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Increasing (and well-deserved) attention has been paid to the thematic and structural commonalities of ‘Second Sophistic’ and early Christian literature. This scholarship has often been undertaken with the goal of identifying a broader intellectual and cultural landscape and disrupting traditional disciplinary boundaries that have obscured or effaced the existence thereof.

From foot to Muse: metapoetic feet as structural devices in Ovid’s Amores

Four Forms of Philosophic Esotericism in Cicero’s De natura deorum

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The Odyssey presents a striking series of situations in which the protagonist is reduced to the status of a helpless spectator, watching the action unfold but unable to act. These situations include a number of episodes in the apologoi (paradigmatically, Odysseus’s escape from the sirens, but also parts of the encounters with the cyclops, Scylla, and the winds of Aeolus), as well as several times when Odysseus constrained by his disguise on Ithaca (when Odysseus watches the reunion of Telemachus and Eumaeus, and when Odysseus sees the dog Argos).

Even in antiquity, the philosopher’s letter had become its own genre. But Diogenes of Oenoanda, an Imperial-era Epicurean living in southern Asia Minor, went beyond generic expectations: he published his letters, along with his own Epicurean treatises and maxims, plus the maxims of Epicurus himself, not on papyrus rolls, but on a large public stoa which he himself commissioned. This paper articulates the relationship between epistolarity and monumentality at play in Diogenes’ letters.

Enjambment in the trimeters of Plautus and Terence:

New measures of compositional method and technique

This presentation assesses enjambment in Roman palliate drama within the framework of modular composition. Modular clause units in Plautus and Terence—composition by set measures of syntax and meter—can be shown to be the predominant vehicle by which playwrights composed and imparted the words of their plays to their actors. Clause enjambment, that is, clauses with syntax spanning verse-end(s), is integral to this comprehensive system of composition.

“THE TEACHER: Wield the rod to your heart’s content – instruct through chastisements”. To readers familiar with the rituals and rhythms of late antique elite education, this advice harps on a familiar tune. Beatings were an accepted and well documented part of late antique pedagogy. They were imagined as a critical tool supporting the formation of a powerful future governing class (Bloomer 1997, Richlin 2011, Bernstein 2012).

Dramatizing the Enneads in Eunapius’ Life of Porphyry

This paper identifies philosophical elements in the biographical work of Eunapius of Sardis. It argues that Eunapius dramatizes Plotinian Neoplatonism through anecdote. The account of Porphyry’s depression (Lives of Philosophers and Sophists IV 1.7) serves as this paper’s case study. Ultimately, Eunapius is shown to use biography as a tool of philosophical communication.

At the beginning of the adaptation of Euripides’ Bacchae performed by La fura dels Baus and directed by Carlus Padrissa (Siracusa, Italy, 2021), Dionysus introduces himself as “mujera, hija, hermana, guerrera, compañera”. Indeed, throughout the performance, Dionysus, who was played by a young actress, appears to be a companion to the other bacchants, a fellow warrior, rather than a god who possesses them.

Divine Anger at the Aiolids in Apollonius’ Argonautica

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the thematic significance that connects the anger of Zeus and Hera to the frequent aitia of sacrificial rituals which the Argonauts establish along their journey in Apollonius’ Argonautica.