Despite hailing from different backgrounds, Antigone and Socrates ultimately meet their ends in similar manners, claiming their places in classical history as some of its earliest depictions of civil disobedience. As it were, their motives and the actions that led to those moments are explored in the dialogue created below, as well as the similarities and differences in their approaches to religion, rebellion, duty, and death; thus, the purpose of this preface is not to re-discuss these notions in redundancy.
Brawn and Brains: An Avian Alliance (Phaedrus 2.6)
The tortoise’s best-known appearance in fable might be as the embodiment of “slow and steady wins the race,” but in Phaedrus’s Aquila et cornix, “The Eagle and the Crow,” the shelled reptile meets a less happy end. The titular characters conspire to break open the tortoise’s natural armor via another tried-and-true principle: gravity.
Fractured by formido: Plotting the Destabilizing Specter of Fear in Catiline’s War
Fractured by formido: Plotting the Destabilizing Specter of Fear in Catiline’s War
By Gideon Gruel
In Catiline’s War, Sallust constructs the eponymous Catiline and his infamous conspiracy to overthrow the Republic as products of Rome’s advancing moral decay and indicts the largely confused counteraction of the Roman populace — the Senate together with the commons — thereto as likewise symptomatic of that decay. This was not a decay of wealth, empire, or political institutions, though these too eventually suffered, but a decay of the mind. For Sallust, this mental decay, its exact evolution muddled and difficult to perspicuously plot, is rooted in a gradual corruption of the way Romans…
Food for Thought: Women’s Domestic Roles through the Culinary Iconography of Archaic Greek Terracotta Figurines
Photo: The collection of Archaic Greek terracotta figurines at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), image courtesy of author. Food for Thought: Women’s Domestic Roles through the Culinary Iconography of Archaic Greek Terracotta Figurines By Camille Blanco Among the corpus of ancient Greek artifacts found in the eastern Mediterranean, ceramics and pottery remain […]
Al(l)ia Potestas: A Woman with a Different Authority
Al(l)ia Potestas: A Woman with a Different Authority
By Daniel Campos-Rojano
A strange funerary inscription dedicated to a certain Allia Potestas has puzzled philologists for its language, layout, and outlandish content. The epitaph, written primarily in dactylic hexameter, was found near the Salary-Pinciano burial ground in Rome, a site that was primarily in use from the decline of the Republic to the end of the Flavian Age. Although the dating is controversial, the inscription is generally dated to the early Imperial Age. The poet often alludes to or outright quotes Ovid as a source of literary inspiration which supports this dating…
Medea Through the Centuries
Medea Through the Centuries
By Maggie Yuan
A witch. A sorceress. An enchantress. Each of these terms have been ascribed to Medea, the Colchian princess who married Jason and aided him in his quest for the Golden Fleece. Her story has fascinated audiences for centuries, inspiring writers to craft their own versions of the myth…
Practical Just War: St. Augustine & His Framing of Just War Theory
Practical Just War: St. Augustine & His Framing of Just War Theory
By Benjamin Elkins
Today, the application of moral terms to warfare may seem quite ordinary. Discussions about which military general is or is not a criminal, which states are just or unjust, or who should or should not be held accountable for war crimes are commonplace within modern discourse. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, scholars were quick to call it an unjust war of aggression. As a result, thousands of people bought flags and posters that read “Slava Ukraini” — glory to Ukraine. Throughout the 2023 Hamas-Israel war, numerous opinion pieces have been published evaluating the morality behind either side…
Homeric Poetry and the Construction of Humane Understanding
Homeric Poetry and the Construction of Humane Understanding
By Eden Riebling
In recent years, an interdisciplinary subfield sometimes called Empathy Studies has become central to the literature on diversity, equity and inclusion. Yet empathy remains an elusive concept, more easily praised than implemented or understood. The Oxford English Dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings, experience, etc.
Lucretia Moribunda: Honor and Suicide at the Hands of Sexual Assault in Livy’s Book One
Lucretia Moribunda: Honor and Suicide at the Hands of Sexual Assault in Livy’s Book One
By Dara Sánchez
After translating and analyzing a section of The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, I chose to translate a passage from the first book of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita because, like the early Christian martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, Lucretia was a martyr who died for her moral beliefs. Although these women had different religious creeds, they were both concerned with virtues like modesty and honor. Moreover, the horrible conditions that they endured because of a violent outside world, such as Tarquinius’ sexual assault of Lucretia and the bodily harm Perpetua experienced during the circus games, made these women sympathetic yet courageous personalities…
The Mēchanē in Prometheus Bound: Recognizing the Role of Technology on Stage
The Mēchanē in Prometheus Bound: Recognizing the Role of Technology on Stage
By William Gerhardinger
Prometheus Bound, henceforth PB, poses an insoluble scholarly puzzle. In addition to its authorship and date—and, in fact, intertwined with them—matters of its stagecraft have given rise to a heated scholarly debate. Most prominent among these is the question of how Oceanus’ seemingly aerial mode of transportation (284-87, 394-96) was achieved. Alan Sommerstein suggests the effect was achieved by using a flying-machine—namely the mēchanē, a sort of crane which lifted actors…