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Poem 61 of the Carmina Priapea stands out as a poem that, at first glance, defies the generic norms of the priapeum: it is the defensio of a barren fruit tree with no mention of Priapus and no obscenity. CP 61 is, therefore, not “Priapic,” when “Priapic” is reduced only to sexual humor. In this paper I offer a new interpretation of CP 61 that broadens what it means to be “Priapic” in the Carmina Priapea.

Book 8 of Lucan’s De Bello Civili vividly describes the death of Pompey Magnus, whose head is chopped off, impaled on a pike, paraded through the city, and then embalmed as a prize for Caesar. I argue that Lucan stages this gruesome scene as a figurative revolt of the Roman body politic. The inevitable toppling of Pompey’s head becomes central to the poet’s criticism of imperial power.

The Attic deme Hecale was named after the poor old woman who in her modest hut hosted Theseus on his way from Athens to capture the Marathonian bull. This previously obscure mythological tale was the subject of the epic poem Hecale by Callimachus of Cyrene, the most influential poet in Hellenistic Alexandria. Two centuries later, in the 50’s BCE one of the leading Latin translators and imitators of Callimachus' poetry was the Veronese poet C. Valerius Catullus, whose own epic on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (Carm.

Imperial pantomime was not, of course, the street performance that we think of today, but what seems to us a strange mix, with a notoriously effeminate silent masked male player (the "pantomime") at center stage, in some sense "acting" and "dancing" the part, while other male and female players, notionally off stage, spoke and sang the libretto, performed the music, and at times added an additional "actor." Exactly who did what, in what way, and where, remains controversial.

This paper offers a new reading of Plautus’ Amphitryon based on theorizations of identity as performative. A basic tenet of performance studies is that personal identity, in both theatrical and everyday contexts, is constructed by the set of repeated, characteristic actions that an individual embodies—what Schechner (1985) calls “twice-behaved behavior.” Identity performativity is deployed most famously in Butler’s theorizations of gender and has had an important reception in the study of gender in the ancient world (Butler 1988, Butler 1990, Gunderson 2000).

The first few lines of Plautus’ Truculentus develop the conceit that the stage is a temporary incursion of Athens into the heart of Rome. The prologus addresses the audience as a public assembly and asks that they consent to this ad hoc territorial redefinition of Roman city space. Scholars have sometimes noted the similar turn in the Menaechmi (7-12; 72-76), where the prologus draws attention to the arbitrariness of the stage’s “here,” which may change from city to city between plays.

While the choral culture of archaic and fifth-century Greece has enjoyed the focus of many scholars in the past half century, the role of the chorus in fourth-century culture has remained obscure - and with good reason. The texts of choral performance have acted as a mainstay for much discussion of choral theory and, after 400, extant choral texts are few and far between. Peter Wilson has demonstrated in his work on the institution of choregia that non-lyric texts can be just as illuminating, if not more so, in this kind of enquiry.

Every four years, on 28 Hekatombaion, ancient Athenians celebrated the Great Panathenaia in honour of the goddess Athena with sacrifices and extensive games drawing competitors from all over Greece. Despite this international participation in the games, the festival in the archaic and classical periods showcased the city’s elites in a celebration of Athenian exclusivity. Scholars have focused primarily on this phase of the Panathenaia (e.g. Neils 1992, 1996); if they discuss the Hellenistic festival, they emphasise continuities with earlier periods (e.g. Mikalson, 196-198; Tracy 1991).

This paper offers a new interpretation of IG II² 204 (RO 58), an Attic decree dating from 352/1 BCE. The exact circumstances and motivations leading to its enactment have long been disputed, thanks both to the damaged state of the stone itself and to the unsatisfactory literary evidence for the circumstances of the decree.

This paper argues for a systemic, institutionalist, and imperial approach to the Athenian economy in the generation after the Peloponnesian War. The slow recovery of trade after Athens’ defeat—having been dispossessed of its former imperial infrastructure—required leading citizens to revisit the means by which the dēmos could improve their markets and increase their revenues. What emerged was Agyrrhios’ Grain-Tax Law of 374/3 BC (Rhodes and Osborne 2003: 118-129).