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This paper offers a new perspective the relationship between Ovid and his wife over the course of his exile with particular attention to the way in which he attempts to use her as a conduit to a network of powerful women. In the Tristia she is mostly treated as an exemplary figure whose fortitude in the face of danger Ovid renders mythic. In the fifth book, Ovid strikes a different tone. She might have the power to help relocate Ovid, he observes bitterly: esset, quae debet, si tibi cura mei “if you had the concern for me which you should have” (Tr. 5.2.34).

It is striking how frequently games of chance are paired with anger in Greek literature. Passages from a wide array of genres and time periods associate dice and knucklebones with ire, but the details of the relationship vary considerably among the sources. For example, in the very first appearance of a game of chance in Greek literature, Patroclus becomes incensed while playing knucklebones (ἀμφ᾿ ἀστραγάλοισι χολωθείς, Odyssey 23.88) and kills Amphidamas’ son.

Depictions of religious practice are widespread in Plautus's plays, but literary scholarship has thus far given little attention to how Plautus deploys this "serious" content for comic effect. Gods, prayers, and religious rites are essential to many Plautine plots (as in e.g., Amphitruo, Mercator, and Rudens), and the centrality of religious elements to Plautus's literary style has been broadly outlined in several major studies (e.g. Hanson 1959, Dunsch 2009).

Ovid was the first Latin poet to employ the word viscera as a metonymy for both wombs and children (Bömer 1976). While a number of commentators have remarked on individual instances of viscera, observing that the word appears in “charged contexts” (Knox 1995) and “for shock effect” (Fantham 1998), no one has yet undertaken a comprehensive study of these metaphors.

dilator, spe †longus†, iners , <p>auidusque futuri

In this paper, I explore the dialogue between princeps and poets surrounding the 23 BCE death of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Augustus’ nephew, son-in-law, and potential heir. Scholarly treatments of Marcellus’ passing often focus on a single reaction (see, e.g., Falkner, Freudenburg, Shaya), but a synoptic analysis reveals the debate about the youth’s commemorative value.

In Aeschylus’s Persians, Athens is rarely described while more distant Greek landscapes are repeatedly used to portray the human toll of Xerxes’ expedition. I explore how recently uncovered information about the venue of the play’s performance in 472 BCE relates to this landscape use. Aeschylus’s rendering of war’s desecration via description of the landscape may respond to traces of the 480-479 BCE invasions visible from the Athenian Acropolis’s south slope.

This paper examines Cicero’s choice in the Brutus to begin oratorical history with Marcus Cornelius Cethegus (cos. 204). Based on Cicero’s own criteria for constructing oratorical history, I argue, we would expect Cicero to begin his history earlier, with Appius Claudius Caecus (cos. 307, 296). The paper begins by closely analyzing Cicero’s citations of Ennius as his evidence for choosing Cethegus. Careful reading of these passages will show Cicero’s distortions and manipulations.

This presentation argues that Senecan prose both evokes and enacts the physical transformation of his audience as they read his texts aloud, a common practice in ancient Rome (Valette-Cagnac 1997). While scholars have attended to Seneca’s didactic technique, particularly its combination of moral exhortation and exposition of philosophical doctrine (Schafer 2009), I argue that Senecan philosophy does more than instruct; it immediately molds the material soul through the physical act of voiced reading.

Since antiquity, Pindar’s epinician odes have puzzled readers and scholars alike (see Young 1970; cf. Lloyd-Jones 1973: 109–117; Most 1985: 11-41). Two of the most pressing problems concern their unity and their relation to the extratextual situation. One instructive example is Nemean 1, a victory ode for Chromios of Syracuse who won in the chariot race at Nemea (see Braswell 1992; Carey 1981).