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
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
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…
Kubrick’s Spartacus: A Legacy of Mediocrity
By Taína Monegro
The concept of mystery has played a paradoxical role in the lives of humans: we are reverently fearful of it and enticed by it. This makes the study of classics deeply magical. It remains a mystery that continually eludes historians, offering mere morsels of itself at a time. Moreover, the greater reality remains ever-present: while worshiping at the increasingly stingy altar of this fickle mistress we call classical studies, time clamors on, pulling us further away from the ancient past we seek to decode. This may be why cinematic portrayals of the classical world are so often woefully short. For those of us who cling to these morsels of the past, what makes most classical stories so magical cannot coexist with the magic of cinema; mystery clashes with reality. In the case of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 blockbuster Spartacus, I argue that it was a conglomeration of the two – the latter filling in the cracks of the former – that led to the film’s attempt at doing the legend of Spartacus justice…
Echoes in the Forest: Fable Tradition and Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Phaedrus 1.12
By Alethea Lam
Phaedrus opens Book 1 of his fables with the phrase Aesopus auctor, anchoring his work in the animal fable tradition of the legendary Greek storyteller. With this phrase, the Latin poet credits Aesop as the pioneer of the genre itself as well as the original narrator of the fables he is about to retell (Phaedrus 1.1.1). Phaedrus’s poems exhibit the classic characteristics of animal fable, namely morals communicated in promythia and epimythia, instructive narratives to demonstrate these lessons, and recurring semi-anthropomorphized animal characters whose behavior reflects stereotypes of their species.