Classics

The character Giton in Petronius's Satyrica represents one of the most multifaceted characters in this piece of literature. The thesis of this dissertation is that Giton performs slavery in various ways throughout the novel, and his interactions with others reinforce this claim. Firstly, Giton is
represented as performing a variety of tasks and roles typically assigned to enslaved persons: he serves as a bath attendant, he cooks, and he guides. Giton also is sexually objectified by a variety of characters in the novel in ways that are similar to the sexual objectification of slaves. Similarly, the narrator and fellow character Encolpius denies Giton's subjectivity by objectifying and feminizing the boy. Finally, some of the ways in which Giton performs slavery are emblematic of Roman comedy’s clever slave. This investigation into how Petronius represents Giton's multifaceted embodiment and enactment of slavery advances our understanding of enslaved persons and their status by analyzing Giton's actions and interactions as social performances.

Preview [Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.] This significant publication examines a group of 14 Apulian red-figure vases from Ceglie del Campo near Bari, Italy. Issued on the occasion of the exhibition Gefährliche Perfektion: Antike Grabvasen aus Apulien, currently on view at the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the book follows a six-year joint project (2008-2014) between museum staff there and curators and conservators of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Funerary naiskoi of monumental size were unusual in fourth-century BC Attic funerary art, but the evidence shows that a similar type of building was more commonly produced in the West: architectural and relief fragments alongside depictions of naiskoi on Apulian red-figure vases indicate that this type of temple-like structure was also produced in Taranto. Relief decoration showing episodes of heroic myth and battles served to enhance the status of the dead in tomb iconography; being the Amazonomachy the single most popular subject on fourth-century BC funerary monuments. Today, it is widely accepted that the popularity of the subject is indebted to its presence in the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos and other eastern funerary monuments, but little has been said about the myth's connotations when placed in different geographic areas. This paper explore the funerary uses of the Amazonomachy through both a contextual and an iconographic analysis of its presence on Attic and Tarantine funerary naiskoi.

In 1958 Glenn Hughes was approaching the end of his career at the University of Washington.  He retired as director of the School of Drama in 1961.  In this paper, I envision some lectures that he might have given his students.  Never having met Hughes, or anyone who knew him, by writing this paper I am at risk of attributing ideas to Hughes that might have been alien to him.  Given his strong interest in the Imagists, I think it is reasonably safe to assume that he shared their interest in mythology and classical literature.  In the lectures, I decided to have Hughes combine his skill as a playwright with his knowledge of Imagist poetry and the Imagist poets.  He would use this knowledge as a way to coach the art of scriptwriting.  I may have exaggerated his interest in the cinema.  But I do think he would have agreed that the visual imagery of a poet like Catullus is akin to cinematography.

Sallust's treatment of Fulvia and Sempronia is compared to that of Hillary Rodham Clinton by parts of the U.S. and Russian media.  Writing about Fulvia and Sempronia, Sallust characterized similar treatment of women in the Roman comedies Russell was reading at the time.  It struck him then, during the Presidential campaign while studying Sallust, that her treatment by her Republican opposition was comparable with how Roman literature, in general, treated women. 

Sallust's description of the Catiline conspiracy also dramatized the great gulf between Left and Right in Caesar's days before the tyranny of Augustus, similar to today's lack of bi-partisanship.  Can we speculate that, two years later: A. O. C. has inherited Hillary's attraction to such partisan attack?