Iphigenia in Tauris in the Early Empire
By C, W, Marshall (University of British Columbia)
As Edith Hall has discussed (2013: 92-134), Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris (IT) is one of the most influential Athenian tragedies on the literature of the early empire. The friendship between Pylades and Orestes became a model for amicitia (Cic. de Amic. 7.24, de Fin. 5.22.63; Plut. Tox. 6) and Ovid uses the letter sent to the presumptively absent Orestes as an implicit model for his own sad letters from the Black Sea (Trist.
Euripides saver of Athens and the Athenians in Two Plutarchean Anecdotes (Nic. 29; Lys. 15)
By Giovanna Pace (University of Salerno)
This papers analyzes and compares two Plutarchean anecdotes, the one about the Athenians who were prisoners in Syracuse after the defeat of the Athenian expedition and could escape and get freedom through their knowledge of Euripides (Nic. 29), and the other about the decision of the Greek allies not to destroy Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war after listening to a Phocaean who sang the parodos of Euripides’ Electra (Lys. 15).
An (A)Political Hero and a Tragic Mother: Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus
By Federico Ingretolli (University of Oxford)
My presentation explores the tragic intertextuality of Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus, a Life whose ‘tragic colouring’ has not hitherto been probed. The first part makes the case that the ‘apolitical’ nature of Coriolanus has two tragic models, Sophocles’ Ajax and Adrastus’ funeral oration in Euripides’ Supplices.
A Tragic Variety Show: Reversal in Lucian’s Necyomantia
By Stephen Hill (University of Virginia)
The notion of reversal (περιπέτεια), famously developed by Aristotle in the Poetics (1452a), is integral to the genre of tragedy. This paper explores the importance of περιπέτεια for Lucian’s Menippus or Necyomantia, in which Menippus tells a friend about his recent journey to the underworld, by focusing on its Euripidean tragic intertexts. These operate on multiple planes: the plot’s circumstances, the plays’ themes, and Lucian’s broader socio-critical project.
The Atreus and Thyestes Dramas in the Imperial Age: Reflections on Tyranny, Conviviality, and Cannibalism
By Matthew Roller (Johns Hopkins University)
Early in Tacitus’ Dialogus, several friends visit Curiatius Maternus, following his sensational recitation of a drama entitled Cato. Powerful persons have taken offense, and they urge Maternus to revise the work for safety. By no means, replies Maternus: he will soon complete a Thyestes that will say anything the Cato left unsaid (Dial. 3). Scholars have long recognized that Maternus’ Thyestes, and other dramas on this theme, can be taken—by contemporaries and by mo