Abstracts of the Papers Heard at the 2003 Joint CAPN-CACW Meeting

KEYNOTE LECTURE
Robin Osborne (King's College, Cambridge): Pinning the tale on the spine of an ass: Thasos from Archilochus to Akeratos and beyond.    The rich epigraphy of Thasos and the long history of French archaeological investigations on the island make it perhaps one of the few classical Greek sites outside Athens from which we have both texts surviving in quantity and well-investigated material culture. Like epigraphic remains everywhere, the texts from Thasos cast brilliant light in very small patches, and the interpretation of individual documents has been much disputed. Archaeological remains similarly tell a highly selective and fragmented story. In this paper I look at the ways in which scholars have in the past fitted these fragments together, noting the heavy use which has been made of narrative histories whose focus is elsewhere and which have in some cases had no direct connection with Thasos at all. I explore the sort of history that can be generated from the Thasian evidence alone, and the implications of stressing local contexts rather than grand narratives. The picture that emerges offers a challenge to histories that present other cities as mere pale imitations of Athens, and has far-reaching implications for how we write archaeological history.

CONFERENCE PAPERS
Ethan Adams (University of Washington): Fragmentary Latin Poets: Epigraphy and the Poetics of Epitaphs
The monumental and immortalizing structures of poetry are reflected in the large corpus of Roman funerary inscript-ions. Epitaphs announce themselves as texts; they often address passersby, asking them to stop and to read. In this way funerary poetry is performed, given an authorial voice, and actualized as poetry, just as a ‘published’ poem would be. This dialogue with an audience and desire for performance finds a cultural analogue among the canon-ical poets, who frequently liken their works to monuments or cenotaphs (e.g., Horace Odes 3.30, Ovid Met. 15.871-9). In this paper I examine the cultural dialogue between poetic epitaphs (beginning with the disputed epitaphs of Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius) and actual funerary inscriptions, which, from the time of the epitaphs of the Scipios, appropriate more and more of the language and tone of poetry. Whether in the form of a sphragis or an elegy, an epitaph is a monumental text, a last chance for self definition and the immortality of fame. I hope to show how the ‘manus ultima’ of an epitaph—whether literary or material—is part of the larger Roman cultural tradition which equates poetry, monuments, and immortality. By studying epigraphical and literary epitaphs together, epigraphers and philologists can appreciate funerary inscriptions as different expressions of a singular cultural phenomenon.

Evangelia Anagnostou-Laoutides (University of Kent at Canterbury): The Orphic Aspects of Daphnis
In the Eclogues Vergil commemorated the death of Daphnis, The Sicilian bucolic singer, in imitation of his Greek original (Theocritus, Idyll 1). However, Vergil also celebrated the apotheosis of Daphnis as a countryside god of the calibre of Orpheus: Daphnis would lead his devotees to a bright future similar to the Hesiodic Golden Age. Vergil refers allusively to this era in Eclogue 4 but his lines lack sufficient explanation; my argument is the Vergil draws on the Orphic and the Eleusinian mysteries, the foreground of the Daphnis/Orpheus’ comparison. This literary analysis seems to be supported by archaeological evidence: several sarcophagi, though of later date, depict Daphnis and Orpheus in a striking similarly style. Historically also the popularity of the Orphic cult during the age of Vergil can be sustained. The paper stresses the validity of a literary hypothesis when combined with the study of the material culture that surrounds ancient texts.

Colin Bailey (University of British Columbia): Dianomae in the Greek cities of Roman Asia Minor
The distribution of money in the Greek cities of Roman Asia Minor, dianomê, is a phenomenon which is easily studied in epigraphy, but valuable evidence also comes from literature. This combination of evidence reveals that distributions of money were given by Roman citizens to citizens, a fact which is not immediately evident from either body of evidence. The inscriptions of Asia Minor praise the benefactors–all of whom are citizens–for their generosity in providing these gifts of money, but a letter of Pliny the Younger presents the practice as a dubious activity. The solution to this contradiction lies in the Imperial priesthood, an institution which is particularly apparent in Miletus-Didyma and Ephesus: the distributions were commonly used as a means of maintaining Roman presence and authority in the cities and regions of Asia Minor. I shall focus on two aspects of dianomê only: the citizenship of the bene-factors and the use of these distributions by the Romans.

Karen Bassi (University of California at Santa Cruz): Materializing Memory: Objects and Time in Narrative
In Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire Ray Laurence talks about the "uneasy dialogue" between Classicists who work in material culture and philologists. This uneasiness is a feature of the questions we ask our "sources" and the ways in which this euphemism promises to give access to the ancient past. This paper seeks to understand how concrete visible objects are imbued with temporal significance in selected Greek texts and, more to the point, how the emplotment of such objects creates and mediates the past. While the representation of visible objects has been the subject of research in ancient philosophy, the history of religion, and art history, there has been no study devoted to the relationship of objects to the passage of time in the Greek imaginary. The importance of autopsy in ancient history writing is well established (Schepens). But autopsy is an effect of a larger field of inquiry that might be called the materialization of memory. My paper begins with current work in the philosophy of history that helps us to understand how material objects become historical (de Certeau, Ankersmit, White, Pieters). I then look at objects as metonyms for the past in passages from Homer, Aristophanes and Thucydides. In these examples, "things of the past" -- like the wall of the Achaeans in Iliad 12.1-37 or the pots and pans in Frogs 980-88 – constitute a category for analyzing truth claims. Returning to Laurence’s "uneasy" dialogue, I discuss what Hal Foster (1988) calls the difference between "vision and visuality" or between "the datum of vision and its discursive determinations." These categories usefully refer to the methodological and epistemological principles that distinguish archaeology from philology and invite further research into the role of material objects in the foundational narratives of Classics and the humanities.

Sandra Blakely (Emory University): Iron rings, inscriptions, and missing daimones: archaeology and texts at the sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace.    The sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace exemplifies the difficulty of resolving textual and archaeological remains. Herodotus, Stesimbrotos, Pherekydes and Strabo wrote that the gods of the mysteries were Kabeiroi, sons of Hephaistos, similar to him in appearance and in their craft. This literary evidence led to the hypothesis that the rites at Samothrace celebrated the advent of metallurgy, as those at Eleusis did agriculture. The site, however, has yielded no material evidence for Kabeiroi: their names are absent from inscriptions, which mention only Theoi Megaloi, and no iconography appropriate to them has been found in ceramics or sculpture. Archaeologists have therefore concluded that neither the Kabeiroi, nor metallurgy, played a role in the mysteries. One artifact from the site, however, suggests a reconsideration of the question. Pliny and Lucretius wrote that magnetized iron rings were tokens of Samothracian initiation. 32 iron rings have been found at the site, as well as several loadstones. These would seem to offer the direct match between site and text that is otherwise elusive; archaeologists have used these to suggest magnetiz-ation of the rings as one step in the initiations. More fundamental questions regarding the gods of the cult, however, may be addressed by analyzing these rings against the wider epigraphical, literary, and mythological record. Sacred laws prohibit both rings and iron inside sanctuaries; they are actively employed, however, in magical rituals. Natural historians describe magnetism as a manifestation of a spirit in stone; the magnetization sequence suggested for Samothrace thus has an important analogy in empsychein rituals. And the daimonic group of which the Kabeiroi were members were magicians, inventors of iron, and creators of animated statues. The Kabeiroi, therefore, have a subtler relationship with the cult than direct epigraphical or iconographic evidence would provide.  They occupy a semiotic range directly analogous to those of the rings, so that the rings provide physical, the Kabeiroi mythical, signs for the same sets of ideas. An analysis of the rings that takes the wider range of literary evidence into account thus can demonstrate the subtle interpenetration not only of texts and material but of mystery cults, magic, and natural history.

Laurel Bowman (University of Victoria): Atanarjuat, Greek myth and Narratology
The story of Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner, has been described as an Inuit Iliad, a description that fits its epic scope, large cast of characters, and basis in oral tradition. Its subject matter is however closer to the Oresteia, in that both dramas deal, in very different ways, with a curse affecting generations of a ruling family. The Greek drama sees this curse from within the family, and deals only indirectly with its effect on the community. The Fast Runner sees the ruling family entirely from the perspective of the community which has been devastated by its actions. Both Orestes and Atanarjuat undertake hero's journeys which ultimately restore order to the community, but the community is of secondary importance in the Greek play; Orestes' actions are given importance primarily from their effect on his family. Atanarjuat's hero's journey by contrast is seen in the light of its value to the community from which he has been exiled, and whose cause he is able to champion on his return. In this paper I will use a narratological approach to examine the significance of the close parallels between the narratives, in their cultural and mythic context.

Deborah E. Brown (Bryn Mawr College): When is a house not a house? Problems of identifying sacerdotal housing at ancient Greek sanctuaries.    Ancient sources provide ample evidence for the housing of cultic personnel at or near ancient Greek sanctuaries. Yet, archaeologists have often been frustrated in their attempts to identify architectural remains with the buildings indic-ated in ancient texts. The state of preservation of the remains and the methods of excavation are often to blame for this frustration, but some fault lies in the challenge of using both textual and archaeological evidence. For example, a key problem has been one of definitions. While an ancient author may have used the word oikia to designate a building that housed cultic personnel, archaeological remains may not fit the modern archaeologist’s notion of an ancient house, especially as shaped by recent discussions in the archaeology of ancient households. Rather, the remains, as seen from the archaeologist’s perspective, represent buildings of special use. Furthermore, as this conference explores, ancient texts must be understood to reflect the circumstances existing at a specific moment in time and the particular perspective of the author(s). In comparison, the "archaeological record" results from formation processes that affect a site over time, and its recovery and interpretation reflect the training and skills of its modern excavators. Therefore, it is necessary for the modern scholar to be able to read the textual sources critically and with a view to their particular contexts as well as to be aware of modern approaches to the interpretation of archaeological material. This paper demonstrates the value of critically examining the evidence while remaining aware of the limitations of the evidence and the scholar’s unique perspective. First, it summarizes the textual evidence for sacerdotal housing. Then, using examples from large sites such as Eleusis, it explores the challenges of associating buildings named in ancient texts with excavated structures. Finally, it discusses the ways in which the archaeological evidence can complement the evidence of the textual sources.

Christer Bruun (University of Toronto): History from Roman Lead Pipe Stamps
Stamps on Roman lead pipes (fistulae) from Rome and from elsewhere in Italy have been found by the hundreds, and new ones are regularly discovered. They constitute a little known group of sources and are rarely displayed with much pride by museums. Yet they provide information on many aspects of, for instance, social history, administration, and topography. Having spent some time in the past working on and interpreting these sources, I am since the summer of 2002 ingaged in a project of re-editing the collection of stamped fistulae in the Musei Vaticani (to be published in the series Inscriptiones Sanctae Sedis). The project also includes the writing of a general introduction to the study of lead pipe stamps, to replace Dressel’s introduction in CIL XV 2.1. Against this background, my paper will attempt to introduce the subject, but it will also focus on two cases that I am currently working on. One case concerns the building history of the Domus Transitoria on the Palatine; imperial fistulae giving chronological information have been overlooked in the past. Secondly I will discuss how to interpret a stamp in which Nero’s architects Severus and Celer appear together. This identification is new, and we now have their family names. One also needs to consider what the stamp implies: is it evidence of the joint ownership of a private house, of neighbours living close together, or of a business association?

Michael Carter (Brock University): Dating the Armenian Campaign of Caesennius Paetus
The date of the disastrous Armenian campaign of L. Iunius Caesennius Paetus (cos. ord. 61) has been a matter of some debate. Tacitus, our primary source for this military operation, discusses all of Paetus’ unfortunate command under the annalistic year 62, although we are told that his invasion and retreat occurred quite late in the campaigning season, possibly concluding early in the following winter. Most scholars accept the chronology apparent in Tacitus’ outline, that is, that Paetus’ campaign took place in the autumn of 62. But others, including Th. Mommsen, E. Groag, W. Schur and recently M. Heil have instead argued that Paetus arrived in the summer of 61 and conducted a successful campaign later that year, only to be subsequently defeated, perhaps in early 62. It is difficult for one to be certain, however, because arguments on both sides of the debate are supported almost exclusively by evidence internal to Tacitus’ description of the events. Moreover, Tacitus’ chronology floats somewhat freely and one often is unable to state with certainty precisely when a particular incident took place. We must search outside of Tacitus’ text for evidence with which to anchor the chronology that he has established. Such a chronological anchor may be supplied by the so-called Lex Portorii, an inscription discovered in Ephesus. This document is a Greek translation of a Roman tax law dealing with harbour-dues (portoria) for the province of Asia. It was revised in the spring of 62 through the work of three curatores, whom – Tacitus tells us – Nero only appointed sometime after rumours of Paetus’ defeat began to reach Rome. If the chronology suggested by Tacitus in this instance is accurate, then Paetus’ invasion of Armenia and subsequent retreat must be placed in the autumn of 61.

Stefan G. Chrissanthos (California State University at Fullerton): Ringleaders: The Instigators of Mutiny in the Roman Repub-lican Army.    The purpose of this paper is to analyze the 46 known mutinies in the Roman Republican army to answer a number of important questions about the leaders of these military rebellions. Specifically, who were these leaders? Were certain ranks involved more than others? Was there a change in the status of mutiny leaders from the early to the late republic? What motivated these men to lead a rebellion against their commander? How did the soldiers' duties and the chain of command within the camp effect their ability to mutiny? Last but not least, who was really in charge of these mutinies, did the officers bow to the wishes of the men, or did officers manipulate the soldiers under their command to ferment mutiny to realize their own personal agenda? This study will provide new insight into the inner workings of the Roman camp and the organization, hierarchy, and leadership involved in these incidents.

Catherine Connors (University of Washington): From turnips to turbot: the politics of epic allusion in Roman satire
Allusion to epic is a frequent feature of Roman satire. Tossing odd bits of epic around with abandon can seem a game of genre-mastery and literary bravura carried on in aesthetic isolation, but therein the satiric poets reveal themselves as fully implicated in the history and politics of their time and place. This paper investigates the ways in which texts and material culture intersect when satiric poets critique contemporary political developments in their re-fashioning of the epic gods. Where Ennius describes the deified Romulus living with the gods in his epic Annales, Lucilius' satiric Romulus is a Roman peasant, who devours turnips. In this picture of a rustic ravenous Romulus, Lucilius plunges into debates about Roman-ness — neither too rustic nor too luxuriously hellenized. From the fragmentary evidence it can further be deduced that in his epic Annales, Ennius had staged a council of the gods to discuss the fate of Romulus (and thus of Rome); Lucilius re-worked the scene as a meeting of the gods-as-senators to decide the fate of a certain greedy, luxurious and corrupt Lupus, princeps senatus in 131 BC. The joke turns on the fact that lupus (in addition to meaning wolf) is used as the name of a ravenous fish; when the gods pronounce their judgment (ius) on Lupus, they are also selecting a fish sauce (ius) for him. Horace positions his satire as altogether more personal, less public, than Lucilius'. So too, his allusions to epic gods (and to Lucilius' re-fashioning of them) create sharp contrasts between Horace's private satire and Lucilius' more public satire. Along the way (as Ian DuQuesnay has argued) the concept of libertas is redefined from a (Lucilian, republican) freedom to speak in public to a (Horatian, and proto-Augustan) freedom to think in private. The motif of the council of the gods receives its fullest surving treatment in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis, a raucous account of the 'trial' in which the gods deny Claudius' claim to deification; their high-handed and arbitrary procedure mirrors imperial abuses of the law courts, and allusions to Lucilius' picuture of Romuluis devouring turnips bring the contrast between Lucilius' gods -as-republican-senat-ors and Seneca's gods-as -imperial –functionaries into sharp relief. The divine council scene surfaces again in Juvenal's fourth satire, in which the poet literalizes the fish metaphor in Lupus' name so that a real fish (a prodigiously large turbot) becomes the subject of mock-political debate. Here the senators are excluded completely, while (in a scene modelled on Statius' epic poem on Domitian's war in Germany) the emperor seeks advice only from his courtiers. From Romulus' turnips to Domitian's turbot, satiric allusions to epic are an integral part of satirists' participation in the world of politics.

Walter Englert (Reed College): Cicero and the Creation of Roman Philosophical Space
One of Cicero's tasks as he began to write his philosophical works in the 50's and the 40's was to create a space in Roman society in which these discussions could take place. His decision to use the dialogue form for most of his philosophical works had many causes, including his desire to follow the philosophical precedents of Plato, Aristotle, and Heraclides of Pontus, among others, but the dialogue form also enabled him to set his own discussions in a distinctly Roman space and time. This paper, building on the approach of Ann Vasaly (Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory) and others, will examine the settings and characters of some of Cicero's philosophical dialogues to see how he opened up a space for philosophical literature in Rome. By choosing famous past and contemporary Roman elite interlocutors, and setting his dialogues at particular times and in particular Roman physical spaces, Cicero was able to more successfully adapt Greek philosophy for his Roman readers. Just as physical space had to be created in Roman villas for libraries and philosophical discussion among the Roman elite, so Cicero had to find a way to create metaphorical space in Roman literature for philosophical discourse.

Michael Fontaine (Brown University): The Sophisticated Paraprosdokian and Performance in Plautus: Poenulus
It is a given that ancient performance texts have come down to us without any sort of stage directions; generally, characters’ movements are clear, but in the special domain of comedy, jokes can be a bit more difficult to sort out. In modern texts of Plautus, jokes of the type para prosdokian are generally punctuated by editors in such a way as to indicate the surprise turn ending of the line, but inasmuch as the punctuation depends on editorial taste, this method masks from us jokes that the Roman spectator would have clearly understood. Some of Plautus’ para prosdokian jokes do not just depend on a sentence break, but, as I will argue, a break mid-word, whose identification is essential for understanding Plautine humor. When, for example, the Menaechmi’s parasite Peniculus announces his entrance with Iuventus nomen fecit Peniculo mihi, ideo quia – mensam quando edo, detergeo (77-8), the joke is not merely in defeating the expectation of a salacious pun (so Gratwick 1993). It is mensam that is hedging its bet, since the diminutive of penis ought to mean not only "little brush (made from a tail)" but more obviously "little penis." Men-sam skirts the expected vulgar men-tul-am. A pause in breath or a gesture easily brings out the joke: indeed, since no stage directions of any kind are given in our manuscripts, we must recognize wordplays of this sort that affect performance for a proper understanding of Plautine humor. This phenomenon has gone almost completely undetected by Plautine scholars. By illustrating a selection of examples from a scene in the Poenulus I will discuss the implications that a proper understanding of the "sophisticated para-prosdokian" holds for Plautine chronology, textual emendation, characterization, and above all, performance.

Andrew L. Goldman (Gonzaga University): Deciphering Roman Gordion: Problems in Reconstructing Roman Town Life in Central Turkey.    Little is currently known about Roman town life in central Anatolia, a region formerly known as the Roman province of Galatia. Galatia’s sparse literary record and limited archaeological investigation within its territorial boundaries have hindered attempts to investigate the function, organization and physical infrastructure of centers with small to medium population densities. As a result, critical issues of cultural relevance, such as the spread and impact of Romanization, have yet to be explored within the numerous small communities that once filled Galatia’s vast rural landscape. Excavations at the site of Gordion (Turkey), located 95 km. southwest of Ankara, have provided the first opportunity to study in detail the nature of Roman town life within rural Galatia. The recent reexamination of Roman-period finds from the town and its cemeteries, studied in combination with a small but significant body of corresponding literary and epigraphic data, has greatly altered previous and erroneously-based suppositions concerning the settlement’s development and function between the first and early fifth centuries A.D. The discovery of a strict axial (north-south) plan imposed at the settlement’s foundation has revealed a hitherto unsuspected level of sophisticated town planning in early imperial Galatia. Analysis of the domestic architecture, ceramic record and numismatic finds from stratified contexts has provided evidence for a moderate but distinct rise in the levels of material prosperity and Romanization during the Flavian and Trajanic eras (ca. A.D. 70 to 120). In addition, examination of related mortuary finds, including two Latin funerary inscriptions and the remnants of hobnailed boots (both highly unusual in central Anatolia), have helped to clarify the original function(s) of Roman Gordion. In now appears likely that the town served as a minor administrative and/or military post in the Galatian hinterlands, a positive candidate for the statio of Vindia or Vinda cited in the Antonine Itinerary.

Mark Golden (University of Winnipeg): Sex and Gender in the Ancient World
In this paper, I offer a new synthesis of the modern history of research on sex and gender in the ancient world. I argue that discussions of gender long focussed on the delineation of separate male and female spheres within Greek and Roman societies. Meanwhile, sex occupied a separate sphere of its own, sometimes the province of specialists in ancient medicine, at others the pastime of collectors of curiosa, of investigators into sexual positions, prostitution, the erotic vocabulary. The fields were only brought together in the '60s and '70s of the last century, through the influence of Kenneth Dover and (especially) Michel Foucault. A sexual act, penetration, became the main means of defining gender; the public and the private became knit together in a web of power. But this recent marriage of sex and gender has been challenged as well as championed. At the same time, the older model of separate spheres has come in for new critiques, marginal or transgressive categories (eunuchs, cross-dressers, gods) have taken their turn at center stage, and men — once accepted without question as part of the background against which others stood out — now appear to wear masks and play roles like any actors. I will be concerned throughout this paper to note correspondences and contradictions among our sources of different kinds — textual, iconographic, material.

Waldemar Heckel (University of Calgary): From the Hydaspes to the Hyphasis: Alexander, Poros and the Eastern Limits of the Empire.    After defeating Poros at the Hydaspes (Jhelum) River, Alexander gave instructions for the founding of two cities on the river’s banks and proceeded eastward as far as the Hyphasis (Beas). Here his men made clear their object-ions to Alexander’s alleged plans to march in the direction of the Ganges — whether he knew of that river’s existence is, in fact, irrelevant for our purposes. There are at least three good reasons for doubting that Alexander had serious thoughts of campaigning east of the Hyphasis: (1) it would have represented a deviation from his earlier practices when he came to the ‘limits of the world’ (as I have discussed elsewhere); (2) the manner in which he handled the news of what lay to the east makes one suspect either poor generalship or insincerity; and (3), as I hope to demonstrate in this paper, there are clear indications that Alexander had already formulated a plan for the conquest of Sindh and a descent of the Indus river-system.

Sonia Hewitt (University of Calgary): Interpreting the Material and Textual Evidence: In Search of the Origins of the Roman Bathing Tradition.    The archaeological, textual and epigraphic material pertaining to Roman baths has received considerable attention from archaeologists and historians in the last decade. Nevertheless, the primary data are incomplete in all categories, so that even the origins of Roman bathing and the development of the architecture housing this distinctly Roman routine remain points of contention. Interpretation of the evidence is furthermore segregated along textual and material lines. Thus the origin of public bathing in the Roman world is approached primarily though the literary record (as the literature is useful for conveying social customs, practices and normative features of culture). The development of bathing architecture and technological innovation, on the other hand, is treated as an archaeological question. This has resulted in a circular approach to the evidence, both material and written, which tends to be exclusive rather than inclusive in the analysis of primary data. The limitations brought to the understanding of the material by this division are addressed in this paper through an examination of the data pertaining to both baths and bathing in the poorly understood 2nd and early 1st centuries BC. This approach demonstrates that the identification of a public bathing tradition at this formative stage cannot be linked to the distinctly Roman bathing ritual, and also highlights the weakness of an approach to the material remains that is typically centered on the regional evidence of Campania.

Steven Hijmans (University of Alberta): The Sun of God? Solar Imagery and Christ in the Art and Literature of Late Antiquity.    "Behold! the sun rizes ablaze:/ then come regret, shame, and penitence,/ for with this light as witness / none can persist to sin." (Prudentius, Cathemerinon 2.25-28). It is clear, of course, that the sun greeted by Prudentius in this morning hymn is not just the fiery orb heralding a new day. It is also Christ heralding the dawn of a new age, making this passage an excellent example of the rich imagery of light and the sun associated with Christ (Sol Iustitiae, Sol Verus) in early Christian literature. Most scholars postulate a comparable use of solar imagery in early Christian art, pointing in particular to the so-called "Christ-Helios" mosaic in the Mausoleum of the Julii in the Vatican Necropolis. However, this "translation" of solar imagery from one semiotic system (language) to another (art) is not the straightforward proposition these scholars make it out to be. It is the product of a false premiss because it assumes in effect that images such as the Christ-Helios mosaic were the direct reflections of texts rather than the products of an independent semiotic system (art) which constructed meaning within its own confines and according to the rules of that system. Once the postulated cases of Christ-Helios in art are interpreted on their own terms, it soon becomes apparent that there was no conflation of solar imagery with Christ in early Christian art. This realization has important consequences. as it requires us to reassess the complex relationships between Sol the god, sol the sun, and Christ Sol Verus in Late Antique Christianity.

M. Eleanor Irwin (University of Toronto): On the track of the hyacinth
Evidence for the Greek hyacinth can be found in texts where the flower is mentioned and sometimes described, and in material culture where hyacinthos was dyed stuff. Gow1s note on Theocr. 10.28 lays out some of the possible botan-ical candidates, though his is not the end of the discussion. Scholars in Israel are attempting to reproduce the dye and to distinguish two dye terms in the LXX (e.g., Exodus 28:8): hyacinthos, usually translated blue, and porphyra, usually translated purple, both from shellfish. I will give a history of the question in both camps and suggest the opportunities and limits to success in combining literary and archaeological evidence.

Rebecca M. Jamin (Univesrity of Southern California): Visual and Textual Representations of Feminine Aidôs
The subject of aidôs in the masculine heroic contexts of the Iliad and the Odyssey has received extensive study by such scholars as Douglas Cairns, Bernard Williams and Arthur Adkins. With the exception of an article by Gloria Ferrari, however, no scholarly attention has been devoted to how the representation of aidos intersects with the construction of gender. In Homeric epic the inhibitory force of aidos prevents individual characters from transgressing the standards of behaviour appropriate to his or her sex or gender. In the case of female characters, moreover, aidos has the added function of being a virtue representing a female’s adherence to and compliance with the ideology of femininity that is defined by the poems. Aidoiê gunê is a title most often granted to married women; this figure is frequently represented surrounded by attendant women, adorned with a headdress, and she may be depicted standing by the stathmos, a pose which Victoria Wohl has interpreted as indicating her allegiance to the household. These postures, which convey an ideal of concealment and seclusion of the female, are the visual markers of the aidoiê gune. Well attested in Homeric epic, as well as in later Greek literature, these visual symbols are also represented on vase paintings beginning in the late archaic period. This material evidence combined with the textual sources suggests that the code of aidos reflects the ideological value in ancient Greek culture placed on the woman who maintained barriers, both physical and symbolic, between herself and the world outside her household.

Stephen Hinds (University of Washington): Martial's Stuff
This paper will explore the single-couplet gift-poems collected in Martial's Apophoreta (Book 14), a proto-Borgesian tour de force of catalogue poetry. The especial focus will be on the epigrams which inscribe artworks and books as gifts: here tensions between text, material object, and ecphrasis are especially pronounced. The paper may expand to include consideration of the xenia (Book 13) and possibly also of the liber de spectaculis.

Michael Dewar (University of Toronto): The Equine Cuckoo: Statius' Ecus Maximus Domitiani Imperatoris and the Flavian Forum.    The first poem of the Silvae of Statius has been studied more comprehensively than most others in the collection, not least for its obvious programmatic status. Discussion, however, has largely focused on the old question of the sincer-ity or subversiveness of the lavish panegyrical rhetoric, and attempted to address this question from one side or the other with reference to the historical data of Domitian's reign and/or Statius' literary precedents. What has not been fully appreciated is the way in which Statius comments on and advances the Flavian programme of appropriation of public space in the Forum Romanum. Statius does this, moreover, by associating the emperor's mighty equine statue with the renewal of the Rome of the republic extinguished amidst the shame of civil war, and by thus asserting the superiority of the Flavians to the disgraced Julian dynasty which they replaced.

Alison Keith (University of Toronto): Digna Loco Statio: Statius' Palace of Mars in the Light of Epic Tradition and Flavian Architecture.    Statius' description of the Palace of Mars (Theb. 7.40-63) has been much discussed and his debts to Homer, Vergil and Valerius Flaccus minutely examined. Another important epic model for Statius' ecphrasis, however, Ovid's description of the Palace of the Sun (Met. 2.1-18), has been neglected. This paper examines the relations between the Statian and Ovidian ecphraseis and argues that both passages look to contemporary building projects in their vivid realisation of divine architecture.

Ray Laurence (University of Reading): Periodisation, Evidence and disciplinary Praxis. How does the period of study determine the period of study determine the relationship between archaeologists and historians?
The ‘disciples’ of Roman Archaeology and Roman History have an uneasy dialogue with each other. There have been numerous attempts to define how these two ‘disciplines’ interact at conferences or in print (e.g. AJA 105: 181-208). The result at times of these ventures is to define the two ‘disciplines’ as separate and maybe unable to effectively interact. This paper will examine the intersection of archaeology and history depends on the period or in so many words the availability of evidence – case studies will be presented from: 1st century AD in Pompeii, 2nd century Ostia and finally 3rd century in London. The paper also addresses the need for the debate over disciplinary interaction to move away from the traditional themes of each discipline towards a convergence of interests as opposed to the exploitation of the ‘other’ discipline by practitioners as has been seen in other interdisciplinary areas – e.g. geo-archaeology. It is only by stepping away from entrenched academic positions into the cultural realm that we can begin to understand the nature of what appears to be an entrenched divide. That division is a product of the grand narrative (deconstructed yet not forgotten) and a belief in disciplinary difference in terms of method. The paper will conclude with a viewpoint drawing on developments in the social sciences that offers a way forward toward integration and a holistic approach, which will allow for the full use and utilisation of evidence from the past for students and the public who have not been initiated into the academic world of disciplinary difference.

Mireille M. Lee (Macalester College): Problems in the study of ancient dress
In every human culture, dress functions as a primary means by which individuals and groups construct identity. Unfortunately, ancient dress systems remain poorly understood on account of the difficulty of reconciling surviving physical evidence with textual sources. This paper surveys the problems inherent in the artistic, textual, and material evidence for dress, and proposes new directions for research in ancient dress. The lack of scholarly interest in ancient dress is attributable in part to the lack of surviving textiles. To reconstruct a history of ancient dress, scholars have depended primarily on representations of garments in art, especially sculpture and painting, and on references to garments in texts. Artistic representations are often unreliable because details are often omitted or indecipherable, and polychromy is no longer preserved. In addition, it is unclear whether the garments represented in art reflect those worn in life. The textual evidence is equally problematic. Although many different garments are mentioned in the literary sources, specific articles of dress are rarely described so that they might be identified with the visual evidence. The names of garments mentioned in the texts also change over time and according to genre. Finally, although later commentators and lexicographers are cited frequently by modern scholars of dress, these sources are not always reliable. Archaeological excavation has also produced evidence for dress. Inscriptions name garments and dress fasteners as dedications in sanctuaries, and actual examples of dress pins, fibulae, and brooches have been recovered from both funerary and sanctuary contexts. Unfortunately, art historians have often ignored the findings of field archaeologists and epigraphers, and attempts to reconcile the archaeological data with the artistic renderings are few. This paper proposes that the study of ancient dress must move beyond simple identification of garments, in order to understand it in its social context. As a means of non-verbal communication, dress often encodes information about the identity of the wearer that is otherwise unrecoverable. Whereas the artistic, textual, and archaeological evidence do not permit a conventional history of dress, they remain a rich source of information for individual and social identities in the ancient Mediterranean.

Rachel Levine (University of Toronto): What did incubatory healing look like? Athens NM 3369 as an illustration of a miracle cure.    Archinos’ dedication to Amphiaraos (Athens NM 3369) depicts the two scenes of healing. One man is seen lying on his side on a kline, his upper torso propped up by a pillow. A large snake curves over his back to lick his upper arm while a second man stands at the head of the bed, holding his hand in a specific gesture at chest level. Another man is seen in the foreground of the picture, holding his injured arm or shoulder to the god. The entire scene is contained within an architectural framework with antae on either side supporting a roof complete with antefixes. The bottom contains the phrase, "Archinos dedicated [this] to Amphiaraos." This votive is curious because it appears to contain a double, if not triple depiction of the dedicant. The man lying on the kline and the man healed by the deity in the fore-ground are markedly similar in dress, hairstyle, and beardlessness. They both receive healing attention towards their upper right arms. If the man at the head of the bed is included, scholars tend to see the panel as an early example of continuous narrative. Ridgeway refers to the piece as "an unexpected anticipation of Roman continuous narrative" (Ridgeway, 1997, 195). This contrasts with what is known of other panel pieces from the same period where a single moment is depicted. I believe that the panel is an illustration of a miracle cure, such as are inscribed on the four famous stelai found at the Epidaurian Asclepieion. Through comparison with textual and pictoral evidence from the Epidaurian and Athenian Asclepieia, the scene can be understood as a depiction of the dedicant sleeping in the kometerion and his simultaneous incubatory dream. Each character and each action shown on NM 3369 has a parallel example in the written texts of Epidauros and the votive plaques from Athens, including the elusive figure who stands beside the bed. This panel provides further evidence about the types of ritual activity that took place at the Amphiar-aion while providing an illustration of incubatory healing that can be transferred back to sanctuaries of Asclepios.

Sian Lewis (University of Wales): Image, text and context in the interpretation of Greek vasepainting
Literary and archaeological evidence are nowhere more closely combined than in the interpretation of vase paintings: we approach the images expecting to find expressed in them the ideologies known from our reading of literature, and to be able to use the pictures to illustrate our texts. But the interplay between imagery and text is rarely straight-forward. Aspects of Athenian identity which are given prominence in the literary sources, such as democratic practice and agriculture, are absent from the imagery, while depictions of women, slave and free, often appear to contradict the claims of writers. Case-studies of themes such as the symposion or athletics demonstrate that although both imagery and literary representation develop through time, it is often in contradictory ways, and that in general attitudes in literature are poorly correlated with artists’ preoccupations. How can we reconcile the competing claims of text and image? First, context should be given much greater weight in the reading of images – a study of findspots makes it possible to categorise pots by use, some made for export, and others for purposes within Greek culture, and this goes some way towards explaining their imagery. But equally important is the fact that different media will express different kinds of ideas: claims can be made in literature about individuals’ status or moral worth, which cannot be depicted, while imagery offers us comment on practices or ideas ignored by writers, such as courtship and domestic work. If, instead of treating literature and imagery as two halves of a whole, we see them as two overlapping fragments of a bigger picture, we can understand what is truly Greek in depictions of athletes, symposia and women, and and what is influenced by the cultures to which pots were exported.

Bonnie MacLachlan (University of Western Ontario): Locrian Persephone: Text and Context
One of the best known texts from Greek Antiquity is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. This mythical narrative of the kata-basis and the anodos of Persephone has been explored in many ways to help us come to grips with the ancient Greek world-view. One of the most prevalent approaches to the myth underscores the importance of the story for the formation of young Greek women as they faced the transition from maiden (kore) to woman (gyne). The account of the abduction of Persephone (archetypal kore), which provokes grief in both daughter and mother, is routinely cited as a reflection of the traumatic effect of marriage upon Greek brides. At odds with this understanding of the rape of Persephone/Kore is the narrative supplied by terracotta pinakes (5th century B.C.E.) that have survived from the sanctuary of Mannella in a Greek city of southern Italy, Epizephyrian Locri. This cult centre was clearly important for Locrian girls approaching marriage, and the pinakes (likely pre-nuptial votives) tell a different story – that of Persephone as willing bride and powerful queen of the Underworld. This dissonance can be resolved in part by consideration of the focus upon eschatological thinking that was pervasive in Southern Italy in the Classical and Hellenistic period. Texts from the gold leaves, such as that found in the Locrian colony Hipponion, attest to this. Material evidence from another cult centre in Locri that was important for Locrian brides after the sanctuary at Mannella fell into disuse, makes it clear that the self-understanding of these brides became even more complex, accommodating the theatrical dimension of Dionysos as well as the Orphic. The puzzle is only partly resolved by looking at a couple of epigrams from the Palatine Anthology (AP 6.20 and 9.326) and at Menander's Dyscolos.

C. W. Marshall (University of British Columbia): A Roman Rehearses Alcestis (P. Oxy. 4546)
The recent publication of P. Oxy. 4546 (ed. D. Obbink in P.Oxy LXVII, 2001) provides for the first time some documentary evidence for the rehearsal of a Greek play in antiquity. Consisting of Admetus’ lines only in Euripides’ Alcestis 344-82, the papyrus presents evidence for a stage in the preparation of a play for a Roman audience in the first century BCE or the first century CE (the papyrus cannot be dated more precisely). This paper examines the papyrus for what is says about the rehearsal process. Following an initial description of the papyrus, it will first isolate what the papyrus is not: it is not a selection from an anthology; it is not a series of cue lines; it is not a copy of an earlier document; and, lest it be misunderstood, it is not evidence for fifth-century rehearsal practices. Once this ground has been cleared, it becomes possible to determine the sort of rehearsal process that can be inferred from this document. Comparisons with what is known of the cue-scripts and prompt-copies from Renaissance drama prove to be informative. While only one Elizabethan cue-script survives (for the actor Edward Alleyn in Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso), it is possible to observe similarities between this document and the papyrus. Modern actors using such cue-scripts emphasize the vitality that they add to a rehearsal (M. White, Renaissance Drama in Action 1998, 40). In brief compass it is possible to discuss the potential impact of a reperformance of Alcestis, the sole represent-ative of the prosatyric "genre" (C. W. Marshall, CJ 2000), on contemporary Roman literature. It is also possible to speculate on the performance style that such a rehearsal implies. The energy from the rehearsal potentially informs an understanding of the delivery of stichomythia in the Alcestis passage. The papyrus corroborates the increased rapidity of exchange that has been suggested (C. Collard, LCM 1980). Aspects of role division are considered. The papyrus consists of a single column of thirty lines, and Obbink observes that the Admetus has exactly thirty lines before this in the play, which might suggest only one column is lost to the left of column surviving on the papyrus, and that Admetus was the actor’s first (and potentially only) role. It is likely that in the original performance in 438 the Admetus actor would also have played either Thanatos or Apollo, and the implications of such a casting must also be considered for the Roman re-staging. While there is no longer any need for role doubling to be preserved (since such doublings are the consequence of the Dionysia competition), the existence of a papyrus from Euripides’ Cresphontes, P. Oxy. 2458 (from the third century CE), which allots stichomythic lines between A and G (that is, the "first actor" and "third actor," apparently), does suggest that these elements may have been preserved in certain later performances. Comparison with the Cresphontes papyrus and considerations of the practicalities of preparing the lines for public performance imply that lost in the left margin of this papyrus must have been a number of lection signs indicating the end of each speech, though it cannot be determined whether these would be paragraphoi, notae personarum, or actor-notations. A handout will detail the posited reconstruction of P. Oxy. 4546.

Hugh J. Mason (University of Toronto): Who was Makar? Anatolian and Achaean elements in Late Bronze Age Lesbos
In a text dated around 1300 BCE, the Hittite King asks about the proper ritual for the gods of Ahhiyawa (i.e Achaiwoi or Myceneans) and Lazpa (Lesbos), as though each was equally foreign to him. But his successor received a com-plaint from his vassal in the Seha-river-lands that an ally of Ahhiyawa, after raiding Lazpa, deported temple-servants belonging to the King, suggesting that the administration of the island's cults was of direct concern to the Hittite court. Culturally, Late Bronze Age Lesbos is an extension of north-west Anatolia, with less Mycenean material than at sites further south; but there is an increase in Mycenean finds from the 13th century, just when cuneiform texts suggest that Lesbos was subject to the Hittites. In the Iliad (24. 524), Lesbos, the "seat of Makar," is part of Priam's realm, i.e. Anatolian. Also Anatolian is Makar's law-code, which he called "Lion" (Diod. 5.82.3) because of the beast's courage and strength; law-writing is the function of a Hittite King and the founder of the Seha-river dynasty was called Muwawalwi, "might of a lion" in Luwian. In Hittite, makar is attested in the place name makarwanda "region of makar," but its meaning is unknown. It does have a meaning   ("blessed") in Greek. Also Greek are Makar's supposed fore-bears from Peloponnesian Achaia, and the (possibly) Mycenean tombs at the site called Makara. The documentary evidence suggests that Late Bronze Age Lesbos was under Luwian/Hittite rule, and only marginally associated with the state of Ahhiyawa; but if we look at the literary traditions about Makar, and the growing evidence for an increase in Mycenean cultural objects, we may suspect that the "Achaean" presence on the island was more substantial.
David Mirhady (Simon Fraser University): Draconian Etiologies
A re-inscription from 409 BC of a procedural regulation ascribed to Drakon and legislated two hundred years before reveals one of the first attempts to regulate homicide in Athens. Although the regulation lays out a complicated list of procedures to be followed in order for the accused to achieve reconciliation with the family of the deceased, on which there has been a great deal of scholarship (see e.g. Carawan 1998), the legislation’s first procedural step is that "the kings judge (dikazen) (someone) liable (aition) for homicide ". This paper will focus attention on two points: first, to what extent Carawan is right that the word "aitios" looks to the consequences of guilt ? liability ? rather than to the initial cause" (42), and second, the cultural significance of this early attempt to rationalize and publicize a concept spanning the gap between aitia in the sense of causation and liability. The paper will make use both of Aristotelian taxonomies of causation and of recent critiques of the cultural assumptions that link causation with blame.

Meredith English Monaghan (Reed College): The Art of Writing in Philostratus the Younger
The literary trope of ecphrasis offers a unique entry into the examination of the relationship between art and text. Because the term ecphrasis refers to extended descriptions of both real and imagined objects, the nature of that relationship can, and does, vary widely. While the term is most commonly used in undergraduate courses to refer to poetic descriptions of divinely wrought objects such as Achilles' shield in the Iliad or Jason's cloak in Apollonius' Argonautica, ancient ecphrastic descriptions can refer to anything from a landscape to a statue to a Christian church. In this paper I am interested in examining one particular group of ecphrases, the Eikones of Philostratus the Younger, whose literary descriptions of pictures of mythological scenes have received little scholarly attention. Generally viewed as a rhetorical exercise describing unreal objects, that is, not referring to actual works of art, the Eikones provide one view into the relationship between art and text in the ancient world. The goal of the paper is to gain insight into this relationship by examining these texts that describe works of art that exist only within the text itself.

Christopher Morrissey (Simon Fraser Univ.): Aristotle on Textual and Material History: Mythical Structures of Reality
This paper investigates the relation between mythical text and material cultural history from the standpoint of the Aristotelian analysis of mythos (‘plot’) as an imitation of material being. It thus clarifies the Aristotelian notions of (1) tragic, comic, and historical plots, (2) history, possibility, probability, and necessity, and (3) representation and real-ity. If, for Aristotle (Poetics 2, 1448a 16-18), tragedy represents people as better than life, and comedy worse than life, this would appear to imply that there could be a third type of drama that represents people as they are. Yet Aristotle remarks that Euripides, unlike the drama of Sophocles, represented people, not as they ought to be, but as they are (Poetics 25). This would imply that tragedy could represent not only people as they ought to be (Sophocles) but also as they are (Euripides). If the same could be said mutatis mutandis of comedy, then perhaps the third type of drama (‘people as they are’) is one in which comic and tragic representations could coexist, since both comedy and tragedy would cross over into this third category by portraying ‘people as they are’. This paper explains how ‘histories’ and ‘romances’ can be seen as part of this third category. In doing so it argues that for Aristotle ‘people as they ought to be’ is not a moral prescription but rather an ontological description of the mode of mimetic representation. The ‘ought to be’ of tragedy is a mimetic strategy of relativity, i.e. a representation by which a character’s reality (material being) is measured against a world that is tragically unjust: a world that is not materially as it ‘ought to be’ (e.g. a good person ends unjustly in misfortune). The ontological relativity is similar for comedy, only inverted.

Max Nelson (University of Windsor): It's Raining Men! The Tradition of Blood Rains in Antiquity
Twice in the Iliad (11.52-55 and 16.459-461) Zeus is said to rain blood on earth, and these passages were clearly conflated some time later by the author of the Pseudo-Hesiodic Shield of Heracles (383–5) (the common modern claim that only the second passage was copied and that line 384 should be deleted can be dismissed). Although it has been thought that the second instance in Homer involved Zeus crying bloody tears because of the foreseen death of his son Sarpedon (scholiasts and Eustathius ad loc. And Johanes Tzetzes, Comm. in Arist. Nub. 621a), all three passag-es should probably be interpreted the same way, that is, as depicting a rain of blood as a portent for impending death(s) on the battlefield. This seems to have been the interpretation of Nonnus (Dion. 25.47-52), who says that since Perseus did not wage war it did not rain blood, thus implying that this was considered a typical sign of war. This sort of portent was likely not a literary invention, but originated in a wondrous if a times misunderstood natural phenomenon, which is often attested in sources from the first century B.C. on (Cicero, Appian, Ovid, Livy, Pliny, Petronius, Dio Cassius, Julius Obsequens, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, Eustathius, etc.). Homer's explanation was that it was a divine sign; others later would explain blood rain as due to the blood from a battlefield being taken up into clouds and then falling back to earth (scholiasts, Porphyry, and Eustathius on Il. 11.52-55) or as due to a mixture of particles of red earth or ochre in the rain (Cicero, De divin. 2.58, and see Eust., Comm. ad Hom. Il. 11.55), which remains the commonly held modern explanation. In a fantastical parody of Homer, Lucian (Ver. hist. 1.17) even suggests that blood rain could be due to the blood from a battle between sun and moon people in the sky.

Nigel Nicholson (Reed College): Vases and Victories: Copenhagen 109
Copenhagen 109 is a complex vase that seems to commemorate a chariot victory. Melding together a one-person racing chariot and a Homeric two-person war-chariot, it suggests that the charioteer had an enduring relationship with the victor (who rarely drove his own chariot), by intimating that, like a Homeric charioteer, the charioteer was a friend, relative or henchman of the man he drove for. Dated to around 550 by Beazley (ABV 135.33), it seems best understood by reference to two other unusual memorials that insist that victor and charioteer are related, SEG XXIII.38 (from around 550) and Pindar's Pythian 5 (462). This insistence is a response to the nascent commodification of chariot driving. Charioteer and victor were beginning to become separated, as successful charioteers began to serve a number of patrons, some of whom they had no prior connection with. But this commodification of chariot-driving posed considerable problems for the aristocratic owners, since it implicated them in a mode of exchange against which they defined themselves. Like Py. 5 and SEG XXIII.38, Copenhagen 109 seems to promote the aristocratic credentials of the victory by assuring us that the victor did not step outside his usual relationships to win his victory. Yet, we should take pause before assuming that this vase can be interpreted by reference to other victory memorials. It differs in two major respects: first, vases were cheaper and more readily available than dedications or odes, and, second, although probably intended for purchase by a victor, Copenhagen 109 was not specially commissioned by one. Thus, although seemingly readily understandable in terms of other memorials, Copenhagen 109 asks us to consider how unified the production of victory memorials was.

M. Nikolic and H. Sigismund-Nielsen (University of Calgary): Lead Poisoning in the Roman Empire
Was chronic poisoning of the Roman population through continuous use of lead in all areas of daily life an important reason for the "fall" of the Roman Empire in the 5th century CE? Or putting it less bluntly, did it at least have a significant impact on Roman mortality levels? It is known today that chronic lead poisoning, also known as saturnism, causes, among other things, infertility and nerve damage. The widespread use of e.g. lead-based paint, kitchen utensils and water pipes in ancient Rome suggests that these may have had noxious effects on the population’s health. Did a substantial number of Romans, then, suffer from lead-induced infertility and brain damage? Scholars have argued for and against this idea on an intuitive basis, but only very few attempts have been made to find evidence of lead in skeletal remains from the Roman period. This paper collects and summarizes the results from such studies that have been carried out in the past, draws conclusions that are relevant to the social historian and makes suggestions for future research to settle this question on a solid basis of statistical data.

Alexandra Pappas (University of Wisconsin): The Art of Writing: The Aesthetics of Archaic Greek Inscriptions
Few contexts reinforce the interrelationship of text and material culture like the writing preserved on archaic Greek pottery and stone. These dipinti and graffiti—and the artistic medium in which they have been preserved—remind us that ancient modes of literary and visual expression each contributed meaning to the other. Modern scholars, however, often treat the material in specialized studies on epigraphy or art history despite the fact that ancient artists did not always conceive the written word separately from visual narrative. While some important considerations of early Greek writing in its artistic context have recently been made (e.g., Immerwahr, 1990; Jeffery, 1990; Lissarrague, 1990; Henderson, 1994), they are often limited to a few pages, prohibiting the in-depth analysis that the topic demands. This paper will explore Greek inscriptions that I view as contributing to the visual field of which they are a part. I will examine the writing preserved on the Dipylon Oinochoe (Athens, NM 192), the "Keramo" stele (Athens, EM), a Nessos Painter neck amphora (Athens, NM 1002), and a Nearchos aryballos (New York 26.49). In all four test cases, each artefact reveals that the written word is integral to the visual field of which it is a part and its shape and placement both inform and are informed by the medium in which it has been preserved. The unifying feature of the writing in this sample of archaic epigraphy is that the words themselves have an artistic and decorative function which contributes to the overall narrative of the scene, creating meaning even for an illiterate audience. Thus, I will demonstrate that archaic Greek writing can have an aesthetic value which equals, and in some cases even super-sedes, the semantic value of the recorded words and in this context, text and material culture are inextricably linked.

Frances Pownall (University of Alberta): When Textual Evidence is Not Enough: The Problem of the First Sacred War
The lack of a continuous narrative source makes it difficult to assess the accuracy of the textual evidence for many of the events of the Archaic Period. A case in point is the First Sacred War. The evidence for this shadowy conflict is late, literary, and tendentious, causing doubts to be cast on its very historicity (Noel Robertson, CQ 28 [1978] 38-73). The Greeks themselves seemed to have forgotten about this conflict (it is not mentioned by Herodotus or Thucyd-ides), until its resurrection in the wake of the Third Sacred War, when it provided further grist for Philip's ever-active propaganda mill. It is only by examining all the sources for this conflict, both textual and archaeological, that one can make a more balanced assessment not only of its historicity, but also of the reasons why it is presented as it is in the literary sources.

Lorina Quartarone (University of Montana): Where relics and texts disagree: the enigmatic origins of the Capitoline Temple & Triad.    Among ancient authors, material remains, and modern scholars’ assessments, there is considerable dis-agreement concerning many aspects of the Capitoline Temple and Triad. Regarding the construction and scope of the Temple itself, the works of Canina, Paribeni & Gatti, Lanciani, and Gjerstad, among others, as well as many ancient sources, attest to a structure of considerable size with lavish embellishment. This long-accepted description of the temple has been recently and reasonably challenged by the work of John Stamper, who is supported by Vitruvius as well as modern scholars such as Stambaugh, Nielsen & Poulsen, Rowe, and Boethius. Stamper’s well-researched and detailed work suggests that the original temple was much smaller than has been traditionally thought. His reassessment of both our ancient sources and the conclusions drawn from material remains in the relatively recent past (18th -20th centuries) aptly demonstrates that even matters which have been deemed well in hand are still subject to debate. Another such matter is the traditionally attributed (by Livy, Dionysius and Servius) Etruscan origin of both the Temple and Triad. While the Temple’s plan, initial construction, and ancient authors all indicate Etruscan influence, Servius’ assertion that the Triad itself is Etruscan and important in city planning remains unsupported by the material remains of any Etruscan settlements. Furthermore, Varro’s reference to the Capitolium Vetus of the Quirinal, Livy’s description of the averted displacement of "local gods" from the site where the temple was built, and the works of modern scholars (such as Hackens, Dumezil, Pallottino, Camporeale, and Haynes) may foster different conclusions.

Pauline Ripat (University of Winnipeg): The Effects of the Prohibition against Divination in Roman Egypt (AD 199)
In AD 199 an order from the prefect was circulated around the Egyptian nomes prohibiting divination on pain of death. The details are preserved for us on P.Yale 299. Scholars have often considered the effects of this order to have been negligible. This conclusion is often drawn on the analogy of similar prohibitions issued within Rome itself, which ancient historians note as largely ineffectual. But the Roman period oracle questions and similar prophetic evidence from Egypt, all which survive on papyri, suggest that the prohibition contained in P.Yale 299 did have profound effects. Indeed, this order may have caused a rift between temple ritual and traditional forms of divination, resulting in the appearance of 'magic' for the first time in Egypt.

Annabel Robinson (University of Regina): Jane Harrison, ecstatic ascetic. The beauty and the thrill of it!
Jane Harrison always claimed that the Olympian religion of ancient Greece was not religious at all, hating the Olymp-ian gods as mere objets d’art, for they failed to address what she believed the most important elements in religion: the emotions, the need for belonging, the mystery of the irrational. The worship of Dionysus, by contrast, incorporated just these elements. Dionysus also promised release from convention, especially for women. However, his followers achieved this end through drunkenness and the eating of raw flesh, and their loss of inhibition led to unimaginable violence. This paper will explore how Jane Harrison came to terms with these obstacles and claimed to find in Dionysus and his worship a religion for today.

Luke Roman (University of Victoria): Metapoetic Writing Materials in Martial’s Apophoreta
Writing-tablets (pugillares, codicilli, or tabellae) were used in ancient Rome for ephemeral writing of various kinds, including messages requiring a quick response and rough drafts. For Roman poets, such tablets are interesting in literary terms because they represent a stage of writing prior to the published text, and thus afford an opportunity for reflecting on literary textuality. In poems on this theme by Catullus (c.42), Propertius (3.23), and Ovid (Amores 1.11-12), multiple levels of mediation, with a complex alternation between voice and writing, bring into play a series of inter-connected issues relating to literary medium: wax tablets, slaves, a public notice, personified hendecasyllabi, and the author’s voice variously convey messages embedded within messages. One implicit theme within this scenario is the replacement of the ephemeral materials of writing with the author’s voice, which is, in turn, preserved in an enduring text. It is not accidental that the tablets are stolen (Catullus), lost (Propertius), or consigned to ignominious decay (Ovid). In their place, we encounter the author’s voice demanding them back (Catullus), posting an advertisement of reward for their return (Propertius), and cursing their failure (Ovid). Martial, at the opening of his Apophoreta, introduces a series of tablets in various formats, often made out of remarkable materials, followed by two epigrams on paper (Epigrams 14.3-11). I wish to argue that this representation of writing materials participates in the metapoetic tradition summarized above, but by inverting its premise. Martial restores the lost tablets; he makes available as Saturnalian gifts the material objects that were previously displaced by the author’s voice. Martial’s poetica degli oggetti brings the tablets and their distinct, physical qualities back into view, perpetuating by inversion his predecess-ors’ concern with issues of utility and uselessness, voice and writing, ephemeral communication and literary immortality.

J.J. Rossiter (University of Alberta): Cupid’s dining-room: text and context in Apuleius’ Golden Ass
This paper examines the relationship between text and cultural context with respect to the many descriptions of dining found in Apuleius’ Golden Ass. It focuses in particular on the description of the dining arrangements found in Cupid’s palace in the story of Cupid and Psyche. It addresses the question of what specific cultural practices Apuleius’s text reflects and whether these practices were part of the provincial African culture in which he lived and wrote or of the elite culture of Rome with which he was personally acquainted. The paper looks at both the archaeological and literary evidence for social dining in Roman North Africa and concludes that it was this African environment which likely inspired his fictional vignettes.

Greg Rowe (University of Victoria): Shifting Fortunes: The Sulpicii at Murecine
The material evidence for this talk is a small-scale "harbour villa" on the river Sarno in the agro Murecine, south of Pompeii, unearthed in 1959 during widening of the autostrada. The textual evidence is basket of wooden tablets found on a triclinium couch in the villa, the financial and legal records of the Sulpicii, three generations of moneylenders from Julio-Claudian Puteoli. In this talk, I shall introduce the site and the archive and consider questions raised by the confrontation of the material and the textual evidence. Why were documents from Puteoli found near Pompeii? Because the Sulpicii owned the building at Murecine, as suggested by graffiti reading SVL(picii (or -piciorum) found during reexcavation in 1999-2000? Why would the Sulpicii have left Puteoli? Because commerce at Puteoli was in decline after Claudius constructed the port at Ostia? Why would they have come to Pompeii? Because they were drawn by a building boom following the AD 62 earthquake? What broader social, economic, and political trends might their move reflect? Were the Sulpicii upwardly mobile? Ought we to think of them as representing a commercial class investing its profits in landed property? As freedmen and freedmen's descendents entering the Pompeian aristocracy?
The talk will be accompanied by slides and a handout with texts and bibliography.

James Russell (University of British Columbia): Can We Trust Tacitus' Agricola?
For a province that existed for close to four centuries the written record for Roman Britain is scarce indeed, amounting to a few hundred words in total. For this reason archaeological evidence plays a disproportionate role in reconstructing the province's history. The resulting narrative, with its stress on social and economic developments, though very different from a text-based history, offers in many ways a richer and more nuanced account of the province. Yet the traditional image of archaeology as the handmaiden of history dies hard. The case is well illustrated from Tacitus' account of the first decades of Roman rule in Britain which perversely continues to provide the framework into which the archaeological evidence is expected to fit. The habit of validating Tacitus from evidence on the ground began as early as the 16th century when Hector Boece presented the first candidate in the never ending quest for the location of Agricola's victory at Mons Graupius. The same instinct accounts for Cunliffe's invention of Cogidubnus, ruler of the Atrebates, as owner of the newly excavated palatial villa at Fishbourne, without a shred of evidence to support an association now permanently enshrined in the Cambridge Latin Programme A more serious challenge to Tacitus as a reliable source, however, has arisen recently from excavations on the short-lived Gask frontier system in Perthshire and elsewhere, which indicate that the conquest of northern Britain began a full decade before Agricola entered his governorship ca. 78, possibly under the command of Vettius Bolanus to whom Statius attributes a successful campaign over the Caledonians in a much disputed passage (Silv. 5.2.142-49). Tacitus' failure to mention these early Flavian activities in the north in favour of compressing the entire conquest of northern Britain into the short space of Agricola's governorship can easily be explained in an author composing a panegyric intended to enhance the reputation of its hero. For the historian, however, the omission seriously compromises his own reputation.

Lionel Sanders (Concordia University): Cornelius Nepos, Dion of Syracuse and Triumviral Rome
Traditionally Cornelius Nepos’s ‘Dion’, like Nepos’s other biographies, has been regarded as an untrustworthy source marked by chronological and factual errors. These deficiencies are said to derive from Nepos’s employment of inferior Hellenistic biographies. More recent scholarship has convincingly revised this overall estimate and abandoned the theory of Nepos’s dependence on such sources, maintaining that he had access to sound historiographical material. Further Nepos has been reassessed as a biographer who utilized his historiographical sources to forge a highly personal view and indictment of the politics of his own era. Within the context of this reappraisal, this paper argues (a) that Nepos in the ‘Dion’ did consult a variety of historiographical material; (b) that he used this material to offer a vital critique of the events of his own era;, and (c) that consequently most of the historical problems in the biography have less to do with Nepos’s weaknesses as a researcher that with his agenda of passing caustic comment upon the politics of the triumviral era.

Julia L. Shear (King's College, Cambridge): Texts and Material Culture: Peisistratos and Phye Return to Athens
To understand antiquity as fully as possible we must consider both texts and material culture, a holistic approach which, in our case study of Peisistratos’ second return to Athens in either 557/6 or 556/5 B.C. leads to a new inter-pr-etation of the events. On this occasion, Peisistratos dressed up a tall woman named Phye in a panoply and together they drove into the city in a chariot to the acclamations of heralds who announced that Athena was bringing Peisistratos back to her own Akropolis (Herodotos 1.60.2-5). Much to the disgust of both Herodotos and many modern scholars, the Athenians believed this ‘ruse’, worshipped Phye as Athena, and welcomed back Peisistratos. Tradit-ion-ally, scholarship on this episode has focused on Herodotos’ text and its interpretation remains elusive. Building on the work of Connor and Sinos, we must look at the occasion in its larger cultural context reconstructed from both texts and physical remains. As I argue, the point of reference is the Panathenaia and Peisistratos’ actions must be under-stood through the festival’s rituals and myths. In this setting, he was identified as a participant in the apobatic contest and re-enacted its invention by Erichthonios and his foster-mother Athena. Peisistratos, therefore, displayed himself, not as a would-be tyrant, but as a legitimate and divinely protected ruler of the city, hence the reaction of the Athen-ians. This episode demonstrates the benefits of a holistic approach to a historical problem, but it also emphas-is-es its complexity. Reconstructing the Panathenaic setting requires a knowledge of both texts and material culture and of their problems. Furthermore, if we expect our students to do such work, we must ensure that they have a wide range of skills rather than limited specialisations and that our institutions are structured to facilitate such learning and research.

Kathleen Sherwood (University of British Columbia): Understanding the role of minor votive offerings in sanctuary contexts in antiquity: the challenge of working around limited texual evidence
Minor votive objects are often found in the archaeological excavations of sanctuaries. Rarely, if ever, are they ment-ioned either in ancient texts or epigraphical documents.Unlike major votive dedications such as large-scale sculptures or relief stelai, they are often and periodically cleaned out from within and around temples and altars, and are re-deposited within the sanctuary confines. How, then, are we as scholars of classical antiquity to understand the role that they played in the context of sanctuaries? This paper will look at two categories of minor votive offerings, i.e. terracotta figurines and relief plaques, and votive metal plaques, in order to explore what information may be obtained about ritual practices in antiquity from such ephemeral material. Using carefully selected examples of such finds from excavations in the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros at Mytilene on Lesbos and the acropolis sanctuary at Stymphalos in Arcadia, as well as at other sites, the author will examine the value and limitations of perfunctory references to such offerings in poetry (Herondas) and in the epigraphical record (inventory lists from the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron), in addition to the art historical method whereby comparisons are drawn with large-scale sculpture in order to provide a date based on stylistic development. The value of the ethno-archaeological approach for creating theories of use, and the important of studying and interpreting such material within the archaeological context, utilizing more firmly established chronological indicators such as pottery and coins, will also be examined. It is essential for scholars of classical antiquity to use all such available resources at their disposal in order to develop theories leading to a balanced and holistic view of religious votive practices in antiquity.

Chris Simpson (Wilfrid Laurier University): The Prima Porta Statue of Augustus: A Fresh Interpretation
The very well-known Prima Porta statue of Augustus is universally believed today to represent and glorify the Princeps’ diplomatic coup of 20/19 B.C. in recovering legionary standards from Parthia — standards which were lost in three military campaigns beginning with that of M. Licinius Crassus at Carrhae in 53 B.C. However, this paper casts doubt on that exclusive interpretation. By appealing to the iconography of the statue itself, and to the written and numismatic evidence, a more convincing context for the making of the Prima Porta Augustus is proposed. In the event, it seems more likely that the original statue was made about the the time that the Ara Pacis Augustae was dedicated in January 9 B.C. This suggestion, if accepted when published, will necessitate a slight but significant shift in our understanding of Augustan art and visual propaganda.
David G. Smith (Stanford University): Off the Map: Reading the Greek West in the Hellenistic Age
It can be demonstrated quickly that the Hellenistic poets were fascinated by the geography of Italy and Sicily. In fact, it seems that they often went out of their way to include puzzling details of topography or local mythology. For example, why do Apollonius’ Argonauts follow in Odysseus’ footsteps down the western coast of Italy, even though technically they were there before he was? Why do Callimachus’ Aetia include a poem listing a number of obscure Sicilian cities? Why do dozens of Lycophron’s returning Greek and Trojan heroes settle in Italy and Sicily, but nowhere else outside of Greece? Clearly, earlier versions of these stories in Homer and others play a role in their Hellenistic incarnations, but appeals to literary precedents cannot explain the morass of topographical and mytho-logical detail that these poems reveal. This level of detail can only be explained by understanding the intertexts for the Hellenistic poems as material objects – not as disembodied ideas, but as real artefacts that were written and read, researched and cited, lost, found, copied, stolen, lent and borrowed, filed, shelved, rolled and unrolled countless times alone and in combination. This paper reconsiders the Alexandrian fascination with Italian and Sicilian mytho-logical topography in the light of the technologies of reading and writing, and invites a more precise under-standing of the relationship between myth, place, and textual construction in the Hellenistic period.

John Vanderspoel (University of Calgary): Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Britain: Whose God is it, anyway?
Traditionally, scholars have suggested that an annual ceremony in honour of the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva) constituted a declaration of allegiance by legions scattered throughout the empire. While this may occur elsewhere, that perspective requires serious modification for Roman Britain, where the textual and material evidence, i.e., inscriptions, their findspots and their distribution, shows a remarkable divergence from this tidy interpretation. By far the majority of inscriptions occur at no more than half a dozen places; the sites lie along the supply road to the ern portion of Hadrian’s Wall and at the Wall itself. Most dedications were made on behalf of auxiliary units, not legions. Meanwhile, dedications to Juno and Minerva are rare in northern Britain. The evidence of these epigraphic texts indicates that reinterpretation is necessary. Even accounting for the loss of evidence, the view that legions regularly declared their loyalty in this manner is unsatisfactory, at least for northern Britain. The minimal appearance of the other members of the triad suggests that the Jupiter in question was not the Capitoline deity, but rather a supreme male deity brought to northern Britain by the auxiliary units (or possibly a local British equivalent) and con-veniently recast as the Capitoline Jupiter when these units were in Roman service. In that case, as many as 90% of the epigraphic texts honouring Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Britain are not truly dedications to the Roman god.

Nicola Waugh (University of Bristol): Animal, Mineral or Vegetable? Interpretations of the Helen at Sparta
While Helen is popularly perceived as ‘Helen of Troy,’ it was at Sparta that she had her most important cult. She shared the hillside site overlooking the Lakonian plain with her husband, Menelaos, after whom the sanctuary was named. The British School at Athens undertook the first major excavation of the site in the early part of the twentieth century. The excavators considered the cult to be that of a ‘nature goddess,’ and this view has not been seriously questioned since. Much scholarship on Helen has focused on her literary persona, or associations with Indo-European models. However these studies remove Helen fro the socio-religious setting in which she was worshipped and which ultimately determined her ‘meaning’ for the Spartan polis. Excavations of the site have noted that the votive offerings are centred around Bronze Age ruins, and it ha been suggested that the cult had a physical focus in a natural out-cropping of rock encompassed by the Classical shrine. The early excavators also found a hoard of terracotta figurines of a woman seated astride on a horse in the archaic shrine building, which are comparable to the numerous equine votives found at other Spartan sanctuaries. To understand Helen of Sparta, I suggest that it is necessary that all of these elements are taken into consideration, rather than privileging one to the detriment of another, and will present a possible interpretation for Helen’s role in Spartan cult and society.

Haijo Jan Westra (Univ. of Calgary): The semiotics of fish, fishing and fishermen in Greco-Roman culture and society
After the recent publication of the Teubner edition of Oppian's Halieutica (1999), the discovery of the significance of the (cunning) behaviour of (some) fish by Vernant and Detienne (1974), as well as the long article by Engemann in RAC (1969), it is possible and desirable to review and analyse the many actual and symbolic functions of fish, fishing and fishermen in the ancient world, from the dietary and socio-economic realm to their role in religion and art. One of the striking results of such a survey is the great range in symbolic value of fish, from poor man's dinner to decadent luxury in the hierarchy of the dietary code. In religion, attitudes range from Egyptian fish worship to Pythagorean abstention. The low social status of fishing is inverted in the poor man's religion of Christianity where it becomes a metaphor for salvational activity, also attested as a Hellenistic-Roman motif. At the same time, fish, fishing and fishermen are associated with erotic activity. As has been demonstrated recently, indulging in certain seafoods was the moral equivalent of engaging in venal sex, according to socially prescriptive texts. In art, fish can be a symbol of life, as well as being associated with the afterlife. It would appear that there is no one single ground for the symbolic value of this sign system, and that the positive/negative charge, value and symbolic function of fish, fishing and fishermen are contextual and constructed, their significance dependent on their relative position between the polarities of staple and luxury, the pure and the impure, and life and death. The closest parallels are with the sign system of hunting and with the symbolic values of the (corrupting) sea.