Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches – serie

In this volume, K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis bring together scholars of history, archaeology, and anthropology to explore the located and contextual nature of historical narratives. The contributors analyze contested historic rituals, building styles, and traditions-looking through the unique lens of twentieth-century Greek identity-paying particular attention to the ways these social phenomena and cultural artifacts manifest tension between 'official' and 'unofficial' narratives of the past. Though focused on the changing historical basis of Greek culture and identity, this work further serves as an important theoretical contemplation of how our view of the past is shaped by our relationship with the present.

Samuel Eliot Bassett's classic work The Poetry of Homer investigates the rhetorical techniques that have made the Iliad and the Odyssey speak to audiences throughout the ages. Combining a sublime poetic sensitivity with thorough scholarship this work offers original analyses of many topics, including the Homeric narrator's presentation of his story, his evocation of character through direct speech, the organization of speeches and descriptions into vivd dramatic situations, the pacing and emotional weight of similes and narratorial interventions, and the expressive variation in rhythms and word-groupings. A prolific and insightful contributor to Homeric scholarship, Bassett was invited to deliver the Sather Classical Lecture at Berkeley, but he died with the manuscript unpublished. This work, published posthumously in 1938 as The Poetry of Homer, has left its mark on a generation of classicists. Lexington is proud to bring such an important and influential book back into print in this new edition, edited and introduced by Bruce Heiden with a foreword by Greg Nagy.

Samuel Eliot Bassett's classic work The Poetry of Homer investigates the rhetorical techniques that have made the Iliad and the Odyssey speak to audiences throughout the ages. Combining a sublime poetic sensitivity with thorough scholarship this work offers original analyses of many topics, including the Homeric narrator's presentation of his story, his evocation of character through direct speech, the organization of speeches and descriptions into vivd dramatic situations, the pacing and emotional weight of similes and narratorial interventions, and the expressive variation in rhythms and word-groupings. A prolific and insightful contributor to Homeric scholarship, Bassett was invited to deliver the Sather Classical Lecture at Berkeley, but he died with the manuscript unpublished. This work, published posthumously in 1938 as The Poetry of Homer, has left its mark on a generation of classicists. Lexington is proud to bring such an important and influential book back into print in this new edition, edited and introduced by Bruce Heiden with a foreword by Greg Nagy.

A Penelopean Poetics looks at the relationship between gender ideology and the self-referential poetics of the Odyssey through the figure of Penelope. She is a cunning story-teller; her repeated reweavings of Laertes' shroud a figurative replication of the process of oral poetic composition itself. Penelope's web is thus a discourse and it can be construed specifically as feminine. Her gendered poetics celebrates process, multiplicity, and ambiguity and it resists phallocentric discourse by undermining stable and fixed meanings. Penelope's poetics become a discursive thread through which different feminine voices can realize their resistant capacities. Author Barbara Clayton's work contributes to discussions in the classics as well as literary criticism, sex and gender studies, and women's studies.

A Penelopean Poetics looks at the relationship between gender ideology and the self-referential poetics of the Odyssey through the figure of Penelope. She is a cunning story-teller; her repeated reweavings of Laertes' shroud a figurative replication of the process of oral poetic composition itself. Penelope's web is thus a discourse and it can be construed specifically as feminine. Her gendered poetics celebrates process, multiplicity, and ambiguity and it resists phallocentric discourse by undermining stable and fixed meanings. Penelope's poetics become a discursive thread through which different feminine voices can realize their resistant capacities. Author Barbara Clayton's work contributes to discussions in the classics as well as literary criticism, sex and gender studies, and women's studies.

In Homeric Megathemes D.N. Maronitis puts forward war, homilia, and homecoming as three themes central to Homer's two epic poems, the Illiad and the Odyssey. Branching out from each of these themes are certain semiotic and structural characteristics that determine, specific to each of the poems, myth and plot, narrative syntax, and more generally, their poetic and humanistic character. The aim of Maronitis' study is to determine and document similarities and differences in the two Homeric epics through these themes and to identify examples of them in ancient lyric poetry and Attic tragedy. Maronitis' theoretical framework gives classics scholars and literary theorists interested in poetry, history, and tragedy a social and cultural research model for thinking about the genesis and maturity of great lyric works. His comparative approach, revealing the creative debt of the Odyssey to the Iliadic model, lays bare the progression of an art form through the development of literary technique, the shifts in classical ideologies (including anthropoligical ideas about "man"), and in politics. Anyone interested in the thought of the Archaic period should read this book.

Metrical Constraint and the Interpretation of Style in the Tragic Trimeter is an interpretation of the choices the Greek tragedians made in regard to certain forms of standardized variations in word order and prosody. Dr. Nicholas Baechle demonstrates that in their compositional practice the tragedians collectively decided to use certain prosodic variations to fit metrically intractable words and phrases. This book is grounded in metrical constraint and the mechanics of trimester composition, but also extends to a greater understanding of the stylistic sensibilities of the tragedians and of their feeling for the generic ethos of tragic dialogue. By means of comparisons with Aristophanes' general practice, and with paratragic imitations of tragic style, the distinctiveness of the style of tragic dialogue versus the rendition of speech in comedy is made clear. Metrical Constraint and the Interpretation of Style in the Tragic Trimeter offers a critical and sophisticated perspective on Greek drama that will appeal to anyone interested in language and classical studies.

In Diachronic Dialogues: Authority and Continuity in Homer and the Homeric Tradition author Ahuvia Kahane considers central aspects of Homer's poetry, such as truth, knowledge, gender, virtue and the heroic code, authorship, memory and song, diction and formula. This book makes the case for performative, rather than essential values in the Illiad and the Odyssey. On the one hand performativity allows Homeric epic form to enact diverse claims and agendas in specific historical, cultural, and political contexts. On the other hand, the performative character of Homer's values implies radical resistance to fixity of reference, forms of meaning, and patterning, etc. No individual performers or group of historical interpreters can thus claim exclusive authority over the song and its contents i.e. over its truth, knowledge, social codes, its diction, authorship, etc. The interaction of diversity and radical resistance marks the traditional and canonical icon we call "Homeric epic." It is a shared record of many pasts open to all but exclusive to none. Performativity may be a general quality of all poetic discourse, or indeed of language itself. Nevertheless, this study suggests that in historical terms Homeric poetry has been, and perhaps still is, one of the most prominent sites for exercising tradition and claims of cultural continuity. Diachronic Dialogues is an essential addition to scholarship in literary criticism and the classics.

In Diachronic Dialogues: Authority and Continuity in Homer and the Homeric Tradition author Ahuvia Kahane considers central aspects of Homer's poetry, such as truth, knowledge, gender, virtue and the heroic code, authorship, memory and song, diction and formula. This book makes the case for performative, rather than essential values in the Illiad and the Odyssey. On the one hand performativity allows Homeric epic form to enact diverse claims and agendas in specific historical, cultural, and political contexts. On the other hand, the performative character of Homer's values implies radical resistance to fixity of reference, forms of meaning, and patterning, etc. No individual performers or group of historical interpreters can thus claim exclusive authority over the song and its contents i.e. over its truth, knowledge, social codes, its diction, authorship, etc. The interaction of diversity and radical resistance marks the traditional and canonical icon we call "Homeric epic." It is a shared record of many pasts open to all but exclusive to none. Performativity may be a general quality of all poetic discourse, or indeed of language itself. Nevertheless, this study suggests that in historical terms Homeric poetry has been, and perhaps still is, one of the most prominent sites for exercising tradition and claims of cultural continuity. Diachronic Dialogues is an essential addition to scholarship in literary criticism and the classics.

Anger is central to the Homeric epic, but few scholarly interventions have probed Homer’s language beyond the study of the Iliad’s first word: menis. Yet Homer uses over a dozen words for anger. Fighting Words and Feuding Words engages the powerful tools of Homeric poetic analysis and the anthropological study of emotion in an analysis of two anger terms highlighted in the Iliad by the Achaean prophet Calchas. Walsh argues that kotos and kholos locate two focal points for the study of aggression in Homeric poetry, the first presenting Homer’s terms for feud and the second providing the native terms that designates the martial violence highlighted by the Homeric tradition. After focusing on these two terms as used in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Walsh concludes by addressing some post-Homeric and comparative implications of Homeric anger.

Anger is central to the Homeric epic, but few scholarly interventions have probed Homer’s language beyond the study of the Iliad’s first word: menis. Yet Homer uses over a dozen words for anger. Fighting Words and Feuding Words engages the powerful tools of Homeric poetic analysis and the anthropological study of emotion in an analysis of two anger terms highlighted in the Iliad by the Achaean prophet Calchas. Walsh argues that kotos and kholos locate two focal points for the study of aggression in Homeric poetry, the first presenting Homer’s terms for feud and the second providing the native terms that designates the martial violence highlighted by the Homeric tradition. After focusing on these two terms as used in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Walsh concludes by addressing some post-Homeric and comparative implications of Homeric anger.

Metrical Constraint and the Interpretation of Style in the Tragic Trimeter is an interpretation of the choices the Greek tragedians made in regard to certain forms of standardized variations in word order and prosody. Dr. Nicholas Baechle demonstrates that in their compositional practice the tragedians collectively decided to use certain prosodic variations to fit metrically intractable words and phrases. This book is grounded in metrical constraint and the mechanics of trimester composition, but also extends to a greater understanding of the stylistic sensibilities of the tragedians and of their feeling for the generic ethos of tragic dialogue. By means of comparisons with Aristophanes' general practice, and with paratragic imitations of tragic style, the distinctiveness of the style of tragic dialogue versus the rendition of speech in comedy is made clear. Metrical Constraint and the Interpretation of Style in the Tragic Trimeter offers a critical and sophisticated perspective on Greek drama that will appeal to anyone interested in language and classical studies.

For better or worse, the ancient Greeks retain their cultural, political, and philosophical authority for contemporary educators and actors. Maureen Dowd has talked about the Hellenization of the Bush administration, Thucydides has been used as a template to analyze the Iraqi War and the War on Terror, Greek drama has been repeatedly performed in sometimes spectacular if unconventional ways, while the Trojan War, the battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans, and Alexander have all been the subjects of recent films. Last year the New York Times carried a front page story about "conservatives" taking a "new tack" by establishing "beachheads" for programs in Western Civilization and American Institutions in which the ancient Greeks hold pride of place.The contributors to When Worlds Elide are also invested in having Greek philosophy, literature, and political theory taken seriously in contemporary debates-whether over modes of interpreting Plato, Athenian democracy, gender, ethnicity, or materiality. What distinguishes this book is the substantive range of the essays in it and the generative potentialities of "using" ancient authors and events in analyzing these debates. It begins from the premise that "the Greeks" (like "the French" or "the Chinese") obscures the contested histories of ethnic, geographic, and political formations in favor of an idealized dehistoricized collectivity. The also book also illustrates the ways in which ancient texts must be understood within the history of interpretative practices, which means that "the Greeks" are more a moving target than a stable entity, and that each generation of interlocutors formulates continually transforming questions, readings, and arguments.Finally, this book supposes that an interrogation of "the Greek legacy" depends on interdisciplinary work where interdisciplinarity functions as a verb-that is, something that is always in the process of being achieved.

Described as "a powerful, brilliant, and original study" when first published, this second edition of Froma Zeitlin's experiment in decoding the Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes in the light of contemporary theory now updates her explorations of the tragic struggle between Eteocles and Polyneices, the doomed sons of Oedipus, with a new preface, a new afterword, and the addition of the relevant Greek texts. The mutual self-destruction of the enemy brothers in this last act of the cursed family is preceded (and determined) by one of Aeschylus' most daring innovations through the pairing of the shields of attackers and defenders in the central scene of the play as an extended dialogue explicitly concerned with visual and verbal symbols. In a preliminary consideration of the relations between language and kinship and between city and family, between self and society, as determining forces in fifth-century drama, the heart of the book is a detailed investigation of this tour de force of semiotic energy. Zeitlin's decipherment of this provocative text yields a heightened appreciation of Aeschylus' compositional artistry and the complexity of his worldview. At the same time, this study points the way to Zeitlin's larger engagement with the special ideological role that the city of Thebes comes to play on the tragic stage as the negative counterpart to the self-representation of Athens.

Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey reveals the significance of the Odyssey's plot, in particular the many scenes of recognition that make up the hero's homecoming and dramatize the cardinal values of Homeric society, an aristocratic culture organized around recognition in the broader senses of honor, privilege, status, and fame. Odysseus' identity is seen to be rooted in his family relations, geographical origins, control of property, participation in the social institutions of hospitality and marriage, past actions, and ongoing reputation. At the same time, Odysseus' dependence on the acknowledgement of others ensures attention to multiple viewpoints, which makes the Odyssey more than a simple celebration of one man's preeminence and accounts in part for the poem's vigorous afterlife. The theme of disguise, which relies on plausible lies, highlights the nature of belief and the power of falsehood and creates the mixture of realism and fantasy that gives the Odyssey its distinctive texture. The book contains a pioneering analysis of the role of Penelope and the questions of female agency and human limitation raised by the critical debate about when exactly she recognizes that Odysseus has come home.

This volume explores the ways local communities perceive, experience, and interact with archaeological sites in Greece, as well as with the archaeologists and government officials who construct and study such places. In so doing, it reveals another side to sites that have been revered as both birthplace of Western civilization and basis of the modern Greek nation. The conceptual terrain of those who live near such sites is complex and furrowed with ambivalence, confusion, and resentment. For many local residents, these sites are gated enclaves, unexplained and off limits, except when workers are needed.While cleavages between residents and archaeologists have received attention elsewhere, they have been little examined in Greece, where they are often masked by sweeping statements on the glory of antiquity that overlook the extent to which ordinary Greeks have become disconnected from these places in their midst. The complexity of this situation, freighted as it is with two centuries of archaeological practice, is explored in this volume from multiple viewpoints and with respect to sites from prehistoric to Ottoman and beyond. Several chapters trace the origins of the disconnection between archaeological sites and communities, relating it to the ways in which early travelers appropriated sites for their own purposes, the subsequent move of archaeology onto the slippery slope created by the travelers, and the concurrent depiction of Greek peasants as passive and uninformed. Other chapters chronicle the active ways in which communities have contested the development and representation of particular sites and even sometimes created alternative landscapes with other points of entry to the valued Greek past. Still others recount and assess recent archaeological efforts to reconnect residents to the sites in their midst. Archaeology in Situ will be of particular value to those interested in modern Greek studies, Greek archaeology, Classics, public archaeology, archaeological ethics, anthropology, cultur

Light and darkness played an important role beyond the division of time in ancient Greek myth and religion; the contributors to Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion consider its function on both the individual and social level as manifested in modes of thought and behavior and expressed in language, beliefs, ritual, and iconography. The book is divided into five parts: color semantics, appearance and concealment, eye sight/insight, being and beyond, and cult. Each subdivision contains a wealth of information for the reader, ranging from detailed explanations of the interplay between lexical categories that denote darkness and light and the effect of blindness on metaphysical matters to the qualities of cultic light. This unique volume will be of interest to readers in fields as diverse as ancient Greek history, metaphysics, and iconography.

The Philosopher's Song is a full-length treatment of Plato and the dynamic course of his philosophical thought, regarded from a distinctly poetic point of view. Kevin Crotty demonstrates how Plato's invention of philosophy needs to be situated within the context of a society where poets were cultural authorities, whose teachings emphasized such tragic themes as the instability of things and the indeterminacy of moral terms. The interest of Plato's philosophy lies to a great extent in the compelling interest of what he sought to repress-the poetic and political heritage of a world tragically conceived. Plato's attacks on the poets are notorious. Despite his apparently frank hostility, however, his relation to the poets was exceedingly complex, argues Crotty. Even the banishment of the poets in the Republic turns out to be, more deeply, a recruitment of mimetic poetry for Plato's metaphysics. Once endowed with a metaphysical significance, however, the poets posed a serious challenge to Platonic idealism, and spurred Plato to revise considerably his metaphysical scheme. Crotty ultimately concludes that the views of politics and ethics in Plato's later works return in many ways to the insights of the poets.

The Philosopher's Song is a full-length treatment of Plato and the dynamic course of his philosophical thought, regarded from a distinctly poetic point of view. Kevin Crotty demonstrates how Plato's invention of philosophy needs to be situated within the context of a society where poets were cultural authorities, whose teachings emphasized such tragic themes as the instability of things and the indeterminacy of moral terms. The interest of Plato's philosophy lies to a great extent in the compelling interest of what he sought to repress-the poetic and political heritage of a world tragically conceived. Plato's attacks on the poets are notorious. Despite his apparently frank hostility, however, his relation to the poets was exceedingly complex, argues Crotty. Even the banishment of the poets in the Republic turns out to be, more deeply, a recruitment of mimetic poetry for Plato's metaphysics. Once endowed with a metaphysical significance, however, the poets posed a serious challenge to Platonic idealism, and spurred Plato to revise considerably his metaphysical scheme. Crotty ultimately concludes that the views of politics and ethics in Plato's later works return in many ways to the insights of the poets.

Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a study on heroism and mortality from Homer to Plato. In a collection of thirty enjoyable essays, Stamatia Dova combines intertextual research and thought-provoking analysis to shed new light on concepts of the hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Bacchylides 5, Plato's Symposium, and Euripides' Alcestis. Through systematic readings of a wide range of seemingly unrelated texts, the author offers a cohesive picture of heroic character in a variety of literary genres. Her characterization of Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles is artfully supported by a comprehensive overview of the theme of descent to the underworld in Homer, Bacchylides, and Euripides. Aimed at the specialist as well as the general reader, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades brings innovative Classical scholarship and insightful literary criticism to a wide audience.

Viewing the Iliad and myth through the lens of modern psychology, in Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond,Richard Holway shows how the epic underwrites individual and communal catharsis and denial. Sacrificial childrearing generates but also threatens agonistic, glory-seeking ancient Greek cultures. Not only aggression but knowledge of sacrificial parenting must be purged.Just as Zeus contrives to have threats to his regime play out harmlessly (to him) in the mortal realm, so the Iliad dramatizes threats to Archaic and later Greek cultures in the safe arena of poetic performance. The epic represents in displaced form destructive mother-son and father-daughter liaisons and resulting strife within and between generations.Holway calls into question the Iliad’s (and many scholars’) presentation of Achilles as a hero who speaks truth to power, learns through suffering, and exemplifies kingly virtues that Agamemnon lacks. So too the Iliad’s cathartic process, whether conceived as purging innate aggression or arriving at moral clarity. Instead, Holway argues, Achilles (and Socrates) try to prove they are not what at bottom they experience themselves to be—needy, defenseless children, who fear to acknowledge, much less speak out against, parents' use of them to meet parents' needs.What emerges from Holway’s analysis is not only a new reading of the Iliad, from its first word to its last, but a revised account of the family dynamics underlying ancient Greek cultures.

Debate concerning the extent to which the tragic chorus is marginal to the dramatic action has prevailed in discussions of choral identity and, more broadly, Greek tragedy as a whole, since the time of Aristotle. Furthermore, it is supposed that choruses not tied to the role of Athenian military-age men are all the more marginal. Yet choral identity challenges our understanding of the ancient Greek tragic chorus—and thus of Greek tragedy as a whole—because the dramatic identities of tragic choruses are, with few exceptions, so different from the identities of the plays' external audiences.Choral Identity and the Chorus of Elders in Greek Tragedy presents U.S. Dhuga's radical reappraisal of the ancient Greek tragic chorus. Through a close reading of the speech, song, and choreography among choruses of old men, Dhuga overturns previous assumptions about the chorus of elders, arguing that their decrepitude and supposed low social rank resulted in the historically dismissive view of the chorus of elders. This book demonstrates that choruses of elders are instead remarkably central to the tragic action. Dhuga guides us through detailed yet readable analyses of the choruses in Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus and Antigone, Euripides' Heraclidae and Hercules Furens, and Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Through these works, Dhuga broadens our understanding of the ongoing, if not increasing, importance that the chorus commands in Greek tragedy. Choral Identity and the Chorus of Elders in Greek Tragedy is a must-read for anyone who wants a more complete understanding of the power and complexity of Greek tragedy.

In Chronos on the Threshold: Time, Ritual, and Agency in the Oresteia Marcel Widzisz combines various anthropological, philological, and narratological perspectives in order to consider afresh both the textual details and structural elements of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Included among the approaches is first a consideration of normative ritual structure in Archaic and Classical Greece and then a demonstration of its regular reconfiguration throughout the many individual scenes and choruses of the trilogy. This framework not only provides a new view of the micro and macro structure of the Oresteia, but also paves the way for an elucidation of the many references to time and its workings, references which, however well attested in the manuscripts, are being more strongly challenged if not altogether removed from recent editions of the Greek text. Time, however, beyond appearing as a subject at these key junctures, pervades the trilogy in a number of subtler ways: in how characters use timing, attempt to control the tempo of on-stage action, and even demonstrate different degrees of temporal perspicuity. The appearance of analepsis and prolepsis, the referencing of past and future (too often presented in previous scholarship in the form of mere cataloguing such instances), is shown to be a dynamic field of contention between opposed agents in a discursive process termed agonistic temporal framing, a practice not only found repeatedly in the Oresteia, but one which can bedetected in authors as diverse as Homer and Plato. The manipulation of time and the various constructions of competing temporal horizons allow for a new view of what agency appears as and means in a work such as the Oresteia. The context of the law court in Eumenides brings with it a different type of temporality, specifically suited to resolve conflicting ritual claims, in which temporal framing and individual antagonisms are subsumed into a greater structure, with even wider and more long lasting implications for personal and corporate agency.

Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a study on heroism and mortality from Homer to Plato. In a collection of thirty enjoyable essays, Stamatia Dova combines intertextual research and thought-provoking analysis to shed new light on concepts of the hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Bacchylides 5, Plato's Symposium, and Euripides' Alcestis. Through systematic readings of a wide range of seemingly unrelated texts, the author offers a cohesive picture of heroic character in a variety of literary genres. Her characterization of Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles is artfully supported by a comprehensive overview of the theme of descent to the underworld in Homer, Bacchylides, and Euripides. Aimed at the specialist as well as the general reader, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades brings innovative Classical scholarship and insightful literary criticism to a wide audience.

Iambic Ideas, explores the concept of the "iambic" as a genre. In a set of detailed studies, the contributors examine, across time, the idea of iambic through a wide variety of cultural settings—Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, and late antiquity. What emerges most clearly is that the "iambic idea" is impossible to define in absolute terms: rather, the form of iambic keeps varying in response to a vast variety of historical contingencies. The variation is evident in such critical terms as the "iambic tendency" in Sappho, the "reusing of iambi" for Roman epodes, and even the instances of "iambic absence" in comedy and other such related forms. In the end, what is most characteristic about the "iambic" is its own inherent variability.

In this landmark collection of essays, renowned classicist Charles Segal offers detailed analyses of major texts from archaic and early classical Greek poetry; in particular, works of Alcman, Mimnermus, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna. Segal provides close readings of the texts, and then studies the literary form and language of early Greek lyric, the poets'' conception of their aims and their art, the use of mythical paradigms, and the relation of the poems to their social context. A recurrent theme is the recognition of the fragility and brevity of mortal happiness and the consciousness of how the immortality conferred by poetry resists the ever-threatening presence of death and oblivion, fixing in permanent form the passing moments of joy and beauty. This is an essential book for students and scholars of ancient Greek poetry.

The Classical Moment is a reexamination of the concept of a supreme moment in the literatures of Greece, Mesopotamia, India, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Taking the case of Greece as its starting point, it examines what such "moments" have in common, how they are created, and what effect they have on subsequent literary creation.

In this collection of his essays on Homer, some new and some appearing for the first time in English, the distinguished scholar Pietro Pucci examines the linguistic and rhetorical features of the poet's works. Arguing that there can be no purely historical interpretation, given that the parameters of interpretation are themselves historically determined, Pucci focuses instead on two features of Homer's rhetoric: repetition of expression (formulae) and its effects on meaning, and the issue of intertextuality.

This clearly written, beautifully illustrated book introduces a previously unrecognized Homeric theme, the "belted hero," and argues for its lasting historical, literary, and archaeological significance. The belted hero fuses king, warrior, charioteer, and athlete into a supreme image of political power. The special "heroic warrior's belts" (zosteres) worn by Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Nestor served as unimpeachable visual emblems of their exalted positions of rank. The feminine counterpart, or zone, presents the woman as superior in the competitive arena of love. Bennett shows that the belted hero represented an ideology attractive to wealthy landowners, their oikoi, and inter-family connections. He suggests that the communal spirit of the hoplite phalanx attempted to appropriate the belted hero ideal, even while undermining its ethos of personal honor. Bennett also makes several important iconographic interpretations that provide fundamentally new insights into early Greek oral epic compositional techniques, conceptions of time, and cosmological structure. Belted Heroes and Bound Women will be of interest to scholars and students of early Greek art, history, or literature.