Abstract This article foregrounds Horace’s underexplored engagement with tragedy in Odes 1.6, arguing that this interaction exceeds the conventional limits of recusatio and engages with both literary and political discourses of the period. First, by qualifying Ulysses as duplex (line 7), the poem not only humorously debases the epic genre but also participates in ancient debates about Odysseus/Ulysses, possibly originating in Greek tragedy. Second, the reference to Varius’ Thyestes (line 8) may suggest an intertextual dialogue with tragic treatments of the saga of the Pelopids and its prominence in contemporary political discourse. Third, I point out further tragic references in the last two stanzas of the poem. The generic disavowal of Homeric epic feeds into the panegyrical intent of this poem, to honour Agrippa/Augustus. However, Odysseus/Ulysses’ duplicitousness and the violent crimes of the Pelopids also acquire a loaded meaning in the immediate context of Horace’s Odes in the aftermath of Actium (31 BC ).
Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate how the sea in Chariton of Aphrodisias’ novel is skilfully used to portray the character of the hero (namely, Chaereas) and arrange an elaborate narrative. As the analysis will try to show, through the references to the sea in relation to Chaereas, Chariton highlights some peculiar features of his hero and weaves a complex network of cross-references, which strengthen the connection between Chaereas and other characters of the novel and introduce events which have a proleptic function, or compel the reader to re-examine previous passages. Moreover, Chariton’s peculiar use of the sea will be highlighted through a comparison with the other extant Greek novels.
Abstract This paper argues that the reading λιστοί , transmitted in Plato’s quote of Hom. Il. 9.497 in Pl. R. 364d6, is preferable to the reading στρεπτοί given by the Homeric manuscripts. As a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, λιστοί presents the lectio difficilior and better suits the general motif of Iliad book 9. The attempt to dismiss λιστοί as an invention of Plato’s relies on a narrow conception of the term’s meaning and disregards the context of the quotation. The claim that λιστοί is actually a valuable pre-Alexandrian variant receives further support from a famous passage in Apollonius Rhodius, in which Apollo appears to the Argonauts as the rising sun, with the relevant lines forming the acrostic ΛΙΣΤΑ . The intentional character of this acrostic is supported both by Apollonius’s reception of the acrostic tradition and by its connection to two other acrostics in Apollonius, whose interconnection has already been demonstrated.
Abstract This paper argues for a hitherto unexplored source of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo: the famous dramatic fragment of Pratinas. This text, widely considered to have been part of a satyr-drama, shows a dramatic and rhetoric character that is in many respects similar to Callimachus’ Hymn. The keen musico-aesthetical criticism in the fragment offers a new take on the long-standing controversy concerning the epilogue of the Hymn. The correspondence between hymn and satyr-drama, Apollo and Dionysus, proves to be another conscious innuendo with many layers of significance.
Abstract This paper re-examines the constitutional irregularities surrounding the triumph of C. Pomptinus in 54 BC . It argues that the public thanksgivings ( supplicationes ) for Pomptinus’ victories in Transalpine Gaul, long assumed to have been decreed by the senate in the teeth of Caesar’s faction, were in fact never ratified. Instead, they were unilaterally proclaimed by the consul M. Bibulus through an edict designed to obstruct Caesar’s legislation. The paper then turns to the lex Sulpicia , which finally enabled Pomptinus to enter the city in triumph. The highly unusual circumstances of the law’s passage—the only recorded instance in Roman history of a voting assembly convened before dawn—are explained as a stratagem to forestall obstruction by means of obnuntiatio , a device central to the political warfare at Rome in the mid-50s.
Abstract It is argued that the story of how the emperor Domitian used to spend his time alone killing flies with a stylus has no historical basis but was invented by someone to explain the wit of a celebrated reply by the senator Vibius Crispus to the question of whether there was anyone in the palace with Domitian when he or she did not properly understand the wit of this reply. The reply that there was not even a fly in with Domitian, except perhaps in his wrestling-room, seems to have contained a pun between the Latin noun musca ‘fly’ and the Greek noun μύσχον ‘genital part’. However, this pun seems to have gone generally unrecognised as such because of the rarity of the Greek noun.
Abstract Throughout Tacitus’ works, the author frequently includes passages related to the law, the importance of which has increasingly been acknowledged in recent years. In particular, Tacitus devotes significant attention to the many different ways in which the enforcement and application of the law could malfunction. The collection and categorisation of these different types of breakdowns of the Roman legal order, it will be argued, can shed an important light on Tacitus’ legal thinking and the way in which he relates to wider judicial debates of his time. It will be suggested that Tacitus imbues his texts with a distinct, but ultimately nuanced, sense of legal scepticism and that he, rather than providing his readers with clear-cut answers, challenges them to carefully consider how the law ought to function and how they themselves should relate to it.
Abstract This article examines the stylistic development of name-lines from Homer to Silius Italicus. Name-lines are defined as lines of poetry predominantly consisting of proper nouns and patronymics. This article focuses on name-lines in death-scenes, denoting the proper nouns of the killers and those killed during epic battles. It shows that name-lines are an important feature of epic through which stylistic innovation can be mapped. Name-lines are highly intertextual and show allegiance to the earlier epic tradition. In addition, stylistic developments can be observed, such as a move away from the clustering of name-lines and towards an integration of name-lines into the wider narrative.
Abstract This paper proposes that in composing the Eumenides , Aeschylus was heavily influenced by theogonic poetry and made a particularly copious use of the literary model provided by the Homeric Hymns . The discussion centers on four elements, the treatment of which is shown to be similar in Aeschylus’ play and in the Hymns: epiphany, human characters, divine conflict, and allocation of divine privileges. The main lines of argument are the following. 1. The staging of the play evokes the progressive actualization of a divine epiphany, that of the Erinyes. 2. The discretion of its human characters is typical of the largely instrumental role that they play in the Hymns. 3. The agonistic encounters of the Erinyes resemble the power struggles at the heart of the Hymns. 4. These conflicts revolve around the problem of divine timai and the rivalries that emerge thereof.
Abstract In Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica Pelias sends Jason off on the quest for the golden fleece under the false pretense of avenging Phrixus’ murder by Aeetes. The reader soon finds out that Phrixus was in fact hospitably welcomed by Aeetes and died of natural death in Colchis, but Jason does not realize the full extent of the lie until later in the epic. This article reviews the hints about Phrixus’ fate and retraces both the readers’ and the Argonauts’ cognitive progression from Pelias’ initial lie to their full realization of the truth.
Abstract Since 1882, scholarly literature has embraced the thesis formulated by Charles Tissot that L. Valerius Catullus Messallinus could have acted as a proconsul of Africa in the times of Domitian. The basis for this claim would be the ancient scholium to Juvenal’s Satire 4, which Tissot found in the materials left by Bartolomeo Borghesi. It turns out, however, that the text quoted by Tissot is not of ancient origin, but that it is a fragment of the first Renaissance commentary on the Letters of Pliny the Younger, authored by Giovanni Maria Cattaneo. Moreover, this author did not suggest that Catullus Messallinus served as the proconsul of Africa, but linked the figure of the senator from the time of Domitian with Catullus, the governor of Crete and Cyrenaica, mentioned by Josephus towards the end of Bellum Judaicum .
Abstract This article provides a reconsideration of the work of Hestiaea of Alexandria, a scholar who was active during or before the early second century bce . Through a detailed examination of the available evidence, it shows that a number of modern understandings about Hestiaea’s life and work are based on questionable interpretations of the surviving material and need to be revised. The article includes an edition, translation, and commentary on the remains of Hestiaea’s scholarship.
Abstract Whereas Jewish writers who grew up in a Hellenized environment, such as Philo of Alexandria, Paul, and Flavius Josephus, describe their sea journeys across the Mediterranean and encounters abroad, travel narratives in Palestinian rabbinic literature almost exclusively deal with land journeys of a much shorter duration within the Land of Israel itself and, sometimes, further afield to the adjacent regions of Egypt and Syria and onwards to Babylonia. While the reasons may have been pragmatic, namely, that most Palestinian rabbis lacked sufficient purposes to travel overseas, this also raises the question whether and to what extent they perceived certain geographical locations differently from their more Hellenized Jewish coreligionists. To what extent were certain spaces and regions considered “foreign” in the sense of being potentially dangerous and idolatrous? Did certain objects, inhabitants, or practices render a space “strange”? At least to some extent, individual rabbis’ perception of otherness is likely to have varied. It would have depended on their respective urban or rural background and social status as well as their travel experiences and practices.
The two mentions of Bion of Borysthenes in Demetrius Laco’s De forma dei (PHerc. 1055, coll.19+23) might be no proper references to his views or arguments, but to his popularizing and unsystematic philosophical style. Demetrius might have compared the reasoning of his actual opponent(s) with Bion’ way of (not) arguing in order to ridicule or delegitimise it. Moreover, Theophrastus seems to indicate Bion’s lifetime and not to figure as the source for a judgement on his philosophy, which instead goes back to Eratosthenes, as Diogenes Laertius und Strabo attest.
Since 1882, scholarly literature has embraced the thesis formulated by Charles Tissot that L. Valerius Catullus Messallinus could have acted as a proconsul of Africa in the times of Domitian. The basis for this claim would be the ancient scholium to Juvenal's Satire 4, which Tissot found in the materials left by Bartolomeo Borghesi. It turns out, however, that the text quoted by Tissot is not of ancient origin, but that it is a fragment of the first Renaissance commentary on the Letters of Pliny the Younger, authored by Giovanni Maria Cattaneo. Moreover, this author did not suggest that Catullus Messallinus served as the proconsul of Africa, but linked the figure of the senator from the time of Domitian with Catullus, the governor of Crete and Cyrenaica, mentioned by Josephus towards the end of BellumJudaicum.
This article argues that the ring composition in Parmenides' proem (DK28B1) forms a previously overlooked argument in favour of katabasis within the blurred-topography interpretation, since the ring composition mirrors the circular journey of the daughters of the Sun, who travel from the House of Night, pick up the kouros in the light, and take him back to the House of Night. The turn in the centre of the six-layered ring composition emphasizes the narratological i80-degree shift in the audience's attention from the analepsis (lines 9-i0) to the continuation of the primary fabula (line ii). Both these turns mirror the topography of the circular journal of the daughters of the Sun. By connecting what previously were two separate issues in Parmenidean scholarship, i.e. the ring composition and the topography of the kouros' journey, this article also emphasises once more the close entanglement between form and content in early Greek poetry.
This article considers the propositions, recently advanced in this journal, that Sappho fr. 1 was "the most widely quoted poem by the Lesbian poets in antiquity, and by far Sappho's best-known work'. Arguing that the evidence tells against both these claims, the article compares fr. 1 with two other well attested works by Sappho. It builds a nuanced picture of their relative popularity, drawing on all the available evidence, before by way of conclusion bringing two poems by Alcaeus into the mix.
This article provides a reconsideration of the work of Hestiaea of Alexandria, a scholar who was active during or before the early second century BCE. Through a detailed examination of the available evidence, it shows that a number of modern understandings about Hestiaea's life and work are based on questionable interpretations of the surviving material and need to be revised. The article includes an edition, translation, and commentary on the remains of Hestiaea's scholarship.
This article argues that, beyond Aratus and Callimachus, Hesiod's Works and Days provides a code model for Ovid's Fasti. Despite the many differences, the connection becomes clear when considering the ancient reception of Hesiod. Literary imitations, as well as ancient exegesis preserved in the scholia, show that in Antiquity the Works and Days was read as both an astronomical poem and a poem about the religious calendar, viz. a poem very similar to Ovid's Fasti. The remaining divergences highlight the novelty of Ovid's appropriation of the model: Hesiod's rustic and archaic calendar is recast in the urban and festive context of contemporary Augustan Rome.
