Hecataeus

This article discusses a problem in integrating archaeology and philology. For most of the twentieth century, archaeologists associated the spread of the Celtic languages with the supposed westward spread of the ‘eastern Hallstatt culture’ in the first millennium BC. More recently, some have discarded ‘Celtic from the East’ in favour of ‘Celtic from the West’, according to which Celtic was a much older lingua franca which evolved from a hypothetical Neolithic Proto-Indo-European language in the Atlantic zone and then spread eastwards in the third millennium BC. This article (1) criticizes the assumptions and misinterpretations of classical texts and onomastics that led to ‘Celtic from the East’ in the first place; (2) notes the unreliability of the linguistic evidence for ‘Celtic from the West’, namely (i) ‘glottochronology’ (which assumes that languages change at a steady rate), (ii) misunderstood place-name distribution maps and (iii) the undeciphered inscriptions in southwest Iberia; and (3) proposes that Celtic radiating from France during the first millennium BC would be a more economical explanation of the known facts.

This article discusses a problem in integrating archaeology and philology. For most of the twentieth century, archaeologists associated the spread of the Celtic languages with the supposed westward spread of the ‘eastern Hallstatt culture’ in the first millennium bc. More recently, some have discarded ‘Celtic from the East’ in favour of ‘Celtic from the West’, according to which Celtic was a much older lingua franca which evolved from a hypothetical Neolithic Proto-Indo-European language in the Atlantic zone and then spread eastwards in the third millennium bc. This article (1) criticizes the assumptions and misinterpretations of classical texts and onomastics that led to ‘Celtic from the East’ in the first place; (2) notes the unreliability of the linguistic evidence for ‘Celtic from the West’, namely (i) ‘glottochronology’ (which assumes that languages change at a steady rate), (ii) misunderstood place-name distribution maps and (iii) the undeciphered inscriptions in southwest Ibe...

Philosophy is usually believed to be a timeless virtuality. Nevertheless, it is widely assumed that philosophy began in Miletus with Thales (or just a little later, with Heraclitus and Parmenides). Nevertheless, it is equally well known that the Presocratics ignored to be philosophers, and therefore couldn't want to be called philosophers.
These points are not mutually compatible. So, what lies behind them? What is escaping our attention?
In this paper I attept to outline a more consistent answer. 
Towards the end, I'll try to qualify the idea of philosophy which happened to be outlined, mainly thanks to Socrates and Plato, at the very beginnings of its history.

Una delle prime testimonianze letterarie dell’esistenza di una regione nota ai Greci come Licia proviene dai frammenti della "Periegesi" di Ecateo di Mileto. Il presente contributo vuole analizzare quale immagine della Licia emerge dalla lettura di queste sopravvivenze, cercando, nello stesso tempo, di collocare questa descrizione nel milieu storico del tempo. Pertanto, dopo
aver fornito un breve quadro della biografia di Ecateo e della Periegesi, si analizzeranno i frammenti dedicati alla regione, analizzando il contesto in cui furono composti e in cui nacquero.

Mario Cesarano, «Nola polis degli Ausoni» nella Periegesi di Ecateo alla luce della documentazione dalle necropoli [143-168]
When Hekataios of Miletos speaks of Nola, a town of Campania near Naples, uses an apparent contradiction in terms: while he defines Nola as a polis belonging to the ‘Ausones’, some ancient writers considered the Ausones an indigenous people without poleis. We can assume that in the VI century BC Nola reached such a high level of ‘urban’ organization so as to share a cultural Mediterranean koine. The Greeks were the main intermediaries of this common culture, but not the only ones: through the grave goods some burials document the development of a Nolan community between VIII and VI century BC and the contacts between indigenous people, Greeks inhabiting the gulf of Cuma and some Etruscan groups settled in Campania. The result of this analysis allows us to put up for discussion the old concepts of hellenization and colonization, and to reflect carefully as to new notions of hibridity and creolization.
Nola – Ausones – Corinthian pottery – symposium – krater

The fragment attributed to Hecateus plays an important role for the reconstruction of popular traditions about Moses at the end of the Persian period. This paper offers a new French translation of the text and a commentary, which ar¬gues that Hecateus’ ideas on Moses and the Jews are largely de¬pendent on the standards of Hellenistic ethnography.

The paper focuses on the area encircled to the N by the Lake of Shkodra and the lower stream of the river Buna and By to the Black Drin and the Aoos/Vjosa to the SE through the most important geographical sources of the archaic and classical periods. The purpose of this study is to single out the different perspectives disposing the description of those countries in written sources and the main features making them recognizable within the framework of Greek culture of the time.
It is highly probable that the first setting of this model could be traced back to Hecataeus, the first Greek author who realized a complete description of the world, and that later sources here under study keep vestiges of that authoritative record.

This paper seeks to offer a fresh interpretation of the literary production of Hecataeus of Miletus, usually regarded as a starting point for historiography or mythography. Firstly, to assess his real contribution to the complex of Greek literature, it is paramount to carefully analyse the proem of the Genealogies (fr. 1 Fowler) and its value as a programmatic statement. It will be shown that the proem is shaped so as to resemble an authoritative heroic speech and that Hecataeus shares his concerns about the reliability of myth-telling with poets like Pindar. Secondly, it will be argued that his work was primarily conceived as a means to rewrite those stories already told in the epics (not only Homer and Hesiod but also the Epic Cycle and local sagas). Hecataeus’ contribution to archaic Greek literature fits into an open network of epic texts, as a cross-cultural comparison with the Hebrew Bible shows, and perhaps it can be best described as a form of “rhapsody in prose”, which entails a good degree of reworking of contents and the strong affirmation of an authorial persona free of the Muses’ patronage

This paper was originally given at the Cambridge University on the 22 March 2018.
According to the third century CE biographer Diogenes Laertius, once while observing the heavens, the Milesian philosopher Thales, misplaced his footing and stumbled into a ditch earning him the reproach that if he could not see what was under his feet how could he understand what was over his head (DL. 1.33). Stories such as this feed into an imagined world of Greek philosophers, like Diogenes the cynic in his barrel, as being above and beyond the grimy realities of day-to-day life. The testimonia we possess for the earliest Greek thinkers, particularly those from Miletos, suggests that this was not in fact the case. In fact, they seem to have played an active role in political decision making both at home and abroad. Thales, recognised as the first true philosopher is said to have counselled in favour of the federal unification of the Ionian poleis (Hdt. 1.170) and accompanied the Lydian king Croesus on campaign (Hdt. 1.75). His ‘pupil’, Anaximander, was said to have lead the expedition to found the city of Apollonia Pontica on the western Black Sea coast (Ael. VH. 3.17). Hekataios, the father of geography, advised the Milesian tyrant Aristagoras throughout the Ionian revolt from Persia (Hdt. 5.36, 5.125-6, 5.137) and was chosen to negotiate with King Darius after the defeat of the insurgents (Diod. Sic. 10.25). Many of these stories, however, are generally recognised as apocryphal and we are in danger of following an overly positivistic line to accept them without serious critical analysis. Thus, we must ask what effect contemporary Milesian politics actually had on the development of these early thinkers? Can we recognise hints in the textual and material sources that help us to understand the political culture and organisation of Miletos, and their place within it? This paper will attempt to approach these questions through a critical exploration of the Archaic Milesian political scene exploring both narrowly political contexts, such as tyranny and stasis, alongside wider questions of the nature of the Milesian polis including its religious and ethnic makeups. We hope to demonstrate how these thinkers did not emerge in an intellectual vacuum but in fact were informed and inspired by the dynamism of the Milesian polis, where a variety of peoples and ideas met and contributed to the formation of a diverse and variegated intellectual and political life.

Resumo: O artigo a visa apresentar o relato de Hecateu de Abdera a respeito dos judeus, citado por Diodoro Sículo (Bibliotheca Historica, 40.3) e preservado na Bibliotheca de Fócio (244), oferecendo uma tradução livre para o português. Hecateu, além de ser o primeiro autor grego a descrever o povo judeu (contemporaneamente a Teofrasto), é também importante por ser o grande ícone do surgimento da nova etnografia grega no período helenístico. No relato estudado neste artigo, Hecateu apresenta elementos importantes da identidade judaica e suas fronteiras culturais e ainda lhes dá uma explicação racional, a fim de facilitar a compreensão a respeito dos judeus por parte de seu público grego. Palavras-chave: Hecateu de Abdera; mundo helenístico; etnografia grega; Judeus.

Abstract: This article aims to present Hecataeus of Abdera’s account of the Jews, quoted by Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica, 40.3), and preserved in Photius’ Bibliotheca (244), which is offered here in a free portuguese translation. Hecataeus, besides being the first Greek author to describe the Jewish people (contemporaneous with Theophrastus), is also important as the great icon of the emergence of a new Greek ethnography in the Hellenistic era. In the account studied in this article, Hecataeus presents important elements of Jewish identity and their cultural boundaries and gives a rational explanation of these aspects,
aiming to facilitate understanding of the Jews by his Greek audience.
Keywords: Hecateus of Abdera; Hellenistic world; Greek ethnography; Jews.

This paper deals with Anaximenes' rejection of a key doctrine of Anaximander, namely that the sun is able to complete its circular motion around the earth, since the earth, in turn, far from being indefinitely deep, has a lower as well as an upper limit, is located at the centre of the universe, is stable and does not incur the risk to fall.
Parmenides resumed the basic idea of Anaximander with new conjectures and arguments, but in the meanwhile Anaximenes' rejection found several followers (not just Xenophanes).
So, these old sophoi didn't disagree only about the 'arche', whether it is to be identified with 'to apeiron' or air.

The paper analyzes evidence on the cities pertaining to non-Greek people which one can find in Greek authors Hecataeus of Milet, Herodotus and Thucydides. It wil check not only the occurrences of the term  πόλις but when the very the idea of anorganized policy in an urban context is applied to local people of the western part of the Mediterranean area.