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Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and Moralia are studded with anecdotes on Greek artists such as Polignotus, Pauson, Zeuxis, Pheidias, Nicomachus, Apelles, Protogenes of Kaunos, Nikias, Nealkes, Lysippus. On the other side, it is well known how books 33-37 of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia are rich in stories, anecdotes and information on the lives and carriers of Greek artists. In some cases, the two authors refer the same anecdotes, in other occasions, they select different information on artists.

This paper provides a concise overview of how the Aristotelian Natural Problems were received in the Early Empire (esp. the first two centuries A.D.), an era in which the genre of natural problems revived and gained in popularity beyond the confines of the Lyceum. The evidence shows that the Problems sparked much debate among Greek and Roman philosophers, doctors, sophists and scholars.

Dissonance (Gurd 2016) makes the case that the remains of Greek song from the 6th and 5th Centuries BCE represent the earliest avant garde movement known in European cultural history, and invites a comparison between this tradition and the various avant gardes that populated the 20th Century (and, to a lesser extent, the early 21st). After a very brief overview of some of the evidence supporting the comparison, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to specify what it means to use avant-gardism as a basis for comparison in musical research.

The 1890s produced the discovery of several ancient Greek musical fragments, particularly the Delphic “Hymn to Apollo.” Describing the music as “weird” and “vexatiously monotonous, tedious, and unmusical,” even academic composers felt compelled to reorchestrate and expand upon the limited corpus of ancient musical texts.

Scholars of past decades writing on the Pythikos nomos often compared it to modern “program music” (Guhrauer 1875-1876; Gevaert 1881: 352; Seidenadel 1898; Grieser 1937: 70), especially Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, a famous example of program music considered the ancestor of the symphonic poem. More recently, Bélis has used the expression “sonate à programme” (Bélis 1999: 131). Indeed, the ancient Greek nomos does tell a tale, which is the program of its music. But scholars have underestimated the methodological implications of such a rich concept.

As Alexander the Great spread Hellenism through the Mediterranean to India, theatre venues expanded east far beyond Athens and theatre audiences grew more socially and ethnically diverse. Thus, we must ask how theatrical performances during this time succeeded in communicating the proper emotions to a mixed audience. In recent years, scholars of later Greek theatre have examined the problems of a more diverse audience in terms of gender, ethnicity and class, and exhort us to consider the input of non-Athenian, non-Greek communities (e.g.

Both Virgil (Aeneid, 685-713) and Propertius (Elegy III, 11. 39-56) present Cleopatra not only only as a femme fatale, but also as a dissonant voice in the overall poetic harmony of Augustan warfare. In her work on the feminine art of lament, Holst-Warhalft asserts that women’s tunes follow a musical pattern that contrasts dangerously with the official logos. The Oriental strain in particular was accused of a magical disharmony, “not contrary to Greek logos but to logos itself” (2002).

This paper examines the presence of criteria for a katabasis in Classical authors, focusing on Vergil's Aeneid, and relates them to Harry’s journey to the afterlife in Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Throughout Harry's descent, we see several elements strongly paralleling Classical tradition, but in the end, Rowling produces her own work entirely.

This paper focuses on counterfactual statements within the Pylos narrative, contained in Thucydides Book 4. Thucydides recounts a battle that took place around modern day Messenia for control over the island of Sphacteria. Thucydides is clearly very interested in the event, and considers it a turning point in the first phase of the war. There are two examples of counterfactual narratives within the text in question (4.1-45), one which corresponds to the Spartan point of view, while the other corresponds with the Athenian point of view.

In Statesman, Plato offers a critique of regimes based solely on law in favor of wise kingships (St. 293 ff.). This assessment is supported by a number of complaints, summarized collectively under a single broad claim: law, absent the corrective discretion of a political expert, is too simple to govern the complexities inherent in human affairs (Lane 1998). In particular, the dialogue notes that legislation will always be general rather than tailored to individual needs (St.