Untimely Women: “Clock Time” and Gender Stereotypes in the Greco-Roman World
By Kassandra Miller, Colby College
In Satire 6, Juvenal’s catalog of negative female stereotypes, an interesting pattern emerges: women are consistently portrayed as “doing time wrong.” They stay out too late, perform tasks too slowly, or become unhealthily attached to their astrological calendars. Timekeeping and temporal regulation are depicted, instead, as a man’s game. Despite the satire’s exaggerations, it captures an idea that people in power have continued to propagate (e.g., in modern-day discussions of “black time” vs.
Stereotype and slavery in the joke collection Philogelos
By Inger N.I. Kuin, University of Virginia
One of the most disturbing aspects of the hard-to-date Greek joke collection Philogelos is the casual and cruel way in which it features enslaved men, women, and children.
Lozenges and Goats: Stock Smells in Roman Comedy and Horace’s Satires
By Joseph Dreogemueller, University of Michigan
At the onset of Plautus’ Mostellaria, two serui, Tranio and Grumio, accost each other because of their odors. Tranio reeks like exotic perfume and Grumio like, among other things, garlic and dog mixed with goat (38-44). According to Tranio and Grumio, their respective scents betray their ways of life, each one detestable in its own respects. Smell has an extremely close
Unpacking Historical Baggage: Classical (Mis-)Receptions in Sally Wen Mao’s Mad Honey Symposium
By Erynn Kim, Yale University
By examining how the poem “Yellow Fever” functions within the overarching framework of Mad Honey Symposium, this paper studies how Sally Wen Mao alludes to the propensity for classics to be used to give credence to modern modes of discrimination and seeks to demonstrate how Mao’s own interaction with classic works simultaneously dethrones the classics from any default position of authority and offers a path of resistance to damaging stereotypes.
The Greek Stereotype of the Asian Matriarch: From Semiramis to Ada I
By Walter Penrose, San Diego State University
In his Anabasis of Alexander (1.23.8), the ancient historian Arrian describes how Alexander the Great made Ada I the governor of Caria, which he had conquered with her assistance: “He commanded Ada, the daughter of Hecatomnus and wife of Idreius, to be satrap over all of Caria. Idreius, when he died, had turned affairs over to her. For from the time of Semiramis, it had been the custom in Asia for women to rule over men.” Not only does Arrian exaggerate here; he also stereotypes. Alexander ruled over Ada, not vice versa.
Greek? Egyptian? Syracusan? Stereotyping and identity claims in Theocritus’ Idyll 15
By Natasha Rao, University College London
Hellenistic Alexandria, with its blend of cultures, histories, and languages, provided fertile ground for interactions and conflicts between people of Greek and Egyptian backgrounds. These clashes are attested to in the wealth of literary and papyrological evidence from this period, from the Ptolemies’ privileging and preservation of Greek literature to the day-to-day disputes between Greeks and Egyptians in the lawcourts.