Classics Commons^™

Potters' Marks And Potmarks, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The brief remarks and the detailed catalogue presented below, along with the author's forthcoming (a) re-study of the discoveries of the British expedition to Enkomi, supplement and update the author's 2002 study of the marked pottery found at Enkomi. In both cases, it is more a matter of adding, refining, and correcting than significantly changing the observations presented in the earlier paper. But even though they are not headline-grabbing, these contributions are important in that they add to the gradually accumulating evidence for marked vases in circulation in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Because we cannot (yet) 'read' the marks directly …

"So Say We All"—Reimagining Empire And The Aeneid, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Battlestar Galactica, a television series that aired on the SyFy Channel from 2003 to 2009, tells the story of the Twelve Colonies, a human society whose home planets have been destroyed by a race of robots, the Cylons. These androids, originally created by mankind as a slave workforce, have at the moment of their revolution evolved to become physically indistinguishable from humans, and, after they turn against their creators, as the Internet Movie Data Base tag line puts it: "The fight to save humanity rages on." While the series presents itself as a traditional science fiction narrative with the …

Writing And Empire In Tacitus [Review], Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Over the past decade, scholars such as Ash, O’Gorman, and Haynes have taken up a cause long championed by Woodman, insisting that we must treat Tacitus’ works as literary productions before we can use them as historical documents. By remaining attentive to issues of voice, allusion, and narrative presentation, these scholars have shown how Tacitus is worthy of the kinds of intense readings we might perform on any ancient author writing in poetry or prose; in many ways they do for Tacitus what Miles, Jaeger, and Feldherr did for Livy in the 1990s. Dylan Sailor’s Writing and Empire in Tacitus …

Cyprus, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Strabo described Cyprus as “second to none of the islands of the Mediterranean: it is rich in wine and oil, produces grain in abundance and possesses extensive copper mines.…” (14.6.5). Geographical proximity placed Cyprus within the orbit of the Levant; currents and winds situated the island in the flow of peoples and ideas between the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. But at the same time, Cyprus’ insularity and large size fostered idiosyncratic developments. This tension—between native and imported ideas, and invention in a middle ground—informs studies of ancient Cyprus.

An Exemplary Heroine In The Hippolytos, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In this paper I examine the link between cultic and dramatic heroes, and more particularly the status of cult heroes as exemplary figures for protagonists in tragedy. A hero in ancient Greek cultural terms is a human being who becomes heroized after death, a figure of cult, that is, who requires worship and sacrifice. Heroes are also central to epic and tragedy, yet because of the local nature of hero cults, heroes' status as objects of worship is rarely explicit in poetry. Poets typically avoid references to particular local practices, and focus instead on the figure of the hero before …

Almodóvar's Female Odyssey, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Although Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver does not refer to Homeric epic, Odyssean motifs are ubiquitous in the narrative. As they must be, insofar as Homer's poem is the foundational text in Western culture of the very idea of homecoming, or nostos. A meditation on the notion of return (Spanish volver), the film focuses on the modern experience of the family, the connections between husbands and wives, parents and children, memory and identity. Irrespective of intention on Almodóvar's part, to raise and to represent the phenomenon of return is to start a conversation with Homer's Odyssey, which …

Cypro-Minoan, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

There are approximately two hundred identified Cypro-Minoan inscriptions (excluding potmarks). Most are very short (one or two sequences totaling fewer than ten signs). They are impressed, incised, or painted on a variety of objects and materials in an assortment of lengths and formats and are found in a diversity of contexts widely dispersed across the island of Cyprus and at Ras Shamra-Ugarit on the mainland. They span the entire Late Bronze Age (16th-11th centuries BC) and perhaps continue into the very early Iron Age.

The earliest discoveries were made at the end of the 19th century; most recently, Cypro-Minoan has …

Critical Moments In Classical Literature [Review], Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Critical Moments in Classical Literature is a curious book; deeply learned, elegantly written, and filled with subtle observations on a vast array of texts, but also somewhat diffuse, elusive, and in the end frustrating. On the face of it, the subtitle, Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses, is a good description of the book’s six chapters, each focused on a text constituting a ‘critical moment’ in ancient literary criticism: (1) Aristophanes’ Frogs, (2) Euripides’ Cyclops, (4) Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Imitation, (5) Longinus’ On the Sublime, and (6) Plutarch’s How the …

Death Ante Ora Parentum In Virgil’S Aeneid, Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Virgil's Aeneid includes a number of scenes in which children die in front of their parents. While the motif has a Homeric precedent, Virgil's invention of a formula (ante ora parentum: "before the faces of one's parents") suggests a particular interest in the theme. An analysis of scenes where the formula recurs (such as Aeneas's shipwreck, the fall of Troy, and the lusus Troiae) reveals a metapoetic resonance behind the motif, with the parent-child relationship acting as a metaphor for authorial influence and artistic creation. Thus the threat that Aeneas might die as Anchises looks on, for …

A Referential Commentary And Lexicon To Homer, Iliad Viii [Review], Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

A 14,305 page Iliad commentary? That is what we get if we multiply the pages Adrian Kelly lavishes on Book 8 with the poem’s dimensions. And, Book 8? This is never really explained, though I suspect the long scholarly tradition that the book strays from Homer’s typical compositional practices and standards is one reason. For Adrian Kelly’s stated objective is to recreate at least part of the rich network of associations available to the early auditors of epic, with the result that Book 8 is shown to be as traditional as any other.

On The “Importance” Of “Iliad” Book 8, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The scene from Homer's Iliad book 8 where Diomedes rescues a chariot-wrecked Nestor from the advancing Hektor has been accused of being inadequately motivated. Not only is this scene well integrated into book 8, but it has been carefully prepared for in the preceding books. What motivates Homer to incorporate the scene of rescue is the practical consequence of having Zeus impose arbitrary defeat on the Akhaian army. To give the narrative of that defeat minimum dimensions, and appropriate dramatic force, the Akhaians must stage a counteroffensive. However, continuing to fight in the face of direct opposition by Zeus would …

Farcical Philology: Alexander Shewan's Homeric Games At An Ancient St. Andrews, Thomas E. Jenkins

Classical Studies Faculty Research

It is one of the many ironies of the term "philology" that what to the untrained ear may connote a dry and lifeless field of study was once the fightingest of fighting words; indeed, philology has been only recently retired as a field with an especial love for internecine warfare. "Love of literature," it seems, could spawn loathing of fellow literature-lovers, and as philology grew as a discipline and even academic profession, the stakes were high. Any examination of metaphilology, then, must include a glance at philology's discourses of error and detection, of correction and humiliation: philology- if dedicated to …

Appendix K: Trireme Warfare In Xenophon’S Hellenika, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The disaster at Syracuse (415-413) marked the effective end of Athenian naval supremacy. She would rebuild her fleets and continue to be a force, but Xenophon's account of the following half century tells of a hard-fought struggle among many contenders to dominate the Aegean Sea. Although in the ancient Mediterranean world geography and tradition favored islands and coastal cities as emergent sea powers, dominance could not be achieved without also having access to the vital resources of timber, manpower, and plenty of revenue. Thus the Persian king Artaxerxes and Jason of Pherai posed alarming threats to the traditional masters of …

The Many Ways Between Late Bronze Age Aegeans And Levants, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Interactions between the "Aegean" and "Levant" cannot be discussed in monolithic terms. The physical realities of sea travel, the vocabulary and accounts preserved in texts, and the objects found in foreign earth and under the seas point to many routes among the diverse communities that inhabited the eastern Mediterranean littoral in the Late Bronze Age, and give hints of the different peoples forging the connections. They interacted in a multiplicity of ways, their relationships shifting through time. Focusing in on the specifics of interactions reveals complexities that should be the basis for alternative ways of classifying interactions across the Aegean …

The Hero Beyond Himself: Heroic Death In Ancient Greek Poetry And Art, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The modern mind likes its heroism served with death. "They died heroes" begin news reports of death in battles and disasters, man-made or natural. Altruism, self-sacrifice, and disregard for danger define the modern hero, both in life and in death. Sometimes heroes are defined by the fact of their survival: war heroes return home after enduring the trauma of battle, captivity, or torture. Regardless of individual circumstances, to be a modern hero entails joining a community of individuals defined by the same essential qualities of selflessness and courage: to be a hero is to be willing to sacrifice oneself and …

Historical Fiction, Brachylogy, And Plutarch's Banquet Of The Seven Sages, Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In this paper I examine the ways in which the weaknesses and strengths of Plutarch’s Banquet of the Seven Sages are tied to Plutarch’s attempt to recreate the world of the sixth century BCE in fictional form. The awkwardness of the first half of the dialogue stems from the incommensurability between the symposiastic genre of the Banquet and the Sages’ role as ‘performers of wisdom’ and their noted brevity of speech, or brachulogia. It is only when Plutarch stops trying to historicize in the second half of the dialogue (and shifts his focus away from the Sages altogether) that …

"That's What I'Ll Remember": Louise Glück’S Odyssey From Nostos To Nostalgia, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

From Vergil’s Aeneid to James Joyce’s Ulysses and Derek Walcott’s Omeros, writers have used the Odyssey as a framework to explore the meaning of memory, home, and homecoming. When the American poet Louise Glück looks at a marriage unraveling in her collection of poems entitled Meadowlands (Glück 1996), she too turns to the Odyssey. Some of the poems in the collection refer directly to their ancient model as Glück gives voice to Circe’s regrets and anger, Penelope’s grief, and Telemachus’ ambivalence towards his parents. Other poems allude less transparently to their Homeric antecedents, but also go back to …

How And Why Potmarks Matter, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Potmarks lie in a no-man's land, not quite within the usual parameters of ceramic studies, not usually a concern for epigraphists. Although many excavations have yielded some potmarks, they are not a regular feature of publication. But potmarks found in Bronze Age contexts in Cyprus occupy an unusual position in the archaeology of the Bronze Age Mediterranean: they are regularly noticed and published.

Cypriot Pottery, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

At least 3 of the 10 pithoi (large ceramic transport containers) stowed on the ship that sank at Uluburun contained Cypriot pottery: Bucchero jugs, lug-handled bowls, milk bowls, Base Ring bowls and a single juglet, White Shaved juglets, lamps, and wall brackets—about 140 pieces in total, excluding the pithoi. The Uluburun shipment and the ceramic cargo jettisoned off Point Iria on the Greek mainland a century later are the only extant excavated direct archaeological evidence for the transport of pottery in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. These examples of ceramics-in-transport are highly significant for what they tell …

Waiting On A Friend: Statius, Silvae 4.7, Timothy M. O'Sullivan

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The renewed embrace of historicism in recent decades has helped revive the reputation of Statius’ Silvae. As remnants of the relationship between poet and patron in Flavian Rome, for example, the Silvae can exemplify the careful navigation required in the imperial court and high society of the time. Yet appreciation of their literary qualities has lagged behind this increased interest in the cultural context of the Silvae, and analysis of the poems’ exuberant strategies of praise too often seems to involve a degree of defensiveness. In recent years this trend has begun to reverse, with the appearance of …

Time, Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

In his monumental work Time and Narrative, Paul Ricoeur distinguishes 'tales about time', like The Magic Mountain or Remembrance of Things Past, from 'tales of time', which all narratives are by virtue of the fact that they are read and unfold in time. Few would put the ancient novels into the former category; they are not explicitly about time in an abstract sense, that is, they rarely discuss time in a philosophical or reflective fashion. Much scholarship has instead focused on how the novelists manage their 'tales of time' - for example how Heliodorus manipulates the temporal order …

Mortels Et Immortelles Dans La Théogonie, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Cet essai prend comme point de départ Ia conclusion de Ia Théogonie. Le poème d'Hésiode nous dit I'origine du monde et la naissance des dieux, un récit qui mène à la victoire et au règne suprême de Zeus sur le monde divin. Mais l'histoire ne finit pas Ià: au vers 963, l’aède invoque à nouveau les Muses et chante un catalogue à la gloire des déesses qui reposèrent dans les bras des mortels et donnèrent le jour à des enfants. La question de l’authenticité de ce catalogue a beaucoup occupé les spécialistes et certains ont même avancé I 'hypothèse qu …

The Potmarks From Troy Vi-Vii In The Berlin Schliemann Collection, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

More than a century of excavations on and around the citadel of Troy have uncovered a total of only fifteen Late Bronze Age (LB) ceramic vases with non-decorative mark(s) incised into their rim, handle, belly or base. Surely potmarks have been Overlooked or lost in the course of the tremendous labors of digging and sorting. On the other hand, in the absence of the discovery of archives, the excavators of Troy have been on the look-out for signs of writing of the briefest sort on the humblest kinds of objects. For example, already the first volume of Schliemann's publications is …

The Portrait Of Homer In Strabo's Geography, Lawrence Kim

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Strabo’s Geography, as anyone who has perused it will know, is suffused with a profound, nearly obsessive, interest in Homer. The desire to demonstrate Homer’s knowledge of geographical information at every turn (even where it seems prima facie unlikely) is matched only by the determination with which Strabo “solves” notorious problems of Homeric geography such as the location of Nestor’s Pylos or the identity of the “Ethiopians divided in twain” visited by Poseidon. Strabo’s concentration on such arcana, often to the exclusion of more properly “geographical” material, has understandably exasperated many modern readers with different ideas about what constitutes …

Navigation And Transportation, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Water was the most efficient means of transportation and travel in the ancient Greek world. Evidence of the movement of commodities and people comes from a combination of literary, iconographical, and archaeological sources.

Marked Objects From Apliki Karamallos, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

The study of Cypriot Late Bronze Age (LBA) writing had reached one of its apogees in the summer of 1939, when Joan du Plat Taylor undertook excavations at Apliki Karamallos. Publication of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's reports and new discoveries by Schaeffer at Enkomi and the Americans at Kourion Bamboula had shrugged off the mantle of dormancy imposed by the first World War; by the mid '30's, scholarship on the origins and uses of writing on LBA Cyprus was in full swing. Evans (1935), Persson (1932 and 1937), and Schaeffer (1936) published important studies, and Casson (1937 and 1939) …

Potmarks, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Twelve potmarks have been recorded among the finds from Tel Mor (Fig. 6.1). They are all simple marks, and only one may possibly be part of a longer inscription. They are incised, mostly into handles. At present, we do not know enough about the potmarking practices of the Late Bronze Age Levant to ascertain whether the assemblage recovered from Tel Mor is typical or unusual.

The "Ultra-Modern" Euripides Of Verrall, H.D., And Macleish, Thomas E. Jenkins

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This essay explores the modernity of ancient Greece. If this concept seems a paradox, it is; and it is that tension between antiquity and modernity, between constructions of classical rationalism and modern angst, that fueled three extraordinary adaptations of Euripides from the early 1890s to the mid 1960s. Drawing on a perception of Euripides as the most "modern" of ancient (perhaps even modern!) playwrights, A. W. Verrall, H(ilda) D(oolittle), and Archibald MacLeish all fashioned Euripides-inspired works that challenged contemporary perceptions of Euripides as a classic. As H.D. explains in her Notes on Euripides, "[W]e are too apt to pigeon-hole …

Joan Du Plat Taylor: The Road To Apliki, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

Thirty-two-year-old Joan du Plat Taylor and her friend Judith Dobell [Stylianou] must have created a stir when they arrived at the field offices of the Cyprus Mining Corporation in 1938. For one thing, Joan probably drove, and the sight of an English-woman driving would have been cause enough for comment among the villagers. The few photographs of Joan's cars which survive depict vehicles overflowing with the accoutrements of field excavation, large bundles tied to the roof and hanging off the rear of the wagon. And always dogs perched among the piles of baggage. The road up the Marathasa Valley was …

Appendix S: Trireme Warfare In Herodotus, Nicolle E. Hirschfeld

Classical Studies Faculty Research

§1. Herodotus describes a vigorous era in the history of the maritime traffic and warfare in the Mediterranean. Greek and Phoenician colonies anchored far-flung trading networks north to the Black Sea and west along the African and European coasts to Spain and even beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. Sea lanes had to be policed, colonies protected, parochial navies developed and increased. Furthermore, naval strength, always a prerogative of coastal and island states, became an important factor in the expanding domains of inland powers such as Sparta and Persia. The jostling of all these escalating commercial and political interests in the …