The Athen Um

Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie und Patristik.

Short biographies of famous people, one for each day of the year, presented on important life or death dates. For instance, Carl Linnaeus is featured on January 10, the date of his death.

This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers. A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.

This book is a monumental work on the late Romantic Irish poet, George Darley, with a scholarly edition of his complete poetry and a new biography. The text of each poem is meticulously edited from manuscript and printed sources. For the first time, Darley is established as a translator of the First Book of Virgil’s Æneid. A newly discovered manuscript of Darley’s 70 Lenimina Laborum poems enriches the edition, while the celebrated Nepenthe is authoritatively presented with Darley’s manuscript running headnotes. The book introduces over 40 new manuscript letters by Darley, and discusses contemporary reviews of his work and a century of critical commentary. Darley’s influence on Tennyson is evaluated and his vast periodical contributions are examined. In addition, the insightful interpretation of Nepenthe by Edward Hutchinson Synge is presented. This book will be of great interest to scholars of the Romantic period, readers of contemporary periodical journalism, and students of Irish literary history.