Jakub Kuciak

The purpose of this article is to present the possibilities that Pseudo-Philo of Byzantium’s Περὶ τῶν ἑπτὰ θεαμάτων, a treatise on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, offers to a didactician of Ancient Greek. The article discusses the aspects of grammar, lexis and culture that can be introduced and developed using pseudo-Philo of Byzantium’s work. The following analysis is a result of the author’s work with the students in the Faculty of History of the Jagiellonian University who examined the aforementioned text during a course in the Ancient Greek language.

Described most exhaustively in Herodotus’ Histories, the navy commanded by tyrant Polycrates of Samos was allegedly one of the greatest in archaic Greece, but the extant sources provide conflicting information about its history of use, structure and role in Polycrates’grand strategy. The paper analyses the available evidence to throw light on selected unknowns regarding Polycrates’naval power. Considered matters include numbers and types of ships found in Polycrates’ navy: penteconters, triremes and samainae, the invention of the latter type traditionally ascribed to Polycrates. Relevantly to this article, the Greek historiographic tradition frequently ascribes famous inventions to famous personages: within this text, I attempt to untangle this association to test whether it holds true for Polycrates. Finally, I examine how the tyrant obtained funds to maintain his sizeable fleet, investigating whether Polycrates might have resorted to pillaging and privateering to pay for his navy’s upkeep.

This article discusses the tradition of the Ionian colonisation preserved in ancient literary sources. The author focuses on the time and circumstances in which the view that the Athenians were responsible for the Ionian colonisation emerged. He also examines whether there is any support in the sources for the opinion expressed by some  historians that such a belief was already strong in the Archaic period.

The main aim of the article is to present the preserved literary tradition about connections between the Samian tyrant Polycrates and the poet Anakreon. The literary tradition is analyzed chronologically: from Herodotus to Himerius. The author makes an attempt to present various traditions (which are partially independent form Herodotus) concerning the tyrant and the poet.