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.