Jeffrey S Rusten
Biographic Data
| ID | 5626580 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeffrey S Rusten |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeffrey S |
| FAMILY NAME | Rusten |
| SIGNATURE | RUSTEN J S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Honour, Fear, and Benefit—In That Order
The triad of motives for Athenian action in 1.76.2 is preceded at 1.75.3 by the much-quoted listing of the same three items, in a different order and with too many list-markers, both sequential and preferential. Thucydides’ consistent usage of these markers reveals καὶ τιμῆς and μάλιστα μέν to be insertions. The motive for the interpolation of τιμή (to make the first list match the second) is easy to understand, μάλιστα μέν being added to ‘clarif…
Prolegomena to the Peloponnesian War
This chapter offers an analysis of the first book of the History , paying particular attention to the distinctive structure of Book 1. Thucydides’ plan of narrating the war chronologically, by summers and winters, is announced only at the start of Book 2; the structure of Book 1 is much more complex. The chapter starts by exploring ancient critics’ reactions to Book 1’s unusual form, and then it goes on to analyse each of the disruptions to chron…
The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is one of the earliest and most influential works in the western historiographical tradition. It provides an unfinished account of the war between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies which lasted from 431 to 404 BC, and is a masterpiece of narrative art and of political analysis. The twenty chapters in this Companion offer a wide range of perspectives on different aspects of the text, its i…
Τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ λόγου ἐποιησάμην
Τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ λόγου ἐποιησάμην (1.97.2) means not ‘I made a digression in my narrative’ but is rather a periphrasis for τὸν λόγον ἐξέβαλον, ‘I have discarded my logos’ (here ‘plan’). It sets aside the Corcyra starting-point announced at 1.23.5–6, interrupted by listing the empire’s much earlier military actions following the league’s foundation. Two old objections are reconsidered. (1) ‘1.88 begins the flashback, so 1.97.2 is not a break’. 1.88…
The Phanagoria Chous
Although I present and interpret here a vase found on the Black Sea, I am a philologist; my interest and expertise is Greek comedy, a field where the evidence of contemporary art is so abundant that it simply cannot be ignored, even by textual scholars. For scholars of Greek comedy, this particular vase is essential; and yet, despite the current fascination with paintings relating to Greek comedy, until recently it had not been illustrated or ser…
The Tree, the Funnel, and the Diptych
This chapter introduces three common types of long sentence in Thucydides: the “tree,” in which the main action is presented as an initial fact to be explicated and complicated, the “funnel,” in which the main action is final culmination of a complex of motives or observations, and the “diptych,” in which the main action is a hinge that opens to the reader two tableaux, a “before” and “after,” and displays how they contrast with or mirror each ot…
The Mind of Thucydides
First published in France in 1956 and now available in English for the first time, this narratological analysis of Thucydides's "History of the Peloponnesian War" highlights the power and sophistication of the Greek historian's rhetoric
The Birth of Comedy
Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens
Reviewed by: Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II2 2318–2325 and Related Texts by Benjamin W. Millis, S. Douglas Olson Jeffrey Rusten Benjamin W. Millis and S. Douglas Olson. Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II2 2318–2325 and Related Texts. Brill’s Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiv, 238. $163.00. ISBN 978–90–04–22912–9. This invaluable volume pe…
Dionysius Scytobrachion
Dionysius Scytobrachion
‘The Odeion on His Head’
Cratinus was considered the first political satirist of ancient comedy, especially in his constant attacks on Pericles. The most frequent titles are in the category of literature and especially myth, and Bakola has argued for his persistent and widespread adaptation of forms from Aeschylean tragedy and satyr play. Rather than focusing on tangential and equivocal evidence on the chronology of Pericles’ building program or the Odeion’s shape, the c…
In Search of the Essence of Old Comedy
"The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From the birth of comedy in Greece to its end in Rome, from the Hellenistic diffusion of performances after the death of Menander to its sympotic, artistic, scholarly, and literary receptions in the later Roman Empire, no topic is neglected. The result offers Hellenists an excellent overview of the …
Thucydides and Comedy
The scope for Thucydides humor in his work is very limited. There are, however, several ways in which Old Comedy and Thucydides can obviously illuminate each other: for certain individuals, certain events, political institutions, and periods of the war, the evidence of Thucydides and that of Old Comedy provide interesting complementarities which historians have put to very different uses. The study of the war and its historical period that Thucyd…
Who "Invented" Comedy? The Ancient Candidates for the Origins of Comedy and the Visual Evidence
The formal beginning of comedy is firmly dated to the Dionysia of 486 B.C.E.1 For what preceded it there were at least three ancient candidates: phallic processions, Doric comedy and Susarion. Each is supported by visual evidence of the sixth century B.C.E., each explains certain features of Old Comedy, but all have some anomalies as well. Striking is how many forms of performance attested in the sixth century contained comic elements. All these …
Thucydides
Two lives or three? Pericles on the Athenian character (Thucydides 2.40.1–2)
ɸιλοκαλο⋯μέν τε γ⋯ρ μετ' εὐτελείας κα⋯ ɸιλοσοɸο⋯μεν ἄνευ μαλακίαας. πλούτῳ τε ἔργου μ⋯λλον καιῷ ἢ λόγου κόμπῳ χρώμεθα, κα⋯ τ⋯ πένεσθαι οὐχ ⋯μολοσεῖν τιν⋯ αἰσχρόν, ⋯λλ⋯ μ⋯ διαɸεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς οἰκείων ἄμα κα⋯ πολιτικ⋯ν ⋯πιμέλεια, κα⋯ ⋯τέροις πρ⋯ς ἔργα τετραμμένοις τ⋯ πολιτικ⋯ μ⋯ ⋯νδε⋯ς γν⋯ναι . J. Kakridis has seen in this famous passage a reflection of the popular debate, conducted most memorably by Amphion and Zethus in Eur…
Kolner Papyri 4
Dionysius’ Ethnic
As new fragments of the Argonauts, the three papyri examined in Part I are relatively unimportant; they serve mainly to confirm what was already known of the story from Diodorus. It is rather as new testimonia on Dionysius himself (P. Mich. 1316 and P. Oxy. 2812 through their citations, P. Hibeh 2.186 through its date) that they are of value, and it seems worthwhile to examine anew all the hitherto known testimonia in the light of this new eviden…
The Libyan Stories
We have seen that the accounts of the Libyan Amazons, the Atlantioi and Dionysus, which Diodorus gives in three separate installments, were probably combined by Scytobrachion in a single work. Since the real title of this work is unknown, it is here called the Libyan Stories. 1 Like Dionysius'; Argonauts, these stories offer a radical re-interpretation of traditional myths, this time in conformity with Euhemerism—indeed, the method of the Libyan …
The Argonauts
In the preceding chapters reasons have been adduced for assigning part or all of three different papyri to the Argonauts of Dionysius of Mytilene, and for dating that work and the same author's Libyan Stories to the period 270–220 B.C. It remains to examine the nature of these works themselves, and the literary traditions to which they belong.
Ovid, Empedocles and the Minotaur
The Birth of Comedy
Thucydides
Who "Invented" Comedy? The Ancient Candidates for the Origins of Comedy and the Visual Evidence
The formal beginning of comedy is firmly dated to the Dionysia of 486 B.C.E.1 For what preceded it there were at least three ancient candidates: phallic processions, Doric comedy and Susarion. Each is supported by visual evidence of the sixth century B.C.E., each explains certain features of Old Comedy, but all have some anomalies as well. Striking is how many forms of performance attested in the sixth century contained comic elements. All these …
Two lives or three? Pericles on the Athenian character (Thucydides 2.40.1–2)
ɸιλοκαλο⋯μέν τε γ⋯ρ μετ' εὐτελείας κα⋯ ɸιλοσοɸο⋯μεν ἄνευ μαλακίαας. πλούτῳ τε ἔργου μ⋯λλον καιῷ ἢ λόγου κόμπῳ χρώμεθα, κα⋯ τ⋯ πένεσθαι οὐχ ⋯μολοσεῖν τιν⋯ αἰσχρόν, ⋯λλ⋯ μ⋯ διαɸεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς οἰκείων ἄμα κα⋯ πολιτικ⋯ν ⋯πιμέλεια, κα⋯ ⋯τέροις πρ⋯ς ἔργα τετραμμένοις τ⋯ πολιτικ⋯ μ⋯ ⋯νδε⋯ς γν⋯ναι . J. Kakridis has seen in this famous passage a reflection of the popular debate, conducted most memorably by Amphion and Zethus in Eur…
Ovid, Empedocles and the Minotaur
Dionysius’ Ethnic
As new fragments of the Argonauts, the three papyri examined in Part I are relatively unimportant; they serve mainly to confirm what was already known of the story from Diodorus. It is rather as new testimonia on Dionysius himself (P. Mich. 1316 and P. Oxy. 2812 through their citations, P. Hibeh 2.186 through its date) that they are of value, and it seems worthwhile to examine anew all the hitherto known testimonia in the light of this new eviden…
The Libyan Stories
We have seen that the accounts of the Libyan Amazons, the Atlantioi and Dionysus, which Diodorus gives in three separate installments, were probably combined by Scytobrachion in a single work. Since the real title of this work is unknown, it is here called the Libyan Stories. 1 Like Dionysius'; Argonauts, these stories offer a radical re-interpretation of traditional myths, this time in conformity with Euhemerism—indeed, the method of the Libyan …
The Argonauts
In the preceding chapters reasons have been adduced for assigning part or all of three different papyri to the Argonauts of Dionysius of Mytilene, and for dating that work and the same author's Libyan Stories to the period 270–220 B.C. It remains to examine the nature of these works themselves, and the literary traditions to which they belong.
Ovid, Empedocles and the Minotaur
Kolner Papyri 4
Two lives or three? Pericles on the Athenian character (Thucydides 2.40.1–2)
ɸιλοκαλο⋯μέν τε γ⋯ρ μετ' εὐτελείας κα⋯ ɸιλοσοɸο⋯μεν ἄνευ μαλακίαας. πλούτῳ τε ἔργου μ⋯λλον καιῷ ἢ λόγου κόμπῳ χρώμεθα, κα⋯ τ⋯ πένεσθαι οὐχ ⋯μολοσεῖν τιν⋯ αἰσχρόν, ⋯λλ⋯ μ⋯ διαɸεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς οἰκείων ἄμα κα⋯ πολιτικ⋯ν ⋯πιμέλεια, κα⋯ ⋯τέροις πρ⋯ς ἔργα τετραμμένοις τ⋯ πολιτικ⋯ μ⋯ ⋯νδε⋯ς γν⋯ναι . J. Kakridis has seen in this famous passage a reflection of the popular debate, conducted most memorably by Amphion and Zethus in Eur…
Thucydides
Thucydides and Comedy
The scope for Thucydides humor in his work is very limited. There are, however, several ways in which Old Comedy and Thucydides can obviously illuminate each other: for certain individuals, certain events, political institutions, and periods of the war, the evidence of Thucydides and that of Old Comedy provide interesting complementarities which historians have put to very different uses. The study of the war and its historical period that Thucyd…
Who "Invented" Comedy? The Ancient Candidates for the Origins of Comedy and the Visual Evidence
The formal beginning of comedy is firmly dated to the Dionysia of 486 B.C.E.1 For what preceded it there were at least three ancient candidates: phallic processions, Doric comedy and Susarion. Each is supported by visual evidence of the sixth century B.C.E., each explains certain features of Old Comedy, but all have some anomalies as well. Striking is how many forms of performance attested in the sixth century contained comic elements. All these …
Dionysius Scytobrachion
Dionysius Scytobrachion
‘The Odeion on His Head’
Cratinus was considered the first political satirist of ancient comedy, especially in his constant attacks on Pericles. The most frequent titles are in the category of literature and especially myth, and Bakola has argued for his persistent and widespread adaptation of forms from Aeschylean tragedy and satyr play. Rather than focusing on tangential and equivocal evidence on the chronology of Pericles’ building program or the Odeion’s shape, the c…
In Search of the Essence of Old Comedy
"The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From the birth of comedy in Greece to its end in Rome, from the Hellenistic diffusion of performances after the death of Menander to its sympotic, artistic, scholarly, and literary receptions in the later Roman Empire, no topic is neglected. The result offers Hellenists an excellent overview of the …
Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens
Reviewed by: Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II2 2318–2325 and Related Texts by Benjamin W. Millis, S. Douglas Olson Jeffrey Rusten Benjamin W. Millis and S. Douglas Olson. Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II2 2318–2325 and Related Texts. Brill’s Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiv, 238. $163.00. ISBN 978–90–04–22912–9. This invaluable volume pe…
The Birth of Comedy
The Tree, the Funnel, and the Diptych
This chapter introduces three common types of long sentence in Thucydides: the “tree,” in which the main action is presented as an initial fact to be explicated and complicated, the “funnel,” in which the main action is final culmination of a complex of motives or observations, and the “diptych,” in which the main action is a hinge that opens to the reader two tableaux, a “before” and “after,” and displays how they contrast with or mirror each ot…
The Mind of Thucydides
First published in France in 1956 and now available in English for the first time, this narratological analysis of Thucydides's "History of the Peloponnesian War" highlights the power and sophistication of the Greek historian's rhetoric
The Phanagoria Chous
Although I present and interpret here a vase found on the Black Sea, I am a philologist; my interest and expertise is Greek comedy, a field where the evidence of contemporary art is so abundant that it simply cannot be ignored, even by textual scholars. For scholars of Greek comedy, this particular vase is essential; and yet, despite the current fascination with paintings relating to Greek comedy, until recently it had not been illustrated or ser…
Τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ λόγου ἐποιησάμην
Τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ λόγου ἐποιησάμην (1.97.2) means not ‘I made a digression in my narrative’ but is rather a periphrasis for τὸν λόγον ἐξέβαλον, ‘I have discarded my logos’ (here ‘plan’). It sets aside the Corcyra starting-point announced at 1.23.5–6, interrupted by listing the empire’s much earlier military actions following the league’s foundation. Two old objections are reconsidered. (1) ‘1.88 begins the flashback, so 1.97.2 is not a break’. 1.88…
Prolegomena to the Peloponnesian War
This chapter offers an analysis of the first book of the History , paying particular attention to the distinctive structure of Book 1. Thucydides’ plan of narrating the war chronologically, by summers and winters, is announced only at the start of Book 2; the structure of Book 1 is much more complex. The chapter starts by exploring ancient critics’ reactions to Book 1’s unusual form, and then it goes on to analyse each of the disruptions to chron…
The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is one of the earliest and most influential works in the western historiographical tradition. It provides an unfinished account of the war between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies which lasted from 431 to 404 BC, and is a masterpiece of narrative art and of political analysis. The twenty chapters in this Companion offer a wide range of perspectives on different aspects of the text, its i…
Honour, Fear, and Benefit—In That Order
The triad of motives for Athenian action in 1.76.2 is preceded at 1.75.3 by the much-quoted listing of the same three items, in a different order and with too many list-markers, both sequential and preferential. Thucydides’ consistent usage of these markers reveals καὶ τιμῆς and μάλιστα μέν to be insertions. The motive for the interpolation of τιμή (to make the first list match the second) is easy to understand, μάλιστα μέν being added to ‘clarif…
Classical Antiquity Studies (17 works) · Art (16 works) · Literature (14 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · History (8 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (7 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Comedy (5 works) · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works)