C. James

In 2015, a tablet containing an archaic inscription of considerable length from Arkadia, which had appeared on the antiquities market, was “pre-published”. The present article offers: (1) a new edition of the text from autopsy and two photographs, along with (2) an English translation. Since the inscription contains many unusual linguistic and ritual details, an extensive line-by-line commentary on the text (3), as well as a study of the script and dialect (4), are also proposed. Developing this commentary, a further section (5) offers an analysis of the typology of the text, identifying it as a calendar for a three-day (τριανβρίς) festival, which recurred in different cycles (annual, biennial/trieteric, and enneateric). This festival was concerned with multiple communities, sanctuaries, and deities, perhaps especially with Zeus. By way of conclusion (Envoi), an attempt at a general appraisal of the tablet is presented: issuing perhaps from the sanctuary of Mount Lykaion or from Methydrion, the regulation was closely linked to the Arkadian myths of the birth of Zeus. Every eight years in particular, the armed defense of his mother Rhea was celebrated (the Hoplodmia), announcing the rise of the new king of the gods.

Universality has become a predominant focus of critique. To take just three examples: the purported universality of Western values has been exposed as a major justification for violent imperial enterprises, feminist thought has exposed so-called universal norms as having a specifically masculine provenance and nature, and the study of whiteness has largely been the exposure of specifically white features of institutions, practices, arts, norms, and laws that have been taken to be universal and colorless. All these examples follow the general Marxian form of critique that is guided by the proposition that all existing universalities conceal a factional interest. Universalities that function effectively and guide..