I. Papers
- Kathryn B. Stoddard, "The Programmatic Message of the 'Kings and Singers' Passage: Hesiod, Theogony 80-103"
In Hesiod's Theogony, the "Kings and Singers" passage, lines 80-103, parallels the poem's Dichterweihe, lines 22-34, in that both portray contact between the Muses and mortals on whom they bestow gifts. The gifts granted Hesiod in the Dichterweihe, a divine voice and a laurel scepter, represent the persuasive powers of aoidos and basileus as described in Th. 80-103. The latter passage is thus programmatic for how Hesiod perceives his role as narrator and how he intends to use the Muses' gifts for didaxis. The Prometheus and Hekate passages later in the poem show Hesiod's didaxis in action.
- Derek Collins, "Nature, Cause, and Agency in Greek Magic"
This paper explores the concepts of nature, cause, and agency as they define Greek magical practice in the Classical period. I seek first to demonstrate that the authors of the Hippocratic and Platonic attacks on magic share basic assumptions about nature and divinity with the magical practitioners themselves. Next, I situate magic within the mechanical, teleological, and volitional modes of Greek causal explanation, demonstrating how these modes can overlap in the explanation of a magical event. Finally, I consider figurines as a test case for concepts of causality in magical action. I argue that figurines, like Greek statues generally, are viewed as social agents capable of causing events to happen in their vicinity. Once we situate the figurines within a network of social relations, new explanations can be derived for the practice of binding and abusing them.
- Jacob Stern, "Heraclitus the Paradoxographer: Peri Apistôn, On Unbelievable Tales"
The text of Heraclitus the Paradoxographer (so LSJ, although "Mythographer" would be better), which is here translated with Introduction and Commentary, survives to the present in a single 13th-century manuscript. Of the author nothing is known, although he appears to belong to the late 1st or 2nd century A.D. The text includes 39 items in which familiar myths are briefly told and then interpreted through rationalism, euhemerism, allegory, or etymology. Among extant mythographical collections this text is of particular interest precisely because it exemplifies in brief compass such a range of ancient strategies for the interpretation of myth.
- Sharon James, "Her Turn to Cry: The Politics of Weeping in Roman Love Elegy"
Roman love elegy presents its male speakers as weeping helplessly for a cruel mistress, the dura puella. Though this image has dominated the reception of elegy, Ovid's Ars amatoria and Amores deviate strikingly: in these works the lover seeks to see his mistress weep. Further review demonstrates the same desire, well hidden, in the elegies of Propertius and Tibullus. This paper argues that Ovid shows the resentment underlying the elegiac lover's tears, along with the desire for revenge in the form of his beloved's compensatory tears.
- Laurel Fulkerson, "Chain(ed) Mail: Hypermestra and the Dual Readership of Heroides 14"
Through a detailed analysis of key passages in Heroides 14, this article seeks to show that Hypermestra's letter, generally considered to be peculiar and rhetorically ineffective, is in fact cleverly designed to elicit distinct responses from its two potential readers. Either the letter will be read by Lynceus, its addressee, who will return to save Hypermestra from her father, Danaus, or (more likely) the letter will be intercepted by Danaus, who will find in it information written to convince him that he has mistakenly imprisoned his daughter. Hypermestra's hitherto unnoticed sophistication in epistolography prefigures her larger success: she survives to found a royal line at Argos.
- C. L. Murison, "M. Cocceius Nerva and the Flavians"
Very little information survives about the career of M. Cocceius Nerva before he became Roman Emperor in A.D. 96. His importance by the end of Nero's reign is demonstrated by the rewards bestowed on him in 65 after the suppression of the Pisonian conspiracy; thereafter he became ordinary consul with Vespasian in 71 and with Domitian in 90. In this paper the attempt is made to explain by plausible hypothesis why Nerva was so highly regarded by both Vespasian and Domitian, and also how and why he succeeded Domitian in 96.
- E. J. Kenney, "In the Mill with Slaves: Lucius Looks Back in Gratitude"
At Apuleius Metamorphoses 9.13.3-5 Lucius confesses that his experiences as an ass have profited him only as a literary artist, not as a philosopher, an admission borne out by his own narrative. This, it is suggested, reflects Apuleius' own retrospective assessment of a fruitless attempt to reconcile Egyptian religion with Platonism. The Greek ass-story which he appropriated and embellished conveniently provided a fictional alter ego as narrator, a highly dramatic metaphor with Egyptian resonances for Apuleius' own experiences, and an opportunity for a bravura display of the rhetorical talents on which his reputation as at once Sophist and Platonic philosopher was based.
II. Paragraphoi
- D. R. Shackleton Bailey, "With Jackson's Help"
In lines 7-8 of Housman's dedicatory poem (Manilius, vol. 1) nomen means "fame" and virtutis refers to scholarly achievement, not to Moses Jackson (cf. TAPA 132 (2002) 209-13).