Abstracts of the Joint CACW-CAPN conference in Victoria B.C. February 18-19, 2005


Presenter    Ross, Charles
Purdue University
Comparative Literature
Title    Augury and the Undecidability Topos in Statius's Thebaid
Abstract    This paper looks to determine Statius's understanding of the irrational by comparing Statius's use of auguries and other methods of predicting the future with one of the poet's favorite topoi. In either case Statius seems to distance himself from the fumblings of his Grecian characters. The Argives refuse to abide by the negative omens discerned by the prophet Amphiaraus. The Thebans are relieved, in their misery, by Tiresias's predictions that they will not lose in the war between Polynices and Eteocles. Yet the narrative voice of the poem lambasts both sides for seeking to predict the future on the grounds that it is somehow unworkmanlike, un-Roman, unmanly to do so. That voice seems to prefer the rational, and so it is not surprising that Statius often inflicts uncertainties on his characters, particularly Adrastus, who wonders, for example, where Apollo resides (at the end of book one) and whether Hypsipyle is a goddess. The paper will also suggest, briefly, what appeal Statius's hectoring tone had for later writers like Dante or Milton

Presenter    Kindt, Julia C.
The University of Chicago
Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts
Title    Knowledge, Knowing, and Spotting the Blind Spot Knowledge and Reflection in Accounts of Oracle Consultations
Abstract    Accounts of oracle consultations depict interpretation. However, at the same time, these stories require interpretation themselves. In my paper I investigate how these two receptive levels might be related to each other. I outline what kind of knowledge oracle stories communicate and how they communicate it. I show that the continuing scholarly debate about the existence or non-existence of a chasm, vapours, and a frantic priestess Pythia is irrelevant to the nature of the oracular discourse and its transmission. The knowledge communicated in these stories is not irrational nor is it induced by intoxication of the Pythia, but is deep and reflective and communicates strong notions of order.

Presenter    Feldman, Sarah E.
University of Victoria, Philosophy
Title    Oracular modes of knowing in Presocratic philosophy
Abstract    Early Greek philosophy makes frequent use of the dichotomy between contingent, incomplete human knowledge and perfect, divine knowledge. My thesis is that these two types of knowledge are not mutually exclusive for the Presocratics and are often collapsed into one another in a subjective state of "oracular knowing" - that is, a simultaneous state of knowing and not-knowing. In general, a philosopher's use of oracular modes of knowing indicates either: a) a gap between desired knowledge and available epistemic tools, or b) a belief in a species of knowledge which is not rationally/linguistically expressible. The three main traits of oracular knowledge I will be isolating in this paper are: a) an absence of social, historical, or deductive context b) a straining of traditional linguistic forms c) an attempt to both acknowledge and bridge the gap between human and divine realms

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Presenter    Nice, Alex T
Reed College/University of the Witwatersrand
Department of Classics
Title    Erudition, Antiquarianism, and Exploitation: Roman Responses to Diviners and Divination in the Second Century B.C.
Abstract    Rome's expansion throughout the Mediterranean in the Late Third and Early Second Centuries B.C. resulted in an influx of foreign cults and divinatory practices. This paper examines Roman responses to forms of divination alien to the customary rituals of the Roman state. For some members of the Roman elite the influx of ideas was an opportunity for the broadening of their intellectual horizons, for others it implied a recourse to antiquarianism and a strengthening of Rome's habitual religious rituals. For yet others this meant an opportunity for exploitation, whereby a special relationship with the divine could be cultivated to further one's own political aspirations. In all cases the inevitable outcome was a reshaping of Roman thoughts on religion and divination which foreshadows the developments in religious thought and practice that characterise the final years of the Roman Republic a century later.


Presenter    Robinson, Annabel
University of Regina
Title    Hungry at the banquet of reason: Jane Harrison and the irrational
Abstract    Influenced by Gilbert Murray, and particularly by his translations of Euripides, Jane Harrison appropriated personally his "lesson" of the Bacchae, that there are in the world "things, not of reason, but both below and above it" which we tend to worship, and which can either bring bliss or tear us to shreds. Underlying much of Harrison's writing is a glorification of the sub- or supra-rational, and scorn for the purely rational. This paper will explore to what extent she herself was irrational in espousing the irrational in religion.

Presenter    Todd, Robert B
University of British Columbia, Classics
Title    E.R. Dodds and the Irrational
Abstract    E.R. Dodds is the scholar most associated with the modern study of the irrational in antiquity; in this paper I would draw on some recent publications of mine and add new material in order to define the range and sources of Dodds' interest in this subject.

Presenter    Bocci, Nicole J
University of Calgary
Department of Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Analyzing Alexander the Great
Abstract    Later in his life Alexander the Great appears to have experienced a change in his personality. He became more aware of portents and divine signs, but more importantly he became wary of his closest companions. As he progressed east, Alexander raged against some of his closest friends, fearing that they were in a conspiracy against him. Some such examples are his murdering of Cleitus the Black, Parmenio, and Callisthenes. It is also important to note that at this time Alexander's drinking continued to increase as well. This paper will look at Alexander's actions to see what they may imply about his mental state. It will take into account modern day diagnoses such as posttraumatic stress disorder and manic depression to see if Alexander potentially suffered from one of them. It is a look at Alexander's behavior towards the end of his life in the light of modern day psychiatric diagnoses.

Presenter    Cazes, Helene J
University of Victoria
Department of French
Title    How Greek poets can teach reason according to Henricus Stephanus II
Abstract    As of the first collection of Greek verse for the youth, published at the imitation of Erasmus in the late 1560's, to the monumental anthologies of Epic poets (1566), Epigrammata (1570), Moral excerpts and Presocratic Poets (1573), the undefatigable editor and humanist Henri Estienne (1531-1598) never ceases to plead the cause of Poets in term of rationality and reason : according to the lengthy prefaces that he devotes to the topic, Greek poetry contains more sense and philosophy than would be expected from their apparent fictionality. For the humanist, the meaning of poetry is not only to be found in the myth or the fable, as taught by ancient philosophers, but also in the reaction triggered in the reader's mind. Thus, on the model of the "Apology for Herodotus", the editor offers an "apology for poets" and defines the new notion of "poesis philosophia". This very notion would be the core of my paper.

Presenter    Nelson, Max G.
University of Windsor
Classical and Modern Languages
Title    Magic and the Rational
Abstract    In 1951 E. R. Dodds' series of Sather Classical Lectures was published in his justly famous work The Greeks and the Irrational. Dodds never really defined what he meant by "the irrational", but he certainly understood it to include such things as poetic inspiration, the prediction of the future, and the practice of magic. However, the study of ancient magic has come a long way in the last fifty years and some basic assumptions about it have drastically changed. For one, the inefficacy of magical rites used to be taken for granted; now scholars have shown that magic probably often did work, though in different ways than the ancients may have thought. Furthermore, magic used to be defined as fundamentally irrational; however now magic is often viewed as a rational, albeit non-scientific, means of using knowledge concerning occult causal links in the world to attain one's personal goals.

Presenter 1    George, Demetra
Kepler College
Presenter 2    Wilson, Malcolm
University of Oregon
Title    The de Decubitu: the Contexts of Rationality
Abstract    The de Decubitu is a astrological-medical guide intended to help physicians diagnose patients based on the time of their 'decumbiture', the time they go to bed on account of their illness (hence its Latin title de Decubitu). As a fusion of Greek and Egyptian, elite and common, ideas, and as the focus of astronomy, astrology and medicine, it serves as an excellent source for distinguishing the patterns of ancient rationality. I shall argue that the rationality displayed in the text, to the extent that it is a useful concept at all, is deeply multivalent and dependent on a variety of social and cultural factors.

Presenter    Morand, Anne-France
Institut romand d'Histoire de la medecine et de la sante publique, Faculte de medecine, Universite de Lausanne
University of Victoria, Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Ancient medicine: ancient rationality and modern pseudo-rationality
Abstract    The theory of humours, which asserts that four or more bodily liquids presided over health and illness, played an prominent role in ancient medicine : a perfect balance of the humours was necessary for good health; humoural imbalance was thought to be the cause of various illnesses. From a modern medical point of view, humoural theories are thought to be fundamentally incorrect. My aim in this talk is to contrast rational elements in ancient medical thought with the pseudo-rational views of modern historians of medicine. I shall show that modern constructions of humoural theories are often so simplified and draw on so many different sources that they are simply wrong. Furthermore, the elaboration of humoural theories during the Middle Ages distorts the accounts of ancient humoural theories. I shall emphasize that, because contemporary medical thought dismisses these theories, historians of medicine also avoid them or deal with them unsatisfactorily.

Presenter    Mason, Hugh J
University of Toronto
Classics
Title    Rational Paradox: The explanation of false death in the Ancient Novel.
Abstract    A characteristic feature of the ancient novel os its concentration on dramatic paradoxes such as false death, kindly pirates or virginity preserved even in a brothel. This paper will explore some supposedly "rational" explanations of "false death" in ancient novels, including Chariton 1.8 (lack of food caused a resumption of respiration, blocked by a kick to the stomach); King Apollonius of Tyre 26 (breathing obstructed by congealed blood due to severe cold; cured by application of heat); Apuleius 10.11 and Xenophon of Ephesus 3.7 (death-resembling sleep caused by a drug -mandragora) I plan to focus on the novelists' choice of such "rational" explanation as to an external (divine?) causation; and on the medical conidition of "suspended animation" that is used to rationalize these paradoxes.

Presenter    Irwin, M. Eleanor
University of Toronto at Scarborough
Humanities
Title    Flower power in medicine and magic
Abstract    From Homer on, certain plants had mysterious healing properties known to the experts and shared with the few, like nepenthe given to Helen in Egypt along with knowledge of its use to ease pain. Those in the know were often on the edge of society - women, foreigners or not-completely-human like Cheiron the centaur from whom many heroes learned herbal medicine. There was a deliberate attempt to control access as illustrated by stories told by the 'root-cutters' of strange (irrational) behaviour practiced by those who gathered medicinal plants. But many herbal treatments have a rational explanation, appreciated more today than in the past. I will explore both irrational and rational components of Greek herbal medicine.

Presenter    Harms, Paul J
University of Calgary, Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Aretaeus and Physician-Assisted Suicide
Abstract    I will begin with a brief summary of the arguments of Ludwig Edelstein and Danielle Gourevitch, who claim that Graeco-Roman physicians readily and commonly aided sick people to die. More recently this view has been put forth by Paul Carrick and Darrel Amundsen. I will then briefly point out what I think are problematic elements in their arguments. Lastly I will focus on Aretaeus' sympathetic approach to his patients. In particular I will examine passages which highlight his position on physician assisted suicide. Aretaeus clearly stands in opposition to the kind of physician Edelstein and Gourevitch claim was commonplace.

Presenter    Connors, Catherine
University of Washington, Classics
Title    The geography of rage in Apuleius' Metamorphoses.
Abstract    Apuleius' Metamorphoses imports many epic elements into its prose fiction. Its hero Lucius is a dangerously curious wanderer, like Odysseus. He eventually finds his way to Rome, like Aeneas. As in epic, divine anger is in one way or another central to all the episodes of the story as Lucius tells it. This paper will explore the ways in which anger operates throughout the novel. Of particular interest is the portrayal of Venus as the deity whose rage drives the inset narrative of Psyche and Cupid. Apuleius' descriptions of Venus' rage are modelled on Vergil's account of Juno's rage against Venus, Aeneas and the future of Rome in the Aeneid. In place of the Aeneid's Juno vs. Venus contest, the novel constructs a world in which divine anger of specifically Roman imperial dimensions must give way before the benevolence of Isis which transcends imperial space and time.

Presenter    Keith, Alison M.
Victoria College,
University of Toronto,
Classics and Women's Studies
Title    Anger and Theban Civil War in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Statius' Thebaid
Abstract    Both Ovid and Statius associate the madness of civil war with a Theban myth of origins. Thus although the oracle of Apollo at Delphi instructs the Phoenician Cadmus to found Thebes in Ovid's Metamorphoses (3.10-13), the actual foundation of the city is predicated not on reason and piety but on rage and battle-lust as Cadmus must slay the Dragon of Mars (Met. 3.25-94) and watch the Spartoi engage in bloody civil war (Met. 3.101-25). These origins in battle frenzy leave their mark on both the site and its inhabitants, leaving Thebes open to recurrent outbreaks of anger and civil war. My paper examines the rage that motivates individual members of the house of Cadmus as both a genealogical inheritance (in Ovid's Theban narrative of Met. 3-4) and a literary legacy (in Statius' Thebaid) from the Ovidian Dragon of Mars, and also considers the landscapes of Thebes as a geography of madness.

Presenter    Fitch, John G.
University of Victoria
Dept. of Greek & Roman Studies
Title    Passion, Death, and the Nature of (Senecan) Tragedy
Abstract    This paper pays tribute to Otto Regenbogen's classic essay "Schmerz und Tod in den Tragödien Senecas" of 1927/28. The passions which dominate Seneca's tragedies are often based on a sense of pain and hurt, and particularly on a sense of damaged selfhood. (Dolor can refer both to such pain and to the anger that arises from it.) Another dominating aspect of the plays is their focus on death and the world of death, which is closely associated with the passions. Death repeatedly invades the world of the living, and threatens or destroys the young in particular. The plays' intense focus on dolor and death carries through into their notoriously harsh endings. Critics often make the assumption that tragedy properly offers some final healing or resolution of suffering. But tragedy has many potentials, one of which is to present starkly and forcefully the pain of human existence.

Presenter    Pollio, David M.
Christopher Newport University
Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures,
Title    Interpreting Madness: Plato's Division of the Soul and Vergil's Amata and Turnus
Abstract    Scholars have argued that Amata and Turnus are naturally predisposed to the madness and violence that Allecto instills in them in Aeneid 7. Recently, however, scholars, treating the gods as characters (instead of symbols), have argued that Allecto's actions are "real" within the Aeneid's fictive universe and, therefore, that Amata and Turnus may be considered victims, not necessarily villains. I will apply Plato's conception of the soul (especially as outlined in Republic 4) to explain how an ancient audience may have understood and reacted to the irrational madness that engulfs Amata and Turnus. I will demonstrate (1) that Allecto corrupts their passion - "the natural auxiliary of reason" (441a) - so that it works in concert with the irrational element of their souls and (2) that Vergil intimates Turnus' innocence by having him both recognize that he has acted irrationally (12.645-9, 665-71) and accept the justness of Aeneas' punishment (12.931); Turnus, unlike Amata, "hears the voice of the shepherd, that is, reason, bidding his dog bark no more" (440d).

Presenter    Creese, David E.
University of British Columbia, Classical, Near Eastern & Religious Studies
Title    MULES, SEMITONES AND LUKEWARM COFFEE: (IR)RATIONALITY AND MUSICAL PERCEPTION IN GREEK HARMONICS
Abstract    For Greek musical theorists, rationality, in the sense of a musical interval being expressible "en logois arithm'n", was a key debating point. So-called "Pythagorean" harmonicists held that numerical relationships underlie the differences between notes. How could such theorists respond to others who asserted that musical intervals are constituted by qualitative, not quantitative, differences? Or that there might exist some intervals the voice can produce and the ear perceive, but which cannot be expressed by numerical ratio? Do such "irrational" intervals have a musical identity at all? Is rationality an attribute of the harmonic? The paper will examine the answers to these questions proposed by a certain Panaetius the Younger, whose only surviving work is a fragment preserved by Porphyry in his commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonics (65.21-67.10 D�ring). Panaetius' argument, in many respects unique in antiquity, involves admitting the necessity of rational analysis of musical intervals while denying ratios any logical priority, and attempts to preserve the definition of an interval as a "blend" (krasis) which is perceived qualitatively.

Presenter    Oleson, John P.
University of Victoria
Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Well-Pumps for Dummies: Was there a Roman Tradition of Popular, Sub-Literary Engineering Manuals?
Abstract    Upper-class Roman intellectuals were aware of the need for the transmission of technical information to the working classes directly engaged in crafts and manufacturing. Pliny the Elder states that he wrote his Natural History for the "great crowd of farmers, artisans, and those who have time for these pursuits" (praef. 1). The Natural History is unwieldy, and most craftsmen would have found the information contained in it of no help in their day-to-day activities. But Pliny cites numerous sources of information and says he perused "about 2,000 books" to collect his "20,000 facts" from "100 authors" (praef. 17). Could some of these books have been practical manuals concerned with every-day technical challenges, such as building a concrete wall, laying out cog-wheels for a water-mill, or making a well pump? The relatively high level of basic literacy in the Roman empire, combined with the expanding economy of the first two centuries A.C., probably fostered the spread of some craft techniques and innovations in popular written form - particularly in the European provinces, manuals with straightforward text accompanied by illustrations or diagrams. Although these hypothetical sub-literary technical manuals have been lost, occasional mention of such commentarii (handbooks) survives, and it is possible that their influence can be traced in the artifacts created by the artisans who used them. This paper proposes that striking similarities in design and dimensions linking many of the wood-block force-pumps used in domestic wells in the Western Roman provinces can only be explained by the influence of such a manual, now lost, concerned with the techniques of domestic water supply. This particular technology is well-suited to such methods of transmission.

Presenter    Nikolic, Milo
University of Victoria
Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Bridges, Bends, and Bubbling Bellies: A New Look at Vitruvius' Vocabulary
Abstract    Book 8 of de architectura by Vitruvius contains the only surviving ancient text that describes in some detail gravity-flow water pipelines, also known as inverted siphons. The relevant passage is notoriously difficult to translate. Attempts to reconcile the text with archaeological evidence seem to have further exacerbated the problem even to an extent that some modern scholars claim that Vitruvius did not understand what he was writing about. The physical behaviour of water and residual air in such systems is problematic indeed, even by modern scientific standards. Based on an examination of the fluid mechanical properties of pipelines, this paper investigates a few key terms from Vitruvius' description that may have been mistranslated in the past. Perhaps he understood the systems better than we give him credit for.

Presenter 1    Williams, Burma P
Independent Scholar
Presenter 2    Williams, Richard S.
Washington State University,
Dept of History
Title    PEBBLES & CALCULATORS: Thoughts on Roman Computing
Abstract    At Caerleon, Wales, a number of bone disks were found in the archaeological dig at the Roman camp of Isca. Although sometimes considered to be gaming pieces, the large number and uniformity of the pieces leads us to conclude that these are more likely markers (calculi) for Roman board abaci. Three metal devices about the size of 4x6 cards are designated as Roman "hand abaci," and are often noted as the major means by which Romans calculated. From personal inspection of the size and operation of the Paris abacus, we conclude that these are novelty items that do not seem very practical. We suggest that the normal method of Roman computing beyond finger calculation, thus seems to be boards or tables using the bone markers rather than metal abaci. This is an example of needing to look at the "minor" pieces from archaeology as clues to major trends in social and economic history.

Presenter    Keyser, Paul T
IBM Watson Research Center
Title    (Un)Natural Accounts in Herodotos and Thucydides
Abstract    The Hippokratic corpus and the fragments of writers categorized as "presocratics" by Diels have been deployed extensively in debates about rationality, science, and tradition, scholars studying Herodotos and Thucydides have positioned their debates differently, as, e.g., an issue of historical accuracy, a tradition going back at least to Dionysios of Halikarnassos' invective against his countryman's status as father of history. I will argue for an independent approach opened up by considering the copious evidence for how Herodotos and Thucydides treated natural science and numbers. Thucydides employs a rhetoric of reliability, but his treatment of numbers and phenomena can be shown to be very traditional, whereas Herodotos often reports on, partially accepts, or even intellectually engages with contemporary natural-philosophic debates. The contrast of their social origins, the one a general from a wealthy family of an ethnically-exclusivist town, the other a widely-traveled merchant from a polyglot colony, may not be irrelevant.

Presenter    Kukkonen, Taneli
University of Victoria
Dept. of Philosophy
Title    The Waking Life of Reason: A Brief History of Rationality according to Aristotle
Abstract    Anaxogaras' claim to fame lies in positing reason as principle (arkhe) and cause (aitia). According to Aristotle, this made him appear sane in comparison with the doddering statements of his predecessors (Met. 1.3). Even so, Aristotle - like Socrates before him - professes dissatisfaction with Anaxogaras' actual offerings, while other thinkers - notably those of the school of Elea - are chastised for not speaking reasonably at all. What is at stake here? I propose to examine in detail what Aristotle has to say about the presence and absence of rationality in earlier Greek thought.

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Presenter    Harris, John
University of Alberta
Title    Divine Madness and Human Sanity in Plato's Phaedrus
Abstract    Plato's Phaedrus is famed for its rehabilitation of the power of madness. In particular, Socrates claims that "the greatest of goods come to us through madness, provided that it is bestowed by divine gift" (244a6-8; trans. C. Rowe). This all-important proviso implies an opposite: non-divine madness. The only explicit opposite, however, is "human sanity" (244d4-5). So when Socrates argues that mania must be distinguished, and argues for "divine madness" in contradistinction to "human sanity", a further, albeit implicit, opposition is suggested: "divine sanity" and "human madness". In the course of this paper I will argue that, from the divine perspective, "human sanity" and "human madness" are to be regarded as virtually one and the same thing. And from the human perspective so too are "divine madness" and "divine sanity". In short, "madness" and "sanity", be it from the human or divine perspective, are simply two sides of the same coin.

Presenter    Chew, Kristina
Seton Hall University
Department of English and Honors Program
Title    Irrationality in Plato: Stupidity and Madness
Abstract    Irrationality in Plato's philosophy is characterized not only as madness or mania, but also as stupidity (amathia), as a lack of intelligence. In modern medicine and psychology, madness as a mental disability (such as schizophrenia) is distinguished from cognitive disabilities such as mental retardation. Are being crazy and lacking intelligence conceived of as the same condition in antiquity? In Plato's Timaeus, the soul that lacks reason is the lower type of soul that is subject to the appetite. Madness and stupidity are types of "folly" and are diseases of the soul, which does not see or hear "correctly" and is unable to use reason (86b-c). Incorrect seeing and hearing are also a feature of a stupid person who makes false judgments and speaks mindlessly in the Theaetetus (195a). Irrationality in Plato is thus conceived of as a disorder and disabling of the senses of sight and of hearing.

Presenter    Adluri, Vishwa
New York University, Philosophy
Title    Initiation into the Mysteries: Experience of the Irrational in Plato
Abstract    In my paper, I will contrast two scholarly interpretations of the language of initiation in Plato's Gorgias. In the first interpretation, Socrates is the rational "Enlightenment" critic of the "old religion." He is an iconoclast and a scientific truth-seeker (e.g. Janko). In the alternate view, Socrates is engaged in a religious reformation (e.g. Riedwig). Socrates, I argue, operates within this philosophical-religious framework. His criticism of the Sophists is more than merely epistemological. The individualistic, experiential component of Socratic philosophy is manifest in the divine commandment "know thyself." The Delphic journey of knowledge is not only rational. The language of initiation is neither a mere metaphor nor a literal call to religious conversion. It is an inscription marking the "sacred experience" which philosophy must preserve, a task at which the Sophists have deplorably failed. The vocabulary of initiation modulates Socratic teaching on a surprisingly mortal level: one that preserves the existential, ethical, and eschatological ["irrational"] concerns of the philosopher, amid his rational scientific, "sophistic", and skeptical philosophical practices.

Presenter    Morrissey, Christopher S.
Simon Fraser University
Department of Humanities
Title    Aristotle on Conspiracy Theories
Abstract    This paper argues that the Aristotelian conception of politics is the antithesis to conspiratorial thinking. Aristotle's analysis of regime types in Politics III aims to make a rational analysis of tyranny by seeing it in its distinct forms. In contrast, conspiratorial thinking is a mode of theorizing born of resentment. It is characterized by the irrational search for scapegoats to bear the burden of resentment. This mode of thinking postulates a universal regime type ('master' vs. 'slave') in the place of Aristotle's discernment of multiple regime forms. Aristotle's discussion of how the best regime naturally comes into being (Politics IV-VI), however, shows some awareness of the political offices and powers of office that can be abused by political factions demanding scapegoats. He therefore advocates the mixed regime as a rational response to this potential danger posed by irrationality.
Link to paper    http://www.sfu.ca/nomoi/

Presenter    Mirhady, David
Simon Fraser University
Humanities
Title    Anger in the Athenian Courts
Abstract    Following up investigations pursued by Danielle S. Allen (The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), this paper will examine tensions between rationality and irrationality in arguments made by Athenian litigants in order to win the judges' anger to their side. In several passages in his Phaedrus and Gorgias, Plato denigrates the manipulations of irrational emotions in Athens' law courts. And while Aristotle shared some of his misgivings, he ultimately put emotions in the centre of rhetorical theory. For Aristotle the anger of the law courts was the paradigmatic instance of anger, which he understood to have both rational and irrational elements. While most of Athens' surviving forensic speeches accept anger, this paper will devote more tie to speeches, such as Antiphon 5, where the judges are urged to mitigate its effects.
Link to paper    http://www.sfu.ca/classics

Presenter    Mamoojee, Abdool-hack
Lakehead University, Faculty of Humanities (Emeritus)
Title    INEFFABLE AND UNSPEAKABLE NAMES IN CICERO'S SPEECHES
Abstract    Systematic avoidance of certain names is an aspect of Cicero's rhetorical manipulation of Roman nomenclature in his public discourse. Reticence on ladylike women, a token of discretion to the ineffable, turns into sardonic innuendo with scandalous Clodia in 'Pro Caelio' and notorious Fulvia in 'Philippics'. For men on the orator's hit-list -Clodius, Piso and Gabinius in the 'Post Reditum' speeches, and the anonymous prosecutor in 'Pro Balbo'- persistent evasions, an extreme among naming options, bespeak utter disdain of the unspeakable. Name-refusal is explored here in more depth, marginally skimmed in an earlier presentation on Cicero's rhetorical nomenclature as a whole.

Presenter    Golden, Mark
University of Winnipeg
Department of Classics
Title    Rationality, Reckoning and Parental Mourning in Antiquity
Abstract    Parental mourning in high mortality populations (such as ancient Greece and Rome) has continued to attract debate since my contribution ("Did the ANcient Care When Their Children Died?") in Greece and Rome 35 (1988). How did individual mothers and fathers bear up under the strain of frequent loss? How did communities function amidst continuous grieving? Answers to such questions often invoke rational considerations and the discourse of investment, reckoning the benefits of having children and the costs of losing them. In this paper, I review some recent discussions, making two points in particular. (1) (1) Rationality in this area (as in others) is determined culturally. (2) The gendered division of labour -- mothers bore the brunt of mourning children as well as of bearing them -- allowed public life in the ancient city to carry on.

Presenter    Shoichet, Jillian G.
University of Victoria
Greek and Roman Studies Department
Title    Reading between the Lines: Oral-cultural responses to writing and literacy
Abstract    Rosalind Thomas has suggested that literacy is not a single, definable skill with specific, limited uses and foreseeable effects. Rather, the way a culture applies writing and literacy depends on the society and customs already in existence. If this is true, we should be able to broaden our understanding of an oral culture and the relationship between orality and literacy by examining how the oral culture makes use of writing. A consensus is emerging among scholars that early writing in Greece exhibits oral-cultural features that had been in use for centuries as part of oral performance. An examination of the literature from other primarily oral cultures may indicate that these cultures, too, applied literacy in service to their own oral traditions. Using a passage from Herodotus' Histories and examples from Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, I consider what this might mean for our understanding of oral cultures and early literate traditions.

Presenter    Burke, Brendan
University of Victoria
Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Hittite Throne-Cult and the Phrygian Highlands
Abstract    This paper examines the Phrygian sanctuary of Dumrek to suggest links between Phrygian cult places and the Hittite divinity Halmasuit, identified as "the deified throne". Hittite culture may have had a more profound effect on the Iron Age Phrygians than previously believed. Recent excavations have narrowed the chronological divide between the Hittites and Phrygians in central Anatolia, and this paper will focus on cult activity and possible continuity. The site of Dumrek was intensively surveyed in 1996 and was primarily used as an open air sanctuary during the Early and Middle Phrygian periods, ca. 900-550 BC. At least eleven stepped thrones have been mapped at Dumrek, along with rock-cut platforms and niches. Elsewhere in the Phrygian highlands stepped monuments comparable to Dumrek are found at Midas City and Tekoren. Rather than interpreting these monuments as "cultic furniture" upon which an anthropomorphized divinity would sit, this paper proposes that the thrones were representations of a divinity, perhaps derived from Halmasuitt, the embodiment of "the deified throne" from the Hittite pantheon

Presenter    Dethloff, Craig R.
Independent Scholar
Title    Personification and Metarepresentation.
Abstract    Accounting for the ability of the ancient Greeks to represent natural phenomena or abstract virtues as human beings has always proved challenging, and nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in the case of Hestia. How the Greeks were capable of raising this "common object" to the level of a divinity has puzzled scholars for centuries. In this paper I treat how Hestia and other 'pale personifications' are products of the same cognitive strategy of metarepresentation routinely employed by human beings to decode everyday communications. Grasping that someone or something is trying to communicate involves first attributing intents, beliefs and desires to that person or object. Only by this method can then otherwise incomprehensible statements or utterances be decoded as to what they really mean. By assuming that the hearth was Hestia, the Greeks were not then acting irrationally, rather they were just using the most convenient cognitive tool at hand to explain very real phenomena.


Presenter    Cousland, J.R.C.
University of British Columbia,
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Title    "KAI SU?": The mosaic of the Evil Eye from Antioch
Abstract    The Hatay Museum in Antakya, Turkey houses an intriguing mosaic featuring the Evil Eye. The museum catalogue describes it as follows: "From Antakya, 2nd cent. A.D. The Evil Eye is depicted as a huge eye being attacked by several animals. The one man in the picture, who has turned his back on this scene, is horned and is carrying forked spits in his hands." While this scene has a number of analogues in Anatolia, it is particularly interesting for the animals that it depicts as attacking the eye. At least four of them, the crow, scorpion, serpent, and dog also feature commonly in Mithraic reliefs. This paper will examine these correlations in iconography and determine whether there is any potential connection between this mosaic and Mithraic and zodiacal imagery.

Presenter    Sherwood, Kathleen D
University of British Columbia
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Title    Dedications Ancient and Modern
Abstract    An unusual form of votive appears in the corpus of terracotta dedications from the Sanctuary of Demeter on the acropolis of Mytilene on Lesbos--a rectangular plaque with eyes within a naiskos frame. Such dedications are rarely found in their original context, and are not mentioned in ancient texts. How then might we create a model in order to explore how these votives may have functioned in a religious context in antiquity? This paper will use the theoretical approach of ethnoarchaeology in order to examine the role such votives might have played in ancient Greek religion. Using modern ethnographical data and examples, this presentation will explore such topics as the manufacture and sale of these items, their placement and use within a sacred context, and the intentions of the dedicators as they make an offering to their deities. Such a comparison, and the establishment of a model based on the modern evidence, may allow for an understanding of the purpose and placement of similar votives in Greek sanctuaries in antiquity.


Presenter    Miles, Anthony M
University of Colorado at Boulder
Department of Classics
Title    Egeria and Apotheosis: Function and Fornication
Abstract    The abstract functions of individual Roman gods are expressed in the feminine gender and later become personified as female companions. This abstract feminine is the origin of Romulus' wife Hora and Numa's companion Egeria and the cause of their nebulous biographies. Hora's origin as the abstraction of the power of religious persuasion is clearer than that Egeria as the abstraction of establishment of religious rites. An etymological examination of semantics in Roman religious terminology restores Egeria as a function of Numa, allowing her to maintain her unspecified marital status without weakening her efficacy. Furthermore, this abstraction explains both the marital status of Numa and his exclusion from the celestial pairs. Numa's function is establishing rites, but his wife is not the same as his function. Numa does not apotheosize because his role in establishing rites is a terrestrial activity, but the power to grant petitioners' supplications requires Romulus' apotheosis.

Presenter    Frazer, Brian L. W.
University of California-Berkeley

Classics
Title    Roma Recidiva: an agricultural metaphor at Livy 6.1
Abstract    Livy employs a striking agricultural metaphor, in book VI.1 at the juncture between the first pentad and the remainder of his history. Livy's work and the Roman state begin anew; the republic is reborn (renatae) in a more luxuriant (laetius) and more fruitful (feracius) incarnation. Camillus, in addition to being the conditor alter, is also a vine-prop, adminiculum, of the Roman state. This paper will explore Livy's agricultural metaphor primarily through Pliny the Elder's Natural History, attending closely to the many portents which have to do with trees, vines, and, significantly, regime change in Rome. This agricultural metaphor informs aspects of the Gallic sack of Rome.

Presenter    Porter, John R.
University of Saskatchewan, Department of History
Title    A Tomb with a View: Petronius' Widow of Ephesus and the Ancient Satiric Tradition
Abstract    At first glance, Eumolpos' humorous tale of the Widow of Ephesus (Sat. 110.6-113.4) would appear to tie rather seamlessly into the ancient satiric tradition. Although motivated by a desire to amuse and entertain rather than by Juvenalian indignatio, its condemnation of women's wantonness displays a number of affinities with the treatment of women in Juvenal 6, particularly in its emphasis on the perverse manner in which even the best of that sex will betray their "natural" roles and expected loyalties. On closer examination, the tale's true roots are found to lie not in satire but in a long-standing tradition of comic adultery tales, which inform not only the particular elements of Eumolpos' account but also its spirit and, in particular, the presentation of the Widow herself. Petronius' humorous reworking of this comic tradition adds to the hilarity of Eumolpos' anecdote, but also highlights the curiously ambiguous picture of the Widow presented by the tale.
Link to paper    http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/widow/widowframes/

Presenter    Littlewood, Cedric A. J.
University of Victoria, Department of Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Horace and the Political Rhetoric of Seneca's Thyestes
Abstract    no abstract is available

Presenter    Quartarone, Lorina
University of St. Thomas
Modern and Classical Languages
Title    Furor and Irony in the Aeneid
Abstract    Therefore, if we understand the poem as metaphorically presenting the civilization which the Romans constructed and Augustus used to keep furor in its place (as the vision of Furor in book 1 suggests) as the collective social structure, created through human reason and industry, which to some degree confines human instinct, emotion, and irrational behavior, we must understand as well that Vergil offers the ironic perspective that that structure, in effect, not only confines furor but actually employs it in its foundation.


Presenter    Lawall, Mark L
University of Manitoba
Classics Department
Title    Ignorance is part of the equation: Problems in making sense of ancient commerce.
Abstract    Study of antiquity would be much simplified if we could be sure that the objects of our study behaved in rational ways. A review of ancient textual sources related to the question of economic decision-making reveals ancient difficulties gaining accurate intelligence. Nevertheless, modern scholars often assume that other aspects of ancient economic behavior will follow rational expectations. For example, a certain level of standardization in commercial containers has been widely advocated for very sound, logical reasons. Actual measurements do not bear out a consistent interest in such desirable precision on the part of the Greeks. Likewise, the modern classification of ancient containers depends on assumptions of an underlying rationale to serve as a structure for choices of shape and changes in shape through time. Evidence gained in recent decades reveals disturbing complexities. Difficulties lie as much with scholar's dependence on rationality as with irrationality among ancient Greeks.

Presenter    Klapecki, Derek V
University of Victoria
Title    Geography and Environment in the Early Development of Stymphalos
Abstract    While Stymphalos is best known as the location of Herakles' sixth labour, its history stretches from Mycenaean times to the Roman Empire. Pausanias, in his description of the Late Classical city, mentions that "It is said that it (Stymphalos) was originally founded on another site, and not on that of the modern city" (Paus8.22.1). Drawing on Hector William's investigations at Stymphalos, this paper will attempt to unravel the relatively unknown early history of this rural Arkadian city by examining the evidence for Pre-Classical occupation. The result will show that despite extensive work at the site, much investigation still needs to be done in order to reveal the full history of Stymphalos.

Presenter 1    De Angelis, Franco
The University of British Columbia
Dept. of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Presenter 2    Papaioannou, Maria
The University of British Columbia
Dept. of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Title    One Size Fits All: 8th-century Houses in Greek Sicily
Abstract    Excavations conducted in the early Greek settlements of Sicily since the end of the World War II have revealed an intriguing pattern of domestic architecture that requires explanation. At Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, Naxos, and Heloros, the 8th-century houses consist of a single room with sides averaging between 4 and 4.5 m. Such regional uniformity has never been adequately addressed. There are grounds for suggesting that both internal and external forces of a social and economic nature may have played a role in dictating the size of these structures.

Presenter    Williams, Hector
University of British Columbia
Classical Studies
Title    Gladiators of Lesbos
Abstract    Excavations by UBC at ancient Mytilene between 1984-1994 revealed a number of representations of gladiators of the first and second centuries after Christ, particularly a lead figurine of a retiarius and a number of relief lamps. There are also little known marble reliefs of gladiators built into the castle walls and on display in the local museum as well as theatre that was converted for gladiatorial and wild beast shows. This paper will summarize the evidence and show how it fits into our growing knowledge of gladiatorial activity in the eastern Mediterranean.

Presenter    Weir, Robert G.A.
University of Windsor
Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Title    Fake!?: the Purpose and Use of Counterfeit Coins in the Greek World
Abstract    The Greeks began counterfeiting coins very shortly after the invention of coinage, usually by plating a base-metal core with the appropriate precious metal (e.g. Herodotos 3.56). This intriguing phenomenon was widespread (plated coins of most poleis are known) but was most frequently encountered in a few particular times and places (e.g. in 5th-3rd c. BC Magna Graecia). But what is one to make of this counterfeiting? Whereas the ancient testimonia do not unequivocally condemn the forgeries themselves as worthless, they do agree that plated coins are the product of a deviant purpose: counterfeits are an evil, but a necessary one. The modern scholarship is similarly inconsistent when it comes to identifying the counterfeiters and stating their purpose. This paper will both survey the life-cycle of plated counterfeits from manufacture to circulation and attempt to bring some order to a very heterogeneous phenomenon by stressing the common denominators that characterise its occurrence in various times and places.


Presenter    Al-Maini, Doug
University College of the Cariboo, Philosophy
Title    Truth in Myth and History
Abstract    The rise of rationalism in ancient Greece places the traditional mythic backdrop to polis-culture under a variety of pressures, one facet of which is expressed in the relationship between myth and history. If we maintain that the Greeks did at one point accept the veracity of mythical explanations of past events, then the arrival of a self-consciously "historical" narrative betrays some degree of dissatisfaction with myth. As an example of this, we see Plato having his character Phaedrus demand of Socrates whether he believes in the truth of the mythical explanation of the fate of Orithyia, especially when this is compared to more naturalistic narratives (Phdr. 229c-d). But if myth becomes unacceptable as an account of what actually happened, then what role is myth to play in society? With the hope of gaining some understanding of how the rationalists among the Greeks answered this question, I shall explore the use of myth when it appears alongside seemingly more historically-oriented examinations in the writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato.

Presenter    Pownall, Frances
University of Alberta
Department of History and Classics
Title    Apollo as Culture-Hero: Rationalizations in Ephorus
Abstract    Despite his professed intention to avoid the mythological period, Ephorus of Cyme includes in his universal history an account of the foundation of the Delphic oracle. In his narrative of the myth of Apollo's establishment at Delphi, Ephorus includes a number of rationalizations, including those of Themis, Tityus, and Python. These rationalizations all serve the purpose of emphasizing the moral and civilizing mission of Apollo. In his role as a culture-hero, Ephorus' Apollo appears to be modelled upon Isocrates' Evagoras, indicating that there may in fact be some truth behind the tradition in antiquity that Ephorus was a student at Isocrates' school.


Presenter    Nicholson, Nigel
Reed College
Classics
Title    Psaumis, Camarina, and the Rhetoric of Foundation
Abstract    Among Pindar's Odes. Olympian 4, for Psaumis of Camarina, has one of the stranger endings. To demonstrate the importance of testing, Pindar describes the victory of the youthful, though gray-haired, Erginus in a running competition held in front of Hypsipyle, the queen of the Lemnian women. This paper will argue that this narrative must be understood within the context of the recent re-foundation of Camarina, and that it serves to legitimate both the re-foundation of the city and Psaumis' rule over it. The ode itself was part of a consistent strategy of self-representation on Psaumis' part that drew especially on the strategies of the earlier Sicilian tyrant Hieron: like Hieron, Psaumis directed considerable resources to equestrian competition, celebrated any victories won with victory odes and perhaps even a coin issue, and represented himself as a founder-figure, rather than simply a king.


Presenter    Chew, Kathryn S
California State University, Long Beach
Department of Comparative World Literature and Classics
Title    Dogma, the imperialist answer to rationality
Abstract    For the ancient Greeks and Romans rationality/irrationality were culturally constructed conceptual categories that denoted power. "Irrational" did not mean "not using reason" but "not thinking like we do" - it was a way to mark outsiders. For instance, early Christian martyrs behaved in ways that the Romans deemed irrational, but which were completely congruous with Christian ideology. Early Christianity intuitively recognized the relativity of "correct thought", and its term dogma reflects this. Dogma refers to what seems good to the designated group. Dogma in no way appeals to reason, and thus is pragmatically more problematic: independent thought equals heresy. Why dogma? Early Christianity perceived society as more diversified than the binary "us" (rational) vs "them" (irrational) of the Greeks and Romans - there were non-Christians as well as every type of heretic. The means to imperialism in this more complex arena was to make a division between "who knows" and "who doesn't know".


Presenter    Cooper, Craig R
University of Winnipeg
Classics
Title    Myth and History and their place in biography
Abstract    At the beginning of Theseus (1.1-2), Plutarch compares himself to geographers who have reached the outer limits of the known world and what lies beyond is fabulous and tragic, with nothing credible or clear. He hopes, with Lives of Theseus and Romulus, "to cleanse out the mythic and make it submit to reason and take on the appearance of historia" (Thes. 1.4-5). But because the "mythic" stubbornly refuses to "mingle with the probable" Plutarch begs "for kind readers who will graciously accept archaiolgia" (Thes. 1.3). In this paper I would like to explore Plutarch's approach to myth. In these lives he both follows and departs from the historian's method of treating myth. This ambivalence can been explained by his approach to biography, which is rooted in history but aims at revealing character.


Presenter    Germany, Robert
University of Chicago
Classics Dept.
Title    Mimetic Contagion in Terence's Eunuch
Abstract    In antiquity, as today, one of the most pressing concerns surrounding art's reception is that viewing subjects will be pulled into mimesis of what they see. In this discourse of imitative modes of response, the rationality/irrationality dualism is parallel to the distinction between, on the one hand, persuasive, exemplary effect and, on the other, compulsory, quasi-magical affect. In this paper, I focus on Terence's Eunuch and an erotic painting that reaches outside its frame to instigate a rape. A reading of the rapist's respose as rational emulation is complicated by a fuller awareness of the play's sophisticated metatheatrical treatment of the painting's role as a new "script" for both rapist and victim. The painting also serves as a figure for the dangerously adhesive nature of role-playing in the Eunuch, as in several cases the dramatic art of the characters' deceptions steps outside its own boundaries and becomes indistinguishable from reality.


Presenter    Purchase, Philip
University of Southern California
Classics Department
Title    Theocritus and the Landscape of Persuasion
Abstract    In the pastoral theater of Theocritus' first Idyll we witness a set of variations on performance and persuasion. This paper asks two related questions. How might the terms of dramatic criticism draw out the ethics of relationship in this poem, and what are the ethical parameters of a poem notably concerned with the transformative impact of communicative acts? If Epicureanism offers a philosophical landscape for Theocritus' tracking of the bounds of propriety, the conceptual centrality of death shared with psychoanalytic ethics builds a bridge to contiguous territory. Daphnis' striving for transcendence suggests a taste for the tragic discourse of catharsis and sublimation--while the tragic hero/heroine of psychoanalysis stands as an unfolding of desire beyond the rational, Daphnis as embryonic tragedian is defined by his attempt to delimit the self. Comic material in the frame, meanwhile, draws the audience into the oscillating process of self-assertion and self-abnegation. It is the goatherd who mediates these positions and points to the active duty of the pastoral audience.

Presenter    Horky, P. Sidney
University of Southern California
Department of Classics
Title    The Tragic Imprint: Psychosomatic Affect in the Works of Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle
Abstract    Owing to Platonic philosophy, the definition of rhetoric has been an activity fraught with obscurity and laden with negative valuation; it eludes formal definition despite attempts at indirect or amplified substantiation in the works of Plato. Perhaps this is no surprise given the position rhetoric is assigned in Plato's works: it is antithetical to philosophical inquiry, sickness (pathe or nosos) to the soul. Nevertheless, several Plutarchean fragments aid in reconstructing possible sophistic definitions of rhetoric (attributed to Gorgias) with reference to two phenomena not commonly associated in scholarship on rhetoric: affection (to paschein) and the "tragic style" (tov tragikov). Surprisingly, there is some ground of agreement between Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch on this element of rhetoric: it psychosomatically affects its audience. The aim of this presentation is to explain the physiological affect of the "tragic style" in three authors: Gorgias (Encomium of Helen), Plato (Phaedrus/Gorgias) and Aristotle (De Anima/Rhetoric).


Presenter    Fox, Matthew W
St. Peter's College, Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures
Title    Tortoises, lyres, thelxis: the transformative magic of musical instruments
Abstract    In the archaic/early classical periods the tortoiseshell lyre was a potent symbolic ritual object (symbol in Victor Turner's sense, a multivocal object condensing many references, from physical, to cosmic, to normative, into a single "cognitive and affective field"). The Homeric hymn to Hermes articulates in narrative form the many poles of reference that were invested in the ritually transformed tortoise-become-lyre. The hymn's myth roots the lyre's making into basic divine creative forces (especially eros and metis/dolos); it recapitulates cosmogony. As the "feast's companion" the lyre produces the chief socially valued affects, desire, sleep, and conviviality (eros, hupnos, euphrosune). Thus it acquires exchange value for Apollo's cattle, creating a world where material and immaterial wealth circulate. The hymn is thus a potent origin myth for the aoidos, whose occupation was to summon up the "magic" (thelxis) of song and music to enchant the senses of feasters and ward off disruptive forces.

Presenter    Chrol, E. Del
University of Southern California
Classics Department
Title    Ethical Aesthetics: Ovid and the Political Impact of Affect
Abstract    Do lovers make poetry, or poetry lovers? Positioning his work within a didactic, anti-neoteric tradition, Ovid claims a subservient role to his muse in Ars Amatoria. The Ars espouses a natural pararational knowledge, its generic elegiac conventions mirroring innate structures in its readers, thereby effecting three orders of amatory subjects: intentional readers seeking instruction, their unwitting enamorata, and new erotic poets. When confronted with the implications of his iuvenalia, namely fame, status, and exile, Ovid's Tristic persona retrojects a masterly rationality throughout his corpus; recuses muse, affect, and impressionable audience; and realigns himself with traditional theories of poetic production. This paper treats the character of Phaedra in Heroides as exemplary of the opposed anxieties expressed by the narrators of Ars Amatoria and Tristia over the mystification of style and the affective power of poetry on writers and readers.


Presenter    Moss, Brian W
University of Victoria, Greek and Roman Studies
Title    Εἶπε τις, Ἡράκλειτε: Three Homeric Hapaxes in Callimachus 34 (A.P. 7.80)
Abstract    Although Callimachus 34 has been subject to academic interest, there has been little scholarshp on the Homeric allusions in this funerary epigram. Of particular importance to our understanding of the poem is Callimachus' use of Homeric hapaxes. Callimachus employs these specific Homeric references to effectively link the memorialized subject, Heraclitus, with two Homeric heroes, Odysseus and Hector. By doing so, the poet introduces another layer of meaning into his short memorial for a dead friend. This discussion will identify those hapaxes and will examine how these allusions influence our reading of Callimachus 34.


Presenter    Capra, Raymond L.
Fordham University, Classics Dept.
Title    Herakles and the far ends of the earth
Abstract    This paper will investigate the transmission of myth and the creation of history in the classical tradition, with a focus on Greek literature's treatment of Herakles as pater generum barbarorum, father of barbarian peoples. Herodotus (Histories 4.8-10) tells a story of the Herculean origin of the Scythians that is attributed to the Greeks of Pontus and is preferred to the rational explanation of the poet Aristeas in the epic Arimaspea. The recurrence of this topos was a symbol for the expansion of Greek culture and its awareness of other cultures. The predominance and development of this theme in literature reflects the manner in which the Greeks incorporated foreign peoples into their perception of the world by subordinating the origins of other, seemingly younger nations to their own mythology and so asserting their own cultural superiority.


Presenter    Reid, Heather A.
University of Victoria
Interdisciplinary Studies
Title    Sacred Marriage and Female Initiation in Antiquity
Abstract    The mystical consummation of a God with a woman is a well-understood and essential ingredient in the theological recipe of Christian religion. Antiquity, however, may offer its own versions of "Sacred Marriage" in the context of myth and cult practices. A little- known Jewish Hellenistic romance known as "Asneth" may give us an archetypal example of the Sacred Marriage in antiquity as well as female initiation in preparation for the Sacred Marriage. The story is based on the Old Testament characters of Joseph the Patriarch and Potiphar's daughter, Asneth, mentioned in Genesis. Ancient but specific iconography in this story may offer scholars a close glimpse of cult practice in Classical Antiquity, including a mystical dream sequence chiasmically placed in the centre of the tale. The Story of Asneth may offer a glimpse of the irrational in antiquity.


Presenter 1    Westra, Haijo J
University of Calgary
Greek and Roman Studies
Presenter 2    Nikolic, Milo
University of Victoria
Greek and Roman Studies
Title    The Logic of Myth: Hesiod's Myth of the Races
Abstract    As Vernant argued, there is no simple process of "gradual deterioration" in the Hesiodic version of the myth of the races (cf. Querbach [l985] 7): the insertion of the heroic age and the division of the iron age into two phases are not gratuitous, but lead to a scheme of comparison which extends beyond the comparison between the two members of each pair to a much wider scheme of analysis in terms of analogy and antithesis. The structure forms the basis of a ring composition with its characteristic central pivot ( here located at the interstices of bronze and heroic), pointing to the functions of symmetry in archaic thought as a logical ordering structure in addition to being an aesthetic and mnemonic device. This structure shows the operation of two modes of thought, analogy and antithesis, in answering the basic question: How was human life once different or the same?


Presenter    Stocking, Charles H
UCLA Classics
Title    Aesthetic Conflict and Dramatic Resolution: Discursive and Presentational Symbolism within Aristophanes' Frogs
Abstract    This paper sets out to explore the distinction between Aeschylus and Euripides, as they are characterized by Aristophanes within the Frogs, through the modern aesthetic categories of presentational and discursive symbolism. Such categories may contribute to an ancient understanding of the dichotomy between rationality and irrationality and are essential for interpretation of the Frogs. Dionysos' initial desire within the play can be characterized as irrational and therefore corresponds to a desire for a presentational poet, Aeschylus. The very nature of this desire, therefore, is in opposition to the discursive art of Euripides even in its nascent stages. Thus the conflict between poets is also a psychological conflict for the figure of Dionysos. This aesthetic conflict and its resolution within the Frogs have great social and philosophical significance in so far as Aristophanes associates the rational discursive symbolism of Euripides with the figure of Socrates at the conclusion of the play.


Presenter    Sou, Derek
University of Victoria
Title    The Interpretation of δεισιδαιμονια in Theophrastus' Characters 16
Abstract    Although Theophrastus wrote Characters over 2,300 years ago, much of that work still aptly describes people today. However, the character entitled Δεισιδαιμονιας or Superstition can be set apart from this generalization, as this character cannot be interpreted outside of Greek religious practice. I will substantiate this claim by considering the examples of δεισιδαιμονια that Theophrastus provides in relation to other Greek literary works and the modern interpretation of Greek thought. Despite the elusive nature of superstition in general, I maintain that Greek superstition in the late fourth century B.C. can be defined and that it bears little resemblance to modern examples of superstition.


Presenter    Anagnostou-Laoutides, Evangelia
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Title    The Madness of the δυσεροι
Abstract    My paper will examine the nature of those characterised in Hellenistic lovers that suffer a passion of an unnatural ,epigrams and poetry as δυσεροι,  or excessive nature partaking to madness. The association of extreme passion with mythical figures such as those of Heracles, Achilles, Orpheus and even the Theocritean Daphnis will be explored and the view that their legends bear initiatory elements with madness being one of these will be supported. In addition, the aura of these totally irrational and prominent lovers seems to have found its way in Latin poetry (elegy and pastoral) where the enamoured often appear as the victims of magic. Spellbound lovers that assume the characteristics of the δυσεροι often suffer death or symbolic death like the initiates of numerous religious ceremonies. Their irrationality has many parallels with the extreme character of Near Eastern heroic figures who in their adventures also deal with witchcraft frequently. Heroes of the calibre of Gilgamesh and Dumuzi typically pose as maddened by passion for an object of desire or for discovering the secret of life. I shall argue that derived from Near Eastern ideas falling in love madly or falling in love to death actually means falling in love with death. And that this is why maddened lovers often experience a katabasis and assume a religious role. A number of Roman elegiac motifs could be fully explained with this view in mind; finally, the mythical figures mentioned above will be associated with aspects of the Near Eastern shepherd kings whose traits they exhibited down the centuries.


Presenter    Wells, James B.
University of Idaho
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Title    Pierre Bourdieu's "objective limits of objectivism" and the Theme of Return in Pindar's Epinikia
Abstract    The stream of linguistic anthropology that has informed Homeric scholarship informs our understanding of epinician poetics. The dominant response of Pindarists to the theme of return in Pindar's epinikia is to identify it with the athlete's literal return to his polis. Another prevailing view is that the return theme is a surface realization in poetic performance of underlyingly ritual practices. Both perspectives cohere on the basis of logics originating in contexts external to epinician performance: the former, the logic of modern narrative historiography; the latter, of structural anthropology. A practice-centered method of philology establishes a more authentic understanding of Pindar's use of the return-theme: the Return Song story pattern of Absence-Devastation-Return-Retribution-Marriage, which constitutes The Odyssey, informs epinician performance, understood neither as a strictly chronological continuum nor as the etic realization of an emic geometry of cultural syntax, but as an event of artful communication between Pindar and his audience.


Presenter    Marshall, Toph
University of British Columbia
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies
Title    Mamet, Madness, and Masks: insights into Athenian acting.
Abstract    Scenes from Sophocles' Ajax and Euripides' Heracles can serve as test cases for an examination of acting style: how did fifth-century actors act 'mad'? To answer this, the most common approach has been to consider scholia and other later secondary sources. This fails to recognize the significant changes the acting process underwent in the fourth century. My proposed solution is to begin with David Mamet's accounts of characterization in modern theatre. Mamet, an accomplished playwright and theoretician, provides an insight that can be transposed onto the Athenian setting and which proves especially applicable to masked acting. How, after all, can a masked actor represent notions of psychological interiority such as are demanded by scenes of madness? The result distills key elements of two significant debates in tragic scholarship: the nature of characterization (see Goldhill, Wiles, Gould, Easterling, and Taplin)and the process of masked acting (see Wiles, Taplin, Halliwell, Marshall, and Sifakis). Once rational explanations are abandoned for the creation of character, even the most irrational excesses of Greek tragedy make sense in performance.