Classics

This paper discusses Cassius Dio’s political thought in his Agrippa-Maecenas debate (52.2-40) through the use of a form of content analysis developed by political scientists called “operational code analysis.” It offers a description of operational code analysis, which demonstrates the value of this method to the debate. It then presents an examination of Dio’s operational code, from which one can glean his philosophical and instrumental views on politics. It argues, inter alia, that the Agrippa address is based on the same epistemological foundations as the Maecenean corollary. Further, the paper stresses that the Agrippa oration remains consistent with views Dio expresses elsewhere in his history. This suggests that scholars should not discount the efficacy of the Agrippa oration, despite its utopian character.

Classics, the Culture Wars, and Beyond pertains to disputes over what Americans should learn in colleges and universities, about who we are as Westerners. The book examines the role of classical studies in the tempestuous academic environment of the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, which witnessed impassioned debates over affirmative action, the literary canon, multiculturalism, Afrocentrism, feminism, and postmodernism. Its analysis of major classical controversies during this period offers insight into the place of ancient Greece and Rome in contemporary American higher education. Through an appreciation of this role, the book suggests ways for the field of classics—and, more broadly, for the humanities—to survive in the uncongenial pedagogical and intellectual climate of the present.

Many scholars contend that Tacitus' praise for Nerva and Trajan in the *Agricola* was heartfelt: only has his literary career developed did Tacitus prove condemning of the Roman Empire as a system. This article, in keeping with Bartsch's notion of imperial doublespeak, argues against this claim, stressing that in the *Agricola* Tacitus can also be read as subtly undercutting the praise he included for the current emperors. It maintains that a key to Tacitus' implicit criticism of imperial authoritarianism in the *Agricola* rests on the mater of effectiveness. Unlike all other categories of Roman leaders in the work, "good" emperors lack the ability to be effective agents of change. The *Agricola* thus carries important hints that Tacitus, far from disdaining Domitian alone, can also be interpreted as deeming the monarchical control of Rome problematic under any circumstances.

Many recent critics of the neoliberal university blame traditionalists during the American academic culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s for the impetus to treat institutions of higher learning like businesses. This paper challenges this contention, stressing that the origins of academic neoliberalism are much earlier. It demonstrates that nineteenth-century university reformers such as Charles W. Eliot knowingly crafted a curriculum that embodied free-market capitalism. This is the true origin of the corporate university in the US, and critics of campus neoliberalism must not overlook curricular neoliberalism as they aim to reform our higher education.

This article presents a representative, “state-of-the-field” picture of what US classical scholars think about issues of prime importance to their discipline. It offers results from a large-scale survey of randomly selected members of the Society for Classical Studies. We demonstrate not only what classicists think about key questions, but also how attitudes diverge on the basis of differing political ideologies, genders, ethnicities, and incomes, challenging impressionistic assumptions about the discipline. In light of the survey data, we also present ideas for the field to respond to the pedagogical, intellectual, and financial pressures of contemporary American higher education.

These are troubling days for the humanities in America. In response, a recent prolieration of works defending the humanities has emerged. But, taken together, what are these works really saying, and how persuasive do they prove? The Battle of the Classics demonstrates the crucial downsides of contemporary apologetics for the humanities and presents in its place a historically informed case for a different approach to rescuing the humanistic disciplines in higher education. It uses the "Battle of the Classics" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a springboard for crafting a novel foundation for the humanistic tradition.

Eric Adler demonstrates that current defenses of the humanities rely on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of certain poorly defined skills such as "critical thinking." It criticizes this conventional approach, contending that humanists cannot hope to save their disciplines without arguing in favor of particular humanities content. As the uninspired defenses of the classical humanities in the late nineteenth century prove, instrumental apologetics are bound to fail. All the same, the book shows that proponents of the Great Books favor a curriculum that is too intellectually narrow for the twenty-first century. The Battle of the Classics thus lays out a substance-based approach to undergraduate education that will revive the humanities, even as it steers clear of overreliance on the Western canon. The book envisions a global humanities based on the examination of masterworks from manifold cultures as the heart of an intellectually and morally sound education.

The architects of the modern American university knowingly attacked the humanistic tradition in their successful attempt to center higher learning in the US on the scientific method. Without a rebirth of (an omnicultural) humanism, the humanities will never rebound in our education and our culture.

This article contends that the so-called New Humanism--a movement of literary and social criticism led by Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More--was more politically varied than previous scholarship has suggested. Although by no means principally driven by political concerns, the Humanists supported a range of views on both domestic and foreign affairs. It is thus misleading to deem the movement "conservative."

Plausible deniability has presented both problems and opportunities to queer people and queer historical projects. Some scholars have avoided reading one woman expressing desire for another in the graffito CIL IV 5296. The speaker of Tibullus 1.4 uses a double meaning to solicit sexual penetration without incurring penalties; this reading has not appeared in print before. Considering the ways in which plausible deniability has affected readings of these poems, we should sometimes take plausible affirmability as a principle for identifying queer desires when we write history. This principle is explored through the lenses of post-Foucauldian historicism and queer unhistoricism.

Several Latin epitaphs for dogs play with the idea of learnedness, or "doctitude", and indicate that these dogs knew some tricks, both canine and literary. Among these inscriptions, CE 1175 = CIL VI 29896, the epitaph for Pearl (Margarita), stands out for its sophisticated poetics and because its speaker is the dog herself. Pearl's epitaph has received some scholarly attention but, as yet, no sustained readings of its poetics. This article explores the poetics of CIL VI 29896, in particular its display and parody of doctitude and its ideas about authorship.

Chapter in "Myth, Text, and History at Sparta", T. Figueira ed., from Gorgias Press, 2016.

The myth of Theseus' abduction of Helen and her retrieval by the Dioscuri in an invasion of Attica has received relatively little scholarly discussion, although it treats the first (albeit mythical) Spartan expedition against Athens. This is perhaps because it is overshadowed by Helen's other, more famous abduction, and possibly also because it was not a topic depicted in Athenian tragedy or monumental art. This myth, however, both deserves scholarly interest because of its clear pan-Hellenic status and historical resonances, and requires scholarly investigation because of the fragmentary and fragmented state of its transmission. This study is divided into three sections, each of which tries to advance our understanding of the abduction and retrieval mythology. First it reconsiders the evidence for Hellanicus' account, which, although it has long been held as one of the most important sources for the myth, has never been properly interpreted. Second, it explores the features of the myth that vary from account to account, using these changing details to uncover the basic structures of this narrative and to show how the myth was adapted for differing audiences in time and place. Third, building upon this analysis, it locates the confrontations between Cleomenes, Isagoras, and Cleisthenes in the late sixth-century as a critical context for the evolution and political deployment of the myth. Finally, in addition to this analysis of the Dioscuric expedition, there are four appendices which provide and organize the various literary and visual depictions of the abduction and retrieval myth.

Traditionally, scholars portray the palaces of imperial Rome as spaces for interaction between the emperor and his elite guests while erasing the majority of the familia urbana that populated these sprawling structures: the slaves. Yet by examining the architecture and decorations of the palaces of Augustus and Nero in Rome, the lives of enslaved people can be reconstructed, restoring their centrality to the history of the early Principate.