Classics

A re-examination of P.Oxy 2212 and the Milan Diegeseis; suggestions on the overall structure of book 3 of Callimachus' Aetia; identification and discussion of thematic patterns; Appendix on the cult of the Cabeiroi boys (Onnes and Tottes) at Miletus-Didyma and the sanctuary and festival of Artemis Laphria at Patras, along with some observations on the transformational nature of uncontrolled encounters with the divine.

On two of the Greek inscriptions that accompanied wall-paintings in the 'House of the Muse' (the 'House of Propertius') found in an Augustan house in Assisi under the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Iamus and Narcissus; observations on metrics and language and the themes of the paintings.

On that underlying unease and discomfort that most of us feel, if we are honest, when we read Apollonius' 'Argonautica'. Analysis of an important episode in Apollonius Rhodius' 'Argonautica' (The Lemnian Women) as a diagnostic example with important implications for the larger question: 'How are we to read Apollonius?' The significance of the mythological themes represented on the cloak worn by Jason as he goes to meet Hypsipyle in the episode of the Lemnian Women in Apollonius Rhodius 'Argonautica' 1.609-909, and the implications for the moral quality and behavior of Apollonius' Jason as a character. (Ariadne, Abesent Fathers, Hypsipyle as Nausicaa, the relation of the description of Jason's cloak to the Catalogue of Women in 'Odyssey' 11.225-330.) On Apollonius as a genuine and independent post-Homeric writer.

Identification and discussion of specific passages in Tibullus that appear to have been written with Hellenistic Greek authors, texts, and issues in mind. The influence of the Alexandrians on Roman elegiac poetry.

[[Comment by Francis Cairns reviewing Robert Ball 'Tibullus the Elegist' in 'Classical Review' 37 (1987) 180-2

"Recent Tibullan scholarship, if it has achieved anything, has revealed how thoroughly steeped Tibullus was in Hellenistic learning, so that any curt denial of Callimachean influence is dangerous; and it was A. W. Bulloch's masterly paper 'Tibullus and the Alexandrians', PCPhS 119 (1973), 71-89 (the very work offering the conclusion dismissed by B.), which swung the balance of scholarly opinion decisively in this direction."]]

Or may you be struck by the three-grooved weapon of hostile Jupiter, as was Hipponoüs' son [=Capaneus] and the father of Dexithea [=Demonax], as was the sister of Autonoë [=Semele], as was the one whose aunt was Maia [=Iasion], as was the one who poorly guided the longed-for horses [=Phaëthon], as was the wild son  The text (see handout 23) is corrupt. If we read Lindia, however, there is certainly some connection with Hercules. Darcy Krasne The Curse of Pedantry in Ovid's Ibis 2 ut Macelo rapidis icta est cum coniuge flammissic, precor, aetherii vindicis igne cadas. (Ovid, Ibis 469-76) of Aeolus [=Salmoneus], as was the one born from the same blood from which Arctos was born, she who lacks the liquid waters [=any son of Lycaon]; as Macelo was struck, along with her spouse, by the swift flames-thus, I pray, you may fall by the fire of a heavenly avenger.

This paper investigates the extended catalogue of curses in Ovid’s Ibis, in particular the catalogue's literary significance and the reasons and methods behind Ovid's organizing principles and choice of themes. I demonstrate how the Ibis plays with presenting itself in the manner of mythographic texts while exploiting the polyvalency of the mythic tradition’s inherent mutability and syncretism. I also discuss how major themes of the poem, such as a prevalent emphasis on names and their suppression, and an identification of the poetic corpus with the poet’s own body, echo the thematic concerns of Ovid’s other exile poetry. Finally, I argue for identifying Ovid’s pseudonymous enemy “Ibis” with the Muses, whose “love/hate” relationship with Ovid is clearly expressed in the exile poetry.

Although Valerius Flaccus does not indulge excessively in Apollonius-style aetia that explain the Argonautic origins of future landmarks and rituals, there is still a noticeably aetiological current running throughout his "Argonautica," primarily explaining the organization of a world that is already complete prior to the Argo’s launching. This enables the Argonauts of Valerius’s epic, which is heavily influenced by the later events of Seneca’s "Medea," to enact the crime that the chorus of Seneca’s "Medea" lays at their feet: the crime of dragging together divinely-imposed boundaries (Med. 335–339). Effectively, Valerius’s altered aetiology helps to define a world that is primed to be impacted by the Argonauts’ voyage in the same way that Seneca’s chorus claims it was, rather than a world that the Argonauts help to complete, as they do in Apollonius’s epic. In the Roman "Argonautica"’s middle region, however, Valerius alters his aetiological approach, using exclusively aetia drawn from Apollonius, and this unprecedented aetiological pattern occurs in particular following Tiphys’s death. This is one facet of the pervasive metapoetics that occupy the epic’s middle region (defined approximately as extending from the departure from Phineus’s kingdom, in Book 4, to the medial invocation of the Muse in Book 5). Tiphys, as the helmsman and guide of what scholars have identified as an ultimately poetic craft, has been serving as Valerius’s muse during the outward voyage, following Aratus’s celestial σήματα. His death, therefore, is catastrophic for the epic; without him, Valerius can only follow the terrestrial σήματα previously laid down by Apollonius as the Argonauts make their way to Colchis. At this point, Valerius is finally able to free himself from the intensified Apollonian narrative, invoking a new muse for the new song on which he now embarks: the “aetiology” of Seneca’s "Medea"’s Medea.

This paper examines the structure of the catalogue in Ovid’s Ibis. In the catalogue’s first half, Ovid highlights the important exilic themes of exile, nostos, and meter through repeating markers located at significant points, specifically a quarter of the way through and at the catalogue’s center (identified by a couplet that forms a ring-composition with the catalogue’s opening). In the catalogue’s second half, Ovid emphasizes poets and poetry, divine punishment, dismemberment, and the consumption of one’s own flesh and blood—again, recurrent themes in the exile poetry. Throughout, metapoetic language suggests both elegy and iambus, appropriately for the poem’s genre-crisis.