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The semantic potential of the ‘formula’ in early Greek epic poetry has been a principal and problematic area of research since the seminal work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. Most Homerists do not accept without qualification their claim that the formula had limited semantic potential, but structure and semantics – i.e. metrical utility and meaning – were not fully reunited in Homeric oralist scholarship until Foley’s ‘traditional referentiality’ (e.g. 1999), the idea that a formula invoked or ‘resonated’ with previous contexts and their associations.

This paper introduces a new method for assessing the relative antiquity of Homeric formulas and formulaic expressions, based on the notion of linguistic productivity (borrowed from morphological theory).

Modern readers of Homer tend to interpret epithets on a sliding scale of significance.

Even the most rigid Parryists are willing to assign semantic significance to certain contextually-appropriate epithets, and even the most subjective reader would be hard-pressed to maintain the

unique significance of each of the 407 uses of δῖος in the Homeric poems. For all we have

learned about Homeric epithets since Parry’s discoveries nearly a century ago, our confidence in

our ability to interpret individual epithets has only diminished.

This paper explores the baffling exit of Aeneas from the underworld by the ivory gate of “false dreams.” Why Vergil sent Aeneas—a real person who had just witnessed an accurate prophecy of Rome’s history—through this gate has puzzled readers for millennia. Scholars have conjectured variously and still come to no ruling consensus about what he meant. This paper attempts to answer that question. I consider three broad camps of interpretation and then construct a specific answer that borrows insights from several different scholars.

In Julius Caesar’s Bellum Civile and the Composition of a New Reality, Ayelet Peer (2015:15) cites six instances in which Pompey and his forces move under cover of darkness to dastardly ends, remarking that these meetings carry “significant meaning.” Examining these six examples and many more throughout the Bellum Civile, this study will pick up where Peer left off in an attempt to ascertain how light imagery colors the depiction of Caesarian and Pompeian forces and why Julius Caesar as author would employ such a device while writing his work.

Phryne was undoubtedly one of the most famous courtesans in ancient Greek history because of both her famous beauty and her scandalous trial for impiety which was still being discussed centuries after it took place. Many authors record a version of this story: Though it looked like she was going to be charged with capital punishment, her beauty saved her when she showed her nude body to the judges. Nevertheless, the accounts of her trial disagree at critical points in the narrative, casting doubt on the historicity of this story.

Herodotus’ Histories is seen as a clear marker of the beginning of unified Greek identity (Hall 2002). Several cultural indicators, such as religion, bloodline, language and custom, inform a complex portrait of group identity formation (Hall 1997). Social identity theory has traditionally characterized this formation as a process of drawing sharp distinctions between groups, maximizing differences, in order to bolster one’s own social identity through an intentional distancing from the often derogatorily construed ‘Other’ (Tajfel & Turner 1979; Hartog 1988; Harrison 2002).

One important narrative ambiguity in the Odyssey is the question of Penelope's recognition of Odysseus. Exactly how and when Penelope recognizes her husband has been the subject of scholarly debate since Hellenistic times. One mainstream reading of this narrative controversy is the “gradual recognition” argument—in other words, that Penelope recognizes Odysseus gradually and by degrees, culminating in a moment of full recognition in Odyssey 23 (Emlyn-Jones, 2).

This paper presents a revised text of a number of relatively well preserved columns (I0 to 15) of Philodemus' first book of De dis (On the Gods). It uses this revised text to clarify his arguments as to why the fears of animals and humans are similar but not the same. There is currently no modern, English-language edition of this text. Knut Kleve worked on the text in the 1990s, and published findings showing that the text is more than 11 columns longer than once thought.