The Greco-Persian Wars and their veterans are mentioned repeatedly in the genre of Old Comedy. Scholars have noted that while often these figures are presented as objects of profound admiration, sometimes the rhetoric surrounding their triumph is satirised. This article argues that: 1) the extent to which Old Comedy mocked the rhetoric surrounding the Greco-Persian Wars is greater than has been previously allowed; 2) the mockery in Old Comedy not only targets the overblown rhetoric to do with the war, but even encourages the audience to laugh at the veterans themselves; 3) but, simultaneously, Aristophanes uses tactics which minimise the potential of offending his audience. Specifically, the poet uses a technique which I call ‘identity layering’: the addition of several types of identity to one character, or, in the case of Acharnians and Wasps, to the chorus. The poet makes his chorus in Acharnians not merely veterans of the Greco-Persian Wars, but fervent patriots and enfeebled old men struggling to defend themselves in litigious contemporary Athens, and similarly he makes the Wasps chorus not only war veterans, but also zealous jurors and human-wasp hybrids. By doing this, Aristophanes is able to mock these figures while never encouraging the audience to laugh at them solely in their identity as veterans.

This paper reassesses how Athens and Demetrios Poliorketes engaged with the memory of the Greco-Persian Wars in the early Hellenistic period. It argues that in the peri-od between the Lamian War and the Gallic invasion, the memory of the Greco-Persian Wars was neither being actively nor centrally employed in political negotiations or forms of self-representation; rather, it appeared only fragmentarily and indirectly, as one element among the pervasive memories embedded within the landscape of the city of Athens, functioning not as an intentional reference but rather as a structural backdrop. The second section con-siders the Successors’ early uses of the memory of the Greco-Persian Wars. Although “free-dom of the Greeks” could evoke the Greco-Persian Wars, extant evidence shows Successors preferred to legitimise themselves through Philip and Alexander (and Argead continuity), not by explicit Persian analogies. The third section discusses the allusions to the Greco-Persian Wars in the context of the political communication between Demetrios and Athens. It discusses four cases which might have a link with the memory of the Greco-Persian Wars: (1) Demetrios’ marriage to the Athenian Euthydike; (2) the gift of 1,200 panoplies after the Battle of Salamis; (3) the “oracular” consultation with Demetrios concerning shields at Delphi; and (4) the assignment of the Parthenon opisthodomos. In each, references to the Greco-Persian Wars are ambiguous, incidental, or multivalent. Demetrios’ image was also shaped by democratic symbolism and quasi-cultic integration, indicating that Athenian values and ritual frameworks organised honours and expectations. The final section con-siders the meaning of these allusions and argues that engaging Athens inevitably touched the memory of the Greco-Persian Wars, but it was not always foregrounded. Memory is selective; faint traces are not inherently meaningful. I urge caution and argue for nuanced, context-dependent readings.

This paper examines how memories of the Greco-Persian Wars were reshaped and transmitted in Hellenistic Athens, with a focus on the evolving role of the Athenian ephebeia. While the Greco-Persian Wars had long been a key example of collective memory—kept alive through monuments, speeches, festivals, and rituals—the paper argues that from the late third century BCE onward, these memories were increasingly conveyed through institutionalised ephebic education. Although the ephebeia became an elite institution with declining enrolment, it remained central to civic education and the development of military and moral virtues. Special attention is given to the intentional connection between ephebic ideals and those associated with the Greco-Persian Wars. In the Hellenistic period, this link was reinforced through new practices, such as ephebic pilgrimages to Greco-Persian War sites like Salamis and Marathon, participation in commemorative festivals, and the introduction of naval training. These activities changed the way the Greco-Persian Wars were remembered, shifting from mainly rhetorical traditions to more performative and experiential ones. Rituals at Salamis, the Epitaphia at Marathon, and later naval contests allowed each group of ephebes to reenact ancestral struggles for eleutheria and homonoia within a contemporary political context shaped by opposition to Macedonian dominance. The paper concludes that through the ephebeia, Athenians reimagined the Greco-Persian Wars as a dynamic model of civic identity and military virtue—concepts later spread more broadly with the inclusion of foreign youths, especially Roman, during the late Hellenistic period.

The Greek victory over the Persian invaders in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, won under Spartan command, was to a large extent the victory of the Athenians who had provided the bulk of the fleet of the allied Greek poleis. The Athenians had also paid the highest price: they had evacuated their city and had seen it being burnt by the Persians. How did they commemorate the victory? This paper concentrates on tropaion monuments – structures that, contrary to the ephemeral display of armor looted from the enemy (called tropaion), were erected in order to remind of the victory permanently. The earliest preserved tropaion monument – an Ionic column, topped by a statue – was set up by the Athenians for their victory at Marathon (490 BCE), about a generation after the battle. I argue that, at about the same time, the Athenians built a tropaion monument for the naval battle on Psyttaleia, an islet between Salamis and Piraeus, as an anchor for collective memory and identity. This monument was regularly visited by the ephebes in Hellenistic times. Another tropaion monument on Salamis, remains of which were seen by early travelers, was built only in the beginning of Roman Imperial times in order to evoke Athens’ glory of the distant past.

The principal aim of this paper is to re-examine Sparta’s monumental commemoration of the Greco-Persian Wars, focusing on two monuments in the city of Sparta: The Persian Stoa and a memorial for the dead of Thermopylai. Although both are first explicitly described by Roman-period authors, I argue that they may plausibly have originated in the fifth century BCE, in the immediate aftermath of the Greco-Persian wars. Although Sparta’s military leadership at Thermopylai, Plataia, Mykale, Artemision, and even Salamis was central to the Hellenic League’s eventual victory over Persia, the nature and dating of Spartan memorials have been heavily debated. Pausanias, writing in the second century CE, records both the Persian Stoa and memorial for the Thermopylai dead in Sparta, but the origins of these monuments are uncertain, and they are often assumed to be products of the Hellenistic or Roman periods. By reassessing and integrating the literary testimonies alongside archaeological evidence and wider trends in Archaic and Classical commemoration, this study argues that these monuments may plausibly have been constructed in the fifth century, funded by Persian war booty. Their existence suggests that Sparta sought to actively shape collective memory through monumental display, and that the Spartans were aware of and engaging with developments in Greek commemorative traditions. In this way, Spartan commemoration of victory over the Persians emerges not as belated or passive but as integral to the enduring narratives that elevated Leonidas, Pausanias, and the city itself within the memory of the Greco-Persian Wars.

Although crocodile cults left extensive archaeological evidence throughout Roman Egypt, previous scholarship has focused mainly on the Fayum region’s sites. This study examines the distinctive architectural features of the crocodile cult at Akoris in Middle Egypt with specific attention to the two wall cultic niches in the third room of Chapel A. These paired horizontal niches, carved directly into the limestone bedrock, measure approximately 4 meters in length and were designed to accommodate crocodile mummies. This configuration contrasts markedly with the vertically oriented mudbrick niches documented in Fayum temples such as Karanis, Narmouthis, and Theadelphia. Through three-dimensional survey analysis and comparative architectural study, this research demonstrates that the Akoris niches represent a regional adaptation shaped by local geological constraints while maintaining the theological significance of paired installations, possibly reflecting syncretic connections with the Greco-Roman Dioscuri cult. The evidence challenges previous assertions of architectural uniformity in crocodile cult practices. It reveals how the Western Temple complex at Akoris represents a localized realization of traditional religious architecture, demonstrating the vitality and persistence of the crocodile cult during the Roman Period.

In 584/1188, a dispute arose in Aleppo over the lineage of two sharīfs. When the renowned genealogist and sharīf al-Jawwānī, then visiting the city, denied the validity of the lineage claimed by the sharīf ʿIzz al-ʿArab al-Idrīsī, ʿIzz al-ʿArab retaliated by denying al-Jawwānī’s own lineage. This study presents an English translation of the entry on ʿIzz al-ʿArab in Ibn al-ʿAdīm’s local biographical dictionary Bughyat al-ṭalab fī taʾrīkh Ḥalab, which preserves al-Jawwānī’s account of his encounter with ʿIzz al-ʿArab and his reasons for rejecting ʿIzz al-ʿArab’s claim to Prophetic descent. Al-Jawwānī’s narrative offers rare and detailed insight into how individuals with a stake in Prophetic lineage acted in a charged setting where a foreign genealogist engaged a local community of sharīfs. Local sharīfs visited al-Jawwānī in numbers to seek validation of their lineages; ʿIzz al-ʿArab, among them, failed in his attempt. He then issued an open letter to al-Jawwānī—either under pres-sure from or with the backing of the local sharīfs—demanding a formal verdict, to which al-Jawwānī responds point by point in the text translated here. Notably, the account depicts two genealogical authorities—one being al-Jawwānī—responding to ʿIzz al-ʿArab’s claim in opposing ways, revealing how each employed genealogical expertise to support conclusions shaped less by objective analysis than by reputational and social considerations. The study further argues that, despite its bias, al-Jawwānī’s account remains a valuable historical source—provided we shift our focus from the factuality of the events themselves to that of the setting in which they are reported to have occurred.