Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Leah Lazar and Christy Constantakopoulou join me in the Lesche to discuss their work on the relationship between Athens and its subject communities (the "allies") during the fifth-century Athenian "empire" (ἀρχή). Leah has a new book out on the subject, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC; Christy’s monograph Dance of the Islands (a favorite of my Classical Greek History students) opened up new ways of thinking about the interconnectivity of the empire’s communities when it came out in 2007.

About our guests

Leah Lazar is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford. She is part of the ERC-funded CHANGE Project, researching the monetary and economic history of Anatolia. In January 2025, she will be starting as a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Her first book, Athens and Power in the Fifth Century BC, came out this year with Oxford University Press. 

Christy Constantakopoulou is a researcher in the National Hellenic Research Foundation. She was previously Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has published on the history of the Aegean islands, ancient historiography, Greek religion, and the Athenian empire. Her book The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World came out in 2007 with Oxford University Press (paperback 2010). 

Ancient texts

• Thucydides
• Aristophanes, Babylonians (fragmentary) and Acharnians
• The lapis primus of the Athenian Tribute Lists, 454/3 BC: IG I3 259
• The 'Chalkis Decree', 446/5 (or 424/3?): IG I3 40
• Decrees for Methone, 430/29–424/3 BC: IG I3 61

Also mentioned

• Anthropologist Veena Das's work on "poisonous knowledge".
• R. Meiggs (1972), The Athenian Empire. Oxford.
• B. D. Meritt, H. T. Wade-Gery, and M. F. McGregor (1939-53), The Athenian Tribute Lists, Vols. 1-4. Princeton. 
• L. Nixon and S. Price (1990), "The Size and Resources of Greek Cities," in O. Murray and S. Price, eds., The Greek City. Oxford: 137–70.
• R. Osborne (1999), "Inscribing Performance," in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge: 341–358.

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert join me in the Lesche to discuss their editio princeps of a newly-discovered papyrus (P.Phil.Nec. 23) containing lines from two of Euripides' fragmentary plays, Ino and Poluidos.

The publication, in ZPE, is currently only available in print. The ToC for the issue in which it appears is available here.

Information about the conference on 'The New Euripides' held at the Center for Hellenic Studies this past June is available here. Pre-prints based on the speakers' presentations are available here.

During the episode, there's mention of an upcoming (as of the day of this podcast's release) public conference on the new papyrus, which will be held at UC Boulder on Saturday, September 14th. Information about the conference is available here.

About our guests

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She works on Greek literature of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods, literary papyrology, the culture of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and the reception of Greek narrative literature in Armenian historiography. Her current book project, Portraits of Pharaohs, studies the historical fictions of Greco-Roman Egypt. She co-directs The City of the Baboon Project at Hermopolis Magna in Middle Egypt.

John Gibert is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He writes mainly on archaic and classical Greek poetry, especially drama. He is the author of Euripides’ Ion (2019) and Change of Mind in Greek Tragedy (1995), and co-author (with Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp) of Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Tragedies II (2004).

Ancient texts

• Euripides, Ino and Poluidos; Medea, Hecuba
• Plato(?), Minos

Also mentioned

• Carrara, L. 2014. L’Indovino Poliido: Eschilo, Le Cretesi, Sofocle, Manteis, Euripide, Poliido (Rome).
• Coo, L. and A. Uhlig, eds. 2019. Aeschylus at Play: Studies in Aeschylean Satyr Drama. BICS 62.2 (special issue).
• Finglass, P. J. and L. Coo, eds. 2020. Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy. Cambridge. 
• Johnson, W. A. 2004. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto.
• Luppe, W. and Henry, W. B. (2012) 5131. Tragedy (Euripides, Ino?), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 78: 19-25.

________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form

Welcome to Lesche, a podcast on new books and ideas in the field of Ancient Greek Studies. 

In each episode, we'll be talking to classicists about their latest contributions to the field.

We’re going to start by releasing two episodes each month, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month. The first episode will debut on Wednesday, September 11.

You can find us on Instagram, @leschepodcast, or send us an email at [email protected] 

If you have an idea for a new book or topic you think would make for a good conversation, please reach out using this form. 
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For more on the Song of Seikilos see:

• M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 1992, with modern musical notation on p. 301
• A. D'Angour, "The Song of Seikilos: a Musically Annotated Ancient Greek Poem, in Antigone
• E. Pöhlmann and M. West, Documents of Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, 2001. (The Song of Seikilos is dossier #90)

________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: [email protected]
Suggest a book using this form