Love in the Age of War explores soldier characters in
Menander’s situation comedies, the oldest of their kind. Menander came
to dominate and define comedy for centuries, and a soldier served as the
central character in many of his plays. This study reveals that these
soldier characters are not the bragging buffoons that later became the
stereotype in this brand of comedy, but challenging and complex men who
struggle to find a place in new families and in their local communities.
In contrast to the traditional Greek stories of tragic warriors, these
soldiers ultimately succeed in adjusting to civilian life.
Wilfred Major details how Menander dramatized these compelling
stories, while later traditions instead turned these characters into
clowns. Menander’s original soldiers, however, may be the ones whose
stories resonate more powerfully today.
The crisis of Spartan power in the first half of the fourth century
has been connected to Spartan inability to manage the hegemony built on
the ruins of the Athenian Empire, or interpreted as a result of the
unexpected annihilation of the Spartan army by the Boeotians at Leuktra.
The present book offers a new perspective, suggesting that the crisis
that finally brought down Sparta was in important ways a result of
centrifugal impulses within the Peloponnesian League, accompanied by a
general awakening of ethnicity in various areas of the Peloponnese.
A series of regional case studies is combined with thematic
contributions focusing on topics such as the relationship of religious
cults and ethnicity and of democracy and ethnicity, the use of
archaeological evidence for ethnic phenomena, and comparative approaches
based on social anthropology
Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.
Ktèma est une revue annuelle de recherche consacrée à
l'histoire, l'archéologie et la littérature de la Grèce, de Rome, de
l'Égypte et du Proche-Orient antiques. Fondée en 1976 par Edmond
Frézouls et Edmond Lévy, elle est publiée par l'Université de
Strasbourg. Elle accueille des dossiers thématiques ainsi que des varia qui
proposent des articles originaux en français, en anglais, en italien,
en allemand et en espagnol. Elle jouit d'une solide réputation
internationale et ses articles sont abondamment cités.
Ktèma : civilisations de l'Orient, de la Grèce et de Rome antiques,
N°48, 2023. Traitement du passé et construction de la mémoire chez les
auteurs de la Seconde Sophistique.
Traitement du passé et construction de la mémoire chez les auteurs de la Seconde Sophistique
Since 2020, the Res Difficiles conference series has been a
venue for addressing inequities within the field of Classics, examining
issues arising out of intersectional vectors of race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, disability, class, socio-economic status and beyond. An
outgrowth of this conference series, Res Difficiles, The Journal—an imprint of Ancient History Bulletin,
a Green Open Access Journal—invites submissions from individuals,
pairs, or groups, addressing “difficult things” within the discipline of
Classics and related fields. Res Difficiles, The Journal seeks
to publish the “traditional” argumentative forms of inquiry standard to
the discipline, but also reflections upon pedagogical concerns as well
as contributions of a creative, personal, or experimental nature,
including interviews. In addition to individual submissions, we welcome
pitches for guest-edited special issues.
Res Difficiles, The Journal as an imprint of AHB adheres
to the usual North American editorial policies in the submission and
acceptance of articles but imposes no House Style. Authors are, however,
asked to use the abbreviations of L’Année philologique (APh) for journals, and of the Thesaurus linguae latinae (TLL) for Latin authors.
Submission of articles must be sent as .doc (or .docx) files in the
form of email attachments. PDF files should be submitted in addition to
the .doc file when the article contains Greek or other fonts; Greek text
should be entered using Unicode. Authors will receive PDF offprints of
their contributions. Copyright is retained by the author.
Editorial Board:
Hannah Čulík-Baird (UCLA), Co-editor
Joseph Romero (University of Mary Washington), Co-editor
Luke Roman (Memorial University), Associate editor
Elke Nash (University of New Hampshire), Associate editor
Abstract: This paper focuses on the foundations and
legacies of anthropology in the American Southwest, building from
previous classical reception scholarship which considers the ways in
which classicism interacted with colonialism in the early anthropology
of Lewis Henry Morgan and his contemporaries. Due to Morgan’s studies,
lands in Northern New Mexico, then a recent acquisition of the United
States, appeared alongside interests in classical archeology for the
first annual Archaeological Institute of America report. Yet this
examination seeks to revisit Morgan’s conceptions of civilization and to
recenter Indigenous kinship and connection to these lands. Through
Indigenous feminist revisioning, this revisioning asserts the importance
of methodologies in ethical care against the colonial abandonment of
Indigenous peoples to static stages of antiquity.
Abstract: This paper
examines the discursive and theoretical matrix deployed to conceptualize
“indigenous” peoples, landscapes, and material culture within the
context of the archaeology of Greek colonization in southern Italy
during the Iron Age. Of particular interest is how ways of knowing as
well as knowledge produced around ancient “Greek colonization” reproduce
white and colonial ways of knowing contemporary Indigenous and
colonized peoples and communities. This paper will suggest that
“indigenous” as a category comes to represent a stalking horse for
conceptual voids in approaches to archaeological studies of ancient
Greek colonization. A close reading of the archive of the archaeology of
Greek colonization in southern Italy positions this paper to reflect on
larger questions including how invented images of the “indigenous” can
become violently appropriated to settler colonial projects in classics
and how the indigenization of ancient southern Italic people represents a
maneuver to appropriate critical theory.
Keywords: Roman Africa, Punic, mestizaje, Augustine of Hippo.
Abstract: This article
explores how educated men in late antique North Africa navigated the
linguistic and cultural frontiers between the Latin and Punic languages.
Using the surviving corpus of Augustine of Hippo, it provides case
studies of provincials caught between their African origins and Roman
education: Augustine’s son Adeodatus, Augustine himself as a bishop,
grammarian Maximus of Madauros, and controversial bishop Antoninus of
Fussala. By applying a post-colonial framework of mestizaje,
this study elucidates the ambivalent identities of North African elites
while also exposing the marginalization of Punic-speaking populations in
rural areas. Left without the same recourse to appeal to the pope or
the Roman legal system, rural Punic speakers relied upon collective
action to enforce their will.
Keywords: Indigenous, feelings, soul, 1492, George Manuel.
Abstract: Over 50 years have now passed since the publication of George Manuel and Michael Posluns’ groundbreaking text The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (1974)
and the political and philosophical ideas presented prove to be just as
important as ever. In the introduction, Manuel recounts the story of a
settler co-worker asking him the question “Does Indians have feelings?”
This question ties directly into the many myths perpetuated about
Indigenous peoples, and reveals the denial of humanity that many
Indigenous people experience. This article will trace philosophical
ideas of the soul in a reverse chronology beginning with contemporary
stereotypes and finding connections with seventeenth century ideas about
Indigenous people, the soul, and animals.
Keywords: Indigenous philosophy, ancient philosophy, Charles Mills, Hamid Dabashi, Global philosophy.
Abstract: This article
grapples with the relationships and assumptions that define how
Indigenous philosophy is or is not related to the study of ancient
philosophy. I show that these assumptions are defined by a willingness
to contrast Greek and Roman philosophy with Indigenous peoples and
knowledge systems as being from a distant past. I argue that this
tendency reveals larger questions at hand: what ‘counts’ as philosophy?
Who can ‘do’ philosophy? In the first section of this article, I address
these questions following the works of Charles Mills, Hamid Dabashi. I
argue that Indigenous people can do philosophy. In the final sections of
this article, taking lessons from Coyote, V.F. Cordova, and Brian
Burkhart I demonstrate how Indigenous philosophies are beneficial for
creating space for new methods on approaching ancient texts.
Keywords: academic writing, black studies, colonialism, crip theory, disability studies.
Abstract: This essay argues that the conventional
and doctrinal forms in which we do our writing and thinking—because of
their indebtedness to racializing, pathologizing, and colonial
regimes—put limits on our ability to enact change, resistance, and
abolition in our work. It suggests that we find our way to experiments
in form, and thus to new possibilities for thought and relation, through
mundane interruptions in our abilities to reproduce such forms, as well
as through other departures from the over-performed and idealized
hyper-rationalism of academic work.
Keywords: ancient Mediterranean religion, epigraphy, manumission, metaphor, slavery.
Abstract: In this article, I offer a critique of a
common trend in classical and religious studies scholarship: the
treatment of human enslavement to deities as fictional, metaphorical, or
otherwise unreal. In conversation with postcolonial and feminist
historiographical and philosophical interventions, I explore what
assumptions operate in metaphorizing or fictionalizing ancient
Mediterranean deities and their role in socioeconomic affairs, including
slavery. After providing an overview of how historians and philosophers
have challenged some Western historiographical norms that govern the
treatment of deities as unreal, I examine inscriptions from three sites
(Delphi, Leukopetra, and the Bosporan Kingdom) and how the sale,
dedication, and enslavement of humans to deities occurs. I end by
analyzing how scholars have often continued to treat such inscriptions,
noting how there tends to be a common reading of enslavement to a deity
as fictional or a religious smokescreen.
Keywords: language pedagogy, second language
acquisition, grammar and translation method, active Latin, communicative
method, Prussian method.
Abstract: The way the classical languages are
traditionally taught can constitute a barrier to the entry to the field
for many students. This piece reviews the history of language pedagogy
over the last two centuries (starting with the Prussian school reform),
and makes the case for embracing more progressive approaches to teaching
Greek and Latin, informed by contemporary linguistics and second
language acquisition studies. It includes a discussion of existing
barriers to change, suggestions on how to implement small incremental
changes in the classroom, as well as a conversation with an expert who
has shifted to teaching Latin communicatively.
Abstract: This piece is a call-to-action for those
who work with ancient greco- roman material, often identified as
“classicists,” to minoritize the field of classics by adopting a stance
of disciplinary and individual humility. This includes critically
examining the assumption that classics is exempt, or will even benefit,
from the political persecution of racialized, queer and trans, disabled,
and other minoritized populations. Current diversification attempts to
combat this state of affairs by incorporating minoritized viewpoints via
reception, though well meaning, ultimately bolster the colonial
supremacy of the discipline. Minoritizing classics requires a varied,
widespread, and communal imaginative labor aimed at completely revising
the hierarchized valuation of greco-roman material and classical
(philological) methodologies.
Keywords: colonial travel literature, Grand Tour, orientalism, primitivism.
Abstract: In
the mid-eighteenth century, the Roman towns that were buried under the
debris from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE began to be excavated. The
findings drew an unparalleled number of travelers to Naples, eager to
visit the Bourbon excavations and see for themselves the remains of the
best-preserved example of daily Roman life. The immediate impact that
Pompeian wall paintings and decorative arts had on eighteenth-century
interior design is well studied, but what remains relatively
underexplored are the reactions of shock (and horror) to the artefacts
being unearthed in towns like Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here I show how
some British travelers understood the artefacts through a distinctly
colonial lens. Some likened the vividly-colored wall paintings to Indian
or Chinese art, while others were deeply disturbed by the proliferation
of erotic statues which recalled the phallic objects described in
recent reports from the South Sea islands. My research brings to light a
different experience of the British Grand Tour, where travel to the
Mediterranean drew heavily upon foreign tropes found in contemporary
colonial travel literature.
Abstract: The county of Kaiping, located in Guangdong Province, China, is well-known for the local watchtowers called diaolou which are commonly found throughout its landscape. The diaolou is
a form of defensive architecture first developed in the Ming era.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kaiping saw a boom in diaolou building,
accompanied by rising numbers of local people migrating to the West or
Western colonial spaces in East Asia and then later returning home. The diaolou built
during this period display a unique mix of Western architecture, often
recognizably Classical or Classicizing, set in a traditional Chinese
structure. This article argues that the reception of Western/Classical
architecture in these buildings was multivalent, structured along the
following themes. First, the Western/Classical references were not
drawing from true antique Classical architecture, but rather, on
contemporary Neoclassical architecture in Asian colonial spaces,
Australia, and North America. Second, the designs of these buildings
reference how their owners and builders experienced overseas migration
into Western spaces during this period. And lastly, these diaolou have served as enduring foci of cultural memory regarding the diasporic experiences of the local community over time.
Keywords: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, Haizi, Reception, Sappho.
Abstract: This
article examines the contemporary poet Haizi’s response to a hybrid
Chinese and Western tradition of mediating Sappho in his short poem To Sappho,
and pays particular attention to the routes of transmission and
translation through which Haizi encountered the Greek poet. For Haizi,
Sappho comes to represent an elusive lyric ideal as he strives for
affective poetic language in the wake of the Cultural Revolution’s
impact on Chinese literature. Echoing and reconfiguring imagery from her
available poetry and biography, Haizi domesticates Sappho into his
symbolic, rural landscape of poetry, thereby creating a paradigm to
contemplate his own poetic identity and legacy.
Keywords: Asian American hermeneutics, Aeneid, disciplinary reform, freedmen, Petronius, racialization, romantic capitalism.
Abstract: Riffing
off Vincent Wimbush’s directive to consider Blackness in biblical
studies, this article imagines what it might mean to center Asian
Americanness in the study of the classics. I offer two brief case
studies that offer one possible vision of what an Asian American
hermeneutics for classics might look like. These two case studies focus
on two Asian immigrants in Roman culture—Aeneas (as well as his fellow
Trojans) in Vergil’s Aeneid and Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyrica—and
how reading them through an Asian Americanist lens can shed light on
these figures and, more broadly, on contemporary Roman social, cultural,
and political structures. The article concludes by considering the
ethics that might attend further attempts at developing an Asian
American hermeneutics in classics.
Keywords: banking model, Classics teaching, conscientizaçao, critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire.
Abstract: This paper offers a critique of
traditional Classics pedagogy which has been historically avoidant of
pedagogical theories from other disciplines, such as Education.
Resituating the bibliography of difficulty literature in Classics
through the discursive frameworks of critical pedagogy advanced by
scholars such as Paulo Freire, we examine Classics’ dependence upon a
banking model of learning which positions students as empty vessels
waiting to be filled by the authority of their teacher. Furthermore, we
offer a critique of the prevailing pedagogical mode in Classics, which
positions some students as the cause of “difficulty,” as a fundamentally
managerial practice. Finally, we offer some reflections on the
potential of conscientizaçao (“consciousness raising”) to chart a course for disciplinary change within Classics.
Keywords: Black literature, ancient rhetoric, Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Herodotus, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Abstract: Following the efflorescence of scholarship
on Black freedom narratives and activism, this article examines
Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford’s The Tragedy (1897), an
antilynching text which recounts a history of colonization and
enslavement from the Mediterranean in the 7th century BCE to America in
the late 19th century CE. Together with a study of the ancient
discourses, Rev. Stanford’s work is here situated in the context of the
white paternalism of British and American publishing during the late
19th century, with particular attention to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
preface to Stanford’s The Tragedy (1897). The article analyzes
how Rev. Stanford uses ancient rhetoric to argue for the sanctity of
Black life, including both classical and biblical references, concluding
with reflections upon pedagogical applications as well as the need for
further study.
Keywords: microgrant organisations, mutual aid, solidarity, Sportula Europe.
Abstract: This paper describes the efforts of the
microgrant organisation, Sportula Europe, to offer material support as
well as the kinship of solidarity to historically-looted and
marginalised communities within Classics. Contextualising our work
within critical intellectual traditions and the history of mutual aid
practices, we reflect upon non-hierarchical approaches to ameliorate the
material conditions of students and researchers in our field.
The name “Helots” evokes one of the most famous peculiarities of
ancient Sparta, the system of dependent labor that guaranteed the
livelihood of the free citizens. The Helots fulfilled all the functions
that slaves carried out elsewhere in the Greek world, allowing their
masters the leisure to be full-time warriors. Yet, despite their crucial
role, Helots remain essentially invisible in our ancient sources and
peripheral and enigmatic in modern scholarship.
This book is devoted to a much-needed reassessment of Helotry and of
its place in the history and sociology of unfree labor. The essays deal
with the origins and historical development of Helotry, with its
sociological, economic, and demographic aspects, with its ideological
construction and negotiation
Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.
Edited by Mary Louise Lord after the author’s death, The Singer Resumes the Tale
focuses on the performance of stories and poems within settings that
range from ancient Greek palaces to Latvian villages. Lord expounds and
develops his approach to oral literature in this book, responds
systematically for the first time to criticisms of oral theory, and
extends his methods to the analysis of lyric poems. He also considers
the implications of the transitional text—a work made up of both oral
and literary components.
Elements of the oral tradition—the practice of storytelling in prose
or verse, the art of composing and transmitting songs, the content of
these texts, the kinds of songs composed, and the poetics of oral
literature—are discussed in the light of several traditions, beginning
in the ancient world, through the Middle Ages, to the present.
Throughout, the central figure is always the singer. Homer, the Beowulf
poet, women who perform lyric songs, tellers of folktales, singers of
such ballads as “Barbara Allen,” bards of the Balkans: all play
prominent roles in Lord’s book, as they have played central roles in the
creation of this fundamental literature.
Originally published in 1995 by Cornell University Press
This 40th Anniversary edition of Albert Lord’s classic work includes a
unique enhancement: the original audio recordings of all the passages
of heroic songs quoted in the book; a video publication of the
kinescopic filming of the most valued of the singers; and selected
photographs taken during Milman Parry’s collecting trips in the
Balkans.
Parry began recording and studying a live tradition of oral narrative
poetry in order to find an answer to the age-old Homeric Question: How
had the author of the Iliad and Odyssey composed these
two monumental epic poems at the very start of Europe’s literary
tradition? Parry’s, and with him Lord’s, enduring contribution–set forth
in Lord’s The Singer of Tales—was to demonstrate the process by which oral poets compose.
Now reissued with a new Introduction and an invaluable audio and
visual record, this widely influential book is newly enriched to better
serve everyone interested in the art and craft of oral literature.
Note: The content of the CD originally distributed with this book has been embedded into the epub for the online version.
Online version of the 2nd ed., edited with an
introduction by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy. Originally published
in 2000 by Harvard University Press. 3rd edition available to purchase in print via Harvard University Press.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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