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In Rome, divorce was not less frequent than it is today. Indeed, it may have been even more frequent, at least in the higher echelons of society, where remarriages could play a political role (Bradley 1991, Treggiari 1991a, and Corbier 1991). Though the political machinations of the imperial center were largely absent from Egypt, the situation there clearly did not differ much, given what private letters, petitions, and most of all census returns reveal about the fates of the province’s marriages (Bagnall and Frier 1994, Huebner 2013). But what would exactly happen upon divorce?

The occupational associations in both the Roman Empire and Tang Dynasty of Ancient China were multi-dimensional and multi-functional organizations. Based on a close analysis of the primary sources, this paper compares the interactions between the occupational associations and religion in Rome and Tang.

This paper is an attempt to comprehend the function and impact of occultism in the form of astrology on ancient society, specifically in terms of its relationship with political culture, by comparing the relationship between the ruling class and occultists in the Early to Middle Roman Empire (1st c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) and the Han Dynasty (3rd c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) from the beginning of each empire to its zenith. “Occultist,” as discussed in this paper, is an umbrella term for persons who worked with “supernatural” forces, such as diviners, astrologers, magicians, etc.

Roman Greece (circa. 1st c. BCE – 4th c. CE) and Warring States China (5th c. – 3rd c. CE) both saw significant evolutions of their political structures over their histories. Occurring in parallel to these evolutions, however, are observable transitions in musical cultures of these societies as well. While it remains popular to analyze the interrelated dynamics between poetry and political structures (Bessone 2014), attempts to do the same with musical cultures are few and far between (Csapo 2004).

This paper engages a targeted comparison of the treatment and behavior of defeated generals in the Roman Republic and early Principate with equivalent cases evidence in Eastern Zhou and Han China (8th C. BCE to 3rd C. CE). Specifically, this paper explores three separate but related dynamics of defeat: how surviving defeated generals behave in defeat, how generals are remembered when they are killed in battle, and how they are treated by their leaders.

Han Chinese texts allude to a conceptual model of macrocosm and microcosm, in which elements at different scales, from the body to the household to the city to the empire to the cosmos map onto each other. This system, expounded by Lewis (2006) among others, has already been compared with Roman imperial models of space by Chen (2020). In this paper I historicize the comparison, analysing the model’s development in both Rome and China, to show that in both cases it is a development particular to the period of consolidation of territorial empire.

In this bilingual reading, I will highlight the plays of words and sounds in the English that attempt to mimic the Greek in non-choral sung passages of Euripides’ Hecuba. I emphasize the techniques that work for performance: accuracy and clarity, sound, alliteration, repetition of words in various grammatical forms, and rehearsals with actors. While I do not follow a set metrical pattern, I craft the lyric voice with this flexible method. The reading in Greek and English, with some remarks, will fit in 15 minutes. Sample:

Hecuba

I propose to read from my forthcoming translation of 800 years of Greek and Latin lyric poetry, a book over ten years in the making, which will be published by Penguin Classics in July 2023, with an Afterword by Glenn Most; the book anthologizes a generous selection of poetry, which, along with lyric proper, also encompasses elegy, iambus, epigram, and even pastoral. I am happy to read both Greek and Latin originals as well as translations, and/or to talk about principles and approach employed in the translation, as time and interest allow.

Sample Translations

I’m working on a verse translation of the Odyssey into (Brazilian) Portuguese. While many (inventive) verse translations already exist, mine is different for two (related) reasons: first, it is inspired by and remade into the style of cordel literature, a type of regional, popular literature, which is related to the oral tales improvised by repentistas (our own rhapsodes).

Below I include the opening of Persius’ third satire, translated into fourteeners, following Stallings’ Lucretius’ The Nature of Things (a poem with which Persius’ 6-part libellus makes important contact, for example with “void” in the last position of the first line of Satire 1, above).