Callimachus's Vibrant Materiality: Reading Non-Human Agency in Hymn to Artemis
By Marissa Gurtler, University of Wisconsin
In this paper, I read Callimachus’s Hymn to Artemis through Bennett’s vibrant materialism because it highlights the blurred boundaries between human and non-human agents which helps us to better understand ecology within the text. According to Bennett’s theory, non-human things have a vibrancy that causes the object to affect, thus creating a subjectivity for the non-human thing. While Purves has used vibrant materialism to read Ajax in Homer’s Iliad, this framework has yet to be applied to Callimachus’s Hymns.
Apollonius’ Μοῦσαι ὑποφήτορες and the interpretation of the Egyptian tradition
By Camilla Basile, University of Virginia
Apollonius’ relationship with the Muses ὑποφήτορες (1.22) has often been read in terms of the poet’s experimentation between tradition and innovation in the Argonautica. Starting with Gercke (1889), some scholars argued for translating the Apollonian hapax as “interpreters” and advanced the idea of the Muse’s subordination to the poet (Paduano-Faedo 1970; Feeney 1991; Goldhill 1991). The opposite view conceives the Muses in more traditional terms as “inspirers” of the poet (Ardizzoni 1967; Vian 1974; Campbell 1994; Green 2007).
Peleus and the Fate of Achilles: Iliadic Allusions in the Odyssean Argonautica
By Amelia Bensch-Schaus, University of Pennsylvania
Peleus is a prominent figure in Apollonius’ epic, and this paper argues that his characterization both signals the importance of the Iliad as a model for the Argonautica and alludes to Achilles’ tragic fate in the Iliad. Carspecken and Händel were among the first to note the importance of Peleus, and Dräger observes that he is the fourth most referenced Argonaut, with Heracles and Orpheus appearing only a few more times.
Family Trees: Orchards and the Raising of Children In Greek Epic
By Amanda Rivera, Boston University
This paper explores the use of sapling and orchard imagery in Greek epic. Authors, such as Homer, Apollonius, and Quintus, use these images to represent the rearing of children in familial networks. Homeric scholars have argued that the cultivation and ownership of orchards signifies patriarchal inheritance for characters like Odysseus (Brockliss 2019). The connection, however, between this orchard imagery and that of rearing children like saplings has yet to be studied. This paper shows how Greek epic writers combine these images to comment upon the idealized way to raise a child.
Aristotle’s Manuscripts and the Fate of his Library
By Richard Janko, University of Michigan
The remarkably detailed story told by Strabo (13. 1. 54) and Plutarch (Sulla 26. 1–2) of the disappearance and rediscovery at Scepsis in the Troad of the library of Aristotle and Theophrastus has strained credulity.