Reception

In an early study of the 14^th-century English romance Sir Orfeo, Kittredge wrote that despite the poem’s evident basis on the accounts of Orpheus and Eurydice as found in Virgil and Ovid, ‘so different is the romance from any known version of this story that, if the English minstrel had not called his hero and heroine Orfeo and Heurodys, his indebtedness to the ancients would be hard to prove.’ Scholars in the more-than-century since Kittredge have continued to struggle at synthesizing the poem’s classical and medieval-romantic elements into a unified reading (Dronke; Fr

Even though we are members of a discipline and a profession at risk, Classicists seem to dedicate ourselves too little to issues of social justice and inclusion. Nevertheless, Classical scholars have long been present in social issues from abolition to LGBTQ+ rights (Malamud 2016; Meckler 2006).

The Einaudi edition of Pliny’s Natural History, volume 1 is prefaced with an essay by Italo Calvino entitled “Il cielo, l’uomo, l’elefante” in which Calvino characterizes Pliny’s science as one which oscillates between the desire to find fundamental harmony in the universe and a recognition of the extraordinary and the unique (Calvino, 45). It also characterizes Pliny himself as both a poet-philosopher and a neurotic collector of data (Calvino, 43).

The last act of Seneca’s Phaedra (1154-280) has raised many concerns among scholars regarding its consistency, and particularly its performability [Coffey-Mayer 1990, Zwierlein 1966]. Some scenes, such as Phaedra’s suicide or the transportation of Hippolytus’ dismembered body onto stage, have been criticized as artistically inaccurate and incoherent. Considered a rhetorical exercise and strongly criticized, this part of the play (more than others) has been labelled as unperformable [Zwierlein 1966]. Following the path traced by some scholars [e.g.