149

In the Phaedrus, Plato puts intertextuality to thematic use, showing how the absorption, scrutiny, and revision of others’ logoi is tantamount to the never-ending process of philosophy itself (Nightingale 1995: 133-71). In this paper, I examine the particular role that two authors, Parmenides and Stesichorus, play in this program. While scholars have discussed allusions to one or the other, no one has closely examined the two sets of references together (on Parmenides, see Slaveva-Griffin 2003; on Stesichorus, see Demos 1997, Capra 2014: 27-55).

Birds do it, but it turns out bees don't. This paper places the bee-wife of Hesiod, Phocylides, and Semonides into conversation with scientific thought, specifically Aristotle's Generation of Animals and History of Animals. Bees represent the ideal wife because they fulfill Greek men’s fantasy of a world in which women contribute to the household but do not threaten it with their sexual appetite.

This paper argues for the recognition of distinct instances of humor in Tacitus’ account of Nero’s reign, Annals 13-16, and explains their function in the historiographer’s program. Though modern scholarship has traditionally regarded the historian as a more somber representative of an already-serious genre, Tacitus’ use of humor has received some attention, albeit limited and not recently.

Although concerns over digital privacy and government surveillance may seem to be a modern phenomenon related to age of wikileaks and cyber warfare, this paper demonstrates that anxieties about personal privacy and government overreach can be detected as early as the Early and Late Roman Empire. As this paper notes, while rulers like Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius publically burned the unread letters of their rivals as a gesture of clemency (Dowling), these occasions were the exception rather than the rule.

The study of Greek prose rhythm was popular in the early part of the twentieth century, but has received only sporadic attention since; in recent years, however, there are signs that it is again attracting interest (cf. the important article of Hutchinson 2015). This paper aims to clarify the relationship between Hellenistic (sometimes called ‘Asianist’) prose rhythm and that of Imperial Greek sophistic writers.

This paper analyses the solitary instance of a monumental Latin inscription in De architectura. Attributed to one Diognetus of Rhodes near the end of end of the treatise, the inscription is almost surely a Vitruvian invention, as is the narrative in which Vitruvius embeds it (cf. Plu. Demetr. 21). In combination, both the inscription and its context offer a powerful and a literal example of the recent suggestion (Lowrie 2009) that successful Vitruvian monuments are in some sense 'legible.'

Ovid’s Enchanted Ring Poem: Amores 2.15

Scholarship on Greek diplomacy is divided between modernists and primitivists (Lendon 2002). The division is fiercest in the matter of interstate law. For the modernist, the only form of interstate law in Classical Athens “was that contained in treaties between states” (Gomme HCT ad 1.37). For the primitivist, Athenians treated kinship, friendship, and moral norms as sources of interstate law (Low 2007). The evidence for the primitivist view is far richer in Greek literature (Fragoulaki 2013).

Immediately preceding Capua’s fall to the Romans in 211 BCE, Livy describes a debate in the Capuan senate that centers on the question of what treatment Capua can expect from Rome if they choose to surrender the city.

The underworld is a murky, ambiguous place about which we mortals naturally have certain doubts and fears (Plato Rep. 1.330de; cf. Dover 243–46, Mikalson 114–31). This ambiguity is repeatedly exploited in Sophocles’ Electra to present characters experiencing wide ranges of emotion and to accentuate the irony of their situation. The tragedy’s plot turns on the developing theme of the living dead, as a supposedly deceased Orestes unexpectedly returns alive, with the possible assistance of his father’s spirit (e.g., Soph. El.