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Ancient history’s recent quantitative and social-scientific turn reflects a renewed and rising interest in adapting models from the “soft”—and occasionally the “hard”—sciences for the study of Greco-Roman antiquity. The turn is on full display in ancient religion, where interpretations of the material evidence for cultic observance and ritual practice have of late grappled with quantifying models and techniques.

Exploring the relationship between religion and social identity, my paper discusses cognitive aspects and reconsiders the socio-religious context of two texts concerning “magic”: the recently discovered invocation of omnipotentia numina by their self-styled “guardian,” Verius Sedatus (Autricum, Lugudunensis, late I^p/early II^p: AE 2010.950), and Apuleius’s Apology.

This paper discusses the effectiveness and limitations of approaches from economic anthropology and economic theory for the study of ancient Mediterranean religions, distinguishing three broad directions.

The nature of pleasure and its role in the good life are much debated topics among Aristotelian scholars. Scholars agree that perceiving something as pleasant often entails believing that it is good. They stress that this process may lead one to consider something as good when it is not and they tend to emphasize the illusory and deceptive nature of pleasure. Jessica Moss argues that pleasure is the apparent good.

Plautus’ Rudens was an especially apt choice for Louis Zukofsky’s eccentric manner of translation (Zukofsky 1967), as its fascinating mixture of comedy and melodrama, its lively stage action, its metrical/musical variety, and its exuberant sound play combine to make it unique in the Plautine corpus. After a brief introduction to the play, this paper describes how these features work together in the passage chosen for performance at this workshop: lines 615-705.

In 1967 Louis Zukofsky made a poetic rendering of Plautus’ Rudens, which he incorporated into his a long poem “A” as the twenty-first of its twenty-four sections. This paper offers an introduction to “A”-21 aimed at classicists. Zukofsky’s “transliteration” (his term) of Plautus’ comedy is less well known than the complete Catullus he made in collaboration with Celia Zukofsky. It is also less easy to describe and evaluate, both as a poem and in relation to what, on the ordinary translation model, would be called its source text.

A similar geographic pattern, or itinerary, is shared by some early epic nostoi involving ports of call in Egypt, Phoenicia, and a Greek state. The term metanostos suggests that some nostoi may have had an analogical structuring influence on others, and that a fairly specific itinerary was expected of many nostoi.

This paper approaches the relationship between the Odyssey’s nostos and other ‘Nostoi’ from two perspectives. First, rather than privileging either the ‘lost’ poems or our extant epic as primary in a ‘vertical’ relationship (with one influencing the other(s) exclusively), I assume a horizontal dynamic wherein the reconstructed poems and the Odyssey influenced the character, structure and composition of each other while developing in an oral tradition (cf. Nagy 1999 [1979]; Burgess 2003; Graziosi and Haubold 2005).

I seek to re-evaluate the Telegony in light of a tendency of early Greek epics to set heroic generations, especially fathers and sons, into a paradigmatic relation with one another. I argue specifically that the Telegony controverted this tendency and thereby projected a different historical vision of the heroic age and its demise.

This paper reevaluates the Odyssey’s pervasive theme of recognition vis-à-vis the Telegony and its portrayal of the death of Odysseus. The impetus for this inquiry is a simple contrast in the skeletal plots of the Odyssey and Telegony: the former is driven by recognition scenes resulting in the hero’s success, while the latter predicates the hero’s doom on failed recognition.