Ares, Xerxes, and Collective Suffering in Aeschylus' Persians
By Isabella Reinhardt, Vanderbilt University
This paper is an investigation of the connection between Ares and Xerxes in Aeschylus’ Persians. Ares, as god and metonym for war, appears several times during the play, and his presence is attributed to both sides of the conflict. Nevertheless, there are signs within the text that Ares is associated particularly closely with Xerxes. This paper investigates what the proposed connection means for our understanding of the Persians.
A Conflicted Chorus: Sophocles’ Philoctetes and the Tensions of Societal Reintegration of the Disabled
By Sydney Kennedy, University of Cincinnati
Sophocles' Philoctetes has become an extreme metaphor among scholars for the life of isolation and loneliness that disabled and sick people in the fifth century BCE experienced, expelled from their communities (Leder 1990; Worman 2000; Kosak 2006; Mitchell-Boyask 2007 & 2008 & 2012; Gagnon 2016). However, this isolation is not an accurate depiction of disability in Athens. Athenaion Politeia and Lysias 24 confirm the presence of a welfare pension awarded to disabled Athenian citizens in this period, and D.
The Pure and the Impure: Transcendence in Sophocles' Antigone
By Irene Han, New York University
In my examination of Sophocles’ Antigone, I cast the tragic heroine as a transcendent figure. I use Beauvoir’s existential philosophy as a lens and hermeneutic model and apply her language and terms—immanence, transcendence, and ambiguity—to the original ancient text to understand the gendered metaphors of the play and to reveal a blind spot in her treatment of the tragedy.
“She is my city”: a Care Ethical Interpretation of Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan Women
By Molly Hamil Gilbert and Edith Gwendolyn Nally, Mississippi State University
Euripides characterizes Hecuba as a protective mother of her biological descendants whose maternal care expands to encompass the entire group of Trojan war captives (Chrysikou, Scodel). Hecuba is, however, not merely a caretaker; she is also deeply invested in systems of justice (Baconicola, Meridor, Mira Mossman, Bohórquez, Zanotti; for an opposing view, see Morwood and Reckford). In both plays she participates in a central trial scene that interrogates ethical issues. She also forces awareness of wartime atrocities by describing in detail the mangled bodies of her family members.