Transactions of the American Philological
Association
Vol. 128 (1998)
Contents
I. The American Philological
Association Presidential Address
II. Textual Criticism
III. Athenian History and
Oratory
IV. Hellenistic Epic
V. Athenian and Egyptian Women
VI. Roman Political Discourses
VII. Paragraphoi
I. The American Philological
Association Presidential Address Full
text available online
Susan Treggiari: "Home and Forum: Cicero
between 'Public' and "'Private'" p. 1
II. Textual Criticism
M. S. Silk: Pindar's Poetry and the Obligatory
Crux: Isthmian 5.56&endash;63, Text and
Interpretation p.25
A new text and interpretation is proposed for the
notoriously difficult passage at the end of I. 5,
including:
- Elimination of the implausible plural dapÐnai
and the meaningless öpin in 58.
- Reinterpretation of the reference to Pytheas in 59
and demonstration of the falsity of the traditional
supposition that Pytheas acted as trainer for his
brother.
- Restitution of the manuscript reading
FulakÛda (as vocative) in 60.
(Web editor's note: there will be a readable Greek
text here soon).
The new text centres on the sequence:
…oéd( õpos( dapÐn(
¤lpÜw |knij(. ôpÜ d( (n
a_n¡v kaÜ Puy¡an ¤n
guiodÐmaiw,
FulakÛda, plag_n drñmon…
The whole passage, 56&endash;63, is given a new and
comprehensive reading as a celebration of the
aristocratic family.
III. Athenian History and
Oratory
A. J. Graham: "Thucydides 7.13.2 and the Crews of
Athenian Triremes: An Addendum," p. 89
The inscription IG I3.1032 contains the only extant
epigraphical evidence for the composition of the crews of
Athenian triremes, and is a very important complement to
the information in Thucydides (7.13.2). Only a small
proportion of the inscription is preserved in twelve
fragments, but the accepted reconstruction, when
re-studied, can be shown to be generally correct. A new
suggestion is offered for the action celebrated by the
inscription and its date. The inscription confirms
Thucydides' information that slaves regularly formed a
substantial proportion of the rowers on Athenian
triremes, and their masters included fellow oarsmen.
Ann N. Michelini: "Isocrates' Civic Invective:
Acharnians and On the Peace," p. 115
In Isocrates' On the Peace, allusions to
Acharnians parallel the speaker's subversive
attack on traditional Athenian patriotic
genres&emdash;including the symbouleutic speech and the
funeral oration. Aristophanes' complex manipulation of
internal and external audiences matches the contrast
between Isocrates' fictional audience in the Athenian
Assembly and his real public. While Isocrates claims for
his work the didactic function of the comic poet, his
denunciation of the Athenians makes it clear that his
"philosophical" moral theorizing could be tolerated only
by a more conservative, more cosmopolitan, and more elite
audience, his reading public.
IV. Hellenistic Epic
Ingrid E. Holmberg: "Metis and Gender in
Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica," p. 135
In the figures of Jason and Medea, the
Argonautica considers the intertwined notions of
heroism, metis, and gender. The epic traces a
movement from the salvational and constructive
metis of the Greek heroes through the salvational
but destructive metis of Medea. As the poem
progresses, metis becomes increasingly necessary
to heroic goals; simultaneously, metis and Medea
evade the control of Jason and the Argonauts as acts of
violence and senselessness are committed in the name of
the Argonauts' goals. The poem leaves these questions
about metis, gender and heroism disturbingly
unresolved.
V. Athenian and Egyptian Women
David M. Schaps: "What Was Free about a Free Athenian
Woman?," p. 161
Gender distinctions in Athens differed qualitatively,
not merely quantitatively, from the distinction between
slave and free. A free Athenian woman could and probably
did consider herself entirely free, not partially free,
and superior to a slave of either sex, despite the
restrictions that were imposed upon her by the gender
structure of a highly patriarchal society. These
restrictions, whose real sources were in biology, in
history, and in ideology, cut across class distinctions,
and were considered neither naturally degrading (as
slavery was) nor subject to arbitrary change.
Jennifer A. Sheridan: "Not at a Loss for Words: The
Economic Power of Literate Women in Late Antique Egypt,"
p. 189
During the late third and early fourth centuries C.E.,
a number of literate women from the Egyptian city of
Hermopolis appear in the papyri. As the women have a
number of things in common, particularly their social
class, this appears to be more than a coincidence. This
article explores these women through the best-known
member of the group, Aurelia Charite, and argues that the
women used their literacy to protect their economic
interests. This paper is aimed at an audience of
classicists rather than specialists in papyrology.
VI. Roman Political
Discourses
R. Sklenár: "La République des
Signes: Caesar, Cato, and the Language of Sallustian
Morality," p 205
A long tradition in Sallustian scholarship has
maintained that Sallust sides with Cato against Caesar in
the Senatorial debate concerning the fate of the
Catilinarian conspirators. More recently, in a detailed
analysis of the synkrisis of Cato and Caesar at Cat. 54,
W. Batstone ("The Antithesis of Virtue: Sallust's
Synkrisis and the Crisis of the Late Republic," CA 7:
1&endash;29 [1988]) has convincingly argued that
the two men embody conflicting notions of Sallustian
virtus. The present paper extends this line of inquiry
into the actual debate in order to show that by
compelling both speakers to jettison their own
distinctive and verifiable styles in favor of Sallustian
moral language, Sallust forces his own normative
vocabulary into a logomachy with itself, and thereby
exposes its instability. Discussion will focus on two
especially illustrative themes: the appeal to reason in
Caesar's speech, and Cato's contrast between the ethical
certitudes of the mos maiorum and the disintegration, in
his own day, of both moral behavior and moral language.
The opposing speakers bring the rationalistic and
moralistic aspects of the historian's ethical ideal into
a conflict so irreconcilable as to validate Cato's
diagnosis of linguistic indeterminacy, which serves
equally well as Sallust's bitter assessment of his own
attempt to frame his convictions within a postlapsarian
moral discourse.
Hans-Friedrich Mueller: "Vita, Pudicitia,
Libertas: Juno, Gender, and Religious Politics
in Valerius Maximus," p. 221
Links between Roman religion and morality may be
observed through examination of the role that Juno plays
in Facta et dicta memorabilia of Valerius Maximus.
Comparison of Valerius' exempla with other authors
reveals that Valerius intensifies the classical religious
element in order to lend divine support to morality.
Valerius' Juno supports conduct that preserves women's
pudicitia, men's libertas and the community's existence
(vita). This morality conforms to Augustan legislation
and Tiberian ideology. Attention to Valerius' voice thus
reveals an individual early imperial perspective of Juno,
and contributes more generally to illustrating links
between Roman religion, law, and morality.
Matthew Roller: "Pliny's Catullus: The Politics of
Literary Appropriation," p. 265
This paper examines the younger Pliny's production,
consumption, and especially recitation of polymetric
poetry modelled on Catullus. Such poetry, valorizing
otium over negotium and frequently obscene or erotic,
poses ideological difficulties for an engaged public
figure like Pliny. Acknowledging these difficulties, he
defends himself by restricting his poetic activity to the
domain of otium, where (he argues) it does not threaten
his public persona. Why bother? Because in reciting
polymetric poetry&emdash;apparently an
innovation&emdash;he politicizes it, creating a new arena
of aristocratic competition in which he expects to excel.
He also thereby realigns the categories negotium/otium,
public/private, and political/nonpolitical.
VII. Paragraphoi
A. E. Raubitschek: "EKTOROS LUTRA," p. 305
Glenn W. Most: "With Fearful Steps Pursuing Hopes of High
Talk with the Departed Dead" p. 311
Zdeslav Dukat: "More on Yugoslavia as an "Oral Epic
Laboratory": A Response to Thérèse de Vet ,
" p.325
Thérèse de Vet: "A Response to Zdeslav
Dukat ," p,. 331
Guidelines for Contributors, p. 337
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