{"title":"On (Not) Reading Inscribed Objects in Latin Comedy","authors":"Hans Bork","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a922568","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a922568","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This paper examines the performance dynamics of onstage texts in Plautus’ comedies and, in the process, argues that an audience-level viewpoint is essential to understanding Latin stage comedy. Examples of rare epigraphic texts are compared with the more common motif of in-play “perishable texts.” The perishable type were performed by actors as though verbatim and transmit novel information to the audience. In contrast, epigraphic texts are paraphrased and so require specific knowledge. Each kind of text thus does different dramatic work, and the difference originates in the different material “entanglements” of each medium in the lives of ancient Italians. As such, Plautus’ audiences understood comic theater through its extra-textual elements as much as through “the text” as we have it. To understand Roman comedy, scholars must also account for how ancient objects were entangled in Roman culture.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140153669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Principle of Decay, or: Why are there Four Bad Regimes in Platon's Politeia?","authors":"Cătalin Enache","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a922566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a922566","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>The paper examines the four-step degeneration of the ideal state in Books 8 and 9 of Platon’s <i>Politeia</i> (timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny) and addresses the question of the number, choice, and succession of bad regimes. Against the common view which considers this part of the <i>Politeia</i> a confusing and structureless narrative, it is argued that the four steps of the devolution represent a systematic account based on the tripartition of the state and the soul.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140153393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revealed and Concealed: Carrying and the Sinus in Ancient Rome","authors":"Melissa Bailey Kutner","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a922567","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a922567","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This paper uses literary sources to investigate how Romans carried objects. Carrying took place openly, in purses, and in clothing, especially the <i>sinus</i>, a fold of cloth created by togas or tunics. While open carrying is portrayed as reinforcing social hierarchies, carrying things in the <i>sinus</i> escaped hierarchies and was closely associated with the individual: with intimacy, character, and the ability to take potentially disruptive action (since people could retrieve objects from it unexpectedly in front of others). References to the latter cluster in the imperial period and center on men’s political power and their potential vulnerability to women.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140153400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Misadventures of Latona in Ovid, Metamorphoses 6","authors":"Ellen Oliensis","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a922569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a922569","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Latona enters the Ovidian spotlight in two episodes in <i>Metamorphoses</i> 6, confronting first Niobe and then some rude Lycian farmers. This essay begins by drawing attention to two features of these episodes: first, Ovid’s reshaping of the tradition to highlight Latona’s peculiar susceptibility to eviction, and second, the way the Lycian story in particular not only reenacts the disrespect the story warns against but, more startlingly, brings Latona’s very divinity into question. The essay ends by linking these humiliations to Latona’s anomalous status as a goddess who is also a fully embodied mother.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140153403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Re-Imagining Euripides' Medea: Pre-Colonial Indigenous Elements in Alfaro's Mojada","authors":"Laurialan Reitzammer","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a922570","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a922570","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This essay examines pre-colonial Mesoamerican elements in Luis Alfaro’s <i>Mojada</i>, highlighting significant differences between the recently published script of the play and a version produced at the Public Theater in New York City, which I attended in summer 2019, to argue that the Public Theater production questions whether Indigenous myth and ritual can persist and function effectively in the United States in the face of the brutal and dehumanizing forces of capitalism and racism. This essay contributes to discussions of the ways in which theatrical representations of Indigeneity function across different Latinx cultures and even different versions of the same play.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140153376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The AJP Best Article Prize for 2022 Has Been Presented by the American Journal of Philology to Rosa Andújar King's College London","authors":"Alain Gowing, Matthew Farmer, Jackie Murray","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a922565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a922565","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> The <em>AJP</em> Best Article Prize for 2022 Has Been Presented by the <em>American Journal of Philology</em> to Rosa Andújar <em>King’s College London</em> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Alain Gowing, Matthew Farmer, and Jackie Murray </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>for her contribution to scholarship in “Philological Reception and the Repeating <em>Odyssey</em> in the Caribbean: Francisco Chofre’s <em>La Odilea</em>” <em>AJP</em> 143.2 (Summer 2022): 305–334.</p> </blockquote> <p>Two of the <em>Journal</em>’s four issues in 2022 constituted a two-part special issue, “Diversifying Classical Philology,” devoted to advancing <em>AJP</em>’s commitment to “helping to transform the practice and the identity of our discipline so that it both reflects and engenders greater intellectual diversity and becomes an exciting venue for the work of scholars of all backgrounds” (Editor’s Letter, Vol. 143.2). Rosa Andújar’s “Philological Reception and the Repeating <em>Odyssey</em> in the Caribbean: Francisco Chofre’s <em>La Odilea</em>” not only represents an exceptional and exceptionally successful contribution to this effort, but also stands out in several important respects as the best article published by <em>AJP</em> in 2022.</p> <p>Francisco Chofre’s (1949–1999) <em>La Odilea</em> is likely not well known to most classicists. A prose adaptation in 24 cantos of Homer’s <em>Odyssey</em> written in Cuba during the 1960’s Revolution, <em>La Odilea</em> “refigures” Homer’s heroic characters as <em>guajiros</em> or peasants, his gods as humans, such as Zeulorio, the estate owner, who has eyes on La Pena, the husbandless wife. The novel follows the journey and adventures of the peasant farmer Odileo (significantly, not the expected Odiseo or Ulises) through a Caribbean landscape. Andújar challenges the common view of <em>La Odilea</em> as a parody of Homer as overly simplistic, arguing that Chofre transforms the Homeric model in significant ways. Quite apart from the novel’s setting and characters, the <em>language</em> of <em>La Odilea</em> is perhaps its most distinctive feature: it is written almost entirely in Cuban dialect, an important aspect of the novel’s effort to capture a distinctly agrarian experience. As Andújar terms it, these “meticulous linguistic transformations” are a model of “‘philological’ reception” that ground the novel in Cuban oral tradition; they also, however, “function as the vernacular equivalent to the features of oral composition” characteristic of Homeric epic (Homer himself makes an appearance in the novel). Far from being a simple parody of its Homeric model, <em>La Odilea</em> is shown to possess “a tense and ambiguous relationship <strong>[End Page v]</strong> with its source text, one in which desecration and veneration are intimately bound together.” Following her deft examination of the novel’s language and","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140153396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Eclogues of Vergil","authors":"E. L. Highbarger, H. J. Rose","doi":"10.2307/4341714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4341714","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4341714","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42027442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Handbook of Latin Literature","authors":"H. J. Rose","doi":"10.2307/290304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/290304","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/290304","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41590947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Horace-as-Alcaeus ( Odes 3.6) Impersonates Horace-as-Archilochus ( Epodes 7 And 16): Persona And Poetic Autobiography In Horace","authors":"Shirley Werner","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a907404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a907404","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: A reader's enjoyment of Odes 3.6 and Epodes 7 and 16 is deepened by an awareness of the interplay between two relationships in Horace's poetry: the relationship of the speaker within the poem to an internal audience; and the interpretive relationship between the reader and the unstable persona of the implied author, Horace. The Archilochean authorial persona of Horace's Epodes and the Alcaic authorial persona of Horace's Odes work together to create a pseudo-autobiography of his life as a movement through genres and through Roman historical time. This pseudo-autobiography functions in the reader's mind as a tool for interpretation.","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135144012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perhaps a Fish, Surely an Ostrich, and Definitely a Fool: The Ontology of Insults at De Constantia Sapientis 17.1","authors":"Tommaso Gazzarri","doi":"10.1353/ajp.2023.a907405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2023.a907405","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:De Constantia Sapientis 17.1 contains two animal-based insults, the interpretation of which has heretofore proven controversial because of the difficulties in pinpointing the exact nature/identity of comparandum and comparatum. An adequate appreciation of the passage requires assessing the function of these contumeliae within Seneca's philosophical strategy. Their ontological vacuity reflects the imaginative status of the two animals selected to construct the jibes. Thus, one should resist rage, not only on account of this passion being self-damaging but also because imagination is a faulty cognitive process.","PeriodicalId":46128,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135144014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}