The polis is a dominant force in scholarship on Greek tragedy, including Euripides’ Medea. This paper addresses the question of whether there is, in fact, a polis (i.e. a Greek-style city-state) in the play. The polis proper does not often feature in tragedy. Euripides’ Corinth, like many urban centres in tragedy, is a generic palatial settlement ruled by a king. It is not a community of citizens. Creon is a non-constitutional absolute hereditary monarch, and it is a commonplace of tragedy that absolute sole role is antithetical to the idea of the polis. Medea is exiled, not ostracised; she is never a metic. Her relationships and actions are governed by elite xenia, not citizenship. Thus, though ‘political’ interpretations of Medea are all to the good, polis-centric interpretations become much less attractive once one observes the almost complete absence of the polis from the play.

This paper examines the treatment of violence in Euripides' Bacchae, particularly in spoken narrative. Bacchae is essentially a drama about violence, and the messenger-speeches establish a dialectic between spectacle and suffering as different conceptions of, and reactions to, violence. The ironic deployment of imagery and allusion, particularly concerning Pentheus' body and head, presents violence as ambiguous. The exodos then provides a model of compassion, in which knowledge of guilt does not preclude sympathy, nor does ambivalence towards violence. Finally, it is concluded that the paradoxical humanitas of this Dionysiac tragedy is grounded in its presentation of violence as a source first of pleasure, then of pain, allowing spectators to be both entertained and shocked.

Abbreviations 35999.indb 10 11/07/2019 14:48'Too bad Hippocrates didn't have Twitter 2,400 years ago, because he's a pretty quotable guy. ' 1 This is how a 2017 article from the Australian Fitness Network by a sports nutrition specialist, aimed at those working in the fitness industry, summarizes the current value of Hippocrates to the modern world, before exploring various things he is supposed to have said; these include 'Let food be your medicine, ' 'Walking is the best medicine' and 'The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well. ' While he is by no means the only figure from the ancient world for whom there are lists of 'quotes' online, 2 whose 'words' are tweeted daily, who features as a common topic for secondary school projects, and for whom programmes, institutes, prizes, products and an online medical news service -the Hippocratic Post -are currently named, I believe that Hippocrates offers a particularly striking example of how the classical world is received outside the academy today. 3 Hippocrates' role in medicine remains exceptional; as Julius Rocca noted, 'Few, if any other professional bodies today either lay claim to an abiding relationship to a figure from classical antiquity or attempt to make use of one. ' 4 In the comparable case of Socrates, for whom there already exists a full study of his reception, 5 his name tends to feature in connection with various educational initiatives, such as the Aspen Institute's Socrates Program, 'a forum for emerging leaders (approximately ages 28-45) from various professions to convene and explore contemporary issues through expert-moderated dialogue' . The bilingual Socrates Academy in Matthews, North Carolina uses the Socratic method to teach the three Rs. 6 Socrates is known today for a method of 'moderated dialogue' as well as for his challenge to state religion, whereas the name of Hippocrates often carries a far more practical, material dimension: an electric juicer, a 'miraculous' face cream, a soup and a highly-controversial residential raw-food Receiving HippocratesWhen I taught at the University of Reading, we offered a third-year classical reception course called 'Uses and Abuses of Antiquity' . It raised the question of where, if anywhere, we should draw the line between a valid 'use' and an invalid 35999.indb 2 11/07/2019 14:48Hippocratic Oath, to which I shall return in Chapter 4. John Harley Warner argues that, until the last third of the nineteenth century, history rather than science was the true source of orthodox physicians' authority; the power of 'two millennia of enduring tradition' summoned by the name of Hippocrates provided them with a lineage, which in turn gave them legitimacy over the various 'irregular' practitioners. 32 In this historical rewriting, Hippocrates was 'highly malleable' . Some praised him unconditionally, and others criticized him for ignorance -for example, in confusing veins and arteries -or for holding 'absurd' views, but such criticisms could be qualified on the grounds t...

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This article analyses the 1902 translation of Euripides’ Bakkhai by the renowned scholar, internationalist, and popularizer of Greek drama, Gilbert Murray. In particular, Murray's syncretistic use of religious diction in the translation is contrasted with his secular humanist reading of the play: throughout the translation, pagan, Olympian polytheism is described in Christian terminology. I conclude that this apparent contradiction reflects the early twentieth-century literary-historical context in which Murray operated, and his own idiosyncratic, ritualist reading of the play and of Greek tragedy in general. Murray interpreted Bakkhai as a ‘secular mystery play’ in celebration of humanism, but he lacked the poetic resources to express this in verse without recourse to Christian phraseology. Within Murray's overall project of popularizing Greek drama, this translation stands as a significant, influential experiment in post-Victorian secular-mystical verse drama.