Roman society was dominated by the wealthy in all historical periods and also deeply geared to imperial expansion and rule. But how imperialism enriched the & eacute;lite is less clear. In fact, there was huge variation in how this happened between the middle republic and the late empire. This variation has been obscured by each generation's success in representing themselves as the heirs of earlier & eacute;lites. The real continuities are to be found in the means by which they retained their wealth and passed it on to those they chose to continue their traditions.
This article argues that stereotypical representations of Asian immigrants in America-and the author's experience as the Chinese-American child of immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic-offer a fresh framework for understanding the treatment of suppliants in Euripides' Children of Heracles. Approaching Heracles' family through Agamben and Castoriadis' framework of "thinkable figures," the article argues that Macaria and Iolaus can be read as "model minorities," while Alcmene is presented as a "perpetual foreigner." The contrast between the idealized suppliant and the inassimilable immigrant expresses anxieties about accepting refugees into mythological Athens that reverberate through American history into our current moment.
Abstract: This article offers a close reading of Trimalchio’s “Homeric” performance during the Cena in Petronius’s Satyricon (59.2–60.1), arguing that it articulates a previously overlooked “third critique” beyond the established satirical targets of Trimalchio’s nouveau riche pretensions and Roman Hellenophiles’ elite notions of paideia . Trimalchio’s substitutions in retelling Trojan War myths—culminating in the Ajax-waiter scene—expose the ideological underpinnings of the Homeric tradition and their role in reproducing an elite society. Rather than worrying about names or narrative fidelity, Trimalchio foregrounds the circulation of wealth, the commodification of women, and other social structures that he keenly recognizes stand at the core of the Homeric world. This third critique is available whether or not it was intended by Trimalchio or Petronius, and the question of intent reveals that the critique stands even if both character and author retreat from the implications of their exposures of inherited ideologies. My analysis situates this passage in dialogue with modern theories of myth and materialist critique, showing how the Satyricon both participates in and resists the ideological reproduction of the “classics.” Ultimately, the third critique illuminates how selective, materially attuned forms of reading were available in the past that can prefigure contemporary critiques of liberal humanism and the cultural authority of canonical texts.
Settler colonial praxis and the racecraft it engendered profoundly shaped the Carthaginian state, its society, and imperial trajectory. Perched against the geographic span of the Maghreb and the demographic heft of native Libyan and Numidian populations, Carthage exerted a tenuous dominance over its African hinterland. Peculiar aspects of Carthage's mythic self-definition and constitutional system owed less to the city's supposed commercial orientation than to its settler colonial legacy. Pathologies inherent to the settler colonial project manifested themselves in moments of crisis, contributing to Carthage's defeat and the creation of an indigenous Numidian state.
The course of Io's journey from Scythia to Egypt as prophesied by Prometheus in Prometheus Bound is full of geographical oddities, including the atypical locations of inhabitants' abodes, the placing of mountains and rivers away from their true locations, and the apparent invention of the names of geographical features. This paper proposes to interpret these oddities in the light of their literary or dramatic effects, and argues that the inhabitants and geographical features of the prophesied course of Io's journey are arranged in two parts (before and after the strait of the Cimmerian Bosporus) in such a way that not only are her reactions after each part of the prophecy plausible, but also the short-sightedness of the mortal Io is thrown into relief in contrast to the far-sightedness of the divine Prometheus.
