SummaryThis paper presents a new argument against the widely accepted view that Eratosthenes and some other Greek authors of the pre-Roman period measured distances in special stades that were much shorter than the ‚common‘ stade of 185 m attested by the majority of sources.

SummaryThis article is a response to Hansen's recent defence of the authenticity of the document at Demosth. or. 24.20–3. It discusses the methodology for assessing the authenticity of the documents in the orators, in particular the role(s) of the stichometry and the importance of the epigraphic evidence. It provides an in-depth analysis of the evidence about thenomothesiaprocedure provided in Demosthenes' „Against Timocrates“, showing, first, that this procedure was one centred on the enactment of new laws, and not, as the document describes, a general review of the laws of Athens; second, that the procedure described in the speech is one that can be initiated at all points of the year (consistently with what the epigraphic evidence shows), whereas the document describes an annual procedure taking place only on the 11thday of the first prytany; third, that the procedure described in the speech was initiated by a simple διαχειροτονία that allowed new proposals to be made, whereas the document describes multiple initial votes „kapitelweise“ to be held in the Assembly on different groups of existing laws. The last part of the article surveys eight specific problems with the text of the document, which confirm that it cannot be an authentic Athenian law.

Summary: This article investigates the topography in Herodotus' account of Xerxes' visit to the Troad in 480 BC, which consists of Mount Ida, the Scamander river, the temple of Athena Ilias at Troy and the tumuli in the surrounding landscape. It suggests that this episode, rather than taking us back to historical events of 480 BC, may (partly) be a product of Greek imagination in the ca. fifty years between Xerxes' invasion of Greece and the publication of the „Histories“, with the landscape of the Troad functioning as a catalyst. To this end, the article traces the Iliadic associations of these places, exposes several topographical problems, and explains how the stories frame Xerxes' visit as hubristic. While the article is not concerned with the historicity of the episode per se, it suggests that this historicity cannot automatically be accepted, as has hitherto generally been done.