Ancient Greek and Roman Literature

Letters inserted into Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History can be interpreted fruitfully within the context of the usage of embedded letters in imperial Greek literature. Elite Greek narrative texts regularly attributed letters to famous Greeks of the past in order to model elite convention and to reveal heroic character. Similarly, Eusebius’ subtle and manipulative reproduction of letters by past Christians foregrounds these Christians as exemplars of proper ecclesiastical conduct. Eusebius’ letters represent wide communication, harmonious resolution of dif erences, and conformity to past Christians’ conduct as essential to Christian identity, particularly in his narratives of the paschal and rebaptism controversies. Eusebius presented epistolary conventions so as to render Christian character acceptable to elite Greek-speaking audiences.

-An addendum to this article now appears in my "'The Only Event Mightier than Everyone's Hope,"" Histos 13 (2020), p. 10 n. 47.
-I missed 4.26.13 among the letters quoted by Eusebius.

Appian's Illyrian book (Illyrike) was originally intended to be just an appendix to his Macedonian book and today remains the only extant ancient work dealing with the early history of Illyricum which is preserved in its entirety. In this short work Appian puts together different local and regional histories in order to create a unified historical narrative and determines the historical and mythological coordinates of Illyricum inside the ancient world. This paper will discuss Illyrike in the context of the Roman construction of Illyricum as a provincial space, similar to some other regions in continental Europe such as, for example, Gaul or Britain. They were all firstly created through the needs of Roman political geography and later written into literary knowledge through the works of ancient history and ethnography. This paper will argue that Appian's Illyrike represented the final stage of the Roman construction of Illyricum from an imaginary to a provincial space, which was the point of its full coming of age as an integral part of the ancient world and the Roman Empire.

It is widely accepted that the Liburni, at some point in the Iron Age, ruled over much of the Adriatic. Professor Slobodan Čače was the first scholar to truly challenge these narratives through a critique of the written sources.  The aim of this paper is to build upon the work of Čače in seeking to rethink identities in pre-Roman Liburnia through analysis of ancient literary sources. It also takes a multidisciplinary approach, and seeks to address ideas about identity and cultural change through material culture. A re- examination is undertaken into Liburnian identity through archaeological evidence, and the transformations it apparently went through during the Iron Age, focusing on ideas about ethno-cultural identities and ‘Hellenization’ in interpretations of developments in Liburnia during the last 4 centuries BCE.

The River Nile fascinated the Romans and appeared in maps, written descriptions, texts, poems and paintings of the developing empire. Tantalised by the unique status of the river, explorers were sent to find the sources of the Nile, while natural philosophers meditated on its deeper metaphysical significance. Andy Merrills' book, Roman Geographies of the Nile, examines the very different images of the river that emerged from these descriptions - from anthropomorphic figures, brought repeatedly into Rome in military triumphs, through the frequently whimsical landscape vignettes from the houses of Pompeii, to the limitless river that spilled through the pages of Lucan's Civil War, and symbolised a conflict - and an empire - without end. Considering cultural and political contexts alongside the other Niles that flowed through the Roman world in this period, this book provides a wholly original interpretation of the deeper significance of geographical knowledge during the later Roman Republic and early Principate.

Summary: The research interprets the textual references of Pharsalia based on the presupposition that the epic aims to emulate and reinterpret (in an anti-Virgilian and anti-Ovidian way) Virgil’s Aeneid (sometimes even Georgics and his Eclogues) and Ovid (especially Metamorphoses). Allusions can be revealed on higher structural and lexical levels of the poem. The allusions of the first section can draw attention to Aeneid’s prologue by being placed in the book of Pharsalia of the same number. The prologues themselves can also refer to other texts and raise the question whether the poet wanted to refer to only one of the prologues or both, and if yes, what kind of correspondence of the two prologues he perceived. The paper reveals and comments the allusions of Virgil in Pharsalia 9. 1–108, with other supposed archetypes involved in the survey.
Key words: intertextuality, imitatio, aemulatio, relationship of Lucan and Virgil, Pharsalia as AntiAeneid, Pharsalia 9. 1–108.

El artículo comprende un análisis de la musa de Catulo, Clodia Metelli, comparándola con la situación de las mujeres
romanas de finales de la República. Clodia parece ser más que la domina cruel e infiel que nos presenta el poeta en
sus versos. Al rescatar algunas de las apreciaciones de Cicerón sobre la vida pública y privada de Clodia, no solo
en su famoso discurso Pro Caelio, sino en su correspondencia privada, podemos descubrir a una mujer diferente de
aquella que la tradición ha dibujado.
Palabras clave: Clodia, Catulo, Lesbia, Cicerón, género, elegía, amor, transgresión, estereotipos

The ancient world is often shrouded in mystery. We have incomplete literary artifacts that claim to be representations of true history, while at the same time, we have complete literary artifacts which vary between works of mythology, works of poetry (some incomplete), works of law and socio-political guidance, and works of socio-political commentary. In this paper, I will address seven literary artifacts from four different ancient time periods, which represent the respective civilization's views on humanism and the sacred. The civilizations consist of Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome. The artifacts consist of the Ancient Mesopotamian texts: The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi, the Ancient Egyptian text " Guidelines for the Ruler, the Ancient Greek lyrical poetry of Sappho, the Ancient Greek play by Aristophanes Lysistrata, the Ancient Greek philosophical influence within Ancient Rome with Lucretius' " Denunciation of Religion, " and the Ancient Roman essay by Tacitus " The Imposition of One-Man Rule. The famous Ancient Sumerian text The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest literary work of which we currently know, is extremely important to the humanities, because it addresses man's ancient and current fear of their own mortality. As this subject never seems to leave the human psyche, we can conclude that this fear is central to the human condition. The Epic of

The present article gives a rough outline of Lucan’s use of alliteration by attempting to discover the most important functions of this particular rhetorical device in the Pharsalia. For the sake of clarity, the instances of alliteration that are found in the Pharsalia are divided into three groups: ‘Pure’ (of one and the same consonant), ‘mixed’ (of two or more consonants) and ‘combined’ (accompanied by other rhetorical devices). Lucan’s use of alliteration is shown to extend far beyond the achievement of an instantaneous sound eff ect at the level of a single line or even a single passage. In several cases, alliteration is used as a means of association in order to allow the poet to connect passages that seemingly have nothing in common. This in turn has leads to the conclusion that Lucan’s compositional scheme – based on allusions and association – is present even at the level of the phoneme.

Las puellae gaditanae fueron un tipo de bailarinas muy famosas en la antigüedad por el erotismo de su danza. los investigadores suelen buscar sus orígenes en relación con las prácticas habituales de las danzas rituales de la prostitución sagrada, comunes también en otras zonas mediterráneas. Sin embargo, con el correr del tiempo y gracias a su fama, las encontramos en calidad de bailarinas de carácter privado y público, empleadas como animadoras de fiestas y banquetes por quienes querían contagiar a sus invitados con el éxtasis de sus movimientos. conservamos un número importante de referencias textuales a estas muchachas, especialmente de escritores romanos, pero los testimonios iconográficos no son tan numerosos como desearíamos. Proponemos hacer un novedoso análisis metodológico de la coreografía que presenta el relieve de ariccia (Museo nazionale Romano, inv. 7725), para ver en qué medida se podría afirmar si puede estar mostrando una práctica aparentemente ibérica o si, por el contrario, se puede establecer algún tipo de relación con las prácticas dancísticas de otros pueblos mediterráneos en contextos similares de exaltación ritual y festiva. PALABRAS CLAVE: puellae gaditanae, iconografía musical, metodología de la danza, danza en el Mundo antiguo. ABSTRAT The puellae gaditanae were a very famous type of iberian dancers in antiquity. Researchers usually classify them in the context of the ritual dances of the sacred prostitution, which allows us to study them in the same framework as those in other zones of the ancient Mediterranean. However, due to their fame, we find them dancing in private and public events, mainly in the feasts and banquets of those who wanted to excite their guests with the lascivious movements of the iberian girls' dance. Many textual references to them have survived, mainly in Roman writers, but the extant iconographic testimonies are not as numerous as we might wish. We therefore propose to carry out an innovative methodological analysis of the relief of (1) PDi artes Visuales y Danza (Universidad Rey Juan carlos), gael.leveder.bernard@urjc.es. ORciD: 0000-0001-5694-6493 (2) Profesor asociado Máster en investigación Musical (Universidad internacional de la Rioja), luis.calero@unir.net.

A Cultural History of Color is a six-volume series examining the changing cultural understandings, interpretations, and utilizations of color throughout history. Each volume has the same structure and begins with a general overview of the major attitudes toward and uses of color in the historical period examined. The introduction is followed by contributions from experts, who investigate color under ten chapter headings which are identical in each of the volumes: philosophy and science, technology and trade, power and identity, religion and ritual, body and clothing, language and psychology, literature and performing arts, art, architecture and interiors, and artefacts. Accordingly, the reader has the option of taking either a synchronic or a diachronic approach to the information provided. One volume can be read to gain a broad knowledge of color in a specific period or, alternatively, a theme or topic can be followed throughout history by reading the appropriate chapter in several volumes. The six volumes divide the history of color as follows:
Volume 1: A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity (ca.3000 BCE–500 CE)
Volume 2: A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age (500–1400)
Volume 3: A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance (1400–1650)
Volume 4: A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Enlightenment (1650–1800)
Volume 5: A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Industry (1800–1920)
Volume 6: A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age (1920–the present)

This work wants to place chronologically the Greek or Latin works and authors mentioned in the First part of the General Estoria, and, at the same time, adds some clarifications about the proper names of these writers, which, frequently, have come down to us with unrecognizable
spellings in theAlfonso’s work. In total, the contribution includes 32 Greek and 15 Latin authors, distributed, when possible, in chronological order.

This thesis primarily focuses on Book IV of the Aeneid, where the ill-fated love affair between queen Dido and Aeneas takes place. I study how these characters struggle to maintain control of their lives in the face of the machinations of the gods and the volatility of their own emotions. I also pin down exactly what role the gods play in manipulating their emotions. While Dido finds herself helplessly in love with Aeneas despite devotion to her husband and people, Aeneas is adrift without the guidance of his recently deceased father, Anchises. While Aeneas’s loss of purpose is restored by divine command, setting him up for his conquest of Italy, Dido is left behind without any hope for redemption

The aim of the present paper is to delineate the translation and editorial activities of Maximos Planudes (Manuel Planoudes, ca. 1255-1305), important figure of the Early Palaeologan Renaissance, with an emphasis on the mapping of motivations for such projects. Translations of Maximos Planudes were mainly concentrated on Roman ancient texts with strong ties to moral philosophy: Catonis Disticha, Cicero, Macrobius. Reflecting Planudes' editorial and translation activities relating to ancient Greek and Roman literature (among philological and theological works of his own) one must consider him as the most important representative of the Byzantine humanism of an early Palaeologan Renaissance in its most genuine form. Planudes' philological approach represents a humanist attitude par excellence looking forward, toward an Italian Renaissance. The study provides a description of the reception of Planudes' translated or edited works both within the Byzantine intellectual milieu and the Italian Renaissance. The translations of Latin works into Greek were probably undertook in the sense of the broader cultural mission. Planudes' editorial and translation projects tries to consider common intellectual and spiritual roots of Latins and Greeks. Such a knowledge tends to delineate culture patterns of that other one. It could be traced the phenomenon previously unprecedented: a more intense effort to understand the Latin world, toward which the Byzantine attitude was defined at a certain distance in earlier stages. In the context of cultural cognition of the second world, a higher imperative is emerging, and that is: the need to preserve the living traditions of both cultures for the contemporaries as well as for the next generations. / Záměrem předkládaného příspěvku bylo přiblížit významného učence raného palaiologovského období, Maxima Planúda (kol. 1255-1305), se zvýšeným zřetelem na jeho činnost překladatelskou a editorskou, přičemž byl kladen důraz na zmapování motivačních pohnutek. Planúdův filologický přístup představuje humanistický postoj par excellence hledící vpřed, k velké italské renesanci. Studie přináší popis působení Planúdem přeložených či editovaných děl jak v rámci byzantského intelektuálního prostoru, tak se snaží o zmapování radiace těchto spisů do prostoru italské renesance. Překlady latinských děl latinských autorů do řečtiny pravděpodobně měly za cíl širší kulturní osvětovou misi v byzantském prostředí, ať již se jednalo o recepci mravních ponaučení anonymní sbírky Catonis Disticha či díla Ciceronova, Macrobiova a Boëthiova. Po období níkajského exilu lze tak sledovat jev do té doby nevídaný: výraznější snahu pochopit svět Latinů, vzhledem k němuž se v předchozích etapách byzantský postoj vymezoval s notnou dávkou distance. V podtextu kulturního poznávání druhého světa se zračí vyšší imperativ, a tím je: nutnost uchování živých tradic obou kultur jak pro současníky, tak pro příští generace.

In ancient Greece and Rome the hottest period of the year was called the dog days, because it was believed that the heat was caused by Sirius, which the Greeks and Romans called the Dog. Allegedly, after its heliactic rising or first-visibility, this star heated up the already hot summer sun, which then caused suffering to people and animals, destroyed crops and dried up streams and springs. In an effort to moderate the summer heat, bring rain, protect the crops and prevent famine, the Greeks developed several ceremonies. They attempted to explain their origin with fables, which are still known today. In ancient Rome the sacrificing of dogs was part of several ancient agricultural and pastoral festivals. Although some were held at the time of the heliactic rising or setting of Sirius, their connection with this phenomenon is unclear.