The Body in Question

Longinus’ preoccupation with the body as a metaphor for verbal style has received little scholarly attention, despite its prevalence in On the Sublime (Bandstra, 2011; von Staden, 1999). More remarkable still is that his appropriation of imagery and terminology from the medical world has received none at all. Considering Longinus’ prominent place in the literary-critical canon and renewed interest in literary treatments of the body in the ancient world (Holmes 2010, Worman 2011), the critical silence on this feature of his work is a striking omission.

Ethiopian Blackness: Aristotelian Commentators on “Affective Qualities” and Racial Characteristics

The most precious maggot of all time was the worm that fell from the putrid body of Simeon the Stylite and, when scooped up by a visiting king, became a sacred gem. The authority of the holy man overwhelms the maggot’s disgusting acknowledgment of mortal decay. In Saving Shame, Burrus has interpreted Christian asceticism as empowered by embracing shame, but I suggest that disgust provides an even more relevant heuristic lens.

This paper examines the rhetoric of body horror in the third decade of Livy’s AUC and argues that Livy uses such discourse to illustrate the exceptionality of the 2^nd Punic War, the cultural cross-pollination of the Romans and Carthaginians during the war, and the biopolitics of empire.

Apollonius of Tyana, a Pythagorean philosopher who lived in the first c. CE, is the subject of Philostratus' VA, composed in the early 3^rd c. CE. Following the Pythagorean tradition, Apollonius takes a five-year vow of silence (VA 1.14). The differences between Pythagorean and Apollonian silence, however, have escaped notice, even in treatments of Apollonius' relationship to Pythagoreanism (Flinterman 2009).

Several scenes in Aeschylys’ Oresteia have been defined as a comic relief (Pypłacz) or, similarly, a touch of mundaneness highlighting by contrast the elevated tragic atmosphere (Seidensticker). The speech of Orestes’ nurse Cilissa in the Choephoroe (730-782) is commonly taken as the prime example: “grotesque but natural... pithy illiterate babble” (Sidgwick; cf. Garvie). Yet such an ostensibly gratuitous digression at such a climactic moment commands attention.