CLASSICAL WORLD最新文献

This article examines a crucial and underexplored topic at the intersection of Roman foodways, agriculture, and health by considering the situation on the Roman farm where the extensive use of manure as well as other practices posed serious dangers to food safety. Manure was central to Roman agriculture, and a growing body of evidence for widespread instances of foodborne illnesses can be linked to manuring. We bring together literary and archaeological evidence with contemporary food science and agricultural research to consider the ramifications for the health, food supply, and economy of the Roman people.

In this paper, I argue against the prevailing view that Aristophanes in the Clouds characterizes Socrates as a “sophistic” teacher-for-pay. To do so, I reexamine the play’s five potential references to teaching payments—Strepsiades’ description of the Thinkery (98–99), his offer of a wage (245–249), the Clouds’ exhortation to Socrates (804–812), a joke about Hyperbolus (874–876), and the “honor” that Socrates receives from Strepsiades (1146–1147)—within the framework of Aristophanes’ comic technique. I demonstrate that Aristophanes, particularly in the sections of the play most significant for the characterization of Socrates (126–509 and 627–803), portrays Socrates not as a venal teacher looking to take advantage of his students but as an impractical intellectual who has no concern for money.

The overriding sense of civilizational superiority among Greeks was encapsulated most potently in the concept of the “barbarian,” an uneducated foreigner who could do nothing more than babble nonsense, let alone contribute to civilization. The strong distinction between Greeks and barbarians was not always perfectly dichotomous, however, as seen in the wise barbarian theme that scholarship has long tracked, particularly in connection with ethnographic works and, in the Roman era, philosophical and religious debates. Taking a decolonizing approach that also moves beyond the problematic modern categories of “philosophy” and “religion,” this article explores the wise barbarian as part of a more widespread set of ethnic discourses in the period after Herodotus (ca. 420 bce) and before Poseidonios of Apameia (ca. 50 bce). I argue that these discourses were employed not only among Greeks such as Ephoros of Kyme (ca. 350 bce), but also among subject peoples themselves, as in Bel-re’ushu (Berossos) of Babylon (ca. 300 bce), long before the Stoic Poseidonios developed his theory of primitive wisdom in the first century bce. These multivalent discourses provide important insights into ethnic relations in and around the Hellenistic era as those belonging to both hegemonic and conquered populations engaged in different strategies in order to navigate their places within an expanding world.

This paper discusses the portrayals of physicians in the Annals, and argues that they reveal Tacitus’ underlying ethnic prejudice against Greeks. The passages narrating the actions of Eudemus, Charicles, and Xenophon show that the historian portrays them negatively by underscoring their cunningness and involvement, direct or indirect, in the death of an emperor or heir. The pattern at work points to a deeply rooted hostility against them not as medical professionals, but as Greeks. This is further corroborated through the contrast with the non-Greek doctor, Annaeus Statius, and through the comparison with the professional poisoner treated in the Annals, Locusta.

This article demonstrates a series of uncanny parallels between the Oresteia and the 2002 film Minority Report, and their import for our understanding of tragedy and film alike. I explore Minority Report’s Agatha as a modern Cassandra (as has been covered in some literature before), and extend the analogy to pair John Anderton and Orestes, Lamar Burgess and Apollo, and Spielberg’s Washington, DC and Aeschylus’ Athens. I encourage every classicist who teaches the Oresteia to assign their students Minority Report, and to think about this film, and science-fiction more generally, as a new frontier in classical reception studies.

Xenophon’s portrait of the education of Cyrus the Great in his Cyropaedia depicts a youth with an erotic desire for hunting, which in the ancient world trained men in the art of war. But Cyrus learned quickly from going on hunts in the royal parks or “paradises” of his grandfather, the King of Media, that the luxurious mode of hunting game in parks could not match the thrill of hunting animals in the wild. Moreover, hunting in paradise was a temptation to be avoided, because it failed to educate one in that kind of virtue which (as Machiavelli later argued) alone prepares a prince to conquer and, as in the case of Cyrus, become the founder of an empire.

This paper focuses on one of ancient mythology's most notorious voices, the nymph Circe, daughter of the Sun and witch of Aeaea. Tracing the evolution of Circe's mythology through the works of Vergil, Ovid, and Valerius Flaccus, it shows how these early imperial authors use her presence in Rome's family tree to push back on Augustus' version of Rome's genealogy and his own right to rule. By embedding Circe in the "Italian" side of Rome's antecedents, they demonstrate the fragility of the principate's claim to legitimacy through control of Rome's inheritance.

This paper, which serves as the introduction to the volume, suggests that stories of ancient Roman women shattering the curtain of silence that surrounds them can be repurposed to support contemporary women's struggle to make their voice heard. In particular, the tales of Io and Philomela in Ovid's Metamorphoses can be used to amplify the powerful message of the recently developed Me Too movement, as they show that women victim of sexual assault can reaffirm their identity and reclaim their role in the community by speaking up and denouncing the violence they have suffered.