This article uncovers the knowledge practices undergirding ancient Greek paradoxography, focusing on the ps.-Aristotelian On Marvelous Things Heard. Paradoxographers reconfigured time-honoured myth traditions—a powerful form of collective wisdom—into scientific data that could subsequently be scrutinized, classified, and refashioned for various purposes. Despite this classificatory ethos, paradoxographers attempted to retain the marvelous aspects of these ancient traditions. What ultimately defines paradoxographical discourse is the concurrence of Aristotelian and Homeric impulses: that is, the scholarly aim of gathering and systematizing myriad local myths and customs, on the one hand, and the preservation and continued fascination of marvels, on the other. I compare Greek paradoxography to the Chinese Shan hai jing (a coeval compendium of marvels) in order to highlight the evidentiary limitations of the Greek materials as well as the specific status of wonders in Greek paradoxography.

This paper aims to examine the way in which Tacitus in the books of his Annals concerning the reign of Nero makes use of ancient novelistic literature and to what purpose he employs novelistic motifs in writing history. The hypothesis that he does indeed make use of such means is confirmed by many instances; examples include certain passages from the books concerning the reign of Nero (13-16), especially his relationship with his mother Agrippina.This method of writing appears to be typical of Tacitus, who in this respect stands for agreat part of ancient historiography. In writing history, dramatization is achieved not only by means of the writer's art but frequently also by direct recourse to the features not only of fictional literature and dramatic poetry,but also of novels and novellae.

As I am proposing it, the medieval everyday is “what we see” rather than “what we know”––it is made up of the sights, objects, and encounters of lived experience. This dissertation points to a way of thinking about the everyday that I trace from Latin and Old English riddles through to late medieval riddles and Chaucer’s dream vision poems. My approach is structured by two key claims. My first is that riddles seep into other literary genres through what I call ‘enigmatic structures’––passages of heightened uncertainty governed by riddling conventions. My second claim is that for my medieval authors and their readers, everyday wonders––wonders in lived experience––are often understood through enigmatic structures and vice versa. My chapters are about poets for whom the wondrous in the everyday was a shared concern as they debated the origins of wonder, teased out questions about their own poetics, and applied riddling techniques to philosophic and literary problems. Chapters 1 and 2 ...

This study examines Tacitus' treatment of eastern topics in sections of the Histories and the Annals related to trips from or to Rome. It aims to show that those sections, though involving non-Roman subject matter, are essentially connected with the main subject matter about Roman politics that articulate the narratives of the Histories and the Annals: the consolidation of the Principate, the legitimacy of the emperors' power, the territorial expansion of the empire and the responses of the Roman institutions to those new realities. Thus the internal structure and the connection with the surrounding narrative of each episode as well as the references to mythical and historical accounts and characters (from remote and recent history), and to rains, sanctuaries and cult statues are explored. Chapter 1 (Titus' trip and the consultation of the sanctuary of Paphos, Hist 2. 1-4) suggests that the remoteness of the place and of the traditions and Titus' oracle, do not diver...

An international symposium entitled 'Grotius, Tacitus and the Annales et Historiae de rebus Beligicis (1612): The imitation of language and style,' was held in the department of Classics of the Radboud University Nijmegen on 19 january 2007, organised by Jan Waszink and Marc van der Poel within the framework of Jan Waszink’s post-doc project on the Annales et Historiae. The aim of the conference was to draw attention, as is not often done, to philological approaches to Hugo Grotius’ works and the results that can be obtained through them. A central issue that arose from the papers and discussions was: which were the marks of the Tacitean style for Grotius and his contemporaries? On closer consideration, the very notion of the Tacitean nature of the AH appears problematic in itself. Grotius does not imitate some of the most important characteristics of Tacitus’s style that are recognised today. The papers presented at the symposium have been published in Grotiana, vol. 29 issue 1 and vol. 30 issue 1.

This review article discusses two commentaries on Tacitus' Annals: The Annals of Tacitus, Book 4. Edited with a Commentary by A.J. Woodman (CUP 2018, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 58) and Tacitus, Annals, Book XV. Edited by Rhiannon Ash (CUP 2018, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics).