Volume 31 Number 1 October 2000
NB: The online version of the Bulletin is identical to the hardcopy version, with the exception of a few advertisements, which have been omitted.
NOTICE OF THE THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
The thirty-first annual meeting of CAPN will be held jointly with CAMWS (The Classical Association of the Middle West and South) in Provo, Utah at the invitation of the Brigham Young University and in co-operation with the Utah Classical Association. The meeting will take place at the Provo Marriott Hotel on April 18-21, 2001.
Information on accommodations and on the conference in general is or will be available on the conference website:
http://www.rmc.edu/~gdaugher/ut01/index.html
Please note that the deadline for submission of abstracts was September 29, 2000.
Minutes of the 2000 CAPN Meeting
11 March 2000, Laurel Point Inn
Victoria, BC
1. The Meeting was called to order at approximately 1:00 PM.
2. The minutes of the 1999 annual meeting were approved.
3. Report on Regional Associations: There was no report on the meeting of Regional Associations at the APA meeting in Dallas.
4. National Committee on Latin and Greek: It was moved, seconded and passsed that CAPN contribute 165.00 as we had last year to the NCLG.
5. There was no report on CAPN's links with the American Classical League
6. Treasurer's report: Catherine Connors presented the Treasurer's report (please see the report in this Bulletin).
7. Report of the Scholarship Committee: No business was reported by the Scholarship committee. A request was made to improve publicity of the purposes for and amounts in which funds may be awarded.
8. New Officers: The following slate of officers was elected: President: Linda Gillison, University of Montana; Vice President: Mary Jaeger and Malcolm Wilson, Univ. of Oregon; Secretary - Treasurer: Catherine Connors, University of Washington; Editor of the CAPN Bulletin: Alain Gowing, University of Washington
Executive Committee
: Karen Carr, Portland State; Fred Lauritsen, Eastern Washington University; Laurel Bowman, University of Victoria; Alain Gowing, University of Washington; Catherine Connors, University of Washington.Plans were discussed for the April 2001 joint meeting of CAPN and CAMWS in Provo. Since the call for papers will be earlier than is customary for CAPN meetings, additional mailings will be done over the summer to announce the call for papers
9. New Business:
The membership thanked Laurel Bowman and her counterpart in CACW, Ingrid Holmberg, for their work in organizing the extremely pleasant meeting at Victoria. Linda Gillison encouraged everyone to come to Provo in 2001.
10. The meeting was adjourned.
(as of March 10, 2000)
scholarship fund
Balance as of March 20, 1999 $1929.37
+ Interest (thru 12/31/99) 28.11
+ Contributions 30.00
Balance as of March 20, 2000 1987.48
general fund
Balance as of Feb. 25, 1999 1411.72
+ Deposits
dues, contributions, subscriptions, and
conference registration fees 2040.42
+ Interest (thru 2/28/00) 4.37
2044.79
Sub-Total: 3456.51
- Expenses:
Paid subscriptions 351.23
Printing and other expenses 443.23
Conference expenses 696.00
-1490.46
Balance as of Feb. 25, 2000: 1966.05
+additional deposits +172.00
-outstanding checks -475.00
Balance as of March 10, 2000 1663.05
Submitted by Catherine Connors
CAPN Secretary-Treasurer
Department of Classics, Box 353110
University of Washington
Seattle WA 98195
Editor's note:
As CAPN members know, each fall we print in this space reports on the activities of member departments and units. If your program or department (high school, college, etc.) is not represented here -- and you would like it to be -- please send the Editor the name and address of a contact person who would be willing to write such a report.Whitman College
The Department of Classics at Whitman College is delighted to have Brady Mechley here this year as a sabbatical replacement for Jeannine Uzzi in the fall and Dana Burgess in the spring. Professor Mechley received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, so this marks his return to the Pacific Northwest. This is the first year for Whitman's new, regularly offered Classics major program, including new upper division curriculum. Jeannine Uzzi is spending the fall semester in New York City working on a book on the representation of children in Roman Imperial art, while Dana Burgess will spend the spring semester in Walla Walla working on the Iphigenia at Aulis of Euripides.
University of Idaho
Bella Vivante
, Associate Professor of Humanities and Adjunct Faculty Member in Classics, University of Arizona, and Hennebach Visiting Professor, Colorado School of Mines, will be at the University of Idaho as the Kennedy Visiting Scholar from October 23-27. She will lead a week-long seminar for classics majors and minors on "The Multiple Images of Helen in Ancient Greece: Goddess and Mortal, Icon of Beauty, Sex, and Womanhood" and a faculty seminar on "Diversity in the Curriculum: Challenges and Possibilities" and deliver a public lecture, "Women's Love Poetry of the Ancient Mediterranean: An Illustrated lecture on Sappho, the Song of Songs, and Other Women's Love Poetry." These events are made possible by a generous gift to the Classics Section of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures by Father Arthur Thomas Kennedy of Twin Falls, Idaho.We are also pleased to announce the Kennedy Summer Travel Award for study in Italy or Greece, granted for the first time in the summer of 2000 to two outstanding seniors majoring in Classical Studies, Natali Miller for the Vergilian Society and Tanna Day for the College Year in Athens summer session.
Eta Sigma Phi (The Classics Honorary) will sponsor three public lectures this fall:
Celia Luschnig, "Oh Rats: Dirty Tricks in Cicero's Campaign for the Consulate," 21 September, 5:00 p.m. Administration 316.
Bella Vivante, "Women's Love Poetry of the Ancient Mediterranean: An Illustrated lecture on Sappho, the Song of Songs, and other women's love poetry," Thursday, 26 October, 7:30 p.m. University Auditorium (Administration Building).
Tanna Day, Natali Miller, Mackenzie Struble, "Travelers in Antique Lands: A Multi-media Presentation" (tentatively scheduled for 6 November, 5:00 p.m. Administration 316).
Enrolments continue at nearly record highs for the Fall semester.
Louis Perraud
was promoted to the rank of Professor in the spring. He reports a successful first-time course, "Rome Goes to the Movies." The nineteen summer school students enjoyed it a great deal. For the University of Toronto Erasmus Project he is working on "Annotations on Mark's Gospel," introduction, translation, notes and comparison of different editions: an important document for humanist applications of philology and historical techniques to the Bible.Cecelia Luschnig
continues to work on the Medea Page with Susan Spencer (Professor of English, Central Oklahoma University); she is also working with Hanna Roisman (Professor of Classics, Colby College) on a students' commentary on Alcestis. "Seeing the Real You at Last: Understanding Medea's Changing Roles" was published in July 2000 in Interdisciplinary Humanities 16 (1999): 97-112. She is currently revising her manuscript on Euripides' Medea.University of Oregon
Zachary Biles
is a visiting assistant professor this year. Last year, he was a lecturer in Classics at the University of Colorado, where he also completed his dissertation ("Aristophanes' Wasps: A Study in Competitive Poetry"). His recent article, "Eratosthenes on Plato Comicus: Didaskaliae or Parabasis?," appeared in ZPE. He continues his work on Old Comedy with essays on Aristophanes and Cratinus, and is now working on an article on the literary and historical significance of Xanthias in Frogs.Lowell Bowditc
h has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Her book Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage is scheduled for release in January from the University of California Press, in the series "Classics and Contemporary Thought." At the APA meeting in San Diego she will be delivering a paper, "Hermeneutic Uncertainty and Female Subjectivity in the Ars Amatoria: the Procris and Cephalus Digression."Cristina Calhoon
attended the NEH summer seminar in Rome "Representing Geography and Community in the World of Imperial Rome"; her project was "The Bridge, The Road, The City and The Forest: Colonization of Space on the Column of Trajan," which she is converting into an article. She is also working on an essay entitled "Venus and Venom: Poison and Desire in Roman Literature," which explores the cultural construction of poison.Jeff Hurwit
has been named a "Martha S. Joukowsky Lecturer" by the Archaeological Institute of America for the year 2000-2001, and will be giving 13 lectures across the US and Canada this year.Mary Jaeger
continues to work on Roman historiography, and will deliver a paper on "Livy and the Deaths of Cities" at Gustavus Adolphus College in October. She is again teaching in the University of Oregon Pathways program, which offers freshmen and sophomores a general-education curriculum integrating courses in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences.Steven Lowenstam
published "The Shroud of Laertes and Penelope's Guile" in CJ this spring, and "Seneca's Epistle 65" in MAAR. He will be delivering a paper at the APA in San Diego, "The Proton Philon and Forms in Plato's Lysis."Steven Shankman
's book (coauthored by Stephen Durrant), The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, was published this year. Another book, Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons (co-edited with Stephen Durrant), is forthcoming From SUNY Press. It is a collection of essays, one by Shankman. He has also just published a book of poems, Kindred Verses, which contains an original Pindaric Ode and also a translation of Pindar's Third Pythian.Malcolm Wilson
has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. His book, Aristotle's Theory of the Unity of Science, was published in June by the University of Toronto Press. He gave a paper on demonstrative form in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics at CAPN in April, and is working on a paper on demonstrative proofs in the Posterior Analytics.The University of Oregon is looking forward to hosting the 2002 CAPN meeting.
Eastern Washington University
Fred Lauritsen
spent the summer at the Center for Old World Archaeology and Art, Brown University working on their collection from Roman Egypt. He plans to publish a hoard of tetradrachmas dating to Aurelian and Vaballathus imbedded in the collection. He has also retired from EWU (but has hired back at 40%).University of British Columbia
UBC's Stymphalos Project continued for a seventh season at this late classical/Hellenistic polis in the northeastern Peloponnese. An international staff of over 70 spent nearly two months uncovering a variety of sites, including more of a large early Roman villa that had been constructed in the remains of the Hellenistic city that was apparently abandoned after Mummius' destruction of Corinth in 146 BC. An unusual find there this year were a bronze shield and an iron dagger to go with the complete iron sword found last year. Further west a large 3rd c. BC stoa with a Doric facade, apparently prefabricated in Corinth, appeared along with foundations of a monumental Ionic propylon. At the eastern end of the acropolis yet another group of early Christian graves, the fifth from the site, emerged while in the Sanctuary of Athena at the eastern end of the acropolis yet another group of early Christian graves, the fifth from the site, emerged while in the Sanctuary of Athena at the western end of the acropolis limited excavations recovered much more gold, silver and (mostly) bronze jewelry, offerings to the goddess.
A deep sondage in the southeastern sector of the ancient city seems to have reached a pure Mycenaean level; unfortunately ground water made stratigraphic excavation at this level difficult but the identifiable sherds from the mud seem to be 14-13th c. BC.
Specialist work on human remains and on coins have also provided a lot of incidental information about the ancient city. Dr. Robert Weir, University of Victoria, has identified most of our over 200 coins, including an interesting forged Roman denarius of 149 BC. Coins of Syria and of Carthage perhaps attest to the widespread range of Stymphalian mercenaries in Hellenistic armies.
The family of the late Homer Thompson, one of UBC's most distinguished alumni and for many years Director of excavations in the Athenian Agora, has endowed a number of travelling scholarships for graduate students in Classical Studies. Last summer four of our students--one PhD and three MA students in archaeology--took part in the excavations at Stymphalos thanks to the fund.
Tony Barrett
of UBC's Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada last spring, joining former department members Malcolm McGregor and Allan Evans as members of this prestigious body. Tony has recently submitted his manuscript on Livia to his publisher, soon to join his earlier books on Caligula and Agrippina. You may also occasionally see him on television, popping up in a biographical programme on Caligula.A fund raising campaign for the graduate reading room of our united department has raised $10,000, including a $5000 donation from alumna Reema Faris for books on Near Eastern archaeology.
University of Calgary
There have been, again this year, substantial changes in the make-up of the Department of Greek, Latin, and Ancient History. Peter Toohey took up his appointment as Professor on January 1 of this year and, on May 1, took over the departmental headship from Martin Cropp. Martin C. almost immediately went on Sabbatical Leave to continue his work on Euripides.
In July of this year Franco De Angelis joined us from the University of Lethbridge, where he had taught for three years, as an assistant professor. Franco completed his graduate studies at McGill University and at Lincoln College in the University of Oxford with a focus on classical archaeology and ancient history. He received his doctorate in 1997 with a thesis on the social and economic development of the Megarian city-states in Sicily (Megara Hyblaia and Selinous) in the archaic period. This work has been accepted for publication in the series Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology, and is to appear in 2002.
At the beginning of July we regretfully said farewell to a number of long-term sessional and part-time staff who have moved on to tenure track positions elsewhere in Canada. Michael Carter moved to teach Classics at Brock University (accompanied by Nadine Brundrett), Michael Cummings to teach Latin at Queens, David Mirhady to teach Humanities at Simon Fraser University, and Kelly Olson (accompanied by David Lamari) to teach Ancient History at Western Ontario.
This year we have welcomed as sessional appointments Sonia Hewitt, who graduated in the fall from McMaster University with a Ph.D. thesis entitled 'The Urban Domestic Baths of Roman Africa', and Ben Garstad who graduated in the summer from St. Andrews University with a thesis entitled 'The Titanomachy of Thallus and its Reception by the Latin Church Fathers'. Sonia and Ben will be joined in the Winter Term by Christina Vester who is currently completing a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Washington. We are also very grateful to have welcomed this year as adjunct Professor Marcelo Epstein of the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary. Marcelo teaches a course for science students (especially Engineering students) entitled 'The Latin of Science'. It is a Beginners Latin course based on Latin scientific literature.
In the main office Linda Sharpe has been joined Cheryl Hamaliuk.
Boise State University
Charles Odahl
, History & Classical Languages, gave a slide presentation on "The Imperial Churches of Byzantine Constantinople from Constantine to Justinian" at the Idaho Historians Conference in Boise, and represented the Northwest region at the Membership Committee meeting at the joint conference of the American Society of Church History and the American Catholic Historical Association in Santa Fe in the spring of 2000. In the summer, he completed articles on "The Battle of the Mulvian Bridge," "The Edict of Milan," "Pope Sylvester I," and "Eusebius of Caesarea" for the Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Salem Press, 2001). This fall he is completing the final chapters of his book Constantine and the Christian Empire (Routledge, 2001).Brian O'Grady
, Adjunct Instructor in Greek, gave a talk on "Early Christian Liturgical Formularies" at the Idaho Historians Conference in Boise in the spring, and was ordained as an Antiochan Orthodox Priest during the summer.Lee Ann Turner
, Art History, gave presentations on "Public War Monuments and the Classical Foundations of Commemorative Walls" at the Denver Art Museum (November 1999); "Cultural Diversity on Iron Age Crete" at the CAPN meeting in Victoria (March 2000); and "Celebration and the Bachelor Party: The Omphale Myth in Renaissance and Baroque Art" at a conference in Chicago (April 2000). She has written articles on the "Colossus of Rhodes," and "Trajan's Column" for the Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Salem Press, 2001).BSU has long had a strong program in Ancient History and Classical Languages in its History Department with courses on Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, a Seminar on Augustus and Classical Rome, Early Christianity, and a Seminar on Constantine and Late Antiquity; plus six semesters of Latin and two of Greek. The Art Department has now introduced a new major in Art History, which includes courses in Bronze Age Art, Ancient Greek Art, and Art of Ancient Italy. The Philosophy Department also regularly offers a course in Ancient Philosophy, and the Literature Department offers a course in Mythology. Students at BSU are thus able to approach Classical Civilization from a variety of perspectives, and earn an MA degree in Ancient History and Classical Civilization. Our graduates are teaching Latin in several private classically based academies, and in all the high schools of the region; and many have gone on to Ph.D. programs in history, art, and philosophy.
Portland State University
I am pleased to report another excellent year here. Our AIA society is doing well, with over eighty members and six lectures last year. Our Byzantinist, Ann McClanan, is editing a volume on medieval gender and material culture with St. Martin's Press, and gave papers at the CAA and Leeds this year. Laurie Cosgriff's first year of Greek went well, with about 40 students in the class, and she is continuing the first year of Greek and adding the second this fall. Six courses in classics in translation have also been added for this year, through Foreign Languages. George Armantrout will be teaching another Greek Civ course winter term. Karen Carr spent October in Tunisia working on the Roman finewares from Leptiminus, and stopped in France on the way home for a conference on textile production at Lattes. She gave a paper at the AIA in December, and recently finished a chapter on Roman houses for Professor McClanan's anthology. Portland State's World Wide Web site on Greek Civilization for middle schoolers (http://www.greekciv.pdx.edu) has had almost seven million hits in the past year, averaging about 2500 visits a day during the school year. It is, however, being replaced by a newer and larger version at http://www.historyforkids.org.
University of Puget Sound
David Lupher
, Ili Nagy and Molly Pasco-Pranger continue in their usual activities giving papers and teaching while trying to work on their scholarship. Eric Orlin (BA Yale, 1986, PhD Berkeley, 1994) has joined the Classics Department in a tenure-line position, replacing Bill Barry, who is now serving the University as Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs. Eric specializes in Roman Republican history; his first book (Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic) was published in 1996 by Brill.Gonzaga University
Darel Tai Enge
n continues as the faculty advisor for Gonzaga's History Club and its affiliated Xi Gamma chapter of the national history honors society, Phi Alpha Theta. His article, "Ancient Greenbacks: Athenian Owls, the Law of Nikophon, and the Greek Economy," will soon be published in Coinage, Politics, and Ideology in the Ancient World, edited by J.R. Fears and E. Zarrow. He will present a paper entitled, "Star Trek and the Modern Schizophrenic Attitude toward Ancient Rome," for the "Science Fiction and the Classical World" panel at the 2001 annual meeting of the American Philological Association in San Diego in January. For the eighth consecutive summer he will teach an overseas course in Greece through the UCLA Summer Sessions Overseas program.University of Montana
The Classics section continues to provide healthy programs in three major areas of study: Classical Languages, Latin, and Classical Civilization. Each of two Latin 101 sections enrolled 40+ students this September, Linda Gillison has 24 Greek 101 students, and Hayden Ausland teaches approximately 50 students in upper-division Greek History.
The estate of Margherite and Henry Ephron made generous commitments to the study of Classics on this campus, and we have therefore been able to support several students by scholarship awards. Recipients for this year were Melanie Murray (Classical Languages), Barbara Werner (Latin), and Myles Morris (Classical Civilization).
Linda Gillison
is Director for this year's Italy Program and will bring 14 students with her to Rome. Four of them have declared majors in Classics, and the rest come from around the campus and are encountering the joys and tribulations of Roman studies for the first time. The group will spend most of its time in Rome but will travel to Florence, where this year's emphasis on the Etruscans will keep us longer in the Museo Archeologico than before. The director is already aware of several sites newly accessible to serious students in Rome, and is including them in the group's itinerary.Jim Scott
continues as Associate Dean of CAS and has thus had to limit his participation in the section. Rina Quartarone is teaching in his stead, both in Classics and in the Liberal Studies Program. While we all judge Jim an optimus and the Associate Deanship should certainly earn him at least senatorial status, he and his wife Anita maintain their life as equites complete with grand new barn and working arena where they have recently been known to host (non-Neronian) parties for select guests.Hayden Ausland
was on sabbatical last year but has plunged again into the teaching/service maelstrom. He has published two articles and has two additional ones in press, has reviewed two books (including the controversial Who Killed Homer?), and has presented papers in Cincinnati and Liechtenstein and on Samos. He is the section's designated traveler.Rina Quartarone
has also been working hard, with papers presented at regional, national, and, yes, international (are we cosmopolitan, or what???) conferences. She is most pleased that the volume on which she collaborated with W. S. Anderson for the MLA's "Approaches to Teaching World Literature" Series is forthcoming. In addition, her work will be represented in the forthcoming volume dedicated to this year's meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.Linda Gillison
has published an article on Honors education in the new volume from the National Collegiate Honors Council and also a faculty resource volume to accompany Classical Mythology. Images and Insights (3rd edition) from Mayfield Press. If she is allowed a slot on the CAMWS/CAPN program, she will present the second in her highly popular series of non-horti papers. Her abstract has a very catchy title, which she hopes will effectively disguise the Thucydidean nature of the presentation. Stay tuned.Reed College
Things are going well in the Classics Department at Reed. Richard Tron is teaching an advanced Greek class on Euripides' Bacchae. Walter Englert continues to make progress on his translation of Lucretius and to work on Cicero's philosophical works. He also was the coordinator of the twelfth annual Reed Latin Forum for Oregon and Washington high school Latin teachers and students in November, 1999, and assisted the Classic Greek Theater company stage a production of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus (in English) at the Reed College amphitheater in September, 1999. Nigel Nicholson is still working on his book on the representation of charioteers and trainers in Pindar's Odes and other victor memorials, and recently had the pleasure of lecturing on this subject at UW in the Fall. Two of his articles will be appearing soon, "Pindar Ne. 4.57-58 and the Arts of Poets, Trainers and Wrestlers," in Arethusa, and "Victory without Defeat? Carnival Laughter and its Appropriation in Pindar's Victory Odes," in Carnivalizing Difference, edited by D. Shepherd, P. Barta, A. Miller and C. Platter. Reed also welcomes two new visiting faculty this fall. Gordon Kelly, who received his Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1999, is at Reed for two year visiting appointment in Classics and Ancient History. His article, "The Attempted Exile of L. Hostilius Tubulus," will appear in the 2001 edition of Athenaeum. Gordon is teaching Roman History, Latin, and Freshman Humanities. Kenneth Wolfe has joined the department as a one-year visiting assistant professor in Classics and Humanities. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley this year, and wrote his dissertation on "The Relation of the Forms to the Intellect in Plotinus." Ken is teaching intermediate Latin, intermediate Greek, and Freshman Humanities.
Pacific Lutheran University
Rochelle Snee
is in her third and final (!) year as chair of the Languages and Literatures department. Eric Nelson has had a book proposal for The Idiot's Guide to Rome accepted. Kathryn Taddy is again teaching Roman Civilization for us. Enrollments in the languages have continued to grow, and Kathryn is also handling a second section of beginning Latin.University of Washington
Larry Bliquez
is nearing the end of his term as President of the Society for Ancient Medicine; he will devote an upcoming sabbatical to his ongoing book project on Greco-Roman surgery. Ruby Blondell was promoted last year to Full Professor; her book The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues is forthcoming from Cambridge U.P. Jim Clauss, who was Acting Chair of the Department last winter and spring, is organizer of a major November 3-4 colloquium on Argonautic mythology: 'On board the Argo through time and media'. The speakers come from as close as UPS and Whitman and as far away as Leiden and Groningen; and in the first of what we hope will be many such north-south collaborations (taking advantage of the cheap flight corridor down the Pacific coast) the event enjoys the co-sponsorship and participation of the Department of Classics at Stanford. Catherine Connors (your Secretary-Treasurer) contributed a chapter 'Imperial space and time: the literature of leisure' to Oliver Taplin, ed., Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective, Oxford U.P. 2000. Alain Gowing (your Editor) has an article forthcoming in Eranos 2000 on 'Memory and silence in Cicero's Brutus'; this arises from his book project on history and memory in Rome. Ever the Renaissance man, in winter 2001 Alain will co-teach a course on 'Shakespeare in Rome' for the UW Center for the Humanities. Dan Harmon, who has just completed his term as co-director of the Palazzo Pio, UW's superb teaching facility in Rome, is on leave in autumn 2000, working with Jim Clauss on the final stages of their joint translation and revision of Coarelli's Guide to Rome and Central Italy. Stephen Hinds contributed articles to two collections of essays on Ovid, both edited by Philip Hardie: 'After exile' in Ovidian Transformations, Cambridge Phil. Soc. 1999, and 'Landscape with figures: aesthetics of place in the Metamorphoses and its tradition' forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Paul Scotton had another good summer in the field at Corinth, and published 'Curvature in the Julian Basilica at ancient Corinth' in L. Haselberger, ed., Appearance and Essence, University Museum Press 1999; on January 10 he will present some of his findings in the second of the annual UW Faculty Lectures co-sponsored by the local AIA and the Department of Classics. Meanwhile, our two temporary exiles continue to prosper, Michael Halleran as our own Divisional Dean of Arts and Humanities, and Merle Langdon as Mellon Professor at the American School in Athens. Pierre MacKay will add to the UW faculty presence in Athens next year: he has been appointed Elizabeth A. Whitehead Visiting Professor there for 2001-2002.We had more good-byes than we would have liked in 2000: to Sheila Colwell, who, after a decade at UW, has returned to her roots in the Bay Area; to Joy Connolly and Susan Lape, who took up jobs in Stanford and University of Texas respectively; and to Mark Buchan, who relinquished his visiting position to take up a tenure-track job at Princeton. They will all be missed. However we are delighted to welcome two new faculty in visiting positions: Sarah Stroup from Berkeley (but with a BA from UW!), working on Cicero and Roman cultural history, and Larry Kim from Princeton, working on the reception of Homer in later Greek antiquity.
TITLES AND ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS HEARD AT THE Joint 2000 CAPN/CACW MEETING
(10-11 March 2000, victoria, British Columbia)
Taking the Waters: A new survey of spas in Tunisia
Tana J. Allen
University of Alberta
Among the many Roman monuments of Tunisia can be counted numerous bathing establishments supplied by thermal-mineral springs which functioned as healing spas. These institutions formed an integral part of health and healing in antiquity. As of yet, the fifteen spas of this region have remained largely neglected and understudied, despite H. Jouffroy's introductory survey in 1990 ("Les Aquae Africaines," in Les eaux thermales et les cultes des eaux, R. Chevallier, ed.). Several of the spas are known only from literary or epigraphic evidence, such as those named on the Peutinger Table, included in the Antonine Itinerary, and known from the ecclesiastical conference held at Carthage in 411. Others have been identified both by name and archaeologically. These include Aquae Caesaris, Aquae Carpitanae, Aquae Traianae and Aquae Tacapitanae. Two remarkably well-preserved sites, Djebel Oust and Hammam Mellegue, have received entirely inadequate attention and have yet to be associated with an ancient name. This paper aims to update the current state of information about spas in Tunisia by first outlining the relevant archaeological, literary, and epigraphic evidence and then assessing how these provincial spas fit into the overall pattern of spa usage in the Roman world.
Aeneas and His Gradual Escape from Trojan Epithets
William S. Anderson
University of California, Berkeley
Vergil made a virtue of the necessity, caused by the meter and the needs of his audience, of varying artfully his words for "Trojan". He did not foresee how much trouble that would cause modern readers of the Aeneid. In the opening episode after the prologue (1.33 ff.), Juno rants against the Trojans, but calls them "Teucrians". She perhaps sneers at their Cretan ancestor Teucer, but Vergil also prepares for the mistaken decision of Aeneas to settle in Crete after the fall of Troy. Having survived the storm, Aeneas gets to Carthage and Dido. As he marvels at her commanding beauty, he is called "Dardanian" by the poet (1.494; cf. 560. 602) for the first time. This epithet connects him with another ancestor who moved from Italy to Troy; it points to his short stay with Dido and return to Italy, where he can claim a rightful place. I aim to trace Vergil's usage in the poem. Eventually Aeneas must shed all Trojan epithets and, after fighting Turnus, become a new person as Latin and Roman.
Tacitus Annales XII, 60: Increase of Procuratorial Jurisdiction under Claudius
John Aveline
Simon Fraser University
According to Tacitus, Claudius in 53 AD extended the judicial authority of his procurators to the extent that they should have equal authority to that of the emperor himself. The passage in which Tacitus describes this action has been a source of lively discussion due as much to the concise nature of Tacitus' writing as to the historical digression in which Tacitus indulges. This paper will attempt to demonstrate a number of points:
1.) that the passage demonstrates a ring-composition which indicates that this section was carefully thought out, rather than written in the carefree manner that first appears.
2.) that the procurators which were being singled out for this increase of jurisdiction were those in charge of imperial estates. This can be seen in such things as the description of the procurators as Claudius' own. This would mean that both freedmen and equestrians were benefitting from this extension of authority.
3.) that Claudius was responding to a state of affairs which was already in existence (i.e., these procurators were already exercising this judicial authority) and that Claudius was simply legalizing the behaviour of his procurators.
The Helios figure in Jewish Synagogue Mosaics
Christopher Beall
University of British Columbia
The proposed paper will challenge the orthodox view of Helios imagery in Jewish synagogue mosaics from Late Antiquity. Traditionally they have been considered purely artistic, the images borrowed from Roman art solely for decoration. Using slides to emphasize the centrality of the images in relation to the Torah niche, however, this presentation will suggest an alternate view, that the artists may have borrowed Helios' religious meaning as well as his decorative form.
Helios' societal role in the Roman world greatly expanded in Late Antiquity and it would have been too significant an image for the Jews to use in their religious buildings without understanding the meaning outsiders would place on it. Its usage has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between the Jews and the rest of the Roman world, and as well may challenge the ideal of the Rabbinic dominance of Judaism in Late Antiquity.
Funerary Rites and Epic
Reyes Bertolin
University of Calgary
This paper is divided in two parts. The first one examines the role of men and women in funerary rites in the Homeric world. The second part seeks to connect the regulations of funerary rites in many Greek cities with the fixation of the Homeric epic. To clarify the data in the Greek world, the paper recurs to parallels from Indo-European and non Indo-European cultures.
Silence is Golden: Callimachean Tact at the close of Horace Odes 3.2
Pamela R. Bleisch
Boston University
The closing lines of Horace's second Roman Ode have been interpreted as Horace's redefinition of virtus, elevating discretion to the same height as prowess in war and integrity in politics. Some have even suggested that these lines reference the leaked news of the Murena conspiracy-- a notorious instance of Maecenas' lack of discretion.
I argue that the close of the poem does not continue or extend the virtus theme; rather, it interrupts the poem. Horace abruptly breaks off, and takes his ode in a new direction, with the verse "Est et tuta fideli silentio merces." This verse quotes Simonides (fr. 77 Page), and, more significantly, quotes Augustus quoting Simonides (Plutarch Moral. 207c). Evidently no-one has remarked that Horace quotes Callimachus as well. Lines 25-27 allude to Aetia 2.75.4-7, where Callimachus interrupts his poem and rebukes himself for a tactlessness that would reveal even the Eleusinian mysteries. So too, in Ode 3.2 Horace interrupts his poem and declares that he will avoid the company of any fellow who would reveal the Eleusinian mysteries!
Callimachus can help us to understand the occasion for Horace's ostentatious discretion. Callimachus silences himself after bringing up the heiros gamos of Zeus and Hera, a veiled allusion to the incestuous marriage of Ptolemy and Arsinoe. This Egyptian marriage was distasteful to the Philadephoi's Greek subjects. Callimachus treats it with a tact so conspicuous as to be ham-fisted, defusing an awkward political situation with his subtle wit.
Horace silences himself after discussing immortality as the reward of virtus (lines 21-24); a thinly veiled allusion to Augustus' deification. Ruler apotheosis was a characteristically orientalist institution, deeply distrusted by traditional Romans. The deification of Augustus was a potentially divisive issue, like the marriage of the Philadelphoi. Horace finds himself in a political situation very similar to that of Callimachus, and reacts with the same poetic strategy: ostentatious self-enforced silence, and deft humor.
Plato as Prophet
Mark Buchan
University of Washington
If Plato's Republic has any historical referent, it is taken to be Athenian democracy. The Republic looks back to the regime which killed Socrates in order to construct a regime where philosophers are safe. If we believe its rhetoric, it may not have any referent at all: it creates a theoretical utopia outside of time and space. But in this paper, I want to examine another possibility, briefly argued by the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan.
For Lacan, Plato's Republic is a self-consciously anti-utopian tract. But it also is prophetic of the coming Hellenistic age. The Republic not only looks back to democracy, it looks forward to the Hellenistic tyrannies. The argument is less a philosophical manifesto than an analysis of contemporary political trends, as democracy moves towards its dissolution. This paper defends Lacan's reading, and suggests it is helpful for understanding the nature of political identities.
Strangers in their own land: Greeks and the Roman god-emperor.
Barbara Burrell
University of Cincinnati
Part of the diplomatic dialogue between the Roman authorities and the Greek provinces they controlled was the offer and acceptance of temples to the Roman Emperor. Though the Emperor was set below the gods in some contexts, study of the provincial cult across the east shows that there the Greeks were encouraged to treat the Emperor as an independent deity, not a subsidiary to others (specific examples will include the cult of Hadrian at Kyzikos). Moreover, Roman responses to Greek offers of cult tended to encourage rivalry among the cities, which then became a subject of Roman derision of Greek character. The distinction between imperial cult as designed for the "xenoi" of Cassius Dio 51.20.6-8 and that for "Romans" will be examined, along with the social and political developments that brought it to an end rather than a solution.
The Roman Spectacles of Antiochus IV at Daphne, l66 BC
Michael Carter
University of Calgary
According to Athenaeus, quoting Polybius, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV presented 240 pairs of gladiators (monomachoi) along with wild beast hunts as part of an extraordinary festival in honour of Apollo Archegetes at Daphne in 166 BC. While gladiatorial combat was to become quite common in the Greek East, even in Syria and Palestine, this was a phenomenon of the imperial period. Indeed, there are several problems associated with the history of this event, and some scholars have come to question the faithfulness with which Athenaeus quoted Polybius. But Livy also notes that Antiochus was fond of gladiatorial munera, often presenting the spectacle in Syria, and that it inspired in the youth an enthusiasm for arms (armorum studium). The presence of a clearly Roman spectacle at a festival celebrated by an independent and powerful Hellenistic monarch presents an interesting opportunity to study the early impact that contact with Rome had in Greek society. Were Antiochus' 480 "monomachoi" Roman "gladiatores"?
The Chaste and the Chased: svfrosÊnh, female martyrs and novel heroines
Kathryn Chew
Vassar
This paper examines the theoretical dimensions of chastity (svfrosÊnh) from the perspective of a separate study of mine on the influence of the Greek novel heroine on the literary persona of the early Christian female martyr. Interest in women in late antiquity is on the rise (Gillian Clark 1993 etal.), and while some very good work has been done in the area of religion (Judith Perkins 1995), the complex relationship between late classical and early Christian literature deserves more attention -- for instance, Glen Bowersock's (1994) provocative thesis that the Greek novels were influenced by the Christian gospel narratives needs to be reexamined.
SvfrosÊnh
is the single most outstanding characteristic of novel protagonists and is also of vital importance to the integrity of female saints. This word goes through an important change in meaning by the time of the novels. As Helen North (1966) finds, through the classical period svfrosÊnh means "self-restraint" applicable to any activity. Though her study passes over the Hellenistic and Imperial periods to patristic literature, during that time svfrosÊnh comes to mean specifically "chastity" in the sense of sexual self-restraint. Virginia Burrus sees svfrosÊnh as a form of self-empowerment and autonomy for women, while Kate Cooper discerns a difference between the Greek ideal of svfrosÊnh which promotes good social order and the Christian ideal of §gkrãteia (abstinence) which undermines the social order. There is another kindred aspect of svfrosÊnh; if Burrus' take on svfrosÊnh is in the subjective sense, there is also an objective sense of the word, whereby svfrosÊnh becomes an ideological means of controlling people, especially women. Karen McCarthy Brown explores this in a broad context (1994). I am interested in svfrosÊnh as a sort of double-edged sword which can cut either with or against its formal meaning. This duality is pointed up in a comparison of the concept in the novels and in hagiographies.While current scholarship argues for a wealthy male novel reader (Susan Stephens 1994, Ewen Bowie 1994), saints' lives certainly reached a broader audience. As the Greek novel genre fades from literature, the hagiographic "novella" is responsible for passing on the motifs such as
svfrosÊnh through which women continued to be seen and continued to see themselves.Roman Colonizing Expedition to Corsica
Ed Clark
Member-at-large
In Theophrastus' Historia Plantarum 5.8.2 there is a curious story of a Roman colonizing expedition to Corsica. According to the account the Romans sailed to the island in 25 ships, but gave up the idea of founding a colony because of the wildness of the place. Instead, they cut down a number of trees from which they built a raft with 50 sails. Unfortunately, this raft broke up in the open water.
Theophrastus published his work c. 314 BC which makes the tale all the more surprising since it is widely assumed that the Romans took little interest in the sea before the third century BC. However, the account is not to be rejected out of hand. Its reliability can be assured by the witness of Pliny the Elder. But the greater difficulty is placing the episode in its proper chronological context in early Roman history.
Monkey Business in Plautus
Catherine Connors
University of Washington
This paper explores Plautus' use of the imagery of the ape. In texts ranging from Ennius' Saturae to Cicero's De Natura Deorum to Ovid's account of the monkeys of Pithecusae in Metamorphoses 14, the fact that apes more than any other animals resemble humans is playfully emphasized in pseudo-etymological puns between simia and similis. I demonstrate that such playing on simia/similis is immanent in Plautus' mention of apes at moments when deceptive resemblances are essential to the success of comic schemes. I further suggest that via a comparable play on cecropius ('Athenian') and cercops ('long-tailed monkey') Plautus' monkey business can also comment on the ways that Roman literature, and especially Roman comedy, enjoys aping its Greek models.
Worst of all he's an Egyptian
Craig R. Cooper
University of Winnipeg
Democratic Athens of the 5th and 4th centuries prided itself on being a free open society; the ideal is eloquently expressed in Pericles' funeral oration (Thuc. 2.39), where the great statesman contrasts Athens' openness to the deliberate xenophobic policies of Sparta: "Our city", he claims, "is open to the world and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people from observing or finding out secrets". But reality often belies the ideals of public rhetoric. Athens could take putative measures against resident aliens who left the city in times of war. And certainly the language of ordinary Athenians did not always live up to the rhetoric of public discourse. A case in point. In the 330s a young Athenian by the name of Epicrates got entangled with a crafty perfume seller Athenogenes, who duped Epicrates into buying a debt laden business. In the litigation that followed Epicrates sued for damages, but what we can gather from the evidence (Hyperides 3) he had an extremely weak case. Thus, with little legal grounds to support his case, his only strategy was to play on the prejudices of the jury, who believed that foreigners like Athenogenes prospered at Athens's expenses and only took advantage of her citizens. At one point in the speech he reminds the jury that what has happened to him is something that should be expected of "a speech-writer and peddler, and worst of all an Egyptian." (Hyp. 3.3)
In this paper I propose to examine the ethnic prejudices that we find expressed in the orators and other Athenian literature, the "they" of Athenian discourse, those Egyptian schemers and Megarian cheapskates.
Something to Do with Dionysus? Thematic Resonances of the Bacchae in Third Maccabees
J.R.C. Cousland
University of British Columbia
Third Maccabees contains suggestive thematic echoes of the Bacchae. The protagonists of both works are kings who become theomachoi. Each king attempts to kill the devotees of the god against whom he struggles, and each is afflicted by a consequent disordering of his mental state. Pentheus and Ptolemy IV rashly attempt to spy on things that they ought not, and each suffers for his repeated hubris.
The above echoes give expression to a different theomachy, one that is profoundly ironic. Ptolemy IV is only able to serve Dionysus at Yahweh's pleasure. The Jewish people in Egypt may well be under the authority of Ptolemy, but Ptolemy only rules by the authority of the God of Israel. The novelist, therefore, draws on the literary heritage of the Greeks to pillory Hellenistic culture and its Dionysiac cultus: so long as Yahweh rules, one indeed ought to have nothing to do with Dionysus.
Artemidorus' Cultured Dreamworld
Jennifer J. Dellner
University of Houston
Study of Artemidorus' "Dream Book," the Oneirocritica, was until recently a kind of "reclamation project," begun by Freud's dismissal of the book, and attempts by scholars to situation Artemidorus' particular brand of dream reading within the history of of psychoanalysis. Since the book and its writer are clearly more concerned with prognostication than diagnosis, with what will happen to, rather than what is happening in, an individual, it has been easy to detach this text from the psychoanalytic science of the mind based on secret desires. Dreams, one would argue, along with Freud, are much more supple than the "decoding" process practiced by Artemidorus and the ancient oneiromancers.
Paul, Gaius, and the 'Law of Persons': The Conceptualization of Roman Law in the Early Classical Period
Will Deming
The University of Portland
In the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul of Tarsus wrote the following words:
˜ti _ nÒmow kurieÊei toË ényrÅpou §f' ˜son xrÒnon zª. It will be my contention in this paper that these words, properly interpreted, yield the first occurrence of the phrase 'law of persons' as well as the first evidence of a general theory of alieni ius, or legal governance by another, in the western legal tradition. I will begin by examining the evidence from Roman legal literature for the origin of the phrase 'law of persons'. Then I will turn to Paul's statement, offering a new interpretation and providing an account of its connection with Roman law. Finally, I will suggest how this new understanding of Paul contributes to the current scholarly discussion concerning the extent to which Roman law was organized into conceptual categories in the early classical period.The Ideology of Romanitas and Cultural Diversity in the poetry of Claudian
Michael Dewar
University of Toronto
In a well-known passage of the In Rufinum (2. 100-123), Claudian conspicuously praises the harmony of intention and the unity of both halves of the combined eastern and western Empires in their loyalty to Rome and to Stilicho, despite their striking cultural differences. And yet, only a few years before, they had met at the battle of the Frigidus in a civil war between Theodosius the Great and the usurpers Eugenius and Arbogast. An examination of similarly phrased descriptions of multi-ethnic armies in the epics of Lucan (3. 288-90, 7. 360-62) and Silius (16. 19-21) reveals that Claudian is using the intertextual associations of these earlier texts to reclaim the unity of Rome shown by Lucan to have been destroyed in the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, and to expand the conception of Romanitas found in that poem to one more in keeping with his own times. Far from being designed solely to make a political-paneygrical point in a single, dispensable poem, the concerns underlying this strategy are found repeatedly in his poetry, not least in the famous laudes Romae of the third book of the De Consulatu Stilichonis: 'cuncti gens una sumus.' But 'cuncti', as it seems on closer inspection, does not in fact include quite everyone.
Access and Excess: Social Implications of the Assumption of the Toga Virilis
Fanny Dolanksy
University of Victoria
Assuming the 'toga virilis' was part of a dramatic ritual that celebrated coming of age for freeborn Roman boys. The rite of passage had many practical implications, few of which have been examined in detail. The period following receipt of the toga was a time of opportunity, especially socially, when boys began to avail themselves of the rights and privileges of manhood. Donning the toga entitled boys to participate fully at banquets and dinners, and for some, initiated a period of increased sexual activity, acting as an informal license for greater exploration as several poets suggest. Increased social and sexual freedom, however, entailed responsibility and maturity. According to various literary sources, the sudden freedom of the toga could be overwhelming for some youths who quickly abused their new status and demonstrated that, without restraint, the assumption of the 'toga virilis' translated not only into access but into excess as well.
Tradition and Dialogism in Roman Civic Discourse
Basil Dufallo
The College of Wooster
As the preeminent public discourse at Rome in the first century BCE, politico-judicial oratory bears the traces of the cultural plurality that characterized Roman society in the late republic. The oratorical representation of Roman tradition, embodied in illustrious figures from the past, responds to the diversity of practices through which Romans imagined their relationship to the dead. While affirming the hegemony of the aristocratic elite, Cicero exploits the oratorical technique of mortuos ab inferis excitare, a topos that points beyond the elite-sanctioned realms of politics and "state religion" to other kinds of ritual practice associated with culturally marginal groups such as foreigners and women. The Pro Milone, the Pro Scauro, and the Pro Caelio exemplify this aspect of oratory's inherent dialogism-its ongoing dialogue, that is, with social groups and representational structures beyond those it ostensibly promotes.
Multi-lingual Coinage in the Punic World
Rory B. Egan
University of Manitoba
It is agreed that the palm-tree emblazoned on Punic or Siculo-Punic coins is a rebus representing Fo›nij ("palm-tree" and "Phoenician"). Such coins are consequently called types parlants. The same coins also carry images of a horse or horse-head and/or a star or solar disk. I shall argue now that these figures also "talk" and represent the same place or people in other languages.
The theory was initially stimulated by Stephanus of Byzantium and Eustathius who cite
kakkãbh as the name for Carthage in the "local" language where it meant " horse-head". There is earlier evidence for kakkãbh as a toponym in a Hellenistic coin which names (KKB) as a colony of Sidon. I personally believe that the corresponding ethnonym also appears in a 6th-century Phoenician inscription from Italy in the form (KKBM, i.e. Kakkabim). There is no evidence that () should mean "horse" or "horsehead" in Semitic languages. It is, though, likely to mean "star" in Phoenician/Punic, as copious Semitic data attest. I propose that the stars and horses represent KKB (or Carthage) in, respectively, the Phoenician/Punic language and the "Libyan". Thus some Siculo-Punic types parlants are actually bi-lingual or tri-lingual.The Role of Interpreters in the Roman Empire
Chris Epplett
University of British Columbia
In keeping with the theme of the conference, I would like to discuss one means by which the Romans interacted with diverse populations both within and outside of their empire, namely through the use of interpreters. Although such individuals were essential in dealing with various foreign or 'non-Romanized' groups, their role has received relatively little attention from scholars, likely due to the few extant inscriptions or written sources explicitly mentioning them. However, enough such information does exist to shed some light on the specific functions and status of such individuals in both Roman military and civilian administration, from the time of the Republic to the fall of the empire.
Monuments and Documents: Livy, Florus, and Early Rome
Owen Ewald
University of Washington
Livy acknowledges the difficulty of writing the history of the early Roman Republic because of the sheer chronological distance between the early Republican past and the Augustan present (6.1.2), while the second century CE Roman historian Florus faces an even larger chronological gap. To translate past events into present terms, Livy and Florus emphasize the smaller scale of past events (e.g. Livy, praef. 4, 7.29.1; Florus 1.11.6, 1.11.10), compare places with similar significance in different periods (e.g. Livy 9.36.1; Florus 1.11.8, 1.17.3), or attribute to figures of the past actions and thoughts appropriate to more recent times (e.g. Livy 4.13.1-4.16.4 with Ogilvie 1965: 551; Florus 2.8.2). Moreover, Livy often cites existing monuments to complement his written document (e.g. 2.13.11). Yet because many of the monuments cited by Livy disappeared during the first century CE, Florus must rely on Livy's text as the equivalent of physical monuments (Florus 1.10.3, 1.12.11).
The Transformative Simile
Patricia Fagan
University of Toronto
In this paper, I will demonstrate that similes can not only be traditional elements in traditional scenes, as Bernard Fenik and William Scott have demonstrated, but that they can be seen to realize and complete traditional patterns when the narrative of the poem has in some ways forbidden this realization. I will show that some of the similes in the Iliad demand not only that we recognize and adhere to the demands the simile puts on us to interpret given narrative moments in light of a particular structure of meaning but that we see this structure actively at play in the narrative proper.
We see from the simile for Meriones at Iliad 13.528-529 that similes can serve an essential role in directing the audience's interpretation. A simile is not merely an "illustration," but a direction to see something as something else. Similes thus can be transformative in the narrative. That is, they can set up interpretative frames through which the audience is compelled to see and understand the characters and events beyond the narrow purview of the simile itself. Similes, moreover, are a means for the realization of broad traditional goals and themes. One cannot ignore similes when one interprets any passage in which they occur.
Euripides' Oath and Other Performances in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae
Judith Fletcher
Wilfrid Laurier University
When the Kinsman (disguised as a woman) makes Euripides swear to save him if he falls into danger at the women's festival, he not only alludes to an oath in Euripides' Melanippe the Wise, but also sets in motion a familiar Euripidean plot device by which displaced women such as Medea and Iphigenia make men swear to rescue them: the oaths of Aegeus in Medea and Pylades in Iphigenia at Tauris both emancipate the heroines from intolerable situations. Euripides will discover that by swearing an oath to his Kinsman he is compelled to enter the text of his own rescue drama. As we come to realize, such formulaic speech acts as oaths do in fact gain their power from what Derrida would call their "iterability", or their potential to cite previous oaths. Iphigenia at Tauris also illustrates the textual aspect of performative speech by melding the twinned oaths of Pylades and Iphigenia with the letter that Iphigenia reads into the oath. The oath of Euripides at the beginning of Thesmo. thus functions as a script or text which derives its effects and power from previous oaths sworn by Euripidean characters.
Wild Neighbors: Perceptions of Megarian Ethnic Identity in Fifth-Century Athenian Comedy
Monica Florence
Boston University
The characterization of barbarians in fifth-century comedy as wild, untrustworthy, effeminate, and childish has been well documented (T. Long 1986; E. Hall 1989). On the other hand, the presentation in comedy of the various Greek ethnic groups has received much less scholarly attention.
In this paper, I focus upon Megarian ethnic identity as portrayed in the comedies of imperial Athens. I argue that the comic poets employ ethnic slurs and stereotyping which effectively cast the Megarians in the role of barbarian other. Secondly, I suggest that the comic vision of Megarian ethnic identity is inextricably linked to Athenian imperial ideology. Through ethnic abuse of their Megarian neighbors, the comedies make the local landscape unfamiliar and, therefore, sanction Athenian mastery over it.
Greco-Italic Amphoras from Sicily and Tyrrhenian Italy at Carthage
Joann Freed
Wilfrid Laurier University
This paper is based on my catalogue of 100 Greco-Italic amphora fragments, nearly all stamped handles, in the National Museum of Carthage. The epigraphy of these was briefly published by Pere Delattre (1850-1932), first director of the museum. A significant number were found in a 4th to 2nd c. B.C. Punic necropolis at Carthage. Most of the stamps record Greek names, but others name Roman citizens. Fabric and distribution show that these amphoras were produced in Sicily and along the Tyrrhenian coast. Trade in Greco-Italics evidently continued through the Punic wars. Both Romans and Carthaginians ignored profound differences in order to trade in fine comestibles, as is clear from the story of Cato and the fresh Punic figs with which he demonstrated that 'Carthage must be destroyed'.
Epictetus as Therapist
John J. Gahan
University of Manitoba
The recent campaign of Lou Marinoff, Canadian author of Plato, Not Prozac: Applying Philosophy to Everyday Problems (Harper Collins, 1999), can claim additional support, it seems to me, from the unlikely realm of modern popular fiction.
Professor Marinoff, who teaches philosophy at City College in New York, is leading a crusade through his book and as president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association for philosophers to practise as therapists as psychologists and psychiatrists do. Psychological and psychiatric associations are less than enthusiastic about all this, but Marinoff has an unexpected ally, I think it can be shown, in Conrad Hensley (alias Connie DeCassi) in Tom Wolfe's latest novel, A Man in Full (Bantam, 1998). While in prison Hensley is mistakenly sent a copy of the Discourses of the stoic Epictetus, which not only save his life but are ultimately the salvation of Charlie Croker, the title character of A Man in Full, who is converted to the philosophy of Epictetus by Hensley. Both men survive emotional crises through philosophy but not through contemporary psychotherapy.
This paper examines Epictetus, Marinoff, and Wolfe to explore the relationship between stoic philosophy and modern notions of psychotherapy.
Race, Racism, and Status: The Role of Roman Slavery
Michele George
McMaster University
A tolerant and embracing multiculturalism did not mark the Romans' attitude to the numerous ethnic groups in their midst, as the xenophobia of authors such as Juvenal clearly demonstrate. Many of Rome's immigrants were brought to the city from all corners of the empire as slaves, some captured as prisoners of war, others born of enslaved women and sold at market. The presence in the city of this variegated servile population was an important component in Rome's cosmopolitan make-up. Yet, in Roman, art representations of slaves are determined more often by status issues and master/slave relations than by race or place of origin. In this paper I shall examine the visual imagery for Roman slavery and the reasons for the relative lack of racial distinctions that are present in it. I shall also place the evidence in the broader discussion of the relationship between status, race, and racism in the Roman empire, and the pivotal role played by institutional slavery in the development of these ideas.
Agrippina: Laborum Periculorumque Socia
Linda W. Gillison
University of Montana
In a productive year of publication (98 C.E.), Tacitus brought forward not one but two works which dealt with peoples ethnically diverse from his own: in Agricola, the British; in Germania the Germans. His final work, Annales, returned to those peoples, though in a context more firmly focused on Rome and its rulers.
In this paper I will focus on Tacitus' descriptions, in Germania (7, 8, 18, 19, 20), of the German wife as equal partner in labors and dangers with her husband, bound by strict standards of chastity, and a participatory mother; and his later description (Annales 1.33, 1.41, 1.69, 2.71, 3.of the elder Agrippina and her consistent, determined involvement in, first, the career and struggles of her husband Germanicus and then the tribulations of his house and numerous offspring after his death.
Similarities in situation (turning of a routed army), character (outstanding chastity), and biological productivity (fertility, dedication and determined proximity to children) between the German wife and Agrippina will be traced. Resonances between the captive Thusnelda (Annales 1.57) and the threatened (1.41) and subsequently grieving Agrippina (3.1) who braves (3.1) the same watery barrier which separates the Germans from most of civilization (Germania 2)-- will repay investigation and analysis.
Slaves in Greek Sport: The Case of the Palaistrophylax
Mark Golden
University of Winnipeg
A law concerning the gymnasium at Beroea in Macedonia (SEG 27.261, about 175-170 BCE) contains two clauses of crucial importance for the study of slaves in Greek sport. One forbids slaves (along with other groups) to disrobe in the gymnasium. The other outlines provisions for the sale of gloios, scrapings of dust, oil and sweat from the bodies of those who were allowed to exercise. The contractor for the revenues from the gloios is to provide a palaistrophylax, a guard, who is to serve under the orders of the gymnasiarch and is to be subject to whipping if he misbehaves. This palaistrophylax is therefore likely to be a slave. The exclusion of slaves from exercise and formal competition was widespread in the Greek world. Their involvement in other aspects of the life of the gymnasium (such as the sale of gloios) has attracted less attention, despite a wealth of iconographic evidence. In this paper, I offer a case study of one aspect only, the figure of the palaistrophylax mentioned in SEG 27.261, in order to suggest that slaves' presence in athletic environments tended to blur the link between them and free citizens seemingly set out so clearly.
The Forma Urbis and Septimius Severus‚ Restoration of Rome
Charmaine Gorrie
University of Britsh Columbia
It is usually accepted that the Forma Urbis produced during the reign of Septimius Severus and located in a hall of the Templum Pacis was an administrative map for the office of the Urban Prefecture, based on the presence on the map of the residence of this magistrate, Fabius Cilo, and gardens belonging to his wife - the only labelled private properties. This evidence, however, is tenuous, considering that only ten percent of the plan survives, and the size and medium of the plan also precludes its use as a working map. The purpose of my discussion will be to consider the production of the map within the context of Severus‚ building programme. This paper will propose that in its impressive marble format the Forma Urbis was intended to be a public monument, inscribed to commemorate the survey undertaken during the rebuilding after the Commodan fire. It was set up for public viewing as an important element of the decoration of Severus‚ restoration of the Templum Pacis and an advertisement of the emperor‚s renewal of the capital city.
Cultural Diversity in the Ancient World: Justin Martyr and Christian Apologetics'
Wendy E. Helleman
Moscow State University
Justin Martyr (ca.100-165AD) was Palestinian in origin, from Flavia Neapolis, but certainly familiar with the rest of the Roman imperial world of the second century. He spent part of his career as a philosopher in Ephesus, but most probably ended his life in Rome. The Acts of his martyrdom, together with that of six of his students, have survived.
In this paper I wish to focus on Justin's two well known Apologetical Works adressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius and the Roman Senate. In that 'golden' imperial period Christians were unfairly being accused of all kinds of atrocities and immorality, and not just fined or imprisoned, but sentenced to death. With incredible boldness and confidence in his cause Justin tried to set the record straight.
In textbooks on the history of Christianity Justin is typically described as being far too generous to his opponents, the pagans, allowing that seeds of truth had been revealed to Greeks like Heraclitus and Socrates, as indeed to the Hebrew prophets. H.Chadwick, in his chapter on Justin Martyr (in A.H.Armstrong ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge UP, 1967: 161) goes so far as to say that "Justin is convinced that with a few necessary qualifications Plato and Christ can be happily reconciled."
In his Apologetics Justin was not only interested in convincing the state of the sincerity of Christians as citizens of the empire. He had also to defend Christianity in its relationship to Judaism, with which it was often confused, and to Gnosticism, which also claimed to be Christian but managed to avoid persecution. In the present essay I hope to show that the key to a correct understanding of Justin's defence can be found in his elaboration of a philosophical concept of part-whole, or of microcosm and macrocosm, which relates Christ as (universal) Logos to individual 'spermatikoi logoi'. This argument is crucial to his defence of Christianity against Jews who did not accept Old Testament prophecies as pointing to Jesus as Messiah. It is also crucial in Justin's elaborating a view of creation which excluded the Gnostic view of the subordinate creator-demiurge.
Ovid's Exile: The Final Frontier
Stephen Hinds
University of Washington
The ten books of poetry sent by Ovid from exile should constitute one of the most remarkable sets of documents to survive from classical antiquity. The poet's previous repertoire of literary and mythological themes is suspended: instead, we have here a body of poetry devoted to the experience of an extraordinary individual experiencing the geopolitics of his time in an extraordinarily immediate way.
The puzzle, and the challenge, is that for modern readers the poetry of Ovid's exile has largely failed to deliver on this promise of singularity: the trauma of banishment leaves Ovid's poetic style too unruffled to satisfy the psychoanalytic critics; the alienation of life on the Pontic frontier fails to yield enough representations of otherness to satisfy the culturalists; the politics of Ovid's exile remain too impenetrable to deliver a satisfactory account of relations between poet and emperor to the political historians. Some recent critics, missing a radical shift in Ovid's poetic persona, have had recourse to the perverse theory that the exile poetry is just another jeu of Ovid's fertile fictive imagination -- he was never exiled at all.
Building on recent work, my paper will attempt to sketch some new or improved ways of interrogating Ovid's exile poetry.
Trade, travel and exotic flora; cultural diversity expressed through plants
Eleanor Irwin
University of Toronto
The Greeks became familiar through trade with plant products like spices and fragrances, many of which were not native to the Greek world. These products often enhanced what was available locally in the way of food and clothing and became associated with luxury and fine living. Their places of origin took on this aura as well.
Those who travelled or collected travellers' tales, like Herodotus, Xenophon and Theophrastus, were naturally interested in unfamiliar plants. Herodotus took a great interest in the plants other peoples used for everyday purposes as well as for religious observances. Xenophon was entranced by the great paradise gardens of Persia and tried to recreate them in the countryside of Attica. Theophrastus explored the effect of climate on flora in Enquiry into Plants 4 and incorporated reports of those who accompanied Alexander to the East.
Acquisition by trade of exotic and desirable plants coloured the attitude of the Greeks to their native habitats and the inhabitants of those lands.
Archimedes and the Siege of Syracuse
Mary Jaeger
The University of Oregon
Two features of Rome's sack of Syracuse during the Second Punic War captured the imagination of ancient writers (Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch). One was the looting of the city and the transfer of its artistic treasures to Rome. The other was Archimedes' role in the defense of the city and his death at the hands of a Roman soldier. The two seem unrelated, and the arrival of Syracuse's art in Rome has received the most scholarly attention because of the pernicious role assigned it by Roman moralists. Yet the historical tradition's representation of Archimedes' role in the fall of Syracuse provides another rich and complementary source from which to extract further information, from different perspectives, about Rome's cultural identity. Accordingly this paper examines the role assigned Archimedes as a symbolic point of both overt conflict between two peoples and less obvious cultural exchange and continuity.
Greek and Lydian Evidence of Diversity, Erasure, and Convergence in Western Asia Minor
John M. Kearns
Hawaii Pacific University
This paper examines the Greek and Lydian evidence of diversity, erasure, and convergence in Western Asia Minor. For centuries the Greeks of Asia Minor lived as autonomous neighbors beside the Lydian kingdom, neither people capable of absorbing the other and thereby reducing the cultural diversity of the region. Excavations of the Lydian capital at Sardis in recent decades have revealed the coexistence of numerous languages, religions, and cultures. After the Persian, then Greek, and finally Roman conquest of Lydia, a separate Lydian culture and language gradually disappeared under the influence of the kind of forces -- socioeconomic, sociolinguistic -- that today threaten to reduce the diversity of the world's cultures and languages. There is evidence, however, that a convergence between Greek and Anatolian (particularly Lydian) cultures stretched back into the Bronze Age. This kind of convergence would explain Herodotus' remarkable statement that Greeks and Lydians follow much the same customs.
The Date of Pausanias's Visit to Athens
Hanna Kepka
University of British Columbia
Pausanias's important visit to Athens, has so far not been dated more accurately then between A.D. 143/144 and 160/161, that is from after the restoration of the stadium of Agrai by Herodes Atticus (1.19.6) and before Herodes Atticus's completion of his Odeion (7.20.6). However, Pausanias's description of the Odeion of Agrippa may be able to further narrow the date of his visit. He mentions statues of Ptolemaic dynasts standing before the entrance of the Odeion (1.8.6), and a large enough statue base has been found on the north side, which became the side of the main entrance to the structure only after its restoration, according to the fundamental work of Homer A. Thompson (Hesperia 19 [1950] 31-141). Furthermore, the statue of Dionysus seen inside the Odeion by Pausanias (1.14.1) was likely also located on the north side (on the evidence of a statue base found there) and certainly existed at least after the restoration of the structure as is proved by the destruction layer in which fragments attributed to it have been found. Since the restoration of the Odeion of Agrippa can be dated to A.D. 150/151 on the basis of stamped roof tiles, and since in all likelihood Pausanias saw the building after its restoration, it can be fairly confidently asserted that Pausanias visited Athens some time between A.D. 150/151 and 160/161.
The Lamia in Coleridge's "Christabel" and Keats's "Lamia"
Katherine Kernberger
Linfield University
The figure of the lamia, a female vampire going back to Greek mythology, reappears in the English Romantic poets. Coleridge's poem circulated in manuscript before it was published in 1816 and Keats's poem appeared in 1820.
Both Coleridge's and Keats's vampires are deceptively attractive and ambiguous in their moral status in the poems. Christabel discovers Geraldine, the lamia in the poem, alone, beautiful, thinly clad, telling a tale of her abduction and abandonment. The victim of violence, in need of help, Geraldine seems innocent and harmless. But Coleridge builds up a pattern of suspicious circumstances. When the two women retire to Christabel's room to sleep, Geraldine's deformity is revealed, though the poet declines to name it.
In Keats's poem Lamia has fallen in love with Lycius, a young Greek of Corinth. To win Lycius, she begs Hermes to transform her into human form. After they are together for a while, Lycius wants to reveal his secret love to the world. When he insists on marriage and invites his family and friends to the celebration, his tutor, the philosopher Apollonius, sees through Lamia's disguise and destroys her. He justifies his intrusion by asking Lycius, "And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey?"
Ajax' "Suicide-Note" Speech (Soph. Ajax 646-92)
Paul T. Keyser
IBM -- T. J. Watson Research Center
Classicists have offered widely varying readings of Ajax' "Deception Speech", but have tended to insist that the speech is ambiguous in phrasing, and the ambiguity is generally read as deceptive. But the issue of deception is part of the interpretive crux, not a textual given.
There seems no dramatic necessity for any deceit: Ajax' plans were clear to all by the end of his first sane monologue and were abundantly hammered home in his farewell to his son. He could now make his departure without a word to Tekmessa and the chorus, or with a direct order to leave him be, or with a direct order to fetch Teukros, or so on.
I believe a good case can be made that Sophocles was depicting the ambiguous buoyancy and elevation (often deceptive to friends and family) that accompany a suicidal resolve, when suicide is chosen as an escape from powerlessness.
St Jerome's attitude towards the Romans and the Jews as reflected in Epistula 57.
J.P.K. Kritzinger
U.P., South Africa
In his Liber de optimo genere interpretandi St. Jerome mentions several groups with whom he either compares or contrasts his opponents. This paper focuses on two of these, namely the Romans and the Jews. He compares his opponents with the Jews who accused St. Paul before Agrippa, with Judas who accepted a bribe to become a traitor; with Annas and Caiaphas who bribed Judas, and with Aquila, a Jewish proselyte who followed a very literal approach to translation. The immoral conduct of his opponents is contrasted to the exemplary behaviour of Roman officials who stood by their principles in difficult circumstances. Jerome compares his 'sensus de sensu' approach to translation to that of the classical Roman authors (Cicero, Horace, etc.) and contrasts it with Aquila's approach. His attitude towards the Romans and the Jews is clearly revealed in these comparisons and contrasts.
Xenophon's Pharnabazos
Ron Kroeker
University of Alberta
Many have attributed to Xenophon an ardent panhellenism coupled with a broad anti-Persian prejudice (E. Delebecque, Essai sur la vie de Xenophon, (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1957), p. 199; W. E. Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), pp. 79-81; John Dillery, Xenophon and the History of His Times (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 59-63). Others have disagreed with this attribution. (See especially Steven W. Hirsch, Friendship of the Barbarian (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1985).) Yet the discussion has paid too little attention to Xenophon's portrayal of individual Persians; particularly neglected has been Pharnabazos.
Xenophon invariably presents this Persian satrap in a positive light and often uses his virtues to point up the moral shortcomings of the Greeks. At Hellenica I.1.23-25 Pharnabazos shows courage, energy and resolve in the face of the Spartans‚ despair; at IV.1.30-38 he displays a faithfulness to the king which the Spartans did not show to Pharnabazos; at IV.8.1-2 the Ionian cities honour Pharnabazos as their liberator from the Spartans. His consistently positive portrayal of this satrap makes it unlikely that Xenophon is motivated by a thoroughgoing xenophobia toward the Persians.
The Virtue of Agricola
David N. Lamari
University of Chicago
Tacitus' Agricola is a farrago of genres: biography, ethnography, geography, and consolatio, all of which Tacitus borrows for the sake of encomium. Lausberg (Gymnasium 87, pp. 411-30) adds Caesar's Commentaries to Agricola's generic borrowing, and believes that Tacitus imitates the Commentaries to honor his uncle Agricola's conquest of Britain.
I will argue that Tacitus wants to critique Stoic conceptions of virtus, and in turn to offer his own model of virtus under the Principate. To this end, Tacitus sets Agricola's deference to Domitian against Julius Caesar's self-aggrandizing rebellion, and thereby undercuts Stoic justification for its antagonism to the Principate, especially the new regime of Nerva and Trajan.
Punic Amphoras and the Romanization of Athens?
Mark L. Lawall
University of Manitoba
E. L. Will attributes Roman amphoras at Athens in the 2nd c. BC to deliberate "economic Romanization." To emphasize, instead, the cultural diversity of transMediterranean trade, I turn to Punic imports to Athens. These are rare until ca. 230 BC and only common after ca. 150 BC.
Imports of Punic amphoras continue after the sack of Carthage. If Rome hoped to eliminate an economic rival, she failed. Also after 146, Adriatic region imports appear at Athens alongside the Punic material. This combination may be explained by the removal of Corinth from the commercial topography in 146. Was Rome's economic goal to remove Corinth? Probably not: the action gave all merchants more direct access to the wealthy Aegean basin.
This is not to argue for 'economic Punicization'. Instead, in the late 3rd century, and through the 2nd century BC, the Hellenistic world included the West as a more consistent trading partner.
Medea in Corinth III
Celia Luschnig
University of Idaho
Why does Medea, the embodiment of diversity in the homogeneous world of the play, make this overtly political and rational speech in response to Creon's sentence of exile, especially given the personal reasons for his punishment of her and her children? Many commentators find in this scene Euripides' own voice, commenting on his fellow citizens' reception of the Sophists (Verrall, Page, Elliot, for example) which may be true and it is intriguing that Euripides would choose as his mouthpiece an alien female outcast, characterized in the popular mind as chaotic, passionate, and dangerous. But are there other explanations? Yes. I think so.
The real horror of Medea's situation is that Jason's political, royal ambitions have put his family in danger. In her answer to Creon whose presence makes this a political scene, Medea tries to change the terms of the discussion. Her argument would be effective if Creon were not a tyrant, with his personal agenda. But she has other audiences, the Corinthian women, paradoxically political in spite of their gender, and the Athenian spectators, both of whom would be inclined to side with her in this debate. Hers is a good and basically democratic argument. When her attempt at the masculine art of political persuasion fails what other recourse does she have than to take just vengeance against the man who destroyed her family for political gain, and the man and his daughter who abetted him, thinking they could have a happy life at the expense of Medea and her children?
Rome's Women in Office: A Greek Legacy?
Kathryn E. Meyer
Washington State University
During the Roman imperial period, a surprising number of women in the eastern half of the empire held political office at the municipal and provincial level. Ongoing research for the Femina Habilis project has identified over 100 such women, including 41 gymnasiarchs and more than a dozen prytaneis, as well as a variety of other magistrates and civic officers. In contrast, women office holders in the western half of the empire are found only in private organizations, not in government. These findings seem to belie the accepted view that Roman women led less restricted lives than their Greek counterparts. This paper examines this paradox and attempts to explain it in terms of cultural expectations, philosophical traditions, and political practices.
Mixed Messages: Language and Nomenclature in the "La Ghorfa" Inscriptions
Jennifer P. Moore
Trent University
The "La Ghorfa" votive stelae originate from the region of Makthar in central Tunisia and mostly belong to the late first and early second centuries A.C. They are best-known for their sculptural registers, which combine Punic, Roman, and indigenous iconography to create a unique pantheon of gods and beliefs. Their inscriptions have received less attention, though they reveal much about the members of this localized cult. The dedicants have Numidian, Punic, or Roman names. Their inscriptions are in Neopunic or Latin, though at least one stone-cutter confused the two languages. The most interesting inscription was published as CIL VIII, 1144, which reports only a Latin phrase for what is actually a bilingual inscription. Its composition is unparalleled in North African epigraphy, yet it typifies local attitudes to the cultural diversity of the region.
Cultural Diversity in the Xanthippic Dialogues
Chris Morrissey
Corpus Christi College
Roger Scruton's Xanthippic Dialogues rely upon numerous sources from the ancient world. But some of these sources, although presented as factual, are, like the dialogues themselves, fictitious. In this paper, we discuss the importance of Scruton's footnotes (which he offers in a manner reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges) in fleshing out the dramatis personae for his readers. We attempt to see why Scruton's enterprise, although based on actual sources and scholarship, must be primarily a work of the imagination. To this end we examine Xanthippe and Perictione as Scruton's spokeswomen (in opposition to Socrates and Plato) for a nuanced conception of cultural diversity. We assess the philological basis for Scruton's aesthetic understanding of the ancient world.
Infant Sacrifice at Punic Carthage: Revisionist History & the Classical Sources
Paul G. Mosca
University of British Columbia
Ancient texts, both biblical and classical, speak of an institutionalized rite of child sacrifice at home in what may broadly be termed the "Canaanite" religious tradition (i.e., in Israel, in mainland Phoenicia, and in the Phoenician-Punic West). By the late 1970s it seemed that the rapidly accumulating archaeological and epigraphic evidence from Carthage and elsewhere in the central Mediterranean had confirmed the essential accuracy of these ancient sources. In the last two decades, however, revisionist interpretations of both the archaeological and the literary evidence have gained ground. The present paper will attempt to evaluate the persuasiveness of these interpretations, especially their rereading of the classical texts.
Reciprocity in Fourth-Century Antioch
Colin J. Munro
University of Calgary
This paper will focus on the culturally diverse and dynamic city of Antioch in the fourth century A.D. Specifically, it will deal with the issue of reciprocity within the framework of patron-client relationships and how this may or may not have been altered in the wake of changing administrations and cultural elements in Antioch. Special attention will be paid to the role that Christianity played in the dynamics of vertical relationships, especially those between urban patrons and their peasant clients. The orations of Libanius, an Antiochene aristocrat who occasionally describes such relationships, will be drawn upon as a major primary source of evidence.
Vehicle Realization in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius
Jackie Murray
University of Washington
Thanks to several important contributions to the study of similes in the Argonautica it is becoming more and more obvious that Apollonius did not use this Homeric legacy as a purely ornamental feature of his narrative, merely tipping his hat, as it were, to his illustrious predecessor. We can now safely assume that as part of his poetic process Apollonius carefully selected all the material presented in the Argonautica, including those elements that seem superfluous or extraneous on a first reading, and that he incorporated these elements into his narrative consciously. Indeed, we are in a position now to assert quite confidently that descriptive elements such as similes ought to be approached as organic to the narrative, since they add significance in various ways. Specifically, the vehicles of similes can be shown to create intra- and inter-textual connections through clear verbal and thematic affinities. These connections invite the reader to engage the text actively, and to participate in the construction of the narrative. This paper hopes to shed some light on how Apollonius exploits the narrative potential of simile by focussing on a rather ingenious poetic device: Vehicle Realization.
Vehicle Realization is the phenomena that occurs when the vehicle of an extended simile in one part of the poem is repeated/realized elsewhere in the text. In this other location, the realized vehicle is the direct subject of the narration. This examination of the Argonautica reveals that Vehicle Realization is a common function of extended similes and that the technique not only creates strong thematic bonds between the relevant passages, thereby enhancing the unity of the poem, but it also adds another narrative dimension or layer so that for the active reader the poem becomes a dense plurality of narratives interwoven together.
Statius' Horatian Lyrics
Rebecca Nagel
University of Toronto
Like Horace, Statius wrote many occasional poems for the wide circle of friends and acquaintances whose love and esteem were central to his social identity as a poet. A. Hardie, Statius and the Silvae (Liverpool, 1983) and John Henderson, A Roman Life (Exeter, 1998) have discussed in detail some of Statius' hexametric Silvae in the light of Horace's lyrics and hexameters. In particular, they show how Statius often imitates Horace's concepts and themes, but deliberately avoids imitating Horace's vocabulary. In this paper I will discuss Statius' only lyrics (Silvae 4.5 and 4.7) in an attempt to uncover why and how Statius imitates Horace metrically as well as conceptually in these two poems.
"Cultural Diversity in the Ancient World": Did the Greeks and Romans have a General Distaste for Beer?
Max Nelson
University of British Columbia
Scholars have often made sweeping statements about the general distaste that the winedrinking Greeks and Romans supposedly had for beer. To give but one example, Clarence Forbes, in an article on beer in classical antiquity, wrote that "beer languished in the disfavor of Greeks and Romans" (CJ 46 [1951] p. 284). There is, however, very little evidence for such a broad dislike. Most Graeco-Roman references to beer are neutral, though some are certainly negative. Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that Celtic beer is made from barley rotted in water and smells terrible ( 13.1 l . l ), and the Emperor Julian, in his epigram against the beverage (AB 9.368), says that Celtic beer smells of he-goats. These last two testimonies hardly give a fair impression of the Graeco-Roman view of beer in general, and may simply point to an actual unappetizing trait of certain inferior types of Celtic beer. The best Celtic beer was made with wheat and honey (Poseidonius, fr. 67, 11. 30-32), and was likely quite good. And in fact, Diodorus Siculus repeats no less that four times his observation that the bouquet of Egyptian beer is little inferior to wine (1.20.4, 1.34.10, 3.73.6, and 4.2.5), while Xenophon states that Armenian beer is very good once one is used to it (Anab. 4.5.27). Dionysus's mention of barley rotting in water likely betrays his lack of understanding of the initial process of germinating the cereal in water, as well as the process of fermentation, which, because of a general ignorance of the workings of yeast, was considered to be a form of decomposition (Theophr., de caus. plant. 6.11.2 and Tac., Germ. 23.1). On the other hand, Aeschylus's attack of beer drinkers as effeminate (Suppl. 952-953) reflects a standard type of invective against outsiders; thus the Germans, according to Caesar, conversely considered wine drinkers to be effeminate (Bell. Gall. 4.2.6).
Of Mules and Mule-Drivers
Nigel Nicholson
Reed College
Pindar's Olympian 6 contains the only naming of the driver of a victorious mule team. This naming is a response to the change in the status of drivers generated by their commodifcation: the payment passed between victor and driver made the victory seem dependent on an outsider, an unacceptable idea. Pindar responds to this crisis by, first, recognizing the driver, and then, through the deployment of a double, Aeneas, representing him as firmly dependent on the victor, and easily replaceable. The driver serves two further functions: first, Pindar saves his own product from the taint of commodification by elevating himself above the driver's level, and, second, he uses the driver to articulate the relationship between the victor, Hagesias, and his city's tyrant, Hieron. Just as Hagesias presents himself as the mule to Hieron's horse, so Pindar suggests that he is the mule-driver to Hieron's victor.
Death and Divine Gifts in the Iliad
Roberto Nickel
Laurentian University
The Iliad contains one reference to the Judgement of Paris. At 24.23-30, all the gods feel pity as they watch Achilles defiling Hector‚s corpse, all that is except for Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, whose hatred of the Trojans began when Paris insulted the two goddesses and favoured her who offered him grievous lust (
maxlosÊnhn élegeinÆn). I will argue that this description of Aphrodite's gift to Paris can be explained with reference to the motif of divine gifts in the Iliad and the fatal consequences attendant upon the receipt of such a gift. The Iliad's one mention of the Judgement has perplexed scholars since antiquity. No scholar, however, has offered a reading of the peculiar description of Aphrodite's gift as maxlosÊnhn élegeinÆn. MaxlosÊnhn is a rare word, denoting sexual impropriety, and used only here in Homer. I will argue that this description of Aphrodite's gift refers to an important motif that is framed in its first and last appearance with the character of Paris. This is the motif of gifts from the gods and the effect they have on the destinies of their mortal recipients. In the Iliad, divine gifts are always fatal for humans, for they blur the otherwise impermeable boundaries between gods and mortals. I will argue that the pernicious nature of divine gifts in the Iliad accounts for the pejorative term used to describe Aphrodite's gift of Helen to Paris. Appropriately this motif begins and ends with the man who inadvertently began the Trojan war when he accepted that gift.Musa Excusa: Longinus and Plato on Inspiration
David C. Noe
University of Iowa
In On the Sublime, Longinus argues that greatness in literature is a reflection of greatness of soul. The aspiring writer should aim at greatness by imitating the best models of the past. For Longinus, this small and distinguished group includes chiefly Homer, Demosthenes, and Plato. In fact, Longus says that the writer should ask "How would Homer have said this?" Or, "How would Plato or Demosthenes have made it sublime?"
It is interesting that Longinus chose Plato as his chief model, since Plato's views on achieving sublimity in writing are inimical to Longinus's. What literary criticism we have from Plato is prejudicial against the value of the poets and rhetors. And far from advising that their practice be emulated, Plato ostracizes from his utopia those who do not write philosophically.
Although this aspect of the Phtonic aesthetic is well-known, in the Ion, Plato claims that the poets produce their works by enthusiasm, by a frenzied possession. This leaves them unable to say how they create their works. That lack of rational explanation makes their claim to knowledge illegitimate and refutable.
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I will compare the accounts of inspiration offered by Plato in the Ion and by Longinus. I will demonstrate how Longinus extended one of Plato's basic insights in an unexpected direction. Finally, working from hints in the text, I will investigate the question of whether and how Longinus's possible heritage of Judaism influenced his choice of sources of inspiration.
Togate Prostitutes?
Kelly Olson
University of Calgary
Prostitutes and adulteresses were presumably immediately identifiable from their clothing: both were supposedly togate. But specific passages on the togate adulteress/ whore are very few. Apart from Cicero and Nonius, the toga is not mentioned specifically in connection with the appearance of prostitutes. Instead it appears that whores, depending on their station, appeared in everything from rich clothing all the way down to nothing; the toga, the prostitute's supposed identifying mark, is in fact rarely mentioned there was instead a range of prostitute clothing. Nor do we find any evidence that the adulteress or the prostitute was "compelled" to wear the toga, as is often asserted by modern authors. Like the use of the word stola or stolata to designate the woman of impeccable virtue, it seems possible that the word togata was employed not to designate common social practice, but as shorthand or metonomy for the sexually licentious woman: it is not clothing which is designated, but moral systems.
Love of Labor in Sophocles' Trachiniae
Mark W. Padilla
Bucknell University
Scholars of Greek tragedy have rarely approached Sophocles' Women of Trachis with an eye towards socio-politics. Emphasis has fallen on play's relationship with the heroic tradition, its Euripidean presentation of gender issues, and its problematic ending.
The proposed paper focuses on the play's themes of eros and ponos in the context of Pericles‚ Funeral Oration. In one Thucydidean passage (2.42-43), Pericles praises the fallen soldiers who, 'in defense of their native land,' did 'more service to the commonwealth than they ever did harm in their private lives.' This public vs. private life theme is then joined together in an exhortation tohis male audience to 'fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and [to] become her lovers [erastas gignomenous autês]. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard.' By becoming lovers of the city, the citizen-soldiers will thus channel their eroticism into state duty. A complementary idea is articulated shortly later regarding 'the duties of women [gunaikeias ... aretês]'(2.46), when Pericles (I argue) urges the widows in the audience, in following their nature,' to attain kleos without notice, that is to say, to resume marital relationships and the biological processes of producing more (male) citizens. In short, for both sexes personal eros is to be subordinated to, and appropriated by, public ponos.
These passages provide a context in which to analyze the respective roles of Herakles and Deianeira. Assuming (as I do) that the play was produced in the early 420s, Sophocles offers his audience a dark assessment of Pericles‚ public (read: empire) appropriation of the private (read: body), in that Herakles‚ eroticism while laboring abroad has led him to fall in love with Iole and to attempt to install her as a concubine in his house. Though Deianeira tries to understand this development in rational terms, neither figure proves able to overcome the 'bestial' nature of eros so as to 'tame' it. The union of eros and ponos causes them rather to destroy one another and by metaphorical extension subverts the Periclean ideology.
The Hellenic oikos of the Early Roman Period in Greece: East Meets West
Maria Pappaoiannou
University of British Columbia
The Roman conquest of the Greek east fostered closer ties and an intermingling of eastern and western cultures. Roman officials and businessmen who sought their fortunes in the eastern part of the Mediterranean introduced new customs that were to have a profound effect not only on the sociopolitical climate of the Greek poleis but most importantly, on domestic architecture. The date, extent and type of Roman intervention into Greek affairs varies from city to city and region to region. In the Roman colony of Corinth, for example, western influences were more extensive than in the 'free' city of Athens.
The focus, therefore, of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the domestic remains of Early Roman Greece by documenting the introduction of western elements in plan, construction techniques and decoration; lararia, atria and tablina are among the most obvious. A selection of Greek cities with various status, 'free' cities, subject cities and colonies, will be examined and comparisons drawn.
Aristotle and the Other, or The Unanswered Questions (Politics 1252a-1260b)
Holt N. Parker
University of Cincinnati
Aristotle's arguments about slaves and women are inescapably fettered to each other. The unquestioned inferiority of slaves is the analogical basis for the hierarchy of male over female. The unquestioned natural inferiority of women is the basis of the proof of the existence of the natural slave.
Aristotle reveals the uncertain heart of his argument in a series of unanswered rhetorical questions (59b23-37). His essential move must be to reject Plato's unity of virtue. Mere difference in quantity (Plato's solution) provides contingent not absolute rule. The difference in virtue between men, women, and slaves has to be ontological. Aristotle creates separate entities to be ruled. In order to "save Aristotle's appearances" it is logically necessary that men be superior to women, otherwise power disappears. Because A. views these power relations as necessary, they must be protected at all costs by being made "natural," i.e. unchallengable. So master/slave is assimilated to other "natural" hierarchies: soul to body, man to beast, and the most fundamental analogy male to female. Thus we have reached the master trope of Western philosophy: man is spirit/culture, woman is matter/nature; the male usurps conception and birth.
Philosophy is not a purely intellectual exercise; it is also a call to moral action. We must ask and answer Aristotle's rhetorical question: "For if the highest excellence is required of both [men and women], why should the one rule unqualifiedly and the other unqualifiedly obey?"
Sacred Trees and Human Actions in the Aeneid
Lorina Quartarone
University of Montana
In Book 9, Vergil makes clear the sacred nature of trees when the Great Mother protects the trees from her sacred grove, which had provided ships for the Trojans, by turning them into sea-nymphs to keep them from being destroyed. This episode is an important moment which prompts the reader to reflect on previous scenes depicting human actions toward trees (such as the Golden Bough and the myrtle bush which houses the spirit of Polydorus) through both thematic and verbal correspondences. The metamorphosis also influences our reactions to scenes regarding trees later in the text. I suggest that it underscores the impious actions of the Trojans toward the tree sacred to Faunus at 12.766, and thus calls into question Aeneas' final actions in the poem. I shall also bring to bear Ovid's version of the episode in Metamorphoses 14, which, I argue, encourages a connection between the Vergilian references to sacred trees in Books 9 and 12 of the Aeneid through both allusion and commentary.
The Origins of the Germans: Ethnography and Ethnogenesis
James Rives
York University
Texts like Caesar's Gallic War and Tacitus' Germania have traditionally been read as evidence for the German people's emergence into history. At the same time, there has been an increasing awareness of the extent to which they were shaped by Graeco-Roman ethnographic traditions and specific political concerns. The Greeks had well-established ideas about the characterization of the peoples of Europe, whom they identified as either Scythians or Celts. Julius Caesar drew on these traditions, but also modified them for reasons of his own by identifying the Germans as a third great ethnic grouping. This new schema was propagated by Augustus and his successors, and enshrined in the work of Tacitus.
Such analysis is absolutely necessary for any critical understanding of these texts; at the same time, however, it should not tempt us to reduce the 'Germani' to an ethnographic construct. Historical linguistics indicates that Germanic emerged sometime in the mid-first millennium BCE as a distinct language, while archaeological research reveals a large cluster of distinctive material culture groupings in the regions that Roman writers associated with 'Germani'. The Roman period thus seems to have been a time of ethnogenesis in northern Europe.
The problem lies in striking a balance between these different, and to some extent incommensurable, types of evidence. They interact in significant ways, but cannot be reduced to a simple and unitary view of 'the ancient Germans'.
Jane Harrison, Arktotrophos
S. Annabel Robinson
University of Regina
Jane Harrison, known to her readers as a classicist with a special interest in anthropology, had a passion for bears. Her students gave her a stuffed bear which she kept on her mantelpiece and which took on its own persona, becoming the subject of a large number of postcards between herself and her companion, Hope Mirrlees.
The bear united in itself many human traits that Harrison held dearly. Moreover, it spoke of Russia, whose people she loved with an irrational passion, and whose language and literature she devoted herself to during the First World War.
This paper will consider her cult of the bear as her "totem" and as a key to understanding her later years, 1908-28.
Philosophical influence on the handling of data in Strabo's Geography
Christina H. Roseman
Seattle Pacific University
Scattered throughout Strabo's Geography are autobiographical references documenting his broad philosophical training. Stoic tenets, Peripatetic influence, and an Empiricist use of inference and analogy all can be found in his presentation of geography; the interaction of these is especially interesting in passages discussing ocean tides and the northern oecumene (Books 1-7). Strabo rejected data incompatible with his philosophical positions, and the fullness of his discussion allows one to follow his reasoning. While his conclusions may be inaccurate, the arguments are logically based upon principles drawn from several schools. Once it is understood that Strabo was comfortable borrowing from all the traditions in which he had trained, analysis of his approach to received data helps demonstrate the intellectual eclecticism of the Augustan period, as well as the results of this upon transmitted material.
Hagiography, archaeology and terminology: the case of St. Patrick's Villa
Jeremy Rossiter
University of Alberta
Modern studies of Roman villas usually begin, quite appropriately, with an attempt to define the meaning of the word 'villa'. Difficulties in reconciling the textual and archaeological evidence have led in recent years to an artificial divorce between what have been termed the 'archaeological villa' and the 'literary villa' (M. Millett Roman Britain 1995, K. Dark The Landscape of Roman Britain 1998). J. T. Smith (Roman Villas 1997) goes so far as to consider textual evidence a liability: Roman villas, he argues, can only be understood from archaeological evidence 'unhindered' by textual evidence. In the case of Romano-British villas, Dark suggests that most of the textual evidence, much of it from Roman Italy, is so 'remote' in time and space that it is of little application to Roman Britain. The aim of this paper is to show that, while caution is needed in using textual evidence when discussing Roman villas, there is in reality a good amount of literary evidence which is relevant to Roman Britain. Textual evidence from Early Christian writers in Gaul and Britain is used to suggest a lexicon of terminology appropriate to the study of Roman villas in Britain, with particular attention being paid to the literary and archaeological evidence relating to the Late Roman villa of St. Patrick.
Old Women in Augustan Poetry
Catherine Schlegel
University of Notre Dame
Old women who appear in Augustan poetry may easily be categorized, with little violence to particulars, as 'good' if they function to restrain female sexuality, or 'bad' if they fail to do so. The latter category has a second division, provided by old women whose unrestraint is elaborated by magical, spectral elements, in contrast with old women whose post-menopausal sexuality is by itself spectral and horrible, such as the two found in Horace's Epodes 8 and 12. These poetic depictions of older women tell a story about men and masculine anxiety in Roman culture. The Augustan poets allow female sexuality a certain range of expression so long as a woman has the potential -- whether that potential is acknowledged or not -- to produce children, but the wayward impulse of sexual desire in women is intolerable, in these texts, when it is perceived only to serve its own pleasure-seeking ends.
A 'New' Dedication from Ancient Corinth
Paul Scotton
University of Washington
Research conducted during July 1999 in Corinth has led to the identification of two additional fragments of West-13 (Corinth VIII.ii). These fragments enable a full restoration of the first line of the slab and roughly half of the second line. Although the evidence is too scanty to hazard any restoration of the remainder of the text, the significance of this inscription to the Roman colony of Corinth is clear. Corinth's participation in the seminal activities of the imperial cult can be documented at an early date; the question of the original placement of the well known statues of Lucius and Gaius can be settled; and the construction of the Julian Basilica can be dated to within a four to five year period.
A Preliminary Report on the Terracotta Figurines from the Acropolis Temple at Arcadian Stymphalos
Kathleen D. Sherwood
University of British Columbia
The aim of this paper is to present a sampling of the chronological and typological range of figurines from the acropolis site at Arcadian Stymphalos. In addition, some preliminary and tentative observations about a single facet of votive deposition in the hinterland will be offered, as well as an examination of the powerful influence of a major coastal city like Corinth on this particular aspect of religious practice.
The terracotta figures were found in association with a small, stone temple, an altar to the east, and an adjacent rectangular building to the northeast. The temple is tentatively identified as that of Athena Polias on the basis of a boundary stone found in the vicinity of the structure earlier in the century.
From Hannibal's port to Trajan's colony: cultural diversity in the Roman town of Leptiminus, Tunisia
Lea M. Stirling
University of Manitoba
Founded as a Phoenician establishment ca. 500 BC, the North African city of Leptiminus entered Roman control after the 3rd Punic War (146 BC), and received the status of "colony" under Trajan (AD 99-117). Since 1995, the University of Manitoba and the University of Michigan have excavated at a potting complex that was active at Leptiminus between ca. AD 50 and 300. The technology and products of this potting production centre provide a window onto the interaction between Punic and Roman traditions during an important process of transition. The design of the kilns corresponds with Phoenician precedents, but over time was modified to house larger volumes of pottery. The pottery produced in these kilns follow both Punic and Roman traditions; notably, the coarsewares retain certain Punic forms through to at least the third century A.D. Thus, Leptiminus participated in the marketplace of the Roman Empire while maintaining its own directions.
Classics in Translation: W.H. Alexander and the Western Canadian Experience
Robert B. Todd
University of British Columbia
The contemporary curriculum in Classics is dominated by courses taught to students who will never study Latin and Greek. The origins of this situation, which is now taken for granted, are poorly understood. I shall explore them for the two western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and will show that at both UBC and at the University of Alberta courses in translation emerged in the 1920s in order to attract more students to Classics. The evidence for UBC will be based on extensive research into its curriculum, while the publications on classical education by William Hardy Alexander (University of Alberta 1908-38) will be used to define the reasoning behind such curricular innovation. The paper will finally review more recent developments, whereby the teaching of Classics in translation has moved from a second-best option into an alternative mode of classical education.
Orestes, Madness, and Persius' Satire 3
Peter Toohey
University of New England/University of Calgary
Orestes is often very angry. He killed his mother, then the Furies took after him and drove him mad. The madness was angry and violent. Cicero linked it with melancholia - but of the angry variety. One famous 4th century pot from the Louvre depicted Orestes otherwise, as downcast, even depressed. This Louvre version echoes the medical tradition - that melancholia was depressive. Persius Satire 3 combines these traditions in the person of its melancholy (3.10-19) addressee. The Satire has a violent Orestes exemplify the anger of its addressee (3.115-17). But elsewhere Persius depicts this Orestes-like addressee as depressive (3.58-62). The person suffers, at the one time, from a novel combination of depressive and violent melancholia - an agitated depression?
Cultural Diversity on Iron Age Crete: The Glass and Lead Finds from the Kastro at Kavousi
Lee Ann Turner
Boise State University
The glass and lead items from the excavations on the Kastro in eastern Crete must be the result of foreign contact and trade during the formative but ill-understood years of the late Iron Age. Glass during this peiod is typically thought to be a product of the Near East and, in fact, the two glass beads found on the Kastro appear to have their closest parallels in the eastern Mediterannean: Geometric Rhodian tombs and 7th c. BC Carthage respectively. Lead, a byproduct of the silver smelting process, is also not native to Crete and hence had to be imported either in its raw or finished state. A partially worked lea