The Cipus episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses 15, featuring a Roman with horns, is unusual because it contains no moment of transformation. The narrative also contrasts with that of Valerius Maximus in ways that the difference between genres cannot entirely explain. I suggest that Ovid alludes to the Horned Man paradox, a comparatively well known (and often derided) logical problem. This would add to existing evidence that Ovid knew and played with philosophical themes, most obviously in the Speech of Pythagoras earlier in Metamorphoses 15.
I argue that Catullus evokes both on- and offstage elements of the Roman theatrical experience to simulate the experience of attending a include the audience's behavior, the physical performance space, and the embodied sensory experience of attending ludi and watching a theatrical performance. Understanding that Catullus evokes this experience in c. 64 allows for a more nuanced understanding of the poem and particularly its famous coda about moral decline.
In this article, I re-evaluate the Troezenian setting of Euripides' Hippolytus in dialogue with the concept of "liminal landscapes," culturally constructed spaces imagined as occupying the margins of political geography, whose symbolically laden topographies mark them as zones of transgression and transformation. I argue that Euripides' "liminal" rendering of his fictive Troezen-as a wild borderland on Athens'frontier, representing freedom and purity, but also alienation and contested identity-underscores the fraught civic status of the tragedy's three main characters as well as recent tension between the historical communities of Athens and Troezen.
Teaching Latin pronunciation to children requires not only specific skills, but also a choice of strategies and approaches that can facilitate such learning. The primary objective of this article is to clarify considerations related to teaching Latin pronunciation to children. To achieve this goal, I will begin by examining the fundamental purpose ofpronunciation, which should primarily emphasize intelligibility. Subsequently, I will reflect on various aspects of pronunciation-related issues. Furthermore, the focus will shift towards the adaptability of teaching Classics to children, exploring the field of pronunciation pedagogy from a comprehensive perspective. Additionally, I emphasize the paramount importance of equipping primary teachers with the necessary skills through training to learn pronunciation effectively. I also provide valuable resources, such as online materials, to facilitate this training. In conclusion, I underscore the critical significance of pronunciation in teaching children and I strongly encourage its proper attention and emphasis.
Recurring motifs are a well-noted structuring and meaning-making device in Martial's epigrams. In this article I demonstrate how the word Gallus and its cognates create specific significance in book three, engendering both a tangible architecture within the book and facilitating intertexts between these poems and those of Catullus and Ovid. Moreover, by blurring the discrete meanings of Gallus (both as the not fully-male devotee of Cybele and as the non-Roman Gaul) and gallus, (the non-human rooster) Martial can present himself as a challenging but non-threatening poet- cocky but ultimately domesticated-and invite the reader to consider their own status and identity in turn.
In Iliad 5, Dione attempts to comfort Aphrodite after the goddess of love has been wounded by the mortal warrior Diomedes. Dione insists that a sharp human-divine dichotomy remains, but, I argue, her outdated exempla and inaccurate predictions blur the line between mortal and immortal and hint at the reality of Zeus's newfound preeminence over humans and gods alike. Dione's failure to distinguish between epic "past" and epic "present" exposes the tension on Olympus as gods struggle to accept changes in the human-divine relationship and the increasingly stratified divine hierarchy under Zeus.
In this article I investigate two imperial commemorations that appear under January 17 on the marble calendar monument that stood in the forum at Praeneste to better understand the context for the drafting and production of the calendar around Tiberius's adoption in 4 CE. I argue that both entries should be associated with Livia, the wife ofAugustus, as well as Tiberius.
In this paper I offer a psychoanalytical interpretation of Neoptolemus' deception logos (Ph. 343-90), arguing that it anticipates the play's approach to filial inheritance, from neurotic degenerations to its correct understanding. The tale starts with Neoptolemus claiming Achilles' objects, then Achilles' words, concluding with the boy's spontaneous decision to leave Troy. Similarly, in the play Neoptolemus voices his own pliability to pity, like Achilles, yet these statements leave space to the concrete restitution of the bow to his friend Philoctetes. The gesture precedes what Heracles, son of Zeus, foretells ex machina: Achillean inheritance goes beyond the youth'predicaments or Philoctetes'wishes.
The initial description of Phineus' body in Apollonius' Phineus episode is used to make a poetological statement: by alluding to the wellknown poetological image of a cicada, the narrative indicates not only Phineus' inability to die but also the fact that his story is unable to end. As a consequence, the subsequent narrative keeps continuing despite all hints at closure or ending. That way, divine intervention is presented as happening rather than as being made by a specific agent.
In this article I examine how three didactic poems (Hesiod's Works and Days, Aratus' Phaenomena, Oppian's Halieutica) envisage the role of divine intervention in equipping humans with knowledge in the field that they purport to teach. By asking what gods teach men and what kind of impact this knowledge has on human life, it will emerge that the interaction between gods and men has ramifications for the extent of the poets' belief in progress and their conceptualization of the difference between man and god and man and animal.
With the first appearance of the Odyssey's hero, the fifth book can in some sense be considered the beginning of the epic proper. Its narrative presents a coherent whole that takes the hero from his departure from Ogygia to his arrival on Phaeacia. In addition to its narrative unity, it possesses a significant thematic unity that centers on the issue of mortality and immortality, both the conjunction and differentiation of gods and men. The stage is set by il gran refiuto, Odysseus' refusal of immortality and his choice to return to Ithaca. But the tension between the divine and human permeates the book in ways both obvious and subtle. It also serves to position the Odyssey at a pivotal moment in the relations of gods and mortals; their previous intimacy is waning, and apotheosis belongs to a bygone era. I argue that this central theme not only dominates Book 5 from beginning to end, but that it also offers a framework, so to speak, for the whole poem.
While Aelius Aristides maintained a close connection to the cult of Asclepius at Pergamum, he also expands the concept of sacred space beyond the bounds of the temenos, fashioning the interior of his own body as a conduit for divine intervention and situating this claim to a privileged relationship with the gods within a broader divine cosmology. Examining insight into the relationship between public cult and individual religiosity in the imperial period.
In this paper I explore the role of Euripides' Bacchae in readings of the Life, I argue that Philostratus combines the language and imagery of Dionysus' infiltration of Pentheus' body with a characterization of the emperor Domitian as a Pentheus figure. While this intertextual strand contributes to the text's suggestion that Apollonius may possess a divine nature, it has the added effect of concentrating the reader's attention on the somatic experience of Apollonius' interlocutors.
The extensive scholarship on Ovid's generic experimentation via repeated tales in elegy and hexameter (e.g. Ceres and Proserpina; Daedalus and Icarus) has largely neglected the cross-referencing narrative doublet of Philemon and Baucis in Metamorphoses 8 vs. Hyrieus in Fasti 5. In this article I explore these two matching stories of divine epiphany in a rustic context, with a view to characterization of the human and divine protagonists, narrative complication and resolution, ritual etiquette, tonal variation, and stylistic register.
Theognis' verses on friendship reveal an universal problem: relationships between friends are not always as they seem. People may hide thoughts, feelings, plans and intentions such that so-called friends may turn out to be enemies. Theognis develops a language of psychic interiority to explore this deception and deploys several metaphors to describe the phenomenon, including counterfeit currency. In this article I explore a new reading of Theognis 309-12 that draws upon the construction of psychic interiority and examines Theognis' advice to navigate politically troubled times: namely, to become like Odysseus who disguises his inner thoughts, ever looking to take advantage .
In this article I introduce the value of reading and teaching Ovid's Metamorphoses from a phenomenological and more specifically an eco-psychological perspective on the text's narratives of transformation that prioritize embodied experiences of human and other-than-human inter-relationships. An overview of pedagogical frameworks for phenomenology and ecopsychology will lead to close readings from the Metamorphoses that suggest Ovid's epic naturally invites ecopsychological reflection and participation from its receiver. I include a short practical exercise in this mode of reading for readers of this article to experience, followed by a discussion of similar exercises I have developed for a graduate course on Roman mythology. Student impressions of these exercises demonstrate the epistemological value learners can derive from reading Ovid from an ecopsychological framework.
Roman senators relied on brokers from lower social strata to foster their reputation— existimatio or fama , in Latin. Existimatio was a major consideration for candidates and for politicians deciding whom to support in elections and at court. Well-connected information brokers among Rome's non-elite thus gained considerable power by spreading the reputations of politicians. The need for constant positive existimatio and the need to maintain the Senate as the central organ in civic life thus created opposing forces as the Senate policed the way senators interacted with brokers and regulated organizations through which brokerage occurred while requiring the brokerage to grow their reputations.
Scholars have long noted Promethean themes and allusions in dRN , especially in the anthropological narrative of Book 5. This short study goes beyond identifying allusions and reveals a program of wordplay that Lucretius employs to invoke the fire-thief's name. With these oblique intonations, Prometheus becomes a cipher for the illuminating labors of both the poet and his hero, Epicurus.
