I. The American Philological Association
Presidential Address 2001
Julia Haig Gaisser, "Teaching
Classics in the Renaissance: Two Case Histories,"
1-21
Full text available
online
II. Papers
Dianna Rhyan Kardulias,
"Odysseus in Ino's Veil: Feminine Headdress and the Hero
in Odyssey 5," 23-51
As Odysseus journeys home, from submerged identity
back to wholeness and reintegration, from the languishing
dangers of exotic vice back to the bed of Penelope, even
from death back to life, various devices and disguises
demonstrate his epithet polutropos. One maneuver
remains unappreciated: his brief aquatic debut wearing a
veil (Od. 5.333-462). In Odyssey 5 Odysseus
undergoes a rite of passage that features cross-dressing.
Ino's loan symbolically separates him from the world of
war and fantastic adventures and prepares him to return
to human society, and the Homeric veil is an especially
appropriate garment to mark the end of Odysseus' liaisons
with goddesses and to serve as a talisman against his
erotic involvement with Nausikaa. Paradoxically,
Odysseus' resumption of mature masculine identity depends
on transvestism, a ritual behavior that magically readies
him for interactions and negotiations with the mortal
women who will facilitate his return.
Deborah Beck, "Direct and
Indirect Speech in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,"
53-74
Important themes of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter
include the conflict between male and female perspectives
and the love between mothers and daughters. This paper
enlarges upon previous discussions of the centrality of
the mother-daughter relationship of Demeter and
Persephone in the Hymn to Demeter by examining
representations of speech acts in the poem, particularly
those appearing in scenes where this relationship is
prominent. The Hymn uses direct and indirect
speech in complementary ways to emphasize the
relationship of Persephone and Demeter, and more
generally of mothers and daughters as opposed to their
male relations, as a key theme of the poem.
Hardy C. Fredricksmeyer, "A
Diachronic Reading of Sappho fr. 16 LP," 75-86
Previous interpretations of Sappho fr. 16 LP share a
"synchronic" perspective, by which I mean that they draw
on the poem's images without regard for their temporal
sequence in the progress of the poem. Yet there is a need
in interpreting poetry designed for oral performance,
such as Sappho's, for "diachronic" approaches that treat
images sequentially and thereby take account of the
actual listening process: as the narrative unfolds the
audience revises its impressions of what precedes while
anticipating what lies ahead. My proposed "diachronic"
interpretation resolves the apparent conflict between
antithetical judgments about the character of Sappho's
Helen.
Ariana Traill, "Knocking on
Knemon's Door: Stagecraft and Symbolism in the
Dyskolos," 87-108
This paper shows how Menander individualizes a stock
element of the skene by making one of its doors
function as a symbol of the play's misanthropic title
character. Knemon's door serves as an object with which
other characters may interact when he is not onstage, to
which they transfer emotions felt towards him, and
through which they challenge both his rejection of the
community and his over-valuation of isolation. It thus
serves as a device to translate the play's symbolic
conflicts into physical actions. These physical actions
reveal the convergence of Old Comic and late tragic
stagecraft conventions, as illustrated by several
Aristophanic door-knocking scenes and one scene from
Euripides' Helen.
Alessandro Pardini, "A Homeric
Formula in Catullus (c. 51.11-12 gemina
teguntur lumina nocte)," 109-18
This paper shows that Catullus 51.11-12 gemina
teguntur lumina nocte is a close translation of a
Homeric formula, amphi de êsse kelainê
nuks ekalupse. This reference explains the seemingly
bold transferred epithet gemina, determines the
meaning of the whole sentence and its role in the poem,
and gives a chance to appreciate some aspects of
Catullus' refined poetic technique.
Basil Dufallo, "Appius'
Indignation: Gossip, Tradition, and Performance in
Republican Rome," 119-42
Cicero's prosopopoiea of Appius Claudius Caecus
at pro Caelio 33-34 has been under-appreciated for
all that it can tell us about the dissemination of
information and the function of performance in Roman
society. Cicero here co-opts the informal and marginal
network of gossip from within the formal information
system of judicial procedure. In transforming gossip,
Cicero adapts conventions of not only mime and comedy
(emphasized by previous scholars) but also aristocratic
funeral ritual, carmina, historical drama, and
oratory itself. The importance of these elite-sponsored
performance traditions to both reproducing and recreating
Roman culture emerges powerfully through Cicero's own
performance as Appius.
Robert A. Kaster, "The Dynamics
of Fastidium and the Ideology of Disgust,"
143-89
This paper contends that we can best grasp the
emotion-language of another culture not by seeking
lexical "equivalents" in our own language but by
interpreting the little dramas to which all
emotion-language refers: the sequences or "scripts" of
perception, evaluation, and response that we enact when
experiencing emotion. Taking as its test case
fastidium -- a term for "aversion" that can be
glossed by a broad range of English "equivalents" -- the
paper first argues that nearly all experiences
represented as fastidium can be understood with
reference to one of two "scripts": the aversion of a "per
se reflex"or the aversion of "deliberative ranking." The
final section of the paper then draws out some
implications of this analysis for our broader
understanding of Roman mentality and culture.
Daniel S. Richter, "Plutarch on
Isis and Osiris: Text, Cult, and Cultural Appropriation,"
191-216
In the de Iside Plutarch tells us that his text
is intended in some sense as an exegesis of Plato's
Timaeus. This paper asks why Plutarch chose the
ostensibly Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris as the
vehicle for his most mature and developed thoughts on the
divine and on the structure of the universe. Scholars
have long assumed that early imperial Egyptomania
motivated Plutarch's "Egyptianizing" of Plato. I suggest,
however, that Plutarch's de Iside was motivated
less by Egyptomania than by an unwillingness to accept
what he saw as the culturally derivative status of Greece
which an Egyptian origin of Greek religion implies. On my
reading, the de Iside is an appropriative text
which has as one of its central aims the demonstration of
the priority of Greek philosophy over Egyptian cult.
Donald Lateiner, "Humiliation
and Immobility in Apuleius' Metamorphoses,"
217-55
Apuleius' Metamorphoses pictures provincial
Greek urban elites enjoying the discomfiture of others
below them. The novel illustrates pleasures in reminding
the younger, the poorer, the disfigured, slaves, and
beasts of their inferiority. This paper describes those
techniques of enforcing and displaying superiority,
especially embarrassment and laughter. It also surveys
the victims' responses. These usually end with their
disempowered silence and stillness. Apuleius analogizes
immobility to objectification as statues and to
death-like experiences. Powerful perpetrators and victims
engage in structured Roman spectacles: brutality and
vulnerability establish a grim world. An ever-darkening
canvas culminates in the final salvation. Lucius yet
again delusionally thinks he has escaped.
Michael Roberts, "The Last Epic
of Antiquity: Generic Continuity and Innovation in the
Vita Sancti Martini of Venantius Fortunatus,"
257-85
The Vita Sancti Martini (VSM) of
Venantius Fortunatus, composed between 573 and 576 CE, is
a long narrative poem in four books of dactylic
hexameters, belonging to the subgenre of hagiographical
epic. In this paper, taking my starting point from
Fortunatus' own account of his Christian literary
antecedents, I analyze the affiliations of the VSM
with the conventions of Latin epic; situate the poem in
the context of late Latin narrative poetry, both sacred
and secular; and identify the qualities that
differentiate the VSM from its predecessors and
mark Fortunatus' particular contribution to the epic
tradition. The VSM is an epigrammatic, epideictic
epic of rhetorically refined meditation.
III. Presidential Panel 2001
Julia Haig Gaisser, "Traditional
Specialties at the Turn of the 21st Century: A Janus
View," 287-88
Eleanor Dickey, "What Good is a
Rebellious Teenager? Classics and Linguistics in the
Twentieth Century," 289-96
Ann Ellis Hanson, "Papyrology:
Minding Other People's Business," 297-313
David Potter, "Roman History and
the American Philological Association 1900-2000,"
315-27
Michael C. J. Putnam, "The Loom
of Latin," 329-39
IV.
Paragraphoi
Helen H. Bacon, "Plato and the Greek Literary
Tradition," 341-52
Charles Henderson, Jr., "Quorum pars parva fui,"
353-62
V. Guidelines for Contributors 363-66
TAPA INDEX