Teiresias Supplements Online

Front Matter

Hans Beck — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

“If I am from Megara.” Introduction to the Local Discourse Environment of an Ancient Greek City-State

Hans Beck, McGill University, Montreal — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

The introduction to the volume discusses, first, the conceptual framework of localism and the local in the ancient Greek world. Each city-state cultivated its own identity of place. In doing so, the polis was subject to a local discourse environment that set it apart from other cities. In the second section, the article examines the various manifestations of this environment in Megara, exploring multiple facets and fragments of the local discourse in the city. In sum, the author looks at Greek history through a decidedly local lens, explaining how the Megarians viewed the world around them and what it meant ‘to be from Megara’.

Mythic Highways of the Megarid

Sheila Ager, University of Waterloo — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

The territory of the ancient polis of Megara, situated astride the Isthmus of Corinth, was subject to regular intrusion and invasion from its neighbours to the west and the east, notably Corinth and Athens. This paper explores the ways in which the complex of legends about Megara – whether of Megarian or non-Megarian origin – both shapes and reflects the perception of Megara and the Megarid as a place of passage and the borders of Megarian territory as fluid and susceptible to penetration by others.

Megarian Myths: Extrapolating the Narrative Traditions of Megara

Kevin Solez, MacEwan University, Edmonton — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

This chapter examines the local traditions (through Pausanias and Theognis), discourse environment, and positionality of Megara to establish abstract principles of the Megarian worldview, and then applies those principles to the local traditions in an attempt to present a cohesive account of Megarian myths from the earliest mythistorical times to the beginning of oligarchic government. An important discovery resulting from this is the general avoidance of all things Corinthian in Megarian narrative traditions.

With and Without You: Megara’s Harbours

Klaus Freitag, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule, Aachen — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

The main question that is addressed in this article is whether and how the harbour towns of the Megarid – Nisaia on the Saronic Gulf and Pagai, Aigosthena on the Gulf of Corinth – constituted local worlds in their own right. Exploring the entangled history of the polis Megara and its ports, this paper also points to the complexities behind scholarly approximations to the local horizon of an ancient Greek city-state.

Theognis and the Ambivalence of Aristocracy

Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp, Universität Duisburg-Essen — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

The article focuses on the vexed methodological problem of how to establish a relationship between the historical tradition of Megara on the one hand and the content of the Theognidea on the other. The uncertainties concerning the author’s identity, place of birth, and date notwithstanding, the poems permit a cursory glimpse of a polis community which was characterized by a fierce competition for wealth, social recognition, and sheer power.

‘This City of Ours’: Fear, Discord, and the Persian War at Megara

David Yates, Millsaps College, Jackson — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

In this paper, the author demonstrates that the Persian War stories told at Megara were parochial in nature not just because they evinced a focus on that polis, but also (and more importantly) because they conveyed a tone and outlook that were characteristically Megarian. The themes of fear and discord provide the basis for the present study. Although largely ignored in other parochial traditions across Greece, they feature prominently at Megara (particularly in the Theognidea) because they reflected social and political realities specific to that locality.

οὐ κακὸς ἐῶν: Megarian Valour and its Place in the Local Discourse at Megara

Jonathan Reeves, McMaster University, Hamilton — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

In this essay, the author argues that it is possible to recover from the historiographical tradition something of the Megarians’ own account of their city’s role in the defense of Greece against Persia. Reeves demonstrates that this Persian-War history of the Megarians was articulated and encoded through time by a distinctive community, using a set of idiosyncratic and local memes, and that contentions over the military participation and valour of Megarians in this international conflict constituted an important feature of emic Megarian discourse.

Megarians’ Tears: Localism and Dislocation in the Megarika

Daniel Tober, Fordham University, New York — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Daniel Tober’s “Megarians’ Tears: Localism and Dislocation in the Megarika” explores the interaction between the local and nonlocal in Megarian cultural memory and historiography in the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods. Fragments from Megarian local histories (the Megarika), along with other sources preserving Megarian tradition (from proverbs to Pausanias’s Periegesis), suggest that the Megarian community conceived of its mythic territory differently from other poleis. The Megarians, occupying the isthmus between the Peloponnese on the one hand and Attica and Boiotia on the other, generated a collective memory that was itself isthmian: constricted by traditions emanating from the communities on either side and at the same time availing itself of Megara’s intermedial position. While many Greek local histories extended the reach of the focal community outward into the greater Greek world, the Megarika and the traditions on which they drew took the opposite approach, dragging renowned figures from the cultural memory of neighboring communities inward and binding them permanently to Megarian land through remembered burial and monumentalized tombs. By filling the Megarid with the graves of celebrated nonlocals (e.g. Adrastos, Alkmene, Ino, and Iphigeneia), Megarians constructed a collective past that advertised their territory’s important role as a facilitator of movement between the Peloponnese and the rest of peninsular Greece.

Megarian Local Adjudication: The Case of the Border Dispute between Epidauros and Corinth in 242-240 BCE (IG IV2.I.70 and 71)

Philip J. Smith, McGill University, Montreal — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Over the last quarter century, the study of interstate arbitration and the use of foreign judges to adjudicate disputes between city-states has been rejuvenated. This article re-examines the well-known Megarian adjudication of the border dispute between Epidauros and Corinth by the Achaean League in the 3rd century BCE, with a view to determining the reason for the Achaeans’ choice of Megara as judge and, more importantly, the acceptance of this decision by Corinth, given the less than friendly history between these two city-states.

From the Cradle: Reconstructing the ephēbeia in Hellenistic Megara

Alex McAuley, Cardiff University — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

This chapter re-constructs the form and function of the ephēbeia in Hellenistic Megara, beginning with an examination of the city’s military catalogues during its membership in the Boiotian League. Through comparison with other member cities, a detailed reconstruction of the Megarian ephēbeia is advanced beginning with the period stretching from 224-193 BC, and then expanding to consider the potential origins of the city’s ephebic program in its local context. Throughout, the place of the ephēbeia in the local discourse environment of Megara is emphasized for its role in training subsequent generations of Megarian citizens who would go on to participate actively in the city’s military and political life.

Megara and ‘the Megarians’: a City and its Philosophical School

Matthias Haake, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

From the late Classical to the early Hellenistic period, Megara was a vibrant centre of philosophy. The school of the so-called Megarians drew its name from the city. This paper examines the philosophical school and its leading members, Eukleides, Ichthyas, and Stilpo. The discussion of the school in the localscape of the city illustrates how ‘the Megarians’, although not necessarily united by common thought paradigms or intellectual approaches, played an integral role in the identity of place at Megara.

Between Localism and Diaspora: The Sicilian Perspective on Megara’s World

Franco De Angelis, University of British Columbia — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

In the last twenty-five years, the study of ancient Greek migrations and diasporas has witnessed a sea-change of new approaches that have radically redefined and reinvigorated their subjects. This paper begins by arguing that these approaches have been little applied to Megarian studies, and that older, “colonial” frameworks continue to shape recent scholarship. In particular, it is the search for cultural and institutional similarities between Megara and its “colonies,” as so classically formulated by Krister Hanell in 1934, that has limited scholarship to a narrow range of questions and perspectives. This paper illustrates this problem and the possibilities introduced by the newer approaches by focusing on the Megarian city-states of Sicily, Megara Hyblaia and Selinous. The discussion is grounded in a microregional approach, which seeks to embed these city-states in their local and regional settings. While Megarian culture at home and abroad could share similar features, clear differences also emerge, revealing that the Megarian migrant communities developed through a combination of local and diasporic elements.

What’s in a Name? Megarian apoikiai in the Black Sea: Common nomima and Local Traditions

Adrian Robu, Université de Fribourg — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

The Megarians were one of the most active colonizers between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE, founding apoikiai ("colonies") in Sicily (Megara Hyblaia, Selinous), on the coasts of the Sea of Marmara (Astakos, Chalkedon, Selymbria, Byzantion), and along the Black Sea (Herakleia Pontike, Mesambria). At the same time, Megara was often not the only city who participated in the establishment of these settlements overseas: the literary and epigraphic sources attest the collaboration of Megarians with other groups of settlers from Greece (especially from Boiotia, Argos, and Corinth) and from their own colonies (Megara Hyblaia and Chalkedon), in the foundation and the development of their apoikiai. We may consider these foundations as the result of a synoikismos, or combination of several groups of settlers, often ethnically heterogeneous.