Ancient Greek Lists
Catalogue and Inventory Across Genres

Pioneering study of the cultural value attached to ancient Greek lists, catalogues, and inventories across literature and epigraphy.

Athena Kirk (Author)

9781108744959, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 March 2023

263 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.4 cm, 0.461 kg

Ancient Greek Lists brings together catalogic texts from a variety of genres, arguing that the list form was the ancient mode of expressing value through text. Ranging from Homer's Catalogue of Ships through Attic comedy and Hellenistic poetry to temple inventories, the book draws connections among texts seldom juxtaposed, examining the ways in which lists can stand in for objects, create value, act as methods of control, and even approximate the infinite. Athena Kirk analyzes how lists come to stand as a genre in their own right, shedding light on both under-studied and well-known sources to engage scholars and students of Classical literature, ancient history, and ancient languages.

Introduction. The tally of text
1. A number of things: Homeric catalogue, numerical authority, and the uncountable
2. 'Or such a woman as…': gender and exchange in the Hesiodic catalogue
3. Displaying the past: inquiry as inventory in Herodotus
4. Stone treasuries: the apodeictic inscribed inventory
5. Citizens who count: Aristophanes' documentary poetics
6. Unified I
7. Conclusion and epilogue: the materialization of lists
Appendix of images.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]