Slavery and Status in Ancient Literature and Society

Scholars have noted the influence of Stoic ideas in Xenophon of Ephesus’ novel Ephesiaka. Dalmeyda commented that Xenophon had made his protagonists Habrocomes and Anthia into Stoics (xxi). Perkins compared them (as well as the protagonists of Chariton’s and Achilles Tatius’ novels) to Epictetus’ construction of an ideal subjectivity that is unaffected by pain and suffering (77-103). Doulamis detected possible Stoic influence in three specific episodes (159-160).

This paper explores the significance of Sicily for Vergil's Eclogues. As the native island of Theocritus and the setting of much of his pastoral verse, Sicily has an established place in the evolving genre of bucolic. Yet only one of the Eclogues is clearly situated on the island. The issue is therefore not only what it means for Eclogue 2 to adopt this setting but also why the rest of the poems replace it with areas such as Mantua and the Mincius or Arcadia.

To what extent did citizens specialize in their field of occupation in ancient Greece (whether as musicians, craftsmen, philosophers, and so on)? Moses Finley's answer has so far been the definitive word on the matter—not much. Finley's point was that the existence of slavery, as well as a civic ideology that favoured certain citizen pursuits (owning land, especially), were powerful socio-cultural structures that dampened citizen participation in most specialist fields, and left training- and investment-intensive occupations to slaves and other unfree individuals (Finley 1999, 42, 49-50).

Recent discussion of the ancient economy has focused on the phenomena of vertical integration and disintegration. The first is the process whereby complex social organizations or ‘firms’ control every step in not only a product’s supply chain and production but also in its distribution and sale.

The elephants of Megasthenes’ Indika, a Greek treatise on India written c. 300 BCE and transmitted fragmentarily through later authors, are objects of modern historians’ ongoing attention; Paul Kosmin, for example, has recently argued that it was the exchange of Mauryan elephants for Seleucid-controlled land that inspired the writing of the Indika. This paper examines the Indika from a cultural and literary perspective.

Semonides Fr. 7 is often cited as an especially glaring example of misogyny in ancient Greek culture (Lloyd-Jones; Osborn), but this paper will suggest that such a reading is complicated by Semonides' pointed re-gendering of the simile of the bee taken from Hesiod's Theogony (594-602). I argue that greater emphasis should be placed on the use of poetic persona in this poem, and to its performance context in the symposium (Murray, Steiner [2002]). Semonides Fr. 7 does encourage laughter at the expense of women, but the men's last laugh is at themselves.