The aim of this thesis is to elucidate Homeric aesthetical, ethical, and political values; the relation between these values and those of the polis; and what this relation tells us about the place of Homeric society in our account of the development of the polis. I argue that the system of value that we find in the Iliad and the Odyssey is predicated on the ideas of portion, proportion, and proper distribution. These ideas, I contend, animate the Homeric conception of justice and of appropriateness. Further, I argue that this system shares much ground with the middling ideology of the polis, but is different from this ideology in respect of the discourse of sōphrosunē and of being mesos/metrios. From this, I maintain that the Homeric worldview reflects the social and material conditions of a world that shares the basic values of the polis but is not as sociologically complex as the polis. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This study is about one of the most ubiquitous and yet little studied aspects of ancient Greek religion, the offering of so-called ‘first-fruits’ (aparchai) and tithes (dekatai) in Archaic and Classical Greece (c.700-300 B.C.). A widespread and traditional custom all over Greece and the Greek Mediterranean, the offering of ‘first-fruits’ and tithes entailed using a portion of the proceeds from a diversity of human activities (such as craft-work, fishing, trade, military expeditions) to present something to the gods. I look at the different kinds of aparchai and dekatai offered to the Greek gods by individuals and states under various circumstances, the various contexts in which the language and practice of making such offerings were used, the deployment of this religious custom in politics, and the transformation of a voluntary practice into a religious obligation. Ultimately, however, my major concern is with questions of religious psychology: why people should bring aparchai and dekatai to the gods, and what motivations and expectations they might have had. Because it was such a commonplace practice, the custom has been taken simply as a given in both ancient and modern scholarship; and no attempt has been made to explain its religious significance. By drawing on current anthropological studies of gift-giving, I argue that that aparchai and dekatai do not merely give to the gods, but give back to the gods some of the benefits granted by the divinities in the first place, reflecting first and foremost a sense of dependence on the divine. I suggest that the offering of aparchai and dekatai may be thought of as a means of settling men’s debts to, and thereby maintaining good relations with, the gods, who were considered the sources of both goods and evils. I challenge the emphasis, common in modern scholarship, on material returns as the central motive behind the act of bringing gifts to the gods. Instead I suggest that the study of gift-giving between humans and the divine should embrace the possibility that psychological feelings of dependence on and gratitude to the gods might also have been involved.

Before 1891, it was commonly accepted that the most important source for the rule of the Four Hundred in Athens in 411 BCE was Thucydides' description. The situation changed thanks to the publication of the Aristotelian treatise On the Athenian Constitution, whose version of events differed markedly from Thucydides' one. There followed many attempts at determining which of the two versions was most reliable, or at combining the two versions. These controversies are the focal point of this thesis, but its ambitions are not limited to them: its ambition is also to reconstruct the chronology of the rule of the Four Hundred as precisely as is possible in context of the Peloponnesian war; and to formulate the limitations that are imposed on us by the character of sources at our disposal. Continuity of the coup with earlier developments and its impact on subsequent events are dealt with more briefly.