148

The 12^th century scholar, philosopher and refined stylist Heloise whose prose shows influences from Ovid, Vergil, Lucan, Persius, Seneca Cicero, Augustine and Jerome, is only recently beginning to emerge from the shadow of Peter Abelard through the efforts of modern scholars (Newman 1992; McNamer 1991 et al.) who focus on her unique intelligence to which even Abelard may have been indebted (Marenbon 1997, Clanchy 1998).

This paper proposes that the inscription at the base of the statue of Cato the Elder in the Temple of Salus, of which we hear via Plutarch, is mediated via famous lines from Ennius’ Annales.

Persius famously identifies his difficult metaphors as a hallmark of his style (5.14: iunctura callidus acri), and modern scholars have framed their studies through the lens of his obscure language (Dessen 1968; Hooley 1997). My paper focuses on a constellation of such metaphors in Persius’ programmatic first satire. I argue that these collocations construct a matrix of images surrounding eyes and ears, which signify competing modes of poetics.

In the longue durée, the Isthmus of Corinth was apt to be fortified. This history of fortification has hitherto been treated piecemeal and from a military-historical perspective, but the present paper draws on the archaeological and textual evidence from all periods in order to suggest that the impulse behind their construction derives instead from an enduring sense of what might be called the defective insularity of the Peloponnese.

Spartan-led Peloponnesian forces devastated the countryside of Attica in five of the first seven years of the Peloponnesian War (Thucy. 2.10-14, 2.18-23, 2.31, 2.47, 2.55-7, 3.1, 3.26, 4.2.1, 4.6), and would have done so in 429 and 426, too, were it not for a plague in Athens and a series of earthquake in those years (Thucy. 2.71.1, 3.89).

Archaic inscribed epigram often allows an object to speak in a bold first person. Noting this, Jesper Svenbro observes that the ancient reader must have had no countervailing “conviction that the first person necessarily implies an inner life and voice” (1993: 42). I have often found it necessary to repeat this observation to my students, as they immediately assume that even such simple statements as “Iphidice dedicated me to Athena” (CEG 198) imply an assumed mind behind the voice. In my twenty-minute paper, however, I pose the question: what if my students are right?

The controversy between Asianist and Atticist orators, or between advocates of grand and plain styles of oratory, is well-worn territory in the study of ancient rhetoric. The third, middle style is often neglected in favor of the two extremes, or misunderstood as merely a halfway point between the two. In this paper, I argue that Cicero defines the middle style as a set of aesthetic and ethical criteria quite distinct from the plain and grand styles.

In 15 CE, a delegation from the province of Hispania Citerior traveled to Rome with a petition to erect a temple to Augustus in Tarraco. Notably, Tacitus describes the establishment of this cult as an exemplum for all the provinces of the Roman empire (Ann. 1.78). When delegates from Hispania Ulterior petitioned the emperor Tiberius in 25 CE to establish their own provincial cult to the emperor, they too cited an exemplum, Asia Minor's second provincial cult in Smyrna (Tact. Ann. 4.37).

While technical aspects of ancient fire-signaling have received extensive study (Riepl 1913, Diels 1920, Darmstaedter 1924, Reinecke 1935, and Forbes 1966), this paper examines how historians use this symbolic form of communication to reflect upon both the possibilities and the challenges of the transmission of human knowledge. This approach allows us to view fire signals as meta-historical representatives for the historiographical principles of each author.

“For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God …” (Jowett translation, Apology 30e)