I.
Presidential Address 2004
James J. O’Donnell
Late
Antiquity: Before and After
II.
Papers
Dimitri
Nakassis
Gemination
at the Horizons: East and West in the Mythical Geography
of Archaic Greek Epic
This paper
examines descriptions of remote places in archaic Greek
epic. I argue that Homeric cosmic geography consists of
two complementary models, one in which the sun rises and
sets at a single locus—the axis mundi—as
in the Theogony,
and another in which sunrise and sunset take place on the
eastern and western horizons respectively. Conflation of
these models in the Odyssey results in the gemination of peoples and
places associated in myth with the sun. This not only
explains some recurrent patterns in Homeric geography and
their thematic importance to Odysseus’ travels, but
also resolves some traditional interpretive difficulties
with descriptions of the edges of the earth in archaic
epic.
Herbert
Granger
Heraclitus’
Quarrel with Polymathy and Historiê
Heraclitus’
attitude towards polymathy (B40) and inquiry or
historiê (B129) is controversial, although most scholars believe that
he was a practicing histôr
who thought that polymathy was a necessary, but not a
sufficient, condition for “understanding.”
Through a study of historiê and polymathy as practiced by those whom
Heraclitus explicitly attacks, and by other practitioners
of the sixth and fifth centuries, this paper argues that
the histores were dependent upon polymathy, and that
since Heraclitus believes that polymathy is an impediment
to understanding, he would not count himself among the
polymaths and histores.
Andrew
Scholtz
Friends,
Lovers, Flatterers: Demophilic Courtship in Aristophanes’
Knights
The
politician-as-lover conceit in Aristophanes’
Knights presents a
comic twist on the “demophilia topos,” a
strategy whereby speakers accuse opponents of seducing
the dêmos with specious claims of affection. By
sexualizing the topos, Aristophanes stages demophilic
politics as pederastic courtship, foregrounding tensions
between the eunoia ideal and kolakeia
scare-image in city leadership. But Aristophanes does not
stop there. Demos, a virtual pornos
complicit in his leaders’ efforts to con and “bugger”
him, pursues self-interest no less passive-aggressively,
cynically, or covertly than they do. Hence
value-reversals suggesting stasis, along with a profoundly equivocal return
to the “noble simplicity.”
Ralph M.
Rosen
Aristophanes’
Frogs and the Contest
of Homer and Hesiod
Dionysus’
unexpected decision at the end of the play is generally
thought to reflect the notion that poets such as
Aeschylus and Euripides had practical moral insight to
offer their audiences and to promote an “Aeschylean”
over a “Euripidean” approach to life. I
argue, however, that this ending offers a curiously
offbeat combination of aesthetic insight and intertextual
playfulness that ultimately relieves the Aristophanic
Aeschylus and Euripides of the moralizing burden they
have had to shoulder for so long. My reasons for
suggesting this arise from consideration of the
relationship between Frogs and another literary text that featured a
high-profile poetic contest, namely, the Contest
of Homer and Hesiod.
David
Rosenbloom
Ponêroi vs. Chrêstoi: The Ostracism of Hyperbolos and the
Struggle for Hegemony in Athens after the Death of
Perikles, Part II
The ostracism
of Hyperbolos, a ponêros and sykophant, realized a comic plot,
bordered on pharmakos ritual, and inaugurated a period of
increasingly violent stasis
between chrêstoi and ponêroi that included the affairs of the Hermai
and the Mysteries and the oligarchic takeovers of 411 and
404. The stasis ends with the labels ponêros and chrêstos negotiable. Over the next two generations,
citizens of Hyperbolos’ profile attained hegemony
in Athenian society and the dikasterion evolved as the
authoritative venue for the allocation of the labels.
This marks the moment when ostracism is an institutional
relic. This is the second and final part of a paper whose
first part appeared in TAPA 134.1 (2004).
Andreola
Rossi
Parallel
Lives: Hannibal and Scipio in Livy’s Third
Decade
I trace the
correspondences between the lives of Hannibal and Scipio
in the third Decade of Ab urbe condita and show how Livy fashions the two as “parallel
lives.” I further explore how this synkrisis
reflects issues critical to the political discourse of
the late Republic and sets up an exemplary antithesis
between Rome’s past virtus and her present decline.
Kathryn
Gutzwiller
Gender
and Inscribed Epigram: Herennia Procula and the Thespian
Eros
A marble
statue base found at Thespiae preserves an elegiac
couplet about Praxiteles’ Eros signed by one
Herennia Procula (BCH
[1926] 404–6). This poet, who is absent
from surveys of ancient women writers, is here identified
as a member of a wealthy Roman family resident at
Thessalonica (IG
X 2.1 no. 70). The couplet, which was probably composed
for a copy of the Eros statue made to replace the
original removed by Nero, makes sophisticated allusion to
a series of epigrams about Praxiteles’ Cnidian
Aphrodite, but with a key variation that points to the
nature of the worship of Eros at Thespiae. Plutarch’s
Amatorius, set during the celebration of the
Thespian Erotidia, provides important parallels to show
that the Praxitelean Eros had by the early Flavian period
become an object of veneration for women hoping for happy
and sexually fulfilling marriages.