abstract the oldest comic playwright from ancient world, whose works have survived and reached us, is aristophanes the greek. names of many comic playwrights are found during the 5th century b.c. in ancient greece; however, works of none of whom is survived virtually complete. thus, the only criterion for judging comedies of golden age of ancient greece is applied to the works of aristophanes. ...

Athenian history between the battle of Chaeronea in 338 b.c. and the end of the Chremonidean War in 260 is punctuated by one military disaster after another. At Chaeronea, Philip of Macedon won a decisive victory over Athens and its allies, enabling him to gain effective control of Athenian foreign policy. In 322 Athens suffered a much more catastrophic defeat in the Lamian War, the Greek-led r...

n 490 BC, the first battle for democracy was fought at the reek village of Marathon. Though overwhelmingly outumbered by an invading Persian horde, the citizen-soldiers f Athens were victorious. After running 26 miles to Athens o deliver the stunning news, the Athenian professional essenger Phidippides collapsed and died. Unfortunately, he tragedy of unexpected, sudden death in athletes has bee...

Disease as a pivotal factor in determining the course of human events may be one og the least considered historical variables. When assessing the critical junctures of history, historians seem more inclined to focus on the impact of conquering armies, economic revolutions, and technologic breakthroughs. This analysis attempts to illustrate the seminal effects of the great plague of Athens. By d...

Although excavated almost 80 years ago, the infants' 'bone well' of the Athenian Agora in Athens, Greece and its contents were never thoroughly evaluated and published, until only recently, when a re-analysis of the whole excavation findings was performed. The well dates back to the third quarter of the 2nd century BC and contained at least 449 infants. The project, which explored the causes of...

Ever since Antiphanes brought on the stage a character, perhaps Comedy herself, complaining that comedy was more difficult to compose than tragedy (fr. 189.17-23 K-A), it has become something of a truism to say that the poets of Old Comedy had at their disposal much richer and less generically restricted literary possibilities than their colleagues working in tragedy. Comments Postprint version...

I BEGIN WITH A QUANDARY that is very familiar to Martin Ostwald: Classical Athens saw the invention of both democracy and political theory, yet while we have a number of examples of criticism of democracy, no systematic defense of democracy-no democratic theory-survives from an Athenian pen. I propose that the conundrum is best explained by assuming that from the late fifth through the late fou...

Pnyx is an easy-to-use and entirely web-based tool for preference aggregation that does not require any prior knowledge about social choice theory. The tool is named after a hill in Athens called Pnyx, which was the official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly and is therefore known as one of the earliest sites in the creation of democracy. Pnyx is available at pnyx.dss.in.tum.de.

Legal expertise permits detailed laws to be written and enforced, but individuals with expertise may employ their special knowledge to skew decisions in privately beneficial directions. We illustrate this tradeoff in a simple model, which we use to guide our analysis of the legal system in ancient Athens. Rather than accepting the costs of expertise in return for the benefits, as do most modern...

Pnyx is an easy-to-use and entirely web-based tool for preference aggregation that does not require any prior knowledge about social choice theory. The tool is named after a hill in Athens called Pnyx, which was the official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly and is therefore known as one of the earliest sites in the creation of democracy. Pnyx is available at pnyx.dss.in.tum.de.