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In this talk, I will suggest that the contemporaneous appearance of history painting and historiography in ancient Greece is indicative of a deeper affinity between the visual arts and writing history: both find their true meaning in the fact that what they represent is absent except as image or history.

In the Ovidian corpus, nervus frequently appears in association with poetry and songs to refer to the string of a musical instrument (chorda, Met. 5.340; cithara, Met. 10.108), producing poetic opera (Her. 15.13), verba (Met. 10.40), and carmina (Met. 1.518). Considering the evident poetic significance of the word, the lack of focused scholarship on its metapoetic properties (most commentaries concentrate only on its bodily connotations: e.g.

The goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between humans and nonhumans, i.e., between people and their environment, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses by analyzing the Ceyx and Alcyone storm scene as an ecological parable (Met. 11.444-572). This idea comes from ecocritical scholar Steve Mentz, who argues that all literary shipwrecks are metaphors “for the conflict between human bodies and nonhuman power” (Mentz xxv).

ON SAYING YES IN LATIN

Numquam sibi libera visa: sexuality and status in the epitaph of Allia Potestas (CIL VI 37965)

In Latin literature, human body parts are frequently deployed figuratively, and such words as manus, pes, caput, and corpus acquire implicit meanings. Caput as a political metaphor occurs already in Livy (2.22) in order to describe Rome as caput rerum. After the transition to the imperial ages and more concretely during the Neronian period, caput turns into an allegory for the princeps.

Ovid begins the Ars Amatoria with allusions to Homer: his address to his student-readers echoes Nestor’s advice to Antilochus in Iliad 23 (Citroni 1984; Boyd 2017: 76-85), and he then casts the young Achilles’ interaction with Chiron in terms reminiscent of the scene between the hero’s older self and Priam in Iliad 24 (Hollis 1977: 33).

Any project of public persuasion demands craft, charisma and emotional force. It is no wonder, then, that in lawcourts and theaters, fifth and fourth century Greek orators often appealed to certain gods such as Peitho (conventionally translated, “Persuasion”) in their speeches. As scholars (Johannesen 1962, Martin 2009, Serafim 2021) have pointed out, deistic references of these sorts can be used to curry favor with the audience or, conversely, to alienate an opponent.

Why would anyone pray to see a neighbor crushed under the rubble of his house? Why cherish the memory of witnessing that neighbor beating his wife? Why petition one’s city to put one to death? For a speaker in Libanius, it is because one is agonizingly and incurably envious of a neighbor’s financial windfall, but how does that explain the speaker’s strikingly negative self-characterization? I argue that in Libanius’ rarely discussed Thirtieth Declamation, the speaker’s aim is, ultimately, to persuade the city to seize said neighbor’s property.

Livy’s depiction of Philip V contains several episodes that may be read as exempla. Philip is used by Livy’s historical personae as an exemplum of a ruler attempting to maintain control, both successfully and disastrously. Antiochus III uses Philip as an example of a king who lost power to Rome (37.25.6), whereas Scipio Africanus uses Philip in the same scenario to show the benefits of an alliance with Rome (37.25.11). Philip himself uses exempla to teach his sons about successful fraternal relations (40.8.7-16).