Transactions
of the American Philological Association
Vol.
133, Spring 2003
I.
Papers
Kathryn
B. Stoddard, "The Programmatic Message of the 'Kings and
Singers' Passage: Hesiod, Theogony 80-103"
In Hesiod's
Theogony, the "Kings and Singers" passage, lines
80-103, parallels the poem's Dichterweihe,
lines 22-34, in that both portray contact between the
Muses and mortals on whom they bestow gifts. The gifts
granted Hesiod in the Dichterweihe, a divine voice and a laurel scepter,
represent the persuasive powers of aoidos
and basileus as described
in Th. 80-103. The latter passage is thus
programmatic for how Hesiod perceives his role as
narrator and how he intends to use the Muses' gifts for
didaxis. The Prometheus and Hekate passages later in the
poem show Hesiod's didaxis in action.
Derek
Collins, "Nature, Cause, and Agency in Greek
Magic"
This paper
explores the concepts of nature, cause, and agency as
they define Greek magical practice in the Classical
period. I seek first to demonstrate that the authors of
the Hippocratic and Platonic attacks on magic share basic
assumptions about nature and divinity with the magical
practitioners themselves. Next, I situate magic within
the mechanical, teleological, and volitional modes of
Greek causal explanation, demonstrating how these modes
can overlap in the explanation of a magical event.
Finally, I consider figurines as a test case for concepts
of causality in magical action. I argue that figurines,
like Greek statues generally, are viewed as social agents
capable of causing events to happen in their vicinity.
Once we situate the figurines within a network of social
relations, new explanations can be derived for the
practice of binding and abusing them.
Jacob
Stern, "Heraclitus the Paradoxographer: Peri
Apistôn, On Unbelievable Tales"
The text of
Heraclitus the Paradoxographer (so LSJ,
although "Mythographer" would be better), which is here
translated with Introduction and Commentary, survives to
the present in a single 13th-century manuscript. Of the
author nothing is known, although he appears to belong to
the late 1st or 2nd century A.D. The text includes 39
items in which familiar myths are briefly told and then
interpreted through rationalism, euhemerism, allegory, or
etymology. Among extant mythographical collections this
text is of particular interest precisely because it
exemplifies in brief compass such a range of ancient
strategies for the interpretation of myth.
Sharon
James, "Her Turn to Cry: The Politics of Weeping in Roman
Love Elegy"
Roman love
elegy presents its male speakers as weeping helplessly
for a cruel mistress, the dura puella. Though this image has dominated the
reception of elegy, Ovid's Ars amatoria
and Amores deviate strikingly: in these works the
lover seeks to see his mistress weep. Further review
demonstrates the same desire, well hidden, in the elegies
of Propertius and Tibullus. This paper argues that Ovid
shows the resentment underlying the elegiac lover's
tears, along with the desire for revenge in the form of
his beloved's compensatory tears.
Laurel
Fulkerson, "Chain(ed) Mail: Hypermestra and the Dual
Readership of Heroides 14"
Through a
detailed analysis of key passages in Heroides
14, this article seeks to show that Hypermestra's letter,
generally considered to be peculiar and rhetorically
ineffective, is in fact cleverly designed to elicit
distinct responses from its two potential readers. Either
the letter will be read by Lynceus, its addressee, who
will return to save Hypermestra from her father, Danaus,
or (more likely) the letter will be intercepted by
Danaus, who will find in it information written to
convince him that he has mistakenly imprisoned his
daughter. Hypermestra's hitherto unnoticed sophistication
in epistolography prefigures her larger success: she
survives to found a royal line at Argos.
C.
L. Murison, "M. Cocceius Nerva and the
Flavians"
Very little
information survives about the career of M. Cocceius
Nerva before he became Roman Emperor in A.D. 96. His
importance by the end of Nero's reign is demonstrated by
the rewards bestowed on him in 65 after the suppression
of the Pisonian conspiracy; thereafter he became ordinary
consul with Vespasian in 71 and with Domitian in 90. In
this paper the attempt is made to explain by plausible
hypothesis why Nerva was so highly regarded by both
Vespasian and Domitian, and also how and why he succeeded
Domitian in 96.
E.
J. Kenney, "In the Mill with Slaves: Lucius Looks Back in
Gratitude"
At Apuleius
Metamorphoses 9.13.3-5 Lucius confesses that his
experiences as an ass have profited him only as a
literary artist, not as a philosopher, an admission borne
out by his own narrative. This, it is suggested, reflects
Apuleius' own retrospective assessment of a fruitless
attempt to reconcile Egyptian religion with Platonism.
The Greek ass-story which he appropriated and embellished
conveniently provided a fictional alter ego as narrator, a highly dramatic metaphor
with Egyptian resonances for Apuleius' own experiences,
and an opportunity for a bravura display of the
rhetorical talents on which his reputation as at once
Sophist and Platonic philosopher was based.
II.
Paragraphoi
D.
R. Shackleton Bailey, "With Jackson's Help"
In lines
7-8 of Housman's dedicatory poem (Manilius,
vol. 1) nomen means "fame" and virtutis refers to scholarly achievement, not to
Moses Jackson (cf. TAPA
132 (2002) 209-13).