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From the Editor: Foucault and Arethusa Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Roger D. Woodard
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: From the Editor:Foucault and Arethusa Roger D. Woodard As the contributors to this remarkable issue make plain, the focus on classical antiquity that would emerge conspicuously in the later years of Michel Foucault's too-short life was augured by earlier work—lectures and writings generated more than a decade before his death. Notable
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A Self-Interested Reader? Foucault and Imperial Greek Technical Texts Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Claire Hall
Abstract: This article examines Foucault's Le Souci de soi: while purporting to be a work on sexuality, it is also about the formation of the self and the relationship of subjectivity with claims to truth. I argue that Foucault's use of imperial Greek medical and technical texts connected the ancient world to his own background in the history of medicine and psychoanalysis. By reading medical and technical
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Elephants, Christians, and Pagans in the History of Sexuality Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Niki Kasumi Clements
Abstract: In this article, I argue that Foucault's archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France require that we re-evaluate the development of his tournant antique. Between 1976 and 1984, Foucault does not orchestrate a turn to ancient Greek and Roman ethics in a departure from his analysis of modern sexuality in the 1976 History of Sexuality, volume 1, as volumes 2 and 3 as published suggest.
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Foucault's Epicureanism: Parrhēsia, Confession, and the Genealogy of the Self Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Federico Testa
Abstract: This paper addresses the apparent absence of a systematic analysis of Epicureanism in Foucault's exploration of ancient philosophy. By considering Pierre Hadot's remark concerning Foucault's problematic neglect of the Epicurean notion of hēdonē, it revisits Foucault's work in search of traces of his engagement with Epicureanism. It then goes on to analyze the genesis of the notion of parrhēsia
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The Cynics With and Without Foucault Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 James I. Porter
Abstract: In the last three years of his life, Michel Foucault made a sudden and unexpected turn to the ancient Cynics. In lectures from 1982 to 1984, and most notably in his final Collège de France lectures from 1984 (The Courage of the Truth: The Government of Self and Others II), he sought to recover from the Cynics a potential for critique, militant revolution, and a courageous means of speaking
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The Power of Oedipus: Michel Foucault with Hannah Arendt Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Miriam Leonard
Abstract: It has become increasingly common to draw connections between Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt: there are strong continuities between their respective theories of power, and Foucault and Arendt share an account of modernity and of the entry of biological life into the political sphere. Both thinkers are also immersed in the texts of antiquity and place an analysis of the ancient world at
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Medea in the Courtroom: Foucault, Alice Diop, and Abolition Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Mario Telò
Abstract: Building on Angela Davis' and other Black feminists' critiques of Discipline and Punish, this article reconsiders the important legacy of this book and of the writings of the Prisons Information Group, recently published as Intolerable (1970–1980), through the analysis of Alice Diop's Saint Omer, a 2022 film that imagines an immigrant Medea facing an infanticide conviction in a French courtroom:
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Contents for Volume 56 Arethusa Pub Date : 2024-01-16
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contents for Volume 56 Number 1 Athenian Autochthonous Kings and their Families: The Shared Patterns of their Myths lowell edmunds 1 Unanimous Gods, Unanimous Athens: The Oresteia's Challenge to Democracy amit shilo 27 In Flagrante Delicto: On the Legal Implications of Sight luuk de boer 77 Messalina's Gilded Nipples? stephanie mccarter
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Ritual as Battle: Conceptual Metaphor and Submerged Semantics in Sophron and Alcman Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Richard Martin
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Ritual as Battle: Conceptual Metaphor and Submerged Semantics in Sophron and Alcman Richard Martin Two passages from Greek literature, each dealing with ritual, exhibit unusual and isolated verbal semantics that have puzzled interpreters since the publication of their respective papyri texts in 1863 and 1933. Bringing the pair together
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Aetna Against Henna and the Poetics of Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Ruth Parkes
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Aetna Against Henna and the Poetics of Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae1 Ruth Parkes The earliest known literary treatment of Proserpina’s rape, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, places the abduction on the “Nysian plain.”2 What is here a setting which is “vague and mythical” (Foley 1994.36) could be interpreted as being the Nysa in the east
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A Soul Fallen from Noetic Grace: Proclus's Transformation of Tantalus (Commentary on the Cratylus §94, 46.24–47.7) Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Mikolaj Domaradzki
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: A Soul Fallen from Noetic Grace: Proclus’s Transformation of Tantalus (Commentary on the Cratylus §94, 46.24–47.7) Mikolaj Domaradzki INTRODUCTION In his Commentary on the Cratylus, Proclus offers a highly original but largely ignored interpretation of Tantalus.1 Proclus’s sophisticated account of the king in the treatise has received
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Athenian Autochthonous Kings and their Families: The Shared Patterns of their Myths Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Lowell Edmunds
Abstract: The myths of four Athenian autochthonous kings (Kekrops, Kranaus, Erichthonius, Erechtheus) share a story pattern. The royal line extends only to the third generation and not always so far. The gene of autochthony does not persist beyond the second generation. The "speaking names" of the kings' wives and children overdetermine this pattern. Lévi-Strauss' notion of the affirmation and denial
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Unanimous Gods, Unanimous Athens: The Oresteia's Challenge to Democracy Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Amit Shilo
Abstract: This article argues that through envisioning a militaristic, unanimous Athens, the Eumenides presents a novel and provocative political theory. I use political theology to clarify the structures and dangers of this concluding vision, which profoundly diverges from Athenian democracy. However, still meaningfully operative within the Oresteia are checking forces implied in its polytheism, plural
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In Flagrante Delicto: On the Legal Implications of Sight Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Luuk De Boer
Abstract: The distinction between manifest and non-manifest delicts, and the differentiated regime of punishment attached to it, is attested in all ancient legal systems. And yet, already in antiquity, it assumed the status of a mystery: why punish more severely, only because the criminal had been caught in flagrante? This article examines the extant evidence on the flagrant delict through the prism
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Messalina's Gilded Nipples? Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Stephanie McCarter
Abstract: This article questions the long-held assumption that the empress Messalina, as described by Juvenal at Satires 6.122–23, is donning gold foil pasties on her nipples as she performs sex work in a Roman brothel. I argue that papilla never unambiguously suggests a nipple in Roman poetry and is better understood as referring to the full breast. The idea that Messalina sports pasties, moreover
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From The Editor Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-04-15 Roger D. Woodard
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: From The Editor Roger D. Woodard Earlier versions of the papers that constitute this special thematic issue of Arethusa were presented at a symposium on Greek tragedy—one meeting of a series of three symposia informally known as the "Peradotto Sessions." The series was made possible through the generous financial support of Milton Ezrati
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Iphigenia in Ireland: A Long View Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-04-15 Fiona Macintosh
Abstract: This article explores the relative lack of interest in Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis for over 150 years, and the curious neglect of the play at the end of the nineteenth century, in particular, when scholars rehabilitated Euripides as the ancient playwright for the modern age. Even when Euripides' tragedies were staged in the early years of the twentieth century at London's Royal Court Theatre
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Rewriting Hippolytus: Hybridity, Posthumanism, and Social Politics in Marina Carr's Phaedra Backwards Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-04-15 Isabelle Torrance
Abstract: This article sheds light on Irish playwright Marina Carr's 2011 Phaedra Backwards, which premiered at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, as a particularly dense and multidirectional twenty-first century retelling of the Hippolytus myth. The centrality of the Minotaur in the drama, the role of technology in his creation, the place of nature in human life, and certain surprising motifs, such
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Virginia Woolf's Antigones Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-04-15 Nancy Worman
Abstract: This study explores Virginia Woolf's engagements with the stubborn and riveting character of Sophocles' Antigone, the most famously proto-feminist figure in Greek tragedy. As Woolf's deployments of the character occur only in The Voyage Out and The Years, two novels that are decades apart, as well as in the treatise Three Guineas, I can't claim that Antigone always remained central to Woolf's
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The Matter of Tragedy: Reading with Water Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-04-15 Pauline Leven
Abstract: This article proposes a "matter-realist" reading of tragedy: starting from Alice Oswald's 2019 Nobody, a poem about water based on the Odyssey and the Oresteia, and from the feminist phenomenologist acknowledgment that "we are bodies of water" (Neimanis 2017), my paper argues for the importance of taking water at face value. It focuses on water metaphors and metonymies in the tragic corpus
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Contents Volume 55 Arethusa Pub Date : 2023-04-15
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contents Volume 55 Number 1 Euripides' Suppliants: Mystery Cult Initiation and the Deaths of Evadne and Capaneus bijan omrani 1 Race, Gender, and Queenship in Book 2 of Vitruvius's de Architectura patricia kim 19 Rape, Apotheosis, and Politics in Metamorphoses 14 and 15 alicia matz 47 Bodily Metaphors and Failed Resolution in Persius's
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Aristophanes' Hiccups and Pausanius's Sophistry in Plato's Symposium Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Anthony Hooper
Abstract: This paper concerns the episode of Aristophanes' hiccups in Plato's Symposium. The sequence is typically understood to be not merely a comic aside but rather a means by which Aristophanes offers commentary on the claims of the other speakers in the dialogue. But where scholars have focused on the significance of this passage concerning Eryximachus's account of Eros, I argue that the hiccups
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Epistemic Injustice in Propertius 1.3 Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Nick Ollivère
Abstract: In Propertius 1.3 we hear Cynthia speak for the first time, in direct speech, accusing Propertius of infidelity. It is a striking moment in elegy, barely to be repeated. In this paper I want to explore what the framework of epistemic injustice, part of the field of epistemology, could mean for a reading of this dramatic encounter. As elaborated by the philosopher Miranda Fricker, the theory
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Two Case Studies on Desire and Deniability in Queer History Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Robert Matera
Abstract: Plausible deniability has presented both problems and opportunities to queer people and queer historical projects. Some scholars have avoided reading one woman expressing desire for another in the graffito CIL IV 5296. The speaker of Tibullus 1.4 uses a double meaning to solicit sexual penetration without incurring penalties; this reading has not appeared in print before. Considering the
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What is Athens without Menander? The Comic Poet, the Courtesan, and the Production of Space in Alciphron's Letters Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-11-16 Anna Irene Peterson
Abstract: Spatial descriptions in Alciphron's Letters convey meaning even as they reinforce the Athenocentric view of the collection. This article considers the production of space in the Letters and how Alciphron uses the figure of the courtesan to expand the perspective of the collection to include the broader Hellenistic world. Although Alciphron's courtesans are closely tied to Athens, Book 4 contains
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Euripides' Suppliants: Mystery Cult Initiation and the Deaths of Evadne and Capaneus Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Bijan Omrani
Abstract: The deaths of Capaneus and Evadne in Euripides’ Suppliants have caused considerable difficulty. Many argue there are irreconcilable contradictions in Capaneus’s portrayal throughout the play. Many have also found the portrayal of Evadne’s death, leaping from a great height, as being out of the ordinary in terms of character and Greek stagecraft. This article argues that the two deaths are
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Race, Gender, and Queenship in Book 2 of Vitruvius's de Architectura Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Patricia Eunji Kim
Abstract: This paper engages with intersectional feminist theory to explore how Vitruvius’s story about the Carian queen Artemisia II in Book 2 of De Architectura illuminates first-century B.C.E. Roman attitudes of hostility towards non-Roman women in spaces of political power—especially given what would have been the recent defeat of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. The paper has two goals: first
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Rape, Apotheosis, and Politics in Metamorphoses 14 and 15 Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Alicia Matz
Abstract: This paper examines apotheoses that occur in the last two books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and argues that they are modeled after previous rapes from the poem. In the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, Ovid uses rapina to mean “deification,” a word only used elsewhere in the poem with the definition of “rape.” Similar language of snatching also occurs in the deification of Romulus. Aeneas’s apotheosis
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Bodily Metaphors and Failed Resolution in Persius's First Satire Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Scott Weiss
Abstract: Persius’s first satire programmatically positions his authorial persona at a remove from contemporary literary practice. By coordinating its bodily images as a metaphorical theme, the poem articulates the satirist’s stance on literary production and consumption. After demonstrating a series of correspondences between eyes and ears, this article contextualizes these dynamics within a system
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Euripides' Suppliants: Mystery Cult Initiation and the Deaths of Evadne and Capaneus Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Bijan Omrani
Abstract: The deaths of Capaneus and Evadne in Euripides’ Suppliants have caused considerable difficulty. Many argue there are irreconcilable contradictions in Capaneus’s portrayal throughout the play. Many have also found the portrayal of Evadne’s death, leaping from a great height, as being out of the ordinary in terms of character and Greek stagecraft. This article argues that the two deaths are
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Race, Gender, and Queenship in Book 2 of Vitruvius's de Architectura Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Patricia Eunji Kim
Abstract: This paper engages with intersectional feminist theory to explore how Vitruvius’s story about the Carian queen Artemisia II in Book 2 of De Architectura illuminates first-century B.C.E. Roman attitudes of hostility towards non-Roman women in spaces of political power—especially given what would have been the recent defeat of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. The paper has two goals: first
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Rape, Apotheosis, and Politics in Metamorphoses 14 and 15 Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Alicia Matz
Abstract: This paper examines apotheoses that occur in the last two books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and argues that they are modeled after previous rapes from the poem. In the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, Ovid uses rapina to mean “deification,” a word only used elsewhere in the poem with the definition of “rape.” Similar language of snatching also occurs in the deification of Romulus. Aeneas’s apotheosis
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Bodily Metaphors and Failed Resolution in Persius's First Satire Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Scott Weiss
Abstract: Persius’s first satire programmatically positions his authorial persona at a remove from contemporary literary practice. By coordinating its bodily images as a metaphorical theme, the poem articulates the satirist’s stance on literary production and consumption. After demonstrating a series of correspondences between eyes and ears, this article contextualizes these dynamics within a system
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Origins and Original Moments in Late Greek and Latin Texts Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Marco Formisano, Cristiana Sogno
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Origins and Original Moments in Late Greek and Latin Texts Marco Formisano and Cristiana Sogno In the opening piece of his poetic corpus (Carm. 1), the 5th century Gallo-Roman poet Sidonius Apollinaris presents the reader with an archetypical situation: after Jupiter has been established as king of the universe by Natura, various gods
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The King Listens: Origins, Noises, and Panegyric in Sidonius Apollinaris' Carmen 1 Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Marco Formisano
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The King Listens:Origins, Noises, and Panegyric in Sidonius Apollinaris' Carmen 1 Marco Formisano In the opening piece of his poetic corpus (Carm. 1), the 5th century Gallo-Roman poet Sidonius Apollinaris presents the reader with an archetypical situation: after Jupiter has been established as king of the universe by Natura, various gods
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"All The Famous Deeds of Achilles Are Yours": Homeric Exemplarity in Late Antique Panegyric Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Fotini Hadjittofi
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: "All The Famous Deeds of Achilles Are Yours":Homeric Exemplarity in Late Antique Panegyric Fotini Hadjittofi Late antique panegyrists often raise up their laudandi by casting a shadow on Homer and his (mainly Iliadic) heroes. This paper traces the history of an increasingly irreverent attitude towards Greece's foundational poet and his
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In the Name-of-the-Father: Rutilius Namatianus and the Collapse of Classical Logocentrism Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Jesús Hernández Lobato
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: In the Name-of-the-Father:Rutilius Namatianus and the Collapse of Classical Logocentrism Jesús Hernández Lobato Rutilius Namatianus's poem De Reditu Suo, written around AD 418, is especially famous for its gloomy and almost "romantic" depictions of ruins and nocturnal landscapes. However, at a deeper level of reading, it thematizes an
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Expunging Originality: Alexandrian Critics in Late Antique Gaul Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Brian Sowers
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Expunging Originality:Alexandrian Critics in Late Antique Gaul Brian Sowers This essay examines three references to the Alexandrian critic-librarians Zenodotus and Aristarchus in the writings of Ausonius of Bordeaux: Professores 13, Epistle 10, and the preface to the Ludus Septem Sapientum. Through these references to the origins of Hellenistic
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Beginning at the End in Imperial Greek Epic Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Emma Greensmith
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Beginning at the End in Imperial Greek Epic Emma Greensmith Greek epic has a notoriously ambiguous relationship to authorship, with composers from Homer to Nonnus finding covert, creative ways to construct their identities in relation to their models, origins, or sources. In this essay, I look at three Greek works from the imperial period:
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Alluvium and Interlude: The Dynamics of Relationality in Ausonius's Mosella Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Del A. Maticic
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Alluvium and Interlude:The Dynamics of Relationality in Ausonius's Mosella Del A. Maticic As a study of relationality in Ausonius's Mosella, this paper explores how the poet figures the river as a powerful connective force linking together times, spaces, humans, animals, and supernatural creatures. The many interconnected relationships
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What is Dead May Never Die: Sicilian Regeneration in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Elizabeth Heintges
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: What is Dead May Never Die:Sicilian Regeneration in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae Elizabeth Heintges In the De Raptu Proserpinae, Claudian refocuses the natural cycles of regeneration that color the myth of Proserpina and Ceres by placing a significant emphasis on the landscape in which his poem's events unfold: the island of Sicily
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Beginning with God: Theology and Origins in Nonnus Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Simon Goldhill
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Beginning with God:Theology and Origins in Nonnus Simon Goldhill This article considers how stories of origin change under the growing influence of Christianity in late antiquity. The analysis starts from the different claims on origin made in the four canonical Gospels, on the one hand, and the developed theory of origin in Augustine's
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The Bible as Writing Machine: Reflections on a Late Ancient Theory of Literature Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Virginia Burrus
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Bible as Writing Machine:Reflections on a Late Ancient Theory of Literature Virginia Burrus For Christian writers of late antiquity, the bible is a kind of writing machine that is also a divine body. Drawing lightly on the theories of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Kittler, I will unpack this enigmatic proposal by considering how a
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Contents Volume 53 Arethusa Pub Date : 2022-06-07
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contents Volume 53 Number 1 Red Herrings and Perceptual Filters: Problems and Opportunities for Aeschylus's Supplices peter olive 1 Daughters of Mnemosyne: Architecture, Distributed Cognition, and the Helleno-Roman Theater rabun taylor 31 Controlling Images: Enslaved Women in Greek and Roman Comedy anne feltovich 73 Creative Destruction:
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Sappho's Mythic Models for Female Homoeroticism Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-12-16 Rachel H. Lesser
Abstract: This paper contends that Sappho draws upon the mythic tradition to represent female homoeroticism as queer in her poetry. First, I show how Sappho's invocation of Tithonos and Helen as erotic paradigms in fragments 58 and 16 figures female same-sex love as non-normative and shadowed by loss, while also symmetrical and idealized. Then I propose that the Homeric Andromache also informs Sappho's
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Performing Theocritus's Pharmakeutria: Revealing Hellenistic Witchcraft Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-12-16 Marguerite Johnson, Nicole Kimball
Abstract: Theocritus's Idyll 2(c. 280–60 B.C.E.) is the finest surviving example of what the Greeks called mime, a short spoken play for one to four actors that was probably performed without props. This article addresses the performativity of Idyll 2 through a scholarly exegesis based on a research project that set out to investigate how this monologue could be successfully performed on the modern
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Homer Redivivus? Rethinking the Transmigration of the Soul in Ennius's Annals Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-12-16 Patrick Glauthier
Abstract: This paper reconsiders certain assumptions about Ennius's dream in the Annals. I argue that Ennius likely characterized transmigration as Pythagorean; that based on comparisons with Pythagorean texts, Ennius, not Homer, probably said "memini me fiere pavom" (frag. 1.9 .11); that Ennius may have remembered being Homer in a previous life rather than presenting himself as Homer reincarnate;
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Justice, Revenge, and Unexpected Theodicy in Lars Von Trier's Dogville and Euripides' Medea Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-12-16 Benjamin Stephen Haller
Abstract: Lars von Trier's 2003 film Dogville shares extensive plot parallels with Euripides' Medea. Through elements such as classical and Biblical names (Jason, Achilles, Grace) and Greek words scrawled on a chalkboard, von Trier invites his viewer to read the film against its classical intertexts. Most prominent is the film's Medea-like plot, in which a female protagonist seeks refuge within a strange
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Red Herrings and Perceptual Filters: Problems and Opportunities for Aeschylus's Supplices Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-08-18 Peter Olive
Abstract: The motivation behind the Danaïds’ flight from marriage to their cousins in Aeschylus’s Supplices has long been debated. For more than a century, prominent classicists have entertained the notion that the Danaïds consider such a marriage incestuous, despite the difficulty of justifying such a claim on the basis of the Danaïds’ language. This article will argue that since Darwin’s discovery
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Daughters of Mnemosyne: Architecture, Distributed Cognition, and the Helleno-Roman Theater Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-08-18 Rabun Taylor
Abstract: The Hellenistic theater and its Italian republican cognates were active participants in the dramatic experience. Audiences relied on the architecture of the stage in particular not only to set the scene of the action but to function as an apparatus of simple cognitive cues that either facilitated the audience’s retention and recovery of memory during performances or activated related mental
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Controlling Images: Enslaved Women in Greek and Roman Comedy Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-08-18 Anne Feltovich
Abstract: An enslaved woman, intentionally or unintentionally, facilitates the recognition of a lost citizen daughter in twelve Greek and Roman New Comedies. This paper explores enslaved women and citizen daughters through an intersectional lens. In the literary ideal, citizen daughters are relatively invisible, while enslaved women are made hypervisible in their stead. The “helpful slave woman” represents
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Creative Destruction: Metaliterary Tree Violation in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-08-18 Joshua Hartman
Abstract: This article examines tree violation in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae as a metaliterary comment on the reception of the Latin epic tradition and poetic secondariness. After connecting the trees to numerous literary traditions (e.g., pastoral, Gigantomachic epic, metamorphic epic), the narrator details their violation by Ceres, who fashions the timber into torches. The allusions and generic
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Ovid, Rhetoric, and Freedom of Speech in the Augustan Age Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Jeffrey M. Hunt
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Ovid, Rhetoric, and Freedom of Speech in the Augustan Age Jeffrey M. Hunt The impetus for this volume was a conference on Ovid’s exile poetry held at Baylor University in February of 2019. That conference sprung to life in a conversation between Eleonora Tola and Alden Smith at the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand in 2017,
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Aesacus: The Rhetoric of Remorse (Metamorphoses 11.749–12.7) Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Carole Newlands
Abstract: The myth of Aesacus represents a sustained, dialogical engagement with Virgil’s poetry, in particular the Georgics, and with Ovid’s own poetry. Aesacus is represented as partly a surrogate for Virgil’s Aristaeus, for both characters pursue a young woman who dies from snakebite while in flight. Allusion in the myth of Aesacus serves as a tool for critical, authorial inscription and intervention
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Cephalus's Autobiographical Narrative (Metamorphoses 7.690–865): Between Epic Models and the Conventions of Rhetoric Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Alessandra Romeo
Abstract: This paper treats Cephalus’s autobiographical account in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 7.690–865, a passage that has given rise to various and even contradictory interpretations. The present analysis takes a broader view of the problem of Cephalus’s credibility by relying on rhetorical concepts such as context and contents of speech. The Ovidian myth of Cephalus and Procris is configured as an epic
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Distant Mores, Distant Mores: Persuading the Reader from the Margins in Tristia 2 Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Eleonora Tola
Abstract: The problem of free speech in relation to political power is a major issue of Ovid’s Tristia and ex Ponto collections. A complex blending of literary and rhetorical features allows the poet in exile to associate his self-representation in Tomis with a comprehensive review of his poetic career. From some programmatic statements in Tristia 2, I revisit Ovid’s manipulation of speech in exile
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Propior Patriae: Allusion, Rhetoric, and Persuasion in ex Ponto 1.2 Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Alden Smith
Abstract: In ex Ponto 1.2, Ovid addresses Paullus Maximus, a confidant of Augustus, by employing, within a web of allusions, many rhetorical devices, chief among which is a sustained paronomasia on Maximus’s very name. This paper enlarges on these devices by citing specific examples of each and analyzing various references to Virgil and Catullus that contextualize the poetic persona’s request to be
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"I Attack Not Him": The Rhetorical Treatment and Political Issue of (Not) Naming the Enemy in Ovid's Last Works Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Hélène Vial
Abstract: The texts written on the shores of the Black Sea reveal to us in a crucial way the challenge represented by the free speech of which Ovid himself claims to have made excessive use. Ovid grapples with this issue in his treatment of an enemy’s name in the works of relegatio, where he affirms the primacy of language over the political meaning. But the force of poetry multiplies the political
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"Figured Speech" in Seneca the Elder: A Glimpse of Ovid's Rhetorical Education Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Laurent Pernot
Abstract: By “figured speech,” ancient rhetoricians meant the cases in which an orator resorted to ruse to disguise his intentions. Among the theoretical texts we possess on this technique, the significance of Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae and Suasoriae has not been sufficiently recognized. Seneca reveals his acquaintance with figured speech through a rich vocabulary and interesting observations
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Lessons from the Doctor of Irony: A Reflection on Donna Zuckerberg's Not All Dead White Men Arethusa Pub Date : 2021-06-30 Julia D. Hejduk
Abstract: Donna Zuckerberg’s recent book exposes the dark subculture of modern pickup artists (PUAs), who brag about making Ovid their master and mining his Ars Amatoria for seduction strategies. The present article shows three ways in which PUAs exemplify the very kinds of misreading Ovid warns about: not really reading at all, projecting one’s own obsessions onto the text, and failing to recognize