{"title":"Reading Aeschylus through Seneca: Scenes of Capitulation in Agamemnon and Thyestes","authors":"Adriana Brook","doi":"10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Reception theory holds that close analysis of chronologically later literature has the potential to shape the interpretation of earlier works. This paper investigates the way in which Seneca's treatment of the House of Atreus in Thyestes suggests a new reading of Aeschylus's Agamemnon. I show that both plays reiterate a pattern of capitulation that can be traced throughout the generations of the family they describe. The clear causal connection between two such capitulation scenes in Thyestes helps us to understand Agamemnon's reluctant agreement to sacrifice Iphigenia as contributing to his decision to yield to Clytemnestra in the so-called 'tapestry scene.'","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"44 1","pages":"1 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44636158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"He Licks the Dish but Does Not Taste the Ham: A Grouping of Pompeian Wall Writings and Its Engagement with Elegy and Roman Comedy","authors":"M. Hanses","doi":"10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0042","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines a sequence of four elegiac couplets and two iambic senarii that was etched into the northern wall of the basilica in Pompeii. I argue that this graffito was produced by multiple writers and that it alludes to characters familiar from elegy and Roman comedy. More specifically, the inscription's different blocks of text are attributable to three separate stock types: a lena who recommends locking out the lover who comes without gifts; an exclusus amator who is determined to persevere; and a slave who mocks his owner with the sarcasm he characteristically displays in the fabula palliata.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"44 1","pages":"42 - 65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47400804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women and Masculinity in the Life of Alexander","authors":"E. Carney","doi":"10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0141","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Plutarch's The Life of Alexander Alexander embodied and yet sometimes disregarded a conventional Hellenic understanding of masculinity. Plutarch explicates Alexander's arete as man and king by comparison to two other male rulers, his father Philip II and Darius III, but Alexander's dealings with women also play an important role in defining Alexander's masculinity. The vivid picture the Life paints of Alexander's parents and their literally fateful union casts a shadow over the entire biography, complicating any understanding of masculinity in the Alexander and contributing to its tragic feel.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"44 1","pages":"141 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49555618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cinematic Signatures of Orpheus and Operatic Evocations","authors":"J. Solomon","doi":"10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.44.1.0111","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper traces the tradition of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from Ovid and Vergil through Poliziano to late Renaissance, Baroque, early classical, and early twentieth-century opera as antecedents to Cocteau's Orphée and a number of contemporary films, including Imagining Argentina, Slumdog Millionaire, The City of Your Final Destination, Rabbit Hole, Remember Me, and The Book of Life. Because tragic and non-tragic endings are not reliable identifiers in the Orpheus tradition, the paper focuses on such narrative signatures as retrieval from death, playing a stringed instrument in the face of death, and dying twice.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"44 1","pages":"111 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47891356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hephaestus the Hobbling Humorist: The Club-Footed God in the History of Early Greek Comedy","authors":"E. Hall","doi":"10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0366","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that Hephaestus, the only physically disabled Olympian deity, occupies an important position in the history of comedy and the Greek tradition of laughter. From the Homeric epics to fourth-century comedy and vase-painting, Hephaestus is consistently to be found in cultural contexts which explore the instrumentality of laughter in domestic and social relationships, rituals and entertainments. The article proposes that the structure of the mythical narrative of the Return of Hephaestus, with its estrangement of the protagonist from his community, riotous reconciliation, and komastic procession, underlies several Old Comedies. It also suggests that his banausic profession and deformity helped to make him particularly popular in cultural artifacts—vases and dramas—produced in Athens in the democratic period because neither his trade nor his appearance would have disqualified him from wielding sovereign power, κράτος, as a citizen there.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"366 - 387"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43727074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aretaeus's \"Stomachic\" Patients: Comic Features in a Medical Discussion?","authors":"Chiara Thumiger","doi":"10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0473","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Food, eating, and the human drives and functions related to them are stock features of ancient comedy and comic discourse in general. Food and drink intake are also key areas of observation and therapy in ancient medicine; they lie at the center of the \"regimen\" which is so important in medical thought from the Hippocratics onwards. In this paper, I briefly contextualize the discussions about food in ancient medicine up to the beginning of our era, and then concentrate on a unique document, the discussion of the disease stomachikon by Aretaeus. This text contains many elements of parody, and even grotesque characterization, which are nowhere to be found in earlier sources. I present in detail these features of the text and their comic effects, and explore the questions of why such parodic elements are absent from classical medicine. I propose that Aretaeus's unusually comic take on the disease sheds light on some crucial developments in medicine as a professional activity and as a technical literary genre during the first and second centuries C.E.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"473 - 487"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48229660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Life as a Cyclops: Mythology and the Mockery of the Visually Impaired","authors":"J. Draycott","doi":"10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0404","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines a number of cases in ancient literature in which a visually impaired individual is equated with the Cyclopes: such an individual might be one-eyed, blind in one or both eyes, or simply have poor eyesight. It suggests several reasons why these mythological figures were utilized in this way and seeks to explain what, precisely, the individuals making these allusions were aiming to accomplish. It seems likely that it was Polyphemus rather than any of antiquity's other Cyclopes that was intended, and while it could have been his single eye that was the prime motivator, it is notable that he is portrayed in different ways before and after his blinding by Odysseus, and aspects of these portrayals could also have been relevant when insulting the visually impaired.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"404 - 419"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47884425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"It All Comes Out: Vomit as a Source of Comedy in Roman Moralizing Texts","authors":"I. Goh","doi":"10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/ILLICLASSTUD.43.2.0438","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Retching is important for Roman cultural history and medicine; in this article I assess vomit's appearances in Latin literature. Humor is created by the detailed revelation of habitual, inappropriate, and excessive behaviors by named targets, such as the emperors Claudius and Vitellius, and Mark Antony, accused by Cicero in Philippics 2, especially. Alcohol abuse and gluttony feature in invective against character types who vomit, such as the stock figures of the drunken hostess and faithful wife at sea in Juvenal 6, Martial's lesbian Philaenis, and the cautionary tale of the patient who relapses and dies to which the hungover Stoic student is subjected in Persius 3. I end with the self-mocking visualizations of (bad) poetry as vomit in several Horatian passages alongside Nero's voice-training purges.","PeriodicalId":81501,"journal":{"name":"Illinois classical studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"438 - 458"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46358695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}