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Despite unprecedented booms in both the field of magic and studies of Apuleius over the past few decades, one of the most intriguing questions about his life and career has been all but ignored: How is it that this philosophus Platonicus, sophist and novelist gained a reputation as a great miracle-worker a century after his death, a reputation so grand that he would be compared with Jesus, the Apostles, and Apollonius of Tyana? The earliest sign of this phenomenon is to be found in the polemics of Porphyry and Lactantius (PL 26, 1056D; Lact., Div.

Using Horace, Odes 3.16, as a window onto key monetary moments in the late fourth century poems of the radical Christian, Paulinus of Nola, this paper offers a case study in the representation of value in Latin literature. Where Horace uses poetry to establish a personal relationship, with a monetary dimension, with his patron Maecenas (Bowditch 2001, 31-63, 161-210), Paulinus uses money to establish a personal relationship, with a poetic dimension, with his patron, St. Felix (Brown 1981, 54-60; Trout 1999, 160-98).

The Anthesteria was a curious three-day festival held in early spring in Athens and greater Ionia to celebrate the uncorking of the new wine, which was marked by an amalgamation of traditions and odd events. For example, young children received wreaths, drinking parties were conducted in silence, a hieros gamos was performed between the wife of the archon basileos and Dionysos, there was swinging by young girls, new wine was brought and presented to Dionysus of the Marshes, and a meal was offered to Hermes of the Underworld (Parker).

“Question-and-answer” texts, variously called problemata, zetemata, and aporemata, have long been a source of scholarly frustration, especially as to their purpose and methodology (Mayhew 2015). In an attempt to clarify certain central features of the problemata genre, as well as its relationship to other ancient technical literature, I compare specific examples from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata to the Homeric D-Scholia, arguing that they evince remarkably similar modes of inquiry.

The Digest of Roman Law compiled during the reign of Justinian is a fascinating resource for reasons that go well beyond the law itself. This paper focuses on how one professional group – physicians – used and abused the letter of the law. Building on the work of Below and, more recently, Israelowich, this paper focuses on the ethical lines drawn by Imperial law and the ways that Romans tried to work around those lines for power and profit (Below 1953; Israelowich 2015).

In this paper, I argue that Livy’s narrative of the second decemvirate and its fall (AUC 3.36-55) advances the idea that the plebeians as a social group are more capable of restoring libertas to the state as a whole due to such qualities as unity of sentiment and the power inherent in sheer numbers. By contrast, the character of the patricians as a class that displays a marked tendency to internal factionalism renders them incapable of taking action to restore even their own libertas.

In so many Greek and Roman comedies, a slave woman saves the day. Of the surviving plays of Menander, Terence, and Plautus, thirteen involve the reunion of a lost-daughter with her citizen family. Slave women are responsible, intentionally or unintentionally, for bringing about the recognition in ten of these thirteen plays. Focusing on the nurse, Giddenis, in Plautus’ Poenulus, this paper examines why the playwrights imbue characters of such low status with such power.

Aeschylus’ lost tragedy Aetnaeans (written in the late 470s) celebrates Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, and his colonial foundation of Aetna but also, surprisingly, highlights a pair of indigenous Sicilian deities, the Palici. One prominent interpretation (Dougherty, Bonanno, Morgan) has argued that the Aetnaeans participates in a strategy of “cultural imperialism,” through which Greeks take possession of the indigenous deities, familiarize and Hellenize them, and thereby demonstrate their cultural superiority over the Sikels.

A vital feature of democratic politics in ancient and modern societies alike, rhetoric has been subjected to powerful attacks, with the most effective targeting its efficacy for promoting political judgment. Plato’s Gorgias illustrates the dangers of the orator pandering to or manipulating the people in order to maintain power. Thomas Hobbes argued that rhetoric, insofar as it stirs up the mind’s passions, perverts the judgments of the people, thereby undermining popular government and requiring regulation by a single sovereign authority.

The Mytilene of Alcaeus is a tricky knot to unravel. Waves roll in from every direction, with vague references in the poems to the back-and-forth push-and-pull of several factions alternatingly in ascendance and exile. But there is almost no constitutional specificity in the references to rule, few of these figures can be identified even vaguely, and there is little compelling textual evidence for any link in this chain of events. I would suggest that yet another player is missing from this political picture. Lydia is suspiciously absent from our models of archaic Lesbian politics.