Panel 1.1: Statius on Progress
Talitha Keary (University of Cambridge): Revertendi Animus: Re-examining the ‘Golden Age’ in Statius Siluae 2.5.
Encomiastic poetry is essentially paradoxographical. The laudandus is divinised, his world mythicised; the fantastical mirabilia stand as testimony to his extraordinary character. Even within this hyperbolic sub-genre, however, Statius’ Siluae are remarkable for their audacious strategies of praise, whereby Statius presents the emperor as a living god and the empire as a new and true Golden Age. He particularly delights in transforming unlikely topics into instruments of praise: not only ‘low’, but politically problematic and morally censured characters, objects and themes. Statius emerges as a poet-ideologist, not only legitimising Domitian’s rule but entering into a bold renegotiation of cultural values, claiming as positive precisely those things rejected in more traditional Roman systems of morality (cf., e.g., Pavlovskis 1973, Rosati 2006, Newlands 2011).
My discussion of Statius’ strategies of praise, underpinned as they are by a polemical re-evaluation of tropes of progress and decline, will focus on Silu. 2.5, which features a somewhat improbable encomiastic subject: a tamed lion killed accidentally in the amphitheatre. The events in the arena were a failure with damaging political resonances; Statius’ poem is a propagandist triumph, rejecting the valorisation of ‘natural’ over ‘unnatural’, and instead constructing artifice, luxury, and autocracy as positive features of the regime. I shall demonstrate that through various narrative and allusive tactics Statius presents the lion not purely as a Golden Age animal, but on the crux of the dichotomies humanised/savage, domesticated/wild, myth/reality, Golden Age/modern. He thereby sidesteps the usual clichés of the ‘Golden Age’ topos and neatly avoids entanglement in problems of political control and autonomy. I shall also challenge the tacit consensus that the final line refers to Domitian weeping, offering a new interpretation not only more appropriate to ancient portrayals of Domitian, but integral to the poem’s reclamation of the lion’s death in praise of the emperor.
Henry Tang (University of Cambridge): Theseus in Statius’ Thebaid: A Symbol of Progression or Cyclic Sin?
As with the ending of the Aeneid, scholars have been divided by the ethical questions posed by the ending of Statius’ Thebaid. After eleven books depicting horrors, monstrosities, and fantastic death-scenes, the final twelfth book ends with what, on first sight at least, seems a victory of humanity: “The climax of the whole poem is the coming of Theseus, and the consequent cutting away of all the tangled foulness of Thebes. This is told rapidly, as it ought to be...because it is essential that we should have the impression, not of new wars following upon the old, but of awaking from nightmare, of sudden quiet after storm, of a single sword-stroke ending for ever the abominations” (C. S. Lewis). However, certain subversive elements of Theseus’ portrayal suggest that the tragedy of Thebes has not quite been as resolved as one would like it to be.
This paper will discuss the question of whether any progress and meaningful resolution has been made in the narrative of the Thebaid, or whether the sins of Oedipus are doomed to cyclical repetitions. I will first examine how Oedipus’ original sins - familial strife and illicit union - are handled through the animal imagery that surrounds the warring brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, and the figure of Tydeus - yet another brother-killer. I will then demonstrate how this sustained animal imagery may help to illuminate the vexed question of the role of Theseus in the poem. This imagery will show that his identity as saviour of Thebes cannot be read in a straightforward manner and instead it adumbrates his own familial troubles to come
Joscelyn Cole (Royal Holloway University of London): Journeying towards Thebes: The relationship between Adrastus and the epic τελος in Statius’ Thebaid.
Within the narrative of ancient epic, progress might be measured in terms of an advancement towards τελος, that is towards a consummation of the plot or achievement of its central goal. Examples of this might be found in the return of Odysseus to Penelope, or of Aeneas’ victory over Turnus.
However, in later Flavian epic the goal or resolution of the plot may be allusive, and in some cases unforthcoming. In particular the Thebaid, Statius’ violent tale of fratricidal war, has often read as an epic whose progression, if it has any form of satisfactory ending, is ultimately towards destruction.
To address the notion of epic progression within the Thebaid, I would like to propose a reading of the actions of one of its central characters; the Argive king Adrastus.
Throughout the text Adrastus is present at moments of key decisions and encounters. He is the one who draws Tydeus and Polynices together, he is the one who resolves to go to war, and he is the one who will eventually try to bring an end to the fratricidal strife.
I want to argue that in these crucial moments Adrastus creates liminal spaces which allow him to stand against the flow of the narrative, providing him with a new perspective on the course of the war and in some cases enabling him to delay the epic τελος. In this way he becomes a tool with which Statius can question the Thebaid’s progression towards destruction.
Therefore, as Adrastus seeks to delay progress within the narrative, he conversely becomes a symbol for the continuing progression of the epic genre.
Panel 1.2: Late Antique Progress
Teresa Röger (Universität Heidelberg): Proba and Paulina Progressing in Pietas. Women's dealings with religious change in late antique Rome.
Contemporaries who actively take part in religious change would naturally define this change as progress. This applies especially to Christians who see their God acting in the course of history, which they interpret as a history of salvation. But in times of an ever faster Christianisation pagans too considered themselves as progressing, at least personally, e.g. by getting initiated to a mystery cult.
In my talk I want to ask how women situated the traditional virtue pietas in relation to new religious practices. Two texts surviving from the second half of the fourth century may give answers to this question. First, there is Proba’s cento – a rearrangement of Virgilian lines in order to make them express the message of Christianity. How and why does Proba use the traditional term pietas in a text she wrote to help her family progress in their new Christian faith? This question cannot be answered without considering Proba’s use of the cento genre, highly conservative in its form, but innovatively used as a vehicle for the new faith.
The second text I want to take a close look at are the inscriptions from the tomb of the consul designatus Praetextatus and his wife Paulina. Paulina is the addressee of two of these epigrams and she is given a voice herself in the longest one. Differing representations of pietas in the epigrams lead to the question how Paulina combined an up-to-date perspective on pagan religion with conservative senatorial values.
Late Antiquity has long been seen as a period of decline and perhaps still today it might cause surprise to want to discuss late antique texts under the label of progress. But I think that this label may give us the chance to get closer to what late antique contemporaries wanted to express in the texts they were writing.
Alison John (University of Edinburgh): Literary Salons in Fifth-Century Gaul
An overarching question for western late antique history is whether late antiquity saw the decline and fall of Roman civilization, or the gradual transition from ‘ancient’ to ‘medieval’. In this paper I will address this question by examining the state of Roman education and literary culture in fifth-century Gaul. I will demonstrate that educational life and literary culture was not confined to formal school contexts or professional teaching at this time, but rather that elites also engaged in intellectual culture and educational activities through informal discussion groups, or ‘literary salons’. I will look closely at Sidonius’ Ep. 4.11, in which he describes one such literary salon that was hosted by Claudianus Mamertus, and discuss how it relates to earlier ‘salons’, such as the reading communities described by Pliny the Younger. Finally, I will explore the possible implications of such literary salons on questions of decline in late-antique Gaul.
Tomás Castro (Universidade de Lisboa): Pseudo-Dionysius on the Processes of Negation
One of the most intriguing characters of Late Antiquity is the author who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Dionysius, the Areopagite’. Although the 19th century German scholarship challenged the authenticity of the corpus areopagiticum, the interest in this singular synthesis of Greek Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian thought still remains relevant.
Usually, the works of the corpus are organizes through their internal logic: departing from affirmations we find negations excellent, starting with the cataphatic method we prepare apophaticism. It is customary to point the dialectical structure of the areopagitica, in comparison with authors such as Proclus or Hegel. However, these kind of remarks undervalue the distinctive features of a profoundly ‘work in progress’ speculation.
Recent attempts have tried to challenge the internal logic of the corpus, re-evaluating the role and concept of negation. T.D. Knepper (Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus, 2014) suggested a de-identification of apophasis (negation) with aphaeresis (removal), most of the time synthetized with the concept of ‘negation’ tout court. Recognizing this meaningful distinction, one must rethink the cataphatic and apophatic processes and their aftermaths.
In the last part of the paper, we will detail and examine the role of the preposition hyper (with plenty and ample meanings and uses) within the corpus’ processes. This will lead us to a final remark on the importance of a dialectical thought as unique as the one we can find in Pseudo-Dionysius.
Panel 2.1: Greek Drama
Tori Lee (Washington University in St Louis): The Psychological Effects of Restraint and Seclusion in Prometheus Bound.
In the United States today, restraint and seclusion function as emergency interventions for a patient or prisoner to prevent him from harming himself or others. The measures can have deleterious effects on the recipient (the patient), the performer (often a caretaker or guard), and the viewer (those who witness the event). The effects of being restrained and secluded are manifold, including psychological trauma, physical injury, death, and a wide variety of emotions. It is possible for serious symptoms to occur in otherwise healthy individuals after only a few days in isolation (Smith 2006).
Progress in the field of psychology has helped to shed light on Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound1. I examine the psychological effects of restraint and seclusion in Prometheus Bound—specifically, how being restrained and secluded affects Prometheus. Over the course of the play, Prometheus experiences feelings similar to those of modern day patients who have been restrained and secluded: fear, anger, powerlessness, loneliness, shame, bitterness. His behavior regarding visitors is erratic: although he desires attention, he does not want to become a spectacle. Other characters comment on Prometheus’s psychological state, calling him mad, but Prometheus himself never questions his own sanity. Nevertheless, he becomes emotionally unpredictable over the course of the play. The effects of Prometheus’s punishment deviate from the consequences that befall modern patients in terms of physical and mortal danger, but mirror their experience with regard to emotions and resulting psychological trauma. Being restrained and secluded makes Prometheus mentally unstable. The insight provided by modern scientific research allows us to read more deeply into the motivations behind Prometheus’s emotions and actions and interpret them in a new light.
1 This paper does not address the dispute over authorship of the Prometheus Bound. For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to the Prometheus Bound author as Aeschylus.

Alexandre Johnston (University of Edinburgh): Human Progress and Linguistic Polyvalence in the First Stasimon of Antigone.
The first stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone has traditionally held a significant place in the historiography of Greek notions of progress. The song, which has often been called a ‘Hymn’ or ‘Ode to Man’, offers a remarkable account of human ingenuity mastering nature and the elements. It overlaps in many ways with theories of human progress such as those expounded by Plato’s Protagoras or Aeschylus’ Prometheus, and contrasts sharply with the more traditional Hesiodic account of human decline. Its importance to Greek intellectual history is beyond doubt, but its interpretation has proved highly controversial. There is much disagreement in particular on the precise relationship of the stasimon to its intellectual context, and on its relevance to the rest of the play. The aim of my paper is to shed light on these two issues by focusing on the language of the song, and specifically on its polyvalence and ambiguity. These have long been recognised by scholars, some of whom argue that they threaten the positive tone of the stasimon. I attempt to build on this notion by exploring further ways in which the song’s apparent endorsement of human progress is subverted by its very language and the lurking presence of archaic thought. In this way, I hope to make a contribution to our understanding of the play, and to bring out some facets of the complex dynamics which govern tragedy’s engagement with previous and contemporary intellectual forms.
Paul Martin (University of Exeter): Progression through the Tetralogy: the Case of Euripides’ Alcestis.
In this paper, I shall suggest that Euripides’ Alcestis provides us with a unique opportunity to understand thematic progression in the tetralogies produced by Athenian tragedians. The play was produced in 438 BC after the production of Cressai, Alcmeon in Psophis, and Telephus; its position should make Alcestis the concluding satyr-play, but it lacks a satyr chorus. This absence, despite its final position in the tetralogy, has received much attention from critics, who have viewed the play as a response to a specific, contextual decree that in some form banned ὀνομαστι κωμῳδεῖν (e.g. Shaw 2014). While this approach has proved very stimulating, little attention has been paid to Alcestis’ role within the specific tetralogy of 438. I shall therefore use our knowledge of the plays with which Alcestis was produced to demonstrate that Alcestis picks up on and responds to the portrayal of themes in previous plays in the tetralogy. This thematic progression underpins the function of the tragic tetralogy. When tragedy developed from a series of plays based around the same myth, the significance of thematic rather than narrative progression increased dramatically.
This approach allows us to better understand both the tragic competition and Alcestis itself through the thematic progression of the tetralogy. When read thus, I will argue that the Alcestis renegotiates the marriage theme by portraying the ultimate wife, prepared to die for the sake of her husband, whose death in fact feminizes the head of the household. Her ultimate, and silent, reintegration into the household denies Alcestis the kleos the play has been predicting and puts her back into her proper place - out of sight, restoring the status quo and thwarting notions of progress. Progression, in this case, paradoxically involves reading back through the previous plays, a process of reformulation and recontextualization.
References
Shaw, C. (2014) Satyric play: the evolution of Greek comedy and satyr drama, Oxford.
Panel 2.2: Republican Poetry and Progress
Georgia Ferentinou (University of Athens): Propertius' Progress of Rome: Elegies 4.4 and 4.9.
The fourth book of Propertius’ Elegies marks the progress in the genre of elegy itself, introducing the aetiological aspect. Αt the same time Propertius’ poetic voice expands in order to include a number of different mythological voices. Elegies 4.4 and 4.9 are two representative examples of this, giving voice to Tarpeia and Hercules. The current paper aims to show the progress in the literary figures of Tarpeia and Hercules: Tarpeia will be given her own voice for the first time, inscribing herself in elegy, while an epic struggle of Hercules with Cacus will be replaced by that of Hercules with elegy. It will also be argued that, apart from employing the same literary background, these two elegies are connected through the motives of conflict between female and male, elegy and epic, space and space, and also through the game of appearance and social status. Propertius plays with the expectations of the reader, well acquainted with the 8th book of Virgil’s Aineid and Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, and like a new Evander, he takes us on a journey in time, giving his own account on the progress of locus in Rome. Going backwards in time, from the story of Tarpeia to the one of Hercules and Cacus, the progress in the formation of contemporary Rome and its most recognizable monuments is seen by Propertius as a result of a struggle between mythological figures, who wish to gain access to different genres: the elegiac Tarpeia in the epic space of the epic Tatius and the epic Hercules in the elegiac worship space of Bona Dea.
Matthew Johncock (Royal Holloway University of London): Lucretius' Reader and the Path to Moral Progress.
Lucretius frequently refers to his De Rerum Natura as a journey to philosophical enlightenment. The path is steep and treacherous (1.659), but Lucretius will guide his reader to the ultimate goal of Epicurean ataraxia (freedom from care) – ‘a life worthy of the gods’ (3.322). Along this journey, the reader should progress from novice to expert, accepting the principal Epicurean truths: everything consists solely of atoms and void; the highest pleasure is the absence of pain; death is nothing to us; and the gods do not control human affairs. In addition, the reader must sometimes choose their own path, searching out proofs (1.402-8) and, ultimately, applying what they have learnt to future challenges such as the death of a loved one.
This progress contrasts sharply with the degeneration of mankind portrayed in Book 5. For Lucretius, there was originally a golden age, during which men took pleasure in the simple things provided by Nature and lived a life of ataraxia. However, peace was gradually destroyed by two incorrectly chosen paths, which initiated man’s degeneration: attributing mysterious phenomena to the gods, and failing to comprehend the limits of pleasure. Together these initiated a downward spiral of fear, superstition, greed and crime. One of the principal aims of De Rerum Natura, therefore, is to put right the errors of early man – a process originally begun by Epicurus (depicted in the prologues to Books 1, 3, 5 and 6).
This paper will explore where early man went wrong; how Lucretius directs his reader down the right path by a combination of structural, rhetorical and linguistic techniques; and whether the reader can maintain their progress after reaching the end of the poem – especially the concluding ‘what have we learnt today?’ test of the Athenian plague.
Christina Boltsi (University of Athens): Slaughter and the Beast: Sacrifice, Ratio, and Progress in Lucretius.
Sacrifice was a fundamental practice of Roman religio and was considered to be a public expression of pietas. In the first part of this paper I analyze Lucretius’ approach to sacrifice (DRN 1.80–101, 2.352–370, 5.1198–1203). In order to do so, I compare Lucretius’ point of view to that of Ovid in his Metamorphoses and his Fasti. On the basis of this comparison, it can be concluded that while Lucretius differentiates himself from Epicurus’ views on the issue as transmitted to us by Philodemus, he helds an absolutely negative thesis against sacrificial practice, by openly confronting and rejecting it. For Lucretius the need of sacrifice is rooted in fear and is simultaneously the cause and the result of the degradation of human ratio; at the same time it poses a threatening peril to the stability of human society. Augustan Ovid’s stance, on the other hand, is more ambivalent, as he both recognizes the necessity of sacrifice and underscores it. In the second part of my paper, I explore whether the sacrificial ritual is an indicator of progress within human society and, furthermore, whether there is a kind of evolution between the two poets. Whereas Lucretius completely rejects sacrifice, Ovid’s modified point of view could be considered to be more realistic, since it poses a subtle criticism to the practice of sacrifice and religio that does stimulate the readers’ ratio. In other words, Ovid’s ambivalent views make the reader ponder upon the issue. Lucretius rejects any co – existence of ratio and religio, while on the other hand Ovid associates them through ambiguity.
Panel 3.1: Archaic Progress
Gary Vos (University of Edinburgh): Mythological Progress and Progressing Mythology: Linus from Hesiod to Hellenistic Poetry.
In the Hesiodic corpus there are two fragments about a ‘Linus’ (frr. 305 Merkelbach-West = *11 Hirschberger = 255 Most = Σ Hom. Il. 18.5701 Erbse and 306 Merkelbach-West = *12 Hirschberger = 256 Most = Clem. Strom. 1.4.25 [II, p. 16.13 Stählin-Früchtel]), which scholars have not been able to ascribe to a specific poem. My paper argues that the fragments belong to the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, which narrates the so-called Heldendämmerung, the end of the Heroic Age and will look at Hesiod’s Linus-figures (plural, as the poem’s reception makes clear that subsequent readers noted a distinction between the two fragments) as paradigmatic for mankind’s fall from grace and move towards the Iron Age.
So far, the main source for the reconstruction of the Catalogue has been ps.-Apollodorus’ Library. I will argue that much can be gained from the reception of Hesiod in, on the one hand, Callimachus’ Aetia, a poem which from the start uses the Hesiodic literary career (envisaged as Theogony – Catalogue of Women– Shield of Heracles – Works and Days) as a template for its chronological and geographical span and features two Linus-figures (frr. 23 & 25e-31b Hdr.), and the list of teachers to Heracles in Theocritus’ Idyll 24, two sources which so far have been ignored.
Secondly, I will argue that the first Linus-figure in Hesiod must have appeared as a paradigm of the transgressive behaviour that led Zeus to eradicate the race of Heroes, whereas the second may have exemplified how mankind, even after its fall, may be redeemed.
Pietro Verzina (Universities of Salerno and Madrid): Changing the Self and the World. The Homeric Hymns as Patterns of Transformation and Progress.
The narrative of the Homeric Hymns has a peculiar charm. Their plot tend to be more archetypal and paradigmatic, or even, in Aristotelic sense, more philosophic than Homeric narrative poetry. These texts represent the gods dynamically, framing them in a crucial and decisive moment of change in their life. The praise of the deities consists of the revelation of their personal achievements or records. Therefore, the structures of poems are based on concepts such as enhancement and progress. Not only the gods acquire a definite condition and a new self- conscience, but a decisive change in the world history occurs at the same time. In the Hymn to Demeter, the abduction of Persephone brings about the institution of a princess of the Underworld, but this event also originates the seasons, the Eleusinian mysteries and agriculture, which represents civil life. Moreover, the quest story of Demeter is based on the withdrawal and return pattern. This basic structure is commonly used in epic poetry to feature the personal transformation of a character and the advancement of the story; it is founded on the ideas of fall and rebirth, which are essential to understanding the archaic concept of progress. In the Hymn to Aphrodite the goddess experiences mortal love for the first time, and a new rule imposed by Zeus brings about a new era. The Hymn to Hermes recounts the god’s unnaturally rapid maturation and some new inventions, such as the lyre. The struggle with Python featured in the Hymn to Apollo represents the symbolic fight between the forces of light and darkness: the passage from chaos to kosmos is a primary concept of progress in the archaic Greek thought.
Maciej Paprocki (Universities of Liverpool and Wroclaw): Always an Heir, Never a King. Apollo, Human Mortality and the Divine Succession.
In Hesiod’s Theogony, the progressive ordering of the world is periodically interrupted by violent divine takeovers; Uranus was defeated by his son Cronus (173-182), only to be defeated by his son Zeus (729- 731). A bleak prophecy of Zeus’ eventual downfall (A. Pr. 907-912) makes the son of Cronus fear potential claimants to his throne, such as his heir apparent, Apollo. Renowned as a god “who is overly reckless and will greatly lord it over immortals and mortals” (Hom. h. Ap. 67-69), Apollo remains incompletely integrated into Zeus’ power base (Felson 2012: 271-275, 2011: 275-283; Clay 2006: 19-27; Harrell 1991: 312-313). I argue that—despite Zeus’ appeasement policies—Apollo still endangers his father’s rule, perhaps most visibly so when he tampers with the mortal-immortal divide.
Zeus and Apollo once locked themselves in a vicious cycle of violence: Apollo’s son Asclepius hubristically raised the dead and was smitten by Zeus; in retaliation, Apollo slew the Cyclopes that forged Zeus’ thunderbolts. Enraged Zeus would have hurled Apollo to Tartarus; however, at the intercession of Leto, he ordered Apollo to serve a mortal king, Admetus (Apollod. 3.10.4). Having learned that Admetus was fated to die young, Apollo interceded with the Fates so that the king could live (A. Eum. 723-728; E. Alc. 1-23; Apollod. 1.9.15), at the steep price of Admetus’ wife dying in her husband’s stead.
Lyons (1997: 86) noted that those “who run afoul of Zeus are often engaged in inherently subversive acts, the success of which would attack the very foundations of the mortal/immortal distinction”; indeed, Apollo and Asclepius postpone human deaths, perhaps indefinitely (Hubbard 2013: 92-93, 102 n. 57). As a god, Apollo sets and observes boundaries (Clay 1996: 86); through Admetus, Apollo defies his Zeus-ordained purpose and readmits forces of chaos into Zeus’ cosmos.
Panel 3.2: Reading Progress in Fragments
Effie Zagari (University of Reading): Aristophanes of the 4th c. BC.
This paper aims to add significant information to our knowledge on Aristophanes’ work looking at his two last fragmentary plays (Cocalus and Aeolosicon) and pointing out these elements that show a certain progress and advancement in Aristophanes’ way of composing his comedies. I will argue that Aristophanes’ last two comedies contain specific elements that are not encountered in his extant plays and could provide evidence for the beginning of the transition to a new Comic era. A transition that had started being evident already from Assembly Women and Wealth continues and becomes even more prominent.
We are all familiar with the traditional Aristophanes of Old Comedy, the author of a comedy heavily charged with the political reality of the Athens of the Golden era, but what happens when this era is gone for good? Starting from the excellent editions of Kassel-Austin and Henderson, I will follow up on the work of scholars such as R. Hunter (The New Comedy Of Greece And Rome), E. Segal (The Φύσις of Comedy), Γ. Ξανθάκη-Καραμάνου, (Παράλληλες εξελίξεις στη μετακλασσικη 4ος π.Χ. αι. Τραγωδία και Κωμωδία) and H.G. Nesselrath (Parody and Later Greek Comedy), and I will show with specific examples the evolution and progress of the Aristophanic Comedy in the 4th century BC.
Consequently, through my paper I will attempt to explore the Aristophanes of the 4th century. An Aristophanes who composes plays that are looking forward to the plays of Middle and New Comedy as well as pushing the borders of his comedy to the West. He writes parody plays using his “tragic” treasury and reproduces well known myths to serve his own purposes and give an alternative version for which the future generations would remember him.
Anna Reeve (University of Leeds): Stesichorus' Geryoneis and Greek colonisation in the West: a nuanced depiction of progress.
Stesichorus’ fragmentary Geryoneis tells the story of the Greek hero Herakles’ raid on cattle belonging to Geryon, a mythical being with three heads. This conflict is situated in Erytheia, a land in the far West, on the margins of Greek culture. In the course of the attack, Geryon is mortally wounded. On one level, this narrative can be read as a straightforward celebration of progress, the archetypal Greek hero eradicating an indigenous monster in order to clear the land for civilised settlement, thus legitimising Greek colonisation in the West and justifying the spread of settlers into new lands. However, Stesichorus’s presentation of Herakles and Geryon is markedly ambiguous. While fragmentary, it is clear that his poem emphasises Herakles’ cunning and guile, while Geryon’s monstrosity is downplayed and he is constructed as a noble, heroic character, not least through Iliadic parallels. The extended description of his defeat is crafted to evoke pity and sorrow. In this way Stesichorus achieves a nuanced presentation of Greek colonisation in the West, rejecting a simple narrative of progress and recognising the cost of Greek expansionism. There is an explicit tension in the portrayal of a brutal civiliser and a heroic barbarian, which recognises the points of view of both the colonisers and the local indigenous population. This presentation would have had particular resonance for Stesichorus’ local population in the Greek colony of Himera in Sicily, providing a foundation myth for their shared community which acknowledges and legitimises the experience of all participants.
Max Leventhal (University of Cambridge): Dining Among the Stars: Astronomical Progress in the Cena Trimalchionis.
When Clearchus of Soli discusses riddling at the symposium, he differentiates between contemporary and ancient habits, ‘For as they were drinking, they used to pose questions—not, however, as people do today, when they ask one another...which fish or variety of fish is the most delicious or the most precisely in season, and then which one is particularly good eating after Arcturus rises, or the Pleiades, or the Dog-Star.’ (Clearchus fr.63.I Wehrli = Athenaeus X.457c). Intellectual posturing was a central concern at the Classical symposium. The mention of astronomical quizzing, however, constitutes a unique intersection of technical knowledge in a performative space. A survey of sympotic literature at once confirms and expands Clearchus’ thesis: every period weaves astronomy into sympotic discourse.
Collectively, these texts display a range of astronomical thoughts: Alcaeus reworks Hesiod (fr. 347 V. See now Hunter (2014)); comic symposia engage with popular suspicions of astronomical skill (Nicomachus fr.1, Alexis fr.263, Sosipater fr.1 K.-A. See, still, Wilkins (2000)); Antipater of Thessalonica’s ‘bowls for Piso’ have emphatically nothing to do with Aratus (XLIV Gow and Page (1968), with notes). Beyond the case studies, I am interested in the intellectual authority which attends each interweaving. I chart how the development of astronomical thought at the symposium parallels the progress in astronomical understanding more generally. By addressing the strategies authors employ to assign significance, the forms the knowledge takes, and the generic traditions in which it exists, we are able to nuance our understanding about astronomy in the Ancient Greek mind. I argue that these astronomical allusions reveal the developing collective conception of the discipline and its perceived place in Greek life.
Panel 4.1: Progression through Emulation
Chiara Bonsignore (Sapienza Università di Roma): Remember and Let Go: Progress as Continuity and Rupture in two Hellenistic Epitaphs for Homer and Hesiod (Alc. Mess. 11 and 12 G-P = A.P. 7.1 and A.P. 7.55).
In Hellenistic Literature, a flourishing of metapoetic passages bears witness to the poets' preoccupation with the place they occupy in a shifting landscape. It is a place of both continuity and rupture, a conflict from which progress is often born. If we hold that as true, among the most powerful depictions of progress in Hellenistic literature are scenes where poets mourn their predecessors.
Funerals are certainly meant to praise the dead, but they are for the living; by placing a sema on the grave of the dead, we separate ourselves from them, and the very act of mourning is a testament to our vitality in the face of loss. All of this applies to literary representations of mourning too. It is therefore within this conceptual frame that this talk will analyse two epitaphs written for Homer and Hesiod by Hellenistic poet Alcaeus of Messene.
Firstly, attention will be drawn to Alcaeus's choice of opening both epigrams with references to the circumstances of Homer's and Hesiod's death. A close analysis of the first couplet of 11 G-P will underscore its metapoetic value, as Alcaeus uses the griphos that kills Homer as a symbol of Hellenistic epigrams. Afterwards, it will be shown how both epigrams proceed to describe the funerary honours paid to Homer and Hesiod – apparently flattering scenes, which nevertheless put further emphasis on the poets' status of nekuses, if noble ones. Particular attention will be devoted to Alcaeus' lexical choices, by means of which he weaves into these poems allusions to Callimachean and Theocritean passages, thus linking his praise to the past to his poetical present. Lastly, some conclusive remarks will compare the ambivalence between continuity and rupture found in these poems to other Hellenistic loci expressing a similar attitude.
Emma Greensmith (University of Cambridge): Uprooting the Bloom: The Poetics of 'Succession' in the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus.
‘Every Greek poet is involved in an Oedipal conflict with his overwhelming predecessor Homer. But none more blatantly than Quintus Smyrnaus. We wonder if he was particularly brave and clever or particularly stupid to pick this fight against an adversary so much greater than himself.’ – Schmitz (2007):65
At some point during the 3rd century AD a poet known as Quintus Smyrnaeus penned an epic which fills the gap between the Iliad and Odyssey. So ‘Homerising’ was this work that it became known as τὰ μεθ’ Ὅμηρον: literally, ‘the things after Homer.’ As Schmitz’ quotation suggests, the Posthomerica seems to fit perfectly Harold Bloom’s famous model of literary filiation. Scholarship on the poem has enduringly focused on its methods of responding to this central anxiety about ‘being Homer later.’
This paper aims to challenge this conception of Quintus’ work, and highlight the benefits of moving past it. I shall suggest that Quintus does indeed respond to the concept of ‘literary filiation’ in his poem; but rather than conforming to an ‘oedipal’ paradigm, he provocatively dismantles it.
What happens, Quintus seems to be asking, if a poet chooses not to succeed his literary father, but to assimilate into him? What if a work does not mark its progress by aiming to move past what has come before, but by attempting to erode the distance between the ‘then’ and the ‘now’?
By analysing two case studies of filial relationship in the Posthomerica – one from the human world and one from the divine – I shall explore how Quintus rejects the trope of reacting against one’s canonical predecessor to offer a defiantly different self-conception. The poem is shaped, I shall argue, not by an anxiety about ‘being Homer later’ but by the drive to bring Homer back to life; the possibility of ‘being Homer now.’
After outlining my evidence for this reading, I shall conclude by suggesting its wider significance. Scholars for centuries have struggled to place the Posthomerica into a wider cultural context. Could considering the poem in this way offer some important clues? If Quintus can be understood as aiming not to move past Homeric epic, but to continue and reanimate it, then we may be able to situate his poem as responding to a specific trend in the literary landscape of Imperial Greece.
Panel 4.2: Platonic and Neoplatonic Progress
Christian Keime (University of Cambridge): How to Make New Ideas with Old Words: Plato’s Use and Transformation of Traditional Discourses in Plato’s Symposium (185e-188e; 201d-212c).
Plato’s Symposium presents a series of six eulogies of eros, each one contradicting the former one(s) but containing serious philosophical insights about love. Though there is a scholarly consensus that Socrates’ final speech caps the five previous ones, scholars still debate about the raison d’être of these former discourses: to what extent do they convey Plato’s view on eros (see Sheffield 2005 contra Rowe 1998)?
Using the speech of Eryximachus as a case study, I will argue that through this discourse Plato does not convey only a theory of love. He also and primarily transmits a methodological lesson showing that making progress in philosophy does not amount to coining brand-new theories (kainoi logoi). It rather consists in borrowing traditional theories and changing the meaning of their words.
This lesson in communication develops in two phases:
- Eryximachus explicitly reformulates ancient traditions of thought (Empedocles, Heraclitus, ancient medicine), producing an original synthesis aimed at advocating his own art (tekhnê) : medicine (185e-188e).
- Eryximachus’ speech in its turn is critically reworded by Socrates (201d- 212c): through a significant word echo, Socrates claims, like Eryximachus, that eros is related to tekhnê. Nevertheless he proves to have a more comprehensive view of tekhnê than his table-companion: Socrates’ tekhnê is a complex whole of which tekhnê iatrikê constitutes only one minor part.
As being able to conceive and divide complex wholes is what Socrates calls dialectic (Phaedrus 266b-c), Plato shows that making progress in philosophy is not merely giving new meanings to old words but doing so dialectically. Furthermore, since Socrates pronounces a rhetorical speech, he dramatically demonstrates how to improve traditional rhetoric by incorporating in it the virtues of dialectic. The Symposium, as it were, also teaches how to do dialectics with rhetoric
Georgia Mystrioti (University of Athens): Pseudo-Plutarch's De Musica: The Moral and Pedagogical Importance of Music and Neoplatonism's Critical Attitude against its Progress.
The ethics of music have been an issue of intense discussion throughout classical antiquity, as manifested by Damon’s early research on the moral influence of music (5th cent. B. C.). However, Plato significantly contributed to the subject in his Republic, as he imposed strict and severe regulations about music and specific harmonies that were considered good for morals and pedagogy. Furthermore, Aristotle, in his Politics, studied the ethics of music, with a different attitude towards the aulos, the main musical instrument of his era, from his predecessor.
Pseudo-Plutarch’s De Musica was written within the Neoplatonic movement. The dialogue, in which the banqueters discuss the origins and evolution of music, is heavily influenced by the Platonic ones. There is substantial praise, from both Lysias (a practicing musician) and Soterichos (a theoretician and early critic of music), for the era when music was harmonic, simple and not connected to theatre. Early Ancient Greek musicians and lyric poets had a rather conservative approach to music, often subtracting notes from musical scales. However, as music progressed and got correlated with the theatrical action, more complex scales and harmonies, such as the Lydian and Phrygian ones, were mostly used; the banqueters did not have a high opinion of those, due to the passive morals they were associated with. As a result, the contemporary musical scales were considered harmful for the morals that were to be instilled in people, especially children.
In summary, this late-antiquity dialogue, of which the real author is yet to be convincingly identified, can be considered a very good example of the Ancient Greek attitude about progress, especially in the changing, uncertain times of the early centuries CE.
Panel 5.1: Progress and Anti-Progress in Athenian Political and Cultural Discourse
Matteo Barbato (University of Edinburgh): Between Progress and Continuity: Following the Examples of the Ancestors in Athenian Public Debate.
In his speech On the False Embassy, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of having exhorted the Athenians to forget about their ancestors and to be wary of those who talk about their trophies and sea battles (Dem. 19.16). The orator remarks the gravity of his opponent’s words, which he describes as ‘worthy of many deaths’ (Dem. 19.15-6). On his part, Aeschines is aware of the threat represented by Demosthenes’ insinuations and he addresses them in his speech On the False Embassy, where he is very keen to prove that he has never questioned the example of the ancestors. He states that, as a matter of fact, he had invited his fellow-citizens to remember the achievements of their forefathers and to imitate their good judgment, and that he had only warned them in order to avoid repeating their same mistakes, such as the Sicilian expedition (Aeschin. 2.74-7).
This episode shows how dangerous it was for any orator who wanted to be successful in the Athenian public debate to forget the city’s past and challenge the value of the ancestors’ achievements, which were object of much celebration in the official rhetoric of funeral orations. Their indisputable weight in Athens’ civic ideology seems to set a limit to any aspiration for progress in Athenian public discourse. Aeschines, however, was eventually acquitted; Demosthenes’ accusations were not enough to instigate the hostility of the judges against him. To what extent, then, could orators question the example of the ancestors without incurring in the hostility of the audience? Was there any room for progress in the discussion of the policies of the city? Starting from the case of Aeschines and Demosthenes, my paper will consider further instances of the discussion of Athens’ past within the corpus of the Attic orators and assess the limits of their loyalty to the example of the ancestors.
Claudia Baldassi (University of Edinburgh): Progress and Tradition in Euripides’ Helen.
The Helen is one of Euripides’s most problematic and controversial works. It was performed in 412 BC, when Athens was still in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, facing the immediate aftermath of the failure in the Sicilian expedition. As in the case of other tragedies (cfr. e.g. The Trojan Women in 414 BC), Euripides is here using the Trojan War as a veiled paradigm for the war raging on in his contemporary world. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on how Helen’s myth interacts with the political context of the play by focusing specifically on the third stasimon. Here the chorus give an idyllic description of Sparta and its cults, which Helen will find again when going back home. I will argue that, behind a play that has been considered too often as a mere evasive exercise, one can find an implicit and twofold message directed to its Athenian audience. On the one hand, Sparta is strong in its traditions and traditional cults; the image of Sparta that emerges from the chorus’ description is out of time, both contemporary to the audience and familiar to Helen, who is coming back to it in her mythological past. The rites are taking place as it has always been and the Leucippides – the mythological girls or the Spartan priestesses? – are leading the dances, as it will always be. On the other hand, could there be any room for progress in the perception of Sparta, through the recognition of Helen’s original innocence? Euripides introduces to the Athenians the Spartan image of Helen, who is a faithful wife and an innocent woman, and presents some interesting connections to the female rites of passage. She is much closer to the Spartan goddess than to the traditional adulteress.
Panel 5.2: Progress and its Relation to the Past
Pia Campeggiani (University of Edinburgh): Under the Rim of Pandora’s Jar: Unattainable Hope as an Interpretive Key to the Ancient Greek Conception of History.
The paper deals with the absence of an eschaton as a primary feature of the ancient Greek conception of history. Drawing both on Greek and Christian sources, my aim is to highlight the conflict between Christian fides and Greek theōria, as well as the one between spes as a moral duty and kenē elpís.
Linear perspectives on the nature of time were indeed available to ancient Greeks, but the same cannot be said of the notion of an “end” in its dual meaning of “termination” and “completion”. Greek istoría did not aim to an eschaton and from this standpoint it can be thought of in terms of what Kant, in the Ninth Thesis of his Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, has described as «empirical history», as against «philosophical history» (Geschichte).
My argument is that an investigation of the different roles played by fides (faith in what you cannot see) and theōria (contemplation of what you can see) in Christian and Greek conceptions of history respectively, together with an analysis of the differences between hope as a moral duty (which as such implies the necessity of a “future” of time) and hope as a painful illusion (kenē elpís), prove to be seductive interpretive key to the Greek notions of time and history as well as to the theoretical category of “progress”.
The primary sources I refer to are Hesiod’s Works and Days, Aristotle’s Poetics and Augustine’s De Civitate Dei.
Sebastiano Bertolini (University of Edinburgh): Refusing the Progress: Aristophanes’ Countryside as Celebration of the Past.
As already observed by many scholars in past years, the dichotomy city-countryside has played a relevant role throughout Greek and Roman antiquity. On the one hand, the city usually represents technical, social and cultural progress; on the other hand, the countryside can be taken as a metaphor of an atavistic past, with its serenity and peace. This polarity, as has been already pointed out in recent scholarship, is highly attested in Aristophanes’ theatre as well (cf. e.g. Ar. Ach. 27-36, Nub. 43-55, Eccl. 301-304). In his comedies, in which many characters are rustic countrymen, the depiction of the rural world often becomes an antiphrastic instrument of criticism to the urban sphere, objective correlative of contemporary society and political community. Through the literary analysis of some Aristophanic passages, my paper will place this topos in the wider context of Athenian culture and politics in the late fifth century BC, on the basis of diachronic (e.g. Homeric, Hesiodic and Empedoclean representations of a ‘Golden Age’) and synchronic (e.g. the contemporary representations of the ‘Land of Cockaigne’, such as Crat. Plut. fr. 176 and Telecl. Amph. fr. 1) perspectives. I will thus highlight that, in Aristophanes’ comedies, the refusal of the progress of coeval society finds a poetical facies in the traditional, idyllic depiction of the countryside, which becomes a concrete metaphor of the positive values of an idealised past.
Panel 6.1: Imperial Greek Progress
Giulia Sara Corsino (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa): From Mythos to Logos. Progress of Erotic Customs in Longus' Poimenikà.
My paper intends to demonstrate that ancient novels, though often employing mythical patterns, sought to mark a progression away from the ambiguous ethics that informed issues of eroticism in most of the mythical tradition by moving toward a more egalitarian conception of the relationship between the sexes. This progression is particularly evident in Longus’ Poimenikà.
In the first three books of this novel we find three mythical excursus which describe virgins undergoing a process of metamorphosis in order to escape a god’s rape or other kinds of abuse. The god Pan is regarded as the emblem of eros, purely physical desire, which is something sterile and degrading. On the contrary, the last book offers a positive model of the relationship between men and women: Daphnis and Chloe’s love reaches marital union, the proper place to experience sex as a divertissement with the crucial goal being that of procreation.
The dichotomy between mythos and logos is implied earlier in the novel. If the excursus are classified as myths and they conclude with the virgins losing their human status, Longus underlines that his story is a truthful logos, and he gives it a happy ending: Chloe gains a role in society. Against the trend of looking at mythos as a container of ideal behavioural schemes and at a mythical Golden Age, Longus celebrates the development of erotic customs in his time through the means of a recent mimetic literary genre consisting of human characters. Although the Poimenikà take place in an idealised past, they give account of a contemporary social reality that is more respectful of female volition and they evoke a yearning to substitute the primeval mythical erotic code with the hope of becoming the new paradigm for erotic literature.
Caitlin Prouatt (University of Reading): Plutarch's Pythian Prologues: Points of Progression.
This paper will investigate the prologues of two of Plutarch’s Pythian dialogues and their effect on readers. Through close readings from De Pythiae oraculis and De defectu oraculorum, it will focus on the striking fact that these dialogues include in their openings characters described by some combination of four ideal philo-prefix adjectives concerned with learning activities. These adjectives occur widely in Plato, but also throughout Plutarch’s corpus, in other prologues, or in descriptions of heroes of the Lives. As each dialogue progresses, these abstract qualities, introduced at the very beginning, are shown in action, as interlocutors listen, observe, and ask questions, validating their earlier descriptions, and indicating the need for these qualities in dialogue. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the prologues to the Pythian dialogues should be regarded as important for interpreting the content that they precede. It suggests that the prologues do not impede the progress of the dialogues ‘proper’, but set them up precisely to orient the reader, ensuring that he or she will call these qualities to mind throughout the reading process.
Joana Fonseca (Universidade de Coimbra): Failure and Progress in Apuleius’ Golden Ass.
Failure and progress in Apuleius’ Golden Ass: The subject that prevails through all the books of this Apuleius’ work is the one that includes a failure that leads to a progress in the end, like an initiation way that Lucius must follow. It is a big first failure, then a whole chain of them that condemns Lucius. Some business affairs take him to the city of Hypata, but his uncontrollable curiosity takes him further. The structure of the story shows us how Lucius seemed predestinated to fail, not only ignoring the constant warnings, but also feeling them as a trigger for his curiosity. So, the unlimited curiosity blinds him even after his big failure.
In his asinine form, Lucius passes through a handful of dangerous and frightful adventures, suffers more that he would have ever imagined and, unable to speak, he assists to the most terrible situations – at this point complete failure and annulation seemed unavoidable. Like a rite of initiation where the initiated much surpass an amount of probations that usually involve sweat, tears, and blood, Lucius passes all this and, in the end, he learned nothing, failing by himself, taken by that curious blindness. The final despair situation leads him to meet the goddess Isis, the one and only route to salvation and, more than that, to a personal improvement, to an intellectual progress of self-knowledge and intimate familiarity with the goddess.
Learning through the mistake: it is failure that takes Lucius to progress and final salvation. Both the failure and the progress paths are well marked by comprehension steps. At first, Lucius is blind and not able to learn, only after his big attitude change, on book twelve, through Isis, he’s ready for progress.
Panel 6.2: Character Progression
Dylan James (University of Oxford): Progress? The Only Persian-Speaking Greek in Herodotus’ Histories.
Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, possesses the largest biography of any figure in the Histories. His apparent centrality to Herodotus’ project is chiefly due to his presentation (along with Aristagoras) as a co-instigator of the Ionian Revolt, the event which triggered the grand war around which the Histories are built. He is shown shifting allegiances and moving about the known world, from Ionia to Thrace to Persia. There is debate about Herodotus’ assessment of Histiaeus: “While we may dislike Histiaeus for his deviousness and selfishness...there is no certain indication of Herodotus’ verdict on him” (Chapman 1972). More recently, Herodotus’ portrait has been described as “somewhat puzzling”, as “nowhere in Herodotus’ account are Histiaeus’ actions really important to the outcome of events” (Forsdyke 2002). Curiously, Histiaeus is the only Greek in the Histories depicted speaking Persian, and looking more into the inclusion of his unique linguistic display may offer some insight into Herodotus’ view of this elusive figure. Herodotus tells us nothing about Histiaeus’ linguistic knowledge until the moment of his capture by the Persians – so why then? The passage is one of several key “capture scenes” in the Histories and occurs at the end of the Ionian Revolt. There is clearly dramatic significance to the inclusion of such a detail, but a full examination of Histiaeus as his character progresses through the narrative is lacking. How does Herodotus present this figure, technically the first Greek on record depicted as speaking Persian? Does he present this ability as cultural progress, decline, or something else? This paper examines the presentation of this figure in the Histories with respect to Herodotus’ broader narrative concerns and representation of Persians, Greeks, and their respective cultures.
Sofia Carvalho (Universities of Coimbra and Nottingham): Epeius and the Dichotomy bie vs techne: the Idea of Progress in Stesichorus' Iliou Persis.
My aim is to explore the idea of progress in Stesichorus’ Sack of Troy as conveyed in the treatment of a particular figure: Epeius.
This figure is presented throughout Greek literature as the builder of the Wooden Horse, a crucial moment of the Trojan War. Despite his importance in the construction of the Horse, he is marked by a comic, anti-heroic characterization. From Homer to Athenaeus, among many others, there seems to be a tendency for Epeius to be overshadowed in favour of Odysseus. However, a different version of this episode and this figure have survived.
The Sack of Troy by Stesichorus is the earliest example we have of a sympathetic treatment of Epeius. He is depicted as a servant of Greek kings, their water-carrier, who is inspired by Athena to build the Wooden Horse. In this paper I investigate the extent to which Stesichorus’ version influenced the portrait of Epeius as a symbol of the overcoming of force (Bie) by skill/art (Techne), in that his menial service as a water carrier is replaced by a task that needs a high degree of expertise. I also analyse what are the implications when the builder’s ability can grant the same glory as the service of a warrior, meaning that ultimately the heroes are dependent on a mere water-carrier to sack Troy. The idea of technical progress is intimately associated with narrative progress. Is Stesichorus telling us that it is more important to know how to build instead of knowing how to destroy? Or is he implying that in order to destroy one has to know first how to build?
Tom Nelson (University of Cambridge): Civilisation at what Cost? Heracles and the Ambiguities of Progress in Hellenistic Poetry.
At the heart of Greek thought and culture lies the clash of order and chaos on both a divine and a mortal level. It is through the victory of the former that civilisation can be established and progress achieved, rendering the world safe and inhabitable: think, for example, of the Gods’ fight against the Giants, fifth Century Greece’s conflict with Persia and the individual exploits of civilisation heroes such as Theseus. However, this establishment and preservation of civilisation was not a straightforwardly positive affair in antiquity, for it was rarely achieved without some degree of sacrifice or violence.
In this paper, I propose to explore these ambiguities as they are manifested in Hellenistic Poetry in the figure of Heracles, the civilising force par excellence. On the one hand, Heracles is a stabilising figure of order and civilisation: for not only does he defeat a number of monstrous creatures, such as the serpent Ladon (Ap.Rhod.Arg.4.1396-1405), the Centaurs (Theoc.Id.17.20) and the Nemean Lion ([Theoc.]Id.25, Call.Aet.fr.54j-60 Harder), but he also quells violent peoples, such as the enemies of Lycus (Arg.2.787-98), the Dryopians who have “no regard for justice” (Ap.Rhod.Arg.1.1219, cf. Call.Aet.fr.24-25d Harder) and the Eleans (Call.Aet.fr.76b-77d Harder). By vanquishing such representatives of chaos, he can extend and preserve Greek civilisation. On the other hand, however, Heracles’ actions often appear excessively violent and even irrational: he kills Theiodamas ‘ruthlessly’ (Ap.Rhod.Arg.1.1214), as well as the Boreads (Ap.Rhod.Arg.1.1302-9) and the Lindian farmer (Call.Aet.fr.22-23c Harder), while he is called a ‘most destructive’ man (Ap.Rhod.Arg.4.1432-49) and compared to a ravenous lion (Theoc.Id.13.62-3). Does such violence complicate, or even annul, the achievements of civilising progress? And how do these ambiguities fit with the fact that Heracles was commonly regarded as an ancestor of – and paradigm for – the Ptolemies and other Hellenistic rulers?
Panel 7.1: Progress across Time and Space
Safari Grey (Trinity St David): Homer’s Odyssey: Astronomy, and the Influence of the Near East.
There has been a trend in scholarship, especially over the past two decades, examining the substantial influence of Mesopotamian culture and its literary tradition upon the writings of Homer. Whilst Homer’s Odyssey is widely recognised as one of the earliest pieces of Western literature, its written form represents a long oral tradition which, according to this recent scholarship, is likely to have been influenced by the culture of the Near East. One of the primary aspects of Mesopotamian culture, especially within its religious expression, is astrotheological belief and the practice of astronomy. It therefore seems likely that if Homer’s epics were influenced by Near Eastern culture that there should also be astronomical or astrotheological content within the epics as well. This paper argues that there is not only some astronomical influence on Homer’s Odyssey, but that the text itself is, in actuality, a fundamentally astronomical text, and that the twelve adventures of Odysseus have deep and intimate connections with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Using select examples from the text this paper aims to demonstrate a comprehensive astronomically influenced narrative within Homer’s Odyssey, sharing in a tradition of celestial narrative which is also found in the Eastern Epic of Gilgamesh. This would suggest that scientific learning was dispersed through the form of oral, and later textual literature, and also that myth was used to progress scientific thought.
Georgina Barker (University of Edinburgh): Circle Dance to St Petersburg: The Obsolescence and Necessity of Horace’s Muses in Elena Shvarts’ Homo Musagetes.
The work of Russian poet Elena Shvarts (1948-2010) abounds with references to classical antiquity. Her cycle Homo Musagetes draws the ancient world into contact with modernity, as the nine Muses come to 90s St Petersburg. My paper will address the ensuing clash between antiquity and progress, and their intermediary, reception.
Homo Musagetes is full of allusions to the Odes, taking its epigraph from Horace Odes 3.4: ‘Vester, Camenae, vester’. Here Horace is promising to undertake any journey as the Muses’ poet, even unto the most hostile end of the Earth imaginable to a Roman: Scythia, now Russia. The Muses of Homo Musagetes, having chosen Shvarts as their new ‘musagetes’, follow her thither, but Shvarts refuses to join them.
The passing of time and space is palpable within Homo Musagetes: from poem to poem, as the Muses dance their way towards Shvarts in St Petersburg, and as the winter deepens; and in the increasingly evident gulf between the Muses’ native era and land, and post-Soviet Russia. Through the cycle hints build up that the Muses are out of time and place: the wintry setting; the madness of those they attempt to inspire; the death of the old gods; and the clash of paganism with Christianity. In the final poem they accept that their time has passed.
So in Homo Musagetes Shvarts displays an extremely ambivalent attitude to antiquity and its place in her poetry – even though classical reception is the generating force behind these poems, demonstrating that Shvarts is happy to renew ancient literature in her own work. Yet even this conclusion of the obsolescence of Horace’s Muses is Horatian: in the Odes Horace constantly reiterates that all things (with the possible exception of poetry) pass and are subject to time and fortune. Shvarts shows the Muses seizing their last day.
Mariamne Briggs (University of Edinburgh): Silencing Statius: a Consistent Approach to Translating the Thebaid into Middle Irish
In the Middle Irish prose version of Statius’ epic Thebaid, the author’s poetic voice is consistently written out of the vernacular translation. Around thirty of these types of passages, including the poet’s invocations to the Muses, direct addresses to characters, and commentary on the narrative, are left out or abbreviated in the Middle Irish narrative. This paper will examine the methodology employed by the Irish translator in removing or reworking these passages and will explore the cultural mentality visible in, or revealed by, this process. Following on from Erich Poppe’s research (2004) on the development of an objective style in the Middle Irish prose translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, Imtheachta Aeniasa, I will investigate whether or not the Irish approach to Statius’ subjective style can be seen to constitute the development of an objective style in the Irish Thebes tale. I will also consider whether there are other stylistic features of the text which can be seen to support this argument. How do these features help the modern reader understand the medieval Irish author and reader’s engagement with the Theban tale? This stylistic approach will be considered in the wider context of the translation and adaptation of the classical epic in medieval Ireland. Reflecting on recent scholarship, such as Brent Miles (2011), this paper will question whether or not the Irish author’s approach to Statius’ epic demonstrates a desire to present the Thebaid as a historical narrative.
Talitha Keary (University of Cambridge): Revertendi Animus: Re-examining the ‘Golden Age’ in Statius Siluae 2.5.
Encomiastic poetry is essentially paradoxographical. The laudandus is divinised, his world mythicised; the fantastical mirabilia stand as testimony to his extraordinary character. Even within this hyperbolic sub-genre, however, Statius’ Siluae are remarkable for their audacious strategies of praise, whereby Statius presents the emperor as a living god and the empire as a new and true Golden Age. He particularly delights in transforming unlikely topics into instruments of praise: not only ‘low’, but politically problematic and morally censured characters, objects and themes. Statius emerges as a poet-ideologist, not only legitimising Domitian’s rule but entering into a bold renegotiation of cultural values, claiming as positive precisely those things rejected in more traditional Roman systems of morality (cf., e.g., Pavlovskis 1973, Rosati 2006, Newlands 2011).
My discussion of Statius’ strategies of praise, underpinned as they are by a polemical re-evaluation of tropes of progress and decline, will focus on Silu. 2.5, which features a somewhat improbable encomiastic subject: a tamed lion killed accidentally in the amphitheatre. The events in the arena were a failure with damaging political resonances; Statius’ poem is a propagandist triumph, rejecting the valorisation of ‘natural’ over ‘unnatural’, and instead constructing artifice, luxury, and autocracy as positive features of the regime. I shall demonstrate that through various narrative and allusive tactics Statius presents the lion not purely as a Golden Age animal, but on the crux of the dichotomies humanised/savage, domesticated/wild, myth/reality, Golden Age/modern. He thereby sidesteps the usual clichés of the ‘Golden Age’ topos and neatly avoids entanglement in problems of political control and autonomy. I shall also challenge the tacit consensus that the final line refers to Domitian weeping, offering a new interpretation not only more appropriate to ancient portrayals of Domitian, but integral to the poem’s reclamation of the lion’s death in praise of the emperor.
Henry Tang (University of Cambridge): Theseus in Statius’ Thebaid: A Symbol of Progression or Cyclic Sin?
As with the ending of the Aeneid, scholars have been divided by the ethical questions posed by the ending of Statius’ Thebaid. After eleven books depicting horrors, monstrosities, and fantastic death-scenes, the final twelfth book ends with what, on first sight at least, seems a victory of humanity: “The climax of the whole poem is the coming of Theseus, and the consequent cutting away of all the tangled foulness of Thebes. This is told rapidly, as it ought to be...because it is essential that we should have the impression, not of new wars following upon the old, but of awaking from nightmare, of sudden quiet after storm, of a single sword-stroke ending for ever the abominations” (C. S. Lewis). However, certain subversive elements of Theseus’ portrayal suggest that the tragedy of Thebes has not quite been as resolved as one would like it to be.
This paper will discuss the question of whether any progress and meaningful resolution has been made in the narrative of the Thebaid, or whether the sins of Oedipus are doomed to cyclical repetitions. I will first examine how Oedipus’ original sins - familial strife and illicit union - are handled through the animal imagery that surrounds the warring brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, and the figure of Tydeus - yet another brother-killer. I will then demonstrate how this sustained animal imagery may help to illuminate the vexed question of the role of Theseus in the poem. This imagery will show that his identity as saviour of Thebes cannot be read in a straightforward manner and instead it adumbrates his own familial troubles to come
Joscelyn Cole (Royal Holloway University of London): Journeying towards Thebes: The relationship between Adrastus and the epic τελος in Statius’ Thebaid.
Within the narrative of ancient epic, progress might be measured in terms of an advancement towards τελος, that is towards a consummation of the plot or achievement of its central goal. Examples of this might be found in the return of Odysseus to Penelope, or of Aeneas’ victory over Turnus.
However, in later Flavian epic the goal or resolution of the plot may be allusive, and in some cases unforthcoming. In particular the Thebaid, Statius’ violent tale of fratricidal war, has often read as an epic whose progression, if it has any form of satisfactory ending, is ultimately towards destruction.
To address the notion of epic progression within the Thebaid, I would like to propose a reading of the actions of one of its central characters; the Argive king Adrastus.
Throughout the text Adrastus is present at moments of key decisions and encounters. He is the one who draws Tydeus and Polynices together, he is the one who resolves to go to war, and he is the one who will eventually try to bring an end to the fratricidal strife.
I want to argue that in these crucial moments Adrastus creates liminal spaces which allow him to stand against the flow of the narrative, providing him with a new perspective on the course of the war and in some cases enabling him to delay the epic τελος. In this way he becomes a tool with which Statius can question the Thebaid’s progression towards destruction.
Therefore, as Adrastus seeks to delay progress within the narrative, he conversely becomes a symbol for the continuing progression of the epic genre.
Panel 1.2: Late Antique Progress
Teresa Röger (Universität Heidelberg): Proba and Paulina Progressing in Pietas. Women's dealings with religious change in late antique Rome.
Contemporaries who actively take part in religious change would naturally define this change as progress. This applies especially to Christians who see their God acting in the course of history, which they interpret as a history of salvation. But in times of an ever faster Christianisation pagans too considered themselves as progressing, at least personally, e.g. by getting initiated to a mystery cult.
In my talk I want to ask how women situated the traditional virtue pietas in relation to new religious practices. Two texts surviving from the second half of the fourth century may give answers to this question. First, there is Proba’s cento – a rearrangement of Virgilian lines in order to make them express the message of Christianity. How and why does Proba use the traditional term pietas in a text she wrote to help her family progress in their new Christian faith? This question cannot be answered without considering Proba’s use of the cento genre, highly conservative in its form, but innovatively used as a vehicle for the new faith.
The second text I want to take a close look at are the inscriptions from the tomb of the consul designatus Praetextatus and his wife Paulina. Paulina is the addressee of two of these epigrams and she is given a voice herself in the longest one. Differing representations of pietas in the epigrams lead to the question how Paulina combined an up-to-date perspective on pagan religion with conservative senatorial values.
Late Antiquity has long been seen as a period of decline and perhaps still today it might cause surprise to want to discuss late antique texts under the label of progress. But I think that this label may give us the chance to get closer to what late antique contemporaries wanted to express in the texts they were writing.
Alison John (University of Edinburgh): Literary Salons in Fifth-Century Gaul
An overarching question for western late antique history is whether late antiquity saw the decline and fall of Roman civilization, or the gradual transition from ‘ancient’ to ‘medieval’. In this paper I will address this question by examining the state of Roman education and literary culture in fifth-century Gaul. I will demonstrate that educational life and literary culture was not confined to formal school contexts or professional teaching at this time, but rather that elites also engaged in intellectual culture and educational activities through informal discussion groups, or ‘literary salons’. I will look closely at Sidonius’ Ep. 4.11, in which he describes one such literary salon that was hosted by Claudianus Mamertus, and discuss how it relates to earlier ‘salons’, such as the reading communities described by Pliny the Younger. Finally, I will explore the possible implications of such literary salons on questions of decline in late-antique Gaul.
Tomás Castro (Universidade de Lisboa): Pseudo-Dionysius on the Processes of Negation
One of the most intriguing characters of Late Antiquity is the author who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Dionysius, the Areopagite’. Although the 19th century German scholarship challenged the authenticity of the corpus areopagiticum, the interest in this singular synthesis of Greek Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian thought still remains relevant.
Usually, the works of the corpus are organizes through their internal logic: departing from affirmations we find negations excellent, starting with the cataphatic method we prepare apophaticism. It is customary to point the dialectical structure of the areopagitica, in comparison with authors such as Proclus or Hegel. However, these kind of remarks undervalue the distinctive features of a profoundly ‘work in progress’ speculation.
Recent attempts have tried to challenge the internal logic of the corpus, re-evaluating the role and concept of negation. T.D. Knepper (Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus, 2014) suggested a de-identification of apophasis (negation) with aphaeresis (removal), most of the time synthetized with the concept of ‘negation’ tout court. Recognizing this meaningful distinction, one must rethink the cataphatic and apophatic processes and their aftermaths.
In the last part of the paper, we will detail and examine the role of the preposition hyper (with plenty and ample meanings and uses) within the corpus’ processes. This will lead us to a final remark on the importance of a dialectical thought as unique as the one we can find in Pseudo-Dionysius.
Panel 2.1: Greek Drama
Tori Lee (Washington University in St Louis): The Psychological Effects of Restraint and Seclusion in Prometheus Bound.
In the United States today, restraint and seclusion function as emergency interventions for a patient or prisoner to prevent him from harming himself or others. The measures can have deleterious effects on the recipient (the patient), the performer (often a caretaker or guard), and the viewer (those who witness the event). The effects of being restrained and secluded are manifold, including psychological trauma, physical injury, death, and a wide variety of emotions. It is possible for serious symptoms to occur in otherwise healthy individuals after only a few days in isolation (Smith 2006).
Progress in the field of psychology has helped to shed light on Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound1. I examine the psychological effects of restraint and seclusion in Prometheus Bound—specifically, how being restrained and secluded affects Prometheus. Over the course of the play, Prometheus experiences feelings similar to those of modern day patients who have been restrained and secluded: fear, anger, powerlessness, loneliness, shame, bitterness. His behavior regarding visitors is erratic: although he desires attention, he does not want to become a spectacle. Other characters comment on Prometheus’s psychological state, calling him mad, but Prometheus himself never questions his own sanity. Nevertheless, he becomes emotionally unpredictable over the course of the play. The effects of Prometheus’s punishment deviate from the consequences that befall modern patients in terms of physical and mortal danger, but mirror their experience with regard to emotions and resulting psychological trauma. Being restrained and secluded makes Prometheus mentally unstable. The insight provided by modern scientific research allows us to read more deeply into the motivations behind Prometheus’s emotions and actions and interpret them in a new light.
1 This paper does not address the dispute over authorship of the Prometheus Bound. For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to the Prometheus Bound author as Aeschylus.

Alexandre Johnston (University of Edinburgh): Human Progress and Linguistic Polyvalence in the First Stasimon of Antigone.
The first stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone has traditionally held a significant place in the historiography of Greek notions of progress. The song, which has often been called a ‘Hymn’ or ‘Ode to Man’, offers a remarkable account of human ingenuity mastering nature and the elements. It overlaps in many ways with theories of human progress such as those expounded by Plato’s Protagoras or Aeschylus’ Prometheus, and contrasts sharply with the more traditional Hesiodic account of human decline. Its importance to Greek intellectual history is beyond doubt, but its interpretation has proved highly controversial. There is much disagreement in particular on the precise relationship of the stasimon to its intellectual context, and on its relevance to the rest of the play. The aim of my paper is to shed light on these two issues by focusing on the language of the song, and specifically on its polyvalence and ambiguity. These have long been recognised by scholars, some of whom argue that they threaten the positive tone of the stasimon. I attempt to build on this notion by exploring further ways in which the song’s apparent endorsement of human progress is subverted by its very language and the lurking presence of archaic thought. In this way, I hope to make a contribution to our understanding of the play, and to bring out some facets of the complex dynamics which govern tragedy’s engagement with previous and contemporary intellectual forms.
Paul Martin (University of Exeter): Progression through the Tetralogy: the Case of Euripides’ Alcestis.
In this paper, I shall suggest that Euripides’ Alcestis provides us with a unique opportunity to understand thematic progression in the tetralogies produced by Athenian tragedians. The play was produced in 438 BC after the production of Cressai, Alcmeon in Psophis, and Telephus; its position should make Alcestis the concluding satyr-play, but it lacks a satyr chorus. This absence, despite its final position in the tetralogy, has received much attention from critics, who have viewed the play as a response to a specific, contextual decree that in some form banned ὀνομαστι κωμῳδεῖν (e.g. Shaw 2014). While this approach has proved very stimulating, little attention has been paid to Alcestis’ role within the specific tetralogy of 438. I shall therefore use our knowledge of the plays with which Alcestis was produced to demonstrate that Alcestis picks up on and responds to the portrayal of themes in previous plays in the tetralogy. This thematic progression underpins the function of the tragic tetralogy. When tragedy developed from a series of plays based around the same myth, the significance of thematic rather than narrative progression increased dramatically.
This approach allows us to better understand both the tragic competition and Alcestis itself through the thematic progression of the tetralogy. When read thus, I will argue that the Alcestis renegotiates the marriage theme by portraying the ultimate wife, prepared to die for the sake of her husband, whose death in fact feminizes the head of the household. Her ultimate, and silent, reintegration into the household denies Alcestis the kleos the play has been predicting and puts her back into her proper place - out of sight, restoring the status quo and thwarting notions of progress. Progression, in this case, paradoxically involves reading back through the previous plays, a process of reformulation and recontextualization.
References
Shaw, C. (2014) Satyric play: the evolution of Greek comedy and satyr drama, Oxford.
Panel 2.2: Republican Poetry and Progress
Georgia Ferentinou (University of Athens): Propertius' Progress of Rome: Elegies 4.4 and 4.9.
The fourth book of Propertius’ Elegies marks the progress in the genre of elegy itself, introducing the aetiological aspect. Αt the same time Propertius’ poetic voice expands in order to include a number of different mythological voices. Elegies 4.4 and 4.9 are two representative examples of this, giving voice to Tarpeia and Hercules. The current paper aims to show the progress in the literary figures of Tarpeia and Hercules: Tarpeia will be given her own voice for the first time, inscribing herself in elegy, while an epic struggle of Hercules with Cacus will be replaced by that of Hercules with elegy. It will also be argued that, apart from employing the same literary background, these two elegies are connected through the motives of conflict between female and male, elegy and epic, space and space, and also through the game of appearance and social status. Propertius plays with the expectations of the reader, well acquainted with the 8th book of Virgil’s Aineid and Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, and like a new Evander, he takes us on a journey in time, giving his own account on the progress of locus in Rome. Going backwards in time, from the story of Tarpeia to the one of Hercules and Cacus, the progress in the formation of contemporary Rome and its most recognizable monuments is seen by Propertius as a result of a struggle between mythological figures, who wish to gain access to different genres: the elegiac Tarpeia in the epic space of the epic Tatius and the epic Hercules in the elegiac worship space of Bona Dea.
Matthew Johncock (Royal Holloway University of London): Lucretius' Reader and the Path to Moral Progress.
Lucretius frequently refers to his De Rerum Natura as a journey to philosophical enlightenment. The path is steep and treacherous (1.659), but Lucretius will guide his reader to the ultimate goal of Epicurean ataraxia (freedom from care) – ‘a life worthy of the gods’ (3.322). Along this journey, the reader should progress from novice to expert, accepting the principal Epicurean truths: everything consists solely of atoms and void; the highest pleasure is the absence of pain; death is nothing to us; and the gods do not control human affairs. In addition, the reader must sometimes choose their own path, searching out proofs (1.402-8) and, ultimately, applying what they have learnt to future challenges such as the death of a loved one.
This progress contrasts sharply with the degeneration of mankind portrayed in Book 5. For Lucretius, there was originally a golden age, during which men took pleasure in the simple things provided by Nature and lived a life of ataraxia. However, peace was gradually destroyed by two incorrectly chosen paths, which initiated man’s degeneration: attributing mysterious phenomena to the gods, and failing to comprehend the limits of pleasure. Together these initiated a downward spiral of fear, superstition, greed and crime. One of the principal aims of De Rerum Natura, therefore, is to put right the errors of early man – a process originally begun by Epicurus (depicted in the prologues to Books 1, 3, 5 and 6).
This paper will explore where early man went wrong; how Lucretius directs his reader down the right path by a combination of structural, rhetorical and linguistic techniques; and whether the reader can maintain their progress after reaching the end of the poem – especially the concluding ‘what have we learnt today?’ test of the Athenian plague.
Christina Boltsi (University of Athens): Slaughter and the Beast: Sacrifice, Ratio, and Progress in Lucretius.
Sacrifice was a fundamental practice of Roman religio and was considered to be a public expression of pietas. In the first part of this paper I analyze Lucretius’ approach to sacrifice (DRN 1.80–101, 2.352–370, 5.1198–1203). In order to do so, I compare Lucretius’ point of view to that of Ovid in his Metamorphoses and his Fasti. On the basis of this comparison, it can be concluded that while Lucretius differentiates himself from Epicurus’ views on the issue as transmitted to us by Philodemus, he helds an absolutely negative thesis against sacrificial practice, by openly confronting and rejecting it. For Lucretius the need of sacrifice is rooted in fear and is simultaneously the cause and the result of the degradation of human ratio; at the same time it poses a threatening peril to the stability of human society. Augustan Ovid’s stance, on the other hand, is more ambivalent, as he both recognizes the necessity of sacrifice and underscores it. In the second part of my paper, I explore whether the sacrificial ritual is an indicator of progress within human society and, furthermore, whether there is a kind of evolution between the two poets. Whereas Lucretius completely rejects sacrifice, Ovid’s modified point of view could be considered to be more realistic, since it poses a subtle criticism to the practice of sacrifice and religio that does stimulate the readers’ ratio. In other words, Ovid’s ambivalent views make the reader ponder upon the issue. Lucretius rejects any co – existence of ratio and religio, while on the other hand Ovid associates them through ambiguity.
Panel 3.1: Archaic Progress
Gary Vos (University of Edinburgh): Mythological Progress and Progressing Mythology: Linus from Hesiod to Hellenistic Poetry.
In the Hesiodic corpus there are two fragments about a ‘Linus’ (frr. 305 Merkelbach-West = *11 Hirschberger = 255 Most = Σ Hom. Il. 18.5701 Erbse and 306 Merkelbach-West = *12 Hirschberger = 256 Most = Clem. Strom. 1.4.25 [II, p. 16.13 Stählin-Früchtel]), which scholars have not been able to ascribe to a specific poem. My paper argues that the fragments belong to the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, which narrates the so-called Heldendämmerung, the end of the Heroic Age and will look at Hesiod’s Linus-figures (plural, as the poem’s reception makes clear that subsequent readers noted a distinction between the two fragments) as paradigmatic for mankind’s fall from grace and move towards the Iron Age.
So far, the main source for the reconstruction of the Catalogue has been ps.-Apollodorus’ Library. I will argue that much can be gained from the reception of Hesiod in, on the one hand, Callimachus’ Aetia, a poem which from the start uses the Hesiodic literary career (envisaged as Theogony – Catalogue of Women– Shield of Heracles – Works and Days) as a template for its chronological and geographical span and features two Linus-figures (frr. 23 & 25e-31b Hdr.), and the list of teachers to Heracles in Theocritus’ Idyll 24, two sources which so far have been ignored.
Secondly, I will argue that the first Linus-figure in Hesiod must have appeared as a paradigm of the transgressive behaviour that led Zeus to eradicate the race of Heroes, whereas the second may have exemplified how mankind, even after its fall, may be redeemed.
Pietro Verzina (Universities of Salerno and Madrid): Changing the Self and the World. The Homeric Hymns as Patterns of Transformation and Progress.
The narrative of the Homeric Hymns has a peculiar charm. Their plot tend to be more archetypal and paradigmatic, or even, in Aristotelic sense, more philosophic than Homeric narrative poetry. These texts represent the gods dynamically, framing them in a crucial and decisive moment of change in their life. The praise of the deities consists of the revelation of their personal achievements or records. Therefore, the structures of poems are based on concepts such as enhancement and progress. Not only the gods acquire a definite condition and a new self- conscience, but a decisive change in the world history occurs at the same time. In the Hymn to Demeter, the abduction of Persephone brings about the institution of a princess of the Underworld, but this event also originates the seasons, the Eleusinian mysteries and agriculture, which represents civil life. Moreover, the quest story of Demeter is based on the withdrawal and return pattern. This basic structure is commonly used in epic poetry to feature the personal transformation of a character and the advancement of the story; it is founded on the ideas of fall and rebirth, which are essential to understanding the archaic concept of progress. In the Hymn to Aphrodite the goddess experiences mortal love for the first time, and a new rule imposed by Zeus brings about a new era. The Hymn to Hermes recounts the god’s unnaturally rapid maturation and some new inventions, such as the lyre. The struggle with Python featured in the Hymn to Apollo represents the symbolic fight between the forces of light and darkness: the passage from chaos to kosmos is a primary concept of progress in the archaic Greek thought.
Maciej Paprocki (Universities of Liverpool and Wroclaw): Always an Heir, Never a King. Apollo, Human Mortality and the Divine Succession.
In Hesiod’s Theogony, the progressive ordering of the world is periodically interrupted by violent divine takeovers; Uranus was defeated by his son Cronus (173-182), only to be defeated by his son Zeus (729- 731). A bleak prophecy of Zeus’ eventual downfall (A. Pr. 907-912) makes the son of Cronus fear potential claimants to his throne, such as his heir apparent, Apollo. Renowned as a god “who is overly reckless and will greatly lord it over immortals and mortals” (Hom. h. Ap. 67-69), Apollo remains incompletely integrated into Zeus’ power base (Felson 2012: 271-275, 2011: 275-283; Clay 2006: 19-27; Harrell 1991: 312-313). I argue that—despite Zeus’ appeasement policies—Apollo still endangers his father’s rule, perhaps most visibly so when he tampers with the mortal-immortal divide.
Zeus and Apollo once locked themselves in a vicious cycle of violence: Apollo’s son Asclepius hubristically raised the dead and was smitten by Zeus; in retaliation, Apollo slew the Cyclopes that forged Zeus’ thunderbolts. Enraged Zeus would have hurled Apollo to Tartarus; however, at the intercession of Leto, he ordered Apollo to serve a mortal king, Admetus (Apollod. 3.10.4). Having learned that Admetus was fated to die young, Apollo interceded with the Fates so that the king could live (A. Eum. 723-728; E. Alc. 1-23; Apollod. 1.9.15), at the steep price of Admetus’ wife dying in her husband’s stead.
Lyons (1997: 86) noted that those “who run afoul of Zeus are often engaged in inherently subversive acts, the success of which would attack the very foundations of the mortal/immortal distinction”; indeed, Apollo and Asclepius postpone human deaths, perhaps indefinitely (Hubbard 2013: 92-93, 102 n. 57). As a god, Apollo sets and observes boundaries (Clay 1996: 86); through Admetus, Apollo defies his Zeus-ordained purpose and readmits forces of chaos into Zeus’ cosmos.
Panel 3.2: Reading Progress in Fragments
Effie Zagari (University of Reading): Aristophanes of the 4th c. BC.
This paper aims to add significant information to our knowledge on Aristophanes’ work looking at his two last fragmentary plays (Cocalus and Aeolosicon) and pointing out these elements that show a certain progress and advancement in Aristophanes’ way of composing his comedies. I will argue that Aristophanes’ last two comedies contain specific elements that are not encountered in his extant plays and could provide evidence for the beginning of the transition to a new Comic era. A transition that had started being evident already from Assembly Women and Wealth continues and becomes even more prominent.
We are all familiar with the traditional Aristophanes of Old Comedy, the author of a comedy heavily charged with the political reality of the Athens of the Golden era, but what happens when this era is gone for good? Starting from the excellent editions of Kassel-Austin and Henderson, I will follow up on the work of scholars such as R. Hunter (The New Comedy Of Greece And Rome), E. Segal (The Φύσις of Comedy), Γ. Ξανθάκη-Καραμάνου, (Παράλληλες εξελίξεις στη μετακλασσικη 4ος π.Χ. αι. Τραγωδία και Κωμωδία) and H.G. Nesselrath (Parody and Later Greek Comedy), and I will show with specific examples the evolution and progress of the Aristophanic Comedy in the 4th century BC.
Consequently, through my paper I will attempt to explore the Aristophanes of the 4th century. An Aristophanes who composes plays that are looking forward to the plays of Middle and New Comedy as well as pushing the borders of his comedy to the West. He writes parody plays using his “tragic” treasury and reproduces well known myths to serve his own purposes and give an alternative version for which the future generations would remember him.
Anna Reeve (University of Leeds): Stesichorus' Geryoneis and Greek colonisation in the West: a nuanced depiction of progress.
Stesichorus’ fragmentary Geryoneis tells the story of the Greek hero Herakles’ raid on cattle belonging to Geryon, a mythical being with three heads. This conflict is situated in Erytheia, a land in the far West, on the margins of Greek culture. In the course of the attack, Geryon is mortally wounded. On one level, this narrative can be read as a straightforward celebration of progress, the archetypal Greek hero eradicating an indigenous monster in order to clear the land for civilised settlement, thus legitimising Greek colonisation in the West and justifying the spread of settlers into new lands. However, Stesichorus’s presentation of Herakles and Geryon is markedly ambiguous. While fragmentary, it is clear that his poem emphasises Herakles’ cunning and guile, while Geryon’s monstrosity is downplayed and he is constructed as a noble, heroic character, not least through Iliadic parallels. The extended description of his defeat is crafted to evoke pity and sorrow. In this way Stesichorus achieves a nuanced presentation of Greek colonisation in the West, rejecting a simple narrative of progress and recognising the cost of Greek expansionism. There is an explicit tension in the portrayal of a brutal civiliser and a heroic barbarian, which recognises the points of view of both the colonisers and the local indigenous population. This presentation would have had particular resonance for Stesichorus’ local population in the Greek colony of Himera in Sicily, providing a foundation myth for their shared community which acknowledges and legitimises the experience of all participants.
Max Leventhal (University of Cambridge): Dining Among the Stars: Astronomical Progress in the Cena Trimalchionis.
When Clearchus of Soli discusses riddling at the symposium, he differentiates between contemporary and ancient habits, ‘For as they were drinking, they used to pose questions—not, however, as people do today, when they ask one another...which fish or variety of fish is the most delicious or the most precisely in season, and then which one is particularly good eating after Arcturus rises, or the Pleiades, or the Dog-Star.’ (Clearchus fr.63.I Wehrli = Athenaeus X.457c). Intellectual posturing was a central concern at the Classical symposium. The mention of astronomical quizzing, however, constitutes a unique intersection of technical knowledge in a performative space. A survey of sympotic literature at once confirms and expands Clearchus’ thesis: every period weaves astronomy into sympotic discourse.
Collectively, these texts display a range of astronomical thoughts: Alcaeus reworks Hesiod (fr. 347 V. See now Hunter (2014)); comic symposia engage with popular suspicions of astronomical skill (Nicomachus fr.1, Alexis fr.263, Sosipater fr.1 K.-A. See, still, Wilkins (2000)); Antipater of Thessalonica’s ‘bowls for Piso’ have emphatically nothing to do with Aratus (XLIV Gow and Page (1968), with notes). Beyond the case studies, I am interested in the intellectual authority which attends each interweaving. I chart how the development of astronomical thought at the symposium parallels the progress in astronomical understanding more generally. By addressing the strategies authors employ to assign significance, the forms the knowledge takes, and the generic traditions in which it exists, we are able to nuance our understanding about astronomy in the Ancient Greek mind. I argue that these astronomical allusions reveal the developing collective conception of the discipline and its perceived place in Greek life.
Panel 4.1: Progression through Emulation
Chiara Bonsignore (Sapienza Università di Roma): Remember and Let Go: Progress as Continuity and Rupture in two Hellenistic Epitaphs for Homer and Hesiod (Alc. Mess. 11 and 12 G-P = A.P. 7.1 and A.P. 7.55).
In Hellenistic Literature, a flourishing of metapoetic passages bears witness to the poets' preoccupation with the place they occupy in a shifting landscape. It is a place of both continuity and rupture, a conflict from which progress is often born. If we hold that as true, among the most powerful depictions of progress in Hellenistic literature are scenes where poets mourn their predecessors.
Funerals are certainly meant to praise the dead, but they are for the living; by placing a sema on the grave of the dead, we separate ourselves from them, and the very act of mourning is a testament to our vitality in the face of loss. All of this applies to literary representations of mourning too. It is therefore within this conceptual frame that this talk will analyse two epitaphs written for Homer and Hesiod by Hellenistic poet Alcaeus of Messene.
Firstly, attention will be drawn to Alcaeus's choice of opening both epigrams with references to the circumstances of Homer's and Hesiod's death. A close analysis of the first couplet of 11 G-P will underscore its metapoetic value, as Alcaeus uses the griphos that kills Homer as a symbol of Hellenistic epigrams. Afterwards, it will be shown how both epigrams proceed to describe the funerary honours paid to Homer and Hesiod – apparently flattering scenes, which nevertheless put further emphasis on the poets' status of nekuses, if noble ones. Particular attention will be devoted to Alcaeus' lexical choices, by means of which he weaves into these poems allusions to Callimachean and Theocritean passages, thus linking his praise to the past to his poetical present. Lastly, some conclusive remarks will compare the ambivalence between continuity and rupture found in these poems to other Hellenistic loci expressing a similar attitude.
Emma Greensmith (University of Cambridge): Uprooting the Bloom: The Poetics of 'Succession' in the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus.
‘Every Greek poet is involved in an Oedipal conflict with his overwhelming predecessor Homer. But none more blatantly than Quintus Smyrnaus. We wonder if he was particularly brave and clever or particularly stupid to pick this fight against an adversary so much greater than himself.’ – Schmitz (2007):65
At some point during the 3rd century AD a poet known as Quintus Smyrnaeus penned an epic which fills the gap between the Iliad and Odyssey. So ‘Homerising’ was this work that it became known as τὰ μεθ’ Ὅμηρον: literally, ‘the things after Homer.’ As Schmitz’ quotation suggests, the Posthomerica seems to fit perfectly Harold Bloom’s famous model of literary filiation. Scholarship on the poem has enduringly focused on its methods of responding to this central anxiety about ‘being Homer later.’
This paper aims to challenge this conception of Quintus’ work, and highlight the benefits of moving past it. I shall suggest that Quintus does indeed respond to the concept of ‘literary filiation’ in his poem; but rather than conforming to an ‘oedipal’ paradigm, he provocatively dismantles it.
What happens, Quintus seems to be asking, if a poet chooses not to succeed his literary father, but to assimilate into him? What if a work does not mark its progress by aiming to move past what has come before, but by attempting to erode the distance between the ‘then’ and the ‘now’?
By analysing two case studies of filial relationship in the Posthomerica – one from the human world and one from the divine – I shall explore how Quintus rejects the trope of reacting against one’s canonical predecessor to offer a defiantly different self-conception. The poem is shaped, I shall argue, not by an anxiety about ‘being Homer later’ but by the drive to bring Homer back to life; the possibility of ‘being Homer now.’
After outlining my evidence for this reading, I shall conclude by suggesting its wider significance. Scholars for centuries have struggled to place the Posthomerica into a wider cultural context. Could considering the poem in this way offer some important clues? If Quintus can be understood as aiming not to move past Homeric epic, but to continue and reanimate it, then we may be able to situate his poem as responding to a specific trend in the literary landscape of Imperial Greece.
Panel 4.2: Platonic and Neoplatonic Progress
Christian Keime (University of Cambridge): How to Make New Ideas with Old Words: Plato’s Use and Transformation of Traditional Discourses in Plato’s Symposium (185e-188e; 201d-212c).
Plato’s Symposium presents a series of six eulogies of eros, each one contradicting the former one(s) but containing serious philosophical insights about love. Though there is a scholarly consensus that Socrates’ final speech caps the five previous ones, scholars still debate about the raison d’être of these former discourses: to what extent do they convey Plato’s view on eros (see Sheffield 2005 contra Rowe 1998)?
Using the speech of Eryximachus as a case study, I will argue that through this discourse Plato does not convey only a theory of love. He also and primarily transmits a methodological lesson showing that making progress in philosophy does not amount to coining brand-new theories (kainoi logoi). It rather consists in borrowing traditional theories and changing the meaning of their words.
This lesson in communication develops in two phases:
- Eryximachus explicitly reformulates ancient traditions of thought (Empedocles, Heraclitus, ancient medicine), producing an original synthesis aimed at advocating his own art (tekhnê) : medicine (185e-188e).
- Eryximachus’ speech in its turn is critically reworded by Socrates (201d- 212c): through a significant word echo, Socrates claims, like Eryximachus, that eros is related to tekhnê. Nevertheless he proves to have a more comprehensive view of tekhnê than his table-companion: Socrates’ tekhnê is a complex whole of which tekhnê iatrikê constitutes only one minor part.
As being able to conceive and divide complex wholes is what Socrates calls dialectic (Phaedrus 266b-c), Plato shows that making progress in philosophy is not merely giving new meanings to old words but doing so dialectically. Furthermore, since Socrates pronounces a rhetorical speech, he dramatically demonstrates how to improve traditional rhetoric by incorporating in it the virtues of dialectic. The Symposium, as it were, also teaches how to do dialectics with rhetoric
Georgia Mystrioti (University of Athens): Pseudo-Plutarch's De Musica: The Moral and Pedagogical Importance of Music and Neoplatonism's Critical Attitude against its Progress.
The ethics of music have been an issue of intense discussion throughout classical antiquity, as manifested by Damon’s early research on the moral influence of music (5th cent. B. C.). However, Plato significantly contributed to the subject in his Republic, as he imposed strict and severe regulations about music and specific harmonies that were considered good for morals and pedagogy. Furthermore, Aristotle, in his Politics, studied the ethics of music, with a different attitude towards the aulos, the main musical instrument of his era, from his predecessor.
Pseudo-Plutarch’s De Musica was written within the Neoplatonic movement. The dialogue, in which the banqueters discuss the origins and evolution of music, is heavily influenced by the Platonic ones. There is substantial praise, from both Lysias (a practicing musician) and Soterichos (a theoretician and early critic of music), for the era when music was harmonic, simple and not connected to theatre. Early Ancient Greek musicians and lyric poets had a rather conservative approach to music, often subtracting notes from musical scales. However, as music progressed and got correlated with the theatrical action, more complex scales and harmonies, such as the Lydian and Phrygian ones, were mostly used; the banqueters did not have a high opinion of those, due to the passive morals they were associated with. As a result, the contemporary musical scales were considered harmful for the morals that were to be instilled in people, especially children.
In summary, this late-antiquity dialogue, of which the real author is yet to be convincingly identified, can be considered a very good example of the Ancient Greek attitude about progress, especially in the changing, uncertain times of the early centuries CE.
Panel 5.1: Progress and Anti-Progress in Athenian Political and Cultural Discourse
Matteo Barbato (University of Edinburgh): Between Progress and Continuity: Following the Examples of the Ancestors in Athenian Public Debate.
In his speech On the False Embassy, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of having exhorted the Athenians to forget about their ancestors and to be wary of those who talk about their trophies and sea battles (Dem. 19.16). The orator remarks the gravity of his opponent’s words, which he describes as ‘worthy of many deaths’ (Dem. 19.15-6). On his part, Aeschines is aware of the threat represented by Demosthenes’ insinuations and he addresses them in his speech On the False Embassy, where he is very keen to prove that he has never questioned the example of the ancestors. He states that, as a matter of fact, he had invited his fellow-citizens to remember the achievements of their forefathers and to imitate their good judgment, and that he had only warned them in order to avoid repeating their same mistakes, such as the Sicilian expedition (Aeschin. 2.74-7).
This episode shows how dangerous it was for any orator who wanted to be successful in the Athenian public debate to forget the city’s past and challenge the value of the ancestors’ achievements, which were object of much celebration in the official rhetoric of funeral orations. Their indisputable weight in Athens’ civic ideology seems to set a limit to any aspiration for progress in Athenian public discourse. Aeschines, however, was eventually acquitted; Demosthenes’ accusations were not enough to instigate the hostility of the judges against him. To what extent, then, could orators question the example of the ancestors without incurring in the hostility of the audience? Was there any room for progress in the discussion of the policies of the city? Starting from the case of Aeschines and Demosthenes, my paper will consider further instances of the discussion of Athens’ past within the corpus of the Attic orators and assess the limits of their loyalty to the example of the ancestors.
Claudia Baldassi (University of Edinburgh): Progress and Tradition in Euripides’ Helen.
The Helen is one of Euripides’s most problematic and controversial works. It was performed in 412 BC, when Athens was still in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, facing the immediate aftermath of the failure in the Sicilian expedition. As in the case of other tragedies (cfr. e.g. The Trojan Women in 414 BC), Euripides is here using the Trojan War as a veiled paradigm for the war raging on in his contemporary world. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on how Helen’s myth interacts with the political context of the play by focusing specifically on the third stasimon. Here the chorus give an idyllic description of Sparta and its cults, which Helen will find again when going back home. I will argue that, behind a play that has been considered too often as a mere evasive exercise, one can find an implicit and twofold message directed to its Athenian audience. On the one hand, Sparta is strong in its traditions and traditional cults; the image of Sparta that emerges from the chorus’ description is out of time, both contemporary to the audience and familiar to Helen, who is coming back to it in her mythological past. The rites are taking place as it has always been and the Leucippides – the mythological girls or the Spartan priestesses? – are leading the dances, as it will always be. On the other hand, could there be any room for progress in the perception of Sparta, through the recognition of Helen’s original innocence? Euripides introduces to the Athenians the Spartan image of Helen, who is a faithful wife and an innocent woman, and presents some interesting connections to the female rites of passage. She is much closer to the Spartan goddess than to the traditional adulteress.
Panel 5.2: Progress and its Relation to the Past
Pia Campeggiani (University of Edinburgh): Under the Rim of Pandora’s Jar: Unattainable Hope as an Interpretive Key to the Ancient Greek Conception of History.
The paper deals with the absence of an eschaton as a primary feature of the ancient Greek conception of history. Drawing both on Greek and Christian sources, my aim is to highlight the conflict between Christian fides and Greek theōria, as well as the one between spes as a moral duty and kenē elpís.
Linear perspectives on the nature of time were indeed available to ancient Greeks, but the same cannot be said of the notion of an “end” in its dual meaning of “termination” and “completion”. Greek istoría did not aim to an eschaton and from this standpoint it can be thought of in terms of what Kant, in the Ninth Thesis of his Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, has described as «empirical history», as against «philosophical history» (Geschichte).
My argument is that an investigation of the different roles played by fides (faith in what you cannot see) and theōria (contemplation of what you can see) in Christian and Greek conceptions of history respectively, together with an analysis of the differences between hope as a moral duty (which as such implies the necessity of a “future” of time) and hope as a painful illusion (kenē elpís), prove to be seductive interpretive key to the Greek notions of time and history as well as to the theoretical category of “progress”.
The primary sources I refer to are Hesiod’s Works and Days, Aristotle’s Poetics and Augustine’s De Civitate Dei.
Sebastiano Bertolini (University of Edinburgh): Refusing the Progress: Aristophanes’ Countryside as Celebration of the Past.
As already observed by many scholars in past years, the dichotomy city-countryside has played a relevant role throughout Greek and Roman antiquity. On the one hand, the city usually represents technical, social and cultural progress; on the other hand, the countryside can be taken as a metaphor of an atavistic past, with its serenity and peace. This polarity, as has been already pointed out in recent scholarship, is highly attested in Aristophanes’ theatre as well (cf. e.g. Ar. Ach. 27-36, Nub. 43-55, Eccl. 301-304). In his comedies, in which many characters are rustic countrymen, the depiction of the rural world often becomes an antiphrastic instrument of criticism to the urban sphere, objective correlative of contemporary society and political community. Through the literary analysis of some Aristophanic passages, my paper will place this topos in the wider context of Athenian culture and politics in the late fifth century BC, on the basis of diachronic (e.g. Homeric, Hesiodic and Empedoclean representations of a ‘Golden Age’) and synchronic (e.g. the contemporary representations of the ‘Land of Cockaigne’, such as Crat. Plut. fr. 176 and Telecl. Amph. fr. 1) perspectives. I will thus highlight that, in Aristophanes’ comedies, the refusal of the progress of coeval society finds a poetical facies in the traditional, idyllic depiction of the countryside, which becomes a concrete metaphor of the positive values of an idealised past.
Panel 6.1: Imperial Greek Progress
Giulia Sara Corsino (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa): From Mythos to Logos. Progress of Erotic Customs in Longus' Poimenikà.
My paper intends to demonstrate that ancient novels, though often employing mythical patterns, sought to mark a progression away from the ambiguous ethics that informed issues of eroticism in most of the mythical tradition by moving toward a more egalitarian conception of the relationship between the sexes. This progression is particularly evident in Longus’ Poimenikà.
In the first three books of this novel we find three mythical excursus which describe virgins undergoing a process of metamorphosis in order to escape a god’s rape or other kinds of abuse. The god Pan is regarded as the emblem of eros, purely physical desire, which is something sterile and degrading. On the contrary, the last book offers a positive model of the relationship between men and women: Daphnis and Chloe’s love reaches marital union, the proper place to experience sex as a divertissement with the crucial goal being that of procreation.
The dichotomy between mythos and logos is implied earlier in the novel. If the excursus are classified as myths and they conclude with the virgins losing their human status, Longus underlines that his story is a truthful logos, and he gives it a happy ending: Chloe gains a role in society. Against the trend of looking at mythos as a container of ideal behavioural schemes and at a mythical Golden Age, Longus celebrates the development of erotic customs in his time through the means of a recent mimetic literary genre consisting of human characters. Although the Poimenikà take place in an idealised past, they give account of a contemporary social reality that is more respectful of female volition and they evoke a yearning to substitute the primeval mythical erotic code with the hope of becoming the new paradigm for erotic literature.
Caitlin Prouatt (University of Reading): Plutarch's Pythian Prologues: Points of Progression.
This paper will investigate the prologues of two of Plutarch’s Pythian dialogues and their effect on readers. Through close readings from De Pythiae oraculis and De defectu oraculorum, it will focus on the striking fact that these dialogues include in their openings characters described by some combination of four ideal philo-prefix adjectives concerned with learning activities. These adjectives occur widely in Plato, but also throughout Plutarch’s corpus, in other prologues, or in descriptions of heroes of the Lives. As each dialogue progresses, these abstract qualities, introduced at the very beginning, are shown in action, as interlocutors listen, observe, and ask questions, validating their earlier descriptions, and indicating the need for these qualities in dialogue. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the prologues to the Pythian dialogues should be regarded as important for interpreting the content that they precede. It suggests that the prologues do not impede the progress of the dialogues ‘proper’, but set them up precisely to orient the reader, ensuring that he or she will call these qualities to mind throughout the reading process.
Joana Fonseca (Universidade de Coimbra): Failure and Progress in Apuleius’ Golden Ass.
Failure and progress in Apuleius’ Golden Ass: The subject that prevails through all the books of this Apuleius’ work is the one that includes a failure that leads to a progress in the end, like an initiation way that Lucius must follow. It is a big first failure, then a whole chain of them that condemns Lucius. Some business affairs take him to the city of Hypata, but his uncontrollable curiosity takes him further. The structure of the story shows us how Lucius seemed predestinated to fail, not only ignoring the constant warnings, but also feeling them as a trigger for his curiosity. So, the unlimited curiosity blinds him even after his big failure.
In his asinine form, Lucius passes through a handful of dangerous and frightful adventures, suffers more that he would have ever imagined and, unable to speak, he assists to the most terrible situations – at this point complete failure and annulation seemed unavoidable. Like a rite of initiation where the initiated much surpass an amount of probations that usually involve sweat, tears, and blood, Lucius passes all this and, in the end, he learned nothing, failing by himself, taken by that curious blindness. The final despair situation leads him to meet the goddess Isis, the one and only route to salvation and, more than that, to a personal improvement, to an intellectual progress of self-knowledge and intimate familiarity with the goddess.
Learning through the mistake: it is failure that takes Lucius to progress and final salvation. Both the failure and the progress paths are well marked by comprehension steps. At first, Lucius is blind and not able to learn, only after his big attitude change, on book twelve, through Isis, he’s ready for progress.
Panel 6.2: Character Progression
Dylan James (University of Oxford): Progress? The Only Persian-Speaking Greek in Herodotus’ Histories.
Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, possesses the largest biography of any figure in the Histories. His apparent centrality to Herodotus’ project is chiefly due to his presentation (along with Aristagoras) as a co-instigator of the Ionian Revolt, the event which triggered the grand war around which the Histories are built. He is shown shifting allegiances and moving about the known world, from Ionia to Thrace to Persia. There is debate about Herodotus’ assessment of Histiaeus: “While we may dislike Histiaeus for his deviousness and selfishness...there is no certain indication of Herodotus’ verdict on him” (Chapman 1972). More recently, Herodotus’ portrait has been described as “somewhat puzzling”, as “nowhere in Herodotus’ account are Histiaeus’ actions really important to the outcome of events” (Forsdyke 2002). Curiously, Histiaeus is the only Greek in the Histories depicted speaking Persian, and looking more into the inclusion of his unique linguistic display may offer some insight into Herodotus’ view of this elusive figure. Herodotus tells us nothing about Histiaeus’ linguistic knowledge until the moment of his capture by the Persians – so why then? The passage is one of several key “capture scenes” in the Histories and occurs at the end of the Ionian Revolt. There is clearly dramatic significance to the inclusion of such a detail, but a full examination of Histiaeus as his character progresses through the narrative is lacking. How does Herodotus present this figure, technically the first Greek on record depicted as speaking Persian? Does he present this ability as cultural progress, decline, or something else? This paper examines the presentation of this figure in the Histories with respect to Herodotus’ broader narrative concerns and representation of Persians, Greeks, and their respective cultures.
Sofia Carvalho (Universities of Coimbra and Nottingham): Epeius and the Dichotomy bie vs techne: the Idea of Progress in Stesichorus' Iliou Persis.
My aim is to explore the idea of progress in Stesichorus’ Sack of Troy as conveyed in the treatment of a particular figure: Epeius.
This figure is presented throughout Greek literature as the builder of the Wooden Horse, a crucial moment of the Trojan War. Despite his importance in the construction of the Horse, he is marked by a comic, anti-heroic characterization. From Homer to Athenaeus, among many others, there seems to be a tendency for Epeius to be overshadowed in favour of Odysseus. However, a different version of this episode and this figure have survived.
The Sack of Troy by Stesichorus is the earliest example we have of a sympathetic treatment of Epeius. He is depicted as a servant of Greek kings, their water-carrier, who is inspired by Athena to build the Wooden Horse. In this paper I investigate the extent to which Stesichorus’ version influenced the portrait of Epeius as a symbol of the overcoming of force (Bie) by skill/art (Techne), in that his menial service as a water carrier is replaced by a task that needs a high degree of expertise. I also analyse what are the implications when the builder’s ability can grant the same glory as the service of a warrior, meaning that ultimately the heroes are dependent on a mere water-carrier to sack Troy. The idea of technical progress is intimately associated with narrative progress. Is Stesichorus telling us that it is more important to know how to build instead of knowing how to destroy? Or is he implying that in order to destroy one has to know first how to build?
Tom Nelson (University of Cambridge): Civilisation at what Cost? Heracles and the Ambiguities of Progress in Hellenistic Poetry.
At the heart of Greek thought and culture lies the clash of order and chaos on both a divine and a mortal level. It is through the victory of the former that civilisation can be established and progress achieved, rendering the world safe and inhabitable: think, for example, of the Gods’ fight against the Giants, fifth Century Greece’s conflict with Persia and the individual exploits of civilisation heroes such as Theseus. However, this establishment and preservation of civilisation was not a straightforwardly positive affair in antiquity, for it was rarely achieved without some degree of sacrifice or violence.
In this paper, I propose to explore these ambiguities as they are manifested in Hellenistic Poetry in the figure of Heracles, the civilising force par excellence. On the one hand, Heracles is a stabilising figure of order and civilisation: for not only does he defeat a number of monstrous creatures, such as the serpent Ladon (Ap.Rhod.Arg.4.1396-1405), the Centaurs (Theoc.Id.17.20) and the Nemean Lion ([Theoc.]Id.25, Call.Aet.fr.54j-60 Harder), but he also quells violent peoples, such as the enemies of Lycus (Arg.2.787-98), the Dryopians who have “no regard for justice” (Ap.Rhod.Arg.1.1219, cf. Call.Aet.fr.24-25d Harder) and the Eleans (Call.Aet.fr.76b-77d Harder). By vanquishing such representatives of chaos, he can extend and preserve Greek civilisation. On the other hand, however, Heracles’ actions often appear excessively violent and even irrational: he kills Theiodamas ‘ruthlessly’ (Ap.Rhod.Arg.1.1214), as well as the Boreads (Ap.Rhod.Arg.1.1302-9) and the Lindian farmer (Call.Aet.fr.22-23c Harder), while he is called a ‘most destructive’ man (Ap.Rhod.Arg.4.1432-49) and compared to a ravenous lion (Theoc.Id.13.62-3). Does such violence complicate, or even annul, the achievements of civilising progress? And how do these ambiguities fit with the fact that Heracles was commonly regarded as an ancestor of – and paradigm for – the Ptolemies and other Hellenistic rulers?
Panel 7.1: Progress across Time and Space
Safari Grey (Trinity St David): Homer’s Odyssey: Astronomy, and the Influence of the Near East.
There has been a trend in scholarship, especially over the past two decades, examining the substantial influence of Mesopotamian culture and its literary tradition upon the writings of Homer. Whilst Homer’s Odyssey is widely recognised as one of the earliest pieces of Western literature, its written form represents a long oral tradition which, according to this recent scholarship, is likely to have been influenced by the culture of the Near East. One of the primary aspects of Mesopotamian culture, especially within its religious expression, is astrotheological belief and the practice of astronomy. It therefore seems likely that if Homer’s epics were influenced by Near Eastern culture that there should also be astronomical or astrotheological content within the epics as well. This paper argues that there is not only some astronomical influence on Homer’s Odyssey, but that the text itself is, in actuality, a fundamentally astronomical text, and that the twelve adventures of Odysseus have deep and intimate connections with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Using select examples from the text this paper aims to demonstrate a comprehensive astronomically influenced narrative within Homer’s Odyssey, sharing in a tradition of celestial narrative which is also found in the Eastern Epic of Gilgamesh. This would suggest that scientific learning was dispersed through the form of oral, and later textual literature, and also that myth was used to progress scientific thought.
Georgina Barker (University of Edinburgh): Circle Dance to St Petersburg: The Obsolescence and Necessity of Horace’s Muses in Elena Shvarts’ Homo Musagetes.
The work of Russian poet Elena Shvarts (1948-2010) abounds with references to classical antiquity. Her cycle Homo Musagetes draws the ancient world into contact with modernity, as the nine Muses come to 90s St Petersburg. My paper will address the ensuing clash between antiquity and progress, and their intermediary, reception.
Homo Musagetes is full of allusions to the Odes, taking its epigraph from Horace Odes 3.4: ‘Vester, Camenae, vester’. Here Horace is promising to undertake any journey as the Muses’ poet, even unto the most hostile end of the Earth imaginable to a Roman: Scythia, now Russia. The Muses of Homo Musagetes, having chosen Shvarts as their new ‘musagetes’, follow her thither, but Shvarts refuses to join them.
The passing of time and space is palpable within Homo Musagetes: from poem to poem, as the Muses dance their way towards Shvarts in St Petersburg, and as the winter deepens; and in the increasingly evident gulf between the Muses’ native era and land, and post-Soviet Russia. Through the cycle hints build up that the Muses are out of time and place: the wintry setting; the madness of those they attempt to inspire; the death of the old gods; and the clash of paganism with Christianity. In the final poem they accept that their time has passed.
So in Homo Musagetes Shvarts displays an extremely ambivalent attitude to antiquity and its place in her poetry – even though classical reception is the generating force behind these poems, demonstrating that Shvarts is happy to renew ancient literature in her own work. Yet even this conclusion of the obsolescence of Horace’s Muses is Horatian: in the Odes Horace constantly reiterates that all things (with the possible exception of poetry) pass and are subject to time and fortune. Shvarts shows the Muses seizing their last day.
Mariamne Briggs (University of Edinburgh): Silencing Statius: a Consistent Approach to Translating the Thebaid into Middle Irish
In the Middle Irish prose version of Statius’ epic Thebaid, the author’s poetic voice is consistently written out of the vernacular translation. Around thirty of these types of passages, including the poet’s invocations to the Muses, direct addresses to characters, and commentary on the narrative, are left out or abbreviated in the Middle Irish narrative. This paper will examine the methodology employed by the Irish translator in removing or reworking these passages and will explore the cultural mentality visible in, or revealed by, this process. Following on from Erich Poppe’s research (2004) on the development of an objective style in the Middle Irish prose translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, Imtheachta Aeniasa, I will investigate whether or not the Irish approach to Statius’ subjective style can be seen to constitute the development of an objective style in the Irish Thebes tale. I will also consider whether there are other stylistic features of the text which can be seen to support this argument. How do these features help the modern reader understand the medieval Irish author and reader’s engagement with the Theban tale? This stylistic approach will be considered in the wider context of the translation and adaptation of the classical epic in medieval Ireland. Reflecting on recent scholarship, such as Brent Miles (2011), this paper will question whether or not the Irish author’s approach to Statius’ epic demonstrates a desire to present the Thebaid as a historical narrative.