Edith Foster

Biographic Data

ID5626909
NAMEEdith Foster
GIVEN NAMESEdith
FAMILY NAMEFoster
SIGNATUREFOSTER E
AFFILIATIONSUniversité de Strasbourg
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS48
TOTAL CITATIONS60
AUTHOR COUNT13
EDITOR COUNT35
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2009
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX3

  • ‘Back Then When the Barbarians Came’: Old Comedy and the Funeral Oration

    Open AccessBernhard Zimmermann, Edith Foster et al.CHAPTERAthenian Funeral Oration2024

    A striking feature of old comedy is its cannibalising of contemporaneous Athenian literature. The comic poets integrated the funeral oration into their comedies in three ways. Their first way was to bring on stage the funeral oration’s ancestors. Aristophanes characterised his choruses as such in three of his surviving plays. When these ancestors came to praise their own military exploits, they used the same terms as the funeral speeches and priv…

  • Demosthenes after the Defeat

    Open AccessLeonhard Burckhardt, Edith Foster et al.CHAPTERAthenian Funeral Oration2024

    There are two reasons why the funeral speech of Demosthenes has largely been ignored by ancient historians. The first reason is that it has always been judged as less important than the great funeral speeches of Pericles, Lysias and Hyperides. The second is that many ancient historians have thought it unworthy of Demosthenes in terms of content and style. The lack of sustained research on this funeral speech is thus unsurprising. This speech, how…

  • Revisiting Marincola's Authority and Tradition (on K. S. Kingsley, G. Monti, and T. Rood, The Authoritative Historian: (Tradition and Innovation in Ancient Historiography.)

    Open AccessEdith FosterARTICLEHistos2024

  • War and Literary Studies

    Edith Foster, Huiwen Zhang et al.BOOKWar and Literary Studies2023

  • War and Ancient Athens

    Open AccessEdith FosterCHAPTERWar and Literary Studies2023

    Like other literary genres in fifth-century Athens, such as tragedy and oratory, ancient historiography responded to the continuous wars of the Greek city-states with an intense literary effort, producing the first prose descriptions of warfare in the western hemisphere. This chapter examines the representation of warfare in fifth-century Athenian literature against an historical background, taking account of Homeric epic as well as of political …

  • Devastation of Cultivated Land in Herodotus

    Edith FosterARTICLEKtèma civilisations de l Orient…2022

    Cet article soutient que chez Hérodote il faut distinguer la dévastation de terres cultivées des atteintes à la nature. Il précise les principaux aspects que lesquels insiste l’historien quand il évoque la dévastation et le pillage de terres agricoles, et analyse la relation entre ces thèmes et les événements de la guerre du Péloponnèse. Il montre enfin qu’Hérodote a dépeint la dévastation des terres agricoles comme un acte de guerre, et que ses …

  • Xenophon’s Hellenika on the Greeks’ Continuous Warfare

    Open AccessEdith FosterARTICLEHistos2021

    Published in Rachel Bruzzone, ed., Polemos and his Children (HISTOS Supplement 12), p. 47-61

  • Military Defeat in Fifth-Century Athens: Thucydides and His Audience

    Edith FosterCHAPTERBrill’s Companion to Military…2018

  • Kinēsis, Navies, and the Power Trap in Thucydides

    Arlene W Saxonhouse, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    In the Archaeology of his History, Thucydides traces those factors that led to the rise of the cities that face one another in the war that he records. Foremost among them is the navy. I contend that this focus on the navy as the basis of political power captures for Thucydides the connection between movement and power: possession of power is not a static condition but always entails the unending search for more power, allowing the cities who pos…

  • Thucydides and Myth

    Rosaria Vignolo Munson, Rosaria Munson et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This essay shows how in Thucydides, and especially in the Archaeology, the mythological periods of Greek history become the subject of argumentation, rather than narrative exposition. It also points out the absence of references to myth and mythological figures from the speeches of the History. By contrast, Thucydides recorded the past and present formation of myths—for instance, the myth of the tyrant slayers Harmodius and Aristogiton—and the so…

  • Scale Matters

    W R Connor, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    By examining variations in scale and techniques of expansion and contraction in Thucydides’ narrative, the essay identifies a mimetic principle in his writing—that the presentation of an episode in the work should normally be proportionate to its significance. Significance, however, is not measured by purely military factors. In fact, expansion is often an indicator of intense suffering, pathos. Among the techniques of expansion and compression d…

  • Xenophon as a Socratic Reader of Thucydides

    Paul W Ludwig, Paul Ludwig et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    Xenophon’s “continuation” of Thucydides’ history opens up a perspective on realism as it is found in the speeches and deeds of Thucydides’ Athenians. The Hellenica and, to a lesser extent, the Anabasis enter into a dialogue with Thucydides about realism and the problematic way in which its theory has an impact on practice. Xenophon’s morality contains surprisingly realistic elements, and his peculiar combination of ethics and politics highlights …

  • The Regime (Politeia) in Thucydides

    Seth Jaffe, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This chapter discusses the importance of domestic politics generally and the regime in particular in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. It examines Thucydides’ presentation of the rule of the one (kingship or tyranny), the few (oligarchy), and the many (democracy), and concludes by suggesting that there are three principles of political rule that Thucydides himself endorses: the rule of the wise, the rule of law, and a mixed regime, wi…

  • The Tree, the Funnel, and the Diptych

    Jeffrey Rusten, Jeffrey S Rusten et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    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…

  • Writing with Posterity in Mind

    Cynthia Damon, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    Thucydides and Tacitus are both uncomfortable authors whose unsparing commitment to revealing the truth results in grim depictions of the amoral deployment of political power—power for the sake of power—in idiosyncratic and difficult idioms. However, Tacitus never announces a program of Thucydides-imitation, whether pertaining to methodology or theme. Nor do ancient commentators link Tacitus to his Greek predecessor. Nevertheless, the two are muc…

  • Polybius and Sallust

    Nicolas Wiater, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This chapter examines Thucydides’ influence on Polybius and Sallust. It demonstrates the various ways in which these two authors drew on and adapted the concepts, methods and ideas, style, and narrative technique of their famous predecessor as part of the creation of their own original interpretations of the past. In respect to Polybius, the chapter argues that the Thucydidean paradigm had a marked effect both on Polybius’ conceptions of historic…

  • Thucydides on the Causes and Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War

    Eric Robinson, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    Thucydides repeatedly explains that the Peloponnesian War arose not simply from the specific grievances of this or that state but from a longer process of growing Athenian power that inspired fear among the Spartans, making the war inevitable. Thucydides’ balanced and richly detailed account has not convinced everyone, however. Many scholars investigating the war’s causes have disagreed with Thucydides’ thesis, typically using the historian’s own…

  • Mantinea, Decelea, and the Interwar Years (421–413 bce)

    Cinzia Bearzot, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    The chapter examines Thucydides’ account of the interwar years. The work discusses its introductory sections (5.25–26), which set forth the thesis of the unity of the war, and sequentially considers the crisis of Spartan hegemony in the Peloponnesus from the Peace of Nicias to the Battle of Mantinea; the intervention of Athens in Peloponnesian issues and Alcibiades’ projects in the Peloponnesus; the events related to Melos; Alcibiades’ flight to …

  • Thucydides and His Continuators

    Vivienne Gray, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This chapter discusses the ways in which later historians completed the unfinished history of Thucydides. Cratippus (the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia), Xenophon and Theopompus all wrote completions of Thucydides. They also attached continuations to their completions, going well beyond the endpoint Thucydides envisaged at 5.26. This chapter mentions the continuations only where relevant, however, choosing instead to focus on the completions…

  • Leaders and Leadership in Thucydides’ History

    Mary P Nichols, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This essay explores what Thucydides teaches about leadership, by focusing on four prominent leaders in his History: Pericles, Brasidas, Alcibiades, and Nicias. Successful leaders operate within the confines of particular cities, regimes, and their ways of life, but find space for freedom by articulating goals and standards for action. Pericles instructs Athenians about their city’s purpose and its demands, while presenting himself as a model of f…

  • Thucydides, Procopius, and the Historians of the Later Roman Empire

    Conor Whately, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This chapter discusses Thucydides’ influence on the historians of late antiquity, with a particular emphasis on Procopius. Topics include an overview of history writing in late antiquity; a look at some basic Thucydidean borrowings, from subject matter to types of episodes; a discussion of rhetoric and education in late antiquity and its role in fostering Thucydides’ impact; the particular place that Thucydides’ description of the siege of Platae…

  • Thucydides on the Four Hundred and the Fall of Athens

    Andrew Wolpert, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017Cited by: 1

    Book 8 shows why Thucydides was right to conclude that the Sicilian defeat was not enough to cause Athens to lose the Peloponnesian War. Fear and delay prevented the Athenians from responding effectively to the revolts breaking out throughout the empire and caused them to succumb to civil war. In contrast to the Athēaiōn Politeia, which suggests that the Four Hundred came to power because the Athenians doubted the merits of their democracy, Thucy…

  • Thucydides’ Historical Method

    Sara Forsdyke, Edith Foster et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This chapter shows how Thucydides’ rigorous critical method and literary artistry combine to produce an intellectually penetrating and emotionally gripping account of the past. For Thucydides, the key to accuracy is his interpretation of the facts. But he also wanted his readers to experience events as he perceived them and thereby also experience the validity of his interpretations. In addition to analyzing Thucydides’ goals, the essay also disc…

  • Authorial Comments in Thucydides

    Matthieu de Bakker, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    This chapter argues that authorial comments are an important tool of Thucydides’ historiographical strategy. As the comments interrelate with the longer authorial essays, the surrounding narrative parts of the Histories, and the speeches of its actors, they guide the reader in interpreting rich, complex text. Authorial comments are typically found at the opening of episodes or at the introduction of characters, and thus often create a frame for e…

  • Thucydides’ Predecessors and Contemporaries in Historical Poetry and Prose

    Leone Porciani, Sara Forsdyke et al.BOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Thucydides2017

    The aim of this chapter is to discover, and to adopt, the perspective through which Thucydides himself observed the landscape of historical memory in the fifth century bce. In the complex topography that comes into sight, different forms of oral memory alternate with early attempts to apply writing to the description of the past. Every element of the fifth-century memory landscape (Herodotus, oral history, local historians, historical poetry, epi…