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The Peripatos, the pathway that encircles the slopes of the Athenian Akropolis, was renovated in the late fourth century bc under Lykourgos. The crucial question concerning this somewhat neglected but important path is whether it was simply a walkway, perhaps built for philosophers of the school of Aristotle, who taught their lessons while walking, or whether this pathway had a specific cultic function. This paper gathers arguments for a cultic interpretation of the Peripatos. On this view, the pathway and its renovation were important because only the Peripatos offered access to several minor sanctuaries on the slopes of the Akropolis as well as the Aglaureion, the sanctuary where the ephebes swore their oath, a crucial institution for Lykourgos’ reforms.

Peter Huchel is mainly known for his poetic descriptions of nature. Apart from his poems on his experience as a soldier in World War II, the political contents of his poems are usually neglected, even though Huchel found himself since the 1950s in permanent conflict with the authorities of the GDR. “An Taube Ohren der Geschlechter” subtly reflects this conflict and should be considered as an explicitly political poem. Evoking the terrible destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C., described by Appianus and Polybius (whom the poem mentions directly), Huchel concealed a political message in his poem. Assuming the voice of the Greek historian he compares the “Empire of Evil” with Appianus's and Polybius's Roman Empire that was doomed even at the apogee of its power. Referring to the fall of Carthage (which reminded Scipio that no empire is eternal), and the subsequent fall of Rome, Huchel assures us that communist power in the GDR, which seemed so well established in the 1960s, will also find its demise.

Four protein-based genetic determinants or prions—[ SWI + ], [ MCA ], [ OCT + ], and [ MOT3 + ]—are recent additions to the list of well-known Saccharomyces cerevisiae prions, [ PSI + ], [ URE3 ], and [ PIN + ]. A rapid expansion of this list may indicate that many yeast proteins can convert into heritable prion forms and underscores a problem of prion input into cellular physiology. Here, we prove that the global transcriptional regulator Sfp1 can become a prion corresponding to the prion-like determinant [ ISP + ] described earlier. We show that SFP1 deletion causes an irreversible [ ISP + ] loss, whereas increased SFP1 expression induces [ ISP + ] appearance. Cells that display the [ ISP + ] phenotype contain the aggregated form of Sfp1. Indeed, these aggregates demonstrate a nuclear location. We also show that the phenotypic manifestation of Sfp1 prionization differs from the manifestation of SFP1 deletion. These properties and others distinguish [ ISP + ] from yeast prions described to date.