William F. Wyatt, “Agamemnon’s Deception” Wyatt contends that, while Agamemnon claims in the Iliad to have been deceived by Zeus on several occasions, it is the Mycenaean general’s willful inattention to details of Zeus’s dream messages that led him in turn to deceive his troops in Book 2 and to believe that Zeus had promised him the taking of Troy.
Michael J. Enright and Anthony J. Papalas, “The Cosmic Justice of Hanging Hera” Enright and Papalas explain the curious business of Zeus’s punishment of Hera in Iliad 15 by bringing attention to the similarity of her hanging to ancient portrayals of plumb-lines. They call upon other examples of plumb-lines as arbiters of justice to argue that Hera’s method of hanging is symbolic of her deviation from “true.”
Frank J. Frost, “Solon Pornoboskos and Aphrodite Pandemos” Frost defends Solon against the long-credited claim that he actively encouraged civic prostitution by bringing attention to the unsteady chain of evidence that led to the claim, starting with a misunderstood joke in Philemon’s Adelphoi.
Jennifer Larson, “Corinna and the Daughters of Asopus” Larson contends that it is plausible to date Corinna even to the fifth century B.C.E., considering the affinities her mythical narratives show to the genealogical epic and the body of epichoric material that made up the sources for such epic.
Lowell Edmunds, “Oedipus as Tyrant in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus” Edmunds reveals Sophocles’ careful depiction of aspects of Oedipus as tyrant as revealed by the varying significance of his status to different characters at different times. Edmunds also analyzes the ways in which modern ideological theory has influenced interpretation of Oedipus as tyrant.
Deborah Felton and James D. Miller, “Truth-Inducement in Greek Myth” Felton and Miller apply modern game-theory to ancient Greek myth, revealing how characters in works including the Odyssey, Bacchae, and Metamorphoses manipulate odds and anticipate responses in seeking to elicit truth from adversaries.
John A. Stevens, “Etymology and Plot in Senecan Tragedy” Stevens deconstructs etymologies, complex wordplay, and allusions in Senecan tragedy to reveal how such verbal sophistication advanced the plays’ plots, confirming the extent which Roman imperial literature was composed to be studied.
Peter Tennant, “Beyond the Rhetoric (Part 2): Juvenal and the Roman Élite in Satires 4-6” Tennant continues his revisionist criticism of the persona theory in Juvenal, arguing that the satirist’s virulent invectives arose not from playful rhetorical license, but from a consistently portrayed response to his own frustration with the degradation of the patron-client relationship.
Jacqueline Long, “Bygone Rome in the Historia Augusta” Long skillfully blends topographical and literary knowledge to illuminate late imperial history and the by-ways of Rome as she uncovers the manipulation of history and topography by the authors of the Historia Augusta.
Steven J. Willett, “Recent Trends in Classical Prose Translation” Willett follows up his survey of recent classical verse translations (Vol. 12) with an even fuller (57 pp.) and more extensive sweep through available translations of prose authors, noting star performers, lemons (with samples of both), and notable gaps. All teachers of classical civilization courses will find this critical survey invaluable.
