Philia in Translation, Or, When Orestes Bumped into Paraśurāma
By Tuhin Bhattacharjee (New York University)
This paper examines an unexpected encounter, and the conversation that unfolds, between
Orestes, the ancient Greek prince, and Paraśurāma, the ancient Indian sage who travels to Greece
across the Silk Route. This conversation is not from a lost Greek play, nor from an ancient
Sanskrit text. It can be found in a Bengali book written by Sisir Kumar Das and published as
recently as 2011. The book, aptly titled Aloukik Sanglap (Unearthly Dialogues), contains a
collection of speculative conversations, in modern Bengali, between ancient Greek and ancient
The Texture of Trauma: Fabric, Luxury, and Multiracial Classical Reception in the Art of Devan Shimoyama
By Stefani Echeverria-Fenn (Independent Scholar)
The Silk Road imaginary has historically relied on a totalizing dichotomy of East and West that
deemphasizes ancient cross-cultural connections along other axes, such as between China and East
Africa.i
Queering the Silk Road: Semiramis, Emperor Wu, and Historiographies between Greece and China
By Yanxiao He (University of Chicago)
This paper provides a critical interpretation of Diodorus’ account of Semiramis who builds the
first empire from Syria to Bactria from a comparative perspective. I argue that Diodorus has two
agendas in writing on Semiramis. First, it has to do with Rome’s eastern campaigns during the
late republic. Given Cicero’s accusation of the Syrian governor Gabinius as Semiramis in De
provinciis consularibus (Cic. Prov. 4.9), I contend that Semiramis registers late republican
Roman male elites’ anxiety about the potentially “contaminating” effect brought by Rome’s
The temple of Jandial in Taxila: a locus of encounter or controversy?
By Alice Casalini (University of Chicago)
Lying less than half a mile north of the gates of the ancient city of Sirkap in the Punjab province
of Pakistan, the temple of Jandial overlooks one of the historic routes that connected the city to
Gandhāra in the Peshawar Valley. When the British archaeologist John H. Marshall excavated
the temple in 1912 its walls had partially collapsed and nothing of the roof survived. Two
capitals of Ionic type were retrieved from the floor of the temple, their shafts long gone. The
‘Strange and Uncouth’: The Discovery of Pompei and its Comparisons to Indian and Chinese Art
By Hardeep Dhinsa (King's College London)
Upon seeing the frescoes uncovered at Pompei in the second half of the eighteenth century, Lady Miller was astounded ‘that these people should have any knowledge of the Chinese and their gardens, ornaments, &c. is surprising. I observed one representation of a Chinese temple built on piles over a piece of water.’ Others were not as impressed. ‘Much of the greatest part of them are but a very few degrees better than what you will upon an ale-house-wall...A vast deal of it looks like such Chinese border and ornaments, as we see painted upon skreens,’ observed Mr Freeman.