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Transactions of the American Philological
Association
Vol. 127 (1997)
Contents
- I. The American
Philological Association Presidential Address
II. Art, Myth, and Epic
Conventions
III. History and
Ideology
IV. Hellenistic
Epigram Books and Roman Epistles
V. Roman Satire and
Epic
VI.
Presidential Forum 1996
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- I. The American
Philological Association Presidential Address
- Robert Kaster, "The Shame of the Romans" p. 1
Full text available online at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/TAPA/kaster.html
- II. Art, Myth, and Epic
Conventions
- Steven Lowenstam, "Talking Vases: The Relationship
between the Homeric Poems and Archaic Representations
of Epic Myth" p.21
Representations of epic episodes painted on Greek
vases in the sixth and fifth centuries often differ
significantly from the versions of the myths familiar to
us from the Homeric poems. An examination of such
differences indicates that painters did not recast myths
on their own but frequently gained inspiration from
contemporaneous oral poems. This conclusion suggests that
the Homeric poems did not gain canonical status until the
end of the Archaic period (and may have been composed
later than generally thought). In fact our dating of the
Iliad and Odyssey relies on very tenuous
evidence.
- Hilary Mackie, "Song and Storytelling: An Odyssean
Perspective" p.77
The Odyssey's conception of song is unique in
the Greek hexameter tradition. In its focus on recent
events and ability to cause pain, song in the
Odyssey resembles autobiographical storytelling,
also foregrounded in the poem. Thus the Odyssean account
of narrative emphasizes a dynamic relationship between
narrative and life. Storytelling is further
differentiated, however, as first-person narration based
upon first-hand experience. This type of narrative
enables mortals to create order, and even pleasure, from
random ills. The Odyssey's idiosyncratic account
of song and storytelling arises from its unique notion
that mortals enjoy this kind of agency in creating their
own happiness.
- III. History and Ideology
- E. A. Fredricksmeyer, "The Origin of Alexander's
Royal Insignia" p.97
This paper examines three theories about the origin of
Alexander's diadem as the exclusive emblem of his
kingship in Asia. One, that it was Macedonian, another,
that it was Persian, and the third, that it derived from
an association in iconography with the hero-god Dionysus.
This last possibility is the most likely. Thus
Alexander's royal insignia gave an indication that his
kingship of Asia was neither Macedonian nor Persian but a
combination of the two, and uniquely a creation of
Alexander.
- Craige Champion, "The Nature of Authoritative
Evidence in Polybius and Agelaus' Speech at Naupactus"
p.111
This paper studies Agelaus' oration at Naupactus in
Polybius (Hist. 5.104.1-11), from a fresh
perspective. Leaving behind well-worn debates on the
speech's historicity and the speech as Polybian
fabrication, the paper analyzes Agelaus' address in order
to understand Polybius' working methods and
historiographical principles. The focus is upon Polybius'
thoughts on the symplokê, or unification of
world history, and on Philip V's conscious motivations in
calling for peace at Naupactus. Examination of these
ideas in Agelaus' oration helps to clarify Polybius'
practices in recording historical agents' speeches and
provides important insights into the nature of classical
historiography.
- Noel Lenski, "Initium mali Romano imperio:
Contemporary Reactions to the Battle of Adrianople" p.
129
The Battle of Adrianople changed the course of Roman
history. This was recognized even by contemporaries who
recorded their reactions in abundant testimony from the
forty years after the disaster. This article offers the
first comprehensive assessment of these varied responses:
shock, denial, blame, condemnation, foreboding and
eventually, reassessment. It explores how reactions
changed over time and through interrelation with one
another in a complex interplay which remains remarkably
vivid even today.
- IV. Hellenistic Epigram
Books and Roman Epistles
- Kathryn Gutzwiller, "The Poetics of Editing in
Meleager's Garland" p.169
Scholarly progress in reconstructing the aesthetic
arrangement of the Garland now permits a new
understanding of Meleager's epigrammatic poetry. This
paper analyzes a number of epigrams within their original
context in the Garland's amatory section in order
to show that their meaning as erotic verse, emanating
from Meleager's poetic persona, is enhanced by a
secondary layer of meaning emanating from his editorial
persona. Through the skillful arrangement of poems on
such themes as wine, song, and garlands, Meleager
produces a dual reference to both erotic experience and
the poetics of the collection.
- Erik Gunderson, "Catullus, Pliny, and
Love-Letters" p. 201
This article explores the relationship between love
and literary culture. The seemingly disparate writings of
Catullus and Pliny agree on the role of the literary
epistle in forming and negotiating the bond between
author and reader. Through the movement of letters which
are always implicitly love-letters, each author
acknowledges and engages a performative ontology of the
literary sign. In so doing, they presage the commentary
of Freud, Lacan and Derrida on questions of subjectivity,
alterity, and the mobility of the symbol. The love-letter
thus becomes an elementary and ineluctable literary
exercise revealing the nexus binding love and the
letter.
- V. Roman Satire and
Epic
- Ruth Rothaus Caston, "The Fall of the Curtain
(Horace S. 2.8)" p.233
Despite recent advances, the conclusive force of
S. 2.8 has not been thoroughly understood. I argue
that 2.8 is an effective finale to the second book, and
also to both books of Satires. As the culmination
of a series of satires on food in Book 2, 2.8 literally
drops the curtain on fancy food, explicitly warning
against a departure from the simple lifestyle. The
cena Nasidieni also gives the final word on
satire's comedic ancestry, perhaps the most important
literary theme of Book 1. Finally, 2.8 tests the
effectiveness of the teaching embodied in all the
preceding poems: to produce readers who judge for
themselves.
- Christine Perkell, "The Lament of Juturna: Pathos
and Interpretation in the Aeneid " p. 257
While some critics have read pathos as implicit
political comment subversive of the Aeneid's
imperial claims, others have variously challenged the
authenticity of the poemís pathos, reading it as a
mere function of the epic genre, a product of ideological
fissures, or the indirect expression of a political
program. As part of a larger inquiry into the function of
pathos in the Aeneid, I consider one of the
laments, namely, the lament of Juturna. I first attempt a
refutation of a respected reading of the lament that
reads its primary significance as the retarding of
closure; I then propose a more historical/political
reading of my own. Through a reading of this single text,
I aim to investigate both the poem's famous pathos and
also some of the critical assumptions and procedures that
tend to question its moral power.
- Katharina Volk, "Cum carmine crescit et annus:
Ovid's Fasti and the Poetics of Simultaneity"
p. 287
The paper argues that time, tempora, is not
just the subject of Ovid's Fasti, but that the
passing of time also provides the poem's narrative
framework. As the work unfolds, it tells the story of its
own coming into being: its poet is living through the
Roman year and at the same time producing poetry about
it. This poetics of simultaneity is central to the
Fasti and helps explain a number of the poem's
specific features and elucidate some of its more
controversial passages.
- Christopher Michael McDonough, "Carna, Proca and
the Strix on the Kalends of June" p. 315
The Kalends of June were also known as the Kalendae
Fabariae due to the custom of eating beans and bacon
on this day. Before discussing the custom in the
Fasti, Ovid tells the odd story of the Alban king
Proca, who, as an infant, was attacked by malevolent
flying creatures called striges, and was rescued
by the ritual slaughter of a piglet by the goddess Carna
(Fasti 6.101-82). The relevance of the story to
the custom (or, perhaps better, the myth to the ritual)
can be explained by the anthropology of witchcraft and
misfortune, as well as the concept of liminality.
- VI. Presidential
Forum 1996
- Robert A. Kaster, Introduction
"Fruitful Disputes: Controversy and Its Consequences
in the (More or Less Recent) History of Classical
Studies" p. 345
- Glenn W. Most, "One Hundred Years of
Fractiousness: Disciplining Polemics in
Nineteenth-Century German Classical Scholarship" p.
349
Three controversies are examined which show how even
temporary disagreements can manifest long-term,
unresolvable structural tensions: the polemic about
Creuzer's Symbolik (1811ff.); the dispute about
Boeckh's corpus of Greek inscriptions (1825f.); and the
controversy over K. O. Müller's edition of
Aeschylus' Eumenides (1833f.). The first excluded
aesthetic and religious approaches to Greek myth from
classical philology; the second ultimately established
the validity of epigraphy within classics. These two
controversies helped determine the shape of the field but
did not put the field itself into question. But the
questions raised in the Eumenidenstreit revealed
tensions and self-contradictions which continue to define
classics.
- Christopher Stray, " `Thucydides or Grote?'
Classical Disputes and Disputed Classics in
Nineteenth-Century Cambridge" p. 363
A series of disputes in nineteenth-century Cambridge
are discussed. To understand them, we need to see them in
their ideological and institutional contexts. Conversely,
they offer a window into the nature of those contexts.
The conflicts between the study of classical language and
literature as an idealised, permanent exemplar, and the
exploration of ancient culture as a historical
phenomenon, were intersected by conflicts within academe,
and between scholars and schoolteachers. These latter
became marginalised as a professional academic structure
emerged in classics.
- G. W. Bowersock, "Beloch and the Birth of
Demography" p. 373
Karl Julius Beloch opened up the systematic study of
the demography of the ancient world. His work met with
vigorous resistance from towering figures of his time,
and Beloch passed virtually his entire career in exile
from his own country. His espousal of important new
directions in the social history of antiquity illuminates
the painful process by which our discipline is gradually
transformed, and it exposes the complexity and moral
ambivalence that often attend such a transformation.
- Natalie Boymel Kampen "Democracy and Debate: Otto
Brendel's `Prolegomena to a Book on Roman Art' " p.
381
Otto Brendel's magisterial 1953 essay on the
historiography of Roman art has long been read for its
understanding of European intellectual traditions. It has
not, however, been seen in the context of post-war
American liberalism, the context in which the latter part
of the essay was actually produced. I argue here that the
emphasis on such concepts as pluralism, the artist as
individual, and freedom indicates the author's
involvement with that context. Further, the use of these
concepts raises the question of the troubled nature of
debate in a modern western democracy.
"Agonistics: Eight Controversial Propositions on
Controversy" p. 389
Guidelines for Contributors p. 395
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