154

From Homeric similes to Roman venationes, mammals dominate ancient thinking about animals. Insects, on the other hand, are inessential. Too minute to scrutinize and too alien to anthropomorphize, insects feature predominantly in ‘technical’ narratives (Davies & Kathirithamby 1986, Jackson 1986). But a few exceptions – including ants, bees, beetles, cicadas, and wasps – have mythic-literary biographies with stimulating counterparts to those of mammals.

Animal Difference: Re-conceptualizing physis in Aelian

Contemporary trends in Critical Animal Studies have moved beyond the anthropocentric “the animal is useful to think with” to an animal-centered approach, respect for animal difference, and a search for animal perspectives (e.g. Harel 2009; Calarco 2015, Griffin 2001). Did Imperial animal-centered texts recognize and appreciate animal difference?

The importance of Greco-Roman texts for early European conceptions of the Americashas long been recognised (Grafton & Siraisi, Haase & Reinhold, Lupher), but did colonization and sustained encounters with indigenous societies change the ways in which classical authorities were canonised, conceived and invoked?

The object of this paper is to discuss the peculiar use of sources in Erasmus’ most extensive and relevant work on marriage, the Christiani matrimonii institutio (1526). Marriage is an important topic within the production of the great humanist, pondered throughout many works (e.g. the Colloquia but also the Annotationes to the New Testament) and sole focus of various publications (in addition to the Institutio, cf.

In his Areopagitica, John Milton opposes the licensure of books and supports the liberty of reading any book of one’s choice; hence, he claims, there is no need for a Christian to avoid “Hellenick learning” (Wolf 2.509). Nonetheless, how does Milton, an active protestant and iconoclast, deal with the Classical sources that have potentials to undermine the authority of the Scripture and nurture idolatrous beliefs? Is there a conflict between Milton’s iconoclasm and defense for the freedom of print?

The 1609 Anacreón castellano of Francisco de Quevedo, iconic poet of the Spanish Baroque, is recognized among Hispanists for cementing the author’s Hellenist reputation among his contemporaries.

Epigram is a key and underexploited resource for the growing interest in Hellenistic literature beyond Alexandria (e.g. Nelson (2020), Visscher (2020)). Most of the major epigrammatists in Gutzwiller’s Poetic Garlands (1998) are associated with the Ptolemies (e.g.

Epigraphic poetry is usually anonymous and inscribed Greek epigrams are no exception. In a few cases, however, authors of epigrams left their signature on the stone. Santin’s (2009) pioneering study on the topic only focused on signatures of poets for funerary epigrams, which are all dated from the 2nd century BC onwards. Yet the earliest examples of signatures are from the 4th century BC and are not found in sepulchral contexts; rather, they accompany epigrams engraved on dedications (so-called dedicatory epigrams).

Planudean Margins and Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology

Over the past several decades literary studies have profited from theoretical advances in cognitive science and the study of human consciousness (e.g. Zunshine 2006; Leverage et al. 2010). The cognitive turn has now arrived to the study of ancient literature (e.g. Meineck et al. 2019).