BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES最新文献

The 1753 publication of The Ruins of Palmyra by Robert Wood was key in the formation of archaeological understandings of the site. Examining the original notebooks and drawings of the expedition, which formed the basis for this publication (now held by the Combined Library of the Institute of Classical Studies and the Hellenic and Roman Societies in London), this article examines the relationship between those first documents, the publication, and some of its afterlives. We demonstrate how Wood’s treatment of Tadmor-Palmyra and its inhabitants has shaped memories of the site, prioritizing certain narratives and occluding others, a process that continues today.

Since the beginning of the armed conflicts and public uprisings that accompanied and followed the ‘Arab Spring’ that started in 2010, cultural heritage sites have been hit hard, damaged and often destroyed by different perpetrators. The Syrian Civil War has resulted in unprecedented damage to cultural heritage sites, monuments, and facilities. This has provoked observers, politicians, and international and national non-government organizations to debate about the impacts of damaging Syria’s ‘irreplaceable’ patrimony and how to safeguard its past from the ongoing destructive actions. This paper investigates the transformation of the terminology of heritage—and the uses of heritage—in Syria before and during the ongoing conflict, and how the internationally renowned term ‘heritage’ emerged to promote the destruction of Syria’s cultural patrimony. This paper explores the semantics and impacts of the continuous destruction and the ongoing reconstruction plans on the cultural heritage of Syria. To conclude, I argue that those destructive actions started a process of ‘heritagizing’ the present which will eventually become a part of the Syrian collective memory.

Ovid's second collection of letters from his place of exile exhibits new strategies to achieve his aims of staying in the public eye and making his case for recall back to Rome. One of these new strategies is to pose as a kind of ethnographer with a ground-level view of Tomitan and Thracian society on the Black Sea coast. In the Epistulae ex Ponto, Ovid poses as a mediator between Rome and the imperial fringe, informing his reader about the activities of the Pontic tribes, describing his alleged interactions with the people of Tomis, and addressing the client king of the region. By doing so, Ovid explores new metaphors of exile, and grants to elegy and the letter a novel utility that slightly empowers his exiled voice.

Aside from his actual exile, Cicero describes himself as an exile and overliver in two other stressful periods: during the civil war of 49 and during life at Rome under Caesar's autocracy. Scholars have long noted the exile imagery in Cicero's letters of 46–45, but not in those of 49. Also unnoticed is the image of the overliver, well known from epic and tragedy, who, shamed by a single event, feels he has lived too long yet cannot escape life. In the first two periods, Cicero also deftly employs the themes and figures of lamentation to underline his distress and his liminal state as an overliver and to rebut Atticus' criticism of his self-pity. This self-presentation, sustained over three lengthy and traumatic episodes of Cicero's life, contrasts with his occasional assumption of literary exempla for his own behaviour.

Following his relegation to Corsica in ad 42, Seneca the Younger wrote the ad Helviam, a consolatory letter ostensibly offering his mother Helvia comfort and support in the face of his deathlike absence through exile. The addressees of Seneca's letters served different purposes for him, and here, because he is addressing his mother, who birthed him, Seneca creates within the ad Helviam a space for rebirth, a means of reviving and repairing a self left shattered by the trauma of exile. Reading Seneca's consolation through the lens of psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut's theory of the ‘tripolar self’, I suggest that in this letter Seneca satisfies his needs for mirroring, for an idealized other, and for twinship, which are requisite for his self-recreation. Through this process, Seneca also provides Helvia with the tools she needs to recreate her own self after the ‘loss’ of Seneca; both son and mother are thus reborn.

Despite his absence from his home town, Pliny's ongoing relationship with Comum and its residents is readily apparent in his letters. Careful examination of his donations to his patria and his correspondence with friends and family residing there makes it clear that Pliny's home town does not just serve as an autobiographical vehicle in the letters but is also one of his most important audiences. He presents Comum as a locus amoenus, an ideal place for him to enjoy the kind of refined retirement he so often praises in his letters.

As Eleanor Winsor Leach and others have demonstrated, in the corpus of the Letters Pliny represents different aspects of his ideal self through the way he characterizes his relationships with his correspondents. This paper examines more closely the letters to and about Tacitus, disregarding intertextual references between the works of Tacitus and Pliny (a well-mined field), and shifting the focus to the friendly competition Pliny creates with Tacitus. In particular, Pliny arranges the ‘Tacitus cycle’ into three sections which highlight their roles as orators, patrons, and literary figures. In each of these, Pliny shows that he and his friend are similar in their goals, but unique in their styles and methods. Thus, Pliny creates a world where he is both inferior and superior to his former mentor, as in Laelius' paradox — ‘maximum est in amicitia parem esse inferiori’ (Cic. Amic. 19.69).