and relevant testimonia that show Simonides’ keen interest in Athenian dithyrambic contests; Bacchylides’ Ode 19, probably composed for the Great Dionysia; Pindar’s Pythian 7, Paean 8, and fragment 3 in conjunction with Homeric Hymn to Apollo 281-99, Herodotus 1.31, Cicero, De oratore 2. 86. 352-353, [Plutarch] Consolatio ad Apollonium, and Pausanias – all of which offer precious insights into Pindar’s views on sponsoring monumental sculpture and architecture; and Bacchylides’ description of the golden tripods that Hieron offered to Apollo in Ode 3. On the basis of this evidence I argue that whatever the nature and the range of remuneration of poets and artists may have been, melic rhetoric shows that it was the relationship of poets, artists and their sponsors with the gods that was ultimately at stake. This is why both the poetry and the traditions about Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides privilege the divine favour that poets, artists and patrons alike either obtained or were hoping to obtain by offering masterpieces to the gods.

This paper argues that Euripides in Cresphontes (produced probably in 424) and Aristophanes in Farmers (423) and Peace (421) reflect and promote the plan of the peace enthusiasts in Athens to institute an official cult of the goddess in the city once peace with Sparta was agreed; through investigation of contemporary and later literary and visual evidence (including Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Lysistrata, Thucydides and Plutarch) it offers an explanation why this plan was not fulfilled till much later, i.e. after the Peace of Timotheus in 374 BCE.