bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The diffusion of the cuneiform writing system in northern Mesopotamia: The earliest archaeological evidence
Authors: Quenet Philippe
Published: August 2016

The invention of writing in southern Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium BC had many and long-lasting consequences. As far as the Early Bronze Age is concerned, one of the most remarkable of these consequences is that the cuneiform writing system that gradually emerged in southern Iraq during the first part of the Early Dynastic period spread to northern Syria around the mid-third millennium BC. A flourishing scribal tradition was already firmly established throughout the Syrian Jezirah and inner Syria by the advent of the Akkadian period.

It is difficult to establish the reasons and mechanisms that led the elites of northern Syria to borrow the practice of writing from their counterparts in southern Iraq. The steps in this process are even more unclear. Hence the aim of this paper is to gather material evidence that may help us shed light on those questions. As an archaeologist, I will not discuss here the content of epigraphical finds, but only their context and chronological attribution according to the chronological divisions in northern and southern Mesopotamia respectively.
The “continuous style” in the narrative scheme of Assurbanipal's reliefs
Authors: Watanabe Chikako E.
Published: August 2016

As we walk through the Assyrian galleries in the British Museum, we may observe curious depictions amongst Assurbanipal's reliefs. A scene from the king's lion hunt, for example, shows a lion emerging from a cage, a lion being shot by an arrow in the back and dashing forward in anger, and a lion leaping at the king (Fig. 1). Our eyes follow these images naturally, from right to left, as a series of movements that conclude on the left of the scene. It was E. Unger who first observed this characteristic feature and named it kinematographische Erzählungsform. J. Reade also noted it in his study of narrative composition in Assyrian sculpture, where the style is called the “strip-cartoon effect”. It appeared sporadically throughout the Neo-Assyrian period but became prominent under Assurbanipal. The identification of these animals as the same lion is established by a text on the far left, beyond this scene. This part of the relief only survives in the form of a drawing. It shows the king grasping the lion by the throat and thrusting a sword into the animal's stomach. The epigraph states that a lion was released from a cage in order to be shot with arrows by the king. The lion did not die, however, so he stabbed it with an iron dagger in order to kill it.
Tablets from the Sippar library III. Two Royal Counterfeits
Authors: Al-Rawi F. N. H. , George A. R.
Published: August 2016

This article continues the publication of tablets from the library of the temple of Šamaš at Sippar begun in volume 52 of this journal. Presented here are the library's copies of two texts which have in common the fact that they are not what they purport to be: Maništūšu's cruciform monument, and a literary letter of Samsu-iluna. Both texts are clearly fictitious compositions which postdate their supposed royal authors by a long time. Their purpose was apparently to supply evidence of historical precedent. The invented evidence which these documents present as fact would be intended to substantiate or advance the claims of those who wrote them. While both tablets are duplicates of known texts, each adds to a greater or lesser degree to our knowledge of these texts, not least by filling lacunae and by confirming or rebutting the restorations of previous editors.

The identification of a tablet from niche 8 B as a duplicate of the last column of a large Neo-Babylonian exercise tablet from Ur allows this text to be properly identified for the first time. It is one of several royal letters in Akkadian, some apparently genuine, others certainly bogus, which entered the scribal tradition and survive in late copies. This example purports to be from Samsu-iluna, the son and successor of Hammurapi of Babylon, to Enlil-nādin-šumi, a man whose several titles identify him as a very senior figure, and apparently a royal prince. As is the case with the Cruciform Inscription of Maništūšu, anachronisms in the text mark the composition out as later than it purports to be. Following the formulae which name the letter's addressee and sender the text itself opens with the phrase umma ana narê, an expression that also appears in a probably genuine letter of Nebuchadnezzar I.
Abdissarès l'Adiabénien
Authors: de Callataÿ F.
Published: August 2016

Le nom du roi Abdissarès serait aujourd'hui totalement inconnu s'il ne figurait sur quelques monnaies de cuivre heureusement parvenues jusqu'à nous (ΒΑΣΙLΕΩΣ/ΑΒΔΙΣΣΑΚΟΥ). Quoique extrêmement rares, ces monnaies sont connues depuis longtemps. E. Q. Visconti, F. de Saulcy, V. Langlois, O. Blau, E. Babelon et P. Bedoukian sont les numismates qui ont le plus contribué, par leurs vues ou leurs informations originales, à développer les connaissances à propos de ce roi.

Ernest Babelon a donné la meilleure liste, sans doute, des types monétaires d'Abdissarès tandis que Paul Bedoukian en a fait connaître le plus grand nombre d'exemplaires. Cette liste, quelque peu amendée en fonction de meilleures lectures, est la suivante:

Dr.: Buste d'Abdissarès à dr., barbu et coiffé d'une “tiare” ouverte sur le côté et ceinte du diadème royal. Grènetis au pourtour.

Rv.: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ (à dr., de haut en bas) ֊ ΑΒΔΙΣΣΑΚΟΥ (à g., de haut en bas). Aigle debout à dr. sur une ligne de terre.

a-Paris, BN, coll. de Luynes, n° 3433 (7,40g-23Ø-12h: F. de Saulcy, 1855, 101; V. Langlois, 1859, Pl. I, n° 8; E. Babelon, 1890, Pl. XXIX, n° 3; J. de Morgan, Manuel de numismatique orientale de l'Antiquité et du Haut Moyen Age, Paris 1923–36, 192, Fig. 213 et J. Babelon, Catalogue de la collection du duc de Luynes. Monnaies grecques IV, Paris 1936, Pl. CXXVII, n° 3433).
Re-writing the late prehistory of south-eastern Arabia: a reply to Jocelyn Orchard
Authors: Potts D. T.
Published: August 2016

In a pair of recent articles Jocelyn Orchard has presented what is arguably the most radical interpretation of late fourth and third millennium BC cultural development in the Oman peninsula to appear since archaeological excavations began in this region during the 1950s. Her theses challenge many aspects of current thinking and as such deserve to be scrutinised by all scholars working in East and South Arabian archaeology. Moreover, given the fact that Orchard has reviewed the status of the Jamdat Nasr pottery found in the Hafit-type graves of Oman and the United Arab Emirates, it is important that Mesopotamian specialists examine what she has said about relations between Jamdat Nasr Mesopotamia and the Oman peninsula.

In an effort to extract the salient points from Orchard's 1994 and 1995 articles I shall both quote directly and paraphrase her theses in point form. In this way I believe it will be easier to see how her argument is constructed out of a series of interlocking propositions.

1. In 1994 Orchard coined the term “Al-Hajar oasis towns”, asserting that these differed from so-called “Umm an-Nar settlements”. The two settlement types, she maintained, had been conflated erroneously by scholars working in the area in part because of “the fact that on a number of sites Umm an-Nar tombs are found intermingled with al-Hajar buildings”. Orchard, however, argued that “these two types of third millennium settlement are very different in style” (Orchard 1994: 63). She characterised the Umm an-Nar buildings — in actual fact she only means tombs — as being “built wholly or in part of white limestone”, which differed from the “al-Hajar form of masonry-revetted platform construction”. “Indeed”, she wrote, speaking of the ceramic evidence for such a partitioning of third millennium culture in the Oman peninsula, “the general assumption that all third millennium wares found in the al-Hajar region represent a single culture is curious in view of the fact that three groups of wares can be distinguished, each of which is firmly associated with a different milieu (viz. Umm an-Nar tombs, settlements on Umm an-Nar and Ghanadha islands and al-Hajar settlements)” (Orchard 1994: 64).
King Apil-Sîn confirms the judgment of Sumulael
Authors: Al-ʿAdami K. A.
Published: August 2016

IM 85928, the tablet published here, was discovered at Sippar during the first season of excavations conducted in 1978 by the Department of Archaeology, College of Arts, University of Baghdad. The find-spot was Room 29, under Level II. The tablet measures 12.4 × 6.3 × 4.2 cm. It was enclosed in two envelopes. The outer of the two envelopes was not inscribed. The inner envelope is inscribed on obverse and reverse with 45 lines of text. A further six labels (kišib PN) are written at random on the top and left edges. The tablet itself is inscribed on obverse and reverse with 34 lines.

The text is a juridical document which describes a case brought before King Apil-Sîn of Babylon, the grandfather of Hammurapi, by one Šamaš-šarrum and others. A certain Nūr-ilīšu has laid claim to some of the plaintiffs' property. Their case is that the houses in question were granted to them by Apil-Sîn's own grandfather, King Sumulael. The outcome of the royal hearing is that Apil-Sîn returns ownership of the properties to Šamaš-šarrum and his fellow litigants, and Nūr-ilīšu is sworn to forgo any further claim against them in perpetuity. Among the witnesses are well-known notables of Sippar, including the šangûm-priests Lipit-Ištar and Šamuḫ-Sîn, and also the king's aunt, Ayyālatum, daughter of Sumulael. The tablet is dated to “the year following that of Apil-Sîn”, which presumably means his second year.
Tablets from the Sippar library X. A dedication of Zabaya of Larsa
Authors: Al-Rawi Farouk N. H.
Published: August 2016

The Neo- or Late Babylonian tablet presented here adds to the increasing number of ancient Mesopotamian formal inscriptions extant in copies made by first-millennium scribes. Another such tablet from the Sippar library, containing a copy of two building inscriptions reporting the work of Gudea and Šulgi on the temple of Nanše at Sirara, has already been published.

The present tablet's existence was announced in Iraq 49 (1987) 249. The inscription copied on to it uses an early monumental script. The text (11. 1–13) is a dedication to the goddess Nanše made by a diviner called Nanna-mansum (or Sîn-iddinam) for the well-being of an Amorite sheikh called Zabaya. This is most probably the fourth king of Larsa, who enjoyed the same name and title and reigned in the mid-twentieth century BC, in the usual chronology. The present text is accordingly catalogued by the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia project under Zabaya of Larsa as E4.2.4.3 (Frayne, Old Babylonian Period, RIME 4, p. 112). Original inscriptions of this king have been found at Larsa and Maškan-šāpir.

The colophon (11. 14–18), apparently written over a poorly erased text, is in a conventional late script. The object on which the inscription was found is reported as a bronze “buck” (daššu), presumably a goat-shaped figurine. This was no doubt the object dedicated by Nanna-mansum (or Sîn-iddinam) to Nanše for his royal master many centuries before. Such bronze castings occur elsewhere in the written sources as ornaments on a bed (Nbn 206, 2: da-áš-šá-a-tum).
Iraq Government Excavations At ‘Aqar Qūf Second Interim Report 1943-1944
Authors: Baqir Taha
Published: August 2016

In a previous report we summarized the results of excavations undertaken by the Directorate-General of Antiquities at the site known as ‘Aqar Qūf during a short preliminary season in 1942 and again from February to March in 1943. During the whole of this time work was restricted to the temple area in the vicinity of the ruined ziggurrat. Excavating was resumed at the beginning of October 1943, and the third season lasted until February 10th, 1944. The field staff remained almost unchanged from the previous season and consisted of Taha Baqir, M.A., Curator of the Iraq Museum, as field-director, Mohammed Ali Mustafa, architect, Ata Sabri, registrar, and Izeddin Sanduq, assistant surveyor. Most of the excellent photographs were taken by the Department's photographer, Antran Ivan. As before, excavations were conducted under the guidance of Mr. Seton Lloyd, F.S.A., Technical Adviser to the Directorate-General.
Excavations at Kish and Bar

gh

uthiat 1933: II. Pottery
Authors: Harden D. B.
Published: August 2016

Figs, 1 and 2 show a conspectus of the restorable pot-shapes of both plain and glazed ware found in the Sassanian buildings excavated at Kish in 1932-3. Almost all of them come from the SS 7 complex, at an average depth of 2 metres: a few are from SS 6 or SS 8, at a similar depth. They form a group that should prove most valuable for purposes of dating on less well documented sites in Iraq, for it seems most probable that this pottery belongs to the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. The latest coin found with the pots is one of Justinian I (A.D. 527-65).

A. Plain ware. The commonest shapes are the hemispherical and truncated conical bowls which often bear Aramaic incantations; jugs which have ovoid bodies and rounded or pointed bases; jugs with pinched lips and flat bases or base-rings; and large three-handled jars for storing liquids.
You Can't Go Home Again: War, Women and Domesticity in Aristophanes' Peace
Authors: Sulprizio Chiara
Published: August 2016

Peace was performed at the City Dionysia in 421 BCE, just days before the signing of the fifty-year treaty known as the Peace of Nikias, which brought an end to the first ten years of the Peloponnesian War. The negotiations that led up to this definitive moment for Athens and Sparta had been initiated the previous summer by the simultaneous deaths of Cleon and Brasidas at Amphipolis, who had been, according to Thucydides, ‘the two principal opponents of peace on either side’ (5.16.1). These unexpected deaths created a power vacuum which was filled by more moderate politicians on both sides of the conflict—Nikias and Pleistoanax, respectively—each of whom had his own personal reasons for desiring peace, apart from alleviating the battle fatigue felt keenly throughout the Greek world by this point. At Athens, the break in military action occasioned by this transference of power put the focus back on the political situation at home, and it was during this break that Aristophanes produced his cautiously optimistic play Peace, which, in its celebration of this fortuitous turn of events, also displayed a renewed interest in the well-being of the Athenian home front at this time.
Medea in Metamorphoses 7: Magic, Moreness and the Maivs Opvs
Authors: Williams Gareth
Published: August 2016

It is now widely recognised that Medea's last words in her elegiac letter to Jason, Heroides 12, combine the terrible foreshadowing of infanticide with a telling metapoetic signature:

quo feret ira, sequar! facti fortasse pigebit;

et piget infido consuluisse uiro.

uiderit ista deus, qui nunc mea pectora uersat!

nescioquid certe mens mea maius agit.

(Ov. Her. 12.209-12)

Where my anger leads, I'll follow. Perhaps I'll regret my deed—

as I regret the attention I paid to my faithless husband.

Be that the concern of the god who now goads my breast!

Certainly, something greater is stirring in my mind!

Ovid positions Heroides 12 as ‘a “prequel” to his own Medea-tragedy’, that maius opus which notionally provides Medea with an appropriate generic setting in which to exact her revenge; elegy is too light a medium to bear the weight of so tragic a denouement. Heroides 12 thus concludes by adapting itself to the contours of the larger Ovidian career—a career in which he was to revisit the Medea-theme for the third time in Metamorphoses 7. There, her life-story is selectively told from the beginning of the Argonautic voyage and Medea's first infatuation with Jason to her magical intervention in his gaining of the golden fleece (1-158); from her rejuvenation of Jason's father, Aeson, to the dastardly way in which she induces the daughters of Pelias, Aeson's half-brother, to murder their father (159-349); and from the briefly told murder of her children at Corinth to her marriage to Aegeus and the attempted murder of Theseus, his son, at Athens (394-423). At this point Medea takes flight once more (424; cf. 350-93, in the wake of Pelias' murder) and disappears from the Metamorphoses for good—or, we might imagine, for yet more evil to be worked.
Ovid's Use of the Epistolary Mode in Heroides 3
Authors: Hanson Hans-Peder
Published: August 2016

In his influential reading of Heroides 1, Duncan Kennedy argues that successful fictional letters can be felt to arise naturally from or be motivated by the depicted events and, ideally, be seen as agents in the forward movement of those events. Building on Kennedy's arguments, Peter Knox asserts that Ovid reconfigures his heroines in the Heroides to develop serious issues raised by his literary models from a new perspective. In this paper, I shall follow Kennedy's and Knox's suggestions to propose a new reading of Heroides 3. I shall first discuss how Briseis' letter can be felt to be both naturally motivated by and seriously engaged with Achilles' arguments in Iliad 9. More importantly, I shall argue that Ovid implicates Patroclus' aid in the composition and delivery of Heroides 3. The result is that one can view the fictional letter as having some influence upon Patroclus' fateful appeal to Achilles, thus providing an Ovidian reinterpretation of Iliad 16. Imagining this fictional role for Heroides 3 ultimately provokes comparison of Briseis, Patroclus and their relationships with Achilles. Such a reading uses Kennedy's and Knox's suggestions as a point of departure for making Heroides 3 a more successful and provocative fictional letter.
Statius' Ekphrastic Games: Thebaid 6.531-47
Authors: Lovatt Helen
Published: August 2016

Statius is the arch-describer. Even when it was universally agreed that his poetry was essentially second-rate hack-work, his ability to evoke the visual and his relationship to works of art provided fascination and interest. Yet the ekphraseis in the Thebaid have not received much detailed critical attention. This paper looks at the double ekphrasis of the prizes at the end of the chariot race in Thebaid 6. If ekphraseis tend to be ignored and passed over, if ekphraseis are moments outside narrative, still visions for the viewer in the text, interludes, as it were, then an ekphrasis within a set of games is doubly distant from the thrust of the text. For games themselves have suffered the same marginalisation: read as purely ‘decorative’ or ‘imitative’ their importance for understanding the wider realities of the text has often passed unnoticed. An ekphrasis, then, is indeed a sort of game, and, I would argue, this is particularly so in this case. For Statius uses this passage to make a new move in his poetic contests with his predecessors. He takes one Homeric object and one Virgilian object, decorates them with Ovid and sets them against each other. Hinds has read the Achilleid as an Ovidian epic but Ovid is also extremely important in the Thebaid and much more work is needed on this.
Testing the Boundaries of Ekphrasis: Lucian on the Hall
Authors: Newby Zahra
Published: August 2016

Picture yourself in a beautiful room, flooded with early morning light. It has a lofty ceiling, delicately gilded and glinting in the sunshine. The walls are adorned with paintings, in colour and detail as bright as Spring. What is one to do in the face of such beauty? Stand mute, gazing in wonder, or articulate the impact of the visual, rival it even, in words?

This is the question posed by Lucian's On the Hall, a rhetorical introduction or prolalia, probably written between 160 and 180 CE. The piece is framed as a debate about the merits of speaking in beautiful surroundings. While the first speaker confidently asserts that it is both desirable and beneficial to give oratorical displays within impressive surroundings, a second speaker, who only appears in chapter 14, suggests that such surroundings will instead overpower the speaker and distract his audience. Yet the debate does not only question whether beautiful surroundings help or hinder the epideictic orator. It also asks what the proper response of an educated man should be to visual beauty, and problematises the relationship between the visual and the verbal. While many of Lucian's other works give descriptions of works of art, or appeal to the reader's artistic knowledge, this essay puts the ekphrastic project itself in the spotlight, questioning whether words can ever truly compete with the impact of the visual.
Ethnography's Freak Show: The Grotesques at the Edges of the Roman Earth
Authors: Evans Rhiannon
Published: August 2016

Blemyis capita absunt, uultus in pectore est. Satyris praeter effigiem nihil humani. Aegipanum quae celebratur ea forma est. haec de Africa.Pomponius MelaChorographia1.48The Blemyes lack heads: their faces are in their chests. There is nothing typical of humans about the Satyrs, apart from their superficial appearance. The Aegipanes have the shape described in stories. So much for Africa.

How useful are Roman geographical texts? Outrageous claims like the one cited above have invited scepticism concerning the scientific value of geographies and ethnographies produced by Roman authors. To a large extent, the importance attributed to a geographical text will depend on what is being sought from that text. For example, O.A.W. Dilke tells us that, ‘We are fortunate in possessing all seventeen books of theGeographyof Strabo,’ and that Strabo ‘shows good critical power in assessing earlier geographical writers and giving us a verbal picture of the known world of the time.’ However, ‘a contrast with Strabo's work is provided by the very simple and popularChorographiaof Pomponius Mela,’ of which Dilke expresses die view that it would have been preferable had Juba II's work survived.
Staging the Ephebeia: Theatrical Role-Playing and Ritual Transition in Sophocles' Philoctetes
Authors: Lada-Richards Ismene
Published: August 2016

The last two decades have seen a renewed emphasis on studies falling within the general area of Ritual and Drama. The majority of extant plays have been scrutinised in the search for ritual schemes and sequences, metaphors and allusions remoulded in their imagery and language, and some of the juiciest discussions of Greek theatre have emerged as a result. Nevertheless, compared to this proliferation of studies on particular aspects of ritual symbolism and ritual patterns, few scholars have attempted to investigate the ways in which ritual and theatre can interrelate and unfold in parallel at the level of dramaticplots. Brilliant, albeit isolated, examples of this type of inquiry can be sought in Froma Zeitlin's unequalled pieces on Aristophanes'Thesmophoriazusaeand Euripides'Ion; in the rewarding work of Foley, Segal, Goldhill on theBacchaeas well as in Bowie's ‘ritual’ reading of Aristophanic plots and Seaford's monumental study of Dionysiac patterns in fifth-century Greek tragedy.
Postscripts from the Edge: Exilic Fasti and Imperialised Rome
Authors: Boyle A.J.
Published: August 2016

Fastiis Ovid's prime exilic work. Begun at the same time asMetamorphosesit is yet the last of Ovid's poems, rewritten in exile to juxtapose past and present, centre and periphery, tradition, religion, time and their ideological appropriation and abuse. Ovid'scarmen ultimum, it joinsEpistulae ex Pontoin straddling the principates of Augustus and Tiberius and bearing witness withEpistulaeto the factuality of dynastic succession and the consolidation of imperial power. There is no evidence that any ofFastiwas recited, or otherwise made public, before Ovid's departure for Tomis; indeed the only reference toFastioutside itself is the secondTristia'sdescription of the rupturing of the work (opus ruptum, Tr.2.552) by Ovid's exilic ‘fate’ (sors). Pre-exilic and exilic strata exist in the poem, as many critics have too frequently noted, but, since they were never read in separate contexts but always within the frame of Ovid's exile, their dynamic interplay serves only to enrich and to deepen the exilic nature ofFasti'sdiscourse.
Qvaerenti Plvra Legendvm: On the Necessity of ‘Reading More’ in Ovid's Exile Poetry
Authors: Casali Sergio
Published: August 2016

In this article I propose to explore the disposition which the reader must bring to bear to Ovid's exilic works. More specifically, I want to begin by considering the way in which Ovid himself shapes or represents the attitude of his reader; that is, the way in which the text explicitly or implicitly shapes his ideal reader, and gives him indications as to how to read the new works which gradually reach Rome from Pontus. We start at the beginning:Tr.1.1.
Horace's Arboreal Anniversary (C. 3.8)
Authors: Putnam Michael C. J.
Published: August 2016

Martiis caelebs quid agam kalendis,quid uelint flores et acerra turisplena miraris positusque carbo in caespite uiuo,docte sermones utriusque linguae:uoueram dulcis epulas et albumLibero caprum prope funeratus arboris icru.hic dies anno redeunte festuscorticem adstrictum pice dimouebitamphorae fumum bibere institutae consule Tullo.sume, Maecenas, cyathos amicisospitis centum et uigiles lucernasperfer in lucem: procul omnis esto clamor et ira.mitte ciuilis super urbe curas:occidit Daci Cotisonis agmen,Medus infestus sibi luctuosis dissidet armis,seruit Hispanae uetus hostis oraeCantaber sera domitus catena,iam Scythae laxo meditantur arcu cedere campis.neglegens, ne qua populus laboret,parce priuatus nimium cauere etdona praesentis cape laetus horae: linque seuera.

What I, a bachelor, am doing on the Kalends of March, what the flowers mean and the casket full of incense and the coal placed on the living turf, you marvel at, learned in the conversations of both languages: I had vowed a savoury feast and a white goat to Liber when I was nearly done to death by the tree's fall. This feast day, as the year returns, will remove the cork, tightened with pitch, from a jar taught to drink the smoke when Tullus was consul.
Out of Circulation? An Essay on Exchange in Persius' Satires
Authors: Malamud Martha
Published: August 2016

Twenty five years ago in the infantRamus, J.P. Sullivan wrote ‘In Defence of Persius’. Not many scholars writing today would think of choosing that title: having contemplated the indefensible aspects of Classical literature, most are far too wary to leap to the defence of any classical author, let alone a writer of Satire, a genre distinguished by its combination of crassness and cruelty, its insistence on turning its audience into victimisers. Sullivan's defence rests partly on his perceptive appreciation of Persius' unusually complex and intense poetic style. Twenty years later, also inRamus, John Henderson took a different approach to the same author: his (ironical?) strategy was not to defend the poet, but to banish him and his style entirely:

Persius then: not the minor figure caught in Latin Literature's toils, Silver Immaturity, that obscure, difficult poetaster and also-ran satirist. Rather, a central and key textual trace of the cultural formation of imperial subjectivity.… Away, then, Persius, from the margins of literariness and into the centre of Roman imperial cultural formation…

The formulation of the object of study as a textual trace—no longer an obscure poet, but acentralandkeytextual trace—transforms the reading of an unpopular minor Latin author (surely a self-indulgent exercise, after all;notthe sort of thing our educational system ought to be funding) into an exemplary study of the cultural formation of imperial subjectivity. Persius would have enjoyed sharingthissecret with his ditch.
Is Literary Criticism an Illegitimate Discipline? A Fallacious Argument in Plato's Ion
Authors: Lowenstam Steven
Published: August 2016

The short Platonic dialogue, the Ion, has suffered a strange fate. Its authenticity has been doubted, and its content considered slight or repetitious. The greatest and most surprising setback the work has encountered is that critics have never even been able to agree on its subject. Therefore, an analysis of the dialogue requires that we first investigate whether the dialogue questions the knowledge of poets or critics, the two subjects proposed. Second, Socrates' argument denying an area of expertise to rhapsodes needs examination; and, finally, the implications of the Ion's argument, especially in regard to the connections between literary criticism and philosophy, deserve attention.

The main argument of the Ion is anticipated by two questions posed at the beginning of the work. Socrates asks Ion whether he is as skilful (deinos) in discussing Hesiod and Archilochus as he claims to be in regard to Homer (531a1-2). When the rhapsode responds that his talent is limited to Homer, Socrates concludes that Ion's ability to speak about Homer is not based upon technical knowledge (tekhnē) or a scientific method (epistēmē) but upon divine inspiration. Shortly afterwards, Socrates asks whether Ion or a seer could better assess Homeric and Hesiodic passages about soothsaying (531b3-6). This question anticipates the argument in the last third of the dialogue where Socrates insists that Ion has no particular expertise in regard to the Homeric works and that in fact specialists in various technical fields are better qualified to judge Homeric passages. The question also prefigures the important role divination will play in the dialogue.
Persius' Didactic Satire: The Pupil as Teacher
Authors: Henderson John
Published: August 2016

The heart does hurt.And that's no metaphor.The feeling isthat ‘throbbing muscle’ you can't say—since that's ‘steel comic sex meat’.But it does hurttop-mid-leftunder my shirt with its atrocious beat.

‘Didactic Poetryis poetry which is primrily intended to instruct. Most commonly, the label is used for poetry which teaches a moral. It can also refer to poetry which conveys factual information.’ Classicists will take issue with such a definition: that ‘also’ is provocative, and so are the priorities it signals; the wedge that is being driven between poetics as ‘moral’ as against poetics as ‘factual’, those terms—… Besides,whatweight is to be placed on the opposition ‘teaches’vs.‘conveys… information’? What concept of ‘teaching’ can there be that stands proud of ‘conveying… information’?

This is the subject of the present essay. If we put this question—these questions—to theSatiresof Persius, we will find in them both: (1) a strategic manoeuvre within the developing construction of imperial subjectivity within Roman discourse that has been strangely overlooked in the recent burst of critical attention devoted to this area; and also (2) a paradigmatic response to repressive encroachment on individual and collective liberties from the ‘defensive’ writer who contrivesfromthe very constriction of the civic voice a vindication of the freedom tomean. Our freedom… to dissemble(,) dissent. Reflection of and on bur predicament: ‘meaning’ in the meaning-fullness ofemphasis, the protocol of reading that problematises the containment of reading this side of theDiktatof Power/Knowledge.Hoc ridere meum(1.122).
Flavian Epicists on Virgil's Epic Technique
Authors: Hardie Philip
Published: August 2016

Despite some notable recent essays in the rehabilitation of the Latin epic of the first century A.D., there remains a prejudice that post-Virgilian epicists are slavishly imitative in a way that Virgil (and his contemporaries in other genres) are not. The following three studies, in Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus, are contributions to an argument, currently being conducted on a wide front, that imitation, even of a very close kind, may behave in a dynamic and creative way; in particular I wish to show how the epigone may function as an implicit literary analyst or critic, anticipating the results of twentieth-century criticism. My three examples take their starting-point from what I see as a general modern consensus about the nature of Virgilian epic, but the direction could be reversed, that is, we might use post-Virgilian epic as a critical aid toourreading of Virgil.

I take individual passages from the Flavian epics in whichtwo(or more) passages of theAeneidare laid under contribution; analysis of such passages reveals that the later poets were reading Virgil with an eye to structural correspondences or contrasts, and to image-structures reaching from the small scale of the ‘multiple-correspondence simile’ to the large scale of patterns that arch over the whole text, features that have been at the centre of much modern Virgilian criticism. Repeated reading of theAeneidreinforces the impression of a vast structure of self-allusion and self-comment aiming for a maximal transparency of the text to itself, in so far as theprima materiaof language will allow, and demanding a ‘simultaneous reading’ that is more spatial than temporal. The fragmentary state of previous large-scale Hellenistic poetry makes it difficult to judge of the originality of Virgil in this extreme extension of the features of repetition and self-allusion that characterize all literary works; but, for example, every increase in our knowledge of Callimachus'Aitiamakes it seem more likely that it was constructed in a similar way.
The Central Character(s) of the Antigone and Their Relationship to the Chorus
Authors: Hester David
Published: August 2016

Dr Shelton's article, ‘Human Knowledge and Self-Deception’ (Ramus 13 [1984], 102-23), has two main theses which are related. The first, as she duly acknowledges, has already been put forward by a small number of other scholars; it is that Creon is the sole main character of the Antigone. The second is, I think, original, or at least has nowhere else been stated with such force; it is not merely that Antigone is a minor character (which is simply the converse of the first thesis) but that she is a dispensable one (‘Ultimately Antigone is not necessary for the story’). ‘The gods would punish Creon even if Antigone had never existed’; should they be remiss, other mortals could do the job (‘since everyone in the play seems to disagree with Creon, and Antigone is therefore not his only opponent, what exactly is her function in the play, and how does it differ from that of Haemon and Teiresias?’). I think that the emphasis of her article is seriously misleading; so I would like to deal with her theses as briefly as possible, without reopening the endlessly debated question of the exact rights and wrongs of the positions of Antigone and Creon.
Vindicat Omnes Natvra Sibi: A Reading of Seneca's Phaedra
Authors: Davis P. J.
Published: August 2016

Many recent discussions of Senecan tragedy have concentrated on such issues as the author's relationship to previous Greek and Latin tragedy, the connections between his prose and dramatic works and problems of performance. Although these questions are important, I propose to set them aside as far as possible in order to examine the inner dynamics of one Senecan tragedy, Phaedra. I shall explore the ways in which Seneca's use of imagery, mythological allusion and characterisation bear upon the play's central theme, man's attempts to defy or control the forces of nature.

Phaedra begins with the organisation of a hunt. In Euripides' Hippolytus the hero entered returning from the hunt, but Seneca's Hippolytus, surrounded by a group of companions, is actually in action. The opening sentences of his first speech are commands (1-24). Indeed his first word is an imperative (Ite [‘Go!’]). He directs his men to different localities much as a general disposes his troops. His language suggests that there are analogies between a hunt and a military operation, for the successful hunter is a ‘conqueror’ (victor, 52) and the sequel will be a ‘lengthy triumphal procession’ (longo… triumpho, 79f.). Implicit in Hippolytus' exercise of power through the hunt is the notion of control. Note, for example, Hippolytus' orders concerning the hounds.
Rose-Fingered Dawn and the Idea of Time
Authors: Vivante Paolo
Published: August 2016

A common view among scholars is that Homer's verse, ‘When the early-born (ērigeneia), rose-fingered (rhododaktylos) dawn appeared’, is a conventional standard phrase used by Homer to say ‘when the day broke out’. In this they of course follow Milman Parry who illustrated with this very phrase his famous definition of formula.

This implies that we have here a mere piece of compositional technique. The poetic value of the phrase is either disregarded or taken for granted. It is seen, at best, as a good instance of artistic craft—as one of those countless formulas which make up Homeric verse.

It is my contention that the phrase reflects a mode of perception and thought. Technique, compositional device, style are but the outcome of a way in which things are visualized and expressed. The phrase must thus be explained on the strength of a deeper poetic reason, it must be appreciated both in its intrinsic value and in its relation to the context. In order to do this, let us look at its occurrences, and then at what these occurrences imply as regards the conception of the poems as a whole.
Truth and Reality in Euripides' Ion
Authors: Forehand Walter E.
Published: August 2016

Criticism of theIonhas been more successful in defining the play's problems than in arriving at any sort of consensus about its interpretation. Indeed, modern critical response has run the gamut from Verrall's view that Euripides was fashioning a pointed attack on Apollo to Kitto's insistence that he was above all concerned to present a piece of lighthearted entertainment. Despite this wide range of opinion, however, discussions have tended to delineate several issues which seem central to the play, and so have endured as subjects for critical examination. One of these is the network of irony which is so prominent a feature of theIon's structure. It is abundantly clear that dramatic irony is important to theIon, and that Euripides was deeply involved with the tension between appearance and reality; however, despite its obvious position in the play, this aspect of theIoncontinues to present an interpretive problem.

In this study I want to concentrate on three areas that are of special significance in the development of the general theme of appearance and reality into a coherent intellectual position within theIon, for it was an idea on which Euripides often touched in plays written in this period. First, there is the concept of identity which is of great importance for Ion and to a lesser extent for Creusa and Xuthus. Next, I will discuss the complexity of relationships between Ion, Creusa, and Xuthus. These change dramatically as the play develops, and the characters react to their perceptions of the truth regarding their relationships with alarming irregularity. Finally, I will look at the problem of understanding Euripides' presentation of Apollo's oracle from the point of view of these other complications caused by the interplay of truth and reality. When we have analyzed theIonalong these lines it will be possible to make some general observations about the approach to reality which Euripides has presented in his play, for these elements suggest that he is making a more formal epistemological statement than is generally realized.
The Didactic Tradition in Vergil's Georgics
Authors: Kromer Gretchen
Published: August 2016

In a recent book L. P. Wilkinson has said, ‘The chief obstacle to appreciation of theGeorgicshas been its ostensiblegenre: it was deceptive and has abundantly deceived. This is no more a didactic poem than Ovid'sArs Amatoria: it simply masquerades as such.’ Throughout theGeorgics, however, Vergil explicitly identifies his work as a didactic poem, both by use of didactic convention and through many specific references to the works of earlier didactic poets. Why, then, does Wilkinson reject Vergil's own definition of his work? What is it that makes readers of theGeorgicsso reluctant to classify it as a didactic poem? Part of the problem, I believe, has to do with thegenreitself. Since this literary type is not popular with modern readers, its methods and objectives are not well understood. I will therefore begin this essay with a discussion of didactic convention and of the assumptions that underlie its use. The linguistic structure of didactic poetry provides the poet with an unusual degree of authority and autonomy but it also involves him in certain difficulties. The seriousness of these difficulties is already apparent in Lucretius'De Rerum Natura, a work which profoundly influenced Vergil's development as a poet. In the second part of the paper I will examine Vergil's use of didactic language in theGeorgics, placing particular emphasis on the poet's narrative or rhetorical stance. There I hope to show that Vergil makes new demands on this literarygenre, for he uses didactic convention as a means for examining and calling into question the fundamental assumptions on which all didactic poetry is based.
The Farmer's Battles
Authors: Betensky Aya
Published: August 2016

The end of the first Georgic is turbulent. The assassination of Caesar leads to civil war; Mars rages savagely; the charioteer can no longer control his chariot (512-14). But at the beginning of Georgic 2 normality seems to have returned, and the farmer is not only plowing but planting trees for his grandchildren (2.58). Later in the book, however, Virgil's instructions for planting grapevines include a puzzling simile which reminds the reader of the end of Georgic 1. He compares the arrangement of vines in a field to the deployment of battle troops on a plain.
The Birth of the Gods: Sexuality, Conflict and Cosmic Structure in Hesiod's Theogony
Authors: Sussman Linda S.
Published: August 2016

The Theogony is a poem about the creation of a cosmos, that is, an order. This order is created through the interaction of sexual beings, and the essentially sexual nature of the creative act eventually comes to structure and organize the space of the universe. Sexuality, moreover, implies a fundamental source of tension or conflict between opposites. Paradoxically, conflict in the Theogony is not destructive; rather, conflict enhances and expands the creative potential of sexuality by ensuring that the end product of sexual interaction, new being, will be able to act upon the world.

Conflict arises in the first two divine generations when a divine being attempts to contravene the telos of sexual movement by preventing his already conceived and fully gestated offspring from coming into the world. Conflict thus works against the destructuring of the world. The consequence of each conflict is a world which is more ordered and structured, as the offspring first of Gaia and Ouranos, and then of Rheia and Kronos, are permitted to assume their appropriate places in it, or as Zeus is able to turn his attention from the suppression of his enemies to the establishment of a fixed moral order. Thus conflict decreases the entropy of the world and tends toward creation and new order.
Neronian Pastoral and the World of Power
Authors: Leach Eleanor Winsor
Published: August 2016

As the third pastoral poet, Calpurnius Siculus was the first to take up the genre fully formed. For all their many differences, Theocritus and Vergil had given bucolic poetry an established frame of reference, a characteristic subject matter, and a self-contained mythology. From a poet in Calpurnius' position whose work would inevitably be measured against that of his predecessors, one would expect a certain amount of generic self-consciousness, taking such forms as an implicit evaluation of the tradition, numerous allusions and specific verbal borrowings, and, ideally, an assurance that the genre had not been exhausted, that is to say, some open-ended indication of the new directions in which pastoral might turn. The first of these elements is clearly present in the poetry, but the last remains elusive. A major imaginative influence upon his genre is something Calpurnius did not provide for antiquity. Unlike his contemporaries, Persius and Lucan, he has no conspicuous literary heir, nor do the Einsiedeln fragments or the slim corpus of Nemesianus give much proof of his having invigorated the tradition. Indeed the effect of Calpurnius upon the pastoral is rather comparable to that often assigned toParadise Lostupon the epic: he closed it off for centuries. But this fact need not stand in the way of an evaluation of the poet's artistry, nor originality. My argument in this paper is that Calpurnius' originality in adapting the pastoral tradition to his own sense of the temper of the Neronian Age was so extreme as to constitute a reluctant denial of the validity of pastoral mythology for contemporary Rome.
The Edict of Venus: An Interpretive Essay on Horace's Amatory Odes
Authors: Boyle A. J.
Published: August 2016

There have been few works of literature so widely known, so persistently traduced and so little understood as the Odes of Horace. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries his defamation has been little less than wanton outrage. Landor's sweeping criticisms are well known. But consider also Tyrrell (1895) on Horace's style: ‘The runnel is exquisitely smooth, but its shallow waters flow where they will, from their natural channel, and end in a puddle’; or Pound (1930) on the question of emotional strength: ‘Against the granite acridity of Catullus’ passion, against Ovid's magic and Ovid's sense of mystery, Horace has but the clubman's poise and no stronger emotion than might move one toward a particularly luscious oyster’; or Nisbet (1962) on artifice and artificiality: ‘His [Horace's] high standards of technical perfection brought a loss of spontaneity; only those who write fast can express all the shades and subtleties of thought.’
The Meaning of the Aeneid: A Critical Inquiry: Part I Empire and the Individual: An Examination of the Aeneid's Major Theme
Authors: Boyle A. J.
Published: August 2016

It is a commonplace of literary criticism that the criteria to be used in the understanding of a poem are internal. What counts as evidential in respect of poetic intent and meaning is what the poet actually says in the poem, and the only methodology worth serious attention is a careful, detailed and critical analysis of the poem itself. Despite this platitude biographical assumptions and postulates have exerted, and are still exerting, a disconcerting influence upon the criticism of ancient literature, most notoriously, perhaps, in the case of Virgil's epic, the Aeneid. All too frequently Virgil's life has been taken as the datum, the fact, to which his epic has had to be accommodated. This is not the occasion to take up arms against the biographical approach to Roman poets; I wish only to assert that, while it is important to place a poem such as the Aeneid in its historical context, it is equally important (indeed, more important) not to allow the historical context to dictate the interpretation of the poem. The poem, after all, is not a postulate; it is a determinate thing, present in a way in which a historical context is not. It must be given primacy, and any attempt to supplant this primacy with biographical hypotheses about the working of a poet's mind during the third decade B.C. based upon ambiguous external criteria would be the antithesis of the procedures of serious (that is to say, intelligent and relevant) criticism.