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The Athenian Skira festival has long been an enigma to scholars of Classical religion (eg. Brumfield 1981, Foxhall 1995, Sourvinou-Inwood 2009). Particularly problematic is its combination of seemingly disparate elements: private, distributed women’s rituals run alongside a centralized masculine state festival, ancient fertility rituals celebrated together with more contemporary Olympian sacrifices and processions, and the combined worship of Demeter, Persephone, Helios, Poseidon, and Athena.

Despite widespread popularity in the ancient world and a long tradition of detailed exegeses, Plato’s Timaeus continues to elude straightforward interpretation. One particularly vexed issue is the ontological status of the δεξαμενή, or ‘Receptacle’ (48a-53c), said to nurse physical objects into being through the process of ‘becoming’. This Receptacle is described as a pre-cosmic ‘container’ filled with chaotic proto-elements that require further organization by a divine creator, but it is unclear how such elements can exist prior to the divine creation.

This paper posits an explanation for the contrast between the respective valences of male nudity in early Greek epic poetry and contemporary visual culture.

The present paper places the wars of Andriscus and Aristonicus in dialogue with later Roman provincial revolts, particularly the Pannonian and Judaean Revolts. The goal of such a dialogue is to correct an unfortunate trend in the current scholarship of Roman revolts. Despite the proliferation of detailed studies of individual provincial revolts during the Imperial Period, relatively few comparative analyses of these conflicts exist—a clear shortcoming of our field given comparative revolt studies in other traditions (e.g. Hobsbawm 1959; Goldstone 1991, 2011).

This paper introduces and explains how to use a new online database that records all metrical changes in the extant plays of Plautus and Terence (http://romancomedy.wulib.wustl.edu/).

In his 2004 book on Greek mercenaries in the Archaic and Classical periods, Matthew Trundle argues that a fighter could only be considered a mercenary if he was under contract to fight. Within this model, the label “mercenary” – that is, a fighter whose interest in a conflict is solely the fact that he is being paid to be there – becomes a temporary status, not a permanent identity.

Recent research on women’s clothing has paid attention to women wearing togas, but no one has yet looked at the togate adulteress as a forced cross-dresser. Campanile and Carla-Uhink have edited the first book-length study of cross-dressing in antiquity in English, but their book focuses predominately on male cross-dressing. With my paper, I aim to start a conversation on one aspect of female transvestism in the Roman world by looking at reasons why certain women wore male clothing.

In the preface to his work, Polybius highlights the knowledge (ἐμπειρία) to be gained from reading his history (1.1.6). The emphatic placement of this word at the conclusion of the opening section suggests that Polybius’ choice of terminology here is intentional. But, while Polybius elsewhere in his work (e.g. 1.35.9, 5.31.3) will again use the term ἐμπειρία to refer to knowledge acquired vicariously through the reading of history, this definition represents a marked contrast with the more common meaning to describe personal experience.

Much ink has been spilled over Livy’s relationship with his fellow historian Valerius Antias. In chapter twenty-six of his Ab Urbe Condita, Livy famously criticizes his source with the phrase ...adeo nullus mentiendi est, “so unlimited are his lies” (Livy 26.49.3). Work on Livy and Antias first saw scholars side with Livy in regards to his accusations of falsehood against Antian figures: thus, early twentieth century scholars such as R.B. Steele and Albert Howard argued that Livy was right to reject Antias’ figures.

Thucydides’ anxiety to prepare the reader to identify a calamity similar to the events he relates, the basis for his claim of his work’s “usefulness” (1.22.4 ὠφέλιμα), is one of his more puzzling stances. This identification must not be obvious if even the intelligent audience he envisions requires his guidance to make it, but he does not specify what, exactly, he proposes to enable the reader to recognize.