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Dialogue across Fragments? Quotations of Republican Tragedy in Varro and Cicero

By Scott Di Giulio, Mississippi State University

Quotation occupies a curious position in the eyes of Classicists: it is a vital means of preserving fragments of otherwise lost literature, but it seemingly lacks the literary creativity of allusive intertexts. Recent efforts to study quotes have moved away from Quellenforschung and begun to explore specific authors’ quotation habits (Olson, Mitchell, Tischer 2017, 2019); work on Cicero has examined his engagement with earlier authors within his oeuvre, with increasing attention paid to his use of quotation in particular (Behrendt, Bishop, Čulík-Baird 2021, 2022).

Searching for the Crowd in Cicero's Second Catilinarian

By Julia Mebane, Indiana University

In the Bellum Catilinae, Sallust claims that omnino cuncta plebes favored Catiline’s revolutionary designs (BC 37.1). In the list of conspirators that dominates the second Catilinarian, however, these supporters are nowhere to be found (Dyck 2008: 148). Scholars have posited historical and rhetorical explanations for their absence. Some deny that Catiline’s program of debt relief would have appealed to those whose economic positions limited the accrual of debt in the first place (Harrison 2008).

Cicero’s Letters of Exile and The Space of Political Upheaval

By Vasileios Sazaklidis, University of Texas at Austin

The Roman conceptual understanding of geography and the circa-Mediterranean space has been predominantly Roman-centric, as Clarke (2008) has -rightly- demonstrated. The Tabula Peutingeriana reinforces the notion of a maximalized Roman epicenter and the subsequent coordination of the rest of the world on the basis of relativity to Rome, in terms of spatial proximity, commercial affiliations, and historical significance. The entire oikoumene revolves around the axon of Rome.

Suffering with Sickness under Domitian in Pliny’s Letters

By Trevor Luke, Florida State University

This paper examines Pliny’s epistolary accounts of the health struggles of family, friends, and slaves in his Letters in light of the imperial ideology of thaumaturgical healing that started to take shape during the civil war of 69 and extended at least as late as the reign of Hadrian (SHA Hadrian 25). As part of its program of imperial renewal, the Flavian dynasty laid claim to a capacity to heal that was unprecedentedly thaumaturgical in nature (Luke 2010).

The Mesopotamian Hippocrates? The Rhetorical Strategies of the Hippocratic treatise De victu 4 in the Context of Mesopotamian Medical Tradition

By Marko Vitas, Brown University

The rhetorical strategies of the Hippocratic treatise De victu 4, which discusses the impact of a patient's dreams on the medical prognosis, find parallels in the earlier medical traditions attested in Mesopotamia. While Van der Eijk (2004) identified the imagery shared between De victu 4 and Babylonian dream omens, I draw on Babylonian medical texts to argue that rhetorical strategies for depicting gods, illnesses and body place De victu 4 in the context of Mesopotamian medical traditions.

Orator Patiens: Therapeutic Rhetoric in Aelius Aristides's Hieroi Logoi

By Hana Liu, Stanford University

In recent years, the conception of the transdisciplinarity of ancient sciences (Lloyd) has encouraged historians of science to account for disciplinary boundaries as conceived and practiced by the ancient Greeks themselves. Furthermore, there is a growing emphasis in the history of medicine on the perspective of patients, largely inspired by Canguilhem and Foucault (Porter, Petridou, Thumiger). To explore the implications of these theoretical turns, this paper addresses the therapeutic usage of vocal practices, a notion that demonstrates the fluid boundary between rhetoric and medicine.

The drawings of the Gynaecia of Mustio - where text and materialities meet

By Micaela Brembilla, Uppsala University

The Gynaecia of Mustio are often considered within the panorama of medical Latin texts that come from a Greek model - in this case, the Γυναικεῖα of Soranus of Ephesus. This, on a certain extent, is absolutely true: our text is a treatise about gynaecology, supposedly written in the 6th century AD in an African area; its author, a Mustio or Muscio unknown otherwise, declares that he has translated a gynaecia following Soranum and the content of the work confirms this information.

Bodily Surfaces in Aelius Aristides’ Third Hieros Logos

By Artemis Brod, Independent Scholar

In this paper, I look at Aelius Aristides’ third Hieros Logos. While sections of this oration have been treated piecemeal (for example, Petridou (2017) discusses the initiation section at the end; Downie (2013, 105-7) and Petsalis-Diomidis (2010, 135-6) discuss his description of pain at III.16-19), it has not been treated either as a unified whole or in relation to the rest of the HL. This may be because the topic is self-evident and seemingly mundane; it is a chronicle of the materia medica prescribed by the god.

I see only bones and bare skulls: Skeletons in Lucian's Afterlife

By A. Everett Beek, North-West University (Noordwes-Universiteit)

In Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, the dead in the underworld are (generally, despite some clues to the contrary) represented as skeletons, as if after death their corpses had been sent straight down to Hades fully embodied, decaying over the centuries, until one cannot tell the difference between Nireus and Thersites. The image of the dead as skeletons is used to make satirical points about the fleeting nature of life's pleasures, especially beauty, youth, and strength.