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My paper investigates the use of opening lines and/or titles (incipits) of biblical texts on Greek and Coptic amulets from late antique Egypt. Drawing on insights from the ritual and scribal contexts of late antique Egypt and from cognitive linguistics, I challenge what has become a foundational assumption concerning this late antique ritual practice.

The most dominant form of feminine subjectivity in Propertius’s fourth poetry book is one that hovers uncomfortably between life and death. While nearly all the women of book four are presented with some reference to their deaths, Cynthia of 4.7 and Cornelia of 4.11 are the most obvious examples of women who linger on a threshold that separates the living from the dead. By suspending the closure of death owed to these two women, Propertius allows them to dictate terms of their commemoration.

Propertius Book 4 is a paradoxical juxtaposition of female triumph and female ruin: the poet ventriloquizes women in half the poems (4.3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11), allowing them a rare chance to speak; Cynthia conquers the amator in 4.8; and the lena manipulates him (4.5).

In elegy 4.7, the dead Cynthia triumphantly returns to Propertius’ poetry, confronting the poet-lover in an extensive speech that provocatively undermines his romanticized account, in Books 1-3, of their relationship. She focuses on such unglamorous elements as nightly meetings in the Subura, sex in the crossroads, the devastating economic effects of his neglect, and the brutal punishment of slaves. Cynthia’s speech occurs in the context of poems 4.5 and 4.8, which likewise recast the elegiac love affair as containing many tawdry elements.

The Greek historian Ctesias (Ktesias) served as a doctor to the Persian king Artaxerxes II, who reigned 404-358 BCE. Fragments of his Persica survive scattered in various ancient authors and in a severely-truncated epitome by the Byzantine patriarch and scholar Photius of the 9th century CE (main text editions Lenfant 2004 and Stronk 2010). Ctesias provides an important, but often frustrating, counter to Herodotus and other narrative Greek sources on the Persians.

The inhabitants of Anatolia during the Achaemenid period and Greeks shared an entwined history, shaped not only by war but also by extensive diplomacy, trade, and cultural exchange. Mortuary remains provide some of the most illuminating evidence for these interactions. Across Anatolia, mortuary treatment is tremendously variable. Even at a single site, we may observe multiple means of disposing of the dead. Certain forms follow local traditions, while others demonstrate radical departures that incorporate Greek or other traditions.

The nature of economic relations between the Greek mainland and the Persian Empire has been a long-neglected area in scholarship. Most studies have focused on the issue from a Greek (specifically Athenian) viewpoint, and also from a viewpoint of hostility and mutual distrust. An example would be the old concept of ‘culture wars’ between Greeks and Phoenicians on Cyprus (for criticism of this view see Raptou 2004).

From our Greek sources, one of the most oft-cited reasons for Greek resistance to Persian westward expansion in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE is the question of freedom, perhaps best described in the conversation between the Spartan emissaries and their Persian host Hydarnes in Herodotus 7:135, where the Greeks, we are told, are “free” and the Persians are not, lacking even an understanding of the term.

The aim of my presentation for the History in Classics/Classics in History panel is to describe the possibilities and challenges that accompany the development and teaching of an interdisciplinary course featuring Classics and Ancient History methodologies for the non-major, general student population at a Liberal Arts University.

This paper examines the place of ancient history in the curriculum of liberal arts colleges. These institutions favor a model of education that is interdisciplinary; as a result, specialized training is rarely seen as a prerequisite for teaching a particular discipline, and most faculty members teach across disciplinary boundaries.