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Stuttard's part to theorise the complex significances of the verb 'looking' in the title, especially with reference to a character like Antigonea girl, by all accounts, who has been 'looked at' by global audiences for 25 centuries. Also, to my mind, the introduction would have benefited from a justification of the choice of foci and from some commentary on the intended contribution the collection seeks to make to the continuous appreciation of the play vis-à-vis contemporary problems and challenges (which is, after all, something with which especially the last two essays of this collection are explicitly concerned). Nevertheless, this is a very important collection. The editor closes the volume with a new translation of the play by himself, which one cannot help but think that it was intended for performance, whilst the choice to render the choral songs in poetic rather than conversational format highlights their function in the play in the most illustrative way. Having seen and enjoyed many performances of Greek plays staged by Actors of Dionysus, the theatre company founded by the editor, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to read and review this wonderfully diverse collection of essays. Despite the complexity of the arguments contained in this collection, the authors have given us twelve insightful and accessible essays, which would benefit specialised scholars and non-specialised readers everywhere.

This article tries less to give a practical demonstration than to theoretically sketch out and propose a novel approach to a specific aspect of ancient Greek culture, namely τιμή (honor) and the pursuit of it. Its aim is not only to illustrate the potential proficiency of such a methodology (and to set the ground for its application), but also to highlight concrete opportunities in the Humanities to study how the language of civic institutions in epigraphic sources and the moral language of ethical philosophy penetrate poetry in Greece: the idea that inscriptions and ethical philosophy are something that scholars of poetry should leave to ancient historians and philosophers has left lots of room for new scholarship in this area. Special attention is devoted here to Euripidean drama and its characters who, in exhibiting specific virtues (e.g. benevolence, solidarity, and friendship) while establishing reciprocal relationships, stand as socio-ethical examples of the pursuit of an honorable status within one’s community. Scholars have not fully explored to what extent this portrayal matches historical evidence for benefactions/exchanges between Greek citizens/cities and, at the same time, it complies with the virtues described by Aristotle’s ethical works. By interpreting honor as a means by which people regulate their social lives, the objective of this article is to show how Euripidean drama can serve as a valuable source to be explored for understanding Greek moral attitudes.

In this paper I investigate the formulaic language of fifth-century BCE honorific decrees and the extent to which the Athenians used specifically democratic language: were men honoured for benefiting the city or specifically the democracy? Despite the general belief that the rhetorical formula ‘being good towards the demos’ had a democratic meaning, consideration of all the readable fifth-century BCE honorific decrees demonstrates that a standard formula to indicate the addressee of the benefits did not exist; rather, it is apparent that honorific decrees enacted under the democracy used indifferently the formulae ‘being good towards the demos’, ‘being good towards the polis’ and ‘being good towards the Athenians’. Moreover, a final consideration of an oligarchic honorific decree will show that oligarchs were perhaps more careful with their language (avoiding ‘demos’ and preferring ‘polis’) than the democrats might have been.

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