The Classical Association
Annual Conference 2014
University of Nottingham
ABSTRACTS
(listed alphabetically by speaker’s surname)
Abstracts may have been edited for reasons of space
Katrina-Kay S. Alaimo (Exeter)
Using Small Finds Data for Temple Sites in Roman Britain
Panel: Material Culture
Analysis of temple sites often mix the study of literature and that of architecture; and when there is a lack of
literary evidence for a particular region, popular literature is used to draw assumptions on the social practice
of that area. Understanding social practice provides insight on how people conducted their daily lives and thus
is important for our comprehension of society. When attempting to understand the culture and identity of
those who used a site, small finds evidence can easily be overlooked. However, when we examine the
collective data relating to a small find type, such as hairpins or animal bones, interesting patterns emerge. The
zonation of specific types or materials, or in the case of the animal remains – taxa, age, etc., can inform us of
the social practice conducted on a specific temple site at different periods of time.
Using small finds data for temple sites is particular important for studying religious practices in Roman Britain
in the 1st to 2nd centuries CE since we lack substantial literary evidence. Approaches to religion within this
province routinely analyse broad patterns, and it is time to start looking at each site individually in order to
pinpoint the subtleties in local practices and to allow an in-depth examination of what actually happened on
site. This sort of fine brush analysis is particularly relevant for data rich sites that have a significant amount of
context available for its material finds. One such site is that of Great Chesterford in modern day Essex; for
example, the small finds data show that areas of the temple site were used differently and that a ritual
involving the slaughter of lambs was conducted at certain times of the year.
Nick Allen (Oxford)
Two Other-world Journeys: Odysseus to Alcinous, Dead Soul to Brahmā
Panel: Escape
Previous work on Greece-India comparison has argued that both epic traditions derive independently from an
oral proto-narrative at least as old as the separation of the relevant branches of the Indo-European language
family. In particular, the proto-narrative included an episode ancestral to both the journey of Odysseus from
Ogygia to Scheria and the journey of Arjuna from forest exile to Indra’s heaven. Arjuna’s journey is akin to the
spiritual progression of the yogin from ordinary life to Release, and all three journeys can be compared to that
of the Buddha to Enlightenment. Using a late Vedic text the present paper extends these comparisons to cover
the journey of those dead souls who escape from reincarnation and take ‘the path of the gods’. he events
presented so concisely in au taki pani ad ( . -7) are compared to those recounted at length in Odyssey
books 5-7, and the implications for both texts are explored.
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Eran Almagor (Ben Gurion)
Last of the Achaemenids, Friend of the Romans: Antiochus I of Commagene
Panel: Eastern Clients
Among Rome’s Client kings of the late republic, one stands out in particular, namely, Antiochus I heos Dikaios
Epiphanes (c. 98/86 BC – 38 BC, ruled 70 BC – 38 BC) of Commagene. Antiochus’ position as well as the
necessities of statesmanship and diplomacy located him at the juncture of several political and cultural entities
and amidst clashing parties. This can be seen in three situations: role in the Mithridatic wars, between Lucullus
and Tigranes (Plut. Luc. 29.6-10, Dio Cass. 36.2.5, 47.27.3), his place in the new arrangements made in the
region (Appian, Mith. 16.106), Pompey and the Romans on the one hand and Darius, king of Media
Atropatene, or the Parthian Pacorus (Pākōr) on the other (Cic. Ad. fam. 15.3,1; 4,3) and his minor involvement
in the Roman Civil Wars and ensuing clash with Antony (Plut. Ant. 34; cf. Jos. BJ 1.322). In all these situations, it
would seem that Antiochus was an indispensible player in Rome’s eastern policy and had to be taken into
account. Antiochus was an ally of Rome, and in the Greek inscription seen in the ruins of the hierothesion of
Antiochus at Mount Nemrut dagi, Antiochus calls himself a friend of the Romans (philoromaios). At the same
time Antiochus claimed Iranian descent on his father’s side from Rhodogyne, daughter of the Achaemenid
Artaxerxes II (together with a Seleucid descent on his mother’s line, OGIS 89). It is the purpose of this paper
to explore Antiochus’ position between Rome and the East, his function as a client king during three dramatic
junctures of Rome’s intervention in the area, and to link his aforementioned policies towards Rome with his
identity as a descendant of the bygone Achaemenids in a period when interest in the past Empire of the East
was on the rise in Roman oratory and historiography.
Mohammad Almohanna (Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, Kuwait)
Antarah Ibn Shaddād: Heracles of Arabia
Panel: Comparative Approaches
The interaction between Arab culture and the ancient Greek legacy took off during the eighth century. At
Baghdad a library, known as the House of Wisdom, was established under the Abbasid caliphs which led an
unprecedented translation movement of Greek texts into Arabic. This movement which marked the golden age
of Islamic culture resulted in a considerable knowledge of ancient heritage in almost all fields of learning
except creative literature (Etman 2004; Leezenberg 2004; Pormann 2006). As a result of this neglect Greek
literature remained unknown to Arabs until the early decades of the twentieth century when the Nahda, or
awakening movement, aroused Arab intellectuals to resume the work of the ancient Arab translators in
Baghdad twelve centuries earlier. From the anthropological perspective Arab literature is thought to be almost
entirely realistic in the sense that almost no room is found for myth to play a part; that the vast majority of
classical Arabic literature belongs to the genre of lyric poetics with various themes including satire, eulogy,
mysticism, romance, and other themes. Nevertheless Arab knew other genres, among them was the oral epic,
ranging from pre-Islamic heroism in the tales of Antarah Ibn Shaddād and Al-Zeir Salim, to the 11th century
epic of Taghribat Bani Hilal, which in later ages became part of written literature. The narrative style, themes,
and content of these epics seem to overlap with the ancient model of heroism, and it can prove that, whatever
may be the reasons for Arab literature’s failure to engage with ancient Greek literature for any reason, it was
not because of a lack of interest in the themes and story-patterns of Greek poetry.
Ronnie Ancona (Hunter/CUNY)
Teaching Sexually-Explicit Catullus
Panel: ‘Sexually-Explicit’ Latin
This presentation will address the challenges and rewards of teaching poems of Catullus that contain sexually
explicit material. It will be argued that including such poems in teaching allows for a fuller, richer, and more
accurate sense of Catullus' poetry. (Cf., for example, Miller, Helios 27 [2000] “Reading Catullus, hinking
Differently.”) The challenges of how to handle sexually explicit material in writing textbooks will be addressed
from the perspective of a Latin scholar and Latin textbook author, with attention to competing scholarly and
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pedagogical decisions. (See Ancona, Writing Passion Plus [2013].) The results of some informal surveying of
teaching practices at the college and secondary school levels in the USA will show the variety of attitudes
towards the value of and the practical possibility of teaching sexually-explicit Latin poetry.
Examples will be drawn from Poems 6, 16, and 32 to discuss ways of explaining and defining sexually-explicit
language or content. Then the explicit material will be put back into context, so to speak, in order to see its
importance to each poem. Following such a procedure in a classroom setting can allow the student to know in
a straightforward manner what he or she is reading and then to see that such explicitness has poetic purpose.
In Poem 6, for example, the explicit “effututa” can be seen in the context of a poem that plays off competing
desires to conceal and reveal; in Poem 6, “pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” can be presented in the context of
the tug between literal and metaphorical interpretation; and in Poem 32 the image evoked of an erection that
humorously pounds through clothing can be seen in the context of other Catullan surprise endings.
Loriel Anderson (Bristol)
Panel: Greece and the East
Seeing the Serious in the Sensational: Ctesias’ Reflections of Contemporary Political Thought
Throughout his Persica Ctesias of Cnidus provides one of the most sensationalist Hellenic accounts of the
‘barbarian other’, employing wild stereotypes and highlighting the most lurid aspects of Persian society.
Despite the sensational nature of his narrative, Ctesias’ work is not as fantastical as it first appears. Rather, his
scandalous stories reflect the current socio-political thought of his audience, particularly in terms of their
concern for political stability. However, because of the Persica’s scandalous nature, scholars have overlooked
Ctesias as a potential source for contemporary Greek political thought. The Greeks stereotyped Persia as a
land ruled by effeminate, lazy, self-indulgent kings, who preferred to spend their days in the harem, rather
than leading troops in battle, building cities and monuments, or writing laws. Ctesias, by emphasizing these
stereotypes, confirms his audience’s belief in their own superior moral character. However, he also confounds
his audience’s expectations by demonstrating that the Persian political system actually functions. Despite the
laziness and ineptitude of the Persian kings, the monarchical system continues unchanged for generation after
generation. There is a stability to the Persian regime which the Greeks themselves longed for in their poleis. A
sense of permanence underlies Ctesias’ fantastic stories of Persian kings, as he constructs a political system in
which stability is the defining feature. Ctesias’ depiction of Persia is unreal; it is an imagined reality which
serves to reflect Greek concerns of civil unrest. While it may at first seem that Ctesias ignores the political
concerns of his contemporaries, in reality he is much more engaged with contemporary Greek political
discourse than has previously been acknowledged.
Efstathia Athanasopoulou (UCL)
Ajax as the First Cambridge Greek Play: Antiquity or Modernity?
Panel: Performance
The aim of this paper is to discuss the first Cambridge Greek play, Ajax performed in ancient Greek from the
29th of November until the 2nd of December 1882 at Saint Andrews Hall. In particular, we are interested in
examining the debates on the ancient and modern aspects of representation of a play with meager
performance history as they are reflected on newspapers of the period. On the one hand, the language of the
play, the interpretation of female parts by male students, the statuesque nature of costumes and the
archaeological reconstruction of scenery and theatrical space aim at an authentic representation of Sophocles’
drama. On the other hand, the diptych nature of the play is conceived as alien to modern ideas about dramatic
structure leading to a considerable reduction of lines from the second half of the play in the acting edition of
Jebb. Masks are considered intolerable for modern tastes while Mr. Macklin is praised for his role as Tecmessa
thus adding to the ancient play a romantic tone anticipated by modern audiences of the period. In conclusion,
it is suggested that Ajax in 1882 is the instantiation of the belief that “a modern representation of an ancient
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classic must always be more or less a compromise “(Times, 4 Dec. 1882).
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Antony Augoustakis (Illinois)
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The Other on Screen in the 21 Century
Panel: Onscreen Receptions
This paper will explore how modern scholarship and criticism on gender in Classical Antiquity is informed by
the representation of Roman and non-Roman women in television, by examining BBC-HBO’s Rome and Starz’
Spartacus. Recent studies on the role of Roman and especially non-Roman women have emphasised the
fluidity of the concept of the other in the ancient world. But how do producers imagine the role of the female
in the ancient world? In reconstructing the past, what are the traits with which they endow women in order to
offer a final product aesthetically and commercially pleasing to modern audiences? And finally how could
Classicists profit from the representation of women in modern film and television? Both Rome and Spartacus
are dominated by Roman female figures who play a prominent and decisive in moving the plot forward: Atia’s
and Servilia’s feud in Rome, Lucretia’s and Ilithyia’s thirst for power and social recognition in Spartacus.
Juxtaposed to this set of Roman women, there are a number of non-Roman women, female figures from the
periphery of the empire, often slaves or freedwomen, including Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen. Eleni, the
faithful servant of Servilia, and Eirene, Pullo’s German partner, occupy a fairly prominent role in the second
season of Rome, which is also dominated by Cleopatra and the events that lead to Actium and beyond.
Spartacus’ hatred against the Romans is presented in the series as the result of his wife’s unjust death; the
women of the rebel group, Mira and Naevia, are cast in terms of manly virtue, as they espouse the cause of
Spartacus in seeking freedom. The representation of these women exemplifies the collapse of binarisms such
as same and other, Roman and non-Roman in an often idealised and modernised portrayal of the ancient
world.
Eftychia Bathrellou (Edinburgh)
Annulling Social Death: Slaves and Greek Comedy
Panel: Slavery II
The work of historians of slavery has become increasingly informed by an awareness that we need to move
beyond approaching slaves either as passive victims or, conversely, as resisting agents. Slaves did not only
suffer in and/or resisted slavery, but also tried and, to different extents and in different ways, managed to, in
the worlds of Walter Johnson, “flourish in slavery, not in the sense of loving their slavery, but in the sense of
loving themselves and one another”. his paper will suggest that the remains of Greek comedy can offer
invaluable evidence so that we might imagine and, in combination with other, “harder”, evidence, reconstruct
ways real slaves in the Greek world attempted and achieved this. The paper will focus on one such way: the
participation of slaves in groups and associations with other persons, both enslaved and free. Through the
close reading of a few comic passages that portray slaves as participating in such associations, the paper will
attempt to illustrate both the potential and some of the limits of the comic material. Attention will be drawn
mainly to two elements. First, while accepting the scholarly consensus that the plays do not represent any
authentic slave voice and, in fact, contributed to the continued acceptance of slavery, the paper will attempt
to identify dramatic contexts from which conclusions about the efforts of real slaves to improve their lives by
forming social solidarities can be drawn with relatively more confidence. Second, the paper will argue that the
partial and uneven survival of Greek comedy does not allow us to confidently observe precise chronological
patterns in the representations of such efforts. Nevertheless, some broad chronological and generic trends
may be drawn, which the paper will attempt to identify.
Melissa Beattie (Aberystwyth)
Panel: Viewing Ancient Sexuality
'I'd be hopelessly trying to flirt with some guy; meanwhile, your dad would get a date with his sister.' 'Greek'
love and Caprica
Telefantasy series Caprica, prequel to the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, features both the Greek-coded
Taurons and one of the few examples of a same-sex relationship in telefantasy. This paper will examine the
textual, paratextual and intertextual links between (ancient) 'Greekness,' homosexuality and Caprica,
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specifically the modern interpretations of the ancient concepts. The paper argues that these links help to both
frame the series (thus influencing audience interpretation) as well as reinforcing this interpretation. It will also
address the industrial context in which Caprica was produced and how this influenced both the series'
expressions of sexuality and the ancient world.
John Bloxham (Nottingham)
The Original Neoconservative? Leo Strauss’s Version of Xenophon’s Version of Socrates
Panel: Legacies
The scope and nature of Leo Strauss’s influence on the American Neoconservative movement is controversial,
and often exaggerated; but, in assessing the classical foundations of Strauss’s thought, both supporters and
critics have agreed in their focus upon the importance of Plato and hucydides in Strauss’s work, whilst largely
ignoring Xenophon. Where Xenophon has been considered it has usually been for Strauss’s early commentary
on the Hiero (1948), which has been read as a tract on totalitarianism in the context of the Cold War; however,
the evidence from Strauss’s corpus suggests that Xenophon remained the thinker Strauss engaged with most
in formulating his own political philosophy. sing Strauss’s commentary on Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (1970) as
a case study, this paper assesses why Xenophon’s writings were so amenable to Strauss’s idiosyncratic
interpretations and shows that Xenophon, rather than Plato or Thucydides, is the classical key for unlocking
Strauss’s political ideology. Strauss believed that ancient writers’ works contain an exoteric meaning, usually a
charming but simplistic morality tale suitable for mass consumption, and an esoteric meaning, containing the
controversial and dangerous truth, suitable only for the philosophical elite. All of the errors, logical
inconsistencies and contradictions within these ancient works are interpreted as the ‘clues’ which lead careful
readers to the real, hidden truths. his theory of esotericism is particularly important for examining Strauss’s
Xenophon. Strauss’s Xenophon is a far more complex, nuanced and interesting figure than the Xenophon
usually portrayed in classical scholarship; however, it is often Xenophon’s limitations as a writer which made
him a malleable instrument, perfectly suited to Strauss’s interpretative technique.
Sophie Bocksberger (Oxford)
Ancient Dance in Modern Dancers Project – Data analysis
Panel: Tragic Performance
In the last few decades, the immense technological progress that has been made possible by the invention of
computers has opened new ways for classicists of dealing with data. If most of us are using textual search tools
such as the TLG regularly, less are aware of the possibility to encode audio and video data in order to use a
large amount of oral data in a systematic way. Under the auspices of the Oxford Research Centre in the
Humanities (TORCH), I have been developing an interdisciplinary project in collaboration with Dr. Helen Slaney
(Classics) and Dr. Caroline Potter (Anthropology) whose aim is to inquire into the ancient art form of Roman
tragic pantomime. Its methodology has involved collaboration on several levels and brought together
specialists from multiple fields of expertise. Our research team organised workshop sessions in which pairs of
participants consisting of a classicist and a dancer worked together to create their own ‘reconstructive’ piece
of Roman dance based on an extract from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We observed both the creative process and
the resulting performances, and invited participants to share their impressions afterwards in discussion. We
collected an immense amount of video and audio data and I would like to report on how we dealt with it via
the qualitative analysis software NVivo. This program allowed us to identify significant steps in the creative
process of reconstructing a Roman pantomime. These included the re-enactment or embodying of iconic
figures, the participants' own relation to antiquity, and the subtle interactions of the dancers and the
classicists with the text and the music, as well as the choreography and how the performance gets more or less
fixed. NVivo offers new manners of doing research and this is the reason why I would like to show how useful
it is and what it can do. For more information about our project see: www.torch.ox.ac.uk/ancientdance
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Lukas C. Bossert (Humboldt)
How the Minotaur Floored Theseus: Integrating Challenging Sarcophagi
Panel: Iconography
The mythological hero Theseus is rare in the sepulchral context: where he does appear on sarcophagi he is
most often shown fighting the Minotaur (as he is in the domestic context). Given this rarity, the interpretation
of two sarcophagi in particular offers an ideal basis from which to examine wider issues around sarcophagus
iconography: the first, in New York, depicts three episodes in Theseus' so-called Cretan adventure. I intend to
show not only that these episodes function together mythologically, but that there is also a close connection
to be seen with the apparently merely decorative elements of the sarcophagus. This approach, of integrating
apparently disparate elements, will be applied subsequently when I consider a piece in Cliveden which shows
episodes from the adventures on Crete as well as the Minotaur. This has troubled scholarship: in this
sarcophagus the repeated appearances of Theseus within variant scenes are puzzling. The point in the
narrative where the Minotaur is fought has changed and leads me hence to a discussion of this free and
elusive use of mythological plots and figures on the sarcophagi. By considering these two sarcophagi I will look,
as it were, for Thesus' Achilles' heel, because in this rarity lies its peculiar interpretation for his role as an
embodiment of virtus and as the lover of Ariadne. I will conclude by analysing how the iconography of the
Theseus scenes compares with the way figures such as Meleager and Dionysos appear, proposing that the
exotic nature of the iconography assembled for the scenes of the Minotaur might render the showcase of
Theseus' virtus problematic and in turn, explain the low popularity of this myth on sarcophagi.
Annelies Bossu (Ghent)
Panel: Late Antique Narrative
The Epic Passions of the Martyrs and the Ancient Greek Novel: Rhetorical Cunning in the Passio Caeciliae and
the Passio Chrysanthi et Dariae
The late antique passions of the martyrs are ambiguous texts. On the one hand, they claim to be true accounts
of historical vicissitudes of martyrs. On the other, they use and adapt elements that can be linked to ancient
fictional traditions. This paper focuses on some affinities between two Latin passions from the 5th century, the
passion of Caecilia and that of Chrysanthus and Daria, and the ancient Greek novel. As the presence of a
couple and the emphasis on chastity indicate, the passions took shape in close contact with the pagan
novelistic tradition in terms of topoi. But in addition, this paper argues, intimate interconnections with the
novel surface also in the realm of character construction. Whereas it is usually argued that these texts
characterize their protagonists as stereotypical, virtuous heroes whose steadfastness and loyalty give them an
exemplary role within the Christian community, this paper sets out to complicate such readings. The two
passions, it will be argued, depict their martyrs with different kinds of rhetorical craftiness which infuses their
exemplary role with ambiguity. It is such craftiness, this paper proceeds to argue, that aligns the protagonists
of these passions with those found in pagan narrative traditions such as ancient Greek novels. The paper ends
by suggesting that the observation that late antique passions and Greek novels use similar techniques of
character construction leads us to re-evaluate and rethink some of the generic categories and boundaries that
have become standard in our thinking about ancient narrative fiction.
Hugh Bowden (KCL)
Sensory Approaches to Divine Epiphany
Panel: Assuming the Supernatural
Accounts of encounters between mortals and gods in Greek texts often include descriptions of unusual
sensory impacts. Most commonly these are visual impacts, for example bright light associated with Demeter
and Aphrodite in the Homeric Hymns, or Dionysos in Bacchae; there are however also references to sounds
and to smells, sometimes pleasant, but sometimes not, as with the sulphurous smell associated with Zeus’
lightning. Sensory clues may also hint at divinity in other cases, as with the fragrance and high bodytemperature of Alexander the Great noted by Plutarch. How far do these accounts follow identifiable
patterns? To what extent can we see specific sensory experiences underlying the (obviously culturally
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constructed) accounts of ‘epiphanies’ in our texts? How far were certain actions (burning incense, gilding the
horns of sacrificial animals) aimed at invoking the actual presence of divinities, rather than pleasing them form
a distance? There has been considerable anthropological and sociological research into the ‘cultural life of the
senses’ carried out by the Concordia Sensoria Research eam (CONSER ) in Montreal over the last 25 years,
and this has raised important questions about the ‘hierarchy’ of the senses – to what extent have we moved
over time from a smell-centred to a sight-centred world, or from an oral/aural to a written/visual one? There
has been some recent work on the senses in relation to ancient sacrifice, but there is plenty of room for
further work. This paper aims to explore the role of the senses in Greek religious perceptions, and how far
Greek material can help us understand the ordering of sensory perceptions more generally in antiquity. It aims
therefore both to bring insights into work on sensory cognition into the analysis of ancient religion, and also to
provide potential material for the broader study of the senses in history.
Timothy W. Boyd (SUNY at Buffalo)
Exit the Rhapsode, Enter…
Panel: Tragic Performance
From the fifth century BC, there had been rhapsodic contests at a number of the traditional Greek festivals. By
the third century BC, however, rhapsodes had almost disappeared and, in their place, we see the rapid rise of
drama –what happened? Long ago, Wolf suggested that the Homeric tradition had had its origin in ballads.
Ballads, however, originate not just in solo song, like the work of a rhapsode, but in group performance. These
performances include both song and dance, as we find in the medieval carol or the modern Faroese chain
dance, itself derived from the medieval Danish ballad. In these, a leader sings the verses while the other
singers/dancers join in the chorus. Surprisingly, this looks rather like the traditional description of the origins of
tragedy, when Thespis stepped out of a chorus to sing a solo, supposedly in a song about Dionysus. As virtually
all tragedies have plots based not upon Dionysus, but upon heroic stories, the stuff of ballads and rhapsodic
song, perhaps Thespis was actually acting the part of the forerunners of the rhapsodes, an aoidos. A ready
Homeric parallel exists at the court of Alcinous, where a singer accompanies young men in a dance. With this
image of Thespis as balladeer in mind, and using materials from the ancient and medieval worlds, as well as
from current art forms from the Faroe Islands to western Africa, this paper seeks to provide a fresh account of
the possible origins of drama in an earlier form of poetic performance and, in turn, the fate of that earlier
form.
Mark Bradley (Nottingham/BSR)
Roman Noses
Panel: Roman Bodies II
The so-called ‘Roman nose’ – a prominent hooked or aquiline beak – is a commonplace of modern popular
physiognomy, a distinctive facial feature that has become the stuff of caricature in modern popular culture but
which also gestured (in men at least) towards desirable qualities such as nobility, courage and vigour. But how
far was the ‘Roman nose’ recognised as a distinctive facial feature in antiquity? From Socrates to Constantine,
from satyrs to no-nonsense goddesses, there was a widely employed classification of nose-types in which the
‘hooked’ (grupos, aduncus) and the ‘snub’ (simos, simus) were recognised as polar opposites and, along with
an array of other shapes and sizes, were associated with various patterns in behaviour and character. The nose
– taking centre-stage in the face, the organ of smell and considered the most direct conduit to the brain – was
arguably the most focalized (and certainly the most prominent) feature of the body. Noses could be an index
of race, age, gender, family, profession, and even class. Furthermore, ancient medical writers and philosophers
were preoccupied with the anatomy of the nose, its role as the organ of smell, and its relationship to the ears,
throat, eyes and brain. This paper, therefore, will set out to explore the physiognomy of the nose, its
characteristics, associations, patterns and anomalies. It will concentrate on the representation of nose-shape
and nose-size (as well as the significance of missing or damaged noses) in ideal and real-life portraits within
Roman Italy: divine and heroic sculpture, honorific statuary, painted portraits, relief sculpture and coin
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portraits, as well as rhinoplastic imagery in the form of dramatic masks and graffiti drawings. All of these
appropriated and exploited norms and expectations about noses in subtle and sophisticated ways to enrich
their subject matter.
Edward Bragg (Peter Symonds College)
Panel: Teaching
Disguised Foods, Pole-dancing, and Homeric Muddles: The Challenges of Teaching Trimalchio’s Dinner to
Sixth Form Students
Petronius’ Dinner with rimalchio is one of the four set texts for the AS unit “Roman Society and hought”
which is part of the OCR syllabus for A level Classical Civilisation. On the surface this text might seem to be a
straightforward piece of ancient literature to deliver in the class room. It is an account of a Roman dinner party
that encompasses colourful characters, multiple courses of food, and a wide variety of entertainments.
However, for 16 to 17 year old sixth form students, many of whom have never studied the classical world
before, it is a challenging and complex text. These challenges occur not only in the initial understanding of the
text and but also later when the students have to revise the text for the exam, especially in light of the
potential questions that the OCR examiners might ask. From a student perspective various questions are raised
about this text. Why is Trimalchio giving his guests disguised foods? Why do these Roman freedmen have a
chip on their shoulder about their origins and why are they so desperate to flaunt their wealth? Above all,
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what would have been funny to a Roman audience is often markedly different to what teenagers in the 21
century find amusing. This paper addresses a number of these challenges and proposes a number of
approaches which engage the students as well as supporting their comprehension of this complex text.
Jenny Bryan (UCL)
Xenophon’s Socrates as a ‘Ladies’ Man’
Panel: Xenophon
his paper considers the significance of Socrates’ meetings with women in Xenophon’s Socratic writings.
Xenophon uses Socrates’ interactions with various women to demonstrate his peculiar status with regard both
to eros and to philia. It is often suggested that Xenophon presents Socrates as a paradigm of properly selfcontrolled behavior, especially in contexts of erotic desire. In fact, Socrates’ relationship with women excludes
him from such a paradigmatic role, not least because it reflects both his idiosyncrasy and his isolation from
Athenian norms. On the one hand, Xenophon’s Socrates clearly advocates the value of heterosexual relations,
especially marriage; on the other, he enacts a peculiar relationship with women (including his own wife) that
emphasizes his difference from the companions to whom he offers such advice.
he paper’s focus is on Socrates’ interaction with three different women: the hetaira Theodote, his wife
Xanthippe and the dancing girl of the Symposium. Those who have discussed Socrates’ encounters with
women in Xenophon have usefully drawn out the parallels established. This is perhaps clearest in his meeting
with Theodote in the Memorabilia. By establishing these similarities with women, Xenophon is perhaps
seeking to attribute to Socrates the kind of expertise in philia (apparently untroubled by problematic erotic
urges) granted to women elsewhere in his corpus. More than once, however, he is presented as (potentially)
subordinate to women, as when he volunteers to learn to dance from a dancing girl and when describing his
relationship with Xanthippe. In the latter case, his relationship seems to be a clear inversion of that he
recommends to his companions; far from training his wife, he allows her to train him. Xenophon presents a
Socrates who reinforces what appears to be a relatively traditional attitude towards heterosexual relations
whilst constructing a more complex and unusual relationship for himself.
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Małgorzata Budzowska (Lodz)
Postmodern Aesthetics in the Theatre Productions of Ancient Dramas
Panel: Performance
The paper focuses on the analysis of contemporary stage adaptations of ancient dramas in the context of
postmodern aesthetics. Postmodernity breaks the source meaning of ancient myths set in the ancient dramas
as well as the structure and poetics of drama. Simultaneity and intertextuality as the main features of
postmodern theatre distract ancient classical structure of drama and myth involving it in the current social and
cultural background. This issue is analyzed on the basis of two mythical figures of Antigone and Iphigenia
described in the Aeschylean, Sophoclean and Euripidean dramas in relation to the contemporary productions
of Polish theatres: Iphigenia by Antonina Grzegorzewska (2009) and Antigone by Marcin Liber (2013).
Abigail K. Buglass (Oxford)
Panel: Cosmos and Creatures
Lucretius on the Origin of the World: The Argumentative Structure of De Rerum Natura V.91-508
De rerum natura V is concerned with arguments for the natural development of the world; lines 91-508 posit
that the world is part of a natural process, which began with a natural birth and will eventually lead to death.
The anti-‘design’ argument found in these lines clearly contributes to Book V’s broader atheistic tendencies,
yet this is by no means understood in Lucretian scholarship. Scholars have always assumed that the only aim of
V.91-508 is to argue for the mortality of the world, and consequently have disregarded V.110-234 as an
unnecessary digression which disrupts what they believe to be the argument of the passage promised in V.91109 and delivered in V.235-379 (Lachmann, Munro, Duff, Bailey, Lightfoot, Smith, Costa, and Gale). Ultimately,
each of these problems has led to a belief that V.91-508—418 lines: a third of the book’s 457—adds little or
nothing to the wider argument in Book V. It is inaccurate and incomplete to name the whole of V.91-508 as
being for the world’s mortality. The primary argument is in fact against creation, while the passage also clearly
indicates the world’s part in the natural process which leads eventually to death. The solacia (V.110-234),
which apparently constitute an anti-blasphemy argument, are in fact a guise into which Lucretius smuggles an
argument against creation. What appears digressive turns out to be crucial. The paper proposes that the
argument at V.91-508 is a critical part of the fifth book, as well as of the poem more broadly. I suggest that the
line of reasoning, though complex, is logical if one is mindful of the aims of the poem more generally, and also
of Lucretius’ particular intention to persuade and even manipulate.
Lilah Grace Canevaro (Edinburgh)
On the Edge: Objects and Liminality in Homer
Panel: Homer and Virgil
Helen is torn between two worlds. In the Iliad she is married to Paris, in the Odyssey to Menelaus; but even in
Troy, she thinks of the family she has lost (Il.3.139-40). Her lives are continuously in conflict, with the Trojan
War the clash between them. Things close in on her when former and current husband plan a duel (Il.3.136-8),
and Aphrodite warns that she could be crushed in the middle (Il.3.413-17). In her husband’s absence, Penelope
is head of the household: she is linked symbolically to the house itself, and elemachus’ attempts to assert his
authority by sending her to weave (Od.1.356--‐-9) are overturned by the subversive way in which she weaves.
By remembering her husband she keeps control over her past, and by controlling the suitors she exerts her
influence over her potential future. She is perpetually on the threshold simultaneously of reunion, widowhood
and remarriage. Odysseus is constantly seeking nostos: a return to Ithaca and Penelope. However, he is
forestalled along the way by Calypso, Nausicaa and Circe, all of whom want to lay claim on him. He is
separated from home, wife and rule yet unable to put down roots elsewhere. All three are in a liminal position,
operating outside normal societal rules. In all three cases the unusual circumstances are expressed through
objects: Helen and Penelope’s weaving; Penelope and Odysseus’ bed; Odysseus’ raft; Ino’s veil. Objects reflect
the characters’ liminality, and define it in terms of gender. When a woman is liminal she takes on a striking
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degree of autonomy; when a man, already more or less a free agent, becomes liminal, agency doesn’t simply
increase – it changes form altogether (Odysseus even ends up wearing a woman’s veil around his chest).
Mirko Canevaro (Edinburgh)
Athenian paramone and the Evidence of the Wills of the Philosophers in Diogenes Laertius
Panel: Slavery II
Obligations of slaves towards their former masters following their manumission are well attested in Greek
sources, and in particular in Delphic inscriptions, where about a quarter of the slaves recorded as freed are
bound by paramone clauses. No agreement however seems to exist on whether the institution of paramone,
in any form, ever existed in classical Athens. While many scholars over the years have argued or often just
assumed that such an institution existed, others have denied it. The evidence for paramone in Athens is
scanty, and consists only of a passage in Plato’s Laws (11.915a-b) which may or may not refer to Athenian
practice, a vague reference in Harpocration to ‘the things that the law orders’, and possibly a distinction
between doulos and oiketes mentioned at Ath. Deipn. 6.267 b-c which might refer to paramone. But the main
evidence for the existence of such an institution comes from the wills of the philosophers preserved in the text
of Diogenes Laertius. In the wills of Theophrastus and Lycon (Diog. Laert. 5.55 and 73) slaves are set free, but
they must “remain” (paramenein) for a period, and similar provisions are made in Aristotle’s will (Diog. Laert.
5.14-15). The conditions of their manumission are expressed with language that closely resembles that of
Delphic inscriptions imposing obligations of paramone. Despite the importance of these documents for
understanding Athenian manumission practices, their authenticity and reliability has not been closely analysed
for over a century (since Brun 1880), and scholars have deemed them reliable or not without proper
discussion. This paper will assess their authenticity and reliability in the light of the other evidence about
Athenian and Greek paramone, and of recent advances in the study of documents preserved in literary texts.
Jennifer Carrington (Cornell)
Panel: Cult
Divine Attribution and Competition: Royal and Elite Strategies in the Statuary of Ptolemaic Egypt
Egyptian temples from the Middle Kingdom onwards served as key sites of self-presentation and boasted a
mixture of royal and non-royal statues. Scholarly approaches to statues dated after the fourth century BCE,
however, have largely separated the statues of the ruling Ptolemies from other elite statues because it has
been assumed from the outset that the Ptolemaic dynasty appropriated Egyptian religious traditions as
foreigners, while elite Egyptians maintained a cultural continuity and autonomy through cult practice and
statue dedication.
In contrast, this paper proposes that royal and elite strategies for temple statuary in Hellenistic Egypt were
much more engaged and interconnected. Statue inscriptions demonstrate that elites were involved both in the
negotiation of their own but also Ptolemaic representations, suggesting a less centralized approach to religious
ideology and images on the part of the ruling dynasty. This paper also takes into much greater account the
material and visual connections between royal and elite statuary and the increasing solicitation of ritual
engagement by statues erected in the same temple contexts.
By looking anew at these interconnections, the mutual constitution of royal and elite religious roles as
negotiated by a variety of players in Hellenistic Egypt can be revealed. The negotiation materialized as both
explicit attribution of a common theological and political hierarchy, as well as competition for primacy within
the religious sphere. Rather than simply reflecting tradition – continued on one side and appropriated on the
other – statues of individual in temples provide evidence for an ongoing development of cultic roles in
Hellenistic Egypt.
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David M. Carter (Reading)
The Aristophanic Prologue
Panel: Talking About Laughter
According to Alan Sommerstein (Greek Drama and Dramatists, London 2002) at p. 67:
In his surviving plays ... Aristophanes shows a very strong liking for one particular plot-pattern ... It
begins with a situation that is extremely unsatisfactory … A character then devises a scheme, often
with a high degree of fantasy, for putting things right and rescuing himself, or his family, or Athens, or
the whole Greek world.
This paper surveys the prologues of the eleven surviving comedies of Aristophanes. The prologues
demonstrate a strong pattern of similarity in the way in which they reveal the particular problem and the
fantastic solution. Within this pattern, however, there is plenty of scope for variation and invention. There is a
particular tension to be observed between the wish to tease the audience and keep them guessing on the one
hand, and the need for clear explanation of the plot on the other.
Emma Cole (UCL)
Panel: Reception and Ajax
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Performance Reception of Sophocles’ Ajax
Classical texts and their accounts of ancient warfare have long been considered valuable in preparing
combatants for battle and assisting returned warriors reintegrate into society: for example, hucydides’
History of the Peloponnesian War is required reading at a number of military academies. Thinking about this
issue from a different angle, the psychiatrist Jonathan Shay has argued that the Homeric epics depict warriors
undergoing the same kind of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as experienced by contemporary soldiers.
His writings on the subject have inspired a series of performance receptions that engage with combat trauma.
his paper explores two recent examples of this phenomenon involving Sophocles’ Ajax: Timberlake
Wertenbaker’s Our Ajax (20 ) and Outside the Wire’s ‘ heater of War’ project (2008 – present).
These two productions featured a high degree of collaboration between theatre makers, military personnel,
and their families. The significance of this process for rehabilitating veterans suffering from PTSD has
frequently been discussed; however, these receptions are equally important for the families and caregivers of
returned soldiers— the Tecmessas and Teucers in the play —and I argue that these parties are also potential
beneficiaries of the play’s performative therapy. his paper considers the benefits of performative
explorations of PTSD that reference a classical context for both returned combatants suffering from this illness
and for families and caregivers dealing with traumatized soldiers. I suggest that there is unrealized potential
for Ajax to be used in the United Kingdom, like it is in the United States, to redress combat trauma and rising
instances of veteran suicide by contributing to the de-stigmitization of PTSD within the home, wider society,
and particularly the British military. This exemplifies the potential therapeutic power of tragedy to mediate
traumatic experiences.
Nicholas Cole (Oxford)
Is There Space for a Greek Influence on American Thought?
Panel: Legacies
American revolutionaries and those who wrote the constitution often made much of the fact that their own
political structures were based upon wholly new and modern principles. Jefferson famously dismissed modern
translations of Aristotle's Politics as uninteresting precisely because Aristotle had nothing to say to the modern
American. Many modern scholars have taken these claims so seriously that they have pronounced the display
of classical learning to be found in American writing to be deceptive, and merely a fashionable windowdressing for ideas elsewhere derived, and even that the fundamental questions of modern thought diverged
too significantly from those that concerned ancient writers for there to have been any meaningful classical
contribution to the American experiment. Classicists who have taken an interest in American thought have
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failed to persuade the main body of American scholars to question this view. In addition, most scholarship has
noted the much more prominent American interest in Roman thought and Roman history, rather than
investigating American interest in the Greek world.
This paper will address three questions: firstly, given all of the other, well-documented influences on American
thought, what hope is there of identifying a specifically Greek influence? Secondly, how much did (well read,
educated) Americans know about the Greek world? How seriously should we take Jefferson's purported
interest in Epicurean Philosophy? This paper will suggest that there are indeed important contributions that
specifically Greek history and thought made to American thinking on government, and that these
contributions, properly understood, do help to explain the development of American thought in the early
republic. It will explain why the Greek influence on American thought was controversial at the time and why it
has remained so in subsequent scholarship. Lastly, using Jefferson as an example, it will examine how deep the
educated, American knowledge of the ancient world was, and how seriously to take American claims of
classical learning.
Patrick Cook (Cambridge)
Corporeal Ekphrasis in Suetonius
Panel: Roman Bodies I
Each of Suetonius’ biographies of the twelve Caesars contains a description of the emperor’s body. Although
the level of detail in these descriptions varies considerably between the lives, something of a pattern emerges:
while certain details, such as height, are always recorded, Suetonius favours peculiar aspects of each
emperor’s body. He is not overtly moralistic, nor is his description neutral. Whilst ‘bad’ emperors such a
Caligula are more likely to have markedly aberrant bodies, even Augustus is not spared, as his body manages
to be at once ideal and possessing weakness and anomalies. This paper will position these passages of
corporeal ekphrasis against the tradition of bodily description in Roman rhetoric more broadly. It will explore
the ways in which Suetonius uses tropes already found in Cicero and the ways in which Suetonius is innovative
within this tradition. In particular, Suetonius often plays the part of a disinterested observer, recording
different versions of an account, and rarely engaging in superlatives of praise or condemnation. By unravelling
the similarities and differences, this paper reexamines Suetonius’ status as ‘biographer’ and ‘historian’.
Raph Cormack (Edinburgh)
Comedy = Tragedy + Time: Ali Salem’s Comedy of Oedipus
Panel: Radical Re-imaginings
In 970 ‘ he Comedy of Oedipus’ was put on in Cairo. Written by Ali Salim and directed by Galal al-Sharqawi it
moved the myth of Oedipus to the Egyptian Thebes, in pharaonic times, and turned it into a comedy. Halfway
through the play the modern age is thrust upon Thebes as Oedipus invents televisions, radios and telephones.
Still, politically the people do not progress like technology does. The repressive police state still remains and
the people want a strong single ruler, not real political participation. The play was very well received in Egypt
when it was first performed though the censors cut the run short presumably due to its strident political
message. Now the play, along with all of Ali Salem’s work, is banned in Egypt but this play was revived by a
small company this year in London as part of the Shubbak Festival. Despite its popularity critics were skeptical
about its relationship to the Greek original. For instance, one reviewer said “ he relationship between Oedipus
yrannos and he Comedy of Oedipus is the relationship of a few names and peripheral events.” In this paper I
will argue that Ali Salem’s engagement with the ur-text is both deep and noteworthy, though not entirely
original as it follows previous Egyptian adaptations in its political focus. In doing this the paper will discuss how
Sophocles’ text can be creatively repurposed to speak to an Egyptian audience in 1970, and how the author
can maintain a dialogue with the original.
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Bárbara Costa (Sao Paulo)
Panel: Education and Classics
Mimesis and Fiction in Choricius’ Declamations: What Can We Learn from Tyrannicides and Murderers?
his work aims to discuss the fictional plot within Choricius’ corpus of declamations focusing primarily on how
imitation was conceived as a tool of educational and rhetorical training, from Classical Athens to Byzantine
Gaza. The first part of the paper will discuss the main role played by themes in the declamatory exercise and
what students should acquire from their lessons. Although declamation was fictional, one can find traces of
reality and hints of social criticism in the remaining texts. The question to be answered is: “what can students,
citizens to-be, learn from playing the role of a murderer or of a deceiver?” I shall then consider the origins of
declamation: how connected are the themes with these origins, and why the themes remained even when
declamation surpassed the school wall. Finally, I intend to exemplify this discussion with selected passages of
Choricius’ declamations, especially with those in which the rhetor gives instruction on how to incorporate
characters and how make the fictional situation plausible.
Robert Cowan (Sydney)
On Not Being Archilochus Properly: Cato, Catullus and the Idea of iambos
Panel: Catullus
This paper proposes a unified solution to the four main puzzles about Catullus 56: why it alludes to Archilochus
fr. 168 West, which Cato is being addressed, what precisely is being done by the pupulus either of or to the
puella, and why Catullus emphasizes the anecdote’s laughability. Most scholars (e.g. den 2007) insist that
Valerius Cato is the addressee, and the minority who argue for M. Porcius Cato (Bucheit 1961, Arkins 1982,
Skinner 1982) stress the provocative incongruity of sending such an obscene poem to the prim future
Uticensis. The more important connection (made, but not developed, by Westphal 1867, Ellis 1876) is with
Plutarch’s anecdote that, when Cato lost his betrothed Lepida to Metellus Scipio, he wrote iamboi in the
manner of Archilochus, but without the latter’s ‘childishness’ or ‘licentiousness’ (Cat. min. 7.2). This
description, which may reflect Cato’s own programmatic self-definition as an iambic poet, suggests a sober,
moralizing mapping of Lycambes and Neobule onto Metellus and Lepida, and a distinctive ‘take’ on ‘being’
Archilochus. Catullus 56 constitutes a (belated) response to this significant contribution to the Roman
reception of iambos, signalled by an Archilochean motto (Courtney 1989), and aggressively restoring the
elements of laughter, obscenity and sexual violence which Cato had self-consciously excluded. This fits with
Catullus’ self-conscious construction of his own Archilochean persona (Wray 2001, Heyworth 2001), a
construction which would in turn be contested by Horace (Harrison 2007, Johnson 2012). The rape of the
pupulus further acts as a metaphor for iambos’ hypermasculine violence. If the pupulus is masturbating, he
could represent Cato’s own futile composition of neutered iambos. More probably, he represents the iambist’s
erotic rival penetrating the puella, as instantiated in both Metellus and Lesbia’s lovers.
Thomas Coward (KCL)
Steadfast Achaeans
Panel: Approaching Hellenism
Achaea is not an easily definable unit in geographical and cultural terms. This paper concerns the formation
and evolution of ‘Achaea/Achaean’ and Hellenic identities by the native inhabitants and its neighbours from
the archaic period to the Hellenistic age. The region transformed in a long-drawn-out process from village
communities to an alliance of a dozen federalised cities that controlled the Peloponnese. Its identity changed
from a regional or ethnic character to a political one. I outline the differentiation and assimilation of Homeric
and Peloponnesian Achaeans in early literary sources. Achaea/Achaean is a name for the Greeks at Troy in
heroic epic and its first known use as an ethnic label is in Stesichorus (222. ii.4 PMGF). Achaean identity is
projected back towards Achaea from its colony Metapontum in Bacchylides (11.113-26), which is deliberately
forming its own version of Achaean identity and wider Hellenic identity, whereas it is used in a political context
and outside the Achaean sphere of culture in Herodotus (5.72). Secondly I examine local Achaean
13
historiography, which emerges with the rise of the Achaean League. Polybius (2.41.4-7, 11.10.9-11.11.7) is our
main source for this period in political and institutional terms, but another example is Autesion (BNJ 298 F1ab),
who uniquely makes Pelops an Achaean, and would seem to be ‘correcting’ previous Spartan and Argive
mythographical and ethnographic claims. Achaea is being interwoven in a different way, beyond the Homeric
into wider geo-political terms of Hellenic identity. This paper shows how the ethnicity and idea of Achaea
changed constantly and was re-defined from and within the centres and peripheries of Hellenic and Achaean
cultures. Some of the key elements of Achaean identity formed through colonisation, migration, and
mythography in this period would be taken up in the Roman and Byzantine eras as a well of Hellenic identities.
Jason Crowley (Manchester Metropolitan)
The Culture of Combat in Classical Greece
Panel: Eliciting Emotions
Like an epistemological echo of Donovan’s famous song The Universal Soldier, the view that combatant’s
susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder is diachronically universal is gaining ground. Gabriel, for
instance, argues that the experience of close-combat would leave ancient armies burdened with thousands of
psychological causalities. Shay offers an influential reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey as tales of Achilles’ and
Odysseus’ psychologically adverse reactions to combat. ritle argues, similarly, that the uninjured hoplite, who
apparently went blind at Marathon, was suffering from conversion disorder, that Aristodemos’ voluntary
death at Plataea resulted from survivor guilt, and that Xenophon’s portrait of Clearchos is the description of a
man suffering from PTSD. Such arguments and others like them are based on a belief in historicallytranscendental human equivalence, that is to say, that since modern humans are the equivalent of ancient
humans, they are not only both equally susceptible to PTSD, the presence or absence thereof can be detected
by the same diagnostic criteria. Yet, despite its influence, this view has never been properly tested. To remedy
this situation, this will paper will re-examine the methodological basis of the universal position and
subsequently argue that adverse psychological reactions to combat result from the interaction between a
human being and his or her environment. This fact is critical, because neither variable is historicallytranscendental: the core beliefs adopted by combatants change, as does the socio-military environment in
which they fight. Consequently, whilst the modern combatant and his or her socio-military environment
combine to produce a susceptibility to PTSD, the very different and historically-specific combination that
characterised Classical Greece could just as easily suppress or even eliminate that susceptibility. This paper
then, seeks to determine whether susceptibility to PTSD is universal, or whether such susceptibility is a
historically-contingent socio-cultural artefact unknown in antiquity.
Leah Culligan Flack (Marquette)
The Great War and Modernism’s Siren Songs
Panel: Refracting
his paper analyses three modernist receptions of Homer’s Sirens that emerged in the years surrounding the
Great War in the writings of James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. As figures of alluring, yet damaging,
claims to comprehensive knowledge, the Sirens were especially appealing for modernists responding to the
War as an unprecedented human and cultural catastrophe. In different ways, these writers used Homer’s
Sirens to interrogate a cultural tradition implicated in nurturing the conditions for war in the modern
imagination. In so doing, they justified and defended their formal experimentation as a revision of this
tradition.
At the end of the War, Joyce wrote the ‘Sirens’ episode of Ulysses, which both thematically and stylistically
adapts Homer’s Sirens to scrutinize the cultural logic of nationalism as an essential cause of the War in Europe
and violence in Ireland. In his early drafts of The Waste Land, Eliot used the Sirens to capture the horror of the
modern mind confronting the overwhelming and agonizing experience of war. Eliot translated Homer to
conceptualize his poem as a response to a war from which there could be no possibility of homecoming. In
14
response to both Joyce and Eliot, Pound adapted the Sirens in three different poems written between 1917
and 1927 that show his deepening post-War skepticism about the literary tradition as an ahistorical
embodiment of aesthetic beauty. Pound used the Sirens to deconstruct this sense of the Homeric tradition, to
analyse the ideals of martial heroism and masculine self-sacrifice inherent in the Western imagination, and to
propose an alternative tradition grounded in ideals of uncertainty and historical engagement. Together, these
three writers foreground the ways in which intensive engagements with Homer helped modernist writers
define and clarify their innovative art in response to the Great War.
Monica S. Cyrino (New Mexico)
Ricochets off the Frontier: Classical Allusion in HBO’s Deadwood (2004-6)
Panel: Onscreen Receptions
This paper engages with the key question of how to identify and understand classical allusions in a nonclassical world onscreen narrative, by exploring the recurrence of Greek and Roman references in the three
seasons of Deadwood (2004-6). With thirty-six hours of densely plotted cinematic text, Deadwood offers an
exceptional opportunity to examine the authorial objectives of the show’s creator. o what extent did he
intend to shape audience interpretation of the series by the use of classical allusions? What role did viewers
play in creating meaning from these classical references? Creator David Milch has stated that he wanted to
produce a series that would investigate ‘the way civilisation comes together out of chaos’. Initially, he wanted
to set his series in ancient Rome, as the establishing story of Western culture, but HBO had already begun
production on Rome (2005-7). So Milch decided to explore the American foundational myth as represented in
the cinematic Western. So, while Deadwood focuses on its main theme of bringing order out of disorder, what
may be recognised as the quintessential classical motif, the series also reveals its mythographic roots by often
referring to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds: the rough and foul-mouthed denizens of the Deadwood
mining camp constantly pepper their speech with allusions to classical history, literature, and mythology. This
paper offers a detailed survey of these allusions, setting them within the larger narrative project of the series
and its creator: to examine the way the wild Western frontier of America made itself into a community in the
image of classical antiquity. Using Deadwood as a case study, this paper proposes a new and more explicit
connection between ancient sources and the modern screen, in order to illuminate one of the more powerful
recent incursions of the classical world into the popular consciousness.
Beatrice da Vela (UCL)
Panel: Education and Classics
A Day at Donatus' School: Strategies, Practices and Methodology of a Late-antique Grammarian
The three extant works of Aelius Donatus (IV AD) comprise two grammars of the Latin Language, the Ars Maior
and the Ars Minor, and a line-to-line explanation of five out of six of Terence's plays, the Commentary on
Terence. These works, although possibly directed to different audiences (teachers and students) were
conceived and used in a school-setting, and were part of a didactic system, of which the Artes represented the
theory and the two commentaries (the extant on Terence and the lost on Virgil) the practice, as argued by
Holtz (1981: 25). St. Jerome, who attended Donatus' lecture, gave us precious information about the use of the
Commentary in class (Hier. In Ruf. 1.6), but the reconstruction of teaching-practices still remains understudied.
This paper aims to examine the hint of teaching-practice found in these three works, with particular attention
to the Ars Minor and the Commentary on Terence, which share some similarities (for example, the use of the
question-and-answer technique). This analysis reconstructs a picture of Donatus' teaching strategies and classpractices, which can then be compared with other school-created texts, such as the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, attempting to recreate the dynamic of a Late-antique lecture.
15
Maciej Daszuta (Liverpool/Warsaw)
The Spartan oikos and the Spartan State
Panel: Sparta: New Perspectives
With a few notable exceptions, the issue of the Spartan family is far from being a popular topic of research
among classical scholars. The reason for that seems to be, apart from a shortage of sources, an almost
unanimous opinion that the role of the Spartan oikos was restricted to one basic function – that of providing
new generations of citizens. Other aspects of family life are reckoned to be present in Sparta merely in a
vestigial form, if at all, and as such not to be noteworthy. However, this view is over-simplistic. First of all, a
strong contrast between the public and private spheres of life, although notable in Sparta, was not unique to
her society. In fact, relations between oikos and polis in ancient Greek communities generally constituted a
complicated and multidimensional issue. Secondly, the ancient evidence provides some insights that allow us
to think of the Spartan family in terms other than merely ‘reduction’ or ‘replacement’. In this paper, I will
highlight certain spheres of Spartan history and life where we can find evident traces of the citizen family’s
importance and reveal an image of the Spartan oikos diametrically opposed to standard views.
Glenys Davies (Edinburgh)
Panel: Roman Bodies II
Subservient Body Language: Barbarians, Slaves, Women and Provincials in Roman Art
This paper is about the way bodies are used, in Roman artistic representations (statues, state and funerary
reliefs etc.), to express lower status through body language. Rome is well known as a strictly hierarchical
society, and the display of relative status within the Roman male elite has been the subject of other studies.
This paper looks rather at those who are not elite and/or not male: the various groups that can be categorised
as ‘Other’, and inferior. First it offers an overview of the striking similarities between the body postures
adopted in Roman art for women and captive barbarians (closed body positions with arms held in the
‘pudicitia’ pose, bowed heads, and so on). his introduces a more general discussion of the ways in which pose
and posture are used to indicate the subordinate position of various other groups (including slaves/servants).
Finally I shall look at the differences in body language between defeated barbarians and deferential newlyincorporated provincials (as seen particularly on rajan’s column). his paper follows on from my previous
work on gender and body language in Roman art and presents some of the material and questions for future
research.
Peter Davies (Nottingham)
Social Dissonance in Lakedaimonian Society
Panel: Sparta Beyond
All stratified societies experience social movement: movement which they seek to recognise and control.
Movement between strata in such societies has commonly been described as social mobility. However, for
many years the social sciences have recognised that this is a problematic term. What constitutes social
mobility? For example, does a change in legal status necessarily indicate social mobility: can one be socially
mobile without changing one’s legal status? With an awareness of these questions the Oxford School for the
Study of Social Mobility created its model of Social Dissonance. This model accounts for the fact that different
elements of an individual or group’s social status can be inconsistent and that social movement almost always
causes such inconsistency. This paper will argue, using the example of Lakedaimon, that in analysing social
movements in past societies we must be aware of these distinctions. Further, it will argue that an implicit
(though never explicit) awareness of social dissonance can influence the ways past societies deal with social
movement and that this was the case in Lakedaimon. Social dissonance feels threatening to members of a
society and thus social movement is only allowed as a release valve for greater social pressures. Lakedaimon
was a society peculiarly aware of its own social pressures. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, it was not a society that
allowed movement between its social strata. A helot could not become a perioikos, nor a perioikos a Spartiate;
nor could downward movement in society cause the opposite. But Sparta did allow social movement. The
16
categories into which it allowed social movement were merely specific to socially mobile groups or individuals.
This paper will argue that this set-up was encouraged by an implicit awareness of social dissonance, in a
society acutely aware of its status issues and the social pressures they caused.
Philip Davies (Nottingham)
The Institutional and Personal Standing of the Spartan Elite
Panel: Sparta: New Perspectives
Significant advances have been made in our understanding of the elites of Greek societies in recent years. In
the studies concerned, however, the elite which existed within Sparta’s citizen stratum has largely gone
unnoticed. Where Sparta has been mentioned, it has tended to be as the extreme end of the spectrum, or the
exception that proves the rule. This relegation is in no small part attributable to the perceived equality of the
Spartan homoioi or ‘peers’, and the state’s assumed domination of Spartan society. However, the existence of
an elite within the Spartiate stratum has long been accepted by Spartanists, and recent scholarship has
highlighted the pre-eminence of this group within Spartan social and political life.
In this paper, I will show that, far from being ‘the exception to the rule’, Sparta’s elite did not differ
fundamentally from those of the majority of Greek states. A number of families, which lacked clear
institutional prerogatives, nonetheless maintained significantly elevated positions within their society through
the deployment of their personal attributes – economic, political, social, etc. – in order to actively assert and
reaffirm their status. The Spartan elite was exceptional in the presence within it of two lineages which were
marked out by their Heraclid descent, and so granted institutional recognition in the form of the right to
provide the Spartan kings. However, far from muting elite competition in Sparta, the imbalance created by the
presence of this institutionally-recognised element within a largely personally-defined elite granted special
significance to the marital and genealogical connections which elite families sought to establish with the royal
houses. In essence, connection to the royal houses could grant elite lineages a degree of definition which they
otherwise lacked.
Rocco Di Dio (Warwick)
The Enemy of Philosophers: The Theory of Laughter in Plato’s Philebus
Panel: Plato and Aristotle
Laughter is one of the most ambiguous and charming phenomena related to mankind. Although the
phenomenon itself is easy to experience empirically, it has a variety of aspects which make its theoretical
definition and explanation complex and elusive. Clear proof of this difficulty is the large number of theories
conceived on the Comic and on Laughter from antiquity to date. Thus, in an article published in 1967, Umberto
Eco defines laughter as ʽthe enemy of philosophers’, since the more philosophers and thinkers seek to explain
the phenomenon, the more unsolvable and enigmatic it seems to get. Additionally, Eco argues that if such a
mystery was uncovered, it would likely also solve the problem of the meaning of human existence. The study
of laughter dates from the earliest efforts of the human race at self-understanding and is documented in the
most ancient philosophical writings. Aristotle is traditionally defined as the originator of the reflection and of
the aesthetics on the Comic: writers, philosophers and scholars started from the definition contained in the
Poetics for conceiving their own theories and explanations. Nevertheless, the earliest surviving theory of
laughter is expounded in Plato’s Philebus. The philosopher conceives a complex theory based on phthónos
(envy), an affection implying ʽa strange mixture of pleasure and painʼ. Modern scholars have interpreted such a
complex theory in a variety of ways in order to explain why Plato conceived a theory based on envy and
produced differing and opposing explanations. The aim of this paper is first of all to provide a contextualised
analysis of the platonic passage, secondly, to seek to provide a new interpretation of Plato’s theory by
conciliating different critical views, and, lastly, to show how Plato, by conceiving a theory based on a rivalry
emotion (phthónos), seemed to ingeniously anticipate theories of modern thinkers.
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Christopher Doyle (NUI Galway)
The Right Hand of Victory: Triumphal Symbolism in the Late Roman Empire
Panel: Transformations
‘ hat hand, which planned to wield the sceptre, which the submissive nobility knelt so many times to
kiss, is torn from the miserable body and lies long unburied’
Claudian. Ruf. II. 442-5.
The symbolic importance of the right hand of victory (dexterae triumphalis) of emperors, senior military
commanders and officials is evident in Late Roman literature, art, coinage and laws. The relevance of the right
hand also features in descriptions of victory celebrations held to commemorate the defeat of tyranni and
other hostes publici of the same period. In certain instances we encounter accounts of hand mutilation applied
to such individuals, both those who were executed and those who were fortunate enough to be spared. Over
the fourth and fifth centuries the ritual display of mutilated right hands, as well as decapitated heads, was
intended to serve as a warning against any future acts of high treason. These forms of punishment did not,
however, have the desired effect and in fact rebellion and usurpation increased in this era. The paper traces
how the dexterae triumphalis developed, within literary and material culture, as a potent symbol of power and
authority from the accession of Constantine I in 306 to the usurpation of Johannes in 423.
Jane Draycott (Trinity St David)
Panel: Roman Bodies II
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Use of Real, False, and Artificial Hair as Votive Offerings in the Roman
World
For the last three thousand years, the anatomical ex voto has performed a continuous although not entirely
understood role in ritual practice. In addition to the eyes, ears, hands, feet, genitals, and other recognisable
parts of the internal and external body made from terracotta, stone, metal or wood deposited in ancient
Roman sanctuaries, temples, and shrines there is ample literary, documentary, and archaeological evidence for
the votive offering of hair cut straight from the dedicant’s head. Hair is one of the few parts of the human
body that it is possible to utilise in this way. However, this ‘real’ hair was not the only type of hair that was
dedicated as an ex voto. ‘False’ hair - that is, wigs and hair-pieces - was also dedicated, as was ‘artificial’ hair that is, objects fashioned from alternative substances that represent an isolated section of the hair-style itself
such as a scalp or a braid. With ‘real’ hair so readily accessible, why were ‘false’ and ‘artificial’ hair ex votos
considered necessary? This paper will survey the range of different types of hair ex voto that were offered in
the Roman world, examining the use of real, false, and artificial hair with a view to establishing under what
circumstances each type was dedicated, and the extent to which these dedications were influenced by Roman
ideas about the nature of hair, its maintenance, styling, and significance.
Michael J. Edwards (Roehampton)
Deception in the Speeches of Isaeus
Panel: Deception
This paper is inspired by recent work on deception by Jon Hesk (Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens,
Cambridge: 2000) and especially Christos remmydas (‘ he Discourse of Deception and Characterization in
Attic Oratory’ GRBS 53 (2013). My proposal is to investigate the uses of the -verbs for deception in the
speeches of Isaeus: apatao only appears once, but there are another sixteen uses of the compound exapatao.
More than half of these come in speeches 4 and 5, and most examples concern deceiving the court. Given
Isaeus’ reputation for chicanery and deception, going back to Dionysius of Halicarnassus but examined at
extreme length by his major modern commentator William Wyse, it will hopefully prove fruitful and
interesting to see how reliable the passages themselves are in which Isaeus’ clients make open accusations of
deception.
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Michael J. Edwards (Roehampton)
Proems in Performance
Panel: Greek Oratory
Attention has been increasingly paid in recent years to the performance of the speeches of the Attic orators, in
recognition of the fact (famously celebrated by Demosthenes, according to Plutarch) that delivery was key to
the success or failure of a speech. Comparisons have been made with dramatic performance by scholars such
as Victor Bers, Alan Boegehold, and Edith Hall. In this paper I intend to focus on one aspect of delivery, how
the speaker delivered his opening remarks, or proem. This section of the speech, as Aristotle recognised in the
Rhetoric, was vital both for establishing the character (ēthos) of the speaker and of his opponent, and also for
securing the attention and goodwill of the jurors (captatio benevolentiae). I propose to test the theory through
an analysis and comparison of the proems of two well-known speeches that are concerned with the topic of
physical assault – Lysias 3, Against Simon and Demosthenes 54, Against Conon. Lysias, who was highly
regarded by Dionysius of Halicarnassus not only for his narratives (Lysias 18) but also for his proems (Lysias
17), relies on characterisation, as he cleverly paints a picture of a client who is restrained and honest, as
opposed to his opponent Simon, who is shameless. Demosthenes was renowned among ancient critics for his
forcefulness (deinotēs), and he brings all his powers to bear from the start of the speech in contrasting his
decent client Ariston with the violent Conon. In sum, I shall investigate how these consummate logographers
not only provided their clients with an appropriate text, but also through that text led them to perform the
speech in a persuasive and winning manner.
Claudio García Ehrenfeld (KCL)
Can a ἰδιώτης be a Better Guide than a Philosopher on the Road to Happiness?
Panel: Multifaceted Lucian
Lucian’s Hermotimus has sometimes been considered a ‘Platonic’ dialogue written under the influence of
Scepticism. In this dialogue Lycinus – one of Lucian’s masks and a ‘new-Socrates’ – debunks Hermotimus’
archetypical stoicism, convincing his interlocutor to join the life of laymen. But, does Lycinus really think that
the life of the ἰδιώται is an alternative to the philosophical life or is he toying with the language of protreptics?
An analysis of the logical and philosophical level of discourse and the imagery of the professional guide and the
road shows that laymen do not have a privileged position, but that they are a useful contrast for the comedy
of philosophy. Contrary to the fictionalized journey of the flight of the soul to heaven or to the underworld, in
the Hermotimus the impossibility of the philosophical quest charges the dialogue with a sense of immobility. I
extend my argument by showing that Lucian is not parodying any specific text, but that he is inverting the
literary convention of the conversion to philosophy and of the flight of the soul.
Esther Eidinow (Nottingham)
Ritual Competence, Magical Power
Panel: Assuming the Supernatural
In scholarship on ancient magic, work on the perceived power of ancient magic has focused on the role and
identity of ritual specialists, investigating the nature of their expertise: for example, claims to knowledge and
power; ritual techniques; identity and relationships with particular communities. Less attention has been paid
to those intended or identified as the targets of ‘magical’ rituals, who tend to be described simply in terms of
their role as passive victims. But in a community in which occult aggression is both practiced and feared, and in
which people claim to be the victims of magical attack, the perceived potency of ‘magic’ is co-created. This
paper argues that we must distinguish the rhetoric of ancient magic, which emphasizes the power of the
individual practitioner, from the actual social processes involved. The perceived power of magic was not
rooted simply in the exercise of a single ritual. Instead, the behaviour of targets of magic (either stipulated in
spells or occasionally documented anecdotally) reveals the intuitive, tacit knowledge of separate rituals—the
rituals of victimhood. Ritual competence was demonstrated not only by those who created spells, through
their display of specialist knowledge, but also through the behaviour of those who were targeted as, or
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perceived to be, their victims. his paper’s approach draws on the cognitive theory of ritual form developed by
Robert McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, which builds on competence theories in the field of linguistics to
explain the implicit acquisition of ritual systems, and posits an ‘action representation system’ to explain
conceptions of ritual action. This paper will use elements of this ritual theory—the role of emotional arousal,
the level of connection with superhuman agency—to explore not only the rituals of the practitioner of magic,
but also those of its victim, and the way in which, together, they created the perceived power of ancient Greek
magic.
Bridget England (UCL)
Panel: Epic and History
Julius Caesar in the Shadow of the Argonauts: Epic Intertextuality and damnatio memoriae in Valerius
Flaccus' Argonautica
Valerius Flaccus demands an extraordinary level of literary knowledge from his reader. It is only relatively
recently, however, that Valerius’ engagement with Lucan, his most recent epic predecessor, has been looked
at in a sustained manner. im Stover (20 2), for example, argues that Lucan’s deconstructive tendencies act as
a ‘poetic point of departure’ for Valerius’ narrative of renewal and recovery. Surprisingly, the consequences of
Valerius’ engagement with Lucan for the figure of Julius Caesar – the protagonist of Lucan’s epic and the
forefather of the dynasty which had just been supplanted by the Flavians – have yet to be examined, until
now. Placing the Argonautica within its historical and political context through consideration of contemporary
inscriptions and coinage (asking, for example, how Vespasian squared his careerism under Caligula, Claudius
and Nero with his position at the head of a brand new dynasty), this paper uses Valerius’ appropriation of
Lucan’s Caesar to investigate what this might mean for how the memory of Julius Caesar was treated in
Vespasianic Rome. The reader of the Argonautica is frequently invited to recall the deplorable behaviour of
Lucan’s Caesar and to contrast it with the admirable conduct of Valerius’ characters. Lucan’s Caesar is inverted
and replaced, in much the same way that Vespasian’s public art collection inverted and replaced the private
collection of Nero’s Domus Aurea. It is the very lack of ‘Caesarian’ behaviour that is on display. he absent
presence of Lucan’s Caesar thus serves as a kind of literary damnatio memoriae, the reader’s literary
knowledge making it clear whose name has been rubbed out. Caesar’s trace in Valerius’ text is therefore a vital
and hitherto unexplored aspect of Caesar’s reception in Vespasianic Rome. Further still, it opens up wider
questions about the relationship between literary appropriation and memorialisation at the Julio Claudian –
Flavian crossroads.
Christopher Farrell (Birmingham)
On the Socratica of Xenophon: a Re-classification
Panel: Xenophon
The present paper examines, and proposes a modification to, our current conception of what constitutes a
‘Socratic’ work for Xenophon. he label ‘Socratica’ typically is restricted to those dialogues in which Socrates
prominently features (e.g. Apology, Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, and Symposium), though occasionally is
extended to works in which Socrates appears as a historical figure (e.g. Anabasis and Hellenica). On the basis
of the internal, intertextual relationship apparent throughout Xenophon’s corpus, which I shall illustrate
throughout, I argue that Xenophon signals to readers that all of his works were ‘Socratic’. It also appears that
Xenophon intended his writings to be a continuation of the mission of Socrates and of Xenophon’s defence of
Socrates, which claimed that the philosopher truly was a benefactor of Athens. To illustrate this, I offer case
studies of Xenophon’s so-called ‘technical treatises’, particularly Cynēgetikos (On Hunting), Peri Hippikēs
(Concerning Horses), and Hipparchikos (Cavalry Commander). It is argued that although Socrates nowhere
appears, let alone is alluded to, in such works, each treatise outlines, develops, and extends discussions,
themes, and types of knowledge that Xenophon outlines in Memorabilia and Oeconomicus as central to
‘Socratic’ education. Moreover, in developing and disseminating these areas of knowledge, it is argued that
20
Xenophon presented himself to ancient audiences, including other Socratics, as an ideal Socratic pupil, citizen,
and leader.
Trevor Fear (OU)
The HBO Cleopatra: “They turned a great heroine into a pop culture slut”
Panel: Onscreen Receptions
The HBO/BBC Rome series presented an excellent opportunity to test preconceptions about Cleopatra in a
wider public forum. The opening episode of the series on BBC 2 drew in an estimated 6.6 million UK viewers,
nearly a third of all the people in the country who were watching a TV at the time. The stakes, then, were quite
high as to how this specific image of Cleopatra might interact with wider popular preconceptions of this
historical figure. In this way, the responses of viewers to this Cleopatra promised to provide an interesting
barometer both as to how she was seen in contemporary popular consciousness at the time and the
parameters of this consciousness.
Contemporary posts on some blogs and websites, including HBO’s own chatrooms, showed a marked polarity
in responses to this particular depiction of Cleopatra. On the one hand there were vitriolic comments
condemning this Cleopatra in terms of promiscuous sexuality as a “nympho”, “ho” and “slut”, and on the other
hand opinions that saw this Cleopatra’s manipulation of her sexuality as a positive response to the necessity
and expediency of the situation she found herself in. Here lines were being drawn between those who saw a
woman’s use of her sexuality, and her enjoyment of it, as something acceptable and indeed positive, and those
who took this as the grounds for labeling a woman a slut. Interestingly, too, these two opposing camps tended
to map onto those who were comfortable with contemporary pop culture Cleopatras and those who saw them
as distortions of a historical truth. As the series also coincided with a wider debate in society over female
sexuality, as branches of third wave feminism attempted to recuperate precisely such terms as “ho” and “slut”,
then the debate over this particular Cleopatra can be seen as a microcosm of a much wider cultural and social
dialogue. This was not just about how an audience saw a past Cleopatra but also about how it saw itself.
Bethany Flanders (TCD)
Non audet scribere dextra: Misdirection and the Epistolary Identity of Ovid’s Medea
Panel: Ovid
In this paper, I argue that there are two competing epistolary identities in Ovid’s Heroides 12, one of the least
familiar poems of the collection. I suggest that the letter conspires to reveal both the character of the writing
heroine, and the image of that heroine created through the narrative. he first or ‘overt’ identity is that of the
naïve Medea, victim of the hero and of her own fate. The second – or ‘covert’ – identity is that of the writing
heroine crafting a self-justifying fiction to abdicate responsibility for events both past and future.
Medea’s position in between the narrative chronologies of Apollonius and Euripides makes her highly unusual
amongst the Heroides. Where we know that the other heroines’ envisioned futures are impossible, foreclosed
by the dominant narratives of the literary canon, Medea appears to be ‘filling in’ the gaps, tracing a clear and
plausible path between her epic and tragic selves. We struggle to treat Medea’s letter as a fantasy because the
account so closely resembles her established history – we know that the terrible deeds alluded to will indeed
happen. Ovid’s Medea thus disrupts our tendency to read the Heroides as mere ‘what-ifs’; she challenges the
reader to reconcile her with the literary tradition, instead of relegating her to its outside.
Through this appropriation of the tradition, Ovid compels his reader to mediate between the two identities of
his epistolary heroine. In order to understand the proffered shift from the epic to the tragic, we must decide
which of these Medeas we believe – the puella simplex or the calculating queen. The poem provokes
uncomfortable questions for the student conditioned to the ‘invulnerability’ of canonical narratives. What do
we make of a heroine who appears to be at once part of the tradition and yet its most sceptical revisionist?
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Harriet I. Flower (Princeton)
M. Porcius Cato's Failure to Reach the Consulship
Panel: Dealing with Defeat
Marcus Porcius Cato (Uticensis, pr. 54, RE 16) was one of the leading politicians of the mid-first century BC,
famous as Caesar's bitterest opponent and a staunch defender of republicanism. This paper will examine his
defeat in the consular elections in 52 BC (for the consulship of 51) and his subsequent decision not to run again
for the highest office. Amidst the whirl of activity that formed the build-up to civil war, in which Cato went on
to play a decisive role, his decision not to pursue the consulship has often received brief attention. There were
many reasons why Cato would have sought and expected to attain the consulship (his family background, his
age and previous career, his high political profile in Rome, and his consistent opposition to Caesar in the late
fifties). Yet he mounted what seems not to have been a full election campaign in 52 and then did not stand
again either in 51 or in 50. Given his previous reaction to defeats and setbacks, in elections and other political
initiatives, as well as in his private life, it is quite surprising that he did not try again. Other politicians, including
some from patrician families, stood more than once before being elected during these years. Was Cato
disappointed, as Caesar claimed, at his electoral defeat (BC 1.4.1)? If so, then why did he not run again? Were
there any political advantages in not seeking the highest office after a first defeat? Was Cato's choice
traditional or a departure from politics as usual? This paper will explore Cato's choice both in personal terms
and within the context of the intricate and rapidly evolving political situation during these turbulent years.
Frances Foster (Cambridge)
Teaching Virgil in Late Antiquity
Panel: Education and Classics
Suetonius tells us that Virgil's poetry was taught in school during the poet's own lifetime, and Virgil became an
important part of the Roman school curriculum from the early empire into late antiquity. The most famous
surviving extended commentary on Virgil from late antiquity is by Maurus Servius Honoratus. Servius himself
worked as a teacher, a grammaticus, at Rome, and taught Virgil's poems (among other authors and topics) to
the sons of the elite. Servius lived somewhere between 354 and 430, according to Phillipe Bruggisser (1999)
and Alan Cameron (1966), although Charles Murgia has suggested that the commentary was completed by 410
(2003). His commentary on Virgil is no doubt the result of his experience in teaching the poet, and may have
been intended as a tool to help other grammatici do the same. The pedagogical practices implied within the
commentary remain somewhat under-examined. Hence I propose to examine some of the ways in which
Servius may have taught Virgil in his classroom. Servius's commentary suggests that he taught language and
grammar through Virgil, but also used Virgil's language to teach a wide range of other subjects relevant to his
students at the time. I will support this analysis with references to some contemporary accounts of learning
Virgil in the classroom, such as Augustine's recollections in the Confessions.
Andreas Fountoulakis (Crete)
Panel: Greece and the East
When Dionysus Goes to the East: On the Dissemination of Greek Drama beyond Athens
During his campaign in the East Alexander the Great was accompanied by performers who presented Greek
theatrical works on various occasions. The production of drama soon became a popular practice encouraged
by Alexander’s Successors in most parts of their kingdoms. While in recent years the expansion of Greek drama
in the West – most notably in South Italy and Sicily – has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, little
research has been conducted on the presence of Greek drama in the East during the Hellenistic and Roman
periods. The aim of this paper is to shed light on some of the reasons that led to the dissemination of Greek
drama in the East. Having as its starting point evidence concerning theatrical activities in the Hellenistic
kingdoms of the East, this paper will examine first the social function of such activities in the political and
cultural contexts of the new kingdoms.
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This will lead to a subsequent examination of the potential reception in those contexts of theatrical works
ranging from fifth-century Athenian tragedies to the comedies of Menander and the Exagoge of Ezekiel, a
Greek tragedy on the story of Moses and the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. It will be argued that the performance
of Greek plays in the East may be seen in relation to tensions and anxieties generated by the contact between
East and West, while it contributed to the construction of a kind of collective cultural memory which
reinforced political and cultural identities developed within the boundaries of the Hellenistic kingdoms.
It was also related to the construction of a common cultural language which had an intrinsically Greek
character, but was used so as to serve the demands of various political and cultural contexts developed
throughout the Hellenistic world.
Maria Fragoulaki (Birkbeck)
Death in Thucydides and Homer
Panel: Epic and History
This paper will look at representations of death in Thucydides and Homer, two archetypal war reporters, as
part of a large-scale investigation of the intertextual relationship of the fifth-century historian to the earliest
Western poet. Inevitably, war provides a setting in which the threats, and the actual occurrences, of death,
injury, illness, physical and emotional violence and pain are experienced with particular frequency and
intensity. his emerges too from hucydides’ account of the first twenty years of the Peloponnesian War (431404 BC), which opened deep material and emotional wounds not only in the two leading Greek cities, Athens
and Sparta, but also in the greatest part of the Greek world of the time that was involved in this destructive
war, and where ‘every form of death ensued’ ( h. . 8 ). What are the forms of life-threatening situations in
Thucydides and the narrative modes employed for such descriptions (e.g. individual – collective, episodic –
telescopic, amount and distribution of detail), and how does hucydides’ text resonate with analogous
representations in Homer? What is the set of emotions that are generated by, and interact with, the
phenomenon of death in Thucydides, with fear and anxiety holding a prime role, but also hope, desire, and
love (erōs)? What are the psychological, ethical, and institutional ‘antidotes’ to the fear of death for the
individual and the ancient Greek city? In the investigation of this intertextual relationship through the theme
of death, special attention will be given to the intimate experience and knowledge of the Homeric text by
hucydides’ contemporary audience and to the meaning created against this background.
Maria Giulia Franzoni (St Andrews)
Homer and Leopardi: 19th Century Interpretations of Unhappiness in the Iliad
Panel: Homer and Virgil
Unhappiness is not (just) an emotion. According to Giacomo Leopardi's (1798-1837) analysis, the Iliad presents
infelicità not as a circumstantial emotional perturbation, but instead as a feature inherently attached to the
conditions of human suffering. With his interpretation of the notion of the human condition in the Iliad,
Leopardi stands at a turning point in the history of the interpretation of antiquity. On the one hand he rejects
the moralizing interpretations employed for example by the defenders of antiquity in the Querelle des Anciens
et des Modernes to soften the boldness of Homeric statements about the misery of man's condition. On the
other hand he finds in the Iliad a precocious, conscious, and coherent interpretation of the unhappiness of the
human condition. This very perspective on the Greek worldview was soon to call forth two of the most groundbreaking works on ancient thought in the 19th century, those by Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche.
The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the Iliad’s ideas about unhappiness and the human condition
in the light of Leopardi's “pessimistic” readings. he first section of the paper will concentrate on Leopardi's
various assessments of the meeting of Achilles and Priam in Iliad 24. The second section will focus on
Leopardi's theory that sees sventura as the core concept of the Iliad. There will be constant attention
throughout the paper to placing Leopardi's interpretations of the Homeric passages against the wider
background of the history of the interpretation of antiquity. As such this paper touches upon both the rich yet
23
under-studied topic of the existence of pessimistic thought in ancient Greece and on the history of its study
and reception in the 19th century.
Richard Fynes (de Montfort)
'From whose bourn no traveller returns?’ - Birth, Death and Life in the Vedic Brahmanas
Panel: Escape
This paper will begin by providing an overview of the key Vedic texts to be considered within the period circa
700-400BCE. The concept of a shared Indo-European heritage informing the literatures of ancient India an
ancient Greece will be questioned. The paper will then move on to examine ideas regarding the transition
between life and death in the context of Vedic cosmology as exemplified in the Brahmanas, texts whose
primary concern is with the praxis of Vedic sacrifice but which also contain exegesis and mythological material.
The paper will consider to what extent it is possible to discern in the Brahmanas a development of ideas about
life and death that would eventually lead to the theory of cyclical death and rebirth as described in the early
Upanisads. The paper will conclude by positing changes in material culture and society that may have
impacted on these ideas.
Nick Geller (Michigan)
Iphigenia among the Moderns: Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris
Panel: Radical Re-imaginings
Verteufelt human. “Damned humane.” hat is what Goethe called the heroine of his Iphigenie auf Tauris
(1779). And not without reason. His Iphigenia cares so much for her fellow human beings – whether her
brother or her barbarian captor – that it almost strains belief. Not for her are the deceits that her Euripidean
predecessor happily embraces in order to escape from auris. Goethe’s heroine rejects such tricks, calling
them “doubly hateful” (doppelt...verhaßt) to her sensibilities, and relies instead upon her friendship with the
Taurian king. Recent scholars have seen this play as an exemplary “work of the Enlightenment” that “fuses the
bloodstained old myth with a modern moral consciousness” (Pugh 2002). If we attribute the differences
between the two Iphigenias to such generalizations, however, we run the risk of overlooking the brilliant
subtleties of Goethe’s adaptation as well as the specific aspects of Euripides’ play that attracted and inspired
Goethe to adapt the Greek tragedy.The point of this paper will be to explore what caused this radical change in
Iphigenia’s nature two millennia later. My analysis will be divided into three parts. First, I will briefly examine
the most significant changes that Goethe made to Euripides’ heroine. I will then set those divergences in the
th
context of 18 -century German Classicism during the Enlightenment, comparing Goethe’s adaptation to that
of his contemporary, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and looking at Friedrich Schiller’s critique of the play in a
private correspondence from 802. Finally, I will return to Euripides’ play with this cultural context in mind to
suggest what in the original version might have inspired Goethe to make his Iphigenia so “damned humane.”
Jennifer Gerrish (Temple)
An Epic Duel in Caesar's Bellum Gallicum
Panel: Epic and History
This paper explores Caesar's adaptation of the topos of the epic duel in his depiction of the rival centurions
Vorenus and Pullo (BG 5.44). Caesar uses this topos to help shape his portrayal of his soldiers (and thus,
implicitly, his own leadership) as outstanding. The peculiarity of the Vorenus and Pullo episode invites
attention; Caesar devotes an entire chapter and a quotation in oratio recta (rare in this book of the BG) to two
otherwise unknown centurions whose exploits had no bearing on the outcome of the battle. Recent Caesarian
scholarship has embraced Caesar as a truly “literary” author, rather than the compiler of dry facts in
commentarius form. Scholars have demonstrated ways in which Caesar uses historiographical allusions to
enrich his commentaries (e.g., Gerrish 2013 on Caesar and Thucydides, Krebs 2006 on Caesar and Herodotus),
but Caesar's interaction with the epic tradition has not been discussed in depth. In BG 5.44, Caesar treats the
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epic duel as a Contean “code model”; he does not allude to a specific referent through linguistic echoes, but
rather invokes the epic world by employing the conventional features of the epic duel. For example, Pullo
verbally challenges Vorenus to settle their rivalry in battle, and the rest of Caesar's men serve as witnesses and
judges. The duel notably diverges from convention in its outcome. Vorenus and Pullo each excel in turn, and it
is impossible to determine which of the two surpasses the other in virtus. Caesar thus adapts this trope in a
way that highlights the supremacy of his army; Caesar's men are so well-matched in virtus that not even an
epic duel, a means of differentiating and ranking heroes, can prove one less worthy than the other.
Zina Giannopoulou (California)
Oedipus Meets Bucky in Philip Roth’s Nemesis
Panel: Fiction
Philip Roth’s last novel Nemesis (2010) is a tale of guilt, suffering, and the absence of redemption. Set in
Newark, NJ, in the polio summer of 1944, it tells the story of Bucky Cantor, a physical education instructor at a
public school, who devotes his life to caring for the children in his charge having been exempt from the draft
due to his poor eyesight. In the midst of general panic he stays calm and performs his job dutifully.
Unbeknownst to himself, Bucky carries the virus and when he joins his girlfriend in the virus-free Pennsylvania
he spreads it to others and becomes sick himself. A cripple after treatment, he spends his life alone,
bemoaning the suffering he has caused and railing against an incomprehensible god.In his review of the novel,
J.M. Coetzee mentions themes that Nemesis shares with Oedipus Rex: hubris, the irony of a leader fighting
against a plague that he himself carries, and the havoc wreaked on humans by chance or god. In my paper, I
take this line of thought further and look at Nemesis as a synthetic reworking of Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at
Colonus. I establish the latter connection on the basis of the narrator, Arnie Mesnikoff, who survives the polio
of 944 and has made his peace with what befell him. Arnie, I suggest, is Bucky’s double, the character hiding
behind the narrator’s impersonal ‘I’ for most of the novel and revealing himself toward the end as Bucky’s
healthy in spirit alter ego. Nemesis thus continues Roth’s engagement with fictional doubles and charts the
progression from crime and self-punishment in Oedipus Rex to bad luck and self-acceptance in Oedipus at
Colonus. Along the way, I register the political echoes of the Second World War in this double exploration of
the nature and limits of knowledge and moral responsibility.
Elena Giusti (Cambridge)
Ovid’s Tireestias: Ovid, Tiresias and Tristia
Panel: Poetry Worth Lamenting
his paper argues that the episode of iresias’ undeserved punishment at Met. 3.316-38 can be read as a
double for the poet’s own punishment, thus turning this relatively neglected scene into one of the most
significant passages for the stale debate of the relationship between Metamorphoses and exile poetry. First, I
will emphasise the clear parallels between Ovid and the first non-divine uates of the Metamorphoses, an
auctor who is here summoned by Juno and Jupiter to act as judge in an apparently frivolous quarrel by virtue
of his status as praeceptor amoris, expert of men’s and women’s sexual pleasures alike. I will then let Tristia
emerge from the Metamorphoses’ ‘ iresias’ by pointing out clear verbal and thematic echoes of exile poetry in
these lines. Additionally, I will argue that similarities between Juno and Livia as portrayed in exile poetry may
shed further light on Livia’s involvement in Ovid’s crime and punishment. While the scene’s legal vocabulary
can be read against Augustus’ authoritarian intervention in judicial matters, the conflict between poet and
princeps is rendered through a ‘prophetic competition’ between Ovid’s iresias and Augustus’ Apollo. iresias
may be a loser on the judicial level, but he is a winner as uates: in contrast to Apollo, who had been presented
in Book as ‘deceived by his own oracles’, iresias relates a truthful prophecy on Narcissus, which is an explicit
subversion of the Delphic oracle. In a period when law and jurisdiction were under serious threat, iresias’
knowledge of sexual matters cost him his sight – and yet it is thanks to this loss that he has become a true
prophet and poet. If the episode can be seen as alluding to Ovid’s own misfortunes, it would then provide
further significance to the whole experience of the exile and its poetic attainments.
25
Elizabeth Gloyn (Royal Holloway)
Passing Under the Wall: Concepts of Masculinity in the Roman Britain Movies
Panel: Across the Border
he four Hadrian’s Wall movies track the activities of Roman legionaries at and around the Wall. The Wall acts
as a boundary between the civilized and the barbarian, and thus establishes a frontier between a fixed
masculinity and a masculinity in flux. The specifically military context offers opportunities for the Roman
Britain movies to consider the role of both sexuality and violence in constructing male identity.
The focus of Centurion (2000) and King Arthur (2004) on the military unit reveals the importance of group
dynamics in establishing and policing gender. Both squads demonstrate group bonding behaviour though
dialogue focusing on women and their relationship to the soldiers; the survivors in Centurion also replicate the
norms of military life as they try to return to the Wall, although those norms slowly disintegrate over the
course of their return journey. This group identity provides the opportunity for violence as an expression of
masculinity. The shifts in the object of that violence on both sides of the Wall, particularly in King Arthur,
illustrate the role of the Wall in destabilising expectations of gendered behaviour.
Sexuality also functions as a marker of masculinity, and the movies handle this in various ways. In The Last
Legion (2007), reaching the Wall enables the two adult protagonists to act upon their heterosexual attraction;
in King Arthur, Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere reinforces a narrative of productive heterosexuality initially
established by Bors’ large British-born family. By contrast, the suppressed homosexuality of The Eagle (2011),
which underpins a traditional buddy narrative, raises questions of authority and power when Aquila must
pretend to be Esca’s slave north of the Wall. Masculinity is thus challenged, rearticulated and re-established
through the use of the Wall as a dividing line which undermines the dominance of social norms.
Anna Goddard (Pennsylvania)
Metamorphic Animals in Phaedrus’ Fables: Phaedrus as a Post-Ovidian Poet
Panel: Ovid
While Phaedrus may have been a poet who was barely acknowledged in the ancient world, he did not view
himself as unconnected with the literary sphere. In addition to relating his poetry to the Aesopic tradition of
fables, recent scholarship has shown how Phaedrus placed his poetry in the context of and in dialogue with
poetic predecessors such as Callimachus (Glauthier 2009), Horace and Virgil (Champlin 2005). However, apart
from observation of vague similarities in their shadowy persecutions (Bloomer 1997, Gartner 2007, Jennings
2009), the importance of Ovid as a predecessor for Phaedrus has not been explored.
In this paper I suggest that Ovid, although an author outside the obvious generic parameters of Phaedrus’
work, was in fact an important poetic predecessor with whom Phaedrus engages. I will focus on a group of
fables in which the figure of the deer is prominent, as well as the appearance of horns and the act of seeing
one’s own image in water. I will discuss passages from the Metamorphoses as background to highlight certain
types of motifs as metamorphic, as well as considering characters whose behavior and (mis)fortune as
metamorphic beings are especially relevant to Phaedrus’ deer, such as Io and Actaeon. I will then explore how
Phaedrus activates this cluster of motifs and characters stemming from the Metamorphoses beneath his own
animals. The supposedly fixed, fabular animals become as unhinged and unsure of their place in the world as
their metamorphic counterparts, affecting their own fate and the outcome of the fables. By demonstrating
Phaedrus’ engagement with Ovidian poetry, I hope to shed new light on the texture of Phaedrus’ fables, and
offer a fresh perspective on why Ovid could be an especially useful poetic predecessor for an author such as
Phaedrus.
26
Christopher Green (Leeds)
Plato's Phaedo and the Milindapaña
Panel: Escape
In this paper I examine four key philosophical themes and images shared by Plato’s Phaedo and the Buddhist
text Milindapaña: the appeal of death for Plato’s ideal philosopher and an enlightened Buddhist monk; the
craving for corporeality that keeps an individual rooted in a cycle of rebirth and suffering; a specific metaphor
of life as a sea of desire that requires a raft of understanding; and the concept of ascent out of water and into
the air above. The Milindapaña provides us with a particular light on Phaedo. Both texts see death as
something not to be feared and bodily life as an existence not to be desired. The inherent contradiction
between wishing death and not doing oneself harm is unsatisfactorily explained by Socrates as ‘in the care of
the gods’ (62b). But a fuller interpretation is possible once compared with Nāgasena’s response to a similar
question (II.2.4.44). Both dialogues view craving for bodily existence as a root of human un-satisfactoriness
and the root of bodily rebirth. he ideal philosophical death is a ‘release’ of the ‘pure’ soul that ‘does not drag
along with it any trace of the body’ (80e). he enlightened Buddhist’s death is similarly a ‘complete passing
away, without cleaving to the world’ (II. .5. ). Both dialogues have a concept of release or escape from
rebirth, which is presented with a powerful image of submersion in water, ascent, and reaching the upper air.
Plato uses the image of Glaucus in Republic (611d-612a) and a fish in Phaedo ( 09c-e), and Nāgasena uses an
image of a lotus flower born submerged but able to ascend into the air above. Both philosophies have a cycle
of rebirth caused by desire, and a concept of release through the cessation of bodily desire.
Leonardo Gregoratti (Durham)
Panel: Eastern Client States
Loyal to the Emperor, Loyal to the Great King: Two Alternative Ways of Building an Empire
Since Pompey’s establishment of the Roman province of Syria in 64 BC in the East, Roman leadership exerted
its political influence and territorial control over the less Hellenized areas of the Near East by maintaining a
series of client monarchs in positions of power loyal to Rome. Among the many political subjects born by the
gradual fragmentation of the Seleucid kingdom, Rome’s warlords decided to maintain only those which could
best co-operate with the Syrian provincial authorities and effectively support Roman foreign policy. Only at the
end of the first and the beginning of the second century AD, was the client kingdoms system abandoned,
having already lost its importance for the Roman ruling system in the East. Roman friendly kingdoms continued
to exist only in very peripheral areas as the frontier with the powerful Parthian kingdom.
This process parallels a similar one on the other side of the Euphrates, in the area under Parthian political
control. During their conquest of Mesopotamia, the Parthians, like the Romans, decided to maintain most of
the local political entities they encounteredin their campaigns westwards. Yet, unlike the Roman system, the
vassal kingdoms of the Parthians never ceased to be one of the most important means the Great King had at
his disposal to control key areas of his vast dominions. Parthian vassal kingdoms were never permanently
annexed, but instead grew in importance until one of them, Persis, became strong enough to take control of
the whole Parthian empire. Through an attempt to compare between the two vassal kingdom mechanisms this
paper aims to examine differences and similarities between the two government systems employed by Rome
and Parthia to face similar problems of control.
Chiara Grigolin (Durham)
Tetrapolis: Receptions of a Seleukid Heartland
Panel: Seleukid Space
More than any other Hellenistic kingdom, the Seleukid Empire included a vast number of cities. Four of them,
the cities of the so-called Tetrapolis in Syria (Strabo 16.2.4), played a significant role as centres of Seleukid
culture and power. They also maintained an important position after its collapse (Downey, 1961), and in this
paper, I look at the reception of Seleukid space by studying the foundation myths that enabled much later
Greek audiences to appropriate the Seleukid Tetrapolis for their own purposes. The foundation myths in
27
question are likely to go back to the time of the Seleukid Empire itself (Ogden, 2011). However, they are
mostly preserved in much later authors, including Libanius, who wrote an oration in praise of Antioch; and
nd
John Malalas who in his Chronographia preserves a discussion of the Tetrapolis by Pausanias of Antioch (2
century AD). In this paper, I look at a selection of passages from Libanius and Pausanias which show that this
late and understudied literature throws an interesting light on receptions of the Seleukid realm in the postSeleukid East. I contend that these Greek authors writing under Rome develop their essentially urban view of
Seleukid space in an attempt to address long-standing tensions between (Greek) city culture and imperial
(Roman) control. It is difficult to say to what extent this conception of the Seleukid realm was already
beginning to take shape under the Seleukid Empire itself; and if so, how it might relate to a shift in Seleukid
conceptions of space from an emphasis on Mesopotamia and the Iranian East (see the other two papers in this
panel) to one on Syria and the Mediterranean West (Erickson and Ramsey, 2011). Rather than trying to answer
these questions here my paper uses the foundation myths transmitted by Libanius and Pausanias to
understand better two important moments in the later reception of Seleukid space.
Jennifer Grove (Exeter)
Panel: Viewing Ancient Sexuality
Sex and History: Using Ancient Images to Tackle ‘Pornography’ with Young People
The question of sex education for young people remains contentious. Top of the agenda is how to tackle the
issue
of
‘pornography’.
Conventional
classroom
education
‘struggles
to
keep
pace’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22643072) with the ever-increasing amount of sexual imagery
available via modern media, namely the internet. he niversity of Exeter’s Sex and History project is exploring
an innovative solution to this problem. Its successful community engagement initiative uses museum artefacts
to stimulate discussion with young people around issues of sex. Roman phallic amulets, erotic lamps and Greek
vases, together with other historical material, have proved excellent tools for inspiring debate. Providing a
historical context for representations of sex and related issues of body image, sexual power and control, helps
young people to develop the skills to critically deconstruct the various models of sex and relationships they are
increasingly coming into contact with, and make informed choices about their lives. Classical imagery is
especially useful for picking apart the concept of ‘pornography’: since its mass discovery in the eighteenth
century it has been intimately tied with modern understandings of sexual imagery - who should see it and
what it is for – to the extent that the sexually-themed finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum have been seen as
the catalyst for the ‘invention’ of ‘pornography’ itself, as a distinct modern, Western category of imagery
designated as sexually stimulating (Kendrick, 1989). As researchers we draw not only on our knowledge of
ancient cultures, but the role such cultures have played in the development of modern notions of sexuality.
With support from teachers, health workers and bodies like the Sex Education Forum and Family Planning
Association we are exploring the development of a programme or resource which would bring ancient images
to the classroom in order to make a real impact in the lives of young people.
Nicholas Hanson (Oxford)
Recalling the Future: Prophecy and Memory in Homer
Panel: Cognitive Approaches
“Be patient, friends, and wait a while longer, so we can learn whether Calchas prophesied rightly or not. We
know it well in our minds, and you are all witnesses to it...” (Il. 2.299-302). With these words Odysseus begins
to retell the omen and consequent prophecy which took place as the Greeks mustered at Aulis. This is one of a
number of prophecies which are remembered by characters in the Homeric epics, the “recalled prophecy
motif” (de Jong). nusually, in Iliad 2 the context of the recalled prophecy and the prophecy itself are
described in detail and met without the customary apathy, misunderstanding, or outright hostility: Odysseus’
audience reacts with roars of approval. In this paper I will examine Odysseus’ recollection in relation to other
recalled prophecy scenes. I will stress the importance of Odysseus’ memory, suggesting that this is more
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effective than the prophecy itself. In fact, in antiquity, the prophecy was regarded as somewhat problematic;
Cicero took issue both with Calchas’ apparent silence on the petrification of the snake and his remarkable
deduction of the war’s length from the awkward number of victims involved. The field of cognitive psychology
offers further avenues for exploration. Does, for instance, ulving’s identification of “episodic memory” have
any applicability to Odysseus? Is Clay’s belief that Homer operated a form of mnemonics traceable in this
scene, and moreover, does the poet lend his technique to the hero who will take on the narrator’s role in the
Odyssey? The argument of Haft that the second books of the Iliad and the Odyssey have a strong relationship
to each other is also relevant; I will examine whether or not she is right to suggest that through this connection
the poet increasingly establishes Odysseus in the role of seer.
Rosie Harman (UCL)
Visualising Socrates
Panel: Xenophon
Xenophon’s Socratic writing makes extensive use of visual language in its representation of Socrates, and
contains a number of theoretical discussions about the purpose and effects of viewing. In the Memorabilia,
both Socrates and the Athens that executed him are offered for the reader’s visual scrutiny and judgement.
The reader is invited to look at Socrates, yet Socrates is also frequently described as looking at and analyzing
others. As Socrates and his values are set in opposition to those of other Athenians, the text’s visual language
requires the reader to position him- or herself in relation to each. In the Symposium, a series of erotic
spectacles are presented to the guests, including the spectacle of Socrates himself, and various responses are
staged. The text invites consideration of what it means to look in the context of desire, especially at the
simultaneously engaging and puzzling spectacle of Socrates. In the Oeconomicus, Socrates argues that learning
to be kalos kagathos starts with learning to look at the city in the correct way. We are also presented with
claims about what it means to look in the voice of Ischomachus, who is offered as a possible model of the kalos
kagathos, but whose valuation as such is open to question. In these three texts, as different characters view
and interpret what they see, viewing is offered as a model for philosophical and political engagement, and for
reading. Socrates seems to offer an authoritative model of the knowledgeable viewer and interpreter, yet
these texts also offer alternative ways of seeing, and allow us to look at Socrates himself from odd angles. The
texts self-consciously frame the problem of reading about Socrates as a problem of political self-positioning in
the democratic city.
Edward M. Harris (Durham)
How to ‘Act’ in an Athenian Court: Emotions and Forensic Performance
Panel: Greek Oratory
In Euripides’ Hippolytus, when heseus discovers the reason for Phaedra’s suicide by reading the note she has
left, he bursts into painful laments. he evil he suffers is ‘unbearable and unspeakable’; he is wretched
(tlamōn) (875-76). He exclaims, ‘where can I escape this burden of misery?’ (878-9). He is ‘utterly destroyed
and dead’ (879). When Euphiletus describes his reaction to the news of his wife’s infidelity in Lysias’ speech
Against Eratosthenes, he only expresses his bewilderment (Lys. 1.16-8). When he recounts how he caught his
wife and her lover in flagrante, he does not describe his own sense of outrage or emotional pain (Lys. 1.24-6).
One finds the same contrast between Oedipus’ shocked discovery of his wife’s suicide in Sophocles Oedipus
Tyrannus and Lysias’ restrained account of his brother’s execution by the hirty (Lys. 2. 7-9).
his essay will explore how litigants ‘acted’ in court when describing the wrongs they have suffered. In general,
victims speaking in court say little about their own emotions. They tended to avoid tragic vocabulary; words
like tlamōn, stenō, iō plus the vocative, etc. are entirely absent. In fact, Demosthenes could make fun of
Aeschines for tragic style in describing the Olynthians’ sufferings. his paper will suggest several reasons for
the differences between the two genres: 1) tragic acting in court would create suspicion of insincerity through
use of artificial vocabulary, 2) litigants were expected to act with restraint and display sōphrosynē, and 3) too
29
much stress on the victim’s suffering would distract the judges from the defendant’s wrongdoing. hat is not
to say that accusers did not attempt to stir the judges’ emotions (pathos), but they had to do it in more subtle
ways that would not diminish their credibility (ēthos).
Edward M. Harris (Durham)
Panel: Professionals
Many Occupations, Few Professions: Technical Specialization in the Classical and Hellenistic Greek Worlds
In Harris (2002) I discussed the nature of technical specialization in the economy of Classical Athens. Although
there was little evidence for vertical specialization (different skills needed to provide a particular good or
service), there was plentiful evidence for horizontal specialization: I discovered over 170 different occupations
for those residing in Attica. My student David Lewis has added several more, bringing the total to over 180. In
that essay, I did not make a distinction between professions and occupations. Occupations are practiced by
those with a single skill producing a particular good or service such as a smith, ship-builder etc. In the modern
world a profession requires training and professional associations such as the American Medical Association,
which has formal membership, a set of officers, and common funds. In Classical Greece and the Hellenistic
world, only three occupations began to resemble professions: dramatic artists, doctors, and philosophers. This
paper will explore why these professional organizations emerged in these spheres and not in others. In the
third century BC, however, dramatic artists formed associations (the technitai of Dionysus), which travelled
throughout the Greek world and negotiated contracts with Greek poleis. Here the reason for increased
professionalization was the expansion of the “market” for dramatic performers created by more and more
cities establishing dramatic festivals and theatres. Doctors may have also profited by the expansion of markets
through increased travel, though Hippocrates may have founded a school in the late fifth century. On the
other hand, the creation of philosophical schools may have resulted from increased specialization in
intellectual activities, making it impossible for one person to master the entire range of subjects.
Juliette Harrisson (Newman)
Narratives of Occupation in The Eagle
Panel: Across the Border
Movies have long drawn parallels between the Roman Empire and the British Empire. The epics of the 1950s
and 1960s pitted all-American heroes (Robert Taylor, Kirk Douglas) against upper-class English-accented
Romans (Peter Ustinov, Laurence Olivier) to show free American characters fighting British oppression in an
ancient context. Screen treatments of Roman Britain, as opposed to those of Italy, offer a different
perspective, but ultimately one that continues to associate Rome with imperial Britain, and particularly with
England. Although depictions of Boudicca usually portray the Britons as fighting for freedom, other screen
portrayals put a positive spin on the old narrative of Romans-as-British, with Hadrian’s Wall often depicted as a
defensive structure. Screen portrayals of the legendary King Arthur, a figure admired for fighting against
(Germanic) Anglo-Saxon invasion, frequently give Arthur a Roman heritage, linking Britain’s great hero with the
Roman Empire. The Eagle offers a different take on Roman imperial identity. The opening caption, placed over
scenes reminiscent of the river journey in Apocalypse Now, places the movie in ‘Roman Occupied Southern
Britain’, the use of the word ‘occupied’ suggesting modern parallels with occupying forces not implied by the
more usual ‘conquered’. Roman characters have North American accents, while the Britons in ’England’ have
regional English accents. The depiction of the Scots-Gaelic speaking Seal People north of the wall as Native
Americans implies a narrative of the subjugation of a native people by a white, American-accented occupying
force. This paper explores the representation of conquest and occupation in The Eagle, and the choices made
by screenwriter Jeremy Brock and director Kevin Macdonald which encourage the audience to view the Roman
Empire not as a parallel to the now mostly defunct British empire, but as an historical counterpart to the
twenty-first century USA.
30
Christer Henriksén (Uppsala)
The Uppsala Database of Dactylic Verse
Panel: Latin Metre
This paper will give a short presentation of a work in progress, The Uppsala Database of Dactylic Verse, the aim
of which is to provide a tool for the metrical analysis of Latin and Greek hexameters and elegiac distichs. The
database is designed with the purpose of being made available on the internet, using a web interface that
should allow for as many combinations of search criteria as possible, while at the same time being possible to
use with a minimum of instructions. Currently, the database consists of the complete works of Vergil, Tibullus,
Propertius, of the poems in dactylic metres of Catullus, of the Satires and Epistles of Horace; there are also
samples from Ovid (Metamorphoses 1) and Martial (the dactylic poems in Epigrams Book 9). An intermediate
goal is to include the works of Ovid and Lucretius, the poems of Cicero and the fragments of Lucilius and
Ennius before a first version of the database is made publicly available on the internet.
In the database, dactylic verses are presented as sequences of l:s and s:s (for long and short syllables), forming
metrical schemata according to the principles of Wilhelm Ott and James H. Dee. However, as the mere lengths
and number of syllables are not exclusively or even primarily what gives a Latin or Greek hexameter or
pentameter its character, a system has been developed to indicate word divisions (i.e. caesurae and diaereses)
and their positions within verses. This is important, as the number and position of word divisions play a much
greater role than long and short syllables in giving a verse a distinctive “feel”; they are also among the most
important features that distinguish Latin hexameter from Greek. Furthermore, the inclusion of word divisions
makes it possible to search also for precise metrical patterns, either extending to whole verses or to parts
thereof. Prosodic features (such as elisions, elisions of monosyllables, prodelision and hiatus) can be included
or excluded as preferred, and it is also possible to use wildcards, “and not” operators etc. At the CA 20 4,
some basic functions of the database will be demonstrated and its possible applications discussed.
Gabriel Herman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Hallucinative Emotions in Ancient Greek Warfare
Panel: Eliciting Emotions
The stress and trauma that soldiers experience on battlefields are associated with some of the most basic
emotions of self-preservation; scientists today claim that they are ‘wired’ into our human natures. The Greeks
called these emotions by names such as φόβος, δέος, δειμός and τρόμος (loosely translatable as fear, dread,
horror, terror, panic and trembling). The emotions themselves have been usefully discussed in modern
literature, but less attention has been paid to the visions they could generate. In an article published in 2011
(‘Greek Epiphanies and the Sensed Presence’, Historia 60, 2001, pp. 127-157), I argued that, on the basis of
comparative evidence, many of the Greek battlefield epiphanies described in the ancient sources can be
identified as the hallucinations known in modern psychiatric literature as ‘the sensed presence’ (hereafter SP).
Here I propose to take that argument one step further. First, I suggest bringing out a feature of the sources
that did not receive sufficient emphasis in my 2011 paper. Most of the stories of epiphanies are the result of a
long process of ‘production’, elaboration, expatiation and adornment, which does not, however, undermine
their evidential value: it is possible to ascertain that the soldiers under discussion had experienced genuine
psychic events. Second, I propose to use an SP vision reported in my own country during a military operation
(several soldiers overwhelmed by fatigue and fear reported that their lives had been saved by ‘Rachel the
Matriarch’, whom they saw distinctly), to unlock the secret of a vision which, according to Eusebius of
Caesarea (VC 1.28), was revealed to the emperor Constantine. That vision, which was allegedly instrumental in
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, was in all likelihood an SP event. As a by-product, the paper offers a
reconfirmation of the theory known in the social sciences as ‘the psychic unity of mankind’.
31
Sarah Hitch (Oxford)
Thinking through Anthropomorphism
Panel: Assuming the Supernatural
The relatively recent development of a cognitive science of religion offers a productive way forward from the
th
myth/ritual debates that characterized Classical studies on Greek religion for much of the 20 century. In
myths, gods are often portrayed as subject to many of the physical limitations of humans: in Homer, for
instance, gods are unavailable or ignorant of human activities due to physical absence, sleep and other
distractions. For many scholars, this picture of divinity could only be reconciled with the extensive ritual
performances attested throughout the Greek world by divorcing practice and story, a segregation supported
by the lack of explicit attention to gods as recipients of sacrifice in the majority of ancient sources. In the
words of Walter Burkert, “Yet the seriousness, the gravity and solemnity, of religion is bound not to the tales
about gods but to the institutions of ritual, which are mainly sacrifice, libation and prayer. These are... not
dependent upon the anthropomorphic picture of the gods as drawn in the Olympic family scenes; they would
indeed be reduced to the absurd by any consistent application of anthropomorphic ideas.” (“Homer's
Anthropomorphism: Narrative and Ritual” in D. Buitron-Oliver, ed., New Perspectives in Early Greek Art,
Washington, 81-91 [= Kleine Schriften I, 80-94].
In the cognitive science of religion, such distinctions can be collapsed through an understanding of the factors
that are mentally appealing, which promote memory and transmission of texts. Anthropomorphism is a
universal feature of world religions, and religious beliefs often center on a ‘minimally counter-intuitive’
concept, such as an omnipotent god who travels in a chariot. Minimally counter-intuitive concepts are the
most memorable, and most likely to be transmitted over time and distance, as was the case with the gods of
Homeric poetry. The way people respond to narratives, when the cognitive pressure for comprehension and
memory is relatively high, reduces the possibility for abstract thought or questioning, making the
anthropomorphic restrictions of Homeric gods more likely and more acceptable. When cognitive pressures are
higher, humans naturally imagine their gods in human-like terms, facilitated as well by the essentially
anthropomorphic constraints of language. In cognitive terms, a paradoxical notion of an omnipotent god who
desires offerings of food without actually eating them is a typical, and very successful, feature of religions
worldwide.
Stephen Hodkinson (Nottingham)
Classical Sparta: A Totalitarian Domination of State over Society?
Panel: Sparta: New Perspectives
Over the last century Classical Sparta has typically been viewed as an exceptional Greek polis. One key aspect
of Sparta’s exceptional character, on this view, was the quasi-totalitarian control which the state exercised
over the daily lives of its citizens. My paper will challenge this perspective, arguing that the state’s control over
Spartan society was more limited than usually thought; and that Spartiate life, far from being quasi-totalitarian
in character, operated through a multiplicity of public and private koinōniai which practised varying degrees of
self-regulation. One consequence of the relative absence of state control was that wealthier citizens were able
to deploy their private influence throughout Spartiate life, eventually undermining central state institutions.
Over the classical period Sparta increasingly came to exemplify less the totalitarian domination of state over
society than the permeation by society of a progressively weakened state.
John Russell Holton (Edinburgh)
Seleukos Nikator and the Anchor within Seleukid Space
Panel: Seleukid Space
The reign of Seleukos Nikator saw the institution of the Seleukid Era in the ancient Near East, an era which
continued unbroken into the reign of his son Antiochos and afterwards until the end of the dynasty.
Contemporary documentation throughout Seleukid lands was dated according to this formula. That this era
began with Seleukos’ return to Babylonia in 2/ is vital to any understanding of Seleukid imperial space, as
32
the region effectively formed the point of geographical origin for Seleukid domination. This paper will explore
how Seleukos’ mark of the anchor, recorded to be Seleukos’ royal seal and a notable symbol in omens on his
rise to kingship and in his self-presentation more broadly, contributed to the development of the concept of
Seleukid space with its centre in Babylonia. Specifically, this paper will focus on how the aetiological story of an
anchor-engraved ring in Appian (Syriaca 56), lost by Seleukos in the River Euphrates in accordance with a
prophecy that he would become king wherever he lost it, effectively centred Seleukos’ kingship in Babylonia
and represented an image of his territorial domination spanning east and west of the river. I will examine how
longstanding conceptions of the Euphrates as a boundary between east and west underpinned this story, how
paradigmatic tales of royal rings (as present for instance in Bacchylides, Herodotus, and Plato) informed its
meaning, and ultimately how the fulfilment of this prophecy tied into the development of the anchor as
symbol of Seleukos’ royal power, most prominently as circulated in his numismatic iconography. Thus with a
combined literary, historical, and iconographical approach this paper will illustrate how the anchor of Seleukos
created an image of Seleukid space with Babylonia at its symbolic centre.
Ailsa Hunt (Cambridge)
Rethinking Numen: A Word for ‘Thinking With’
Panel: Gods Approaching
My paper begins by sketching the word numen’s colourful history. Early scholars of Roman religion, infected by
nineteenth-century enthusiasm for animistic theories, interpreted numen to mean an impersonal spirit, a
precursor of anthropomorphic gods. Dumézil resoundingly challenged such thinking in 1966, arguing that
numen only made sense within a worldview which embraced gods: numen meant the will or power of a god, or
even the god himself. Ironically, despite its heated history, today numen provokes almost no debate, with
scholars simply echoing the animistic or the Dumézilian orthodoxy.
Yet numen deserves another look. Relying on my study of various epigraphical and literary attestations of
numen, I will show that previous attempts to pin down the meaning of numen have grasped the wrong end of
the stick. Roman thinkers may often have used numen to indicate a god or his will, but we miss out on much if
we try to fix numen’s meaning. For the theological value of numen lay in its ambiguity and flexibility, the very
fact that it couldn’t be pinned down. In this paper I shake up past scholarly engagement with numen by
revealing how the word was felt to be theologically good for ‘thinking with’ in Roman culture. I show Roman
thinkers insistently reverting to numen when trying to articulate what, for example, made the senate (Cic.
Phil.III.32), lightning (Luc. I.606-608), a deceased lover (CIL. 06,37965), an old wood (Stat. Theb.VI.93-94),
snowy weather (Hor. C.III.10.7-8) or the human mind (Lucr. III.144) in some way divine. Numen came into its
own when exploring the nature of objects, institutions, processes or ideas which were felt to have divine
significance, but slotted into no straightforward categories. Through examining several uses of numen we will
see Romans relying on numen’s slipperiness to question the nature and limits of the divine.
Steven Hunt (Cambridge)
Strategies for Teaching Sexually-Explicit Latin Texts
Panel: ‘Sexually-Explicit’ Latin Texts
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Headline stories in The Times and the Daily Mail on 7 June this year complained about the inappropriateness
of the inclusion of references to sexual intercourse in the text studied for an AS examination. And yet in The
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Times of 25 July a report about a teacher’s success in bringing Latin to pupils in London’s deprived E 7 district
included the following favourable quote from one of the pupils: ‘My family are from Pakistan and they would
rather I didn’t study Latin. It touches upon subjects my parents would not approve of.’ ‘Like what?’ ‘ here are
lots of sexual references. Take someone like Catullus – he was one of the dirtiest poets of all time. Some of his
stuff was real edgy.’ Such mixed messages can lead to concern by secondary school Classics teachers about
how to approach references in Classical texts which deal with similarly sensitive issues. Sharwood Smith’s view
that a successful Classics teacher should keep ‘education through Classics’ balanced with ‘education in classics’
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(1977) is one held by most teachers of Classics today, who believe that through classical texts pupils may learn
something significant about the ancient world, about humans and indeed about themselves. As a trainer of
Classics teachers I often meet career entrants who are unsure how to cope with the sorts of sexual issues
which arise in teaching classics. Deacy and McHardy have researched how sensitive issues are taught in the
classical classroom in the tertiary sector (forthcoming). Advice from teacher training institutions at secondary
level focuses on Personal, Social and Health Education teaching or on issues dealing with ethnicity, gender and
sexuality as they arise through discussions in Religious Studies or History, for example. This paper explores the
strategies some twenty practising Classics teachers use when dealing with sexual issues which arise from Latin
texts.
Elena Iakovou (Göttingen)
Oedipus Meets Sphinx in Euripides (and Other Literary Texts)
Panel: Mythography
One of the most popular elements of the Oedipus myth is the monstrous creature Sphinx which (according to
the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, the “standard” version of the myth) forced travelers in hebes to solve its
riddle and killed them if they were unsuccessful. The Sphinx was included also in the fragmentary Oedipus of
Euripides (probably produced after 4 5 BC), which shares a close intertextual relationship with Sophokles’
Oedipus Tyrannus, at the same time, though, appears to challenge the Sophoclean version at certain points of
the myth, e.g. the encounter of Oedipus with the Sphinx (TrGF fr. 540a-d .), the Oedipus’ blinding by Laius’
servants, while he is still known at Thebes only as the son of Polybus of Corinth TrGF fr. 541 K.). Although the
plot of the play is ultimately hardly reconstructable due to its fragmentary state, a close examination of the
drama in consideration with our existing knowledge about the Oedipus myth in Sophocles, Aeschylus and
other literary texts will illuminate other aspects of the myth unknown to us but not to the tragedians.
Among the innovative elements in Euripides᾿ Oedipus, very interesting is the detailed account of the Sphinx᾿
riddle and the long description of the various effects of light on the creature᾿s plumage (TrGF 540, 540a K.). I
will argue that the Sphinx episode is related within a messenger speech presenting the circumstances
surrounding Oedipus᾿ victory over the monster and the restoration of peace in the city of Thebes. My attempt
to revisit this fragmentary drama aims to demonstrate the innovative input of Euripides in comparison with
other major dramatic works of his successors derived from the heban Cycle (Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes,
Sophocles’ Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus, and Euripides’ Phoenissae) and to provide
new insights into the reception of the myth of Oedipus.
Claire Rachel Jackson (Cambridge)
Fictional Histories and Histories of Fiction in the Reception of the Ancient Novel
Panel: Fiction
At first glance, ascribing the label of fiction to the ancient novels is unproblematic. In his 1670 Lettre-traité sur
l’origine des romans, Pierre-Daniel Huet describes them as histoires feintes and views them as the natural
predecessor of the contemporary roman, a sentiment echoed by Clara Reeve in her 1785 The Progress of
Romance. By the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods, however, scholarship still viewed the ancient
novel as the equivalent of the contemporary one, but it took on all of the negative properties of accessible,
lower-class fiction, and was seen as a derivative, foreign interloper degrading classical literature. Over 250
years, the status of the ancient novel has been not only affected by, but often determined by, contemporary
anxieties about the quality of and access to fiction. What I shall argue in this paper is that in this period the
reception history of the novel illuminates the tension between the status of contemporary fiction and the
value placed upon classical study. The ancient novel is paradoxical in Victorian scholarship, because although
contemporary novels were derided for their perceived contribution to the decline of morality and literary
quality, classical antiquity was central to Victorian values and ethics. Consequently, the novel had to be
detached from classical study and instead be considered as a later Semitic degradation of true Greek literary
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skill, just as the contemporary novel was a deterioration of Victorian merit. Although the last fifty years of
scholarship have altered these views, not enough attention has been paid to how the ancient novel has been
fundamentally intertwined with contemporary views of fiction. In this paper, I shall demonstrate how the
increased availability of fiction directly affected the reception of ancient novels, and more importantly, why
this reception history still influences our view of the ancient novels as fiction.
Paul Jackson (OU)
Parménide chez Lucrèce
Panel: Cosmos and Creatures
Recent scholarship on Lucretius’ engagement with the tradition of philosophical poetry has tended to focus on
the figure of Empedocles. Lucretius was undoubtedly familiar with his work, both eulogising and criticising the
poet-philosopher by name in the first book of the De rerum natura; indeed, he was not alone. Philodemus in
his On piety mentions an Epicurean polemic treatise, Against Empedocles, and Diogenes Laertius records that
Epicurus himself wrote specifically about Empedocles. The inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda mentions
Empedocles too. While the influence of Empedocles upon Lucretius (Campbell, Furley), and especially upon the
proem to the DRN (Sedley), has been suggested and duly accepted, that of another poet-philosopher bears
further exploration. The influence of Parmenides upon Lucretius has been relatively neglected and, I argue,
underestimated. Rumpf ’s 995 article in Philologus, Lukrez und Parmenides, claims Parmenides’ influence
upon the first two books of the DRN. Gale, on the other hand, has suggested that any influence is indirect.
Although Lucretius does not mention Parmenides in the DRN, there are nevertheless striking intertextual
echoes between their works, such as Parmenides’ ἐν δὲ μέσωι τούτων δαίμων ἥ πάντα κυβερνᾶι (F 2)
perhaps being answered by Lucretius’ quae…rerum naturam sola gubernas (DRN I.21) or solis cursus lunaeque
meatus…flectat natura gubernans (DRN V.76-7). This paper will draw out some of these parallels, and go
beyond Rumpf to advocate a Parmenidean influence upon the DRN as a whole, with respect to both Lucretius’
mode of expression, and the very substance of the DRN and the Epicurean physics it imparts. It will thus
demonstrate that there really is a Parmenides within Lucretius, and perhaps allow for further illumination of
Parmenides, as well.
Paula James (OU)
Panel: Visual Narrative
Picture This! – or Don’t: Ovid’s Figurative Language and its Function in the Metamorphoses.
This paper is a partial palinode in which I plan to problematize the notion of visualisation in Ovid’s epic poem.
Ovid as Cinéaste (Simone Viarre explored his cinematic sense over fifty years ago) is a notion that has inspired
scholars who work on classical reception on film and television. My monograph, Ovid’s Myth of Pygmalion on
Screen, focused on the ways in which movies might bring Pygmalion’s statue into the realm of the moving
image and help us see her differently in Ovid’s text. Martin Winkler’s Ovid and Cinema: a montage of
attractions reinforces the affinities between verbal and visual storytelling, boldly claiming that ‘Ovid’s creative
imagination is admirably suited to, and even expressive of, the nature of cinema.’ However, the similes Ovid
employs in the Salmacis and Hermaphroditus myth of Book Four have prompted me to rethink the implications
of his imagery in this episode and elsewhere. For instance, in the struggle between watery nymph and
beautiful boy Ovid deliberately dissipates our visualisation (scrambles the pixels?!) by giving us more than one
option of comparison. In doing so, he is providing us with visually redundant but narratively significant
pointers. The similes demonstrate the connections between myths and mythical figures far apart on Ovid’s
literary landscape who act as an ethical and even ideological commentary upon Salmacis’ actions. On the other
hand the post classical reader might miss visual references in those narrative descriptions untrammelled by
metaphorical or ecphrastic strategies. Cinematic terminology is indeed very helpful (and possibly more
accessible) in teasing out the techniques of visualisation and narration employed by Ovid but we should not
lose sight of the literary intratexts that a preoccupation with the ‘to be looked-at-ness’ of Latin poetry might
obscure.
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Theodora Jim (Lancaster)
Seafaring and ‘Saving’ Gods in Ancient Greece and China
Panel: Comparative Approaches
Comparisons between Greco-Roman and Ancient Chinese History have proved to be enlightening in recent
scholarship; yet comparisons between Ancient Greek and Ancient Chinese religions remain a rare endeavour.
This paper adopts a comparative approach to examine the concept of ‘salvation’ (soteria) and the
phenomenon of divine ‘saviours’ (soteres/soteirai) in Ancient Greece and China. Both religious systems were
polytheistic, with a range of gods with varying ‘saving’ functions; both provided worshippers with a diversity of
recipes for their well-being and deliverance in different aspects of life. My focus will be on ‘saving’ deities in
maritime activities, arguably the most dangerous sphere of life in antiquity in which divine saving was most
necessary. In particular I will compare the Greek Dioscuri and the Chinese goddess Mazu (媽祖), both of whom
were divine specialists in maritime ‘saving’. A combination of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence
will be exploited to assess the role of these gods in people’s religious experiences, the hopes and fears of
ordinary people, their relations with the gods, and their religious beliefs and presuppositions about divine
power. The following aspects of the deities will be considered: their process of heorization, cult epithets,
iconography, modes of operation, and acts of worship (such as sacrifice and dedications) addressed to them.
While the historical settings and cult practices differ in the two cultures, the participants’ basic psychology may
transcend cultural boundaries and may prove comparable.
Crysta Kaczmarek (Leicester)
A Name and a Place: Civic Identity in Roman Thessaly
Panel: Romans in our Space
hessaly’s geographic position, natural resources, large fertile plains and access to the Aegean made it an
attractive platform for a number of power struggles in antiquity, culminating in its incorporation into the
Roman provincial system alongside Macedonia and the rest of Greece in the 1st century BCE. As a result of
these conflicts, changes took place in settlement and land use patterns: cities, towns and countryside were
changed forever as a result of the destruction and devastation that follows long periods of battle and siege.
Settlements were founded, destroyed, and re-founded, populations killed, enslaved, and forcibly moved, while
new groups such as soldiers, auxiliaries, merchants, and camp followers of all kinds were introduced into local
networks. Since an important facet of a Greek’s identity was related to their polis or ethnos, it is very likely
that these drastic changes would have had an impact on the formation, negotiation and expression of their
civic identity. Using the Thessalian region of Pelasgiotis as a case study, I will employ a regional, micro-regional,
and local approach and will incorporate identity, cultural-interaction, landscape, and network theories in order
to investigate the factors impacting civic identity expression in Roman Thessaly. In doing so, I will reach a more
nuanced understanding of how civic identity was expressed, what changes took place during the Roman
period, and how civic identity expression may have been used as a social strategy by different groups and
individuals in response to changes in the wider political, economical, socio-cultural contexts of Thessaly during
the Roman period (1st century BCE to 2nd century CE).
Tony Keen (OU)
Panel: Across the Border
A Wild West Hero: Motifs of the Hollywood Western in the Four Hadrian’s Wall Movies
One noticeable thing about the Hadrian’s Wall movies is the degree to which they employ the plot structures
and mise-en-scène of the classic American western. The villa north of the Wall in King Arthur, which makes no
sense in terms of Roman settlement patterns, becomes comprehensible as the equivalent of the isolated
homestead that needs rescuing by the US Cavalry. Centurion, as Neil Marshall freely admits, steals
substantially from the prolonged chase of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, including a virtual recreation of
that scene’s climax. The Seal People of The Eagle are visually coded in costumes and make-up reminiscent of
recent cinematic depictions of Native Americans, such as that seen in Dances with Wolves. Only The Last
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Legion avoids that approach, choosing instead to appropriate the mysticism of Star Wars (which has itself been
described as a Western in disguise). This paper asks why such elements are so attractive to makers of Roman
movies that they want to use them to supplement the more traditional tropes of the epic. Why does The Last
Legion choose a different route? If moviemakers are so keen to make disguised Westerns, why are they not
making real Westerns? Perhaps there is a certain portrayal of the Other that is no longer acceptable when
applied to Native Americans, but can be applied on a different continent and at a greater chronological
remove.
Deborah Kerr (Windsor High School)
Panel: Teaching
Never Vex Angry Gorillas Doing Arithmetic: Using Strategies to Support a Dyslexic Learner in a Whole-Class
Setting for Latin Teaching
In 2012-2013 I worked with a Year 10 dyslexic pupil for an assignment as part of my training as a Latin teacher.
His understandable reluctance to be singled out as needing _‘special help’ led me to introduce dyslexiafriendly strategies for unlocking Latin grammar to the entire class. To my delight many pupils demonstrated an
improvement in their grammatical understanding of the language, with a number of them - including my
original subject - reporting that Latin (a subject that they had studied for almost 4 years) had finally ‘clicked’
for them. In this paper I shall detail the strategies that I implemented, including mnemonics, old-school rote
chanting, pattern-spotting, and even kinaesthetic dance! I shall also discuss how multi-sensory learning common in modern foreign languages teaching, and gaining ground in ancient languages teaching - is key in
making language learning accessible for all.
Sonya Kirk (Nottingham)
Lord Byron’s Latin Grammar
Panel: Education and Classics
Like so many young men of his time and station, Lord Byron’s formal education included attendance at one of
the ‘Great Public Schools’; he attended Harrow from 1801 to 1806. Whilst there, he would have dedicated
most of his school hours to the study of classical languages and literature, learning the finer points of Latin
grammar through the Eton Latin Grammar or Lily’s Latin Grammar. Using these textbooks as primary source
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material, I propose to consider what we might learn regarding 19 education and culture through the lens of
Latin grammar. Byron would have learned Latin in the age of ‘grammar grinding’, at a time when
‘schoolmasters were […] starting to believe that it was more important for their pupils to learn syntax and
scansion than to grasp and respond to the poetry they were studying’. We can see this stress on grammatical
rules in the textbooks Byron would have used. This focus on the rules of grammar informs discussion about the
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purpose of classical education, as well as educational methodologies, in the 19 century, echoes of which are
still relevant today. If we also regard these textbooks are cultural artefacts, we can gain insight into the way in
which Latin language education was used to both reflect and create Victorian Britain by exploring the content
of the Latin grammars Byron and his peers would have used. Thus, I propose to discuss the ways in which
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these textbooks portray ancient Rome, discussing topics from grammars which were relevant to 19 century
Britain, including education for empire and the role of Classics in elite education.
Guy Kirkham-Smith (Birmingham)
‘A Monstrous Change’
Panel: Greece and the East
This paper will look at the Near-Eastern influences on early Greek culture by examining the portrayal of the
monstrous in Homer and Hesiod. The thematic and cultural shifts in Greek Epic between Homer and Hesiod
are much discussed in light of increasing influence from Mesopotamian literature, with the influences of the
Enuma Elish and the Hittite Epic of Kumarbi on the Theogony of Hesiod being the most discussed. My own
research is looking into the thematic, stylistic, and mythological factors that caused a shift in literary tone in
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the Greek world around the 8 Century (to use a very loose dating for the time between Homer and Hesiod, a
dating which will be discussed both in forming my argument and hopefully reconsidered in conclusion). Much
has been made of the portrayals of heroes and gods in these texts, however this paper will consider how the
differences between the Homeric and and Hesiodic “monster” – including Echidna and her abhorrent offspring
and the many obstacles Odysseus faces – could have been influenced by increasing contact with the Near-East.
By taking literary examples and comparing them with imagery from the archaeological record, this paper will
discuss whether a tangible shift in iconic mythology coincides with the similar shift in literary mythology,
further supporting the case of Near-Eastern influence on Greek Epic.
Dániel Kiss (Munich/Dublin)
The Neoteric Generation
Panel: Catullus
This paper aims to reach a better understanding of the writings of the Neoteric poets by locating them within
their socio-historical context. As is well known, the so-called Neoterics (the term goes back to a quip of
Cicero’s) were a group of poets writing in Rome around the Fifties BCE. hey included Catullus, C. Helvius
Cinna, C. Licinius Calvus and Valerius Cato. It has been debated whether they formed a closed literary coterie
or a looser group with some shared interests. This paper argues for a related point: that the Neoterics
propagated values that found a wide resonance in their generation. That suggests that they were a more
diffuse group that was closely rooted in contemporary society. There only survive meagre fragments of the
writings of the Neoterics other than Catullus, but it is clear that alongside learned mythological epyllia they
mostly wrote short personal poems. One of the key themes of the latter, and a regular motif in the former, is
the appreciation of the pleasures of life, including love, sex and good literature. Remarks by Cicero and Sallust
suggest that this hedonistic mindset was shared by many well-to-do young men in Rome in the Sixties and
Fifties BCE. It is telling that Epicureanism was notably popular at the time. While no Neoteric is known to have
been an adherent of this philosophical school, its influence can be felt in some of the poems of Catullus, and
several friends and acquaintances of his followed its teachings or had a strong interest in it. Neoteric poetry
not only reflects this social environment, but also appears to enact it in poems about friendship and love
affairs, letters in verse, invective, praise and social commentary.
Jason Koenig (St. Andrews)
Authority and Expertise in Roman Imperial Culture
Panel: Professionals
The first half of this paper offers a broad survey of some of the techniques used for enhancing authority in the
expert writing of the imperial period, and asks how far those techniques were used uniformly across different
intellectual and professional disciplines. Recent decades have seen some important studies of selfrepresentation in individual scientific authors and disciplines, but still relatively few attempts to compare
across ancient disciplinary boundaries. I argue here for a high degree of cross-fertilisation between different
fields--including even areas of professional expertise whose identity as technai or liberal arts was far from
clear-cut--but also draw attention to the way in which some authors adapt common techniques of personaconstruction and authority-projection to unusual effect. As a case study I will look particularly at Philostratus’
Lives of the Sophists, aiming to draw out something of the complexity of that work’s representation of
expertise. In some respects Philostratus’ sophists are typical of other experts of the Roman empire, for
example in their concern with education, their involvement in competitive self-presentation, and their
intricate command over rhetorical technique (assessed by Philostratus in a way which enhances his own
literary-critical authority, in conventional if slightly idiosyncratic terms). His sophists are also repeatedly
described performing at festivals--a remarkably persistent (but not much studied) motif in the text, which
associates them implicitly with athletes and musicians, as figures whose expertise is particularly appropriate to
a Panhellenic audience. This too is not untypical of the intellectual self-presentation of the imperial period
(and of course looks back to earlier comparisons between athlete and intellectual in Isocrates and others). In
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other respects, however, Philostratus’ sophists are represented as figures whose charisma cannot be
contained within conventional models of technical expertise, not least because of Philostratus’ association of
them with oracular authority and divine inspiration.
David Konstan (Brown)
Comments on Emotions and Warfare
Panel: Eliciting Emotions
War is the locus of intense emotions, including such sentiments fear, confidence, pity, hatred, and
competitiveness. But how are we to recover how emotions are actually felt or acted upon? Borrowing the
notion of “speech genres” from Craig Williams’ recent book, Reading Roman Friendship (2012), I will seek to
interpret not real lived experience but rather different linguistic modes of expression. Basing my comments on
the papers presented in the panel, I will, accordingly, compare the way wartime emotions are described in
what we may think of as historical sources (histories, inscriptions, even the archaeology of battlefields) with
the way they are represented in philosophical and literary texts.
Ariadne Konstantinou (Tel Aviv)
Tradition and Innovation in Greek Tragedy’s Mythological Exempla
Panel: Mythography
Greek tragedy’s mythological comparisons, commonly called mythological exempla or paradeigmata, are an
indispensable source of information on otherwise poorly attested myths from the Classical period. They also
form a coherent corpus to study how tragedians appropriate from mythical tradition, not in the larger scale of
the plot — especially since the dramatization of myths in tragedy is a well-trodden field of study — but in the
microcosm of rather brief and often elusive retellings, that focus on a specific point of comparison. In this
paper, I argue that some mythological exempla in tragedy contain innovative elements, in the sense that a
certain mythological ‘fact’ of the analogy is created ad hoc, particularly when the detail is unattested
elsewhere or contains a close literary and thematic equivalence to the embedding myth. I focus on innovative
aspects in four mythological exempla. First, the reason that brought about Acteaon’s punishment (Eur. Bac.
337-40); second, the detail that Ino killed both her children (Eur. Med. 1282-92); third, the transformation of
Tereus into a hawk (Aes. Suppl. 58-76); and fourth, the agent responsible for the blinding of the Phineids
(Soph. Ant. 966-87). While I do not think that every mythological exemplum in tragedy is necessarily or
inherently innovative in its details, I hope to show that innovation on the level of details, within a broadly
traditional framework, was a possibility that all three tragedians explored in shaping the microcosm of
comparisons that draw from the realm of myth.
Lynn Kozak (McGill)
“Spare the Eels!” Troubles with Translating Humour in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata
Panel: Laughter
Translating humour is notoriously difficult, especially when that humour makes reference to the tastes and
politics of 5th century Athens. But of course this has never stopped Alan Sommerstein, who has translated the
Lysistrata for publication no less than three times. Currently translating our own version of Lysistrata for the
2014 McGill Classics play, Sommerstein’s 2007 revised version of his 990 Aris & Phillips translation has been
our main text for comparison, while his 1973 Penguin version has been a constant presence for thinking more
laterally, particularly about choral scenes. With Sommerstein’s 20 Classical Association keynote address,
“Notes of a Serial ranslator”, as well as recent articles on translating Aristophanes by Silk (2007), Robson
(2012), and perhaps, most helpfully, Ewans and Phiddian (2012), all discussing different approaches to
translating Aristophanes for a broader audience, we are faced with the seemingly rarer task of translating for a
performance that we ourselves will produce in a very short period of time. So we have to think about
translation in three dimensions—what can we do with text, music, sound, light, movement and prop to make
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this a translation and a production that resonates with a mostly English-speaking Montreal audience, on a
limited budget with no idea of the talent pool we’ll be drawing on for our cast?
his paper will then in part be a response to Sommerstein’s 2007 translation of Lysistrata, with reflections on
past theoretical and practical approaches to translating Aristophanes. But it will also be a presentation of our
own strategies around translation—including engaging local bilingual (French/ English) comedians and improv
performers to help make jokes funny in English, and clowns to teach us physical humour—and their outcomes,
based on our February 2014 production.
Christos Kremmydas (Royal Holloway)
Panel: Deception
Rhetorical Deception and the Use of Documents in Public Speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines
Athenian state documents were used as means of rhetorical proof supporting the truth claims of speakers
especially in forensic cases (see e.g. Dem. 8. 5). At the same time, they were employed in the ‘discourse of
deception’, a rhetorical strategy of characterization involving disclaimers of deception on behalf of the speaker
and allegations of deception against opponents (see Kremmydas 2013: 52): on the one hand, speakers alleged
that their opponents manipulated documents rhetorically to deceive the dicastic audience (e.g. Aeschin. 3.35),
while on the other, they invoked public documents as a (supposedly) objective means of uncovering their
opponents’ rhetorical deception (e.g. Aeschin. .75). While the citation of documents was intended to support
the speakers’ story and to reinforce the characterization of themselves and their opponents by appealing to an
external, visible, and permanent authority, it could also operate as a tool of rhetorical deception and its
detection. In this paper, I shall explore different deceptive uses of state documents identified by the orators
themselves: e.g. the citation of irrelevant documents, the accumulation of several documents to create a
misleading impression of reliability, the paraphrasing of specific clauses, the omission of key clauses and
addition of deceptively vacuous clauses.
My examination shall focus on the uses of documents in four well-known public speeches of Demosthenes and
Aeschines (Dem. 18, 19 and Aeschin. 2, 3). While strategies of rhetorical deception through documents are
also attested in other public speeches (e.g. Dem. 20, 23, 24), they are more prominent in these two couples of
opposing speeches where the roles of Aeschines and Demosthenes in Athenian foreign policy of the 340s and
early 0’s are vigorously contested and allegations of lying and deception take centre stage. In the highstakes forensic context of the trials of 343 and 330, the use documents renders the task of the dikastai
(“judges”) more complex: they are expected to judge whether deception has in fact has taken place and this
may play a role in determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant. However, the fact that the dikastai
themselves may have been victims of the orators’ deception in their different capacity as members of the
Assembly when some of these documents were first introduced to them heightens the tension they operate
under and potentially increases the effectiveness of documents as means of persuasion.
Anna Krohn (Perseus Digital Library, Tufts)
Technology and Greek in the Translation Course
Panel: Teaching
The Greek or Latin literature in translation course is useful yet problematic. It offers a glimpse into the subject
to entice first year students and to edify non majors. Instructors, however, are left with the task of attempting
to contextualize and explain works to their Greek-less and Latin-less students without the aid of the original
language to differentiate ideas. It is certainly possible to cover large concepts, such as μῆνις. If, however, the
word ‘anger’ appears past the first line of the Iliad, how is a student to know if it represents μῆνις or
something else which should impact their understanding the passage? Similarly, if given two different
translations of the same text, how can a student judge the relative merit of those translations without
knowledge of the original? In an academic environment where undergraduates are being encouraged to
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conduct original research earlier, educators cannot simply provide translations minus understanding of the
original language without robbing their students of vital information that could spur them on to further work.
This paper documents a class wherein we attempted to bridge the gap between the translations and Greek
texts. Our goal was not only to introduce our students to the works and the world where they originated but
to also provoke critical thought and allow our students to engage directly with the original texts. Using a series
of three projects, we demonstrated how they could tackle and begin to understand an unfamiliar language via
tools freely available on the internet. Based on our experiences teaching this class and reactions gathered from
our students, we propose a new potential model for literature in translation courses.
Sarah Lawrence (New England)
Remembering Your Heroes
Panel: Ethics
Whether or not one believes that Valerius Maximus is unintentionally unoriginal (Hadas 1952), deliberately
unoriginal (T. Welch 2013) or perhaps unintentionally original (Langlands 2006), it must be argued that his
collection of exempla endured because it found an appreciative audience. It has long been accepted that
Valerius voices, on behalf of this audience, a whole-hearted, straightforward endorsement of Tiberius and his
divine ancestors (Wardle 1997), with a particular preference for Julius Caesar (Bloomer 1992). This paper
examines chapter 2.10, De Maiestate, in which Valerius chooses exempla that directly pit Divus Iulius against
Cato Uticensis, a figure who here stands in for virtus itself, and whom Valerius elsewhere depicts as embodying
libertas, constantia, continentia and fortitudo. It explores the manner in which the exempla tradition allowed
competing ideologies to be reintegrated into a cohesive Roman identity on a superficial level, while
simultaneously providing space for a more nuanced exploration of the ethical problems presented by the
competing stories of the towering figures of the Late Republic. Langlands (2006, 2011) has argued that the
Facta et Dicta is designed to make its readers think about the various manifestations of morality and ethics it
presents. This paper focuses on the political to show that in De Maiestate, as in the Facta et Dicta as a whole,
Valerius expects his audience to engage with a presentation of the combatants of the last century BCE that
deliberately poses fundamental, uncomfortable questions about the way in which Romans should remember
their past.
Jack Lennon (BSR/Nottingham)
Purity, Pollution and the Construction of Religious Identity in Rome
Panel: Pollution
Pollution was a recurring problem for Roman religion, and it occurred in many different forms and contexts.
Equally, the struggle to maintain order and ensure purity lay at the heart of Rome’s efforts to achieve the
goodwill of the gods. This paper aims to explore some of the key areas in which pollution featured within
religious activity in Rome, but it also considers the extent to which shared ideas about purity and pollution
contributed to and helped to define what it meant to be Roman. When conceptualising their own religion and
customs, Roman authors frequently called upon the language of purity and pollution to describe their
relationship with the gods, and these concepts often played a significant role in their attempts to explain
Rome’s continuing (or faltering) success. The paper begins by highlighting ways in which ideas about impurity
and the vocabulary of pollution impacted on religious activities in Rome. It argues, in particular, that Rome’s
relationship with the gods and the constant struggle to ensure the pax deorum were often understood in
terms of pollution and purification, and that these ideas became even more prominent during the religious
‘restoration’ introduced by Augustus in the aftermath of the civil wars. Finally, the paper considers the hostile
reports of Roman authors concerning non-Roman religious customs and practices. Regardless of their
(in)accuracy, such reports assisted with the creation of religious and cultural boundary lines, and so
contributed to the formation of a shared religious identity in Rome.
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Melinda Letts (Oxford)
Philosophers and Professionals: The Status of the Second Century Medical Man
Panel: Professionals
Galen is well known not just for his medical skill but for his deep and lasting interest in the nature and status of
medicine and his own self-image as its guardian and protector. Both of these raise questions about the status
and authority of the physician. Though Galen expects patients to inform themselves appropriately about
medical matters, he operates a hierarchical epistemology in which his own expert knowledge is pre-eminent
and patients have comparatively little to contribute. In this paper I show that this was not the only available
paradigm for clinical discourse, and suggest that Galen’s choice of a highly autocratic modus operandi was
partly influenced by the challenge of constructing and maintaining a specialist identity in a self-consciously
intellectual culture where his educated (pepaideumenoi) friends and patients prided themselves on their
familiarity with medical theory. I discuss other factors including the identification of professionalism with
slavery and the limited ability of doctors to tackle serious medical problems, offer some reflections on the
meaning and manifestation of specialist expertise in such circumstances, and consider the implications for
ancient physicians’ self-presentation and interaction with patients.
William Leveritt (Nottingham)
Nuanced Meaning in Apparently Stable Motifs: Hercules on some Dionysian Sarcophagi
Panel: Iconography
Sarcophagi featuring Dionysus's triumphal return from India form a readily recognisable corpus. It is my
intention to show that variance in motifs within this corpus achieves wider meaning in the pieces, and that in
zealously following the tradition of transmission or digesting the iconography for its cultic meaning scholarship
has overlooked these shifts in focus or aim. These internal motif developments together provide insights into
variant messages on sarcophagus bodies which otherwise apparently demonstrate extremely close kinship.
Upon examination, I intend to show that these scenes in fact present widely differing messages. To typify the
problem I demonstrate, through appeal to previous misunderstanding of a common animal motif, how the
tenor of a scene can be wholly changed by slight amendments. The received construction of the image is one
of idyll, where exotic animals and big cats each according to their type contribute to the sense of calm; yet a
sarcophagus in Woburn Abbey notably deviates and presents through its animals a scene of cruel violence. I
intend to show that this approach is necessary for understanding these scenes. I then follow a more complex
motif | that of the drunken Hercules | which suddenly flourishes in popularity in the early Severan age before
ultimately losing ground to the sober Hercules. I demonstrate that the changes it exhibits are not deviations
from an archetype but reinterpretation into a new scene. This novel reading is tested by unifying the
observations concerning the animal and Hercules scenes in particular with the sarcophagus as a whole. The
changes in the motifs are found to be consonant with each other and to contribute individually to differing
thematic imports.
David Lewis (Edinburgh)
Panel: Slavery and Sources
Slavery Viewed Through the Lens of Gortynian Law: Generic Distortions and Methodological Principles
After Athens, the fullest evidence we possess for the legal contours of slavery in any Greek society of the
classical period derives from the inscribed laws of Gortyn on Crete. Yet these laws present challenging material
to the historian: they do not provide us with a comprehensive or straightforward picture of slavery, but
instead treat a number of legally complex issues involving slaves that required formal regulation and
clarification. And whilst these laws may have clarified such issues to the original Gortynian reader, they often
perplex modern scholars, since they are brief, sometimes elliptical, and their meaning ultimately dependent on
the contextual knowledge of Gortynian readers that is now lost to us. Using two examples from the 'Great
Code' - IC IV 72 III 40-44 and IC IV 72 II 2-16 - I will show how a superficial reading of the Code creates the
impression that slaves could own property. By looking at other areas of Gortynian law, however, especially the
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inscription IC IV 47, I will show how this interpretation is untenable: these examples allow us to extract
information on basic principles of slave law that can be applied to the interpretation of some of Gortyn's more
obscure and elliptical slave laws. This case study will enable a set of methodological propositions to be
established and demonstrated that will allow scholars to approach slavery in Gortynian law in a more rigorous
and careful fashion.
Maxine Lewis (Auckland)
Landscape, Place, and Space in Catullus: Developments in Theories and Methods.
Panel: Catullus
This paper surveys the merits and drawbacks of various methods currently used to analyse space and place in
Classical literature, through the case study of Catullus’ corpus. In the past three decades, the study of
geography, landscape, and space in ancient texts and cultures has been a growing field of concern (Spencer
2010, Talbert 2010, Larmour and Spencer 2007, Talbert [ed.] 2004). This explosion of interest in how peoples
in antiquity perceived, experienced, and represented space has been influenced by the approaches of other
disciplines and intellectual movements, including psychogeography, landscape archaeology, and human
geography. Hence, within Classics and ancient history, literary specialists currently have a plethora of
theoretical and inter-disciplinary methods and perspectives to choose from in analysing texts that engage with
the physical world. The diversity of potential approaches to place is matched in Catullus’ corpus by the
heterogeneous nature of his poetry. In a collection bursting with metres, genres, and themes, one theory of
space is not enough. This paper outlines approaches that have been taken thus far in the study of Catullus’
treatment of place (primarily semiotic analysis, the study of genres, and reader-response theory). It also
surveys the benefits and problems of using inter-disciplinary theories such as psychogeography or human
geography to analyse Catullus’ poetry. For future directions, the paper advocates the use of semiotic analysis
in combination with the insights of human geographers as instigated in Tuan (1977), and post-colonial thinkers
such as Said (1994).
Mair Lloyd (OU) and James Robson (OU)
eLearning for Ancient Languages in UK Universities
Panel: New Approaches 2
This paper reflects on ab initio Classical Latin and Ancient Greek teaching and learning in UK University Classics
departments, sketching out the results of a recent survey of UK university departments. It reports on current
practice – the main approaches and methods in use, their success in delivering course aims and tutor opinions
of their efficacy. It describes the current use of technology, views on its value, and plans for future
development. The paper also briefly describes a framework for a variety of second language eLearning tools
which might enhance current pedagogy and proposes evaluation of their usefulness for ancient languages.
Emily Lord-Kambitsch (UCL)
Tracing ‘Roman’ Emotions in the Historical Novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
Panel: Fiction
The study of ancient Greek and Roman socio-cultural attitudes to emotions, emotional expression, and the
management of emotions, pioneered by works of Robert Kaster [(2005) Emotion, Restraint, and Community in
Ancient Rome], David Konstan [(2001) Pity Transformed], and others, has drawn the attention of scholars
within and beyond the realm of Classics to central questions surrounding social functions of emotions. Such
exploration of the emotionology [to use the term employed by Peter Stearns and Jan Lewis in their
introduction to (1998) An Emotional History of the United States], or standards governing emotional behaviour
in ancient civilizations has led me to this paper’s aim, an investigation into the reception of ‘Roman’
emotionology in the nineteenth century. I venture to trace the development of ‘Roman’ emotions in Lew
Wallace’s 880 historical novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, in order to evaluate the ways in which Roman
43
emotionology was manipulated by Wallace, and received by its initial readership. The novel falls into a pattern
of nineteenth-century historical fiction that features a Roman Empire characterized by decadence and
oppression of subject peoples, particularly Jews and Christians, from whose point of view the narratives are
generally written. In order to solicit the interest, and emotions, of readers, Wallace needed to provide
protagonists with familiar attitudes and behaviours surrounding emotions, particularly as they related to
Christianity and morality according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, as it was interpreted in the nineteenth
century United States, where the novel was published. I shall examine emotions associated with Romans in
Ben-Hur to address these questions: which specific emotions do Romans manifest in the novel, and how are
they presented? What are the differences between ‘Roman’ emotions and ‘Christian’ or ‘Jewish’ ones? Under
what emotionology do Romans in Ben-Hur operate, and how did this appeal to, and/or alienate, nineteenthcentury readership?
Katharina Lorenz (Nottingham)
Meleager at Pleuron: A Hunter as War Hero
Panel: Iconography
This paper considers the episode of Meleager in the battle of Pleuron and its depiction on Roman sarcophagi,
the so-called Recovery Sarcophagi, popular in the second half of the second century CE. It addresses the
question of how male mythological heroes are characterised by means of their weaponry on Roman
sarcophagi, to what extent a blending (`intermingling') of different mythological stories (and vita Romana
elements) is realised by equipping individual heroes with weapons which belong to different narratives, and
how this impacts the meanings which can be associated with what is on display. Some of the thirty-eight
scenes of the Battle of Pleuron extant on Roman sarcophagi show Meleager fighting with a sword and dressed
in military armour equipment appropriate to the situation of short-distance combat shaping this episode.
Some scenes, however, depict the hero fighting in the nude and with a spear: in the guise and with the
weapon of a hunter, not a soldier. Indeed, they show Meleager in the same way in which he is characterised
without fail in those seventy scenes on Roman sarcophagi depicting the Calydonian Boar Hunt. The paper will
explore the causes for the iconographic variance with regard to Meleager's weaponry on the Recovery
Sarcophagi and examine their relationship with the iconographic portfolio of Mars, the god of war; of
mythological hunters, such as Hippolytus; and mythological warriors such as Achilles. It will analyse to what
extent the Pleuron scenes are influenced by the visual treatment of contemporary war experiences, such as
the Marcomannian Wars. The aim is to establish whether what on the surface looks like an iconographic
vagueness in the pictures, even a mistake by the artists, might be a tool for breaking down the boundaries
between mythological narrative and vita Romana.
Francesco Lubian (Università degli Studi di Macerata/Wien)
Panel: Visual Narrative
Narrativization, Spatialization, and Diachronic Arrangement in Prudentius’ Dittochaeon
In my paper I would like to investigate the structure of Prudentius’ Dittochaeon, a series of hexametrical
tetrastichs which describe 48 pictorial representations of biblical episodes, 24 from the Old and 24 from the
New Testament, aiming to show how these mainly descriptive, spatial-dominant epigrams (probably never
used in their ‘real’ epigraphic explicatory function, the tituli ‘construct’ their pictorial referent with all sorts of
ekphrastic devices) are arranged within a narrative, temporal-linear sequence. The order of the epigrams is
constant in all the manuscripts, and should therefore be attributed to the author, against the doubts of R.
Pillinger; at the same time, a 1:1 correspondence between Old- and New Testament tetrastichs (e.g. ditt. IXXV, II-XXVI), sometimes suggested by scholars (A. Rösler; C. Davis-Weyer), presupposes, does not explain their
succession, and sometimes seems to force the author’s intention with unlikely parallels, unknown to all
Patristic authorities. The sequence of the tituli is mainly chronological, while some minor infractions to the
biblical order of the events could be explained by narratological reasons. More interesting is the fact that the
‘Figuraldeutung’ or typology becomes in the Dittochaeon a structuring pattern which shapes the diachronic
44
arrangement of the cycle, disseminating in the work numerous typological paths (staurological, Christological
etc.), all well attested in the thought of the Late Antique Fathers. These paths interfere with the chronological
order and allow multiple ‘thematic’ readings of the work, all converging in the last epigram, which describes
the adoration of the Lamb of Apoc. 4:4; 5:8-9. The Dittochaeon seems therefore an outstanding example of the
narrativization of an epigrammatic cycle, indebted to the classical evolution from self-standing ékphrasis into
collections and yet original in its structuring use of typology.
Deborah Lyons (Miami)
Once More into the Cauldron: Greek Goddesses and the Failure of Immortality
Panel: Gods Approaching
Greek goddesses often try unsuccessfully to immortalize their sons, but are interrupted by observers who
misinterpret their efforts as homicidal. Why does the attempt to immortalize so easily slide into fears of -- or
actual -- infanticide? Divine-mortal unions rarely produce immortal offspring, but only goddesses make this
doomed effort. o make sense of this motif, I suggest comparing it to the theme of goddesses’ failed attempts
to immortalize mortal lovers. Fire is the usual means: Demeter anoints her foster son Demophoon with
ambrosia and hides him in the fire. In earlier versions, Thetis does the same with Achilles, but is interrupted by
his father. Ino places her sons in a cauldron, but is stopped by their uncomprehending father, who chases her
and her son into the sea, where she becomes the goddess Leukothea. Medea (another heroine who
sometimes appears as a goddess) also uses a cauldron in early versions, accidentally killing her children in the
process. Fear of infanticide can be connected to the fear of eclipse that haunts Greek heroes. Odysseus refuses
alypso’s offer of immortality. Being “kalypsoed” (Dimock, 956), hidden on her island and in her bed, is living
death to a hero whose kleos comes from his exploits in the mortal world. Eos gets the formula wrong when
seeking immortality for Tithonos, and he ends up shriveled with age, hidden inside her chamber. Womb,
cauldron, fire, and island are all places of concealment. Concealment is appropriate for an “uncooked” infant,
but not for a man. he gods are jealous of goddesses’ sexual freedom and reproductive powers. Consequently
the divine economy leaves little room for female divinities to transmit immortality to their children without
the participation of a male divinity. In these circumstances, immortalization looks like murder, and immortality
looks more like living death than eternal life.
Vanessa E. Mackenzie (Warwick)
Conciliation, Coherence, Continuity: Octavian, Rome and Business as Usual….
Panel: Augustan (R)evolution
After the defeat of Mark Antony and the suicide of Cleopatra in Alexandria, Octavian, in Cassius Dio’s words,
held ‘all the power of the state in his hands’. It was a novel situation and one which Octavian would be at pains
to maintain. What is of interest is the thinking which might have informed his decision-making towards this
goal. This, however, rarely takes account of political situations outside Rome which may have had a bearing or
influence on his actions. In this respect, in his early years, there is evidence to suggest that Egypt and the
example of pharaonic/Ptolemaic governance made an impression on Octavian. Egypt was the last bastion of
the Hellenistic east to fall to Rome and both it and Octavian were facing a new and precarious future.
Importantly, and significantly, the people and priesthood of Egypt expected and required that new leadership
continue Egyptian traditions. he most successful of Egypt’s invaders had been those which recognised and
respected Egypt’s culture and traditions – notably Alexander the Great. This was a salutary lesson for Octavian.
he previous several hundred years had seen Egypt’s fortunes fluctuate and its leadership change by invasions
from outside, but despite all of this Egypt had managed to retain its character and maintain its traditions.
Change merely for its own sake was not necessary and radical change would certainly have caused antagonism
leading to violent disruption. By using examples such as his Mausoleum and obelisks raised in Rome, I shall
argue that far from instigating a ‘new’ form of politics in Rome, Octavian took his cue from Egypt, adopted a
conciliatory approach and adapted his Roman regime along lines which deliberately emphasised continuity and
tradition in order to underline that his being in power was the natural outcome to preceding events.
45
Donald MacLennan (Durham)
Panel: Eastern Client States
'Not in the lands of the Judaeans' (Jos. Ant. 15.328): Local and Regional Authority in Judaea, 63 BC - AD 132
The political upheaval in Judaea between the arrival of the Romans and the Bar Kokhba revolt (63 BC – AD 132)
left a lasting mark on the region. This paper examines the political organisation of the Herodian Kingdom and
the Provincia Judaea during this period through the self-presentation of Greco-Roman cities. Both Herodian
Kings and the Romans installed Greco-Roman cities as semi-independent units of local government. By
comparing the coinage of these cities to that of the Herodian kings and Roman officials, this paper argues that
these Greco-Roman cities emphasised their political autonomy through coins, and distinguished themselves as
particular units of political and social organisation. Some of these cities were initially established as ethnically
Jewish cities by the Herodian Kings. These Judaean civic spaces were gradually eroded after the Jewish Revolt
until the region was characterised most prominently by a series of ethnically Greek cities that emphasised
their autonomy not only through their conformity to classical imagery, but also by their particular
manipulation of this imagery. Much attention has been given to the ethnic and religious disputes between the
Jews and Greeks in this period. This paper argues that the issue did not divide two monolithic opposing
entities, but rather was a means of expressing and furthering local individuality and autonomy. The distinctions
between regional and local government, and between different units of local government, were crucially
important to the political landscape of Judaea in this period, and the development of this landscape can be
mapped through the self-presentation of these bodies in their coinage.
Simon Mahony (KCL)
Panel: New Approaches 1
Open Educational Resources and Their Place in Teaching and Research for Classics
Academics within the same departments have always shared teaching materials but a cultural change is taking
place in universities, with academics using the internet to share their research (Open Access) and teaching and
learning resources (OER: Open Educational Resources) more widely. This spirit of collaborative working is
increasing, and potentially opens up higher education, giving both students and teachers greater access and
flexibility. Education for all has taken on a new meaning in the digital age and the true rationale of Openness is
one of reclaiming original academic practice and collaboration; consequently the move towards openness
extends beyond resources and includes increasingly also Open Educational Practices, or just Open Education.
To change academic culture and to encourage open educational practices requires much more than
technological changes. It requires an understanding of the challenges facing the educational community today
and how OERs can help them achieve their goals particularly in research led teaching and learning. This author
has been involved in awareness-raising of OER, by running workshops, presenting at conferences, and
organizing several UKOER programme- and institution-wide events. The focus is on building communities of
users and contributors to ensure sustainability and to develop standards of best practice. This presentation will
develop themes introduced in a recent publication, ‘Open access and online teaching materials for digital
humanities’ (Warwick et al eds. (20 2) Digital Humanities in Practice Facet). It will also locate these ideas
within the sphere of teaching and research in Classics drawing on the experiences of the Digital Classicist
(http://www.digitalclassicist.org/), Stoa Consortium (http://www.stoa.org/) and other open initiatives in
Classical Studies.
Simon Malloch (Nottingham)
See the abstract of John Marincola (Florida State)
Panel: Roman Historiography
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Christopher Malone (Sydney)
Between Ice and Finery: Identity and Loyalty in Jordanes’ Getica
Panel: Late Antique Literature
Scholars have never been able to agree on who Jordanes was, or what exactly his histories were trying to do.
Modern views range from seeing him as a mindless copyist, to a subtle Byzantine propagandist, or to a more or
less – usually less – careful classicising historian; likewise his credentials as either a proud (or nostalgic) Goth or
as a loyal (or cynical) servant of Justinian’s court have been alternatively championed and dismissed (see e.g.
Momigliano 1955; Goffart 1988; Heather 1991). It is, however, possible that we are unable to pin Jordanes
down into a neat category because he does not actually fit into one. In this paper I argue that Jordanes
represents a more fluid category of late antique individuals existing between older and more formal statuses:
he is not properly an insider, because of his Gothic roots, but also not properly an outsider, belonging to a
Latinate literary circle in Constantinople. This paper will therefore offer an investigation of the layers of
identity and loyalty in Jordanes’ work from a different perspective. Rather than mining for sources or for
ethnogenetic material, the paper will first reassess what little Jordanes tells us about himself, and then
examine in particular the way he presents figures in a position comparable to his own, among them Stilicho
and Alaric: people who come from ostensibly barbarian gentes, but exist and operate essentially within the
imperial system; people caught, potentially, between barbarian and imperial identities.
Kleanthis Mantzouranis (UCL)
Bad Leadership and the Limits of Power in Herodotus
Panel: Leadership
Xenophon is generally acknowledged as the first explicit theoretician of leadership in Greek literature. The
intricacies of leadership, however, are embedded already in earlier poetry and prose and play a fundamental
role in the stories of political and military leaders narrated in Herodotus’ Histories. In this paper, I explore
Herodotus’ concern with the practice of leadership, by focusing on the theme of physical violence and its
consequences. Physical violence in Herodotus has received much scholarly attention, since it impinges on two
central Herodotean narrative themes, namely Herodotus’ attitude towards absolutism and the theme of divine
punishment. This paper examines violent actions from a different perspective: I focus on the impact of physical
violence on the leadership process. As various instances in the Histories show, the use of violence by the
leader often generates resentment on the part of his subjects, which eventually threatens the leader’s
position. Followers may revolt from, plot against, depose, or even kill the leader who goes too far in exerting
his power. I argue that Herodotus acknowledges a universal principle underlying the practice of leadership,
encapsulated in Croesus’ advice to Cambyses ( . 6): the leader must measure the consequences of his actions
and refrain from maltreating his subjects. Even absolute rulers need to observe certain limits in the exercise of
their power. Simultaneously, Herodotus’ examination of various instances of bad leadership reveals his
concern with the cultural specificity of leadership. Different peoples in the Histories tend to tolerate different
attitudes, and the practice of leadership varies in different ethnic, cultural, and political settings. Leaders
should therefore consider not only the nature of their authority (constitutional or absolute monarchy, tyranny,
democracy), but also the nature of their subjects and the attitudes that they are prepared to tolerate. This
fresh reading of the theme of physical violence reveals Herodotus’ awareness of the complexities of leadership
as a process and highlights the subtle way in which he constructs cultural polarities and antitheses in his work.
John Marincola (Florida State)
Panel Abstract:
Panel: Roman Historiography
In December 2013, Oxford University Press publishes in three volumes The Fragments of the Roman Historians,
edited by Tim Cornell and a large group of collaborators. It is confidently expected to become the standard
reference work for this material for the foreseeable future, and to reframe scholarly approaches to Roman
historiography through its accessibility and comprehensiveness. The purpose of this organised panel is to offer
47
an early assessment of the impact of this new edition on the field of Roman historiography from a
distinguished group of scholars of ancient historiography who have not been involved in preparing this edition.
Its focus is less on direct critique of the volumes themselves, though naturally editorial decisions will receive
close scrutiny, and more on its implications for future research. As the speakers have not yet seen the
volumes, a detailed abstract cannot at this stage be offered, but issues which we expect to cover include: the
definition and development of Roman historiography; new interpretations of specific historians; the
interpretation of individual fragments within the contexts of books and whole works; the importance of
testimonia; and the identification of new research questions and projects.
Jennifer Martinez (Liverpool)
Panel: Sparta Beyond
Harmful and Useless? Reassessing the Behaviour of Spartan Women during the Theban Invasion of
Lakedaimon
This paper focuses on the reported behaviour of Spartan women during war. More specifically, it will analyse
the way in which Spartan women are described by our sources during the Theban invasion of 370/369 BC.
These sources (i.e. Xenophon and Aristotle), although external, claim to know how the women of Sparta
behaved during this period of conflict. Scholars are divided when it comes to what Aristotle (Pol. 1269b34-39)
meant when he said that Spartan women ‘rendered no useful service, as the women do in other states’. Some
believe (e.g. Cartledge, 2001, and Schaps, 1982) that the women of Sparta proved to be useless in war, just like
the women of other poleis. On the other hand, there are those who argue that during the Theban invasion,
Spartan women behaved in a manner that was different from other women in wartime (e.g. Powell, 2004, and
Van Wees, 2004). Each of these interpretations has ramifications for the study of women during the classical
period. This paper seeks to shed light on this debate by comparing this incident with the attested behaviour of
women during periods of conflict throughout the classical period. Two elements come into play when
addressing this matter: (i) fifth and fourth century stereotypes of Spartan women and (ii) stereotypes of
women during war in general. By focusing on women’s reported behaviour in war (actions) and what men
actually thought about women in war (ideology) we can get closer to what Aristotle meant regarding the
behaviour of Spartan women during the Theban invasion.
Jane Maxwell (KCL)
The Ugly Female Body in Martial
Panel: Roman Bodies I
The literary figure of the ugly old woman, familiar from Greek iambic poetry, pervades Latin literature, but
retains the corrective function of the Archaic period: she is an exemplum and legitimate target for abuse. She
is totally defined by her physical appearance and her body is a catalogue of horrors – part monstrous, part
bestial, and yet also very human. The extended description in vivid language of the ugly body is an essential
part of this satirical mode; the ugly woman is so extreme as to be comic, but we encounter her from the
viewpoint of the male narrator, who often finds himself in close sexual contact with her. Because her physical
repugnance is an outward sign of inner moral turpitude, she is highly sexed and polluting. She presents a real
threat of what is deemed unacceptable at Rome. his paper explores the example of Martial’s epigram III.9 ,
in which the poet describes an old woman called Vetustilla. Martial deploys a number of literary tropes and
techniques, and there are references to historical and mythological figures. Vetustilla is clearly part of a literary
tradition, and yet as an ugly old woman, she is also a real life problem. She is therefore complex:
simultaneously a strongly othered figure of hyperbole, a figure of mockery, and a present threat to society.
48
Amy McCauley (Aberystwyth)
Oedipa in Tokyo: Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses
Panel: Radical Re-imaginings
Director Toshio Matsumoto describes his Funeral Parade of Roses ( 969) as “a modern parody of Oedipus
Rex.” His genre-bending hybrid of documentary and narrative fiction gleefully blends ‘biography’ with
‘autobiography’; and yet, his so-called ‘parody’ teases out some important aspects of Sophocles’ Oedipus
Tyrannus. Set in okyo during the late 960s, the film’s protagonist – ‘Eddie’ – is a young transsexual party girl.
Eddie’s love affair with Gondo and her emerging memories of a traumatic past are played out against the
wider context of social unrest. Real footage of student riots and protests against US military bases in Japan are
placed inside the fictional narrative as it unfolds inside okyo’s thriving gay subculture. Formally, Matsumoto
uses cubist techniques of montage, splicing documentary interviews with appropriated footage from TV and
film. Wanting to achieve “a fragmentation on various levels”, he prioritises the relationship between form and
content and avoids a linear exposition of the story by switching between past, future and present. Just as
Sophocles uses secondary personae as a means of releasing ‘repressed’ material in Oedipus Tyrannus,
Matsumoto uses peripheral characters as triggers for Eddie’s memories. Matsumoto’s suggestion that the film
“turns the ‘original’ on its head” is not quite true: Eddie (as Oedipus) knowingly kills his mother and unwittingly
commits incest with his father, Gondo. But the formal means through which Matsumoto realises his narrative
are undoubtedly radical. Matsumoto’s version – with its self-conscious parodying of the way we receive
information through news broadcasts and advertising – amplifies the way in which Sophocles’ Oedipus
Tyrannus questions the manner in which we acquire knowledge. Matsumoto’s own critique of the film-making
process also brings out the self-reflexivity in Sophocles’ play. his paper will examine the interplay between
Funeral Parade of Roses and Oedipus Tyrannus, using the film as a mirror which throws light back on the
Sophoclean narrative.
Justine McConnell (Oxford)
The Sparagmos of Ajax in Toni Morrison’s Sula
Panel: Reception and Ajax
Toni Morrison minored in Classics at university, and her engagement with antiquity has drawn the attention of
classical reception scholars (Rankine (2006); Roynon (2013)). Most famously, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,
Beloved is inspired by the true tale of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who came to be known as ‘the
modern Medea’ after killing one of her children to prevent her being taken back into slavery. But the classical
strands of Morrison’s 97 novel Sula have not been considered, despite its inclusion of a character named
Ajax and the instigation of ‘National Suicide Day’ by a psychologically traumatised veteran. That the latter is
not the same man as the novel’s Ajax testifies to Morrison’s refusal to provide easy frameworks that gratify
the traditionally-elite readers who have Classics at their fingertips. Simultaneously, it demands that ancient
literature is not the controlling force while also allowing it a space: Shadrack’s invention of National Suicide
Day and the shellshock he suffers from dimly recall Sophocles’ Ajax; once Morrison’s own Ajax enters the
scene, the link is unmissable.
Furthermore, Morrison’s engagement with Greek myth in Sula offers an illuminating new metaphor for
classical reception: sparagmos, with all the violence and fertility that entails (cf. Soyinka’s Bacchae and
Pasolini’s Medea). he Sophoclean Ajax is scattered throughout Morrison’s novel: in Shadrack’s combat
trauma, in his Suicide Day, in the behavior of Ajax himself (who abandons Sula in a distorted echo of the
ancient Ajax abandoning Tecmessa), and in Sula, who functions as the scapegoat for the community, just as
Ajax’s death may function in Sophocles’ play. This is a particularly powerful metaphor for postcolonial
engagements with antiquity, which I will explore as I consider Morrison’s rewriting of the Ajax myth in a novel
where racial tensions and the wounds of the past are at the fore.
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Niall McKeown (Birmingham)
Ancient Slavery and Modern Interpretation
Panel: Slavery and Sources
Disputes in interpretation are a part of the life of every historian. Ancient slavery has had, perhaps, rather
deeper fault-lines than many other areas. There are signs that changes in global academic ‘politics’ may be
helping to create more of a consensus. It is less clear whether such consensus is a good thing. I attempted to
show in 2007 how the nature of the evidence of ancient slavery allowed plenty of room for contradictory
interpretations which happily continued without any violence done to the rules of professional historical
reconstruction. Are there, however, areas in the study of ancient slavery where we can talk of ‘established’,
facts or truths? Are there areas where such ‘truths’ are more difficult to reach? Is the latter simply a function
of the nature of our evidence, or something deeper? Have we, over time, grown more sophisticated in our
approach to the evidence or not?
The way in which the postmodernist challenge to historical reconstruction has been couched has alienated
many professionals and made it seem utterly pointless to most of our students. Can developments in
behavioural economics and psychology more clearly explain the kinds of problems that some postmoderninfluenced writers have sought to draw attention to? The writing of history of ancient slavery may be less
influenced by the tropes of novel writing than it is by the human impulse to develop patterns. This also raises
the question of the extent to which our historical reconstructions may be more interesting as statements of
the ethical position of modern authors than they are reflections of what actually happened. How far is history
writing the rational exercise it purports to be? Or how far might it fulfill more of the roles we generally ascribe
to Greek myth? In sum, what are we actually doing when we look at the history of a subject such as slavery?
Kate McLardy (Monash)
Wailing for Adonis: Local Variation in the Adonia Festival
Panel: Cult
The Adonia festival, a festival of lamentation in honour of the abruptly terminated relationship of Adonis and
Aphrodite, is known from a number of locations within the ancient Greek sphere of influence, with the most
well documented examples occurring in Classical Athens and Hellenistic Alexandria. The festival was adapted
by the Greeks for Near Eastern lamentation rites in honour of Tammuz (Dumuzi), but it is not certain how
much of their Near Eastern character these rites retained. In this paper, I intend to briefly examine the
evidence for the Adonia festival for various locations in order to identify, where possible, the local character of
the rites. I contend that the evidence from different sites and periods should not be subsumed into an
idealised meta-festival, but should be localised within their individual temporal and geographic contexts. In
this manner, I aim to investigate whether there was a standard form for the Adonia festival within the Greek
world, or whether there were some standard features, such as the wailing lamentation, while other features
experienced significant local variation. I will also explore in greater detail the various influences upon the
Adonia festival in Hellenistic Alexandria and Byblos. I will seek to determine if the evidence supports an initial
importation of the rites of Adonis to Greece and subsequent exportation as a Hellenised festival to locations
such as Alexandria and Byblos, or alternatively, whether there was continuing influence from the Near Eastern
lamentation rites without recourse to Greek influences. My research aims to highlight the importance of local
variation within the ancient Greek festivals such as the Adonia.
Jan Meister (Humboldt)
The Body in Roman Invective
Panel: Roman Bodies I
Attacking opponents by means of their bodies is a common feature in Roman invectives. Ancient handbooks
on rhetoric mark out the body as one possible starting point for vituperatio, and modern scholarship has
highlighted the crucial role bodily features play as “proof” of an opponent’s apparent lack of manly qualities.
The bodies described in invectives are therefore often highly stereotypical featuring perfumed hair, fancy
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clothing, shaved skin and a general “softness” as typical traits of effeminate men. However, an orator was not
speaking about fictional characters but about fellow members of the elite who’s appearance was well known
to his audience. So although he made use of stereotypes, the picture he painted of his opponents’ bodies
could never be completely detached from reality. This mixture of stereotypical features and individual traits
often leads to complex descriptions that can be analyzed from several different viewpoints. Cicero’s speeches
against Catiline will be used as examples of this. For while Catiline’s followers feature many traits typical for
effeminate men, Catiline stands outside of this stereotype. On the contrary, he is renowned for his welltrained body enabling him to endure hunger, cold and lack of sleep, qualities which won him high praise
among his followers. How does Cicero cope with these? Analysis of his rhetoric must not focus only on how
Cicero deconstructs Catiline’s image but on the peculiar nature of Catiline’s physicality.
Daniele Miano (Oxford)
Roman Pollution in Public and Private Time
Panel: Pollution
The aim of this paper is to explore the way in which pollution and purity were connected with particular days
of the year, considering both public and private time. My hypothesis is that the comparison between public
and private time will help to shed light on the way pollution was conceived in both. The first part of the paper
will be dedicated to the private sphere. The focus of this section will be Roman funerary rites, because we are
relatively well-informed about them and the way they are related with pollution has been thoroughly studied
in recent scholarship. It is well-known that after a death in the household the family was considered polluted,
and that several rituals were required in order to purify it. At the same time, the family in mourning would be
in feriae. Cicero and Festus make clear that feriae were an important part of the purification of the family from
the pollution caused by death. The second part of the paper will be dedicated to pollution in public time. I
shall, in particular, look at the nature of public feriae and the way they are related with pollution. In the
Saturnalia of Macrobius there is a long discussion of how labour should be avoided during feriae because it
causes pollution. Defiled individuals had to perform rituals to purify themselves. There is, as in the case
analysed in the previous section, a connection between feriae and purity. Most public feriae in the Roman
calendar are marked with the abbreviation NP. In 1869 Philipp Huschke proposed that the abbreviation should
stand for nefastus purus, a reading which was recently rejected by Rüpke and Champeaux. I think that the
comparison with private purification rites allows us to reconsider the conjecture of Huschke.
Sarah Miles (Durham)
‘How to Avoid Being a Tragic Komodoumenos’: Targeting Tragic Artists in Greek Comedy
Panel: Laughter
he paper takes its starting point from Alan H. Sommerstein’s 996 CQ article, entitled ‘How to avoid being a
komodoumenos’ which provided a comic hit-list, a record of all the named individuals to receive mention in
the comedy of Aristophanes and his contemporaries. There are two hundred and twenty-four names in total.
This CQ article, along with the 2002 Indexes to Sommerstein’s commentaries on Aristophanes, are still a
necessary reference for anyone working on named individuals in Aristophanic comedy. These works provide a
wealth of information for understanding the scope of Aristophanic satire of the individual. The present paper,
however, focuses attention solely on the set of individuals devoted to the tragic arts who received attention in
Greek comedy of the 5th and early 4th c. BCE. It considers the following: how common was the comic
presentation of tragic artists? Why were tragic artists targeted at all? Does the number and type of comic
portrayals of tragedians suggest that a pool of popular material was shared between all comic poets or are we
dealing with an Aristophanic phenomenon of paratragedy? Is it the case, as Sommerstein (1996, 337)
concludes, that one of the ways to avoid being a komodoumenos is: “don’t write or perform drama or
dithyramb”? Through such an inquiry the paper tackles issues of ancient reception of tragedy since
Aristophanes and his contemporaries provide the earliest presentation of tragic artists in the form of
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komodoumenoi. Therefore, the paper considers the cultural significance of tragedy as relayed through
individual tragic artists, albeit within the ambiguous and ever-flexible medium of comedy.
Alexander Millington (UCL)
Canonising the Unusual: Pausanias’s Ares
Panel: Cult
A monumental temple of Ares in the heart of bustling, metropolitan Athens, inhabited by a throng of statues,
centred on an image of Ares sculpted by the great Alcamenes; an Ares worshipped only by women; an Ares
worshipped only by men; an Ares said to be a fertility-god, not a god of war; an Ares of great antiquity sharing
a hero-founded shrine with Aphrodite on a lonely country road: these are the cults of Ares recorded by
Pausanias, as he travelled around Greece in the second century A.D. In this paper, I will explore Pausanias’s
criteria for including individual cults, altars, and shrines in his description of Greece, focusing on his
descriptions of cult-places dedicated to the god Ares, and of the rites associated with them. Outside Asia
Minor, very little evidence relating to the cult of Ares has been discovered by archaeologists. As a result, from
Stoll in 1886, through Farnell in 909 and Schwenn in 924, to Gonzales in 2004, Pausanias’ account has been
central to studies of Ares’s cultic roles and identities. he image of Ares’s cult that has been reconstructed
from Pausanias has become canonised. This image of cult has been repeatedly contrasted with the rich and
varied corpus of literary representations of the god, most of which pre-date Pausanias by several centuries.
I will argue that Pausanias cannot be used to reconstruct cultic norms, at least as regards the cults of Ares.
Pausanias, I suggest, was drawn to apparent antiquity, to impressive monumentality or beauty, and to the
unusual. his third predilection must be central to any attempt to interpret the image of Ares’s cult that
emerges from Pausanias’s text.
Fiona Mitchell (Bristol)
Monstrosity and Deformity in Aristotle’s Biology
Panel: Plato and Aristotle
Aristotle describes people and animals which possess physical defects as τέρατα ‘monsters’ and πηρός
‘deformed’. Creatures which are τέρατα have defects which range from internal organs in unusual positions
(HA 496b) to children who do not appear to be human (GA 767b). Those that are πηρός include twins (GA
772a), infertile humans (HA 581b) and species that possess features that appear to belong to more than one
group of animals (e.g. crocodiles have characteristics of both land and water animals, PA 660b). Some
creatures are even described as both monstrous and deformed. The two terms, then, have very similar usages.
Indeed, Aristotle states that monstrosity is a type of deformity (GA 767b). By making monstrosity simply a
physical defect, Aristotle removes monsters from the realms of the mystical or divine; instead of miraculous
beings, they become simply unusual elements in the natural world.
Despite the apparent similarity between the creatures which are monstrous and those that are deformed, the
use of these terms overlaps in just a small number of cases. Only women (GA 737a, 767b), metachoira (GA
573b, 770b) and animals with improperly formed internal organs (GA 770b-771a; PA 667a) are described as
both monstrous and deformed. Additionally, defects which are described as deformities in humans, such as
defects in reproductive capacity or the production of twins, are described as monstrous when they appear in
animals. This divergence in the uses of these two terms indicates that Aristotle differentiates between
deformed bodies and monstrous ones. By analysing these terms in Aristotle’s biological texts I will explore
where the boundary lies between them, and at what point deformity becomes monstrosity. In particular I will
examine the groups of people and animals to which both terms are applied, and the significance of these
groups as intermediaries between deformity and monstrosity.
52
E. P. Moloney (NUI Maynooth)
Panel: Kingship
Neither Agamemnon nor Thersites, Achilles nor Margites: The ‘Homeric’ Kings of Ancient Macedon
In modern scholarship a distinctly ‘Homeric’ presentation of the ancient Macedonian kings and their court still
endures (e.g. essays in the recent volume edited by Carney & Ogden 2010), in spite of recent notes on the
extensive use of ‘artifice’ in key sources (Mossman 998, Carney 2000) and an important critique of the ‘flimsy’
assimilation of basic institutions (Carlier 2002). Although the adventures and achievements of Alexander the
Great are certainly imbued with epic colour, to extend those literary tropes and topoi to the rule of earlier
kings (and to wider Macedonian society) is often to misunderstand and misrepresent the ancient evidence.
This paper offers a fresh review of the presentation of the Macedonian monarchy in fourth-century sources,
considering the depiction of the Argead dynasty in both hostile and more-sympathetic accounts. The intention
here is not to challenge the extensive and enduring influence of Homer (still a source of ‘monumental images
and timeless truths’ for all Greeks: Bell 2004), but to prompt further reflection on how the rule of the Argead
kings may have been presented and understood by contemporaries. At the heart of this investigation is the
inevitable contrast of Philip II and Alexander III, which will both emphasize the limits of those stock modern
comparisons and highlight, instead, the subtlety of the approach of the ancient Macedonians.
Sara Monoson (Northwestern)
Panel: Legacies
Classical Sources and the Promotion of Literacy in Radical Critique: Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads
(1933) and Hugo Gellert’s Aesop Said So (1936)
A broad set of classical sources (literary and material) have animated American political discourse from the
revolutionary period to today. This paper will focus on one episode that brings to the fore a neglected feature
of that history: the lively and varied presence of classical imagery in 1930s expressions of radical critique by
prominent and politically motivated visual artists. In particular, in his famously controversial mural for the
lobby of the skyscraper that anchored the development of the Rockefeller Center in New York, painter Diego
Rivera used the imagery of damaged yet still formidable classical statuary to convey the corrosive capacities of
weighty traditions and to question the value of harking back to Greek and Roman models to inform aspirations
for the future. Though sharing his political viewpoint, the widely published and very well known at the time
illustrator and muralist Hugo Gellert challenged that view of the usefulness of the sources from the classical
past for educating our ambitions. He produced books that combine text and illustrations that find other
narratives in the sources (chiefly, the figure of Aesop as a brilliant view ‘from below’) that were, to him,
thrillingly able to inspire class consciousness and sophisticated examination of persistent problems like
political and police corruption and the excessive greed of the high and mighty. Both artists rely on widespread
familiarity with this material among the viewing public to promote literacy in radical critique. This paper will
examine these two examples in detail.
John Morgan (Swansea)
The Monk’s Tale: Massacre, Mutilation and Narratological Perversion
Panel: Late Antique Narrative
The Narrations attributed (probably wrongly) to St Nilus of Ancyra is ostensibly an autobiographical account by
a hermit-monk of Mount Sinai of an attack by barbarians. It is an extraordinary piece of narrative, distributed
over four narrating voices, one of them the primary narrator’s former self, and radically reordering the
chronology of the events it recounts. It has attracted sporadic attention from historians who have generally
dismissed it with contempt or puzzlement. Its literary importance as one of the most complex and
sophisticated narratives produced by early Christianity has been ignored. This paper intends to put that
situation to rights: the very features that make the work suspect to historians should, in fact, be read as its
most interesting and significant literary aspects. An analysis of the work’s bizarre narrative strategy is followed
by an examination of its destabilising intertextuality with the ancient Greek novels, particularly that of Achilles
53
Tatius, which is quoted almost verbatim on several occasions. I end by offering a deviant interpretation of a
text which has always been read naively as a paean of praise for the hermit’s life: a reading that takes full
account of its tortuous narratology and slippery intertextuality ends by reversing the normal view and
understanding the work as a narrative of religious conversion from eremitic solipsism to a truer Christianity
dedicated to serving the community.
Llewelyn Morgan (Oxford)
A Metrical Scandal in Ennius
Panel: Latin Metre
his paper will present a theory regarding the metre of Ennius’ poem Scipio. Little about this poem is
uncontroversial, but I shall argue that if we appreciate the implications of the metrical form most commonly
associated with the poem, the trochaic septenarius or versus quadratus, we cut through a number of the
debates concerning the poem’s form and character and reach a clearer understanding of much more than its
metrical medium. To make the argument I shall lay out the debates surrounding the metre or metres of the
poem’s fragments, and what we know and don’t know about the poem as a whole. But I shall also talk about
this most characterful of ancient metres, a form associated with popular effusions which came to represent
the voice of the common man. Making that point will take us into triumphal song, nursery rhymes, and Horace,
Odes 4.2, where Fraenkel brilliantly explicated a versus quadratus, or part thereof, smuggled by Horace into his
sapphics. The versus quadratus illustrates a bigger point about Roman metre, and that is its tendency to
become assimilated to three-dimensional physical entities, bodies, constructions, spaces. I shall investigate
how the versus quadratus comes to embody the common man, but relate it also to the “heroic” dactylic
hexameter, “cinaedic” sotadean, and other metres that illustrate what I believe to be a quintessentially Roman
assimilation of metrical and physical form. The paper will be based on an article accepted for publication (next
year) by CQ, as well as arguments originating in my monograph Musa Pedestris.
Kit Morrell (Sydney)
Cato, Stoicism, and the Governance of the Roman Empire
Panel: Ethics
instituto itinere severitatem diligentiamque sociis et rei publicae praesta.
Continue as you have begun, rendering strictness and care to the allies and the state.
Cato to Cicero (fam. 15.5.3)
M. Porcius Cato, who committed suicide at Utica in 46 BC, was famed for his Stoicism—not only in death, but
as a way of life. His interest in the governance of Rome’s empire is also well attested. Cicero calls him “the one
man who listens to all our allies’ grievances” (fam. 15.4.15). I argue for a meaningful link between the two:
that Cato the philosopher shaped Cato the politician, particularly in the sphere of imperial governance. This
emerges not only from Cicero and Plutarch but from the one surviving example of Cato’s own writing (fam.
15.5). Stoicism was well suited to provide an ethics of imperialism. From at least the second century, Stoics
conceived of all human beings as citizens of a cosmopolis or ‘world-city’, with equal rights under natural law.
This ideal imposed standards of conduct towards enemies and allies that went beyond the demands of Roman
mores. At the same time, it was the good man’s duty to rule in the interests of the ruled, a task which
encompassed the socii as much as the populus Romanus. hese ideas, I suggest, underpin not only Cato’s
attitude to empire but a broader programme of ethical imperialism. The letter exchange between Cicero and
Cato was conducted within Cato’s distinctively Stoic ethical framework, and elsewhere in his Cilician
correspondence Cicero refers to Cato as arbiter of good governance. In this way, ethics drawn from Greek
philosophy reached “almost onto the battlefield” (Cic. fam. 15.4.16). Indeed, when Cicero says the governors
of the east were “strengthening Cato’s policy” (Att. 6.1.13), in a sense they were striving towards a Stoic ideal
of empire.
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James D.D.J. Morton (Berkley)
Slavs, Byzantines and a Non-Hellenic Hellenism
Panel: Approaching Hellenism
Following the development of Hellenic identity in Achaea in the Archaic and Classical periods and its
institutionalisation in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, ‘Sclavene’ migrations in the seventh and eighth
centuries virtually obliterated the imperial presence in the Peloponnese and substantially altered the cultural
identity of the area’s inhabitants. Yet, from the ninth century on, the Byzantine authorities would rapidly reestablish a Greek cultural predominance in the region. This paper will consider the role of institutions of power
and their associated language – specifically the Byzantine Church and liturgical Greek – not only in supplanting
cultural identities but also in shaping identities themselves. Unlike the Slavs of what would become Bulgaria
and Serbia, who acquired their own Slavonic written language, the Peloponnesian Slavs were effectively
assimilated into the Greek community. However, although the Byzantine reconquest of Achaea restored a
Greek cultural presence, it was nonetheless as a Christian and ‘Roman’ people that consciously rejected the
ancient ‘Hellenic’ label as tainted with pagan associations. It is no coincidence that surviving evidence for
cultural identity in Achaea in this period reflects entirely the Byzantine perspective and experience in
reintegrating the region, from historical narratives such as the Chronicle of Monemvasia and hagiographic texts
such as the Life of St Nikon Metanoeite to Constantine Porphyrogennetos’ De Administrando Imperio. Drawing
on the sociolinguistic concept of Verkehrsgemeinschaften (‘communication communities’), I shall argue that
the connection between language and elite power structures was crucial in creating and shaping long-term
cultural identity in Achaea, ensuring that the only remaining traces of the Achaean Slavs would be those that
the Byzantines chose to record. Moreover, the re-shaping of Greek identity by the Byzantines has implications
for the way that we understand ‘Hellenism’ either as a discrete phenomenon or as a product of its social
context.
Judith Mossman (Nottingham)
Metaphor and Personification in Lucian’s de domo
Panel: Multifaceted Lucian
his paper examines Lucian’s use of metaphor and personification, focussing on the early part of his de domo,
the description of the hall as a whole which leads up to the extraordinary ecphrasis of the paintings which
adorn it. It will be argued that Lucian’s use here of a blend of metaphor and personification represents a
striking variation from his practice elsewhere (for example in Lucian’s Dream and The Consonants at Law). This
subtle technique combines with his use of hypophora to produce a display of rhetorical prowess which is
appropriate for the subject matter of the piece: the verbal construction of an idealised space dedicated to
oratorical display and rhetorical achievement.
Sheila Murnaghan (Pennsylvania)
The Voices of Homer in the Ajax
Panel: Reception and Ajax
In allusions to the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the Arms of Achilles, Pindar gives conflicting
accounts of Homer’s treatment of the two heroes. In Nemean 7, Odysseus gains an unfair advantage because
of Homer’s sweet voice (20-23); in Isthmian 4, Homer sets the record straight and gives Ajax his proper honor
(37-9). Sophocles is similarly attuned to Homer’s fluidity as an authority. Revisiting the Homeric practice of
assessing heroes in relation to one another in the Ajax, Sophocles shows the difficulty of arriving at a single
definition of Ajax through discrete Homeric reminiscences, triggered by interested characters, that present
Ajax in varying lights. In the opening scene, Athena, stage-managing the display of Ajax as furious and
deranged, refuses to restrain Ajax as she restrained Achilles in Iliad 1. In the play’s most famously Homeric
episode, ecmessa’s attempt to position Ajax as Hector in Iliad 6 brings out Ajax’ inability to respond to his
family members with tenderness. Ajax redefines his suicide as a replay of his duel with Hector in Iliad 7,
seeking to recapture his earlier identity as the Achaeans’ loyal champion. Teucer defends Ajax to Agamemnon
55
by combining several occasions when Ajax served the army in the Iliad. At the end of the play, Odysseus
evokes Ajax’ final appearance in Homer, the underworld encounter in Odyssey 11, in which Ajax is honored but
dead and still angry, while Odysseus is regretful about the arms contest, but alive and looking to the future.
his selective deployment of Homeric references underscores the hero’s fragmented, unclassifiable nature in
ways that anticipate modern receptions of the Ajax: in some cases, Ajax’ contradictory qualities produce
insupportable conflicts in his modern representatives; in others, those qualities may be redistributed among
several figures in a broader consideration of violence and cultural conflict.
Bartolo Natoli (Texas)
Grounding Classics Pedagogy in the Theory of eLearning
Panel: New Approaches 1
Over the past half-decade, pedagogy on all instructional levels has seen a dramatic increase in the use of
eLearning practices. Learning Management Systems (LMSs), mobile learning (mLearning), and Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs) have been some of the most prevalent eLearning practices aimed at enhancing the
learning experience. Due to the rapid rate of technological advance, educators have been in the constant
pursuit of methods to incorporate technology into instruction and scholarship on eLearning has begun to focus
solely on practical applications of eLearning, the "strategies, social contexts, design and/or pedagogies",
without grounding these practices in learning theory (Andrews 2011, 105), despite work being done on
learning theories more generally (e.g., Kress 2010, Illeris 2009). As a result, two divergent strands of
scholarship on eLearning have developed, one practical and one theoretical, neither of which engages with the
other on a regular basis. This paper aims to take a step in this direction, but with an eye to eLearning theory
and practice in the Classics. In particular, it will examine as a case study the use of the recently popular
eLearning model of the 'flipped classroom' in two standard Classics courses at the University of Texas at
Austin: the small, introductory Latin class and the large, Roman History lecture course. Although attempting to
improve student learning experiences through the use of eLearning principles, both classes showed negligible
and even detrimental effects to student comprehension and motivation. It is suggested that the reason for this
is that the eLearning approaches used were not employed effectively because they were not grounded in
theory. Suggestions for future implementation of the flipped classroom in Classics that is grounded in
theoretical principles are then offered.
Stephanie Nelson (Boston)
The Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses as Post-war Epics
Panel: Refracting
he last words of James Joyce’s Ulysses are ‘ rieste–Zurich–Paris / 1914– 92 ’, a vivid reminder that Ulysses
was composed in the midst of the Great War. Joyce himself explained that he was interested in Odysseus
because he was a hero of war whose story does not end when the war is over. Nonetheless, Joyce set Ulysses
in the year 904 and so relegated war to the South African (‘Boer’) War of 899–1902, an imperialist blip that
seemed as irrelevant to his own time as it does to us now. This paper takes issue with recent criticism, which
has tended to dismiss Joyce’s use of the Odyssey as mere ‘scaffolding’, neglecting a factor of major importance
to Ulysses’ relation to Irish nationalism and the Great War. By reprising Homer, Joyce points out that Bloom,
Stephen, and Molly’s various struggles to reconcile their past and present identities were also faced by
Odysseus, elemachus, and Penelope, and so directly challenges his generation’s sense of a seismic break in
history. Joyce makes a similar point by minimizing the importance of war. As Stephen famously puts it: ‘History
… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake’ (Ulysses 2.77); or, as Bloom says: ‘Force, hatred, history, all
that. hat’s not life for men and women …’ ( 2. 48 ). Joyce’s epic thus ends not, as the Odyssey does, with
Odysseus engaged in the masculine world of violent conflict, but at the Odyssey’s penultimate point, with his
hero in bed with his wife. In thus repositioning war Joyce set his Irish ‘national epic’ (9. 09) against a British
war, and against the British influence that had, in his view, co-opted Ireland’s language, literature, and sense of
identity. And in so doing he managed to write the first post-war epic that omits war altogether.
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Sonya Nevin (Roehampton)
Animating Ancient Greek Vases: Panoply.org.uk
Panel: New Approaches 2
This paper explores the use of digital vase animations within the classics classroom. It will outline their
potential for increasing engagement and understanding and will suggest ways to incorporate them within
secondary and HE teaching. The animations are made by Steve K. Simons, who specialises in the digital
restoration and animation of ancient Greek vase scenes. Steve and I have developed a project called Panoply,
in which we create vase animations, develop ways to teach with them, and create further learning resources
to accompany them. The animations have been used in secondary and HE teaching, online open access
modules, and museum outreach projects. This paper will discuss the benefits which digital vase animation has
for modern pedagogy.
Kate Nichols (Cambridge)
Panel: Roman Bodies II
Dismembering the Roman body? Christians, lions, and the Politics of Looking at and in late Victorian Painting
In the 1880s, the walls of the Royal Academy regularly hosted large-scale canvases showing early Christian
martyrdom by lions at Rome. These particular Roman bodies are nearly always nude and female, often bound,
standing in poses alluding to classical sculpture, and the object of scrutiny for both the viewer of the canvas
and spectators within the painting. They are complete and whole, awaiting death, frozen in a moment that
preserves the eternal threat of mutilation, rather than showing its gory aftermath. The body and its physical
integrity are the crux of these paintings. The subject matter treads a precipitous path between eroticism,
sadomasochism, transgression and serious religious import. Widely disseminated through print media,
dramatised in novels, and brought to life in toga plays, these images of Roman bodies were generally reviled
by the art establishment, criticised by social purity campaigners, but also embraced as inspiration for sermons.
In this paper, I will provide detailed analysis of a selection of Christians and Lions paintings, and suggest the
significance of these Roman bodies within Victorian society. But I also want to take these images out of their
Victorian context, and to use these Victorian-but-also-Roman bodies to question how we approach the history
of the body. The subject of martyrdom and its spectatorship, further complicate the Roman/Victorian bodies
on display: viewers are called to situate themselves in the first century CE, yet to reflect on the significance of
the events enacted upon these bodies in their own daily lives. These Victorian visions showcase trans-historical
bodies with multiple ancient and modern contexts. This paper will examine how Victorian and Roman bodies
might be put into dialogue, and what new readings and understandings might come out of this process for
both classicists and Victorianists.
John North (ICS)
Closing the lustrum
Panel: Pollution
The ritual of lustratio sought the purification either of a space, characteristically a city or camp, or else of a
group such as army or fleet, designed to protect against the risks of pollution. The ritual sacrifice carried out by
one of the two censors at the end of their period of office would seem to fit this model, in so far as it closes
their reconstruction of the citizen body and opens a new lustrum or five year period, i.e. purifies a boundary,
though in time not space, and a group, the citizen body. It might, therefore, be expected that the censors’ civil
proceedings and decisions would not be valid, unless the ceremony had been successfully completed.
However, it seems clear that this was not in fact the case, as we know of occasions when the lustrum was
never completed, but administrative decisions seemingly remained valid. This paper will seek to account for
this situation, and to explain why the censors should have been said to have a special religious role – the
religio praecipua censorum.
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Shawn O’Bryhim (Franklin Marshall College)
Visual Rhetoric in Ovid’s Myth of Arachne (Ov., Met. 6.70-102)
Panel: Visual Narrative
In Book 6 of the Metamorphoses, Minerva and Arachne engage in a competition to determine who is the
better weaver. he tapestries that they produce are fundamentally different: Minerva’s contains five myths
arranged symmetrically, while Arachne’s consists of twenty-one myths in no discernable order. It has been
suggested that these compositions reflect two different styles of poetry: the architectonic structure of epic
versus the freer style of Ovid. While this may be true, it does not explain why the competitors selected these
myths for their compositions. A close examination of the stories depicted on Minerva’s tapestry reveals that
they constitute a visual rhetorical argument intended to persuade Arachne to acknowledge her supremacy not
only as a weaver, but also as a deity. When this argument founders, Minerva becomes angry and beats
Arachne, thereby proving the very point of Arachne’s tapestry: that the gods unjustly inflict suffering on
human women.
Cillian O’Hogan (The British Library)
Prudentius and the Language of Ethnicity in Late Antiquity
Panel: Late Antique Literature
Prudentius depicts the Christian martyrs of late antiquity as Roman heroes, repeatedly likening them to
prominent figures from Roman history and legend. This presents a paradox: these martyrs are struggling
against the Roman state, but their struggle is at the same time identified as a supremely Roman one. In this
paper, I argue that one of the ways in which Prudentius attempts to resolve this problem is by using the
language of ethnicity, to depict martyrdom as something that banishes foreign elements from the city. For
instance, in the preface to the first book of the Contra Orationem Symmachi, Paul is described as taming the
wild and monstrous Gentiles (fera gentium...corda...perdomuit, CS pr1.1-2). Non-Christians are represented in
terms that are more typically found applied to non-Romans. The triumph of Christianity becomes a Roman
triumph, a military victory over a foreign nation. The same pattern is repeated elsewhere, especially in the
Liber Peristephanon. This language is particularly noteworthy as it inverts the more common Christian-againstRoman topos found in earlier patristic authors, and I argue that it points to a more nuanced understanding of
the struggle of the early Church to establish itself, and the beginnings of a new Christianised Rome, which must
be seen against the backdrop of the struggle between and subsequent intermingling of the arriviste Trojans
and indigenous Latins in the Aeneid, a text which is never far from Prudentius' mind.
Magdalena Ohrman (Trinity Saint David)
Metre in Metamorphosis: Back and Forth in Ovid’s Tale of the Daughters of Minyas
Panel: Latin Metre
This paper adds to the extensive discussion of metapoetics in Ovid’s tale of the daughters of Minyas (Ov. Met.
4.1-415). It will suggest that Ovid uses the description of the Minyeides to signpost his willingness to engage
with other genres. he focus, however, is not the adoption of tragic or elegiac themes in the sisters’ stories,
nor their use of elegiac vocabulary. Instead, this paper focuses on stylistic features, supported by, but not
inherently dependent on, the medium of elegiac verse or metre, and on how Ovid adapts them even within
the hexameter text of the Metamorphoses. One such stylistic convention found in elegy is what one might
loosely call stichic organisation of content, which the paper aims to show is present in Ov. Met. 4.32-41. The
paper will provide a close reading of the frame narrative of the Minyeides and their reluctance to embrace the
cult of Bacchus, highlighting how Ovid’s text alternates between sympathy for and condemnation of the
Minyeides’ actions. his will show that a pattern of stylised alternation is realised in the Metamorphoses
without the motivation or support of explicit metrical alternation between hexameter and pentameter. Similar
to the function of such stichic content organisation in elegiac verse, I argue that this stylistic feature is
employed in Met. 4.32-41 in order to emphasie differences between the two opposing value systems at war in
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this episode, between old and new, and between the conservative worship of Minerva and the newly
introduced cult of Bacchus.
Eleanor OKell (Leeds)
Panel: Gods Approaching
Euripides' Last Words? The Tale of the Notorious Coda and the Unbelievable Proof
Five Euripidean tragedies (Alcestis, Andromache, Bacchae, Helen and Medea) share almost exactly the same
closing choral tag, a fact which continues to call its authenticity into question; an issue which has prevented
interpreters and commentators alike from focusing on it as anything other than a marker of a play coming to
an end (the function attributed by Roberts, 1987). Rather than following Barrett (1964) in dismissing the tag as
an "undistinguished platitude" that remains "banal" (Seaford, 1996), "glib" (Wright, 2005) or "trite" (Allan,
2008) to the point where "even if it is genuine, it is so generic that no great significance can be ascribed to it"
(Mastronade, 2002) because "it is naïve to expect a dramatist to cast in a few final lines a sudden brilliant
illumination on a complex dramatic action" (Parker, 2009), this paper examines the tag's content and
formulation to determine why Euripides or interpolating actors or editors found it, by the third century BC,
appropriate for 38.46% of the Euripidean tragic corpus. The paper argues that what makes the tag worthy of
repetition is its status as a profession of faith about the nature of the gods, moreover one that supports the
position with the supporting evidence of the drama, by taking the final line, "Thus did the affair turn out" as
the equivalent of ending a mathematical proof with Q.E.D. This has the potential to open up reflections on and
interpretations of each tragedy as a whole for watching and reading audiences in ways that support modern
interpretations of the tragedies made without any reference to the closing tag.
Robin Osborne (Cambridge)
On Not Finding Slaves in Ancient Greece
Panel: Slavery and Sources
Slaves, we are brought up to believe, were omnipresent in ancient Greece. They were to be found even in
relatively modest households, were constant and intimate companions of the wealthy, were employed by
cities as the closest thing to a civil service, and were responsible for rather a lot of classical art – from painted
pottery to the Erechtheion. But they are not omnipresent in the evidence. It is not just that modern scholars
have a blindspot to slaves in war, for instance, so do ancient authors. Whole genres of ancient literature, from
epinician to funeral orations, wipe slaves almost completely from their picture, and mythology somehow
notices slaves only when the slaves are those formerly of high status and now sadly constrained. The
suppression of slaves by art and literature is hardly in itself surprising, but scholars have, with some signal
exceptions, paid very little attention to it. Yet the very act of suppression tells us a great deal not simply about
the particular prejudices and sensitivities of individual authors about the structural position of the slave. It
does so in particular because thinking about exactly what slaves are mentioned or pictured where reveals
patterns of acknowledgement or eradication of different groups of slaves (young, old, female) that speak
loudly about what slavery meant, and about the effects of slavery both on the enslaved and on the enslaving.
This paper seeks to dig beneath the surface of both literary and archaeological evidence to find, and interpret,
the negative imprint of the slave.
Ida Östenberg (Gothenburg)
Describing Defeat: Roman Explanations of Republican Military Failure
Panel: Dealing with Defeat
Ancient Rome was crowded with monuments that celebrated victory in war. Memories of defeat, on the other
hand, were almost non-existent. Anyone who walked through the city would have made innumerable
encounters with success but met with few notions of failure. At the same time, ancient literature abounds in
lengthy stories of Roman defeats. The pugna Cannensis takes up as much space in Livy as the victory at Zama.
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In this paper, I will reflect on why Roman defeats were acknowledged in literature but suppressed in the
monumental landscape. Above all, I will focus on how the ancient authors described and explained the Roman
Republican military setbacks. Nathan Rosenstein has argued that defeated generals (imperatores victi) were
given only very limited blame for the failures, but that Rome instead held her gods and soldiers responsible.
The sources do not support such an interpretation. Generals were often criticized; their greed for glory and
lack of patience are regular components in the literary accounts. Other standard explanations were also
employed. Authors often characterize the enemy as treacherous, and ambush and deceit were frequently
given as reasons of defeat. In many accounts, Nature itself plays a role. The wild and foreign landscape
supported the adversaries by luring the Roman army into an unknown and difficult terrain. I shall discuss the
nature and function of the recurrent explanations of defeat in ancient literature – the overambitious general,
the deceitful enemy, the untamed nature. Why were these particular excuses so frequently emphasized? What
do they tell of the Roman way of handling reverses? What role did they play in shaping Roman identity and
history?
Emma Park (Independent Scholar)
Lucretius and Platonic Pleasure: Reading De rerum natura III.1003-10
Panel: Cosmos and Creatures
his paper will examine Lucretius’ metaphor of the ‘vessel’ (uas), used of the body and the soul in the DRN,
especially in Book III. Arguably, Lucretius’ uas is a deliberate reworking of similar images in Plato. The motif of
water-carriers in the underworld filling up a leaky jar to symbolise insatiable human desires (DRN III.1003-10),
adapts two related images, also used for the didactic purpose of teaching the limits of human desire, in a
comparable context of underworld punishments interpreted allegorically, at Gorgias 492e7-494a5. Both Plato
and Lucretius employ the image of filling up the vessel of the body or soul as a metaphor for the consumption
of pleasures elsewhere in their work, to such an extent as to indicate that it was a sustained part of their
thinking. For Lucretius’ use of the uas image in relation to pleasure elsewhere in the DRN, however, Epicurus’
theory of pleasure must also be taken into account. This is complicated by the possibility that Epicurus himself
appropriated Plato’s semi-metaphorical conception of pleasure as filling up. I shall show how Lucretius’ use of
the image of the pleasure-carrying uas balances Epicurean theory with Platonic imagery. The latter cannot be
assumed merely to have reached Lucretius through an Epicurean filter, rather than through his own reading of
Plato. While Lucretius’ use of Plato can be recognised by readers familiar with him, a lack of recognition of
Plato in Lucretius does not spoil the effectiveness of Lucretius’ teaching on pleasure. Rather, this analysis of
Lucretius’ adaptation of Plato shows how he fortifies his readers’ mind against Plato’s hypothetical influence,
regardless of whether they recognise that he is doing so. his difference between Lucretius’ intertextual
practice and that of other first century BC poets, notably Virgil, deserves greater acknowledgement.
Ruth Parkes (Trinity St David)
Generic Polyphony in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae
Panel: Late Antique Literature
Much ink has been spilt over the generic identity of Claudian’s unfinished hexameter work from the late fourth
century CE, the De Raptu Proserpinae. Is it a traditional epic or an alternative one (Heslin 2005)? Should it be
regarded as an epyllion (Burck 1979; Bouquet-Wolff 1995; Malick-Prunier 2008) or placed within the novelistic
tradition (Bureau 2003)? his paper explores the poem’s generic self-consciousness (noted by e.g. Hinds 2013)
and adds to the current debate by exploring some of its generic voices and the thematic contribution made by
such polyphony. So, for example, it examines the way the De raptu follows a key source text, Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, by engaging with the hymnic genre (exploiting Callimachean and Homeric hymns). It also
explores Claudian’s use of subgenres of the “super-genre” of hexameters, such as pastoral. Whilst
acknowledging the development and mixing of genres in Late Antiquity, it argues for Claudian’s sophisticated
exploitation of generic essentialism from the Classical era.
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Joanna Paul (OU)
Masks, Shadows, and Echoes: Locating Classical Receptions in TV and Film
Panel: Onscreen Receptions
Spotting ‘classical receptions’ in films and V shows that bear little obvious relationship to antiquity has, in
some quarters, become something of an industry. From stalwarts like O Brother, Where Art Thou? to Westerns
and war movies, from historical dramas like The Borgias or Boardwalk Empire to contemporary urban fables
such as The Wire, scholars, students, and fans have taken great pleasure in mining and cataloguing these
narratives’ apparent use of classical material. he results of such endeavours can be intriguing and sometimes
illuminating, but it is not always clear what we are meant to do with the findings, or how they contribute to
our understanding of what classical receptions mean, and how they might be enacted and interpreted. This
paper therefore asks us to step back a little from the frenzy of classical reception treasure-seeking, and to
reflect on how best to handle these more intangible and ephemeral relationships with antiquity. Three
carefully selected examples from recent high-profile American TV series will be put to the test: firstly, the
notion that The Wire stands as a present-day version of a Greek tragedy; secondly, the apparent use of Oedipal
motifs and the theme of performativity in Boardwalk Empire (Season 2); and finally, the relationship between
Game of Thrones and other filmed versions of antiquity, primarily in its production design. The intention is to
unpack the key methodological and theoretical questions that are at stake here (for example, who possesses
the ‘authority’ to declare such links, and what is to be gained from making the connections, both for our
appreciation of the screen text, and for our understanding of antiquity?) so that we might better understand
the routes by which ancient material percolates into popular consciousness.
Alexander Peck (Warwick)
The Roman Concept of the Patria and the Augustan (R?)evolution
Panel: Augustan (R)evolution
he nature of the transition from “republic” to “principate” has been much debated, yet since Ronald Syme’s
1939 The Roman Revolution it is the term revolution that has dominated. However, a close examination of a
variety of sources does not provide indications of a sudden seismic shift from one governmental system to
another. Rather, sources indicate a gradual transition, or evolution, over a long period of time and across all
aspects of Roman society, culture, and politics. Indeed, it is arguably difficult to distinguish clearly between
many “republican” and “imperial” elements of the principate. Whilst the true nature of such an evolution can
only be made clear as a result of a close and detailed examination of all the aspects of Roman civilisation, this
paper offers an exploration of the usage of the Roman concept of the patria, a concept central to Roman
collective identity and communal organisation, that offers an indication of the linear transition between
republic to principate. To do so this paper will be divided into three sections. In the first section I will provide a
brief summary of how the patria was imagined and recognised by the Roman people, illustrating that although
the patria cannot be defined as a political concept, it had a key role in the political workings of the Roman
state. In the second section I will then explore how the patria was an “active player” during the time of the
late-republic, looking specifically at a selection of works of Cicero. This section will demonstrate particularly
the way in which the patria was an important emotive element to emphasise devotion to the “republican
system”. In the third and final section, I will then illustrate the way in which the usage of the patria as a means
by which to stress devotion to the Roman political system transcended into the Augustan era. This
continuation provides evidence of the way in which the traditional cohesiveness of the Roman community was
maintained.
Pietro Perazzi (Cardiff)
Demosthenes’ and Brasidas’ Military Accomplishments: Just a Matter of Luck?
Panel: Military Tactics
During the thirty years of the Peloponnesian War it is possible to find occasional changes in the land warfare
that make the dynamics of this conflict stand out from the previous Persian Wars. These changes are
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somewhat limited to campaigns that at the time were most probably considered of secondary importance,
such as Demosthenes’ invasion of Aetolia in 426 BC and his subsequent fights against the Ambraciots at Olpe
and Idomene, and the skirmishes between Spartans and Athenians at Pylos and Sphacteria in 425 BC, or
Brasidas’ campaign in the Chalcidice Peninsula in 424 BC. Despite hucydides’ skeptical point of view on the
topic (which emerges especially when he dismisses the events of Sphacteria, where he ascribes Demosthenes’
achievements as a pure matter of luck: see Th. 4.4.1, 4.9.1 and 4.30.2), and the fact that most modern
historians do not tend to analyze in depth these events, the innovative approach these generals had to warfare
cannot be ignored: they had to face various problems, ranging from the lack of hoplites (which were the
backbone of almost every polis’ army) to the roughness of the battlegrounds, which favored guerilla warfare
more than pitched battles involving heavy infantry formations; they furthermore introduced massive use of
night marches, ambushes and reconnaissance actions. The objective of this study is to go over the events that
happened during Demosthenes’ and Brasidas’ campaigns, focusing on the characters themselves, which quite
stand out among their peers, and then pointing out the innovative aspects and the management of the battles
they were involved in, since there’s almost no other similar evidence of such frequent use of light infantry and
unconventional tactics in the Greek World until the Corinthian War in the IV Century BC.
Moss Pike (Harvard-Westlake School)
Gamification in Classics
Panel: New Approaches 1
“Gamification” and game-based learning have become one of the hot topics in pedagogy, but the principles
behind it can be opaque and difficult to put into practice. Moreover, games have engendered a negative
reputation on the content rich academic world and have thus been relatively neglected in higher education.
Refuting claims that games do more damage than good, McGonigal (2011) has analyzed why games and good
game mechanics can be so effective in promoting learning. According to the research, games facilitate
engagement and collaboration, making them valuable assets within in the classroom. A good game has a clear
goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation, according to McGonigal (2011:21), and games
promote “autotelic work”, which she defines as “making our own happiness through intrinsic rewards”
(2011:45). Games also foster collaboration, which includes common ground, shared concentration, and
collective commitment (McGonigal 2011:268-269), all of which are critical components of an effective learning
environment. Despite the growing body of research supporting games within education, there is no easy
process for their integration into a traditional classroom. A game-based learning environment within a
language classroom could be organized around modules (perhaps “quests”) that include a set of skills, e.g. a
new verb tense, declension, or grammatical topic like purpose clauses, etc. Upon beginning a module, some
question or problem is posed to students that will ask them to master the given skills, with mastery
demonstrated by answering the question or solving the problem using the learned skills. Additionally, badges
could be awarded to document student achievement and promote investment. Regardless of the approach for
“gamifying” the classroom, it is clear that a foundation based in the principles of gamification is much more
important than the games themselves. Therefore, game mechanics will be explored with a view toward
language classrooms.
Amy Pistone (Michigan)
Antigone the Activist: Greg Taubman’s Antigone/Progeny
Panel: Radical Re-imaginings
In 2012, Greg Taubman directed a show with the title Antigone/Progeny. Although the same cast was used
throughout, the production consisted of two notably different parts: a traditional performance of Sophocles’
Antigone (translated quite faithfully from the Greek) and a drastic retelling of the Antigone story, entitled
Progeny, set in modern Virginia at the heart of the ongoing abortion debate. This paper will examine the ways
that aubman’s production is not only a radical re-imagining of Sophocles’ tragedy that reflects divisive issues
in our own society, but also an adaptation that self-consciously illustrates the effects of adapting and
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translating the material of another culture and time. In Progeny, the drama centers on Anne Cameron (the
play’s analog to Antigone), her twin sister Samantha, and their uncle, the newly elected governor of Virginia.
Antigone’s famous appeal in Sophocles’ play to a higher authority than Creon becomes far more controversial
to a modern audience in the mouth of a pro-life activist of the twenty-first century. For a liberal audience in
New York, aubman’s choice to depict Anne with pro-life views and strong religious (even fundamentalist)
convictions immediately made her an alienating and controversial figure. In this paper, I first examine the ways
that aubman transformed Sophocles’ themes into a thoroughly modern context: civil war is replaced with a
long and ugly election process and concerns about what the living owe to the dead become a debate about the
responsibilities of the living to the unborn. I then explore the ways in which Progeny uses the female body as a
locus to explore the conflict, present in Sophocles’ play, between public and private obligations. The final
portion of my paper focuses on the opportunities that the dual performance of these plays provided Taubman
and the additional meanings that emerged from their juxtaposition.
Luke Pitcher (Oxford)
See the abstract of John Marincola (Florida State)
Panel: Roman Historiography
Nigel Porter (Newcastle)
Departing Warriors on Athenian Pottery
th
Panel: Visual Language
th
Attic vase iconography from the 6 and 5 centuries BC is a visual language usually reflecting frequently
repeated scenes, familiar and comfortable to both its Athenian consumers and those purchasing Attic vases in
the other areas supplied by the active export trade. One of the familiar, continuing themes is that of warriors
departing for war or arming in preparation for battle. The variations in the detail within an iconic theme, like
warriors departing, allows an analysis of the consistency of the imagery and those forces that drive the
occasional innovations, whether cultural, social, political or individual. This paper compares the iconography of
th
warrior departure scenes on a number of mid-6 century BC Attic black figure vases with particular focus on
the work of Exekias. The aim is to see how much of the imagery is consistent within a limited time frame and
what would account for any developments in style and detail in the approach to the familiar topic of warriors
th
departing for war. The mid-6 century BC is an interesting period for Attic black figure as painters expand their
repertoire from images of animals and myth to genre representation. It also coincides politically with the
emergence of the Peisistradid tyranny challenging the tradition of a political and social aristocratic hierarchy.
Amanda Potter (OU)
Subtext or Main Text?: Xena and Spartacus in the Museum
Panel: Viewing Ancient Sexuality
As part of LGBT History Month in February 2014 episodes of US television series Xena: Warrior Princess (19952001) and Starz Spartacus (2010-2013) will be screened in the Petrie Museum in Bloomsbury. Xena, set in
ancient Greece, includes a subtextual lesbian relationship between Xena and her ‘soul mate’ Gabrielle. The
more recent Spartacus, loosely based on the slave revolt led by Spartacus in the first century BCE, includes
open and loving relationships between veteran gladiator Barca and the young Pietros in season one, Spartacus:
Blood and Sand, and between gladiator Agron and ex body slave Nasir in the final two seasons Spartacus:
Vengeance and Spartacus: War of the Damned. Audience members will take part in a viewing survey, to
understand what impact (if any) watching the episodes within a museum has on the overall viewing
experience, and how successful series producers are in portraying lesbian and gay relationships in the ancient
world. Viewers will also be asked to comment on whether the ancient setting allows producers more freedom
than would be allowed for series set in the modern world, and whether overall the representation of the
relationships within the episodes is a positive one.
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Siobhan Privitera (Edinburgh)
Realising the Past: Memory, Materiality, and Mindedness in Il. 9.185-195
Panel: Cognitive Approaches
When Ajax, Odysseus, and Phoenix approach Achilles’ tent at the beginning of Book Nine of the Iliad, they find
him singing the κλέα ἀνδρῶν, ‘the glories of men’. In this scene, Achilles not only conveys important
information about his thoughts and emotions to those around him, but also engages with the Iliadic heroic
tradition as a rhapsode rather than as an active combatant. One of the primary means by which he is able to
do so is through his use of the lyre, which itself symbolises the connections between past, present, and future,
the tensions between spectatorship and participation, and the construction and extension of cognitive
processes through physical mediums in the Homeric poems. In recent years, there have been many successful
attempts to apply insights from the cognitive sciences to both ancient and modern literature. Scholars such as
Lakoff and Turner, for example, have argued persuasively that personal and social experiences, memories, and
bodily interactions with the world play an integral role in the construction of poetic representation and
imagination (1989; 1996); Boyd, meanwhile, has emphasised the role of evolution in the way that stories are
compiled and understood by their audiences (2009). Each of these scholars argue that, despite a historical
tendency to view the construction and understanding of literature as an elevated and isolated process, poetic
expression is deeply and inextricably embedded in everyday language and experience.
This paper seeks to combine recent work in cognitive poetics and linguistics with philological analysis, in order
to show how Achilles’ lyre in Iliad 9 can (1) represent and interact with the memories of its audiences in- and
outside the narrative, especially in relation to concepts of pictureability, imagination, and ἐνάργεια, and (2) act
as a significant intermediary for the construction and communication of thought and emotion. More
specifically, I will attempt to show how the physical medium of Achilles’ lyre realises and symbolises invisible,
internal cognitive processes and, in turn, how recent cognitive approaches to poetry can aid the scholar in
understanding issues of memory, mindedness, and materiality in ancient texts.
Susanne Rasmussen (Southern Denmark)
The Power of Pollution in the Clash between Roman Religion and Christianity
Panel: Pollution
This paper will discuss certain significant aspects of what “pollution” meant to Romans and Christians
respectively, and how this concept was used in meetings and conflicts between Roman religion and
Christianity. It will address pollution as a somewhat flexible and negotiable concept that was not only
embedded in Roman religious rites and rules, but also more broadly internalized in Roman culture; a concept
that defined and classified various social norms and values and controlled patterns of behaviour. Following this
line, the paper will focus on the concept of pollution employed as an effective rhetorical strategy in clashes
between Roman religion and Christianity. The Christian church father Tertullian, for instance, vividly depicts
how the utterly depraved pagan world of the Romans was polluted by a lust for impurity; by religious filth in
the form of cruel and disgusting rituals and myths; by the stench of incense and the unclean blood of victims;
by the dangerous, shameless world of the theatre; by eating binges, excessive drinking, and sex orgies. Finally,
the paper will discuss the benefits of taking a systematic, cross-disciplinary perspective on the subject of
pollution and Roman religion.
Benjamin Raynor (Oxford)
'Cassander Philhellene'? City Foundation and Dynastic Reputation in the Successor Period
Panel: Kingship
The decades after the death of Alexander the Great saw the development of new models of authority and
legitimacy as Alexander's generals fought over his empire. Cassander can sometimes appear peripheral in
histories of this period. Despite gaining control of Macedonia itself, his conquests were not extensive and his
dynasty did not long survive his death in 297 BC. Yet his extensive city building activities, and the need to
construct a personal royal style without alienating Macedonian conservatives in the national homeland, make
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him an arresting case study for modes of dynastic self-promotion in this period. In this paper I examine how
the tensions inherent in Cassander's developing self-representation were embodied in his city foundation and
urban development programme. Certain parts of this programme, such as the foundation of Thessalonice as a
city named for the daughter of Philip II, showed Cassander's respect for the Argead legacy and were designed
to appease Macedonian conservatives. Yet other parts were intended to repudiate the Argead past and show
that Cassander's hegemony in the Greek mainland would be different to that of Philip II and Alexander III. The
refoundations of Thebes and Olynthus, the latter as an independent allied city named for Cassander himself,
recreated prominent Greek communities destroyed by Argead kings. In refounding them, Cassander implicitly
condemned such destruction, disassociated himself with an Argead past of violence against free Greek states,
and portrayed himself as a benefactor and a healer of rifts between the Macedonian kingdom and the rest of
the peninsula. Cassander's urban programme thus emerges as a vital and nuanced aspect of his royal style.
This serves to deepen our appreciation of how even common actions of dynastic self-representation in the
Successor period were highly contingent upon local factors.
Andrew Reinhard (ASCSA/Princeton)
Panel: New Approaches 2
Classics Subversion = Classics Immersion: Why Grammar, Vocabulary, and Reading Aren’t Enough
It can be argued that the best way to learn a language is to be immersed in it for an uninterrupted period of
time. While this is easy for students of modern languages who can move to a foreign country or into a
language-specific residence at university, the immersion technique is alien to most students of Latin and of
Ancient Greek. As instructors, however, we can bring Classics to the students where they live: the Internet and
mobile devices. Students are using smartphones and tablets as well as social sites and apps, all perfect places
for classical languages. When used the right way, these devices, sites, and apps can be breeding grounds for
active use and exploration of language. This paper will demonstrate using current, real-world examples, how
teachers and students of Latin and Greek are supplementing their traditional classroom pedagogy to great
(and fun) effect with Twitter, Internet memes, tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat, Vine, reddit, 4chan, online gaming,
and even old-fashioned texting. This active use of language in a perpetual state of play not only reinforces the
lessons and vocabulary learned, but also injects further interest in making languages do what one wants,
something striven for in higher level composition courses. This playfulness lends itself to creativity with
language use and breaks down the barriers of fear and intimidation in (and out of) the classroom. Students and
teachers play together, using these tools as warm-ups, for breaks, as pre-homework, as practice, in Classics
clubs, and just for fun. It’s serious learning in a contemporary environment. Using any one of these sites/apps
as part of a suite of learning tools (both traditional and non-) adds a layer of pop culture relevance, can boost
enrolment (and retainment) numbers, and engage more students than with traditional learning alone.
John Rich (Nottingham):
Dux or divus? Augustus and the Actium Reliefs
Panel: Leadership
A little known series of eleven relief panels, from collections in Budapest, Corduba and Seville and including
depictions of the battle of Actium and the ensuing triumph, has been displayed in its entirety for the first time
in the recent exhibition at Rome commemorating the bimillenium of the death of Augustus. The empty chariot
shown on one of the panels has been interpreted as the tensa in which the attributes of the deified Augustus
were carried in the circus procession, and the reliefs have accordingly been held to derive from a monument of
Claudian date in honour of Divus Augustus. This paper will argue instead that the empty chariot was one of the
honours voted to Octavian-Augustus for the Actium victory and the reliefs derive from a monument erected
early in his reign in celebration of the victory.
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Christina Robertson (Auckland)
The God’s-Eye View: Conceptions of Space in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Panel: Ovid
his paper situates Ovid’s use of space in the Metamorphoses in the context of recent scholarship on place and
space in the ancient world. Talbert (2010) and Brodersen (2001) have discussed the prominence in ancient
geographical thought of a linear, sequential presentation of space, as expressed in itinerary and periplus
literature. By contrast, Keith (2000) identifies a top-down, quasi-cartographic view of space as an important
motif in epic. Purves (2010) discusses the implications of sequential and cartographic presentations of space in
Greek literature, arguing that these contrasting viewpoints can be understood in relation to the structure of a
narrative. Drawing on Purves’s methodology, this paper explores Ovid’s presentation of space in his narrative
and argues for a meta-poetic reading of his use of space. Ovid exploits the tension between the sequential and
cartographic viewpoints. Both viewpoints are represented in different episodes of the Metamorphoses, but
Ovid also combines the top-down, god’s-eye view with a sequential presentation of space in several significant
episodes involving flight. I argue that the journeys by air of Phaethon (Met. 2.103-328), Perseus (Met. 4.604669) and Daedalus (Met. 8.183-235), which combine sequential organization of space with the unity of an
instantaneous, top-down view, are significant for understanding the structure of the poem as a combination of
eusynoptic and episodic narrative approaches.
James Robson (OU)
See the abstract of Mair Lloyd (OU) above.
Panel: New Approaches 2
Diana Rodríguez-Pérez (Edinburgh)
Panel: Visual Language
Unexpected Signs in Unexpected Contexts: Meaningful Relationships between the Apotheosis of Heracles
and the Apobates Race on Greek Vases
In this paper I want to explore the relationship between the images of the apotheosis of Heracles and the
apobates race in relation to a 4th century Athenian bell krater from Spain. From the end of the 5th century BC,
both iconographies show remarkable similitudes at the level of the microstructure that may translate in its
assimilation at the level of the meaning, in particular in the peripheral areas of the Greek world. There is an
interesting exchange of signs between both images at that time, which can also be put into relationship with
the later scenes of Nike driving a chariot. Their analysis as part of the wider visual system of Greek vase
painting iconography reveals interesting findings about the ways in which images and iconographic types
acquire meaning. It also sheds light on the kind of images favoured by the receptors of these vases in the
Peninsula — the Iberians.
Nikki Rollason (Nottingham)
‘Weaving a Tranquil Work of Peace’? Clothing Gifts in Late-Antique Diplomacy
Panel: Romans in Our Space
Clothing was one of a number of items that were given over the years by the Roman Empire to foreign powers
and functioned as part of the wider framework of diplomatic gift-giving in the empire’s relations with its
neighbours. Within this context, money and metalware were the most frequent diplomatic weapons of choice,
but clothing followed close behind: in Late Antiquity ‘silken clothes’ are listed by the historian Menander,
along with gold and silver, as one of the three best presents to give in a diplomatic context due to their status
as ‘valuable commodities.’ Clothing, therefore, was part of a culture of gift exchange which was central to the
methods employed by the Romans (and others) in order to develop and maintain diplomatic relations –
relations of vital importance to the expansion and maintenance of the empire in all periods. During Late
Antiquity, when the empire’s limited military capabilities resulted in diplomacy assuming a more prominent
role and importance in its interactions with its foreign neighbours, however, clothing gifts had a part to play in
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the empire’s continued survival, creating a fiction of superior power. Working alongside other diplomatic gifts,
and of course the envoys themselves, they produced an image of imperial power and of the empire itself
which was beautiful, threatening, and enticing in order to create and then reinforce the impression of the
empire’s superior position of authority with regard to its foreign neighbours. The multi-layered symbolism
inherent in clothing is not found in the other diplomatic gifts, however; although they have their own
messages, these are usually straightforward and easy to read. This paper will therefore argue that clothing did
not merely contribute towards peace as an important diplomatic gift, but in its other roles as a mantle of
protection, submission, power, and authority it allowed the empire to present an expensive and beautiful gift
which was infused with layers of subtlety, layers which could be adapted by both the giver and receiver of the
garment. Thus it had a vital function in displaying and negotiating authority for those on both sides of the
empire’s borders.
Clare Rowan (Warwick)
Panel: Augustan (R)evolution
Now You See It….Now You Don’t: The (R)evolution of Augustan Iconography in Roman Iberia
Since Zanker’s The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus visual and material culture has been a key area of
study for the ‘revolution’ of ideology that accompanied the creation of the principate. In 20 Burnett initiated
a consideration as to how this ‘Augustan revolution’ played out on the coinage of the provinces, the issues
struck by local cities and magistrates (JRS 20 ). Burnett’s article demonstrates the long-term nature of this
process, beginning in the late Republic and continuing into the Julio-Claudian period. But the view from Roman
Iberia offers some deviating voices: for some cities in this region, provincial coinage suggests that the
principate was not so much an iconographic revolution as an evolution. In fact, at times, the transition to the
Augustan period is so subtle that it is difficult (if not impossible) to spot.
While some mints did adopt what might be termed ‘imperial’ iconography (‘revolution’), others had more
ambiguous reactions (‘evolution’). In some mints (e.g. Carteia, Emporia), the rise of Augustus had no effect on
iconography at the mint whatsoever. In other cases, the ambiguity of the iconography selected for coinage
means that uncertainty remains as to whether it is an ‘Augustan’ or ‘Republican’ piece. Some cities adopted
‘Augustan’ or ‘Roman’ imagery, but only to the extent that it fit in or could be adapted to existing local
iconographic traditions (e.g Ilerda-Iltirta, Segobriga). Through an exploration of the differing reactions of
Iberian mints to the visual ideology of Augustus, this paper highlights the different strategies in which the
imagery of the principate was (or was not) integrated into local currencies, and the ambiguous, discrepant
experiences of the Augustan age that may have resulted, a phenomenon best described by the term
(r)evolution.
Meike Rühl (Osnabrück)
Look and Read: Image and Text in Late Antique Manuscripts
Panel: Visual Narrative
The illuminations in manuscripts are just one aspect of the reception of the classical works in Late Antiquity.
Two of the most luxurious and best preserved manuscripts present the works of Virgil. Although the
manuscripts have not been transmitted complete and some folios have been lost, they nevertheless provide a
most fascinating insight into the book and reading culture of Late Antiquity. Being of little or no interest to
philological analysis (especially for those who deal with questions of textual history), the manuscripts have
mostly been examined by art historians or archaeologists. Particular attention has been paid to describing and
evaluating the miniatures by comparing them with the Virgilian text, and to elucidating the evolution of book
illumination. Curiously, however, there has been little discussion of the relationship and interaction between
text and image in these manuscripts. The reason for this might be that the mere terms "illustration" or
"illumination" suggest that the images only serve to make the meaning of the text clearer by giving some visual
hints. The main purpose of my paper is to take a fresh look at the way in which text and image are combined
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or even intertwined in the manuscripts. By doing so I shall take both text and image as part of the reception in
their own right. My basic concern, then, is to consider the different narrative techniques used by art and text
to organise the story (by focussing e. g. on the perspective or movement in space and time) and to bring into
sharper focus how the reader or viewer respectively are guided through the work.
Amy Russell (Durham)
Explaining and Exploiting Electoral Defeat
Panel: Dealing with Defeat
In the competitive political atmosphere of the late Republic, each year’s elections produced a crop of defeated
candidates as well as newly-elected magistrates. Recent research by Pina Polo and others have demonstrated
that electoral defeat was not necessarily the end of a candidate’s career. Some of the most prominent
politicians of the second and first centuries BCE, including such luminaries as Marius, Sulla, and the younger
Cato, suffered one or more repulsae and went on to achieve their goals in a subsequent year. For these men, it
was important to react appropriately to defeat. How did they explain their unsuccessful candidacies to the
various audiences they faced in the aftermath? What role did past repulsae play in their self-presentation
during the ext elections they contested?
Strategies attested range from the high-risk gambit of accusing one’s successful opponents of corruption –
success might mean taking their place in the magistracy, but at the price of facing a painful dissection of one’s
own campaign in court – to Sulla’s claim that he was defeated in the praetorian elections because the people
were disappointed he had not been aedile, when he could have used his African connections to put on
magnificent games. Sulla’s pretext amounts to a boast that the people expected more from him than from
other candidates, and Plutarch (Sulla 5) sees through his rhetoric. Yet Sulla was not the only candidate to use
this excuse. Did the electorate interrogate defeated candidates’ explanations, or were these face-saving but
paper-thin narratives an accepted part of the rhetoric of elite competition? In Republican elections, glory for
the victors did not necessarily mean shame for the defeated, but care was required to turn defeat into victory.
This paper considers the range of narrative strategies available and investigates which were most successful.
Cressida Ryan (Oxford)
Panel: Performance
From Alexander to Xerxes, Triumphant Tragedy and Tragic Triumph on the British Stage
In February 7 6, Handel presented his version of Newbrugh Hamilton’s libretto for Alexander’s Feast, to great
acclaim. Two years later he treated another example of destruction in Persia with Serse, which was so badly
received that it was little performed for the following two centuries and led in part to Handel giving up writing
opera. Between these two productions, the Licensing Act of 1737 had come in to force. In this paper I explore
some of the Classical resonances in both works in an attempt to understand their respective popularity. I also
argue that the advent of censorship fundamentally changed the way in which Greco-Roman material was used
on stage, moving towards an allegorical structure so dense and complicated that it proved incomprehensibly
multi-valent, which was a major factor in the dissatisfaction with Serse. Finally I tie this in with the developing
concept of the Longinian sublime which was beginning to permeate eighteenth-century thought (culminating
in Burke’s 758 treatise), and argue for a relationship between politics, philosophy, religion and conceptions of
nationhood which again is affected by the imposition of the Licensing Act.
Kate Sanborn (Trinity College Dublin)
Process Philosophy and the Past in the Aeneid 3
Panel: Cognitive Approaches
In Book 2 of the Aeneid, Aeneas embarks on a gradual process of forgetting Troy and foreseeing Rome. The
gradual nature of Aeneas’ transformation is crucial because if Aeneas forgets roy completely, his mission
becomes meaningless; for Aeneas, the significance of Rome is dependent upon his Trojan past. I argue that
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this process resembles the specious present, which William James and the process philosopher Alfred North
Whitehead describe as a brief state in which, by means of relativity, memories and expectations are produced
as the past is replaced sequentially by the future. However, while Aeneas operates within this extended
specious present, Helenus and Andromache engage with the distant past. Whitehead argues that it is
impossible to perceive the past truly; remembering the distant past is merely experiencing the representation
of previous perception. By modelling Buthrotum as Troy, Helenus and Andromache live in a mere
representation of a city that will continue to decay without novelty. There has been recent interest in the
study of memory and time in ancient literature and culture so that we might better understand the ancients’
relationship to their past and future (esp. Gowing, 2005; Kennedy, 2013; Purves, 2010; Seider, 2013). Further,
Quint’s ( 982, 99 ) application of Freudian thought to the Buthrotum episode yielded interesting arguments
on repetition compulsion in both the Aeneid and Augustan Rome. This paper seeks to shed further light in
these areas by applying Whitehead’s (and, occasionally, James’s) theories on memory, time, evolution, and
novelty to Book 3 of the Aeneid. Because process philosophy is concerned with universal concepts which
transcend time and culture, it may be appropriate to employ it to illustrate the dynamics of the Buthrotum
visit, especially since modern readers of the Aeneid are still disturbed by ‘ oy roy’, suggesting a rather
universally human uneasiness regarding stagnation and obsessive preoccupation with the past.
Ed Sanders (Royal Holloway)
Thucydides and Emotional Incitement to War
Panel: Eliciting Emotions
Emotion arousal was an essential component of oratorical strategy in the ancient world, and nowhere is this
more true than in the large number of speeches that survive – directly or reported by historiographers – from
the Classical period (479-322 BCE) of ancient Greece. Orators used a variety of techniques to arouse certain
emotions in their audiences, and their choice of arguments and emotions is neither simple nor uniform, but
instead a subtle and complex phenomenon. Common emotions in deliberative oratory – speeches delivered
before deliberative bodies (normally Assemblies) in Greek poleis – include fear, anger, shame, civic price, and
hope of or desire for gain. Thucydides contains a large number of deliberative speeches, many of substantial
length, in which emotional arguments are made in some detail (in contrast to other Classical period
historiographers, whose speeches are more commonly reported in précis). These speeches are of two types:
those delivered within a polis by a citizen of that state; and those delivered by inter-polis envoys. Speeches
inciting war are also of two types: those proposing starting, and those proposing continuing, to fight. The
emotional requirements of such speeches differ by a variety of factors, such as: the city being addressed,
which Thucydides can portray as being more open to certain emotions than others; the hierarchically
subordinate or superior position of the polis whose envoy is speaking; the state of the war; the polis’s
economic or military strength and stability; its martial history; its diplomatic vulnerability; and more
psychological factors (e.g. continued success creating overconfidence; a concatenation of disasters breeding
despair). This paper will explore such issues, and propose a framework for understanding why certain
emotions are chosen in particular circumstances, and the varying arguments by which they are aroused.
Liz Sawyer (Oxford)
Panel: Legacies
Leo Strauss, in Context: Classical Literature as Political Philosophy in 1950s/1960s American Universities
It is difficult to assess accurately the importance of Leo Strauss on the development of contemporary American
political thought. Even forty years after his death he remains an extremely controversial figure, discussion of
whom polarizes academics into passionate argumentation and even scathing ad hominem attacks. His
association with today’s neoconservative movement is highly contested, as is the question of what his own
political views were, and the term ‘Straussian’, to refer to a person taught by Strauss or influenced by him, is
either a term of adulation or condemnation. On the other hand, little study has been done on how Strauss’ use
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of classical literature, especially the works of Aristotle, Plato and Thucydides, fitted within the broader context
of how political philosophy and Western literature were taught within American universities in the 1950s and
960s. Strauss’ teaching at Chicago was firmly within the ‘Great Books’ mode, a tradition which by that point
was well-established, with its own methods of locating and determining meaning within texts. Strauss’
pedagogical and writing style are firmly based on the discursive and questioning frameworks favoured by
Great Books teachers, as was his claim for the pre-eminence of the classical writers which underpins later
neoconservative tenets about the authority of their own ideology. By studying Strauss’ writings in the light of
the educational methodologies of his time, especially his early Persecution and the Art of Writing (first
published in 1952 by Free Press), compared with his later and highly influential The City and Man (University
Press of Virginia, 1964) which was based on his lectures at the University of Virginia in 1962, we can more
clearly assess how his legacy as the ‘founding father’ of today’s neoconservative movement has developed.
Cédric Scheidegger Lämmle (Basel)
Torn Apart and Glued Together? On Ovid’s Post-Exilic Œuvre
Panel: Ovid
Ovid’s œuvre is characterised by a sharp rupture due to the poet’s condemnation in 8 CE when he was
banished to the Black Sea. In his exilic poems, Ovid informs us with great insistence that his poetic genius has
been curtailed: far from matching the artistry and success of his earlier work, he tells us, his poetic output is
reduced to exercises in self-pity, regret, and lament. Ovid thus stresses the discontinuity between his works
and, drawing on the well-established metaphor of literature as a somatically organised entity, he represents
his œuvre as a disintegrated body, limbs torn asunder and dispersed. Departing from the motif of laceration,
this paper suggests that Ovid’s late works are governed by a paradox: Precisely in dismissing the unity of his
œuvre as unattainable, an ideal always already lost, he unifies his works into an emphatic ensemble. I shall
argue that this discourse is reflected firstly in the poetic form of the exile poems as verse epistles which are
both self-contained entities and parts of intricately arranged collections, and secondly in their attention to the
medium of the papyrus scroll which allows for single sheets both to be glued in and cut off in order to
accommodate specific texts.
Aimee Schofield (Manchester)
Panel: Military Tactics
Here's One I Made Earlier: How Catapult Reconstruction Can Fill in the Gaps in a Text
Philon of Byzantium (who probably dates to around 200BC) is one of the few surviving technical authors from
the ancient world whose work on artillery construction (the Belopoeica) has survived. Not only does he
preserve his own theories on the best ways in which catapults can be built, but he also describes the most
common catapults of his time along with some of the more unusual engines from around the known world. His
work details how catapults can be built, and explains the system of proportional measurements which means
that any type of torsion catapult can be constructed to any given calibre.
There are problems with his work, however. Some details and measurements are missing, and there are places
where his description is so unclear that it is impossible to follow his directions. Other treatises do survive,
though, and they can be used together with Philon's work to patch the gaps which he leaves. Heron of
Alexandria, who republished (and adapted) an earlier treatise by Ctesibius, is particularly useful, as is Vitruvius
who also wrote on how to build torsion catapults.
This paper will put Philon and his work into their historical and literary context, and explain how his work can
be used in conjunction with the other artillery manuals when constructing replica catapults. It will also show
how the reconstruction of catapults can give a different perspective on otherwise abstract and esoteric texts,
and that by applying a practical element to research on military history, it is possible to gain a fresh and new
understanding of the military technology of the ancient world.
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David Scourfield (NUI Maynooth)
Latin, Class, and Gender in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End
Panel: Refracting
In Parade’s End (1924–28), Ford Madox Ford looks back at the Great War with focus on the experiences of the
traditionalist Christopher Tietjens, his serially unfaithful wife, and the young suffragette Valentine Wannop.
Partly a lament for a lost England, the tetralogy also represents a constructive engagement with issues of
societal transformation. his paper considers how the theme of Latin is woven into the work’s rich exploration
of time and change. On the battlefront, Tietjens sets up a contest: he undertakes to write a sonnet in two-anda-half minutes, his fellow-officer McKechnie to translate it into Latin hexameters in three. The contest
reconfigures the War into something familiar to men of this class and thus controllable. But the
meaninglessness of the exercise is underscored by Mc echnie’s determination, yet inability, to complete his
task, in conditions in which he is disintegrating. Later, Tietjens dismisses McKechnie as a Latinist, his constant
versifying in the mess amounting to no more than rendering into tags; ‘that was, presumably, what Oxford of
just before the War was doing’ ( . 2 ). Mc echnie’s institutionally acquired knowledge of Latin, then, is
revealed as a trick, its possession a status-marker in a world now being swept away.
Richard Seaford (Exeter)
Ethicised Reincarnation in India and Greece
Panel: Escape
This paper develops the paper by Fynes by focusing on reincarnation. The idea of reincarnation within the
family has been found in many societies. But there is a different and distinctive idea of reincarnation that is
found only in ancient Greece and in belief systems originating in India. This idea seems to have emerged in
India and in Greece at about the same time, the sixth century BCE. It is of reincarnation that is ethicised
(determined by the behaviour of the individual), indiscriminate (reincarnation is not necessarily into the same
kinship group, gender, or location), and undesirable (it is a painful cycle from which permanent escape is
desirable, as illustrated in the paper by Green). This striking similarity has generally been assigned to influence
between the two cultures, in one direction or the other. I will however show that such influence, of
fundamental ideas of life and death, was to say the least extremely unlikely at such an early period. We are, I
suggest, faced in this instance neither with influence nor with a common Indo-European heritage but rather
with parallel autonomous development. I conclude - again picking up the paper by Fynes - by indicating how
such parallel development should be understood in the context of the parallel development, in northern India
and Greece, of urbanisation, commercialisation and monetisation.
Eivind Seland (Bergen)
Panel: Eastern Client States
Rome and the Not-So-Friendly King: The Social Networks of Local Rulers in the Roman Near East
Roman rule in the Near East was long primarily based on existing dynastic power, and local rulers, often called
client-kings in the scholarly discourse (Badian 1958) continued to play a political role in the region until the end
of Roman dominance.
It has long been acknowledged that the relationship between the Roman metropolitan power and local
dynasts was not merely a hierarchical relationship between ruler and ruled, but rather based on reciprocal,
although asymmetrical benefit and social commitment (Braund 1984). Recent scholarship has enhanced our
understanding of the role played by local elites in the imperial administration (Millar 1993; Sartre 2005), and of
how this relationship was perceived from the imperial fringe (Kaizer and Facella 2010). This paper aims to
highlight the independent agency of local rulers, by a study of their social networks as visible through their
dynastic ties. Without challenging either the notion of the client-king or the friendly king, it is argued that
these rulers manoeuvred in a difficult political landscape, where Rome was only one, albeit the most
important, actor. Local rulers thus depended on maintaining friendly and non-hostile relations to other local
and regional actors, also potentially at the expense of their relation to Rome.
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Andreas Serafim (UCL)
Panel: Greek Oratory
“Conventions” in/as Performance: Addressing the Audience in Selected Speeches of Demosthenes
Addresses to the audience, I argue, can be more than merely a matter of convention. The interpolation of
addresses indicates that speeches were intended for oral delivery and that a fundamental aspect of law-court
performance was the interaction between speaker and audience. When a speaker addresses the audience, he
has specific purposes to achieve: to engage the hearers/viewers, create a certain disposition in them towards
the litigants, and affect their verdict. This paper explores the use of addresses in selected public speeches of
Demosthenes (18, 19, and 24). In speech 18, the civic address (andres Athēnaioi) is used forty-two times. This
speech (together with 22.1) is unusual in containing just a single example of the judicial address (andres
dikastai; §196), whereas in speech 19 there is notable variation in the use of addresses – sixty-five instances of
the civic address and twelve of the judicial. The distinct preponderance in the use of the civic address in
Demosthenes 18 and the high frequency in Demosthenes 19 are strategic and purposeful: they are means of
creating a civic fellow spirit between the hearers/viewers and of estranging Aeschines (19.96, 259, 262; 18.52).
This paper also explores the use of the judicial address: although it might be argued that the judicial address in
18.196 is a random variation, the particular context, I argue, indicates that it has a strategic function. The use
of judicial addresses in Demosthenes 24 is also worth closer examination: although the civic address is
generally used more frequently than the judicial address in Demosthenes’ public speeches, Demosthenes 24 is
an exception to this rule, since the judicial address is used thirty-two times, compared to nineteen instances of
the civic address.
John Shannahan (Macquarie)
The King of Persia and Foreign Policy: The Greek Sources
Panel: Kingship
This paper surveys the evidence for a personal role of the Achaemenid king in developing foreign policy, and in
the administration of the empire. Generally, the Achaemenid Empire is conceived as a highly developed
bureaucracy (Tuplin, 1987). Its infrastructure (royal roads), rationing payments and archives (PFT, PTT),
taxation policies, satrapal autonomy, and distribution of royal representatives (secretaries, garrisons) support
this view. Recent work on the Achaemenid court has further highlighted the ceremony which surrounded the
king (Allen, 2005; Jacobs & Rollinger, 2010; Llewellyn-Jones, 2013). An oversimplified view of the above
produced the conception of a distant, remote overlord, detached from the periphery of the empire by his
decadence. Scholars have, then, set out to highlight patterns of imperial authorization (Frei & Koch, 1996; Frei,
2001; Waters, 2010). It can be safely asserted that the outlying satrapies would respond to imperial
endorsement, illustrating the role of the centre in administration. But can one discern a personal role of the
king in issuing directives? It will be argued that more can be made of the evidence for the king’s hand in
directing the empire’s policy. To address the task, one may begin with the Greek sources. Although flawed,
they can shed some light on the decision making of the king. This survey examines evidence of financial
management, judicial interests, diplomatic conferences, administrative changes, and policy alteration at the
hands of the king. Comparison will then be made between rulers of the growing empire, and those of the static
empire. A consideration of such evidence bridges the gap between the remote, court-obscured monarch, and
the actions of the court administrators.
Trinidad Silva (UCL)
The Shades of Intelligence: The Place of polutropia in Plato’s Intellectual Ideal
Panel: Plato and Aristotle
In Plato’s Lesser Hippias, Hippias says that the difference between Achilles and Odysseus is that while the
former is true and simple (aplous and alethes), the latter is resourceful and false (polutropos and pseudes). For
Socrates, however, this is not an obvious association. The apparent divergence of view is explained by the fact
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that polutropia, essentially an intellectual category, can have a negative connotation. Accordingly, whereas for
Hippias Odysseus’ epithet is a negative quality, close in meaning to wiliness and lying, for Socrates it seems to
be a neutral attribute. What looks here like one of Plato’s playful moves, opens the question about different
attitudes towards the value of intelligence, particularly polutropia. In this paper I intend to reconsider the
question in the context of the second half of the fifth century Athens, where the intellectual model introduced
is in conflict with the conventional value system. From here, I would like to analyse how the cultural scenario,
the weight of tradition, and other rival intellectual paradigms can determine Plato’s intellectual ideal. he
central problem arises as to how we should understand the intelligence of Odysseus, conspicuous in the
literary tradition by its shrewdness and cunning, within the Platonic theory according to which intellectual
ability is committed to truth and virtue.
Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou (Open University of Cyprus)
Panel: Tragic Performance
Cross-boundary Play in Performance: The Poetics of Space and Genre in Euripides’ Helen
Comicality penetrates Euripides’ Helen much deeper than so far noticed. By focussing on Euripides’ use of
theatrical space, this paper argues that the inter-generic give-and-take in construction of plot and theme is
strikingly replicated in the granularity of staging technique. Comic and satyr elements have been detected at
work at the level of plot, individual scenes, characterisation and use of motifs. Irony and a sense of amusement
are inherent in the multiple paradoxes which Euripides’ new, chaste and noble, Helen has to countenance. In
any reading, the wit and playfulness of this play cannot be dismissed. What has not received sufficient
emphasis in previous analyses is the profound extent to which this interaction between genres operates on
several levels: use of space, blocking of actors’ action and interaction onstage, shaping of gender spatial
dynamics (women controlling male designated spaces, women as positive female intruders). The context and
the way of handling spatial motifs reinforce the association with the comic trope. By focusing on staging
technique, this paper rereads the Helen and its early reception (in Aristophanic comedy) through a different
lens. Furthermore, by indulging in a synkrisis of comic and tragic spatial poetics of fifth-century drama, it
engages in the wider debate on tragedy as genre and its development in the late fifth century.
Amy Smith (Reading) and Katerina Volioti (Reading)
Viewing Music Within and Without the Scene
Panel: Visual Language
In this paper we discuss the visual language of a hastily decorated black-figured lekythos dating to the first
quarter of the fifth century BC found in Volos, eastern Thessaly. It exemplifies the decoration of a
commonplace ceramic item with unusual iconography, perhaps intended for and certainly used by a cultural
group different from that which produced it. We explore the interaction between object and audience on a
continuum of familiarity with the images with which the vase is decorated. The lekythos shows a formal music
contest, perhaps relating to the Panathenaia. Specifically, a young man holds a kithara and sings in front of his
teacher(s). To the far right of the music contest and separated by a column from it, the painter has drawn two
men conversing. Did the different viewers / listeners within the scene(s) on this lekythos interrelate? If not, did
the painter purposely fragment the composition so as to communicate distinct visual messages within and
beyond the main theme? The theme of a formal music contest is rare for a lekythos of this type, and it is
through comparisons with such images on other Attic pottery shapes that we can ‘read’ the image today. In
addition, the Thessalian context of using this lekythos could have prompted interpretations that may not have
related to Athenian festivals, so that this lekythos was even more visually distinct. Isolated visual modules
within this lekythos, however, such as the seated and standing figures, are not unique but have countless
visual parallels on other contemporary lekythoi by this and related workshops. Thus, the communicative
power of the visual image(s) in this case capitalized on both familiarity and unfamiliarity on the part of the
Thessalian vase user(s) who, arguably, appreciated the decoration on this lekythos in relational terms, through
comparisons with other vases and local culture(s) pertaining to music competitions.
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R. Scott Smith (New Hampshire)
Mythography in Seneca’s Trojan Women
Panel: Mythography
Scholars of imperial Roman poetry tend nowadays to regard poetic composition as a sort of self-contained
system, whereby poets systematically read their poetic forebears and from that reading garnered everything
needed before (or while) setting out to compose. Since the appearance of Cameron’s Greek Mythography in
the Roman World (Oxford 2004), however, critics have increasingly looked at the role prose mythographical
treatises had in the shaping of Roman mythical poetry. Ovid naturally has received the lion’s share of
attention, but so-called Silver Age poetry has lagged behind. his paper seeks to investigate Seneca’s
engagement with the mythographical tradition, both to examine possible sources (e.g., for Pyrrhus’ catalog of
towns Achilles sacked in Act II, or the catalog of the rojan women’s destinations in the third chorus), but also
to show that Seneca thinks in mythographical terms. In terms of the latter, one of the most interesting aspects
of Seneca’s composition is his construction of multiple parallels between pre- and post-war events. I will argue
that Seneca’s intertwining the fates of Polyxena and Astyanax, evidently unparalleled in Greek tragedy, is a
deliberate attempt to frame the horrific events of the war with atrocities on either side. In particular, the
sacrifice of Polyxena to secure safe voyage home parallels the pre-war sacrifice of Iphigenia, and the heroic
death of Astyanax, highlighted by his refusal to hide shamefully in Hector’s tomb mirrors Achilles’ refusal to
hide among the maidens at Lycomedes’ court. In other words, Seneca thinks like a mythographer as he
innovatively engages in the broader mythical tradition, I process that I have elsewhere called “creative
mythography.”
Alan H. Sommerstein (Nottingham)
Friendly Gods in Comedy and Tragedy
Panel: Gods Approaching
Archaic and classical Greeks fluctuated between two contrasting views of the attitude of gods to mortals.
Sometimes they saw the gods, especially Zeus, as at best indifferent to mortals’ well-being, at worst positively
malevolent; sometimes they believed that the gods desired and rewarded human virtue, punishing only the
wicked (and those associated with them). The latter view, obviously congenial to comedy, is found in different
forms in Aristophanes and Menander alike; in Aristophanes, even when Zeus is hostile to humans (as in Peace,
Birds and Wealth), he can be defeated with the aid of other gods. Tragedy is stereotypically concerned with
disaster, which is often not much mitigated by the consolation offered by a deus ex machina or equivalent; but
it can be otherwise, particularly in Aeschylus. In the Oresteia, Athena (to use her own word) loves her people,
harnesses both Orestes and the Erinyes to their service, and promises them all blessings (if they respect
justice); and the outcome of the Danaid trilogy, presided over by Aphrodite, seems likely to have been in
accordance with moral desert. In the Prometheus plays (probably the work of a relative or disciple of
Aeschylus), a human-friendly god is actually the central character – and either forces or persuades Zeus to
accept and respect humanity. There are no friendly gods in surviving Sophocles, though Demeter presumably
was one in the very early Triptolemus. In Euripides, outside the prosatyric Alcestis, gods tend to be capricious
and selfish; even in the plays of reunion (Ion, IT, Helen), if gods have a hand in ending long suffering, it is
generally gods who brought it about in the first place. So far as our evidence goes, friendly gods in tragedy are
a phenomenon peculiar to Aeschylus and those influenced by him.
Henry Spelman (Oxford)
Borrowing Sappho’s Napkins: Sappho 101, Catullus 12, and Theocritus 28
Panel: Catullus
Only one scholar has in passing and with some hesitation suggested that Catullus 12 may look to Sappho fr.
101.1 In both pieces napkins or at least napkin-like objects2 (sudaria; χερρόμακτρα) were sent (miserunt;
ἔπεμψ’) from overseas (Saetaba ex Hiberis; ἀπὺ Φωκάαϲ) as a precious gift (aestimatione … mihi muneri;
δῶρα τίμια). I argue for an intertextual connection, and draw conclusions about how the allusion changes our
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understanding of C. 12. Catullus first brandishes the invective side of the hendecasyllable (10-11), then
surprisingly reveals its gentler Sapphic facet (cf. the end of C. 11). With the help of Catullus, I next offer a fresh
interpretation of the Sappho fragment that better harmonizes with the text itself, the character of her poetry,
and Greek ritual practice. Scholars have posited that Sappho describes a dedication,3 but she is more likely to
have described a personal gift sent from abroad by a companion. Finally I turn to Theocritus 28 and argue that
this Aeolic Idyll, describing the gift of an ivory distaff to another poet, also draws on the situation and text of
Sappho fr. 0 (note especially δώρῳ ... τίματα, 24-5). Recognizing a programmatic Sapphic allusion reshapes
our understanding of this under-studied Idyll which both inverts and evokes archaic precedent.
Edmund Stewart (Leeds)
The Professional Poet and the Professional Class in Classical Greece
Panel: Professionals
Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, identifies the division of labour as the key to increased production and
economic growth. Yet this was not a modern invention; in fact work in the ancient economy appears to have
been highly specialised. Not only was the ancient agora carefully divided into separate sections for retailers in
different wares, but there also appears to have been a definable class of professionals who made money by
practicing specialist skills (techne).
I propose to examine one particular professional group, that of poets. We shall first look at the ways in which
poets can be seen as professionals. They claim to possess a divine skill handed to them by the Muses, which
they use ostensibly to better mankind. In return, from an early period, they expect payment in the form of
patronage and prizes at festivals. Furthermore, not only did poets in general possess a specific techne, but
even within the profession there are signs of increasing specialisation by the fifth century. Secondly, we shall
see that the status of poets as professionals also affected their activities. In particular, the need to move in
search of a patron or to attend festivals may be the reason why poets are often portrayed as travellers. Finally,
we shall examine the relationship between poets and other professionals. The poet, in our ancient sources, is
the archetypical professional wise man. In myth, it is to poets that the early divine gifts of knowledge are
granted, from which the other skills are derived. The line between poet, teacher, philosopher and mystic is
(perhaps deliberately) blurred. This paper will aim to illustrate the ways in which poets presented their skills
when competing alongside other professionals in the ancient market and how they helped to define the
professional class as a whole.
Martin Stone (Sydney)
Cicero and Sallust on Utility and Virtue
Panel: Ethics
Cicero devotes the entirety of De Officiis Book III to resolving the ethical issue between the utile and the
honestum. If the utile is bound to the honestum, as he argues, it is never to be translated as ‘expediency’ with
its inherently negative implication. That Cicero chose to devote a book to multiple exemplifications of this
simple point, though his source for Books I and II did not, indicates some relevance to the time: the aftermath
of Caesar’s death. Had the dictator been virtuous, or if not virtuous, useful? Were the tyrannicides virtuous but
not useful? As Cicero prepared to take up the cause of the Republic in the last weeks of 44 BC, he set out the
moral ground on which he expected his associates to raise the standard. Soon afterwards, with Cicero gone,
Sallust was to address the same issue in the prologue to the Jugurthine War. This time the utile still reinforces
the honestum (= uirtus), but in a withdrawal from public life to take up historiography. Sallust’s style—even
with difficulties in our transmitted text—problematises what is so lucid and expansive in Cicero. What was
Sallust driving at? Virtus itself is made to jump hurdles in a critique of Caesar and Cicero and, above all,
someone still alive: Sallust himself. Cicero and Sallust are at one in not naming the participants or identifying
the issues in these two highly political texts. Contemporaries understood; we must decode.
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Mick Stringer (Reading)
“Accounting for Slavery”: The Value and Nature of the Roman Agricultural Slave
Panel: Slavery II
The paper considers how both financial and philosophical aspects of the way in which the Roman landowner
viewed his agricultural slaves - his instrumenta uocalia - influenced key decisions on how and by whom his
estates were managed. sing modern analogies such as footballers’ wages and transfer fees and standard
costing systems, and drawing examples from the writings of Cato, Varro, Columella and the Younger Pliny, it
explores how the Romans may have accounted for what was, to them, an amalgam of productive asset,
tradable commodity and, crucially, the means by which the absentee landlord could link himself with ancestors
such as Cincinnatus, who ploughed his own land whilst still participating in the political and military activities
of the state. It concludes that cash accounting was probably central to the Roman financial mindset and as the
need to identify closely with ancestral practices weakened over time this became a key driver in financial
decision-making. he cognitive conflicts which arose are particularly noticeable in Columella’s advocacy of
viniculture and shed some light on the relationships between the slave-manned villa, the free artisan, and the
small tenant farmer during the late Republic and early Empire.
Maarten Taveirne (Ghent)
Panel: Late Antique Narrative
At the Crossroad of Ancient Rhetoric and Biblical Exegesis: Understanding History through Biblical Exempla
in the Latin acta martyrum & passiones from the 4th-6th Centuries.
When reading Latin acta martyrum & passiones from Late Antiquity (4th-6th centuries) one is often struck by
the close resemblance between descriptions of martyrdom and Biblical events. In fact, the protagonists
themselves frequently refer to these events in their prayers, thereby using exempla as rhetorical devices. The
present paper will argue that an approach that combines rhetorical theory with Bible exegesis, helps to
interpret the events in martyrdom narratives. I will show how the historical implications of typological exegesis
merge with those of the exemplum, so as to express the perpetual recurrence in the course of history. To do
so, I will analyze the use of the two most popular exempla – viz, Daniel in the lions’ den and the three youths in
the fiery furnace – throughout the extant Latin martyrdom accounts from Late Antiquity, and explore the
vicissitudes of the martyrs against the background of those of the evoked Biblical models.
The use of exempla obviously relies on classical rhetorical theory and assumes that if circumstances are similar
to past events, the outcome may be analogous as well. Yet, I argue, the exempla in the late antique acta
martyrum & passiones exceed classical rhetorical theory. Instead of an assumed analogy between different
occurrences, the relationship between past and present in the acta & passiones is perceived as a perpetual
recurrence of historical patterns. I argue that in their use of Biblical examples, the hagiographers adopt the
exegetical typology concept. Such typological exempla point out that the martyr’s persecution is always
adumbrated by the vicissitudes of pious Ancient Testament figures. Consequently they unveil the
uninterrupted renewal of the Biblical past, and indicate that all events are in essence determined by God, who
always saves the oppressed.
Tristan Taylor (New England)
Extermination in Late Roman Imperial Ideology in the Latin West
Panel: Transformations
An early fifth century triumphal inscription from Rome to the emperors Arcadius, Honorius and Theodosius II
celebrates the apparent extinguishment of the nation of the Getae (ILS 798). In the same era, however,
Claudian praises Rome as formidable in war, but gentle to foreign nations once they are subdued (De Bello
Gildonico 97-8), echoing the famous precept Vergil had ascribed to Anchises centuries before (Aeneid 6.853).
This paper will explore the tension between the celebration of clementia towards conquered peoples and the
praise of extermination in late Roman imperial ideology, particularly as represented in Latin panegyric from
the late third to early fifth centuries. It will be argued that, while neat distinctions are not possible, certain
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trends appear. Firstly, it is notable that even in a genre as prone to hyperbole as panegyric, the extermination
of peoples is not a particularly frequent trope of praise. In some instances, it is potential, rather than actual,
extermination that is mentioned (eg, Claudian, Bellum Gothicum 1.90-103). There is certainly praise for
slaughter (eg, Claudian de Tertio Consulatu 147-150; Pan. Lat 2(12).5.2-4), but rather than extermination, more
frequent topoi are celebrations of expanding empire (eg, Pan. Lat. 8(2).3.3) or descriptions of clemency (eg,
Pan. Lat. 4(10).37.2) or of once hostile nations now cowed in fear or subservient to the empire (eg, Pan. Lat.
2(12).22). Secondly, although rare, extermination is nonetheless considered praiseworthy. Such praise
particularly occurs in the context of imperial responses to nomadic tribes who have invaded the empire or
have been treacherous (eg, Pan. Lat. 12(9).22.6; ILS 798). However, the significance of this focus is problematic
to determine as combating such invasions also reflects the main area of western military activity in this era.
Kathryn Tempest (Roehampton)
Lies, Errors and Deceit: The Vocabulary of Deception in Cicero’s Speeches
Panel: Deception
That Cicero was capable of suppressing, distorting or misrepresenting the evidence is not a new observation;
according to a well-known passage in Quintilian, the orator even boasted that he had shrouded the jury in
darkness during the trial of Cluentius (Quint. Inst. 2.17.20-1 se tenebras offudisse iudicibus in causa Cluenti
gloriatus est). Indeed, many modern scholars have elucidated the various courtroom tactics that Cicero
deployed to present the best possible case for his clients. But the extent to which Cicero either actively
deceived – or was accused of having deceived - his audience, or how often he accused his opponents of being
deceitful remains to be examined. Building on the growing body of scholarship on deception in Attic oratory,
this paper therefore aims to investigate the vocabulary and topoi of deception in Cicero’s speeches and to test
the effect of such allegations more generally.
Agnes Thomas (Cologne)
Depictions of Slaves in Greek Art of Classical and Hellenistic Times
Panel: Slavery II
The archaeological evidence of slavery in antiquity mainly consists of objects of the visual arts. Hence the
method of iconography regarding the representations of unfree people is under discussion in this paper. The
types of monuments selected for the project contain especially vases, grave- and votive reliefs, as well as
terracotta figurines of Greek origin from the classical and Hellenistic times.
Examining this evidence, we face several methodological problems. At first, what criteria can we define in
order to systematically distinguish representations of unfree people? Most depictions in ancient art deal more
with the social role of servants (in relation to their masters) but not with the legal status of slavery that we
know from the written sources. Furthermore, an iconographical examination of visual sources always has to
reflect changes on the basis of genre (type of monuments), space and time. The characteristics of the slave
depictions differ in relation to the diverse types of monuments used to present them in either case due to the
differing context in which the monuments were once set.
Secondly, the monuments are not to be seen as evidence from the perspective of slaves but were
commissioned by the free members of the society in question. What insights into the everyday life and social
conditions of slavery can we gain from sources that mirror the sight of free people on slaves?
Even if the ancient visual sources cannot tell us anything about the understanding of slaves of their own
situation, this view can at least partly be enlightening for the question regarding the extent to which and the
ways that slaves were embedded in the ancient society. This includes questions like e. g. the relationship of
slaves to their masters and usual treatment, the general acceptance of slavery, common characteristics that
were attributed to some groups of slaves, and related problems.
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Matthew Trundle (Auckland)
Coinage in the Athenian Empire
Panel: Material Culture
This paper examines the role of coinage in the management of the Athenian Empire. Two recent studies (C.
Flament, ‘Faut – il suivre les chouettes? Reflexions sur la monnaie comme indicateur d’echange a partir du
athennien d’epoque classique’, (pp. 39-51) and . onuk, ‘Des chouettes en Asia Mineure quelques pistes de
reflexion’, (pp. 53-66) both in Th. Faucher, M.-C. Marcellesi and O. Picard (eds.), Nomisma: la circulation
monetaire dans le monde grec antique (Actes du colloque international Athenes 14-17 Avril 2010 – BCH
Supplement, 53, Paris, 2011)have questioned the levels of monetisation within the empire pointing to the
amount of coined-Athenian silver found outside the Athenian archê alongside the absence of hoards from the
Aegean basin. These studies suggest that much Athenian minting aimed at exporting the silver of Laureion and
that even coins designed for payment of the fleet and military personnel still left the empire in great quantities
in payments for food and other raw materials. Contrary to these arguments, I would like to reassert the role of
coinage and its circulation within the Empire and the increasingly mercenary Athenian navy (manning Athenian
ships) and the monetised economy of Athens and the Aegean, especially after the revolt of Samos in 440/39
BC. In short, by the 420s BC if not the 430s coins had become the central mechanism for the flow and
management of resources, human and material, throughout the Aegean Archêand much of the eastern
Mediterranean.
Stephen Trzaskoma (New Hampshire)
Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon: A Classic for Christians?
Panel: Late Antique Narrative
Photius' disapproving comments on the obscenity and impurity of Leucippe and Clitophon have led modern
scholars to assume a relatively unified "Christian" response to the second-century novel. This has been easy to
accept because of the general view that ancient prose fiction was rarely read in the centuries after its
production. When we survey the evidence for readership, however, this scenario turns out to be untenable.
From a methodological perspective it unrealistically ignores the different intellectual interests and spiritual
orientations of Christian readers in changing times, various places, and shifting cultural contexts. From an
empirical standpoint it does not adequately convey the surprisingly large manifestations of the linguistic,
stylistic, and narrative influence of Achilles Tatius on Christian writers. This paper will briefly survey the
evidence for Christian readership of the novel between its second-century composition and the eleventhcentury testimony of Psellus that Achilles Tatius was being widely read by his contemporaries. From this it will
emerge that rather than an indication of a recent revival of interest in Leucippe and Clitophon, Psellus' remark
merely shows the continuation of its importance as a Hellenic cultural and literary product. Drawing on recent
scholarship and bringing new evidence into the discussion, I will then turn to the influence of Achilles Tatius on
hagiography, martyrology and narrative epistles, exploring how certain scenes of the novel, particularly the
mise en scène, the description of the storm at sea, and the mock sacrifice of Leucippe, serve again and again as
models for late-antique and Byzantine Christian writers such as Synesius, Ps.-Nilus, the author of the Passio St.
Romani (BHG 1600z), and Nicetas Magister.
Christina Tsaknaki (Cambridge)
Necessary Failures; Self-Consolation and fama in Ovid’s Tristia’
Panel: Poetry Worth Lamenting
The final book of the Tristia begins with an extensive poetic apologia. Defending the composition of his exilic
poetry despite its (allegedly) poor quality, Ovid presents it as the only way to mourn his living death (5.1.14)
and to gain consolation from the overwhelming pain (5.1.59). However, the justification of the exile poetry as a
means of self-consolation is more problematic than has been initially assumed. I will show that a common
thread in the attempts to defend his poetic composition is the emphasis on the sound accompanying weeping
and mourning. This becomes particularly prominent in the mythological exempla that supposedly illustrate the
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necessity of mourning (5.1.53-62). Through this emphasis, a paradox arises: in a poetic collection that assumes
the type of epistolary communication, thus drawing attention to the exclusively textual nature of the work,
auditory expression is by definition impossible. I will argue that Ovid purposefully creates this destabilising
contradiction in an attempt to imply that self-consolation is bound to fail. This becomes particularly clear
through a closer examination of Ovid’s choice of mythological exempla: although they appear to be used as
paradigms for unrestricted mourning and its consolatory effects, in reality they reveal problems in
communication and inconsolable sufferings, providing an apt parallel for the exile poet’s own restricted
communication. I will conclude by claiming that the failure to achieve its goals is an important theme
throughout the exilic corpus; were the exile poetry successful, Ovid’s persona as the ‘suffering hero’ (e.g.
1.5.57-84, 4.3.74-8), as one of his own mutata corpora (1.1.119-20), would collapse. Eventually, failure frees
the exilic corpus from its professed status as an artless product of necessity. Thus, Ovid can once again claim
the fama he envisages for himself in the finale of the Metamorphoses, this time not only as a poet, but also as
the subject of his own epic poem.
Douglas Underwood (St Andrews)
Imperial Patronage and Urban Public Building under the Tetrarchy
Panel: Transformations
The fissiparous nature of the tetrarchy coupled with the increasing military nature of the office led to a
situation in the late third and early fourth centuries where mobile emperors moved frequently between the
cities of their dominion as their political and strategic needs required. Augusti and Caesares in the western
empire from Diocletian to Constantine ruled in—and subsequently patronised—Milan, Trier, Arles, Aquileia
and also Rome. Maxentius, for example, invested in a number of monumental edifices at Rome and framed
himself as conservator Urbis suae; conversely, Constantine seems to have consciously deferred resources away
from Rome as a means to distance himself from his predecessor.
One critical element of this imperial patronage was the construction of public monuments, like spectacle
buildings, baths and urban fortifications. This paper will examine the archaeological and historical evidence for
imperial investment in these kinds of public buildings in the tetrarchic capitals of the west from 284 to 334.
This review of building trends will ultimately be compared to public monuments in Rome, as the city for
imperial patronage par excellence, all the while keeping an eye on the broader trends in urban development
across the western empire in this period. The overall picture of late third and early fourth century imperial
investment in public architecture and urban development will finally be examined in light of its effects on the
establishment and maintenance of imperial authority in a period of rapidly shifting political and urban
circumstances. Patronage in cities across the west not only served to help many of these rulers with often
tenuous grasps on power keep key urban populations in their favour, but also to situate themselves within the
extensive tradition of imperial beneficence and thereby legitimise their own authority.
Rebecca Usherwood (Nottingham)
A Job for life? Emeritus Emperors and the Dissolution of Imperial Authority
Panel: Transformations
st
The voluntary abdication of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian on the 1 May 305 was an event without
precedent in Roman imperial history. Ancient accounts are divided as to the motivations behind it. Was it a
noble and long-devised strategy, compatible with the tetrarchic policy of delegating imperial power? Or was it
instead a hasty improvisation to protect the fragile empire from the implications of Diocletian’s declining
health? This paper is inspired by events of the past year: the recent abdications of the reigning monarchs of
the Netherlands and Belgium, and, in particular, the unprecedented papal resignation of Benedict XVI in
February. A key issue these modern examples highlight is the potential implications these ‘emeritus’
individuals could pose for the ruling powers. What status do they now occupy, and who has the responsibility
for defining it? Diocletian famously retired to grow vegetables in his palace on Dalmatian coast, and Maximian
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lived as a private individual in villa in the Bay of Naples. However, neither of them truly withdrew from affairs
of government. Both persevered as imperial powerbrokers: the following year Maximian re-seized imperial
power with his son, and the year after Diocletian was a central figure in the imperial meeting at Carnuntum,
which restructured the Tetrarchy. I will combine literary sources with contemporary epigraphic and
numismatic evidence to try to understand how these individuals were defined in the years following their
retirement (inscriptions, for example, referred to Diocletian and Maximian as seniores augusti: the ‘older
Augusti’). Did their twenty years of imperial experience give them a higher authority, potentially diluting or
undermining the power of the ruling emperors? Or were they just empty figureheads, exploited by new
imperial players as symbols of stability and continuity in the precarious political environment of the
disintegrating Tetrarchy?
Henriette van der Blom (Glasgow)
Tackling Public Criticism: Metellus Numidicus’ contio Speeches in 107-106 BC
Panel: Dealing with Defeat
How do you explain a humiliating discharge from high public office to the public, and how do you defend your
reputation successfully? What are the parameters for this communication with the public and how does one
navigate these parameters? In this paper, I shall present a case from a Roman republican setting which
illustrates some of the tactics adopted to tackle a potentially career-damaging discharge. In 107 BC, Q.
Caecilius Metellus was replaced on the African command with his former subordinate officer, Gaius Marius,
and Metellus had to return to Rome to face public criticism of his conduct as general. We have evidence of
three contio speeches in which Metellus responded to his critics and gave his version of the events. I shall
focus on the fragments of Metellus’ oratorical performances in the contio because they form part of the great
political debate at the time, namely, the tribunician challenge of the senatorial dominance in foreign politics,
and therefore can throw further light on how this debate played out in the public sphere of the contio.
Secondly, because the textual record of his oratory, albeit few and fragmentary, illustrates well the parameters
for communication available to Metellus and the ways in which he operated within a common set of values
and expectations of how a Roman senator responded to public criticism. The main questions to be pursued
are: how did Metellus perform in his public addresses in the aftermath of his discharge? What were the
reasons behind the senate’s grant of a triumph to Metellus in spite of his discharge from the command? And
what does his handling of his dismissal tell us about the boundaries of public oratorical performances in
republican Rome and the unwritten rules of republican politics?
Elizabeth Vandiver (Whitman College)
Panel: Refracting
‘Pursued by an Infinite Legion of Eumenides’: Richard Aldington and the Trauma of Survival
Richard Aldington, one of the founders of Imagism, was a war poet, an essayist, a biographer, and a novelist.
Classical images, tropes, and references are a constant in his poetry and fiction from his earliest Imagist works
onward. his paper examines one key theme in Aldington’s post-war poetry and the 1929 novel Death of a
Hero: the refiguring of Orestes’ pursuit by the Eumenides to describe the experience of the Great War’s
survivors. he 92 poem ‘Eumenides’ invokes Orestes’ pursuit by the Furies as an emblem for the survivor’s
tortured sense of guilt. At first comparing the night-time war memories that haunt him to the Eumenides and
casting himself as Orestes, the poem’s speaker moves on to combine slayer, slain, and Eumenides into one
figure, the survivor’s ‘murdered self’: ‘It is myself that is the Eumenides ... / What answer shall I give my
murdered self?’ (Complete Poems [1948], 154). Death of a Hero too uses Orestes as a figure of the tormented
war survivor. he Prologue states, ‘ he whole world is blood-guilty, cursed like Orestes, and mad, ... as if
pursued by an infinite legion of Eumenides’, and hopes for ‘the greater Pallas who will absolve us on some
Acropolis of Justice’ (Hero, 28–9). he novel divides its autobiographical elements into the ‘hero’ George
Winterbourne, whose death on the western front is probably a suicide, and the haunted, guilt-driven narrator
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who tells Winterbourne’s story as ‘an atonement, a desperate effort to wipe off the blood-guiltiness’ (29). The
novel’s end leaves such atonement unachieved, as the narrator reiterates his ‘Orestes-like feeling of some
inexpiated guilt’ ( 97). In the novel as in the earlier poem, Aldington’s Eumenides remain implacable.
Anastasia Vassiliou-Abson (Leicester Grammar School)
Sparta in the Eyes of its Allies
Panel: Military Tactics
It is perhaps easy for us to explain why it was necessary for Sparta to form a Peloponnesian alliance. Apart
from furthering its aggression, the city-state that had reduced the Messenians to serfdom, needed support so
as to guarantee that the helots would not incur help from outside and overthrow the ruling minority of the
Spartiates. But, why would the other Peloponnesians agree to form a symmachy under the aegis of Sparta? I
will first examine whether the benefits from such an alliance were worthwhile for the Spartan allies
themselves, offering a brief overview of the debate on how these allies were actually represented and
whether they were truly consulted in the league. Secondly I will examine the ambiguous role of Corinth as a
case in point: how did the Corinthians see themselves in their relationship with Sparta? Were they instigators,
bystanders, witnesses or saboteurs of Spartan imperialism? What would the Corinthians gain from their
equivocal coalition with Sparta? Lastly, I will be putting forward the suggestion that Sparta offered the promise
of national solidarity and because of rather than despite its unrepentant rigidity attracted loyalty and support
despite its offhand and often cruel leadership, well into the late stages of ‘the Spartan empire’.
Jeffrey Veitch (Kent)
Panel: Approaching Hellenism
The Case of Achaea from the Archaic to the Byzantine Period. Part 2: The Roman Period
The Roman colonisation of Achaea shifted the structure of the polis with a focus on the peripheral centres,
which promoted regional development (Rizakis 1995:221-2). It was colonisation that brought this new
administrative, economic, and cultural policy to bear on the landscape (Alcock 1993: 93-115). Patras, for
instance, was settled in two waves; first, immediately following Actium and later in 16/15 BC. Patras was the
urban centre of Achaea and veterans seem to play a dominant role in civic administration (568 SEG LI (2001)).
Post Actium, mainland Greece was designated as a single province using the antique Greek name Achaea.
Alcock has shown the way in which Greeks of early imperial Achaia turned to the past to serve as a channel of
communication among Greek communities, as well as to reach out to Rome (Alcock 1993: 97). This paper will
deal with inscriptional evidence for the Roman settlement of Achaea, especially the urban centre Patras, to
raise questions about the identity of the inhabitants. The region is not a geographical unity and political
boundaries formed divisions within the region. The Roman colonisation of Patras formed an urban centre with
neighbouring settlements included in the periphery. The reorganisation of the province by the Romans has
implications for elite representation in the region, while in Rome elites appropriated Greek history and culture.
This paper will conclude with some observations on the role of Roman forms of elite representation in the area
and the extent to which local identities are visible within the Roman reorganisation of the region.
Carlos Villafane (Liverpool)
Remembering the perioikoi among the Lakedaimonian War Dead
Panel: Sparta Beyond
It is a well-known fact that Spartan soldiers who died in battle were often commemorated with grave stelai
commonly known as the ἐν πολέμῳ (or ἐν πολέμοι) inscriptions. While most of these stelai are from Sparta,
some have also been found throughout Lakonia, in perioikic territory. This paper will argue for the probability
that these stelai commemorated perioikic soldiers who died in war, which would suggest that they were just as
important to the Lakedaimonian army as the Spartans. Once in battle, the common interest between Spartan
and perioikic soldiers became the same: to defend their homeland, Lakonike. They fought and died alongside
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the Spartans, which would have made them equals in war. Therefore, if they were equal to the Spartans when
it came to warfare, why couldn’t they have been honoured in the same way? Sparta’s willingness to honour
the perioikoi with their own ἐν πολέμῳ inscriptions would quell all previous notions that the perioikoi were
supposedly subordinate to the Spartans. Although these stelai have been studied (i.e. Hodkinson and Low),
they have not been properly analysed with the perioikoi in mind. The only true exception is IG V.1 1124, which
describes a soldier who died at Mantinea called Eualkes. This inscription has only been associated with the
perioikoi because it comes from Geronthrai and it describes a specific battle, yet it is not the only one that
comes from Geronthrai. This paper will address the Eualkes inscription along with other inscriptions that come
from perioikic territories with the aim of proving that just as the perioikoi were part of the Lakedaimonian
army they could also be part of the unique Lakedaimonian way of commemorating their war dead.
Marijn Visscher (Durham)
Mapping the Realm: Patrokles and Demodamas on the Limits of Seleukid Space
Panel: Seleukid Space
The reign of Seleukos I Nikator saw the rise of various ethnographic studies on the outer regions of the
Seleukid realm. Examples include the well-known treatise on India written by Megasthenes but also several
works that are less well known today, such as a treatise on the geography of Bactria by Demodamas; and
Patrokles’ Periplus, which describes the regions around the Caspian Sea (Primo, 2009). This paper asks what
this early Seleukid literature can tell us about how the Seleukids conceived of their empire. Previous
scholarship on Demodamas and Patrokles has generally focussed on reconstructing their view of Asian
geography, and in this connection has often questioned the accuracy of their reports. However, Paul Kosmin
has recently shown that more was at stake for these writers than producing a correct map of inner Asia.
Kosmin reads their works in the context of the Seleukid court and its efforts to take possession – conceptually
as well as politically – of a vast geographical space (Kosmin, 2013). In this paper I take up his argument and
show how Demodamas and Patrokles use the fluid geography of the region and mould it to their own
purposes. My main focus will be on Demodamas’ description of the crossing of the Jaxartes and Patrokles’
prima facie implausible geography of the Caspian Sea. I contend that early Seleukid ethnographic literature
conceptualises the Seleukid realm through the description of the border regions of the empire and the
creation of a mental map of the Seleukid Empire which has a prescriptive as well as a descriptive function. It
has sometimes been claimed that the Seleucid Empire effectively had no shape (Austin, 2003: 122-123). My
paper shows that this is certainly untrue: Patrokles and Demodams, both philoi of the king, effectively created
the conceptual borders of the early Seleukid Empire.
Kostas Vlassopoulos (Nottingham)
Inscriptions and Slaves: Sources, Methods and Interpretations
Panel: Slavery and Sources
The study of ancient slavery is largely text-based. This does not merely refer to the fact that historians of
slavery tend to know and utilise literary texts much more than inscriptions and that important bodies of
epigraphic evidence have never been discussed from the point of view of ancient slavery; it also refers to the
fact that the dominant interpretative models for the study of ancient slavery have been derived from literary
texts rather than inscriptions or archaeology. If we are to write novel accounts of Greek slavery, that will
approach it as a dynamic social process rather than a static entity, and which will move beyond the usual focus
on classical Athens, then the spread of epigraphic evidence across space and time and its utilisation by the
most diverse individuals and groups become crucial. New approaches to the study of Greek slavery will have to
be based on epigraphic evidence to an extent unprecedented till now. While this paper aims to show the value
of epigraphic evidence for the study of ancient slavery, it will also put at the focus of discussion the
methodological problems of employing epigraphical evidence and ways in which these problems can be dealt
with. What is the relationship between the purpose and audience of an epigraphic document (e.g.
manumission inscriptions) and its apparent historical interpretation? How reliable are the patterns of
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epigraphic evidence of slavery? Can we tell whether they reflect the vagaries of preservation and discovery of
inscriptions, the trends of the epigraphic habit, or ‘real’ historical processes? When we find evidence of
developed slave families in certain areas of Roman Asia Minor can we extend this observation to other areas
and periods?
Katerina Volioti (Reading)
See the abstract of Amy Smith (Reading)
Panel: Visual Language
Caroline Vout (Cambridge)
The Touchy, Feely World of Post-Augustan Epic
Panel: Roman Bodies I
We don’t need know much about the Pharsalia and Thebaid to know that these are worlds where the gods of
the Underworld reign—violent worlds in which bodies are broken and spattered with gore, faces so disfigured
as to render enemies and loved ones equally anonymous. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes: in the end, the only
thing to distinguish even Pompey is the absence of his severed head. In these texts, each ‘imago’ is more ‘diri
tum plena horroris’ (Luc. .9) than the one that came before, each corporeal ekphrasis self-defeating. There is
nothing of Vernant’s Homeric ‘beautiful death’; just physical annihilation. And yet, for all of the disintegration
of Homeric hero, Homeric model, Greek and Roman identity, there is also a surprising amount of embracing, as
husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, brothers, gods and goddesses, repeatedly attest to the physical
presence of each other’s bodies, not just by seeing, but by touching and kissing. his paper will look at some of
these moments so as to revisit the way in which these epics make us experience humanity, death and the
divine. It will show the gain of putting the bodies of Lucan's Pharsalia and Statius’ Thebaid next to the bodies
of the Achilleid and to Neronian and Flavian bodies more broadly.
Sally Waite (Newcastle)
Representing Ritual: A Kylix Fragment in the Shefton Collection
Panel: Visual Language
This paper offers an analysis of the visual language of a fragmentary red-figure drinking cup of c. 470 BC in the
Shefton Collection, Great North Museum, Newcastle. The enigmatic image, in the tondo of the cup, represents
a woman offering a sacred winnowing basket (liknon) to a second woman. To the right an altar is visible and an
Ionic column on a high base between and behind the women suggests the setting of the scene as a temple.
The scene on this cup is unusual and interpretation depends on an understanding of the iconographic
elements as they appear in other images and on other shapes. Any assessment of the iconography must take
into account the function of the pot. The context of viewing is significant since our perception of the image is
dependent on the potential or intended viewer. Ritual images of this type are not common on sympotic
pottery and the placing of the image in the tondo of the cup is noteworthy. Such a contextual approach offers
a methodology for reading images which takes into account both the influences on the painter and the
preferences of the varied consumers of painted pottery.
Shane Wallace (TCD)
Panel: Leadership
The Earliest Royal Correspondence of the Hellenistic Period: The Letter of Philip III Arrhidaios to Eresos
The letter of Philip (III) Arrhidaios, successor to and brother of Alexander the Great, is the earliest surviving
piece of royal correspondence from the Hellenistic Period. It is preserved as part of a dossier of civic decrees
and royal edicts inscribed c.306-301 BC but relating to the tyrants of Eresos from c.340-300 BC. The letter of
Philip Arrhidaios dates from c.319/8 – when Philip was in Greece under the control of the regent Polyperchon
– but reconfirms Alexander’s earlier decisions concerning the exile of tyrants in 4- 2. While the ‘Eresos
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Dossier’ has frequently been the subject of scholarly attention (e.g. Heisserer 980; och 200 ; Ellis-Evans
2012), the letter of Philip Arrhidaios has been almost universally ignored – it was not even included in Welles’
Royal Correspondence of the Hellenistic Period. In this paper I will place the letter of Philip Arrhidaios in its
historical context and offer a new interpretation of its contents. In doing so, I will argue three key points. First,
that through its reference to the earlier decisions of Alexander the Great the letter elucidates the confusing
and frequently debated sequence of Eresian tyrants under Alexander in 334-332 and reveals that one group
sought to return to Eresos under Philip Arrhidaios in 319/8. Second, that the letter should be understood in
conjunction with the more famous Edict of Philip Arrhidaios on the return of exiles recorded by Diodorus
( 8.56) and published in 9/8 as part of Polyperchon’s struggle for control in Greece. Third, that the letter
reveals the continued importance of Alexander the Great and his edicts as a model for Hellenistic kingship. The
letter of Philip Arrhidaios is an overlooked but important document. This paper will place the letter in its
historical context and elucidate its importance for early Hellenistic history.
Naomi A. Weiss (Berkeley)
Panel: Tragic Performance
Dolphins, Nereids, Monsters and Stars: The Choral Imaginary of Euripides’ Electra (431-486)
The many references to mousikē in Euripides’ later work, particularly in his choral odes, have often been seen
as evidence for his increasing engagement with the “New Music.” Scholars have not, however, considered how
these musical images might have interacted with the singing and dancing of the chorus, nor how the
combination of performed and described mousikē might be dramatically integrated within a tragedy’s mythos.
In this paper I demonstrate the importance of interpreting verbal descriptions of mousikē both within their
dramatic context and in terms of the simultaneous performance of choreia on stage. I focus on the first
stasimon of Electra, in which the chorus describe a series of images that have previously been regarded as
static pictures unrelated to the play’s action, causing the song as a whole to be classed as a typical example of
the sort of “freestanding” dithyrambic ode popular among the “New Musicians.” I argue instead that these
images allude to and would be reflected by the choreographic movement of the chorus in the orchestra, and
that this convergence of performed and described mousikē contributes to the song’s increasingly disturbing
connection to the surrounding mythos. Through their performative language and the cultural nexus of
dithyrambic choreia, dolphins, maritime travel and hoplite soldiers, the Electra chorus initially appear to merge
with the Nereids, dancing dolphin and Achilles traveling to Troy. In the next strophic pair, however, they bring
us back to the bloodiness at Argos in the dramatic present by describing and simultaneously enacting the
terrifying emblems on Achilles’ armor. he change of tone away from the dithyrambic, “escapist” opening of
the song achieves a kind of chilling potency, as it leads us in the epode—and in the drama itself— towards
Clytemnestra’s violent death.
Kathryn Welch (Sydney)
The Virtuous Marcus Antonius?
Panel: Ethics
Of all his biographies, Plutarch’s Life of Antonius perhaps highlights best his intention to illustrate the Platonic
maxim that ‘great natures produce great vices as well as virtues’ Pelling ( 988, 5). Indeed, all extant sources
are given to dwelling on Antonius’ failings and how they undermined ‘a noble and brilliant nature’ (ibid). Can
we recover anything of what Antonius himself said about his virtues and the role they played in his public
persona? In a paper entitled ‘Greek Ethics and Roman Statesmen’, Stone (2008) demonstrated the extent to
which Cicero shaped the moral framework of the Philippics around the four cardinal virtues not only because
he was engaged in writing De Officiis at much the same time but because Antonius had begun to claim them
for himself. In other words, Antonius created the agenda and Cicero responded. My paper applies this
approach to what was said about Antonius and what he was said to have said, especially in the heated
exchanges prior to Actium. His connection to the four cardinal virtues, and even some others, can be seen to
extend well into the long decade after Cicero’s death, suggesting not only that Stone was right but that
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Antonius continued to develop the theme. Rather than the noble but flawed character from antiquity or the
naïve and beset soldier-statesman created by Syme, I propose that Antonius more often than not set the terms
by which his enemies attempted their character assassination and that ethical qualities were part of the mix. If
that is the case then Antonius’ enemies can tell us much more about Antonius than they wanted us to know.
Jackie Whalen (St Andrews)
Mapping Austerity in Sparta’s Sacred Landscape
Panel: Sparta: New Perspectives
Austerity remains central to the popular perception of what it meant to be Spartan in the late Archaic and
Classical periods, thanks to ancient literary sources such as Thucydides, Xenophon and, later, Plutarch and
Pausanias. However, work by leading scholars on Sparta’s material culture, most notably Hodkinson and
Powell, has suggested that Sparta was a less austere society than traditionally thought, particularly when
considered within the wider context of other poleis such as Argos and Corinth. Building on this work, current
research is using a new approach to the question of Spartan austerity by analysing Sparta’s sacred culture in
relation to other Peloponnesian poleis. This comparative approach is based on the premise that the identities
of individual poleis were essentially shaped by their sacred way of life; that is the location of sacred sites in the
landscape, their history, deities and cults, activities and festivals, offerings, decoration and architecture of the
temples and monuments. Thus if Sparta was said to be austere, one would expect to find evidence of this in its
sacred culture. A key element of this research relies on mapping what Alcock described as a ‘landscape of the
gods’ - that is the topography of Sparta’s sacred sites – so that the interaction between people and place can
be analysed within the wider physical setting. This is especially important in the case of Sparta, since
Thucydides’ damning statement on Sparta’s lack of urban planning and monumental architecture has
contributed significantly to Sparta’s austere image. his paper presents the results of comprehensive mapping
of Sparta’s sacred landscape as it was during the late Archaic – early Classical period, and focuses on the
Amyklaion, a major sanctuary of Sparta. It presents new perspectives on the topography, activities and
architecture of this sanctuary and how these aspects inform us on the question of Spartan austerity.
Tim Whitmarsh (Oxford)
Lucian the atheist?: Zeus the Tragedian
Panel: Multifaceted Lucian
In the Suda, Lucian is surnamed ‘the atheist’: for his impiety, the author claims, the satirist was torn apart by
dogs, and will spend eternity being poached in Hell. The reason given is, of course, the mockery of Christianity
in Peregrinus. But Christianity was a marginal concern to Lucian: he was more fully engaged in the critique of
Olympian religion, and in the tradition of philosophical atheism that ran back to the fifth-century sophists and
Presocratics. This paper reads Zeus the Tragedian in the light of such debates, and argues for a lively secondcentury culture of public debate over the existence of gods, a debate that was channeled particularly through
the conflict between Stoics and Epicureans. Zeus the Tragedian emerges as a witty and oblique contribution to
this second-century atheistic discourse.
Philippa Williams (UCL)
The Land in the Georgics: Conflict vs. Desire
Panel: Homer and Virgil
Virgilian scholarship is largely dominated by his form of didaxis. Beyond its instruction, the didaxis of the
Georgics has repeatedly been described as a vehicle to convey a passionate empathy with its subject. The
poem offers itself to reinvention. It encourages nostalgia, set against a contemporary backdrop which it both
defies and extols. One modern georgic is Vita Sackville-West’s The Land ( 926), based strongly on Virgil’s work
and with the Weald of Kent as its setting. Among the many similarities between the two agricultural poems is
their didactic approach; it is interesting to see how Sackville-West recreates Virgil's treatment of this genre.
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Through characterisation of human, beast and land, a simultaneous poignant and celebratory tone arises in
both poems. It is poignant because man and earth are perceived as governing each other; allegory gives them
strength, and thus depicts conflict within the explanation of agricultural tasks. It is celebratory because such
vivid personification allows for hypothesis, hyperbole and an evocation of the exotic and the romantic, in
Sackville-West's case especially by an immense use of adjectives. This paper will explore the relationship
between the struggles and desires portrayed in these pastoral works, examining to what extent The Land
redefines the Georgics’ realism and its idealism. It will conclude with a comparison between S-W Spring 282396 and Virgil 4.1-314, featuring characters shared by both poets- the bees.
Nick Wilshere (Nottingham)
Panel: Multifaceted Lucian
‘Scary-eyed Athena’ and ‘rustic Alexander’: Homer, Lucian, and the Judgement of Paris
In this paper I identify several intertextual allusions to Homer in Lucian’s short dialogue The Judgement of the
Goddesses, and demonstrate that earlier attempts to catalogue such allusions do not take full account of i) the
range of different kinds of allusion; ii) the possibilities they provide for humour and parody; and iii) the ways in
which Lucian appeals to both the ‘general reader’ of Homer and the Homeric scholar. I begin by showing that,
although the Judgement of Paris receives just one brief mention in Homer, Lucian’s more extended scene has
the three goddesses cleverly using common epithets and familiar passages from Homer to taunt and tease
each other in a way that not only recalls their behaviour in the Iliad but also looks ahead poignantly to the end
of the war which they are about to set in motion. I next consider two places where Lucian’s use of this material
shows that he is taking a position on disputes in the interpretation and textual criticism of Homer. I examine
his response to the difficulty raised in his time by the epithet γλαυκῶπις, which the D-scholia on Homer (and
Lucian’s usage elsewhere) reveal could be interpreted in both positive and negative senses. I then argue that
the dialogue’s repeated emphasis on Paris’ being a rustic should be understood as Lucian’s riposte to
Alexandrian doubts about the authenticity of the Iliad’s lines on the Judgement of Paris, doubts based in part
on the fact that Paris is described there as a simple country-dweller, inconsistently with his presentation as an
effete, sophisticated town-dweller elsewhere in Homer.
Jenny Winter (Royal Holloway)
Deceitful Speeches as Devices for Characterisation in Xenophon’s Anabasis
Panel: Deception
The deception of friends in the Anabasis is complicated. The narrator openly condemns the continuous and
systematic deceit practised by Menon against his friends (2.6.22-29) and also represents Xenophon the
character as saying that it is shameful to deceive friends (7.6.21). Nevertheless, he deliberately presents Cyrus,
Clearchus and Xenophon, the three most important leaders, as deceiving friends, or at least people on their
own side, in certain speeches. This deception does not automatically make these characters into villains,
however. This paper will explore the apparent contradiction in the above by investigating how the deceitful
speeches directed at friends characterise Cyrus, Clearchus and Xenophon to the reader. This characterisation
develops the reader’s understanding of the speakers as both people and leaders, because their particular type
of deceit is representative of their wider leadership style and aims. The methods of deceit, how the deceit is
revealed and received, and why it is successful all characterise the deceivers. The most revealing way in which
the characters are elucidated to the reader, though, is through an examination of their motivations for the
deceit of friends. This investigation reveals that Cyrus deceives out of self-interest, that Clearchus’ motives are
too ambiguous to put any kind of trust in his intentions, and that Xenophon is always justified when he
deceives. Xenophon the author’s message seems to be that it is necessary for leaders to deceive their friends,
but that it has to be done for the right reasons. These characterisations reveal the many shades of grey
regarding the deception of friends in a more vivid way than simply offering advice or issuing instructions would
have done. While none of these characters is presented wholly as a villain, they provide positive and negative
exempla for aspiring leaders of how it is right and wrong to deceive friends.
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Nancy Worman (Barnard)
Mimesis, Style, and the Dangers of Dress-up
Panel: Greek Oratory
In the performance-oriented setting of democratic Athens, the body was a public measure of moral worth and
social standing. Plays, speeches, and theoretical discussions indicate in their different ways that policing of
citizen behaviours often took place at this level. Public speakers in particular ran risks of falling short, and not
only because they could appear not sufficiently manly or aristocratic. On the public stage the problems run
deeper, to concerns about mimesis and style. In Book 3 of the Rhetoric, Aristotle addresses style (lexis) as
intimately bound up with delivery (hypokrisis). Both are tricky to handle within the oratorical setting, since
they are the province of mimetic poetry. Thus performance itself is distracting: Aristotle claims that both
actors and those adept at speeches win more favour, because the audience members have corrupt tastes
(Rhet. 1403b-1404b). So what is an orator to do? The speeches of both Demosthenes and his rival Aeschines
reveal that they are very attuned to aspects of performance and aware that these best broadcast their
opponents' moral failings. This paper takes up one corner of this mimetic minefield: dress and deportment.
Aeschines lampoons Timarchus for his "naked" wrangling on the bēma (1.26) and Demosthenes for his love of
soft clothing (1.131), while Demosthenes finds fault with Aeschines' aping of archaic drapery and gestures
(19.251-55, cf. 314). While this notion of the proper citizen's attire and bearing was itself a fiction produced by
the normative rhetoric of orators, it was held up by them as a real measure in order to oust their enemies from
the political scene. What they highlight in others and mask in their own performances, then, is mimesis itself—
the dress-up central to the orator's successful persuasion of his audience.
Amanda Wrigley (Westminster)
Greek Tragedy in the BBC and ITV Schools Curricula of the 1960s
Panel: Performance
In the 1960s there was a remarkable series of engagements with Greek tragedy in the schools programming on
BBC and ITV television networks. Programmes included a BBC Greek Drama series presented by the
philosopher Bernard Williams which engaged sixth formers with moral questions posed by Sophocles’
Philoctetes and Euripides’ Bacchae (1961-62), and a 1961 ITV series, The Angry Gods, which offered
performances of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in a
broad study of guilt and retribution for schoolchildren aged thirteen plus. This programming is one strand in
the larger history of television as pedagogical tool for literature, drama and the arts. However, given the
otherwise increasingly marginalized position of Greek in English schools over the twentieth century, the
perceived ‘renaissance’ of Greek tragedy in professional performance in this decade, and the long history of
regular performative engagements with Greek dramatic (and other) texts on BBC Radio since the 1920s, the
discovery of so much televised Greek drama for schools in the 1960s is a fascinating piece of the bigger
historical jigsaw of public engagements with ancient Greece in twentieth-century Britain. This paper,
illustrated with clips, will first establish the place of Greek drama in schools broadcasting of the 1960s, going
on to discuss questions such as how these programmes fit into wider curricula and what contribution they
made to the secondary-school teaching of classics (broadly conceived) in this decade.
Veronica Zanoni (Università degli Studi di Padova)
Panel: Poetry Worth Lamenting
The Metaphor of the Crumbled House in Tristia 2: Ovid’s Demolishing Self-Representation and its Ciceronian
Models
In Tristia 2 Ovid adopts the metaphor of the crumbled house in order to depict how his life has been struck by
exile. In 2.83-86, the house’s cracked walls and unbalanced weight serves as a prelude to its certain fall, which
can only be restored by the princeps. In 2.109-24, the imagery of the domus works as metaphor for the house
of the Nasones: a respectable house, distinguished by its honourable ancestors, belonging to the equestrian
order. However, the family of the Nasones has been dismembered because of Ovid’s misfortune, and
destroyed by his exile, which again can only be revoked by Augustus.
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Similarly to Ovid in Tristia 2.83-86, Cicero in the pro Marcello – a speech delivered to thank Caesar for the
clemency showed to an exiled ex-Pompeian – makes use of the metaphor of Rome as a house crushed to its
foundations during the civil wars (23-29), and asks Caesar to restore its splendour. Tristia 2.109-24, instead,
relates to the second Caesarean speech by Cicero, the pro Ligario, which contains the defence of another
exiled ex-Pompeian: Ligarius’ distinguished family has been ruined because of his banishment and it will only
be reintegrated once Caesar has allowed him to return (33). This paper aims to reconsider the relevance of the
metaphor of the crumbled house throughout Latin literature (going from Plautus’ Mostellaria through Cicero’s
pro domo sua). I will demonstrate how Ovid deliberately refers to an authoritative oratorical model such as
Cicero in order to masterly implore Augustus and more effectively gain his forgiveness, by assuming the same
imagery, context and vocabulary of the Caesareans: both Ovid on the one hand, and Rome and Ligarius’ family
on the other, are portrayed as crumbled houses in times of distress, waiting to be mended by political masters.
Mantha Zarmakoupi (National Hellenic Research Foundation, KERA)
The Dynamic Commercial Cityscape of Late Hellenistic Delos
Panel: Material Culture
This paper explores the integration of economic activities in the domestic sphere by examining the residential
neighbourhoods that were developed on Delos in the late Hellenistic period. During this time, Romans placed
the island under Athenian dominion and turned it into a commercial base connecting the eastern and western
Mediterranean. Earlier studies have focused on the public spaces in order to study the Delian economy, but
have not recognized that the commercial and manufacturing activities, which were gradually integrated in the
houses, were also an important part of the island’s commercial cityscape. In this paper I consider the ways in
which owners adapted and transformed the organization of their houses, creating new spatial arrangements
that could generate profit in the dynamic economy of the island. In doing so, my goal is to present an early
example of an urban economy where shops and workshops within domestic settings complemented the public
commercial infrastructures. While Olynthos portrays the integrated self-sufficient economy of the household
in the Classical period and Pompeii and Herculaneum represent the diversity of the specialized economy of the
Roman city, Delos provides a step in between. Recent studies have suggested that the architecture of
commercial buildings on Delos corresponds to the developments taking place in Republican Italy: shops and
workshops were walled off from private houses and their upper storey was accessible through a separate
entrance from the street and could be let separately. Analogous developments can be noted in private
architecture. The ground floor of the houses was altered and groups of rooms were created to accommodate
shops and workshops that could be let separately. The development of Delian domestic architecture provides
a parallel for the systematic creation of shops and workshops within domestic settings that we know so well
from the well-studied examples of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Jenny Jingyi Zhao (Cambridge)
Comparing Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame and Moral Education
Panel: Comparative Approaches
The role of shame in education has been approached by philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and
psychologists alike, yet there remains much that is unexplored in the sphere of comparative philosophy, which
would enable us to gain a vantage point from which to see the ancient cultural traditions, as well as our own,
in a new light. This paper discusses the problem of cross-cultural categories by way of an examination of the
distinct approaches through which Aristotle and Xunzi, philosophers from different cultural traditions, adopt
ideas of honour and shame in their ethical frameworks. For both philosophers, concepts of shame and disgrace
and their antonyms are an indispensable part of a person’s path to moral goodness, as disgrace is almost
always associated with ‘bad’ actions, while a sense of shame can be useful or even necessary for a person’s
moral upbringing. One feature of Aristotle and Xunzi’s philosophy draws them together: the emphasis on
cultivating oneself to practise the right kinds of actions and becoming habituated in them. The following
questions will be raised: Why might ‘shame’ be necessary in education, and what is its special role? In what
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ways does a sense of shame encourage one to pursue certain actions that are regarded as worthwhile by
society and/ or by the individual and to avoid others, and whose ‘educational ideal’ is at stake here? Questions
of methodological interest will also be addressed: In what sense are we dealing with the same/ different
concepts on both sides? And how do the differing accounts of ‘shame’ relate to the kinds of texts that we are
dealing with? Through its comparative approach, it is hoped that the paper will contribute to our
understanding of the multidimensional nature of ‘shame’ and of the emotions in general.
Pamela Zinn (TCD)
Love and the Structure of Emotion in Lucretius
Panel: Cosmos and Creatures
The current understanding of the emotions in Epicureanism is primarily founded on analysis of their
phenomenology and the so-called ‘therapeutic approach’. In other words, scholarly focus has been on the
influence of emotion - especially of anger, love, fear, anxiety, and grief - on one’s ability to achieve ataraxia.
The work of Annas, Asmis, Konstan, Nussbaum, Tsouna, Segal, and Sanders, among others, is noteworthy in
this respect and the figure of Philodemus has rightly loomed large. But this is by no means a complete picture.
It does not adequately explain, for example, why or how the feelings of the body play a crucial role in at least
some emotions.
Building upon such scholarship, this paper attempts to answer Fowler’s call to rejoin the analysis of
physiological mechanisms to the study of psychological phenomena - moving towards what Gill has termed
‘psychophysical holism’ - and thus focuses on the De rerum natura of Lucretius. The paper reconstructs
Lucretius’ representation of the aetiology of the emotions from the ground up. It offers a new interpretation of
the evidence for their fundamental nature and their relationship to one another. Then it reexamines the finale
of book four, not as an oft adduced illustration of Lucretian pessimism or as neoteric engagement, but as the
most developed case study in the underlying physiological mechanisms of an emotion offered by the poem - or
indeed by any extant Epicurean text.
Inter alia, this approach reveals the necessary conditions underlying the experience of amor, as well as the
causal structures relating emotion and certain other ‘cognitive’ processes to one another. Finally, it indicates
why Lucretius chose to end DRN IV on this note. In the process, this paper further challenges - at least with
respect to Lucretius - the scholarly claims that Epicurean emotions are (i) irrational and (ii) exclusive to
humans.
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