Dr Maria Pavlou

In the Greco-Roman world lactation and breastfeeding were notions related almost exclusively to women, whether the mother, who gives birth, or a nurse/surrogate mother, who undertakes the newborn's care. This paper focuses on a passage from Clement of Alexandria in which lactation and breastfeeding are used metaphorically and are, paradoxically, associated with the figure of God, the Father. In the first book of the Paedagogus Clement depicts the Church as a surrogate Mother that maintains access to the milk of the Son, which, in turn, is suckled from the breast of his Father. The metaphor, which is marshalled as a visual response to the Gnostics' insistence on the inequality of Christians, is striking, not only because of its language of gender-reversal, but also because of Clement's decision to enrich it with a Homeric quotation. Albeit acknowledged, this Homeric allusion has hardly received any attention from researchers. My intention is to examine in more depth the purposes that it fulfils.

The paper focuses on and attempts to explore the notions of time and temporality in the poetry of one of the most influential and prolific Cypriot poets, Costas Montis (1914-2004). Emphasis is laid upon the intriguing and multifarious ways in which Montis approaches, measures, configures and shapes experiences of time (whether linear, cyclical, spiral, external and internal) in his poetry, in an attempt not only to understand and come to grips with time, but also to transcend it poetically. Even though time plays a prominent and crucial role in Montis’ three lengthy Letters to Mother, the current paper studies and concentrates mainly on the study of his short poems. Τhis is the first time that Montis’ poetry is systematically examined from this perspective, thus allowing us to appreciate his constant and complex entanglements with the notions of time and temporality and the protean ways in which the Cypriot poet circumscribes memory, talks about trauma – especially the trauma left by the Turkish invasion of 1974 – and intermingles past, present and future to form a unity.

This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of the political ramifications of Pythian 10 by drawing attention to two less studied features of the ode’s mythical narrative: the glossing over of King Polydectes within Perseus’ story, and the attribution of the rare appellation λαγέτας to Perseus. Additionally, it is argued that, as well as targeting a Thessalian audience, the ode sends a powerful political message to the other cities of the Delphic Amphictyony, in which Thessaly held a prominent place at the time.

Socrates’ extensive and peculiar analysis of Simonides’ ode in Plato’s Protagoras has been the subject of rigorous scholarly discussion. My main objective in this article is to further the current debate from an oblique angle: by investigating in greater depth the Homeric distich cited immediately before Socrates’ interpretation of Simonides’ poem. I argue that, while the quotation has been largely overlooked, a closer examination of its Homeric context and its recontextualization in Plato’s dialogue may shed light on the tone and function of Socrates’ analysis.

The educational value of play has long been acknowledged. During recent decades, much attention has been paid to video games and the multifarious ways in which they can promote and enhance learning. Μy main objective in this study is to weave game principles, learning and the notion of playfulness into assessment principles, in an attempt to investigate how what I call "Game-Informed Playful Assessment" (GIPA) can affect student learning and particularly students' experience of learning. The GIPA was designed with a view to promoting students' agency, autonomy, collaboration and playfulness, and was introduced in an undergraduate course on archaic Greek lyric poetry at a Greek-speaking university. My data was generated through in-depth interviews with ten of the students that attended the course. While the GIPA was favourably and even enthusiastically received by students, the research also brought to the fore several other issues that call for attention, such as the stress that innovative assessment may provoke in students, and the readiness of students to be playful within an academic framework that typically contrasts serious work with playfulness and play in general.

“Feminizing” time through grammatical gender in Pindar’s Epinicians.
Time holds a prominent place in Pindar’s work, especially in his epinicians whose overarching aim is to transcend time and inscribe the victors’ name on eternity. In addition to chronos, which is personalized, depicted in constant movement, and emphatically dubbed “the father of everything” (Olympian 2.17), Pindar uses a number of other temporal terms to indicate different forms of time. Kairos denotes the “right” or “wrong” time to do something, while the Horae with their cyclical movement usher in the notions of repetition and recurrence. In this paper I narrow down my discussion to the notion of aion, a term that signifies a limited and confined period of time closely related to human life.
In Pindar aion appears no less than eighteen times (fourteen in the epinicians and four in the remaining fragments) bearing the meanings ‘life’ and ‘lifetime’. However, while in ancient Greek aion is a masculine noun Pindar uses the term as a feminine in three instances: in Pythians 4 and 5, and in Nemean 9. To be sure, this usage is not peculiar to Pindar; aion is used as a feminine also in Homer (Iliad 22.58), Hesiod (Scutum 331), Simonides (FGE fr. 70.3), and Euripides (Phoenissae 1484). Υet, the emphasis laid upon aion in the epinicians and its use as a feminine three times are noteworthy and call for attention. As I argue, whereas at first sight Pindar’s predilection for the feminine gender might seem circumstantial and symptomatic of metrical causes, a closer examination of the passages under discussion shows that it could be semantically charged. Drawing on recent research on the close relationship between grammatical gender and cognition, I suggest that Pindar’s use of aion as a feminine is intentional, seeking to conjure up to his audience images and feelings mostly associated with femininity.

In this paper I focus my attention on the two references to Hesiod—one explicit (207a), the other implicit (155d)—that we encounter in the Theaetetus. Whereas at first glance Socrates seems to evoke Hesiod with a view to lending authority to or illustrating his own ongoing argument, if we go back to the original Hesiodic text and examine the wider context of the lines that Plato has Socrates quote or allude to, it becomes clear that the meaning attached to them is arbitrary, even absurd. Although this distortion appears to be " sophistic " owing to its seemingly self-serving and mercenary purposes, upon closer investigation it proves to be philosophically significant, insofar as Plato's orchestration of the two references provokes the alert reader to reflect upon and enter into a more rigorous dialogue with the Hesiodic text and the issues in question.

One of the things that captures our attention in the speech of the Plataeans in Book 3 of the History are the references and appeals to a number of monuments clustered in the final part of their Logos. The current paper examines in more depth the rhetoric that underpins these references, as well as the intricate ways in which the Plataeans exploit these monuments with a view to preventing the desctruction of Plataea and its delivery to the Thebans.

Kambanellis’ Letter to Orestes constitutes Clytemnestra’s apology for the murder of Agamemnon and is addressed to her estranged son Orestes. Until now, research has concentrated mainly on the content, verbal message and metatheatrical dimension of Clytemnestra’s letter, laying emphasis upon Kambanellis’ intertextual links with the ancient Greek tragedies revolving around the Atreid myth. The current paper focuses attention on the dramatic form of the letter examining it as a physical object with social connotations and as an active agent in the unfolding of the events. As I argue, in emphasizing these aspects of the letter Kambanellis was most likely influenced by the function of letters in two of the Greek tragedies on which he clearly draws in The Supper trilogy: Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia among the Taurians. Yet, Kambanellis’ intention was not to reproduce his tragic models but rather to exploit the medium of the letter in order to reconsider a staple of his own work: the disquieting issue of human, and more particularly of familial, communication.

The paper embarks upon an analysis of Ritsos' 'Agamemnon' in the Fourth Dimension from the viewpoint of Existentialism—more particularly Sartrian Existentialism. Even though Ritsos must have read and been influenced by other existentialist philosophers (e.g. Camus), the present study is limited to Sartre chiefly because of the prominent role that the Sartrian notion of 'nausea' seems to play in the 'Agamemnon'.

One arresting feature in the Aeginetan epinician songs of Pindar and Bacchylides is the idealized image of Aegina that they generate. The paper argues that this image should not be taken at face value because it hardly maps onto the fifth-century Aeginetan milieu; rather it is an ideological construct that conceals existing tension and strife.

The frames of Plato’s dialogues constitute a vexed and contentious issue and have been variously treated by Platonists throughout centuries.  Proclus in Parmenides 658-659 provides us with an insight into the debates of ancient commentators about Plato’s prologues: some pay little or no attention to the prefatory parts; others, whereas acknowledging their moral aspect, deem them irrelevant to the subject matter under consideration; a third group contends that the proemia should be read in tandem with the philosophical content of the dialogues. A somewhat similar stance has been adopted by modern scholars: some either completely ignore or attribute little philosophical significance to the proemia; others consider them to be an integral part of the central philosophical discourse and not merely ‘trimmings’ or decorative literary devices.

The aim of the conference is to put under scrutiny the intricate and multifarious ways in which Plato frames his dialogues with a view to exploring both the association between inner and outer framework and how this relationship contributes to, and sheds light upon, the dialogues. 
https://platoconferenceucy.weebly.com

H εισήγηση παρουσιάζει κάποια ενδεικτικά παραδείγματα «παιγνιώδους» αξιολόγησης, που υιοθετήθηκε στο πλαίσιο μαθημάτων αρχαίων ελληνικών στην τριτοβάθμια εκπαίδευση. Μολονότι συχνά η «παιγνιώδης»  διδασκαλία αντιπαραβάλλεται με την ποιοτική και «σοβαρή» μάθηση που οφείλει να παρέχει το πανεπιστήμιο, τόσο η ανατροφοδότηση των ίδιων των φοιτητών όσο και ο τρόπος εργασίας τους κατέδειξαν ότι μια πιο «παιγνιώδης» προσέγγιση δύναται να διαδραματίσει κομβικό ρόλο στην πιο ενεργό, ουσιαστική και βιωματική εμπλοκή των φοιτητών με τα κλασικά κείμενα και τις κλασικές γλώσσες.

Περίληψη
Η διδασκαλία των αρχαίων ελληνικών αποτελεί, εδώ και δεκαετίες, φλέγον ζήτημα σε Ελλάδα και Κύπρο. Η παρούσα εισήγηση επικεντρώνεται στα αποτελέσματα έρευνας που πραγματοποιήθηκε στο πλαίσιο μαθήματος αρχαίων ελληνικών σε Ίδρυμα Τριτοβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης κατά το ακαδημαϊκό έτος 2017/18. Η έρευνα αποσκοπούσε στο να εξετάσει: 1) την πρόσληψη από τους φοιτητές της εναλλακτικής και πολυτροπικής μεθόδου αξιολόγησης που υιοθετήθηκε στο πλαίσιο του μαθήματος και η οποία σχεδιάστηκε βάσει των 36 μαθησιακών αρχών του James Paul Gee, 2) το λεκτικό που θα χρησιμοποιούσαν οι φοιτητές για να περιγράψουν την εμπειρία τους και 3) τις διαφορές που θα εντόπιζαν σε σχέση με παραδοσιακούς τρόπους αξιολόγησης ως προς τις γνώσεις που αποκόμισαν και την απόλαυση της μαθησιακής διαδικασίας. Για την έρευνα υιοθετήθηκε η φαινομενολoγική προσέγγιση και διενεργήθηκαν δέκα ημιδομημένες συνεντεύξεις με φοιτητές που παρακολούθησαν το μάθημα. Η έρευνα κατέδειξε ότι ο τρόπος με τον οποίο συνεχίζει να διδάσκεται και να αξιολογείται το μάθημα των αρχαίων ελληνικών σήμερα σε πολλές περιπτώσεις καθιστά τα αρχαία ελληνικά κείμενα από δυναμικές ευτοπίες σε άγονες δυστοπίες.

Αbstract
The teaching of ancient Greek has been a burning issue in Greece and Cyprus for decades. The current paper focuses on the results of a research conducted within the framework of an ancient course at a Higher Education Institute in 2017/18. The research aimed to examine: a) how the alternative and multimodal assessment method adopted in the course (designed in accordance with James Paul Gee's 36 learning principles) was experienced by students; b) the lexis that students used in order to describe these methods; c) and the differences they identified with traditional ways of assessment in terms of knowledge and enjoyment. For the purposes of this research, a phenomenological approach and semi-structured interviews with ten students who attended the course were adopted. Research has shown that the way in which ancient Greek is still taught and assessed today on many occasions renders ancient texts from dynamic eutopias to barren dystopias.

In reviewing contemporary tendencies in reading Plato, G.A. Press (SJPh 56 [2018], 9–34) noted ‘the expansion and ramification of the more literary, dramatic, and nondogmatic’ approaches (p. 11), a fact that he interpreted as the definitive affirmation of what had been a ‘growing insurgency’ twenty years before. The present book, originating from a conference held in Cyprus in 2015, fits within this broader development. The editors’ intriguing ambition, already expressed in the title, is to propose an investigation on ‘openings’ and ‘closures’. While studies on proems and beginnings have been flourishing in the literature on Plato’s dialogues ever since the revaluation of Proclus’ analysis in the Commentary on the Parmenides, endings have been relatively understudied. We could ask ourselves if the incomplete nature of most extant NeoPlatonic commentaries on Plato (most notably Proclus’) has not deprived us of ancient hermeneutical reflections on how to read closures and interruptions, but this would probably amount to idle speculation. What is certain is that, with few exceptions, the closures of Plato’s dialogues have not been a subject of systematic or general interest in recent interpretations, and this is particularly evident in comparison with current studies on other ancient dramatic forms, such as comedy and tragedy. It is nevertheless clear, even from a first look at the table of contents, that most of the essays included in the volume focus on beginnings. Endings are often more ambiguous: only in a few cases can we properly speak of ‘closures’, and some papers stress the open-ended nature of most of Plato’s production. The chapters can be broadly classified according to their adherence to three or four main (yet not exclusive) formal tendencies: ones dealing mostly with methodological questions or general analyses of proems (and/or closures); ones applying an implicit or explicit methodology in order to analyse and interpret one or more proems or endings (sometimes in the form of a ‘micro-commentary’, as in the case of L. Brisson’s detailed reading of the proem to the Charmides); ones supporting a specific interpretation of a dialogue on the basis of the literary features of its framework (Z. Petraki, Tsakmakis) or as the result of methodological discussions (P. Thanassas). A fourth category of sorts deals with ancient reception (A. Capra’s treatment of the reception of the Lysis and P. Remes’s study of Proclus’ Commentary on the Alcibiades). Owing to the dense and rich nature of the chapters, it would be impossible to treat all of them in detail. S. Halliwell’s contribution begins by engaging in a fully-fledged overview of beginnings and closures in Plato, highlighting the recurrent openness of both and the general freedom taken by the author in transgressing the tenets of what was later to become the Aristotelian rubric in the Poetics. These are ‘preliminary remarks’ (p. 16) for analysing the Phaedrus in order to test the theoretical indications given by Socrates in this dialogue concerning the structure of: (a) the three speeches contained in the first part of the work; (b) the dialogue in its entirety. Indeed, the paradigm of the logos-zoon does not seem to be coherently applied by Plato to any of these textual units. If we analyse the content of Socrates’ literary analysis, we see, with Halliwell, that some strange things are going on: for example, Socrates’ critical remarks about Lysias’ speech apply to many Platonic dialogues. Halliwell’s analysis of the three discourses and of their respective beginnings and endings is valuable and enlightening: in general, one can agree that ‘Platonic practice THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 317

The educational value of play has long been acknowledged. During recent decades, much attention has been paid to video games and the multifarious ways in which they can promote and enhance learning. Μy main objective in this study is to weave game principles, learning and the notion of playfulness into assessment principles, in an attempt to investigate how what I call ‘Game-Informed Playful Assessment’ (GIPA) can affect student learning and particularly students’ experience of learning. The GIPA was designed with a view to promoting students’ agency, autonomy, collaboration and playfulness, and was introduced in an undergraduate course on Archaic Greek Lyric poetry at a Greek-speaking university. My data was generated through in-depth interviews with ten of the students that attended the course. While the GIPA was favourably and even enthusiastically received by students, the research also brought to the fore several other issues that call for attention, such as the stress that inn...