{"title":"Suspending Disbelief: Magnetic and Miraculous Levitation from Antiquity to the Middle Ages","authors":"Dunstan Lowe","doi":"10.1525/CA.2016.35.2.247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2016.35.2.247","url":null,"abstract":"Static levitation is a form of marvel with metaphysical implications whose long history has not previously been charted. First, Pliny the Elder reports an architect’s plan to suspend an iron statue using magnetism, and the later compiler Ampelius mentions a similar-sounding wonder in Syria. When the Serapeum at Alexandria was destroyed, and for many centuries afterwards, chroniclers wrote that an iron Helios had hung magnetically inside. In the Middle Ages, reports of such false miracles multiplied, appearing in Muslim accounts of Christian and Hindu idolatry, as well as Christian descriptions of the tomb of Muhammad. A Christian levitation miracle involving saints’ relics also emerged. Yet magnetic suspension could be represented as miraculous in itself, representing lost higher knowledge, as in the latest and easternmost tradition concerning Konark’s ruined temple. The levitating monument, first found in classical antiquity, has undergone many cultural and epistemological changes in its long and varied history.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"35 1","pages":"247-278"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2016.35.2.247","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"At the Threshold of Representation: Cremation and Cremated Remains in Classical Latin Literature","authors":"Thomas N. Habinek","doi":"10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers a set of passages from classical Latin literature of the first century BC and first century AD that indicate awareness of the particular transformations undergone by a human body during the process of open-air cremation. Evidence for the extent of cremation throughout the Roman West is reviewed, as are indications that mourners frequently remained near the pyre throughout the lengthy transformation of the corpse into bone-remnants and ash. In addition, archaeological, ethnographic, and forensic evidence documenting the step-by-step changes undergone by the burning body is introduced. Against this backdrop, numerous passages from authors such as Horace, Vergil, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, Statius, and Suetonius take on new significance. Although authors occasionally cite crematory details as such, they more frequently make use of such details in non-crematory contexts in order to achieve a variety of literary and aesthetic goals, including economy of description, reflection on the circulation of substance, and clarification of the process of ekpyrosis , or cosmic conflagration. For these writers considered as a group cremation serves as an indicator of both the abject nature of the human condition and of its potential sublimity. The calculated displacement of key aspects of the crematory process onto non-crematory events and practices mirrors and extends the liminality associated with crematory rites.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"35 1","pages":"1-44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales: A Study of the Creation of the “Narrative about Asclepius”","authors":"A. Tagliabue","doi":"10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.126","url":null,"abstract":"Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales is a complex literary text, and its first book—the diary—puzzles scholars, \u0000as it has no parallel in the entire work. This paper offers a justification for this section by arguing \u0000for a deliberate contrast between the diary and Books 2–6 of the Sacred Tales, as a result of which the \u0000latter section is crafted as a narrative about Asclepius. I will first identify a large series of shifts in the \u0000ST: starting with Book 2, change concerns the protagonist, which from Aristides’ abdomen turns to \u0000Asclepius, the narrator, dream interpretation, genre, and arrangement of the events. Secondly, I discuss \u0000the impact of these shifts upon the readers’ response: while the diary invites the readers to relive \u0000the everyday tension between known past and unknown future, the spatial form of Books 2–6 creates \u0000the opposite effect, turning the readers’ attention away from the human flow of time towards Asclepius, \u0000and leading them to perceive features of his divine time.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"35 1","pages":"126-146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.126","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Camenae in Cult, History, and Song","authors":"A. Hardie","doi":"10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.45","url":null,"abstract":"This essay aims to redefine the place of the Camenae within the evolution of Roman carmen . It analyses the documented association of the purifying fons Camenarum with the cult of Vesta and by extension with the salvific prayer- carmina of her virgines ; and it takes the Camenae from the archaic origins of their cult, with reflections on Etruscan and other territorial interests, to their appearance in the epic laudes of men in the third and second centuries BC. The identification of Camenae and Muses, it is argued, pre-dates Livius Andronicus' “Camena,” and is best understood as a component of the Numa-legend as it emerged towards the end of the fourth century. Pythagorean Muse-cult, reflecting the Muses' traditional interest in civic homonoia (concord) and law-making kings, played a part; and an agent of change was the reformist Appius Claudius Caecus, author of the first attested Roman carmen . The wider context lies in the cultural interplay of Rome, Etruria, and Greek southern Italy in the early and middle Republic.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"35 1","pages":"45-85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.45","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Use and Abuse of Training “Science” in Philostratus' Gymnasticus","authors":"C. Stocking","doi":"10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.86","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.86","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses how the sophistic-style analysis in Philostratus9 Gymnasticus gives expression to the physical and social complexities involved in ancient athletic training. As a case in point, the article provides a close reading of Philostratus9 description and criticism of the Tetrad, a four-day sequence of training, which resulted in the death of an Olympic athlete. To make physiological sense of the Tetrad, this method of training is compared to the role of periodization in ancient medicine and modern kinesiology. At the same time, Philostratus9 own critique of the Tetrad is compared to Foucauldian models of discipline and bodily attention. Ultimately, it is argued that the Tetrad fails because it does not incorporate καιρός, a theme common to athletics, medicine, and rhetoric. Overall, therefore, Philostratus9 critique of the Tetrad helps us to appreciate the underrepresented role that γυμναστική occupied in the larger debates on bodily knowledge in antiquity.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"132 1","pages":"86-125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2016.35.1.86","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Peng Wang, Myreille Larouche, Karine Normandin, David Kachaner, Haytham Mehsen, Gregory Emery, Vincent Archambault
{"title":"Spatial regulation of greatwall by Cdk1 and PP2A-Tws in the cell cycle.","authors":"Peng Wang, Myreille Larouche, Karine Normandin, David Kachaner, Haytham Mehsen, Gregory Emery, Vincent Archambault","doi":"10.1080/15384101.2015.1127476","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15384101.2015.1127476","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Entry into mitosis requires the phosphorylation of multiple substrates by cyclin B-Cdk1, while exit from mitosis requires their dephosphorylation, which depends largely on the phosphatase PP2A in complex with its B55 regulatory subunit (Tws in Drosophila). At mitotic entry, cyclin B-Cdk1 activates the Greatwall kinase, which phosphorylates Endosulfine proteins, thereby activating their ability to inhibit PP2A-B55 competitively. The inhibition of PP2A-B55 at mitotic entry facilitates the accumulation of phosphorylated Cdk1 substrates. The coordination of these enzymes involves major changes in their localization. In interphase, Gwl is nuclear while PP2A-B55 is cytoplasmic. We recently showed that Gwl suddenly relocalizes from the nucleus to the cytoplasm in prophase, before nuclear envelope breakdown and that this controlled localization of Gwl is required for its function. We and others have shown that phosphorylation of Gwl by cyclin B-Cdk1 at multiple sites is required for its nuclear exclusion, but the precise mechanisms remained unclear. In addition, how Gwl returns to its nuclear localization was not explored. Here we show that cyclin B-Cdk1 directly inactivates a Nuclear Localization Signal in the central region of Gwl. This phosphorylation facilitates the cytoplasmic retention of Gwl, which is exported to the cytoplasm in a Crm1-dependent manner. In addition, we show that PP2A-Tws promotes the return of Gwl to its nuclear localization during cytokinesis. Our results indicate that the cyclic changes in Gwl localization at mitotic entry and exit are directly regulated by the antagonistic cyclin B-Cdk1 and PP2A-Tws enzymes. </p>","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"9 1","pages":"528-39"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15384101.2015.1127476","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89048053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Another Look at Female Choruses in Classical Athens","authors":"F. Budelmann, T. Power","doi":"10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.252","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits the issue of female choruses in Classical Athens and aims to provide an alternative to the common pessimistic view that emphasizes the restriction of female choreia by the gender ideology of the democracy. We agree that Athens did not have the kind of female choral culture that is documented for Sparta or Argos, but a review of the evidence suggests that women did dance regularly both in the city itself and elsewhere in Attica, although not at the ideologically most marked occasions such as the City Dionysia. The latter part of the article turns from actual choruses to their representation in textual and iconographic sources. An important reason why modern scholarship sometimes underestimates the extent of female choreia in Athens, we suggest, is that Athenian sources are often purposefully elusive in their representation of female choruses.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"34 1","pages":"252-295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.252","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alexander, “Whose Courage Was Great”: Cult, Power, and Commemoration in Classical and Hellenistic Thessaly","authors":"R. Boehm","doi":"10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.209","url":null,"abstract":"An epitaph dating to ca. 217 BCE for Antigenes, a fallen soldier from Demetrias, refers to the tomb of Alexander, “whose courage was great.” This article first provides a reading of the epigram as a document that reflects a compressed civic and cultic map of a recent Hellenistic city foundation and grounds Antigenes’ heroic death in the wider ritual landscape of his patris . It then argues for the identification of one point of reference, the tomb of Alexander, with the infamous tyrant of Thessaly, Alexander of Pherai, and for the continued presence of a heroic cult of Alexander in the “new” polis of Demetrias. The commemorative dynamic at work in the epitaph provides insight into contemporary views of fourth-century tyranny, calling the traditional portrait of Alexander into question, and helps to reconstruct the Hellenistic reception of the recent past among civic bodies and individuals operating under dramatically changed political circumstances.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"34 1","pages":"209-251"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.209","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"SACER, SACROSANCTUS, and LEGES SACRATAE","authors":"G. Pellam","doi":"10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.322","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers a challenge to the conventional view of the lex sacrata which the Romans believed to have accompanied the establishment of the plebeian tribunate. According to most scholars, the lex sacrata was not technically a lex (law), but was rather an oath sworn by the plebs, enjoining them to protect the persons of the tribunes and to punish with death anyone who should harm the holders of this office. Originally it was only this oath that gave the tribunes their power, which developed into a true office of the Roman state only gradually. This interpretation serves as one of the major props in the widely-held interpretation of the early Roman Republic as being characterized by a “struggle of the orders” in which the plebeians formed a revolutionary “state within the state,” separate and distinct from the legitimate state, which was controlled by the patricians. By reexamining the sources for the traditional interpretation of the lex sacrata , this paper shows that all of the evidence suggests that the lex sacrata which guaranteed the inviolability of the plebeian tribunes was, in fact, a law of the Roman community, and that there is little if any support for the “oath” interpretation. With this understanding, a major prop in the communis opinio about the early Republic is undermined. Finally, the paper offers an alternative hypothesis for the role of leges sacratae in the development of the Republic.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"34 1","pages":"322-334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.322","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Finding Examples at Home: Cato, Curius Dentatus, and the Origins of Roman Literary Exemplarity","authors":"M. Pasco-Pranger","doi":"10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.296","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the early history of Roman exemplary literature through the case study of the elder Cato’s account of his imitation of the parsimony and self-sufficiency of M’. Curius Dentatus. I reconstruct from Cicero, Plutarch, and other sources a Catonian prose text that unified the exemplary narrative of Curius’ refusal of a bribe from Samnite emissaries with an evocative location at the hearth of a humble Sabine farmstead, an approving “audience” in Cato himself, and a model for the replication of Curius’ virtue. The narrative itself served as the monumentum for the exemplum, and its details are often evoked in place of the exemplary deed itself. I argue that this narrative is both a very early instance of exemplary literature and a self-conscious reflection on the power of literature to transcend temporal and spatial limitations and to extend cultural models for the familial replication of elite virtues to a broader audience.","PeriodicalId":45164,"journal":{"name":"CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY","volume":"17 1","pages":"296-321"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/CA.2015.34.2.296","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67118435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}