S. Douglas Olson

Firewood and Charcoal in Classical Athens

FUEL FOR HEATING AND COOKING is one of the most basic, irreducible needs of settled human existence.1 Most of the ancient world relied on firewood (evAov) and charcoal (a`vOpae) to satisfy its energy requirements, and in major urban centers like Athens this must have been a major (and potentially quite profitable) industry. Fuel had to be gathered and processed in the countryside, transported into the city, and marketed and distributed there, with possibilities for employment and entrepreneurship at every stop. In part because the evidence is so fragmentary and scattered, however, the charcoal and firewood industries in Attica in the Classical period have never received systematic scholarly attention.2 This paper is an attempt to draw together and analyze what can be known about the business and its part in the larger Athenian economy.

Names and Naming in Aristophanic Comedy

One of the ironies of literary history is that the survival of Aristophanic comedy and indeed of all Greek drama is due to the more or less faithful transmission of a written text. Reading a play and watching one, after all, are very different sorts of activities. Unlike a book, in which the reader can leaf backward for reminders of what has already happened or forward for information about what is to come, a play onstage can be experienced in one direction only, from ‘beginning’ to ‘end’. Nor can a play be put down and picked up again at ones leisure or interrupted while the audience puzzles over a difficult or intriguing passage. Live theatre is an ephemeral and essentially independent thing, which must be experienced in its own time and on its own terms or not at all, and as a result we modern readers, dependent on the written page, are at a marked disadvantage in understanding ancient drama. Taplins study of staging in Aeschylus has shed considerable light on the dramatic technique of Athenian tragedy. Stage-practice in Aristophanic comedy, and in particular the ways in which names and naming are used there, has received much less attention.

Greek theatre in the fourth century B.C.

Past scholarship described the fourth century BC as an age of theatrical decline. This book, the first to explore all aspects of fourth-century theatre, reveals it to be an epoch of unparalleled expansion and innovation. 19 leading scholars evaluate the evidence for fourth-century drama to become the pre-eminent cultural institution of the ancient world.

Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens

Millis and Olson offer a updated edition of IG II2 2318–2325, the most substantial surviving evidence for the institutional history of the Athenian dramatic festivals. Fresh texts, detailed discussion of restorations, and full epigraphic and prosopographic commentary are included.

Matro of Pitane and the tradition of epic parody in the fourth century BCE : text, translation, and commentary

The fragments of Matro of Pitane (c. 300 BC) offer insights not only into the largely forgotten and obscure late-classical genre of epic parody, but also into 4th-century Athenian history, the role of food and dining in antiquity, and the history of the text of Homer and the reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the pre-Alexandrian period. Sens and Olson offer a new text of the 144 surviving lines of Matros parodies based on a fresh examination of the manuscripts; a translation; a detailed philological, historical, and gastronomic commentary; and a lively introduction to the poet and his times.

Scenes from an ill-spent youth (Aristophanes, Knights 411-12)

ἔγωγe νὴ τοὺς κονδύλους, οὓς πολλὰ δὴ ᾽πὶ πολλοῖς ἠνeσχόμην ἐκ παιδίου, μαχαιρίδων τe πληγάς

Chapter Four. The Victors Lists: IG II2 2325A–H

Millis and Olson offer a updated edition of IG II2 2318–2325, the most substantial surviving evidence for the institutional history of the Athenian dramatic festivals. Fresh texts, detailed discussion of restorations, and full epigraphic and prosopographic commentary are included.

The comic poet Pherecrates, a war-casualty of the late 410s BC

The comic poet Pherecrates does not appear to have been active after the mid 410s. I suggest that he is to be identified with an epigraphically-attested war-casualty from a few years later.