Issue 1

History, Research Symposium Papers

The Cyclic Views of the Human Condition in Thucydides’ Archaeology and Sima Qian’s Preface to Historical Records

Citation with persistent identifier: BAI, Chun Xiao. “The Cyclic Views of the Human Condition in Thucydides’ Archaeology and Sima Qian’s Preface to Historical Records.” CHS Research Bulletin 5, no. 1 (2016). http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:BaiX.The_Cyclic_Views_of_the_Human_Condition.2016 1§1 The commencement of historiography may be a coincidence. In ancient societies, there were many methods for people to… Read more

History, Research Symposium Papers

Abstract | Herodotean Democracies

What can Herodotus say to today’s democracies? This essay begins from a puzzle about the very language of democracy in Herodotus’s Histories, namely the narrator’s notorious re-description of what the Persian Otanes called isonomia as a demokratia. Most interpreters wave off this difference as insignificant, but I show… Read more

Language/Literature, Research Symposium Papers

Abstract | Constructing Periander in Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages

In Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages, a seer called Diocles recounts what transpired at a symposium hosted by Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, and attended by several individuals, including the Seven Sages. It is the scholarly consensus that, while Periander was sometimes considered one of the Sages,… Read more

Language/Literature, Research Symposium Papers

Abstract | Logical Categories and Parts of Speech as Structuring Devices in Pollux’ Onomasticon

Pollux’ Onomasticon is a Greek dictionary of the 2nd century CE. It is the first extant representative of the genre of the onomasiological dictionary in Greek. It attempts to organize the vocabulary of the Greek language into object domains and wordfields, and thus must resolve questions concerning the… Read more

History, Research Symposium Papers

Abstract | Improving the Public Image through Athletics. Young Victors in Hellenistic Thebes

The political history of Hellenistic Thebes was far from a success story. Razed to the ground by Alexander in 335 BC, the city never regained its former political significance. Nevertheless, there is a particular kind of Theban success in this period which is worth investigating: the agonistic achievements of Theban… Read more