Wisconsin Studies in Classics – serie

'The most extensive scholarship to appear on this Greek dramatist in many years, Michelini's work will be important to specialists and students of classical literature, literary theory, and both English and comparative literature.' - Modern Greek Studies

This text questions the Hellenistic dating of many famous monuements, based on careful examination of the evidence.

The famous library of Alexandria, founded around 295 BCE by Ptolemaios I, housed the greatest collection of texts in the ancient world and was a fertile site of Hellenistic scholarship. Rudolf Blum's landmark study, originally published in German in 1977, argues that Kallimachos of Kyrene was not only the second director of the Alexandrian library but also the inventor of two essential scholarly tools still in use to this day: the library catalog and the "biobibliographical" reference work. Kallimachos expanded the library's inventory lists into volumes called the Pinakes, which extensively described and categorized each work and became in effect a Greek national bibliography and the source and paradigm for most later bibliographic lists of Greek literature. Though the Pinakes have not survived, Blum attempts a detailed reconstruction of Kallimachos's inventories and catalogs based on a careful analysis of surviving sources, which are presented here in full translation.

With this anthology, Barbara Hughes Fowler presents a comprehensive selection of Greek poetry of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Fowler's translations provide access to six Homeric hymns, eight selections from Bakchylides, 11 odes of Pindar, selections from the iambicists and elegists, virtually all of Archilochos and of the lyricists, including Sappho, and a number of anonymous poems about work, play and politics. Archaic poets delighted in all that was radiant and delicate, and their poems are read for their narrative charm, celebration of nature, and playful sensuality. There are love poems here, as well as poems of friendship and warfare, of colonisation and homesickness; and there are tantalizing fragments of fables. Along with her notes and bibliography, Fowler has provided a biographical list of poets and a glossary of proper names. In addition to its breadth of subject matter, ""Archaic Greek Poetry"" can claim to be the only volume of its kind translated by a contemporary published poet. Barbara Hughes Fowler offers translations true to the original Greek, while providing modern readers with examples of the beauty of lyric poetry. Students and scholars of classical and comparative literature, ancient history, and art history, as well as lovers of lyric poetry, should find this volume useful.

Offering a reminder of the complex uses to which institutionalized violence can be put, this study shows how the deadly violence of arena sport and political suicide served a social purpose in ancient Rome.

Flinders Petrie has been called the ""Father of Modern Egyptology"" - and indeed he is one of the pioneers of modern archeological methods. Here Margaret S. Drower, a student of Petrie's in the early 1930s, traces his life from his boyhood, when he was already a budding scholar, through his stunning career in the deserts of Egypt to his death in Jerusalem at the age of 89. Drower presents Petrie as he was: an enthusiastic eccentric, diligently plunging into the uncharted past of ancient Egypt. She tells not only of his spectacular finds, including the tombs of the first Pharaohs, the earliest alphabetic script, a Homer manuscript, and a collection of painted portraits on mummy cases, but also of Petrie's important contributions to the science of modern archaeology, such as orderly record-keeping of the progress of a dig and the use of pottery sherds in historical dating.

The foremost religious festival of ancient Athens—the city dedicated to Athena, goddess of war, fertility, arts, and wisdom—was the Panathenaia. Challenging old assumptions and refuting new theories, Worshipping Athena addresses the many problems of interpretation and understanding that have swirled for years around the Panathenaia. Among the issues discussed is the recent sensational controversy over the Parthenon frieze, perhaps the best known but least understood work of Greek art. For centuries the frieze has been thought to represent the Panathenaia procession, but recently the argument has been advanced that it depicts the sacrifice of the daughters of the Athenian king Erechtheus. Worshipping Athena offers compelling evidence that the frieze does indeed depict the festal procession and also demonstrates that scenes of contemporary ritual were not unique to the Parthenon.Editor Jenifer Neils and the contributors—eminent classicists, archaeologists, and art historians—explore the role of the Panathenaia in Athenian life and compare it with similar festivals held throughout the ancient Greek world. They discuss such topics as the Panathenaia’s mythical origins, the phenomenon of the festival’s valuable prizes (oil-filled amphoras, rather than the customary laurel wreath), and the architecture, sculpture, and painting related to the festival.Worshipping Athena will provide valuable insights to scholars and students concerned with ancient religion, mythology, art, literature, and gender issues, as well as anyone with a keen interest in the ritual topography of the Athenian Acropolis and the iconography of the Parthenon frieze.

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, one of the world’s leading experts on classical sculpture, turns her attention in this volume to the fourth century, a period of transition from the classical Athenian style to an array of styles found simultaneously in the Hellenistic diaspora. Though a period very rich in important monuments, the fourth century has been particularly challenging and vexing to scholars, and Ridgway’s is the first comprehensive study of this sculpture in sixty years.Ridgway’s careful summaries of ongoing scholarly debates illustrate how the fourth century fits into the development of Greek sculpture and architecture. Discussing figural sculpture, votive and document reliefs, funerary art, and architectural sculpture from Greece proper to the non-Greek territories of Lykia and Karia in the Anatolian peninsula, she looks at major monuments and categories of monuments, describing each work carefully, puts into perspective problems surrounding interpretation and dating of the sculpture, reviews and evaluates previous scholarship on the subject, and offers her own views.Ridgway pays particular attention to Greek originals, but also provides valuable chapters on Roman copies, one of the most difficult but critical areas for understanding Greek sculpture. Taking a skeptical stance, Ridgway revisits scholarly attempts to attribute sculptural work to the famous masters of the fourth century: Praxiteles, Skopas, and Lysippos. She undertakes a factual analysis of the extant evidence for and against various attributions, bolstered by a critical reading of ancient literary sources.“

Employing the same methodology she has used in her previous studies of Greek sculpture, Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway critically scrutinizes most of the best-known pieces of Greek sculpture to determine what can be securely considered to have been produced during 200-100 B.C. Arguing that characterizations of the second century have been overly influenced by the dramatic Pergamon Altar, Ridgway begins afresh, examining architectural sculpture, statuary in the round, funerary and votive reliefs, and the difficult cases of sculptures known only, or primarily, through later copies, or found on Italian soil but probably made by Greek masters. Her exploration ultimately reveals a tentative but plausible picture of the artistic trends of this fascinating period.

Pat Getz-Gentle provides a clear and detailed survey of the Cycladic period, an early Bronze Age culture that thrived at the heart of the Aegean. In particular, she emphasises the steps leading to the iconic, reclining folded-arm figure that uniquely defines the Cycladic era. Getz-Gentle also focuses on the personal aesthetics of fifteen carvers, several of whom are identified and discussed in this volume. New to this paperback edition is an expanded bibliography as well an addendum that contains additional works Getz-Gentle has attributed to some of the fifteen Cycladic sculptors she discusses in her book.

This is a comprehensive collection of material on sculptured statue bases which should be of interest to archaeologists, historians of art and of religion, and scholars of ancient culture (including athletics and gender studies).

In these translated poems, David Mulroy aims to bring to life the witty, poignant and brutally direct voice of a flesh-and-blood man, a young provincial in Julius Caesar's Rome, reacting to real people and events in a city full of violent conflict among individuals marked by genius and megalomaniacal passions. These translations are accompanied by: an introduction and commentary that provide biographical and bibliographical information about Catullus; a history of his times; a discussion of the translations; and definitions and notes.

In the ""Heroides"" the Roman poet Ovid wittily plucks 15 abandoned heriones from ancient myth and literature and creates the fiction that each woman writes a letter to the hero who left her behind. But in giving voice to these heroines, is Ovid writing like a woman, or writing ""Woman"" like a man? Using feminist and psychoanalytic approaches to examine the ""female voice"" in the ""Heroides"", Sara H. Lindheim closely reads these fictive letters. She points out that in Ovid's verse epistles all the women represent themselves in a strikingly similar and disjointed fashion. Lindheim turns to Lacanian theory of desire to explain these curious and hauntingly repetitive representations of the heroines in the ""female voice"". Lindheim's approach illuminates what these poems reveal about both masculine and feminine constructions of the feminine.

Taking a fresh look at the poetry and visual art of the Hellenistic age, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to 20 BC, Graham Zanker makes enlightening discoveries about the assumptions and conventions of Hellenistic poets and artists and their audiences. Zanker offers exciting new interpretations by closely comparing poetry and art for the light each sheds on the other.

Taking a fresh look at the poetry and visual art of the Hellenistic age, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to the Romans' defeat of Cleopatra in 30 B.C., Graham Zanker makes enlightening discoveries about the assumptions and conventions of Hellenistic poets and artists and their audiences.Zanker's exciting new interpretations closely compare poetry and art for the light each sheds on the other. He finds, for example, an exuberant expansion of subject matter in the Hellenistic periods in both literature and art, as styles and iconographic traditions reserved for grander concepts in earlier eras were applied to themes, motifs, and subjects that were emphatically less grand.

Horace's later lyric poetry, ""Odes IV"", which focuses on praising Augustus, the imperial family, and other political insiders, has often been treated more as propaganda than art. But, the author, here, examines the richly textured ambiguities of ""Odes IV"".

This lively translation of Devins, Dieux et Demons is the first English-language edition of Jean-Rene Jannot's highly informative examination of Etruscan religion. Jannot tackles this elusive subject within three major constructs - death, ritual, and the nature of the gods - and presents recent discoveries in an accessible format. Jane K. Whitehead's translation updates Jannot's innovative text and introduces readers of all types - students, scholars, and the general audience - to this thorough overview of ancient Etruscan beliefs, including the afterlife, funerary customs, and mythology. Provocative insights and thoughtful discussions contribute to an understanding of the prophetic nature of Etruscan culture. Jannot investigates the elaborate systems of defining space and time that so distinctly characterize this ancient society. Jannot offers a unique perspective that illuminates the origins of some of our own ""modern"" religious beliefs. This updated edition includes more than 100 illustrations that depict early temples, statues, mirrors, tablets, and sculptures.

In his first book of Satires, written in the late, violent days of the Roman republic, Horace exposed satiric speech as a tool of power and domination. Using critical theories from classics, speech act analysis, and other fields, Catherine Schlegel argues that Horace's acute poetic observation of hostile speech provides insights into the operations of verbal control that are relevant to his time and to ours. She demonstrates that, though Horace is forced by his political circumstances to develop a new, unthreatening style of satire, his poems contain a challenge to our most profound habits of violence, hierarchy, and domination. Focusing on the relationships between speaker and audience and between old and new style, Schlegel examines the internal conflicts of a notoriously difficult text. This exciting contribution to the field of Horatian studies will be of interest to classicists as well as other scholars interested in the genre of satire.

Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World explores the implications of sex-for-pay across a broad span of time, from ancient Mesopotamia to the early Christian period. In ancient times, although they were socially marginal, prostitutes connected with almost every aspect of daily life. They sat in brothels and walked the streets; they paid taxes and set up dedications in religious sanctuaries; they appeared as characters - sometimes admirable, sometimes despicable - on the comic stage and in the law courts; they lived lavishly, consorting with famous poets and politicians; and they participated in otherwise all-male banquets and drinking parties, where they aroused jealousy among their anxious lovers. The chapters in this volume examine a wide variety of genres and sources, from legal and religious tracts to the genres of lyric poetry, love elegy, and comic drama to the graffiti scrawled on the walls of ancient Pompeii. These essays reflect the variety and vitality of the debates engendered by the last three decades of research by confronting the ambiguous terms for prostitution in ancient languages, the difficulty of distinguishing the prostitute from the woman who is merely promiscuous or adulterous, the question of whether sacred or temple prostitution actually existed in the ancient Near East and Greece, and the political and social implications of literary representations of prostitutes and courtesans.

Asses, asses, and more asses! This new edition of Plautus' rumbustious comedy provides the complete original Latin text, witty scholarly commentary, and an English translation that both complements and explicates Plautus' original style. John Henderson reveals this play as a key to Roman social relations centered on many kinds of slavery: to sex, money, and family structure; to masculinity and social standing; to senility and partying; and to jokes, lies, and idiocy. The translation remains faithful to Plautus' syllabic style for reading aloud, as well as to his humorous colloquialisms and wordplay, providing readers with a comfortable affinity to Plautus himself. An indispensable teaching and learning tool for the study of ""Roman New Comedy"", this edition includes comprehensive commentary, useful indexes, and a pronunciation guide that will help readers of all levels understand and appreciate Plautus and his era.

Ulysses in Black demonstrates that, similar to their white counterparts, African American authors - including Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen - have been students of classical languages, literature, and mythologies by such writers as Homer, Euripides, and Seneca. Ultimately, this unique study of black classicism becomes an exploration of America's broader cultural integrity, one that is inclusive and historic.

The notorious image of Pandora haunts mythology: a woman created as punishment for the crimes of man, she is the bearer of hope yet also responsible for the Earth’s desolation. She binds together perpetuating dichotomies that underlie the most fundamental aspects of the Western canon: beauty and evil, body and soul, depth and superficiality, truth and lie. Speaking in multiplicity, Pandora emerges as the first sign of female complexity.In this compelling study, Vered Lev Kenaan offers a radical revision of the Greek myth of the first woman. She argues that Pandora leaves a decisive mark on ancient poetics and shows that we can unravel the profound impact of Pandora’s image once we recognize that Pandora embodies the very idea of the ancient literary text. Locating the myth of the first woman right at the heart of feminist interrogation of gender and textuality, Pandora’s Senses moves beyond a feminist critique of masculine hegemony by challenging the reading of Pandora as a one-dimensional embodiment of the misogynist vision of the feminine. Uncovering Pandora as a textual principle operating outside of the feminine, Lev Kenaan shows the centrality of this iconic figure among the poetics of such central genres as the cosmological and didactic epic, the Platonic dialogue, the love elegy, and the ancient novel. Pandora’s Senses innovates our understanding of gender as a critical lens through which to view ancient literature.

This title provides a panoramic view of ancient cultures in Italy. This impressive collection brings to light the works of international scholars, some previously unavailable to an English-language audience. With new information and assessments about the art, architecture, and archaeology of one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the ancient world - the transition between pre-Roman and Roman Italy - these scholars focus on ancient Italy and the wider Mediterranean. Shedding new light on the evidence of well-known and recently excavated sites and the objects they have yielded - their iconography, manufacturing techniques, and afterlives - this collection follows the first archaeological traces of the rise of ancient Italy to its rediscovery in the Renaissance and its reinvention in contemporary fiction, offering a vibrant contribution to classical studies. Paying tribute to Richard Daniel De Puma, a scholar who has made significant and influential contributions to Etruscan and Roman studies, the contributors to this collection echo the ambition and creativity of his work while offering an up-to-date survey of contemporary Etruscan scholarship. In surveying new developments in both fields, the work collected here represents the diverse, interdisciplinary interests of De Puma as well as areas of recent groundbreaking research.

Barbara Pavlock unmasks major figures in Ovid's ""Metamorphoses"" as surrogates for his narrative persona, highlighting the conflicted revisionist nature of the ""Metamorphoses"". Although Ovid ostensibly validates traditional customs and institutions, instability is in fact a defining feature of both the core epic values and his own poetics. ""The Image of the Poet"" explores issues central to Ovid's poetics - the status of the image, the generation of plots, repetition, opposition between refined and inflated epic style, the reliability of the narrative voice, and the interrelation of rhetoric and poetry. The work explores the constructed author and complements recent criticism focusing on the reader in the text. Ovid's simultaneous play to and rebellion against epic tradition makes Narcissus both an idealized elegiac image through allusions to the poet's own mistress in the Amores and an elegiac poet fixated on his own image. Through Narcissus' demise, Ovid reflects the instability of visual images. In ""Orpheus' story of Venus and Adonis"", an undercurrent of desire in Venus' inset tale reveals a problematic self-involvement. The self-referential nature of Orpheus' song then raises questions about his reliability as narrator, a theme that culminates in Ulysses' contest with Ajax. Here Ovid undercuts heroic views about lineage and valor, but also highlights the many clever strategies by which Ulysses elevates himself over his rival, undermining Homer's ""Illiad"" and ""Odyssey"". Ovid questions the authority of the narrator but also provides the means for understanding the problems at the core of his epic. Thus, in his time and ours, the reader ultimately emerges better equipped to assess inherited traditions in literary, social, and political spheres.

The charismatic Alexander the Great of Macedon (356-323 B.C.E.) was one of the most successful military commanders in history, conquering Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, central Asia, and the lands beyond as far as Pakistan and India. Alexander has been, over the course of two millennia since his death at the age of thirty-two, the central figure in histories, legends, songs, novels, biographies, and, most recently, films. In 2004 director Oliver Stone's epic film ""Alexander"" generated a renewed interest in Alexander the Great and his companions, surroundings, and accomplishments, but the critical response to the film offers a fascinating lesson in the contentious dialogue between historiography and modern entertainment. This volume brings together an intriguing mix of leading scholars in Macedonian and Greek history, Persian culture, film studies, classical literature, and archaeology - including some who were advisors for the film - and includes an afterword by Oliver Stone discussing the challenges he faced in putting Alexander's life on the big screen. The contributors scrutinize Stone's project from its inception and design to its production and reception, considering such questions as: Can a film about Alexander (and similar figures from history) be both entertaining and historically sound? How do the goals of screenwriters and directors differ from those of historians? How do Alexander's personal relationships - with his mother Olympias, his wife Roxane, his lover Hephaistion, and others - affect modern perceptions of Alexander? Several of the contributors also explore reasons behind the film's tepid response at the box office and subsequent controversies.

Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE challenges the often-romanticised view of the prostitute as an urbane and liberated courtesan by examining the social and economic realities of the sex industry in Greco-Roman culture. Departing from the conventional focus on elite society, these essays consider the Greek prostitute as displaced foreigner, slave, and member of an urban underclass. The contributors draw on a wide range of material and textual evidence to discuss portrayals of prostitutes on painted vases and in the literary tradition, their roles at symposia (Greek drinking parties), and their place in the everyday life of the polis. Reassessing many assumptions about the people who provided and purchased sexual services, this volume yields a new look at gender, sexuality, urbanism, and economy in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Oedipus Rex is the greatest of the Greek tragedies, a profound meditation on the human condition. The story of the mythological king, who is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother, has resonated in world culture for almost 2,500 years. But Sophocles’ drama as originally performed was much more than a great story—it was a superb poetic script and exciting theatrical experience. The actors spoke in pulsing rhythms with hypnotic forward momentum, making it hard for audiences to look away. Interspersed among the verbal rants and duels were energetic songs performed by the chorus.David Mulroy’s brilliant verse translation of Oedipus Rex recaptures the aesthetic power of Sophocles’ masterpiece while also achieving a highly accurate translation in clear, contemporary English. Speeches are rendered with the same kind of regular iambic rhythm that gave the Sophoclean originals their drive. The choral parts are translated as fluid rhymed songs. Mulroy also supplies an introduction, notes, and appendixes to provide helpful context for general readers and students.