Abstracts of the 2006 CAPN Meeting, Reed College

Ethan Adams
Loyola Marymount University
The Pharsalia Before Lucan

In this paper I visit the site of Lucan’s Bellum Civile as it appears in the literature of his poetic predecessors. The decisive battle between Caesar and Pompey would take place near the small town of Pharsalos located not in Emathia (properly a district of Macedonia), but rather in Thessaly. Usually explained as poetic license, Lucan’s geographical imprecision, I will argue, is a strategic dislocation which moves the theatre of war into the mythic past and reconfigures the civil wars as a mythologized gigantomachy. By locating the battle on the Emathian fields, I suggest, Lucan takes advantage of Emathia’s metaphysical topography, that is, the layers of meaning and associations the region had accrued in previous literature. I examine Emathia and Thessaly as they occur in Catullus, Horace, Vergil, and Ovid, and suggest that Lucan’s topography in the Bellum Civile coordinates historical and mythological conflicts.


Cristina Calhoon
University of Oregon
The Threat of Novelty: Novercae and Res Novae

The presentation focuses on the subversive role of the noverca within the Roman family and on the stereotype of the tyrant in political discourse. Both figures embody threatening aspects of "the New," a concept embedded in the root of the word noverca"(=the new wife, the latest arrival) and in the term "res novae"(=revolution).   In Roman terms the aim of revolutions is to install a tyranny in the place of republican "freedom" (Conspiracy of Catiline), and the would-be revolutionaries are often defined in relation to their fashionably schocking and un-Roman sexual mores and to their love/desire for wealth, power and personal licence. These themes characterize consistently also tyrants like Nero, Caligula and Elagabalus, whose dangerous "novelty" is also expressed in terms of sexual transgression, gender bending, flaunting of luxury and unbridled power, as well as the use of poisons. Likewise the evil stepmother aims at subverting the family hierachy by poisoning her husband and/or his children. In Tacitus'Annals imperial stepmothers (Livia and Agrippina 2)and their tyrannical sons exemplify the confluence of moralizing traditionalism and political discourse.

Stefan G. Chrissanthos
University of California, Riverside
Aeneas in Vietnam: Comparing the Roman and Modern Battle Experience"

From the Social War to the Battle of Actium (90-31 B.C.) there were 45 mutinies in the Roman Republican army.  Both ancient and modern historians usually blame the soldiers’ greed, unwillingness to obey orders, and lust for violence as the stereotypical causes of these events.  However there is one major factor that has long been overlooked: the traumatic effects of combat on the men which often drove them to mutiny.  Therefore, this paper proposes to do two things.  First, it will compare and analyze the similarities between Roman and modern soldiers’ reactions to the extreme conditions of military service and combat.  Second, this paper will analyze the process by which these extreme conditions sometimes led directly to military disintegration and mutiny in the Roman army.  This is an investigation that, to my knowledge, has never been attempted.

Yurie Hong Easton
University of Washington
Statius’ “Lying Bodies” and the Dynamics of Authority in Silvae 4.6

In Silvae 4.6, Statius capitalizes on the aesthetic paradoxes embodied in Vindex’s statuette of  Hercules Epitrapezios to chart his own poetic negotiations of the changing roles of patron and poet under the empire.  I explore how Statius thematizes the ambiguity of the statuette’s facial expression to privilege Vindex’s superior status as an art collector at the expense of his reputation as a skilled poet.  Statius’ exploitation of the opacity of facial and artistic surfaces reveals an attempt to redefine the social landscape in which he and Vindex operate.  The progressive restriction of the public and political life of the Roman elite during the imperial period resulted in a retreat to private spheres of activity including poetic composition.  This rise in poetic dilettantism among elite patrons posed an increasing threat to the authority, influence, and livelihood of the poet which had to be accommodated for the poet to remain culturally relevant.

Walter Englert
Reed College
Epicurus on Pleasure and Happiness

Epicurus famously posited that the highest good is pleasure, and defined the highest form of pleasure as an absence of bodily pain (aponia) and absence of mental anxiety (ataraxia).   Ancient and modern critics have attacked Epicurus’ view of ataraxia and pleasure as implausible and incoherent.  This paper proposes an interpretation of Epicurus’ account of the highest type of pleasure, ataraxia (“untroubledness”), that clarifies his views and solves some problems with  other views of his account.  Far from positing an implausible view of pleasure as the good,  Epicurus viewed  ataraxia as an active, joyful state that was a worthy candidate for the highest form of human happiness.

Matthew Fox
Deep Springs College
The Empire’s New Texts: A Lucan-Centered Syllabus for Roman Literature and History

This paper will present a syllabus concept for teaching the literature and history of the Roman sociopolitical transformation from Republic to Principate. The course begins with a close tandem reading of Caesars and Lucans Civil Wars, the slowly fills in the gaps (chronological, generic, ideological) with other Augustan and early Imperial texts (eg, the Res Gestae, Virgils Aeneid, Ovid Ars & selections from the Met., Tristia and Epistles ex P., selections of Horace, Propertius and Livy). The goal of the course is to mutually enliven the literature and historiography of the epochal century between Julius Caesar and the Neronian Rome of Lucans day by reading Augustan classics through the polarizing field of Caesars and Lucans politically opposed propaganda pieces. Ideally, the course turns at the end to the broader issue of historical reception of the critical Republic-imperial dividfe, a topic explored by reading Shakespeares Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.

Madeleine Goh
Indiana University
Reverse Similes in the Iliad

When Priam arrives in Achilles\' tent in Book 24 of the Iliad, Homer compares Priam to a murderer who flees his own land and seeks protection at a wealthy foreigner's house. Although it is Achilles who has killed Hector, in this "reverse simile" the roles of the two men are reversed. Similarly, in Odyssey Book 8, Odysseus, who is the victor in the Trojan War, is compared to a captive slave woman (since the simile occurs in the context of the song of Demodokos, it is implied that the captive is a Trojan). This paper examines the significance of these and other similes in which an unexpected reversal of roles occur. I argue that in Homer such "reverse similes" appear in describing the hero of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles and Odysseus, respectively, and no one else. Moreover, such similes function as a powerful narrative device of the "master narrator" who foreshadows the action that follow the simile: Achilles' eventual empathy with Priam, for example. (In her 1978 article, Helene Foley examined reverse similes but concentrated on gender reversals).


Julia Hawthorne
University of Puget Sound
The Insanity of Plautus: Comic and Tragic Madness in the "Amphitruo"

Recent scholarship, such as the 2001 articles by Dupont and Slater, has noted that the prevalence of doubling within Plautus' Amphitruo is intertwined with the duality of comedy and tragedy (tragicomoedia). In this paper, I will assert that the madness caused by the doubling of characters is the most compelling outlet and illustration of the juxtaposition of genres. Sosia and Amphitryon both experience insanity, yet the slave\'s madness is comic while his master's is tragic. The divine usurpation of their identities undermines the sanity of their human counterparts; while Sosia cheerfully accepts this alternate version of himself and his world, Amphitryon refuses to acknowledge alterity.  In line with tragic madness as exemplified by Euripides' Bacchae and Heracles, Amphitryo's inability to recognize his perceptions as false threatens him with a tragic end.  It is only through a deus ex machina ending that the comedy is restored.

Stephen Hinds
University of Washington, Seattle
Seneca’s Ovidian Theater

Some specifics of Ovid’s influence upon Senecan drama are set out in R. Jakobi’s useful catalogue of sources and imitations, Der Einfluss Ovids auf den Tragiker Seneca (Berlin 1988).  The present discussion will sketch a more systematic approach to the uses of Ovidian myth in Senecan tragedy. For any Roman poet of the mid to late first century CE, indeed, the very conception of Greco-Roman myth as a system is importantly and inescapably post-Ovidian and post-Metamorphic – a proposition to be tested and explored in this paper’s rereadings of Seneca’s Medea as a post-Ovidian heroine, and of Seneca’s Thebes as a post-Ovidian space.  More unexpectedly, the story of Ovid’s own exile will be seen to haunt some of Seneca’s tragic protagonists (in the Phoenissae Jocasta protests that she and Oedipus were guilty of an error, not a scelus).  Finally, the negative energy characteristic of Seneca’s mythological universe will find a programmatic model in the prior perversion of Ovidian mythic imagination in Ovid’s own Ibis.

Mary Jaeger
University of Oregon
Petrarch's Archimedes, or Absolutely, Positively My Last Talk on Archimedes

Two of Petrarch’s works, the De Viris Illustribus and the Rerum Memorandarum Libri present biographical accounts of Archimedes.  Written a few years apart, and drawing generally on the same sources, they relate almost the same story: Archimedes knew the heavens, invented machines, defended Syracuse, was killed by a Roman soldier and mourned by Marcellus; Cicero rediscovered his grave.  Thus they offer an opportunity to study the effects achieved by an author presenting much the same material in different contexts, with different modes of narration and alterations in detail.  Moreover, as Petrarch presents them, his sources survive only haphazardly as fragmentary remains of a mostly lost tradition, in whose recovery he is deeply involved.  Thus these stories help to illustrate Petrarch’s relationship with the lost and only partly recovered past, and a close reading of them increases our understanding of Petrarch’s response to the classical tradition.

Brett L. Jordan
Eastern Washington University
The Antithesis between Justice and Utility in Cicero's ideal state:  A Platonic Exposition

It is only recently that the political philosophy of Marcus Tullius Cicero has received the attention that it deserves.  Cicero, in his work de legibus, self-consciously builds upon the foundation of both Plato’s Republic and Laws, to facilitate  his own investigation into the composition and formation of the ideal state.   In his search de optimis legibus, concerning the ideal laws, Cicero posits a clear dichotomy within the human mind.  On one hand stands reason, rooted in nature, which allows both Law and Justice to flourish, and which recognizes the equality of all.  On the other hand is utility, whereby the selfish interests of the individual overcome the benefits of Justice.  It is argued in this paper that Cicero’s dichotomy of human behavior in not only highly reflective of the religious and philosophical debates of his time, but also serves as a critique of the contemporary Roman state.

Ortwin Knorr
Willamette University
Pulling Strings: Julius Caesar's Rise from Obscurity to Prominence

Sick, orphaned, and with a prize on his head, the eighteen-year-old Julius Caesar barely escaped with his life when the soldiers of the dictator Sulla tracked him down in his mountain hideout in the winter of 82 BCE. No one could have predicted at this point that Caesar was destined to rule the Roman empire. How did Caesar ever get into this mess, and more important, how did he manage to get out of it? In this paper, I will argue that Caesar's rise to fame is a case study illustrating how Roman aristocrats exploited family and professional connections to advance their careers. In particular, previous scholarship has overlooked how skillfully Caesar in his later career took advantage of connections he inherited from his father and of the professional acquaintances he made in his brief tenure as flamen Dialis.

Anne McClanan
Portland State University
Depictions of the Natural World in the Ravenna Mosaics

My paper will overview a series of renderings of the natural world in the mosaics of Ravenna, Italy. When we look at most of the major cycles of Late Antique and Early Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, whether at the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia or at the Church of San Vitale, plant life and animals proliferate. The overwhelming amount of scholarly attention has focused on the depictions of secular and religious human figures, but my research seeks to explicate the nuances of meaning imparted to this rich natural context that forms the bulk of the mosaic program. The modern category of nature of course must be reconsidered in the Late Antique milieu.

Ellen Millender
Reed College
Archidamus II's Intelligence:  A Reassessment

Scholars who have attempted to account for King Archidamus II's failure to persuade his audience to vote against war in 432 (Thuc. 1.80-85) have largely viewed Archimus as an intelligent figure who was incapable of overcoming the pressures produced by his confederates' growing fear of Athenian imperialism.  A close study of both Thucydides' treatment of Archidamus II and his understanding of intelligence (sunesis).  While many have interpreted his introduction of Archidamus at 1.79.2 as explicit praise of Archidamus' sunesis, it is noteworthy that Thucydides' description of Archidamus' intelligence differs from his references to other figures' sunesis in the History.  Moreover, the position of his introduction of Archidamus in the text and Thucydides' subsequent account of Archidamus' speech and his leadership at the beginning of the war further amplify the Spartan dyarch's shortcomings as a leader.

P. Andrew Montgomery
Samford University
Marius at the Muluccha (Sal. Jug. 92.5-94.7)

The pervasiveness of geographic descriptions and imagery in Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum invites the reader to consider the geographic significance of individual episodes in relation to the whole.  This paper focuses on the geographic significance of one scene—Marius’ siege of a fortress at the river Muluccha (92.5-94.7).  The geography represents both Jugurtha’s new alliance with a powerful ally, the king of Mauretania, and the limits of Marius’ military strategy.  Most interpretations conclude that the episode portrays Marius in a negative light.  I argue, to the contrary that this episode anticipates how Marius can realize the elusive victory over Jugurtha.  The fortress falls when Marius utilizes the cunning of a subordinate who has found a way to penetrate the enemy fortress; thus Sallust demonstrates Marius as one knowing the value of cooperation.  This theme of cooperation becomes an important preface to the introduction of Sulla in the next scene.

Lindsay Alane Morse
University of Washington
Identity Theft Punishable by Death: Dogs, Beasts and Actaeon in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

I examine the theme of dog attacks in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, which is foreshadowed in the detailed ecphrasis of the statues of Diana and Actaeon at 2.4.  Many have noted that the statues are intended as a warning to Lucius, foretelling his eventual metamorphosis into an animal as a result of his curiosity.  I argue that the later tale of the bandit Thrasyleon, who turns himself into a bear and is torn apart by dogs (4.19-20), is intended to remind the reader of this prior warning.  Subsequently, Lucius--as an ass--and his fellow travelers are mistaken for a group of robbers and attacked by the villagers’ dogs (8.17). I finally relate these examples of mistaken identity and dog attacks to the novel as a whole, especially considering the human / animal dichotomy and the metamorphosis between the two which is at play throughout.

Eric Nelson
Institution: Pacific Lutheran University
Hippocrates, Heraclids, the "Kings of the Heracleidai"

In this paper  I examine how the author of the "Presbeutikos" embellished the genealogical histories of Coan Asclepiadai with the claim that the kings of Macedon are also the “Kings of the Heracleidai.”  I argue both that he (and presumably the Coan ambassadors whose speeches the Presbeutikos resembles) manipulated the Asclepiads' Heraclid genealogical tradition and their association with the Argeads to better align themselves with the world of the audience and the Coans’ goal of obtaining asulia, and also that this is done in a manner that best fits the aspirations of Antigonus Gonatas.   This examination not only helps to confirm a dating of the speech to the mid third century BCE, but suggests an approach that might prove fruitful in further considering the Presbeutikos' historical episodes and the information concerning Hippocrates that the speech contains.

Ann M. Nicgorski
Willamette University
New Acquisitions of Greek and Roman Art at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Salem, Oregon)

Since it opened its doors in the autumn of 1998, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Willamette University, Salem, Oregon) has been grateful to receive, from a variety of generous donors, several new acquisitions of Greek and Roman art--important and exciting additions to the permanent collection.  In this paper, many of these new acquisitions will be presented and discussed in light of current scholarship.  These include sculptural examples, such as a female marble head, originally identified as a representation Athena, whose style and iconography indicate an Imperial representation of Dea Roma.  Another female head from a Tanagra figurine, a rare Roman oil lamp, cast in lead, a bronze patera, and a beautiful example of a Roman glass flask will also be discussed.  In addition, the paper will examine the range of the museum\'s ancient pottery collection, which includes a number of Corinthian, Etruscan, Greek South Italian, Daunian, and Gnathian wares, as well as two Athenian black-figured vases featuring Herakles and the Nemean Lion and the Theban Sphinx.

Nigel Nicholson & Rachel Preminger
Reed College
Athletes, Anecdotes, and the Projection of Civic Identity

The many anecdotes about classical athletes have rarely been considered useful sources. Yet these anecdotes offer a privileged window onto those cities that are largely ignored elsewhere but achieved significant athletic success. Western Locri was one such city, and, through an examination of the materials concerning two of its boxers, Euthymus and Hagesidamus, this paper argues that (1) both formal commissions (e. g. odes and statues) and anecdotes were concerned to articulate the identity of the victor’s city before the larger Greek world; (2) the anecdotes related in certain key sites such as Olympia were in some way controlled by elements of the city, much as formal memorials; but (3) there was no unified control over these expressions of identity. Rather, what is revealed by reading the anecdotes alongside the formal memorials is that the idea of Western Locri was contested, and contested through its athletes’ memorials.

Mark Nugent
University of Washington
Sizing Her Up: Art and Identity in Lucian\'s Images

My paper explores the use of painting and sculpture as a rhetorical motif in Lucian’s Images.    In this encomiastic dialogue on the Emperor Verus’ concubine Panthea, the interlocutors Lycinus and Polystratus undertake the paradoxical enterprise of fashioning, by different means, verbal images which represent Panthea’s beauty and learning.  Lycinus crafts a composite image of Panthea’s body through references to Classical statues that contain features like those which she possesses.  Polystratus, in turn, rejects the idea that there are adequate Classical models for Panthea’s learning, and produces an image on a scale appropriate for a person “painted on the very broad panel” of the Roman Empire (17).  My paper argues that the dual modes of composition which the interlocutors employ in depicting Panthea (the appropriation and creative copying of Classical models versus the insistence upon novelty and superiority) are suggestive of different ways of articulating Greek identity under the Roman Empire.

Charles Odahl
Boise State Univ
Christian Minters in Constantinian Arles

The city of Arles in southern Gaul had a long and loyal relationship with the Constantinian Dynasty, and it played an important role in the policies of Constantine the Great (A.D. 306--37) to support the Catholic Church and to Christianize the Roman Empire. This presentation first surveys the connections of Constantine and his family to Arles (base for military operations, site of Constantinian constructions, location of major Church council, site of imperial mint, and place of the birth and burial of Constantine II); and second examines how the mint officials therein went out of their way to reflect the Christian orientation and propagation policies of Constantine by frequently employing Christian symbols as control marks on the coin types produced in the mint of the city. Slides of Constantinian remains and of imperial coins from Arles are used throughout the presentation to illustrate its theses.

Ryan Platte
University of Washington
Pederasty and Pedagogy in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes

In this paper I argue that the gift of the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes inaugurates an erotically tinged pedagogical relationship between Hermes and Apollo, which is best understood in light of the hymn’s probable performative context, a Hermaia, a festival recognizing the maturation of young men (Johnston 2002).  I will discuss three points: first, that the exchange of the lyre initiates this erotic relationship by associating the lyre with Hermes himself, secondly that the presentation of the lyre to Apollo represents the sexual submission of Hermes, and finally that the exchange of this eroticized lyre initiates a recognizeable relationship which is bound-up in Greek notions of pedagogy and concomitant with the theme of the hymn’s original performative context.  I conclude that this pederastic relationship served to provide the intended audience of young men and boys with a recognizable impetus to their own adolescence



Anthony Podlecki
Univ. of British Columbia
Gods Onstage: divine appearances and their impact on the action of  Eum., Aias and Hipp.

The arrival of a chorus of demons in Aiskhylos's Eum. may seem natural enough, given the numerous references to these strange creatures earlier in the trilogy. However, the emergence from his temple of Orestes's patron and protector and the actual appearance of the tutelary deity of the city where Orestes has sought asylum come as something of a surprise. Athena's contribution to the prologue of Sophokles's Aias is to set up the hero for his final ignominious fall. Aphrodite and Artemis frame the action of Euripides's Hipp. and both appearances prove to be more than merely formal elements in this complex drama. My purpose is to explore how these epiphanies are motivated by the exigencies of the plot and what they each contribute to the dynamics of the plot's resolution.

Lorina Quartarone
The University of Saint Thomas
The “heroes” of Ovid’s Epic

This paper/talk is designed to assist both professors and students in understanding the Metamorphoses as a work of unity rather than as a work of individual, unrelated episodes.  The questions and approaches outlined here will prove useful in general literature, myth and epic courses.  I will suggest three different points, during a reading of the Metamorphoses, at which the professor can engage the students in discussions geared toward increasing their appreciation for the poem. The first line of questioning involves a close reading of the introduction and recording the class’ observations and expectations based on the text, the title, and features of the epic genre.  The second line emerges from a consideration of the notion of ‘hero’ as Ovid appears to employ it in this text.  The final line of questioning focuses on a recurring concern of Ovid’s during various metamorphoses:  the key figure’s (in)ability to communicate as s/he experiences a change of body.  These questions will help students examine the theme of speech and how Ovid employs various approaches to it as a central vehicle of the poem.  The discussion is aimed at eliciting notions about tradition (including a synopsis of trado’s implications), cultural inheritance,  personal identity, and interaction/interconnection.  We live through speech.

Brett M. Rogers
University of Georgia
How Not to Teach (and Still Turn a Profit) in Theognis and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Despite the almost total absence of evidence for the economics of education in archaic Greece, the ‘didactic’ poetry of Theognis and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes form a dialogue on the relationship between teaching and profit.  In the Theognidea, the speaker systematically uses didaskô language to describe negative exempla and instruction motivated by poverty and monetary concerns, identifying the social degradation of the learner as the product of such teaching.  This aristocratic disdain of economics in education finds a response in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, wherein the infant craftsman Hermes seeks to teach (didaskô) the art of song to his would-be student Apollo for profit (kerdos).  Hermes provides an alternative to Theognis’ stance by revealing how profit can be attained through clever self-representation and negotiation, offering a form of (non-)instruction that turns teaching into the more palatable form of gift-exchange and thus leaving intact the social status of Apollo.



Benjamin Stevens
Bard College
per gestum res est significanda mihi: Thought about Language in Ovid’s Poetry of Exile

Against the claim that Ovid’s representation of the linguistic features of his exile “should not be interpreted as reflecting any ancient theory of linguistic interference” (Nagle 1980:133), I argue that Ovid does in fact represent his exile, through a series of tropes, images, and allusions to other authors, in ways which match well with widespread ancient thought about language and even ‘theories’ about cultural contact, language change, and language learning. In the phrase per gestum res est significanda mihi (Tr. 5.10.36), Ovid’s exile is represented linguistically as a second infancy, a return to human prehistory, and a breakdown of the basic separation between speaking human and speechless animal. At a more general level, I thus argue that there is more complicated thought about language in Roman authors than the absence of linguistics as such would imply.

Jody Valentine
University of Southern California
Loss of the Past: The ethics of antiquities collecting at the J. Paul Getty Museum

In November 2005, Italy began to prosecute an unprecedented case against Marion True, the former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum.  In their case, Italy holds True accountable for the museum’s allegedly illegal purchase of antiquities looted from Italy. This case has broad implications for the future of the practice of collecting antiquities and so has sparked a strong response from scholars, curators and collectors.  The current case has brought into the spotlight issues with a complex history.  This paper will analyze a small sample of the Getty’s collection of antiquities in order to open up a discussion about the consequences of antiquities collecting in contemporary times.  Questions will be raised about the aims of a public collection of antiquities and the importance of archeological context in appreciating and studying ancient objects.

Marie Van Kommer
Eastern Washington University
Alexander the Great:  Protrait of a SocioPath

Last year, in this meeting, it was argued that the extreme and erratic behavior of Alexander the Great may have been caused either by post-traumatic stress syndrome or by other psychological illnesses, such as manic-depression.  The immediate drawback to the former suggestion is the fact that Alexander the Great incurred no more trauma than any aristocrat of his time.  The drawback of the second suggestion is that it is inadequate to explain the evidence.  In this paper, I too will examine the actions of Alexander the Great in the light of modern psychological knowledge.  However, I have chosen a quite different diagnosis to explain his behavior:  that of a sociopath.  I will first examine the diagnostic traits of a sociopath, and then compare these traits with a selection of Alexander’s most infamous acts.

Michael Williams
Willamette University
Hymns and Acclamations in the Portian Basilica Crisis

This paper will argue that the early Christian liturgical hymn, which came to prominence in the church only in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, may be seen as an adaptation of the traditional  Roman practice of acclamation.  In particular, it will argue that the development of liturgical hymnody was in part a response to specific political situations in which the authority of the Christian bishop was challenged.  The public singing of hymns offered a formidable display of unity, and helped to establish a bishop’s popular influence as the acknowledged leader of a united congregation.  The crisis over the Portian basilica in late-antique Milan will provide a case study for this discussion, with the intention of showing how Ambrose of Milan used both acclamations and hymns in order to resolve a series of disputes with his enemies in the imperial court and elsewhere.