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This paper examines the legacy of Ovid’s Arachne in the fourth century epic poet Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae. Arachne, the arrogant young woman metamorphosed by Minerva at the beginning of Metamorphoses 6 for the crime of daring not only to challenge the goddess in the art of weaving, but also for the subject matter she chose to depict (the rapes of women by Olympians) has been called a surrogate for Ovid himself (Harries 1990, Pavlock 2009). Her reception at the hands of Claudian evokes a similar relationship between poet and spider.

Sidonius Ep. 8.9 contains a 59-line poem addressed to his friend Lampridius. In the aftermath of the Visigothic seizure of Sidonius’ city of Clermont, Lampridius had found favor with king Euric (r. 466-484), while Sidonius himself was still struggling to recover an estate which had been confiscated by the Goths. Ostensibly composed at Euric's court, where Sidonius had been waiting for months for an audience, the poem has traditionally been construed as panegyric (Hannaghan, 97-8; Mratschek, 316-7; Mathisen, 70; Harries, 240-1; contra Gualandri, 118-29).

Verse inscriptions record the fates of numerous people who suffered shipwreck: funeral epigrams tell of those who drowned, and dedicatory epigrams of those who survived shipwreck. Allusions to Homeric poetry frequently paint these people as Odysseus figures (Bing 2009, Hunter 2018). How should we treat such literary allusions in verse inscriptions? Are such allusions simply pieces of poetry which were common knowledge and which even the worst poetaster would have known?

In the fifth century, the tragedian Melanthios was one of Athens’ most prominent komoidoumenoi. Mocked for gluttony (Ar. Pax. 796-816; 1009-1014; Σ Ar. Pax. 803; Ath. 8.343c), effeminacy (Σ Ar. Av. 151; Eust. Il. 1201, 4), and disease (Av. 150-151), he featured in no less than eight comedies, over more than twenty years. However, the details of his life and works were quickly lost: they did not, it seems, make it to Hellenistic Egypt.

In the third book of his Annals, Tacitus interrupts his account of emperor Tiberius’ handling of Augustan legislation to instead turn his audience’s attention towards the role that laws in general play in Roman society. He points out the plethora of existing laws, and argues that a fuller understanding of the origins of law (de principiis iuris) is required to understand the present situation. In the digression that follows, he then provides a fascinating summary of Roman legal history, starting with the earliest humans, and ending in the early Principate.

This paper will address the transformation and misrepresentation of Cicero in Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. Written towards the middle of the fifth century CE, the Commentarii reads Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and its views on the value of engaging in Roman politics through the lens of Neoplatonist philosophy.

The sixth-century historian Procopius of Caesarea had a great deal of classical past behind him, to look back on and to reach for. As a classicizing historian recounting a contemporary war, he not only emulated his classical historiographic models but positioned himself at a nexus of historical memory (Cubitt 2007), making an argument for the continued relevancy of the classical tradition at a time of monumental cultural change and renegotiation of the canon (a la A. Assmann 2008).

This paper analyses the narrative function of pudor (shame) in Curtius Rufus, starting from the burning of the royal Persian palace of Persepolis by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. The destruction of the palace is a defining moment in Alexander’s conquest of Persia. It is frequently mentioned in ancient literature and has attracted the attention of archeological, historical and literary researchers.

Alexander the Great’s decision to employ bematists and professional historians is best understood as another aspect of his appropriation of imperial structures and practices of the Achaemenid Persians. Traditionally this aspect of his campaigns has been considered an Aristotelian legacy (Dilke 1985: 29, 59-60), though the possibility that such an interpretation represents an anachronistic back-projection has been recently raised (Henkelman 2017: 70 n. 39).

Since the seventeenth century and until recently, 'Western' (that is European and settler colonial) scholarly views of Hellenistic Egypt were effectively encapsulated by the following vignette: besides being the ‘gift of the Nile’, Egypt became a ‘Mediterranean-Sea-looking land’ after the foundation of Alexandria in 332 BCE.