http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/ucb_dagrs/rss Recent eScholarship items from Department of Ancient Greek & Roman Studies Fri, 15 May 2026 05:55:34 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/66s7d9kw <em>Funerary Spectacle: Applied Digital Humanities</em> in the Roman Forum presents “close” and “distant” readings of the three-act funeral of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, who died in 160 BCE. Unique in its highly visual and computational approach, it combines three-dimensional reconstructions of the Roman Forum with traditional philological evidence to reconstruct various possibilities of what might have been seen and manipulated during the procession, eulogy, and gladiatorial games held to commemorate the death of Paullus. This study of one event reveals more broadly how the built environment functioned as a dynamic stage for aristocratic self-representation, both posing new questions and offering new solutions to long-standing debates regarding the visibility and logistics of Middle Republican spectacle. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/66s7d9kw Thu, 2 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Johanson, Christopher J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d77s039 A PDF version of the online edition of scholia at euripidesscholia.org, covering updates and additions present in Release 3 (2025, as revised in Release 3.1 of February 2026), that is, the annotations on Euripides, Orestes 1101–1693. This version is intended for digital preservation purposes. Updates and greater functionality are available at the online site. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d77s039 Fri, 6 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4dh48798 A Misclassified Sherd from the Archive of Theopemptos and Zacharias (Ashm. D. O. 810) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4dh48798 Wed, 8 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Hickey, Todd M https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3056-9279 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1w9926nr <p>Stemming from a seminar held at the University of Parma during the past years, this volume offers 69 editions of papyri belonging to the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri (The Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley).</p><p>Following the traditional division between literary and documentary texts, the book first presents newly considered or thoroughly revised Homeric papyri, shedding light on the fluidity of textual transmission in antiquity. Significant variants, from simple scribal errors to alternative readings with philological relevance, illustrate the dynamic evolution of Homeric poetry. Additionally, remarkable manuscripts featuring punctuation, prosodic marks, and traces of scholarly annotations offer glimpses into ancient reading practices. An exercise of transcription of a Euripidean verse and a fragment of an unknown philosophical prose text complete the literary section.&nbsp;</p><p>The documentary section provides an in-depth look at the administrative,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1w9926nr Tue, 3 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/01s817gp Fossils of large animals have long influenced social practices and ideologies in human societies, including the&nbsp;fantastic myths of giants, heroes, and gods in ancient Greece. It has been estimated that purposeful fossil collecting in Greece began in the Late Bronze Age. However, previous archaeological finds of fossils from mainland Greece were not well documented in secure contexts that&nbsp;dated this far back in time. Herein, we present a newly recognized fossilized astragalus bone recently found in the legacy collections of the archaeological site of Mycenae. It was originally recovered by excavations in the 1970s and recently reanalyzed at the Mycenae Museum. Our analysis explored the available evidence of the find location, the state of&nbsp;fossil preservation, and the species represented. The results suggest that a fossilized rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus) astragalus was collected in the past, possibly from afar. Evidence indicates it was brought to Mycenae, where it... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/01s817gp Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Meier, Jacqueline S Pliatsika, Vassiliki Shelton, Kim https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8s30w6g5 A web and PDF version of the online edition of scholia at euripidesscholia.org, covering updates and additions present in Release 2 (2023), that is, the annotations on Euripides, Orestes 501–1100. This version is intended for digital preservation purposes. Updates and greater functionality are available at the online site. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8s30w6g5 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s96z18t THE ALTARS OF REPUBLICAN ROME AND LATIUM: SACRIFICE AND THE MATERIALITY OF ROMAN RELIGION https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s96z18t Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 MacRae, Duncan E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k06010m The Date of the Proem of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica : New Epigraphic Evidence from Naples https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k06010m Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 MacRae, Duncan E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5dw0q9gb This article proposes a new reading of a late first-century c.e. inscribed dedication from Todi (Umbria) as an accusation of witchcraft, a rhetorical text aimed at propagating a particular story among the local community. Historical and anthropological studies of witchcraft accusations in other societies have emphasised how they can reveal tensions and anxieties that are normally not visible to the observer. By drawing on these studies and close examination of the language and content of the inscription, this article analyses an historical agent's experience of the social structure of early imperial Italy. The accusation is read as a freedman's response to his ambiguous position in a slave society, the ambivalent power of writing in Roman culture and the religious claims of Flavian imperial discourse. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5dw0q9gb Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Macrae, Duncan E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xc6x9qs Reading the Roman-Jewish treaty in 1 <i>Maccabees</i> 8: narrative, documents, and Hellenistic historical culture https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xc6x9qs Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 MacRae, Duncan E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4cc282qc The Predictions of P. Nigidius Figulus https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4cc282qc Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Macrae, Duncan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2632-7381 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1bp9k7n4 Abstract:: Starting from Cicero's famous panegyric on Varro's Antiquitates and attempting to look past the image of the book provided by Augustine, this article proposes a new reading of that work and its place in late Republican intellectual culture. Cicero's specific claim that Varro opened up ‘the laws of the rites and of the priests’ for his readers allows us to contextualize the Antiquitates within a contemporary jurisprudence. The rise of Roman legal studies in general in the first century bc extended to the laws of the priestly colleges: there are signs of lively debate over their nature and the production of texts on the details of these iura. By re-reading the fragments from the Antiquitates alongside the evidence for this sacral-legal turn, we can gain both a new appreciation for the place of law (ius) in Varro's textualization of Roman religion and a fuller understanding of Republican legal thinking. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1bp9k7n4 Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 MACRAE, DUNCAN https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qk349bw JONATHAN J. PRICE and KATELL BERTHELOT (EDS), THE FUTURE OF ROME: ROMAN, GREEK, JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN VISIONS. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp ix + 315. isbn 9781108494816. £75.00. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qk349bw Fri, 4 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000 MacRae, Duncan E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h9646b6 Ludibrium Paulinae: Historiography, Anti-Pagan Polemic, and Aristocratic Marriage in De excidio Hierosolymitano 2.4 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8h9646b6 Fri, 4 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Macrae, Duncan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25r80794 This is the cover photo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25r80794 Mon, 5 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Sicner, George https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ks8x992 This is the cover letter for volume nine issue one https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ks8x992 Mon, 5 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Sicner, George https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7tr701d7 This article presents three unpublished Hellenistic inscriptions from the sanctuary of Poseidon in Kalaureia (modern Poros): two found during archaeological excavations on the site and one recorded in a letter that was once part of Ioannis Kapodistrias’ official correspondence. All three inscriptions were dedicatory and carved on bases supporting portrait statues. Interestingly, they were offered to Poseidon by members of a single family already known from other documents in the Kalaureian epigraphic corpus. Remarkably, eight out of the 18 inscriptions discovered in Kalaureia make repeated references to men and women of this very family, which appears to have materially dominated Poseidon’s temenos and its environs during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC through the careful placement of portraits of its members. Most of these statues were conspicuously placed by the entrance to the sanctuary, though at least one of them was erected inside of the god’s temple. In our article, we present... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7tr701d7 Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Papazarkadas, Nikolaos Wallensten, Jenny https://escholarship.org/uc/item/060915fv <p> <em>During the Greek Archaic Period, the Greek world saw rapid development in culture, economy and political organization.&nbsp; These advancements led to increased prosperity and facilitated the formation of distinct political units.&nbsp; However, these developments introduced new pressures on these nascent governments, which led to waves of Greek colonization across the Mediterranean world.&nbsp; This introduced the new political relationship of ‘mother city’ and ‘colony’ into existing trans-Mediterranean networks, a complex structure that would play a large role in the politics of the Greek Classical Period.&nbsp; This paper explores the colonial foundation narrative of Cyrene, one of the most well documented foundation myths surviving, by looking at the competing and contrasting claims put forward by Cyrene and Thera.&nbsp; This paper examines the both the historical context and the geopolitical considerations at play behind the various components of the divergent traditions.&nbsp;... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/060915fv Wed, 5 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Huang, Jason https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h4142ps PSENKEBKIS, SON OF PAKEBKIS: NEW AND OLD DOCUMENTS FROM THE CENTER FOR THE TEBTUNIS PAPYRI* https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h4142ps Wed, 29 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Levine, Nathan H Santini, Flavio https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h32c2z5 In the <em>Aeneid</em>, Ancient Rome’s seminal epic poem and Vergil’s greatest work, a queen falls in love and later commits suicide. This queen’s name is Dido, and her story contains some of Vergil’s best poetry, but it has also long been a source of interpretive debate by translators. This paper seeks to illuminate how popular, modern, English translations of the <em>Aeneid</em> have depicted this dynamic, tragic character. These translations (i.e. Ruben, Fitzgerald, Lewis, and others) are the ones read in classrooms and disseminated to the wider public. This paper will attempt to understand them by examining how a translator’s personality and philosophy affect their decisions about the translation’s fidelity, cadence, and expressiveness. It is a comprehensive outline of Dido’s journey through the modern age and how that journey may change as more translators come to the fore who have their own distinct, diverse stories. The <em>Aeneid</em> lives through its translators; it... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h32c2z5 Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Onken, Rebecca https://escholarship.org/uc/item/17j7v1xq <p>In Roman New Comedy, each role is a caricature informed by societal expectations: the passive <em>matrona</em>, the grouchy <em>uir</em>, the abused but patient young <em>uxor</em>, the egotistical <em>adulescens</em>, and the self-serving <em>meretrix</em>. <em>Hecyra </em>stands out among Terence’s plays because it is unclear whether he is reinforcing or deconstructing these familiar stereotypes. Most scholars focus on the role of women, who are more involved in this play than any other by Terence. They seem to drive the plot forward and have more information than the men, but at the same time, they might be said to placate their husbands and sacrifice for their children. This begs the question, “Are the women in <em>Hecyra </em>acting unusually?” This paper will examine the expectations of women in New Comedy in relation to scenes where women in <em>Hecyra </em>might be said to be contradicting their prescribed roles. This discussion will prove that the wives are not acting... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/17j7v1xq Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Barton, Rowan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0pt3f10r <p>Statius' Thebaid, a Roman retelling of the infamous Oedipus myth, owes much to its literary forebears. The central tale the epic explores is borrowed from an ancient source: Greek accounts of an unlucky Oedipus and his unhappy offspring. But this first-century rendering is not a carbon copy of its antediluvian precedents, and Statius' treatments of fate, fortune, and human agency diverge distinctly from those of his most immediate narrative parallels. Indeed, it is in the Thebaid's departure from the causal framework of these assorted sources that its author's influence is most clear. </p><p>Throughout the epic's early books, the doubled determinism of Statius' literary inheritance gives way to a possibility of ethical independence for creator and character alike. This mirroring effect—the author's compositional agency is employed to endow his actors with more expansive moral options—serves within the text both to ennoble autonomy and condemn those individuals unwilling or... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0pt3f10r Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Ellerby, Petra Ruth https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06c6k7dv <p>Epicureanism, a Greek philosophical school founded in Athens c. 307 BCE, conceives of “pleasure” (αταρξία) as the ultimate human good. This essay aims to investigate the reception of Epicureanism at Rome in the mid-1st century BCE, drawing on Cicero’s In Pisonem and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura as case studies. Each work addresses the question of whether Epicurus could operate within the framework of Roman cultural and political values and, consequently, whether he should be appropriated into Roman thinking. Through close examination of these two texts, I argue that each author ultimately builds his own version of “Epicurus” to serve his distinctive rhetorical aims. Cicero and Lucretius therefore come together to provide examples of a broader phenomenon surrounding the issue of Hellenization at Rome, namely, that of Greek figures being rewritten and repurposed in different contexts to serve different Roman agendas, revealing the flexible nature of Greek models at Rome and of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06c6k7dv Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Painter, Katie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9650x69r The magical formularies on papyrus are precious witnesses to practices and processes of cultural transmission: i.e. the creation, communication, transformation and preservation of knowledge, both in text and image, across history and between the cultures of Egypt and Greece. More than eighty such handbooks survive, some of them in a fragmentary state. Our book, the work of an international team of papyrologists and historians of magic, replaces <em>Papyri graecae magicae</em> edited by K. Preisendanz, which appeared almost a century ago and has been used as one of the most important sources for the study of Greek magic, augmented in the 1990s by the excellent work of R. Daniel and F. Maltomini, the <em>Supplementum Magicum</em> . Our project has collected all the known magical formularies and fully studied both their materiality and their texts. &nbsp;The facing English translation with notes replaces <em>The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation</em>... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9650x69r Wed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/94w5f6rq This is a study whose main sources are archival, principally Edgar J. Goodspeed’s “Student Travel Letters” from 1899–1900. These letters home recount Goodspeed’s daily and sometimes hourly activities during nearly two years abroad, in continental Europe, England, Egypt, and the Holy Land, in pursuit of scholarly seasoning. The book’s focus is on his engagement with the newly emergent field of papyrology—the decipherment and study of the ancient Greek manuscripts then being discovered in Egypt. The letters allow for a tracking of this engagement in far greater depth than that allotted in his 1953 autobiography, <em>As I Remember,</em> or in his 90-page unpublished memoir, “Abroad in the Nineties,” filling in some apparently intentional gaps, casting doubt on some of his later self-assessments but putting much additional substance to the claim that he was indeed “America’s First Papyrologist.” The result, part biography, part travelogue, part diary, part academic history,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/94w5f6rq Thu, 9 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Hickey, Todd M. Keenan, James G. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3w1734wb Letter from the editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3w1734wb Thu, 1 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Editor, BUJC https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8kb9b59k Contributors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8kb9b59k Tue, 29 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Editor, BUJC https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6245k9z5 <p>In his exposition to the story of Kroisos in the first book of his&nbsp;<em>Histories</em>, Hērodotos narrates the rise of the Mermnad dynasty of Lydia through an act of assassination and usurpation by their founder, Gygēs. Commentators on Hērodotos’s text have seemingly neglected the resonances between the tale of Gygēs and the ancient Eurasian religious ideology of the sacred marriage, which conceptualized sovereign power as a goddess wedded to a male sovereign. This paper seeks to place the Gygēs narrative within the context of Indo-European traditions of the sacred marriage, suggesting that its origins lie in historicized myth.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6245k9z5 Mon, 19 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Rite, Ethan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2zz032sr Among several Indo-European poetic and literary inheritances from which Aristophanes draws in his play The Frogs, a crucial one seems to have been overlooked thus far, which ties together seemingly disparate beats and motifs in the play.&nbsp; This is the metaphor analogizing poets to carpenters, their craft (poems) to ships, and recitation/composition as sailing, which besides its appearance in other branches of the Indo-European languages, is attested in other places in the Greek corpus too, especially in the works of Pindar.&nbsp; Tying this inherited poetic trope in with the metaphorical “ship of state” (attested in the lyric poets, tragedians, Plato, etc.) and the on-the-ground importance of Athens’s naval culture and service to its polity makes the trope into more than just a technique for poetic embellishment, but rather, a crucial element in interpreting the literary and political significance of these aforementioned seemingly disparate sections of the play, the motivations... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2zz032sr Mon, 19 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Srirangarajan, Arjun https://escholarship.org/uc/item/83b9b7nm This painting, reproduced from a Mycenaean fresco from Tiryns (c. 1300 B.C.E)&nbsp;in watercolor, depicts a woman in a style quite characteristic of Bronze Age Greece, holding a&nbsp;<em>pyxis</em>, or an ivory box. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/83b9b7nm Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Sharma, Sojeet Narine https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3fg5t2v3 This paper presents an oppositional analysis between representations of elite and non-elite spaces in classical literature, focussing on elite residences (Section I) and the common Roman barbershop (Section II). Its aim is to highlight the ancient literary elite’s selective deployment of the urban as a tool for reinforcing the divide between elite and non-elite. My main ancient sources are Achilles Tatius and Plutarch, and secondary literature (particularly from Tim Whitmarsh and Jerry Toner) is cited throughout the piece. It deals with issues of narrative authority, truth, and – although not explicitly framed in this term – 'fake news', a topic which of course has been at the fore of public discourse in recent years. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3fg5t2v3 Mon, 5 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Ulas-Ono, Karl https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36k904bt A poem on the original queen of disorder and a part of whose spirit lives in all mothers and wives. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36k904bt Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Martins, L. M. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5g82w4v4 <p>The Electra myth has been a popular subject throughout the centuries for dramatists. The three great ancient Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) each created his own version of the myth, and these plays have been and continue to be translated or adapted into various languages. In contradiction to the famous phrase “lost in translation,” adaptations may incorporate political or cultural aspects of the country in which they are conceived, giving them even greater substance and meaning. The purpose of this paper, in turn, is two-fold. I begin by presenting and exploring the differences among the three Greek versions of the ancient tragedians and their implications. However, the majority of this paper focuses around three twentieth-century adaptations of each of the playwrights’ versions (namely, Jean Giraudoux’s French Électre, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s German Elektra, and Eugene O’Neill’s American Mourning Becomes Electra). In addition to analyzing the changes... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5g82w4v4 Fri, 1 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Shao, Will https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11t601hw What is the Matter with Matter According to Plotinus https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11t601hw Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Long, Anthony A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3vn1z4gn Epictetus and the Meaning of Life https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3vn1z4gn Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Long, Anthony A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8075768t Antiquity Revisited https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8075768t Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Long, Anthony A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5p2939zc This work presents five studies that are <em>parerga</em> to the online edition of Euripidean scholia (EuripidesScholia.org), for which the release of a much more complete sample covering <em>Orestes</em> 1–500 is planned for 2018. The first chapter reviews the achievements and shortcomings of previous editions of Euripidean scholia and argues for a more comprehensive treatment of this and similar corpora of scholia and for the importance of glosses. It assesses the few surviving traces in the scholia of views attributed to philologists and commentators working from Hellenistic times to early Byzantium. The second chapter illuminates a genre of annotation termed here “teachers’ scholia,” prominent in many of the younger manuscripts, but also present to a small degree in the oldest witnesses. Evidence for the teaching of Ioannes Tzetzes related to Euripides is gathered more completely than previously, as is that for Maximus Planudes. The third chapter offers... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5p2939zc Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xp733bb <p> This book has been produced for the purpose of digital preservation of the content of the author's&nbsp;site <a href="https://euripidesscholia.org/">EuripidesScholia.org</a> . That site provides for download of the source files as well as for the variable display of the content for which the online project was conceived, and it wil also contain revisions and corrections not present in this version. </p><p>This book&nbsp;was&nbsp;created in August and September 2020 based on the files used in Release 1.02 of the online edition (all of the full version of the edition, and most of the content of the informational pages).</p><p>This edition of the scholia on the plays of Euripides is conceived as an open-ended repository of the ancient and medieval annotations in Greek found in the papyri and medieval manuscripts. It aims for a comprehensiveness that is impossible in orthodox printed editions of scholia, and is meant to serve purposes beyond giving... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xp733bb Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x9991gd This article reviews The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, a major resource for learners and teachers that incorporates many insights from modern linguistics. While not a full replacement for older reference grammars of ancient Greek, it is particularly valuable for its up-to-date approach to topics such as verbal aspect and the tenses, particles, and word order. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x9991gd Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/683028zc The 2019 season was the second of the second phase of the project, projected as a series of five study seasons (to be carried out 2018-2022) in which the team will focus on the documentation of the sets of artifacts recovered in the excavation of eight houses of small to medium size that occupy one specific block in the city of Pompeii - Regio I, Insula 11 (I.11) - with a view to elucidating patterns of household consumption in the middle and lower ranges of the socio-economic scale in the final period of the town’s occupation. (figs. 2-3) This block was excavated in its entirety under Vittorio Spinazzola during the period 1912-1913 and Amedeo Maiuri during the years 1952-1962, with most of the artifacts recovered in this work remaining unstudied and unpublished. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/683028zc Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Pena, J. T. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ph875ct Two New Epigrams from Thebes https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ph875ct Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Papazarkadas, Nikolaos https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qm3s0k6 From Document to History: Introduction https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qm3s0k6 Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Noreña, Carlos F Papazarkadas, Nikolaos https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g95m2m7 The modern reader may encounter the Greek text of Euripides' surviving plays in many forms: in print either in complete editions or in separate editions of single plays published with translations or commentaries or both, and in digital form at well-known sites on the internet. When Euripides composed his plays, he is most likely to have written on a papyrus roll, although for rough drafts of small sections he could have used wax tablets, loose papyrus sheets, or pottery sherds. Although the papyrus rolls and early codices give us intriguing glimpses of the text of the Euripides plays up the seventh century CE, the surviving complete plays depend on the medieval textual tradition. For Euripides as for Aeschylus and Sophocles, Alexandrian scholars collected texts of as many plays as they could, comparing their titles to those known from the didascalic records. About seventy plays of Euripides never reached the medieval manuscript tradition. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g95m2m7 Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/09f0d8qm Between July and September of 2019, I conducted dissertation research supported by a grant from the Stahl Endowment of the Archaeological Research Facility investigating how the inhabitants of 1st-century CE Pompeii (Italy) prepared their daily meals and what factors influenced their choice of cooking techniques. Through an examination of the frequencies of particular types of vessels (bronze and ceramic) and utensils used for food and drink preparation recovered in the course of earlier excavations from a series of properties in Pompeii, my research reconsiders what constituted the standard batterie de cuisine within the Pompeian kitchen and how this could be modified according to the needs and preferences of the one stocking the shelves. I also attempt to reconstruct the various cooking methods employed and preferences exhibited by the cooks who used these cookwares through an analysis of use alterations (e.g. sooting/fire blackening, scratching, denting, etc.) exhibited by... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/09f0d8qm Mon, 10 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Brown, Aaron D. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5c54s2v7 Arnaldo Momigliano, the most influential modern student of antiquarianism, advanced the view that there was a late antique antiquarianism, but also lamented the absence of study of the history of antiquarianism in this period. Part of the challenge, however, has been to define the object of such a study. Rather than "finding" antiquarianism in late antiquity as Momigliano did, this article argues that a history that offers explicit analogies between late antique evidence and the avowed antiquarianism of early modern Europe allows a more self-conscious and critical history of late antique engagement with the past. The article offers three examples of this form of analysis, comparing practices of statue collecting in Renaissance Rome and the late RomanWest, learned treatises on the Roman army by Vegetius and Justus Lipsius, and feelings of attachment to a local past as a modern antiquarian stereotype and in a pair of letters to and from Augustine of Hippo. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5c54s2v7 Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 MacRae, Duncan E https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d13p25s Introduction https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d13p25s Sat, 4 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Papazarkadas, N https://escholarship.org/uc/item/004198xb In 2007, a very tall funerary stele with a palmette and two rosettes in relief was discovered near the cemetery of Schistos, within the confines of the modern municipality of Perama. The inscribed stele was published in the Archaiologikon Deltion of 2009 by Mrs. Petritaki, who did not put forward any prosopographical identifications. Upon restoring the demotic of the two deceased as [Α]ὐρίδης, I tentatively submit that the stele commemorated two members of an Athenian propertied family of the 4th cent. B.C. and that the first deceased, Archedemos son of Archippos of Auridai, should be identified as the trierarch Archedemos of IG II2 1609. Besides I suggest, very hesitantly, that the new stele can be used to place the tiny deme of Auridai, whose location has been hitherto unknown, in the area of Perama, across Salamis. My tentative identification tallies well with the extant scholarly consensus that Auridai belonged to the coastal trittys of the tribe Hippothontis and receives... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/004198xb Sat, 4 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Papazarkadas, Nikolaos https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9pj0344m This document explains the set of images of a manuscript destroyed in WW II that have been placed in open access on Shared Shelf Comments. A group of 175 images was made available in early 2016. In May 2018, 106 additional images were made available, and this revised version of the document takes account of the additions and provides other updates to the documentation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9pj0344m Tue, 5 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2ks0g83x <p><em>Early Greek alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity </em> provides an example of the innovative power of ancient scholarly patronage by looking at a key moment in the creation of the Greek alchemical tradition. </p><p> New evidence on scholarly patronage under the Roman empire can be garnered by analyzing the descriptions of learned <em>magoi </em> in several texts from the second to the fourth century CE. Since a common use of the term <em>magos&nbsp;</em> connoted flatterer-like figures ( <em>kolakes</em> ), it is likely that the figures of “learned sorcerers” found in texts such as Lucian’s <em>Philopseudes </em> and the apocryphal <em>Acts of Peter&nbsp;</em> captured the notion that some client scholars exerted undue influence over patrons. </p><p> The first known author of alchemical commentaries, Zosimus of Panopolis (c. 300 CE), presented... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2ks0g83x Sat, 13 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Dufault, Olivier https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11x350zm a short introduction by the new Editor-in-Chief of this semester's publication https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11x350zm Sat, 10 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Administrator, BUJC https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gv292c9 Fall 2018 edition of BUJC, designed by Anna-Tessa Rodriguez (Class of 2020, UC Berkeley) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gv292c9 Sat, 10 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Rodriguez, Anna-Tessa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/760519z3 <p> <em>In Tristia 1.1 and 3.1, Ovid grapples with his sadness at being exiled from Rome to the empire’s periphery. Scholars typically interpret these poems, in which Ovid imagines his book journeying to Rome on his behalf, as exhibiting either Ovid’s total longing for Rome, or his total withdrawal in exile. Ovid’s identity, however, is more nuanced. Applying the theoretical lens of center/periphery to Tristia 1.1 and 3.1, I conclude that when Ovid wrote Tristia, his identity was actually in flux. Reading Ovid’s poems through the lens of center/periphery, we see how he engages with themes of exclusion and alterity. Thus, we can better appreciate Ovid’s shifting self-conception: no longer of the Roman elite, but a marginalized figure. Reflecting this change, Ovid draws on the contemporary poetic tradition of aestheticizing books, but he turns it on its head. Instead of emphasizing the color and refine of ideal Roman books, Ovid emphasizes the “other” nature of his book, which... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/760519z3 Fri, 29 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Cawley, Lydia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/60d532fz <p>Cupid and Psyche<em>, the expositional myth that interrupts the narrative of Apuleius' novel </em>Metamorphoses<em>, has been regarded as Platonic allegory for how the soul falls in love. However, inconsistencies and faults in the Platonic logic of Apuleius' allusions have caused some scholars to question the strict Platonic reading. Additionally, Apuleius' allusions to philosophic beliefs are not limited to the Platonic. His extensive quotations of Lucretius and his </em>De Rerum Natura<em> have long been recognized, though they are rarely studied at great length. Looking closely at the allusions to </em>De Rerum Natura <em>in </em>Cupid and Psyche<em>, I have found a rich coexistence of philosophical alignment and contradiction to Lucretius' Epicureanism. Therefore, considering the existence of allusions that correspond to and contradict both Platonism and Epicureanism and the relationship between those allusions and the rest of the text, I shall demonstrate that the tale... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/60d532fz Fri, 29 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Breitenfeld, Paul Brucia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9md661nm <p>A beautiful young boy carried away by an eagle up and became a cup-bearer on Mount Olympus—this is the myth of Ganymede. But who is this young boy? And why is he carried away by an eagle? Interpreters, from mythographers in the late antiquity to historians still living today, have attempted to interpret this myth and to unveil the significance behind this young cup-bearer’s abduction. The Ganymede myth is told differently by many myth tellers—from Homer to the tenth century Byzantine encyclopedia Suda—and interpreted differently by many interpreters. In this essay, I focus on how four different interpreters—Fulgentius, Natale Conti, Jan Bremmer, and Petra Affeld-Niemeyer—are interpreting differently the elements of Ganymede’s abduction, the eagle which carries Ganymede away, and the liquid Ganymede is bearing in his cup. I argue that the four interpreters interpret the Ganymede myth differently because of their varying presumptions about the fundamental nature of the myth.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9md661nm Sun, 24 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Fang, Yuanyuan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0cz6p4w4 <em>In his De Rerum Natura, Lucretius strives to scientifically explain several aspects of the natural world. At times, however, his explanations suggest that his philosophical principles precede scientific evidence. This paper examines the relationship between Lucretius’s science and philosophy in general, and his treatment of the human soul more specifically. Based on the Epicurean principle that the fear of death is irrational, Lucretius attempts to prove that the soul is entirely physical, and will therefore cease to exist after death, while accounting for its sentience. He must describe an atomic soul, no matter how complicating this becomes, in order to satisfy the principle that nothing comes after death. This entails describing the soul in the same manner as perceptible phenomena, and for this reason his evidence meets with several obstacles. Lucretius’s scientific explanation for the soul presents compelling evidence that he forms a scientific basis around pre-existing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0cz6p4w4 Wed, 18 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 McCreery, Katherine https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9968d2fg TAPHOS. Tombs of Aidonia Preservation, Heritage, and explOration Synergasia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9968d2fg Fri, 13 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Shelton, Kim https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32p9c6df The Pompeii Artifact Life History Project: 2013 Field Season https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32p9c6df Fri, 13 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Pena, J. Theodore https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8bd146qs Spring 2018 Cover https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8bd146qs Wed, 4 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Administrator, BUJC https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42w2d01s Spring 2018 Letter from the Editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42w2d01s Wed, 4 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Berlin, Katie Higgs, Robert https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9jc563vr <p> <em>In contrast to its recent pedagogical decline and ongoing negative perceptions, the enduring significance of rhetoric as an independent, systematized discipline continues to be emphasized by modern scholars. In light of this dichotomy, this study presents a coherent, cross-cultural review of two renowned, juridical speeches which aims to highlight the vitality, applicability and confluence of classical Greek rhetoric in contemporary legal speech. Employing its own rhetorical taxonomy, this study seeks to illuminate rhetorical interconnections between examples of classical and modern, North-American forensic oratory by highlighting the homogenous and canonical methodology of ancient and modern orators.</em> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9jc563vr Tue, 6 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Ireland, Adam Jake https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3cp3b1xm <p>Scholars have long debated the exact difference between what is “pious” (ὅσιος) and what is “lawfully right” (δίκαιος). Many agree that τὰ ὅσια are actions or deeds that please the gods, while τὰ δίκαια are mortal customs. Although, by definition, these two realms of justice are distinct, they are largely conflated in Euripides’ <em>Orestes</em>. In the end, piety (ὅσιος) trumps justice (δίκαιος) and even the τὸν κοινὸν Ἑλλήνων νόμον.</p><p>This paper explores the syntactic differences between these two realms and how Euripides comments on them within the play. After establishing a general trend toward anti-intellectual and religiously motivated sentiment after the scandals of 415 BCE in addition to the many rumors of persecuting intellectuals for impiety, this paper seeks to understand why Euripides departed for Macedon just after the production of the <em>Orestes</em> in light of these sweeping attitudes toward intellectuals and impiety. If, in fact, the intellectuals and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3cp3b1xm Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Uhl, Chad https://escholarship.org/uc/item/510508bs <p>In contemporary academic contexts, the ‘Rape of Persephone’ myth is a source of insight into the powerlessness of women in patriarchal, Greco-Roman society. In popular culture, however, the myth has found a surprising second life amongst children’s media as the story of two unlikely, star-crossed lovers. Instead of simply rephrasing the myth as it is found in ancient sources, some Western authors and artists have changed the myth’s plot and characterization of Hades and Persephone in order to transform this rape myth into a love story. In this paper, I explore the ways in which each adaptation deviates from the source material and reveals contemporary views of gender politics. On the one hand, there are some adaptations in which the ‘Rape of Persephone’ is altered just enough to be deemed appropriate for children. On the other hand, there are retellings in which the changes appear to not simply censor the myth, but to subvert the sexism inherent in the myth itself. I argue... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/510508bs Sun, 28 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Schiano, Sierra https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40r9q64k <p>Between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE, ancient Roman spaces, both public and private, served as museums that met religious, political, and social needs. Museums in the sense that they were places that acquired and exhibited art and objects; however, the purposes of these museums were strongly linked to where they were located and that space's uses. In religious contexts such as temples, shrines, and sanctuaries, art served primarily as votive offerings. Public buildings like the Atrium Libertatis displayed collections that commemorated important military victories and furthered political agendas. Other spaces, such as the Templum Pacis, served religious and political purposes simultaneously. Spoils of war dedicated to the god(s) associated with the military victory were exhibited alongside artworks to memorialize the military victor's piousness and achievements. Private collections were shaped by the interests of the collector and became popular due to practices in... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40r9q64k Fri, 26 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Smith, Reagan A. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hp5t0vt In 88 BCE, Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla marched on his own city for the first time in the Roman Republic’s history to procure for himself political control that had been awarded to Gaius Marius. This paper examines not only the impact of this decision, but also some of the most important motivations behind it that help to shape the march’s significance. Specifically, narratives of Appian, Plutarch, and Velleius Paterculus, that describe this event, in conjunction with commentary from modern historian Allen M. Ward, are presented to illustrate that Sulla’s march on Rome was politically significant in that it set a precedent of violence against the state as a means to attain military command. However, it was not necessarily novel on its own: in fact, it was shaped by the Marian military reforms, Sulla's personal struggle for power in a rivalry with Marius, and the ongoing popular revolt against Roman authority during the Italian War. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hp5t0vt Mon, 1 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Szapary, Hannah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1q34c89f <p>If truth is absolute, how is it possible that people can argue for or against it? If truth is not absolute, on what is our existence predicated? Plato and Isocrates, two contemporaries in Classical Athens, took very different stands on the age-old problem of truth and the rhetorical manipulation of it. A close examination of Platonic dialogues and Isocrates’ speeches reveals that they had different understandings of the concept and purpose of truth. This fundamental divergence caused Plato and Isocrates to have disparate notions of rhetoric and even “philosophy”. Accordingly, they devised drastically different educational programs suited to their respective visions of truth and rhetoric, attempting to realize their competing ideals by means of pedagogy.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1q34c89f Mon, 1 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Shen, Yifei https://escholarship.org/uc/item/82m3r9kx Cover https://escholarship.org/uc/item/82m3r9kx Tue, 21 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Administrator, BUJC https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5g51z4px Letter from the Editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5g51z4px Tue, 21 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Berlin, Katie Higgs, Robert https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kb6v1h1 <p>Frequent concern over sexual ethics and behavior in Early Imperial Roman literature encompasses strict norms of what it means to be a good Roman man, woman, slave, soldier, or various other potentially overlapping identities, in a way that reveals the importance of ethical sexual behavior for the functioning of Rome. What to the modern imagination might simply be imagery of sexual indulgence and orgies is actually, at least in Roman literature, a complex system of expectations and measures working to keep individuals, families, and the city running smoothly. In patriarchal societies in which sexual morality is a concern, certain patterns of behavior are set in motion when a sexual transgression, typically implicating a woman, occurs. In early Imperial Roman literature, the operative category in cases of sexual deviance is <em>pudicitia</em>, or chastity.<a href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> This paper frames <em>pudicitia</em> governing over individuals and the city as a code, in comparison... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kb6v1h1 Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Omar, Fatima https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1js6n2rz <p>Traditional interpretations of the <em>Symposium</em> tend to treat Socrates as Plato’s mouthpiece, interpreting the philosophical meaning of the text based on Socrates’ speech alone. The aim of this essay is to discern whether incorporating literary elements, such as Socrates’ characterization and interaction with other characters, into the interpretive process changes the philosophical meaning of the <em>Symposium</em>. For this purpose I examine two aspects of Socrates’ character: his physiology and psychology. I demonstrate how Socrates’ oddity poses a problem for the theory that he is a mouthpiece for Plato’s philosophy verbatim and suggests that, contrary to traditional interpretations, he has not completed the erotic ascent described by Diotima and hence does not possess complete knowledge of love. In my analysis I pay particular attention to the speech of Alcibiades and the interpretations of Martha Nussbaum and James McGuirk. I then conclude by demonstrating how an... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1js6n2rz Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Poole, Zoe https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sm203gk <p>This text analyzes the offerings dedicated to Delphi by autocrats during the site’s lifetime as a sanctuary to Apollo in order to understand Delphi’s role as perceived by Mediterranean powers, and how this role changed through time. Using a combined approach from the fields of art history and classics, the evidence for this paper comes primarily from visual analysis of surviving dedications, as well as study of ancient texts written by classical historians and ancient witnesses to Delphi, such as Herodotus. Through chronological examination of autocrats’ dedications to Delphi, from the site’s genesis as a religious sanctuary in the 8^th century BC until it’s decline under the Christian Roman Empire, this paper seeks to understand Delphi’s changing role and level of influence as perceived by both mainland Greeks and foreigners.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sm203gk Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Carter, Jessica https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8th356bk This paper will be concerned with unpacking the language employed by ancient historians Tacitus and Cassius Dio to create the foreign, rebellious queen, Boudicca. I will argue that Tacitus and Dio’s accounts each create a Boudicca that is more dynamic than simply a negative <em>exempla</em>. While there has been debate as to how legitamet Cassius Dio's account can be, and the extent to which Tacitus seriously portrays female characters, I believe that equally important history can be taken from the speech that both male writers put in the mouth of a female, savage queen. This paper will focus on each of the speeches given by Tacitus and Dio’s Boudiccas. It will then contextualize each author’s language by bringing in other materials concerned with women, sex, and gender in the ancient world. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8th356bk Tue, 9 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Hartsoe, Ella https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qm395ph <p>This paper seeks to explore the space that bees occupy within Greek religious practice. By exploring the appearance of bees within the visual and literary culture of Greek religion, I have tried to shine a little light onto a relatively untouched area of Greek religious culture.</p><p>Previous scholarship has taken the approach of a prosopography, referencing the appearance of bees without much analysis of their role or semiotics in Greek religious rites.</p><p> </p><p>Instead, I have tried to present apian imagery and culture as a divine intermediary, able to confer divine gifts onto humankind. I have taken inspiration from some of my interests, including literature, philosophy, myth, and drama to paint a picture of the role of bees as messengers of prophecy and poetry.</p><p> </p><p>I have concluded that bees operate as intermediaries of the divine, with the ability to transgress both the divine, the mortal, and the chthonic plane. They are akin to <em>daimons</em>, and platonic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qm395ph Mon, 8 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Brewer, Harrison Forbes https://escholarship.org/uc/item/84v5r1zv Letter from the Editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/84v5r1zv Wed, 1 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Graves, Olivia Lyter, Julia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8304n08d <p>During the first century B.C.E. a complex system of surveillance towers was established during Rome’s colonization of the central Alentejo region of Portugal. These towers provided visual control over the landscape, routes through it, and hidden or isolated places as part of the Roman colonization of the region. As part of an archaeological analysis of the changing landscape of Alentejo, Joey Williams offers here a theory of surveillance in Roman colonial encounters drawn from a catalog of watchtowers in the Alentejo, the artifacts and architecture from the tower known as Caladinho, and the geographic information systems analysis of each tower’s vision. Through the consideration of these and other pieces of evidence, Williams places surveillance at the center of the colonial negotiation over territory, resources, and power in the westernmost province of the Roman Empire.</p><p>The full set of figures for this work is&nbsp;available in a Supplement available on this site (under... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8304n08d Fri, 17 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Williams, Joey https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rh4f9jd <p>This research looks to investigate the designs of ancient bows depicted on ancient Greek pottery. The goal is to show that the bows most commonly shown are not native to the Greek mainland but rather are from both Scythia and Egypt. This has been done by examining a number of vases, pyramid friezes, and modern bow reconstructions. The common use of the Scythian design for archer characters in scenes of myth implies a familiarity with archery primarily through the Scythian mercenaries. The Egyptian acacia deflex bow design, while rare in vase depictions, directly corresponds to images on pyramids. The Egyptian angular composite bow appears in a rare case on a Greek vase, but its depiction is consistent with modern historical reconstructions. Through showing these non-native bow origins, this paper hopes to further demonstrate the worldly influences to archaic Greece.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rh4f9jd Sat, 14 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Bowyer, Emily S https://escholarship.org/uc/item/97s627bg The possibility of life after death has captured the imagination of different cultures and religions around the world, resulting in a wide variety of afterlife myths. Modern Western cultures tend to believe that an individual’s experience in the afterlife relies heavily upon the ethical behavior of an individual during their lifetime. This morality-based eschatology has roots in early Judeo-Christian thought – although Classical authors also placed an emphasis on ethical behavior in their understandings of the afterlife. This paper examines how the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and Virgil blended together with Biblical teachings from the Old and New Testament over the centuries. Thanks in part to later authors, such as Dante Alighieri, these differing worldviews came together to create the widespread modern belief that the virtuous go to heaven, and the wicked go to hell. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/97s627bg Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Schiano, Sierra https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g73w5ww <em>Abstract</em><p> <em> </em> </p><p>The recent destruction of Palmyra sent shockwaves across the globe, as the days of religious fanaticism and outbursts of iconoclasm had largely been forgotten by the collective memory. Yet, such acts of destruction have long been a point of discussion (and contention) among scholars. In the centuries following the conversion from paganism to Christianity the fate of the pagan statuary was left in the hands of a newly Christian society, and to the processes of Christianization. Processes which acted either to assimilate the statue into the newly Christian cultural milieu or destroy the statue for its pagan nature. This paper will present an overview of the various attitudes, and responses, towards pagan statuary in late antiquity, and the ways in which recent scholarship has interpreted the processes of Christianization with renewed enthusiasm. Using the Hearst Herakles as a case study for the practice of Christianization, this paper will... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g73w5ww Wed, 11 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Hall, Christian https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1205t8rd <p>Portrayed as the charismatic Queen of Halicarnassus, shrewd adviser to the Xerxes, and fearless admiral at the Battle of Salamis, Herodotus' Artemisia boldly transgresses into the traditionally male-dominated spaces of tyrant, orator, and general. While some have interpreted Artemisia’s lack of punctilio as emblematic of a Persia so politically and culturally backwards that even women (viewed by Greeks as the inferior sex) were entrusted with authority, the significance of her narrative may be more complex. In light of recent scholarship about Herodotus’ generally favorable presentation of women, it appears that each of Artemisia’s three appearances - <em>Histories</em> 7.99, 8.68-69, and 8.87-88 – actually serve to liken the Queen to her Athenian foes. An interpretation of Artemisia as fundamentally Athenian reminds us that the rigid, binary association of a “feminine East” and a “masculine West” in Greek historiography should be called into question.</p><p>Portrayed as the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1205t8rd Mon, 9 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Ackert, Nick https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xz5x7h6 Cover https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xz5x7h6 Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Admin, BUJC https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xs8499d <p>The purpose of this paper is to examine the conception of the body and its relationship to desire articulated by Aristophanes in Plato's <em>Symposium</em>. The paper begins by analyzing the progress of Aristophanes creation myth and determining the role of the body as origin, hindrance, and aid of love. Then the paper compares the account of Aristophanes to the experience of Alcibiades. Lastly the paper compares the account to the one put forward by Plato's Socrates via Diotima. Through this multi-step analysis, we reconstruct a unique conception of the body not found in other works by Plato and come to better understand the role of the body in Plato's account of desire as a whole.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xs8499d Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Carroll, David Thomas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91t5q9fw The Prehistoric Origins and Early Historic Development of The Pan-Hellenic Sanctuary of Zeus:Excavation of Ancient Nemea, 2014 Season https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91t5q9fw Wed, 7 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Shelton, Kim S https://escholarship.org/uc/item/29r3j0gm Pindar’s epinikian odes were poems commissioned to celebrate athletic victories in the first half of the fifth century BCE. Drawing on the insights of interpretive anthropology and cultural history, Leslie Kurke investigates how the socially embedded genre of epinikion responded to a period of tremendous social and cultural change. Kurke examines the odes as public performances which enact the reintegration of the athletic victor into his heterogeneous communities. These communities—the victor’s household, his aristocratic class, and his city—represent competing, sometimes conflicting interests, which the epinikian poet must satisfy to accomplish his project of reintegration. Kurke considers in particular the different modes of exchange in which Pindar’s poetry participated: the symbolic economy of the household, gift exchange between aristocratic houses, and the workings of monetary exchange within the city. Her analysis produces an archaeology of Pindar’s poetry, exposing multiple... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/29r3j0gm Mon, 22 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Kurke, Leslie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1n57m2mf This paper analyzes a phonetic chart of Linear B symbols found in the notebook of Dr. Alice E. Kober to understand how accurately she identified phonetic relationships between the signs and how this chart might have influenced Michael Ventris’s later decipherment. Of the 87 signs in Linear B, only twenty signs were plotted on Kober’s chart, and only ten of which were published in her 1948 article, “The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory”. The remaining ten signs had been written tentatively in pencil and remained unpublished. The only notes about how Kober created these charts were three assumptions she placed alongside her published chart, but no explanation was given about the remaining ten signs on her chart. By looking at the current, accepted phonetic values of each sign, one can identify possible reasons behind the placement of certain signs relative to others and the accuracy of Kober’s analysis. Then, I will examine some of Ventris’s phonetic charts and various writings to... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1n57m2mf Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Wheeler, Brenna https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s05x142 <p>The Hercules and Cacus episode in Book VIII highlights the problematic nature of Aeneas’ exploits throughout the <em>Aeneid</em>. Through the violence of Hercules, Vergil makes the reader question whether a story like the founding of Rome and its eventual imperial expansion can be as cut and dry as the story of a rugged hero slaughtering someone whose name literally means “evil one” might superficially seem. Calling into question Aeneas’ morality and his justification for settling in Italy in turn casts doubt on Augustus’ <em>own</em> means of attaining power.</p><p>The Hercules and Cacus episode is fundamental to our understanding of the <em>Aeneid </em>as a whole inasmuch as it brings up the question of right. The question of the rightful owner of Geryon’s cattle finds its parallel in Aeneas and Turnus’ dispute over betrothal to Lavinia, as well as in Augustus’ contested claim to rule Rome. The Italy of Hercules’ day, in which violence determines right, must be compared with... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s05x142 Sat, 28 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Trotz-Liboff, Leo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hb1r5wk <p>Etruscan winged Underworld figures (commonly referred to as winged “demons”) represent one of the most fascinating and least understood aspects of funerary iconography in ancient Etruria. Their function, along with their origin, has long been the subject of scholarly debates. However, over the last two decades, scholars have begun to take a closer look at these chthonic figures. Recent scholarship has begun to provide answers to many of the most fundamental questions concerning their role, even if disagreements remain over their murky origins. Expanding on interpretations that have cast new light on how these winged (and non winged) Underworld figures functioned, questions concerning Etruscan religious beliefs and funerary ideology can now be reconsidered.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hb1r5wk Thu, 5 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Morris, Marvin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1071z9t4 <p>Hekate is considered one of the most enigmatic figures of Greek religion. In the <em>Theogony</em>, she is referred to as a universal goddess. Nevertheless, her figure transforms into that of a chthonic figure, associated with witchcraft and the restless dead. This paper examines how Hekate’s role in the Greek pantheon has changed over time, and with what figures she has been syncretized or associated with in order to bring about such changes. In doing so, three images of the same goddess emerge: Hekate the universal life-bringing deity, Hekate the liminal goddess of the crossroads, and Hekate the chthonic overseer of witchcraft and angry spirits.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1071z9t4 Tue, 19 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Ou, Adrienne https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ht0q587 Letter From the Editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ht0q587 Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000 MacLaughlin, Karen Rao, Antara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1m25f9hr <p> <strong> <em>Abstract: </em> </strong> <em>Of all that survives in the form of artistic and architectural expression from the Hellenistic world, wall and panel painting are arguably the most underrepresented. In the case of painted wooden panels, or pinakes, that served as something akin to portable canvases for Greek and Hellenistic painters, the long span of over two thousand years has not been kind. Wooden panels, however, were not the only medium on which painters chose to apply their craft. A modest corpus of both painted friezes and painted panels has survived on the plastered walls of monumental Hellenistic tombs, from elite Hellenistic residences, and from mid to late first century BCE elite Roman domestic contexts. This paper undertakes a brief survey of these surviving remnants of the rich and prolific legacy of Hellenistic painting. </em> </p><p> </p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1m25f9hr Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Morris, Marvin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16q3c0w4 Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentary (about AD 200) is the earliest extant commentary on Aristotle’s <em>Metaphysics</em> , and it is the most valuable indirect witness to the <em>Metaphysics</em> text and its transmission. Mirjam Kotwick’s study is a systematic investigation into the version of the <em>Metaphysics</em> that Alexander used when writing his commentary, and into the various ways his text, his commentary, and the texts transmitted through our manuscripts relate to one another. &nbsp;Through a careful analysis of lemmata, quotations, and Alexander’s discussion of Aristotle’s argument Kotwick shows how to uncover and partly reconstruct a <em>Metaphysics</em> version from the second century AD. Kotwick then uses this version for improving the text that came down to us by the direct manuscript tradition and for finding solutions to some of the puzzles in this tradition. Through a side-by-side examination of Alexander’s... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16q3c0w4 Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Kotwick, Mirjam E. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gw8s37p <p>The 9th-century manuscript Metz 292 (Metz, France, Bibliothèque municipale) of Servius' commentaries on the poems of Vergil was destroyed in World War II. Photographs taken in the 1930s for&nbsp;the Harvard Servius Project are the only surviving evidence for&nbsp;this important manuscript of Servius.</p><p>This short document provides background information for the placing of digitized versions of the photographs in the open-access Shared Shelf Commons (ArtStor) and the URL for access.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gw8s37p Sun, 31 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Mastronarde, Donald J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t74d8gh Letter from the Editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t74d8gh Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Graves, Olivia Lyter, Julia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6v36g9xw <p>Ovid’s tales of metamorphoses are beautiful and terrifying. My introduction to Ovid was this tale, of Daphne and Apollo, in Latin. I was fascinated by the language swirling around Daphne’s metamorphosis into a tree while simultaneously horrified by the descriptions of Apollo’s advance. However, reading English translations, I was surprised by a glossing over of the terror Ovid’s transformed feel. One example is the translation of <em>figura </em>in line 547. <em>Cassell’s</em> lists possible translations as <em>form, shape, figure,</em> and <em>size</em>. But it is often translated as <em>beauty</em>.<a href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> Why is this, of all possible definitions, chosen? As we learn later, it is not Daphne’s beauty that is destroyed, but her body and her humanity; she becomes a splendid tree. <em>Beauty</em> implies a simple makeover, not a desperate cry for divine transformation into anything that will not attract rape.</p> This passage of Daphne’s tale works as a stand-alone... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6v36g9xw Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Brunetta, Joan Loftus https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2913v557 <em>I originally translated Book II of Vergil’s Aeneid for my advanced placement Latin course in high school; two years later, I returned to the translation of the Aeneid for Professor Carrie Mowbray’s Latin course, which focused on an in-depth, thorough examination of the Aeneid (more specifically, Books I-VI) in both Latin and English. This excerpt taken from Book II has remained a favorite of mine for years, as the vivid imagery and language utilized allow readers to envision the most detailed of scenes. Vergil’s personification of the Trojan Horse is the prime reason this excerpt has always appealed to me. Of course, Laocoon’s famous line, “quidquid id est, timeo Danaos dona ferentis,” is oft-cited throughout ancient literature, on account of its structure and importance to the Aeneid’s plot. My translation aims to highlight the vivacity of Vergil’s poetry, in order to allow the readers to conjure up uniquely graphic and evocative scenes.</em> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2913v557 Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Galarza, Alexandra Elizabeth https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2545790m <p>This paper compares passages from Book 24 of the <em>Iliad</em>, the <em>Homeric Hymn to Demeter</em> and the <em>Odyssey </em>and argues that Hermes's portrayal in archaic Greek literature is characterized by a high degree of sympathy for those under his guidance and a hands-on approach to divine intervention. In particular, parallels are drawn between Hermes's escorting of Priam to and from Achilles's camp, and his guidance of both Persephone and Herakles out of the underworld. These examples are contrasted with Hermes's role as a psychopomp and are used to argue that these texts display an understanding of divine aid that is not limited to mere function but which takes into account the personality and autonomous agency of individual deities.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2545790m Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Chou, David https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1d32q1b5 <p>The betrayal of Valeria Messalina, dramatically recounted by Tacitus in <em>Annales </em>11.26-11.38, represents one of the greatest scandals of Emperor Claudius’ reign. Messalina’s boldness in choosing a new husband, Gaius Silius, in Claudius’ place and without his knowledge demonstrated the Emperor’s frailty in curbing the excesses of his own household. Tacitus’ account of the entire episode bears uncanny structural, conventional, and spatial resemblances to the customs of Greek tragedy – parallels which imbue the Messalina affair with a greater sense of didacticism and drama. It is through this tragedic lens that Tacitus, with his usual cynicism and disdain, successfully conveys how far the Principate had strayed from the idealized Augustan values upon which it was founded.<em> </em></p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1d32q1b5 Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Ackert, Nick https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9h227067 In this paper, I study the emergence and advancement of epigraphic studies in roughly the first forty years following the foundation of the modern Greek state. The main protagonists - most of whom remain unknown outside Greece - are introduced, and their epigraphic output in its multiple manifestations is examined: the recording and analysis of inscriptions, the publication of articles and monographs, and the creation and protection of epigraphic collections. My study is contextualized by examining contemporary issues of ethnic identity and state-institution formation, as well as questions of interface amongst the Greek intellectuals themselves on the one hand, and between them and their European counterparts on the other. Ultimately, however, an attempt is made to understand the form and content that early epigraphic studies acquired in the Greek-speaking world, and the extent to which Greek scholarship contributed to the emerging field of epigraphy as it materialized with the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9h227067 Tue, 17 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Papazarkadas, N https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1nb9j24s Letter From the Editors https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1nb9j24s Thu, 24 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 MacLaughlin, Karen Rao, Antara https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05z6b1b1 <p> <b>To download this item, select the Supplemental Material tab above.</b> </p><p>With a new introduction and some revisions, these essays on Classical Greek satyr plays, originally published in various venues between 2002 and 2010, suggest new critical approaches to this important dramatic genre and identify previously neglected dimensions and dynamics within their original Athenian context. Griffith shows that satyr plays, alongside the ludicrous and irresponsible—but harmless—antics of their chorus, presented their audiences with culturally sophisticated narratives of romance, escapist adventure, and musical-choreographic exuberance, amounting to a “parallel universe” to that of the accompanying tragedies in the City Dionysia festival. The class oppositions between heroic/divine characters and the rest (choruses, messengers, servants, etc.) that are so integral to Athenian tragedy are shown to be present also, in exaggerated form, in satyr drama, with the satyr chorus... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05z6b1b1 Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Griffith, Mark https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qk1f2bx <p>I originally translated Horace’s Ode 1.9 for a perfect translation exercise in Professor Ellen Oliensis’s “Lyric and Society” class. The poem has been a favorite of mine since I first read it because of its beautiful imagery and the way in which it melds several different scenes effectively into one piece. Particularly the first two stanzas struck me in their stark contrast of natural and human realms as did the last two stanzas which portray a sort of elusive intimacy that is completely different in setting and tone from the rest of the poem. My goals in translating were to remain close to the Latin, emphasizing details that stood out to me in Horace’s word choice, and to generally maintain the tone of each segment.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qk1f2bx Sun, 14 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Solley, Nathaniel Fleury https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dk1f52n <p>Chapters nine and ten of Ecclesiastes in the original Hebrew stand as the most fascinating and enjoyable chapters in the opinion of the translators. We therefore wanted to express that pleasure by adhering to the original Hebrew, for the most part, as literally as possible. Further, we suspect that we have found a way to best express the poetic prose of the Hebrew: we have expressed our translation in relatively strict iambic pentameter. We have broken the meter where it felt fitting to the translation and where it seemed otherwise impossible to adhere. Our translation differs in a few key respects from King James and other translations; we therefore hope that the reader will examine their favorite translation and compare it with ours. Familiarity with the rest of Ecclesiastes is not necessary to enjoy our excerpt. We have left the Hebrew side-by-side with our translation for further scrutiny.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dk1f52n Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Malka, Robert Jacob Bleicher, Sun