147

            An epitaph for a pantomime, Vincentius, from Timgad in North Africa, praises the deceased dancer who "held the theater until the evening [stars] arose" (tenuit theatrum us/que in ortus vesperos, Bayet [1967] 441). While Vincentius' epitaph is often cited as evidence for the attractive power of pantomimes (Lada-Richards 2007; Webb 2008; Hall 2013), scholars have not yet explored the reality of nocturnal pantomime performance behind the arresting image of the dancer captivating the audience into the night.

A Winter’s Paian: Generic Interdependence and Autonomy in Bacchylides 16

Several Hellenistic book epigrammatists wrote their own self-epitaphs, which likely held important positions in their poetry books, appearing at the close of a section or the conclusion of the entire collection (Reitzenstein 1893 and Wilamowitz 1924). Scholars have recognized that these self-epitaphs were integral to an epigrammatist’s literary self-fashioning, providing commentary on their poetry and poetics (cf. e.g., Skinner 1989; Walsh 1991; Gutzwiller 1998; and Höschele 2013).

The foundation myth of Antioch in Syria, which describes the archaiologia of the Seleukid city and its founding by Seleukos I Nikator, is transmitted at length by two very late authors. The first is Libanius who lived in the fourth century AD and described the foundation of Antioch in his oration in praise of the city (Antiochikos 11.84-93); the second is John Malalas a sixth-century-AD chronographer who, in his Chronographia, preserves an excursus on the foundation of Antioch and other Seleukid cities written by Pausanias of Antioch (4th century AD) (Malal.

My paper will explore the imposition of Seleukos’ authority over Babylon in the years after the death of Alexander the Great. Continuity is central to understanding the nature of the transition of power from Alexander to Seleukos. We are immediately presented, however, with an obstacle regarding our evidence for the post-Alexander period at Babylon. On the one hand, literary sources (Appian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, among others) are at pains to present Seleukos as Alexander’s divinely-favored successor in order to promote an image of a seemingly smooth rise to power.

Cicero’s Post-Exile Recovery of Masculinity

In this paper, I reassess Cicero’s desire to publicly commemorate his daughter by evaluating it in the context of his other reactions to devastating loss, specifically his exile. While Cicero’s attempt to memorialize his daughter with a public shrine may be termed a “strange plan” (Shackleton Bailey in a footnote to his 1999 translation of Att. 12.18; see also Shackleton Bailey 1966, 404-13), this paper argues that such a commemoration offered Cicero a unique way to stabilize his response to this death in the face of the blistering evaluation of his mourning.

           During the Second Sophistic etymological interpretations of obsolete words and archaic poetry served as a means for determining customs in the distant past. Since the past carried important ramifications for prestige and status in contemporary society, these etymological interpretations thus carried considerable weight (Whitmarsh 2001, Oikonomopoulou 2007).