Time, Tense, and Genre in Ancient Greek Literature

The 24 essays collected in this book address the complex interactions between concepts of time, grammatical tense, and type of genre of prose or poetry in ancient Greek literature.The chronological scope stretches across nearly a millennium from archaic epic to the Second Sophistic, from the emotional intensity of Homer to Plutarch and the playfulness of Lucian, tracing patterns, developments, contrasts, and intertextual allusiveness across diverse texts and authors.These include dramatists (Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes), philosophers (Plato), lyricists (Alcman and Sappho), ancient literary critics (Dionysius of Halicarnassus), orators (whose lawcourt speeches were delivered literally 'against the clock' in the form of the clepsydra), Hellenistic poets (Apollonius and Lycophron), historiographers (Herodotus) and the fabulist Aesop.The structure is informed by Greek philosophical categories, exploring discrete metaphysical, psychological, aetiological, and ethical i