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Evaluating Criteria for Fictitious Lacunae

By Martin P. Shedd

This paper evaluates stylistic criteria employed to prove that certain lacunae in historical works are intentionally fabricated gaps by investigating the applicability of these criteria to other sections of the same works and to contemporary historical writings.

The Homeric Life of Vergil in the Vita Vergilii (VSD)

By Marcos B Gouvêa

Since Lefkowitz (1981, 20122), scholarship on ancient lives of poets has maintained that those biographies are fictions based on the poems themselves. In recent works, scholars have stressed that Vergil’s own self-presentation deeply influences such later constructions (Peirano 2012, 2013, and especially Laird 2016). In this paper I examine these issues in Aelius Donatus’ 4th c. version of the Vita Vergilii by Suetonius (VSD).

Author vs. Narrator: Voices and Agendas in Dictys Cretensis

By Marc Bonaventura

This paper will examine whether there is a pro-Greek bias in Dictys Cretensis’ Ephemeris Belli Troiani, as many assert (Spence 2010: 134; Griffin 1908: 46-7; cf. Merkle 1994: 184), with a focus on distinguishing between the agendas of the author and the narrator.

Aetolia Shall Rise Again? Phlegon Peri Thaumasion 3 as Anti-Roman Alternative History

By Kelly Shannon-Henderson

This paper focuses on a fictional story, preserved in the Peri Thaumasion by 2nd-century AD paradoxographer Phlegon of Tralles, of Rome’s surrender after its war against Antiochus, and assesses its value as Greek “resistance literature” against Roman rule. The story offers an alternative history written from the perspective of conquered Greeks, in which the Romans are intimidated by dire prophecies of avenging invaders from the East into abandoning their conquest of the Greek world.