Greek and Roman Studies/TSES

publisher, Byzantinist (arete during the third century through the eighth century A'D. experienced Von" of the most interesting and exciting periods in its entire history, a period during which one might assert that the largest number of fundamental changes took place. It is an easy period to define, since at both termini are periods of demonstrable depopulation and population shift, although it remains unclear, and controversial, whether these two phenomena were contributing causes or effects of the larger, sweeping changes.l One might start with the developingcommunis opinio, for which there is still not unanimity, that the first Byzantine period (c. A.D. 410c. A.D. 802) has more continuity with the prior centuries than with those that follow.2 Such a view is in essence a re-statement of the Pirenne3 thesis that the fall of the West did not really occur until the beginning of the ninth century and Moslem expansion into Europe. Before then the case for continuity is stronger than the case for change, but in the following period the case for change is stronger than that for continuity.

The Cyclops is an extremely tricky play and must have been one of the greatest challcngcs in Euripides' career. It does not track its plot on some revelation or the moral (or other) progrcss of one or more of the characters. Polyphemos blind does not have some sudden insight nor does he regret any actions of his life nor does he feel compelled to sacrifice himself for the good of a state about rvhich he cares deeply, like Oidipous. The blind Polyphemos recalls a prophecy and realizes its fulfillmenu unlike Teireisias, he does not make a prophecy or interpret a prophecy or understand the ramifications of some unseen force on the state. His 'epiphany', if one can call it that, is entirely personal and, true to charactcr, includes a sneer about Odysseus' continuing travels. Polyphemos blind is no morc or other than Polyphcmos blind.r The drama of the play is carried by intersecting registers, or sometimes non-intersecting registers, of language rather than by action.2 This is not to deny that there is action; rather, the action remains

Nores aNo DrscusstoNs shift from c to g in the spelling of Latin words: r, ait Ennius, quae "quod gerit fruges, Ceres": antiquis enim quod nunc G C (LL 5.64 = Enn. Var.49-50 V).t3 A similar discussion of the interchangeability, at Ieast under certain circumstances, of I and r is easily imaginable, though it is not a necessary precedent to Ovid's wordplay; in fact, Ovid may have combined his observation of the pattem / > r with Varro's notice of the Ennian etymology for Ceres to create his own variant etymology.ra With the ambiguity of Palilia/Parilia (and associated wordplay) already available to him, Ovid can easily be imagined to have exploited it to allow for several etymologies that are entirely his own. In any case, the association of Celeus withthe Cerealia, bymeansof ahypotheticalearlierform*Celealia, allowsOvidto introduce a new and purely Latin etymological aetiology for the holiday of a Greek agricultural divinity now celebrated on Italian soil. Bansene WslorN Bovn Bowdoin College 13. See D. O. Ross, Virgil's Elements: Physics and Poetry in the "Georgics" (Princeton, 1987), 34; CIHa;a,Tiue Names, 253, on Varro's text; D. Feeney, Ite Gods in Epic (Oxford, l99l), 12l; and Cic. Nat. D. 2.67: a gerendisfrugibw Ceres tamquan Gcrcs (and cf. A. S. P€sq ed., i{. Tulli Ciceronis "De natura deorun" [Cambridge, MA, 1955-58], ad lm.). Cf. also the alternative etymology for Cercs mentioned by Servius ad Gaa. 1.7: Ceres a creando dicta. 14. O'Hara, True Names,50, notes several other pairs of letters the inte,rrelationship of which gained Varro's notice in the extant books of De lingua Latiru: s nd r (7.26); I and s (5.138); i and ? (6.95). Support for Ovidian linguistic experimentation may alrc be found in Lrumannt suggestion (l,ateinische lautund Formenlehre,230-31) that dissimilation can sometimes be a result of "folk etymologizing": "Lautlicher Anklang an ein anderes Wort, also das Spiel der Volksetymologie, begiinstigt offenkundig vielfach diese Fernwirkungen; nicht immer ist allein die l.autschwierigkeit ausldsend. Besondere Celegenheit fiir Fernwirkungen bieten etymologisch isolicne Woner, also auch Fremdwdrler, und zwar in der Volkssprache." Ovid's application of lhis elymological play io unusual and, as ir Celeus' case, patently foreign names is a clever vriation upon what might otherwise seem an unconscious linguislic process.

In /RA 20 (2007), F. Yegril entitled his review of O. Bingol's book "When a theatron is not a theater",l concluding by the third paragraph (578) that "small theater" should perhaps be preferred to "theatron". The problem is even greater for Gortyn whose five theatres have been conflated and misidentified for centuries, but G. Montali's work has lain the confusion to rest. The book is a detailed elaboration of the author's preliminary results as presented in 2000 at a congress on Roman and Early Byzantine Crete.2The cily plan reproduced here (fig. 1) shows: (1) Montali's teatrl rlmano, which on A. Di Vita's earlier plans for the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene is appropriately named the grande teatro romano; it lies southeast of the stadium and north of the circus; (2) a Greek theatre (teatro dell'acropoli) on the approach to the acropolis (upper left quadrant) that shows extensive Roman repairs and elaborations; (3) a much smaller theatre off to the side of the Roman forum, next to the Temple to Pythian Apollo (centre of the plan) and hence called teatro del Pythion, even though it is oriented neither with that temple nor with the Roman forum;3 (4) the Odeion of 'Trajan' (to the right of the acropolis theatre) in the Greek agora, home to the famous law code transferred from the Temple to Pythian Apollo during the reign of Trajan, which hence bears his name even though it was built no later than the reign of Claudius.a (5) The amphitheatre at Ayia Deka on the E edge of Gortyn should be mentioned here since material from the grande teatro romano was sometimes erroneously assigned to it. From 1998 to 2000, Montali, architect for the Italian school at Athens, studied and drew the structure, while M. Rossi undertook stratigraphical sondages. Primary among the objectives was to determine the structure's design and function and to resolve which early travellers' reports described this structure as opposed to one of the others listed above. As recently as 1911, E. Stephani produced a sketch of this structure as an amphitheatre, although A. Maiuri expressed reservations.sRecently I speculated that the structure was perhaps a double-theatre with back-to-back stages.6