Deborah Boedeker

Democracy, empire, and the arts in fifth-century Athens

Athens in the 5th century BC offers a striking picture of the first democracy in history; the first empire created and ruled by a Greek; and a flourishing of learning, philosophical thought, and visual and performing arts. To what extent were these developments interrelated? This text answers this question. The authors bring to this analysis their individual areas of expertise - in the visual arts, poetry and drama, philosophy, archaeology, religion, and social, economic, and political history - and a variety of theoretical approaches.

Epic Heritage and Mythical Patterns in Herodotus

The Histories is a work of monumental originality, and one that springs from monumental traditions. Herodotus occasionally refers to epic characters and deeds; moreover, story-patterns familiar from myths emerge from time to time in the Histories . This chapter considers how epic and mythical traditions interact with his work, both by shaping the narrative of events and by influencing the scope and style of the work as a whole. Aristotle, writing a century before the Halicarnassus inscription, emphasized the differences between epic and historiography. The text of Herodotus interacts frequently not only with epic narrative but with myths in general, by which traditional, culturally significant stories, often involved gods or heroes. The narratives of myth and history can well be expected to overlap, because both are generated in the same cultural climate and reflect its categories and concerns, whether psychological, social, or political. Keywords: Aristotle; epic; Halicarnassus; Herodotus; mythical traditions