Akroterion - Volume 55, Issue 1, January 2010

Book 4 of Homer's Odyssey contains two μύθοι (stories) which reveal two, different "Helens": the first "Helen" is a self-portrait, Helen tells her guests a story about her encounter with Odysseus at Troy. The second "Helen" is revealed in a counter story told straight after hers by her husband Menelaus. This counter tale reveals how Helen nearly succeeded in betraying the Greek soldiers hidden in the Trojan horse. In Helen's story, she saves Odysseus' life and her silence and complicity result in Trojan losses. In Menelaus' story she threatens Odysseus' life as well as those others hidden inside the Horse almost bringing about the downfall of the Greeks and the victory of the Trojans and thus reversing the outcome of the Trojan War.

In spite of the fact that this "heel manoeuvre" enabled an undersized pankratiast to go undefeated in competition, no one seems to know exactly how the technique was executed. Although Gardiner was of the opinion that the "heel-trick" was a well known jujutsu foot lock that enabled one to throw and then submit the opponent, he didn't go into any detail or provide any references to back his assertion. Proceeding on clues provided in the text and on insights provided by the revival of the pankration in the form of modern-day mixed martial arts (MMA) competition, this paper offers a cogent reconstruction of the technique.

This paper investigates the depiction of Clytaemestra and Egistus in the narrative poem of the North African poet, Dracontius. A close reading of the Latin epyllion explores the similarities and differences between this Clytaemestra and Egistus and their representation in the Greek and Roman tradition.

Statius' incomplete Latin epic, the Achilleid, tells the story of the young Achilles' sojourn on Scyros dressed as a girl, before he goes to Troy. The poem was discounted until recently as a curiosity in the Roman epic tradition, a genre which was theorised to be essentially about martial masculinity (Horace AP 73), despite the fact that women and sexual love feature prominently in actual epics. This paper argues that the Achilleid's complex post-Ovidian representation of gender also bears implications for our understanding of Roman epic as a genre. As Achilles struggles towards his literary destiny as the ultimate Homeric warrior, the poem's allusive exploration of gender ultimately reorients the tense relationship of the epic hero to women and amor, and of the epic genre to its own institutionalised masculinity.

It is now well known that Vergil exploited this twofold nature of the symbol of the Euphrates masterfully. On the one hand he uses it to refer back to Callimachus and in doing so to state his own views on poetry; on the other hand he invokes the famous river of the East to explain how events there impacts on Rome, her new princeps and ultimately his own capacity to write poetry. Propertius, too, was not insensitive to the possibilities afforded by the symbol of the Euphrates and, having Vergil as an example, could exploit the symbol in much the same way as the illustrious poet. This paper is primarily concerned with how Propertius uses the symbol of the Euphrates to speak about his own poetry and the socio-political circumstances in which he wrote.

The dragon is one of the most ubiquitous of images - from its appearance in the dreams of individuals to the legendary works of men like J R R Tolkien - it is known across the world but never viewed in the same way. This article takes a Jungian psychoanalytic approach to the dragon as symbol, and juxtaposes two distinct perspectives on the dragon, that of the ancient Greeks (the mythic dragons Typhon and Python in particular) and the Zulu people of South Africa (with special attention given to the place of the python as a possible "dragon" in the practice of divination), in an effort to better understand the creature's significance to these two cultures and to the world at large.

This instalment rounds off the history of the Classical Association of South Africa for the first twenty-five years.

Jonathan Roth of San Jose State University, known as an expert on military logistics, has written this attractive Cambridge Introduction to Roman Civilization volume on Roman Warfare. The series is designed for students with no prior knowledge of Roman antiquity. The book comprises an Introduction on Sources and Methods (pp. 1-6) and 15 chapters on Roman warfare from the beginnings to the fall of the Western Empire in AD 476, using a chronological approach. There are 68 illustrations and maps, a Timeline, a Glossary, a Glossary of People, a Bibliography (which includes several websites) and an Index.

The paper judged to be the best student essay submitted to Akroterion by December 8, preceding publication of the volume for that specific year, is published annually as the CASA / KVSA Essay. The competition, which is sponsored by the Classical Association of South Africa, is open to undergraduate students every year and to Honours students in even-numbered years. The winner receives a cash prize of R800.