Aitia. Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle, 2012
... ENS de Lyon - UMR 5189 Hisoma ANR Culture antiquaire et invention de la modernité. Articles d... more ... ENS de Lyon - UMR 5189 Hisoma ANR Culture antiquaire et invention de la modernité. Articles du même auteur. Les images dans les Alexipharmaques de Nicandre [Texte intégral]. Paru dans Aitia, 2 | 2012. M. Annette Harder, Remco F. Regtuit et Gerry C. Wakker (éd.), avec le ...
The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the the... more The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the theory of Edmund Buchner about the relationship of the gnomonical instrument known as the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pacis Augustae. As a result of this critique, the Montecitorio Obelisk could be situated with greater precision on the map of the city. A computer simulation showed that Buchner erred in positing that the shadow of the Montecitorio Obelisk went into the center of the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday. In this article, computer simulations are used to develop a post-Buchnerian interpretation of the relationship of the obelisk and altar. Over 230 hitherto unrecognized solar and shadow alignments are reported. The first part of the article defines four zones around the monuments where the solar and shadows observations were made. In the second part of the article, specialists interpret the significance of the annual solar and shadow spectacle from various points of view. The conclusion synthesizes the results, arguing that the monuments were intentionally aligned and situated in order to propagate the same message as the one inscribed on two sides of the Montecitorio Obelisk [CIL 6.702 = ILS 91]: that Augustus was a devoted worshipper of the sun god (Sol), who brings Rome victory in time of war, and prosperity in time of peace through his earthly representative, the emperor.
Aitia. Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle, 2012
ABSTRACT
This article calls into question the value and reliability of the contents of P.Oxy. X ... more ABSTRACT
This article calls into question the value and reliability of the contents of P.Oxy. X 1241, the so-called list of Alexandria Librarians. Rather than treating the list of grammarians at col. i.5-ii.30 by itself, as scholars have done ever since the papyrus was published, this paper considers the document in its entirety. This closer reading of P.Oxy. X 1241 demonstrates that there is clear thematic continuity between the list of grammarians and the military catalogues that follow which has never been observed before, precisely because the two parts have always been treated separately. Challenges to three crucial assumptions of the original editors, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt emerge: (1) Is the list at col. i.5-ii.30 in fact a list of the heads of the Alexandrian library? (2) Is the work a copy or compilation of some earlier scholarly piece that dates back to the Hellenistic period, and not a product of a circa second century CE scholar/grammarian? (3) Do the contents of the papyrus reflect the work of a competent scholar/grammarian who was well enough informed about the chronology of the Ptolemaic period to produce an historically accurate account of the succession of individuals connected to the Ptolemaic court and the Alexandrian Library? While it is true to say that in its content and use of learned citations P.Oxy. X 1241 shares many similarities with Hellenistic and Imperial prose catalogues, the strategies of learned discourse deployed by the author in the military catalogue do not conform to the norms of reliable scholarly examples. Accordingly, the value of the text as documentary evidence of the history of the Alexandrian library needs to be reconsidered as it seems likely that we are dealing with a failed literary work.
The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the the... more The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the theory of Edmund Buchner about the relationship of the gnomonical instrument known as the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pacis Augustae. As a result of this critique, the Montecitorio Obelisk could be situated with greater precision on the map of the city. A computer simulation showed that Buchner erred in positing that the shadow of the Montecitorio Obelisk went into the center of the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday. In this article, computer simulations are used to develop a post-Buchnerian interpretation of the relationship of the obelisk and altar. Over 230 hitherto unrecognized solar and shadow alignments are reported. The first part of the article defines four zones around the monuments where the solar and shadows observations were made. In the second part of the article, specialists interpret the significance of the annual solar and shadow spectacle from various points of view. The conclusion synthesizes the results, arguing that the monuments were intentionally aligned and situated in order to propagate the same message as the one inscribed on two sides of the Montecitorio Obelisk [CIL 6.702 = ILS 91]: that Augustus was a devoted worshipper of the sun god (Sol), who brings Rome victory in time of war, and prosperity in time of peace through his earthly representative, the emperor.
Predictably, when the BBC / Netflix series Troy: Fall of a City was released in 2018 (Figure 8.1)... more Predictably, when the BBC / Netflix series Troy: Fall of a City was released in 2018 (Figure 8.1), the production's bold casting choices triggered a white supremacist backlash on social media. The series featured a multiracial cast with Black actors playing prominent roles as gods and heroes. What enraged the racists in particular was the portrayal of Achilles by the Black london-born actor David Gyasi. As the 'know-it-alls' on social media assured everyone-often with paroxysms of expletives-the original Achilles, namely, Homer's Achilles, was white. 1 Classicists were swift to respond to this backlash against the creative license taken by the production. In particular, Tim Whitmarsh in his article for Aeon (2018) and the contributors to the website Pharos: Doing Justice to Classics (Ball et al. 2018a, b, c, d) assembled a vast array of ancient evidence demonstrating that a white supremacist vision of antiquity has no basis in how ancient Greeks and Romans actually viewed themselves racially or how they understood the social value of skin colour. Whitmarsh made a crucial observation that upends most contemporary racialized readings of the ancient sources: 'No one in Greece or Rome ever speaks of a white or a black genos ("descent group")' (2018). Distinctions in pigmentation had little to do with how racial categories were constructed in the ancient world. In fact, if skin colour had any social meaning to the Greeks and Romans, it tended to signify a gender distinction. In art and literature, white skin was closely associated with women and given the principle of female inferiority within the patriarchal ideology, white skin in men was a mark of effeminacy. If a Greek hero were to have white skin, he would have been eroticized (Figure 8.2). To the extent that some ancient writers show any interest in the potential for skin colour to mark racial distinctions, 2 they use them to mark peoples with very dark and very light complexions as morally inferior to themselves and locate them on a continuum at opposite extremes from their own light-to medium-brown complexion: the somatic
Harder This paper offers bi-directional readings of the intertextual allusions between Apol-loniu... more Harder This paper offers bi-directional readings of the intertextual allusions between Apol-lonius' Argonautica and Callimachus' Argonautic stories in the Aetia. It argues that the allusions represent direct confrontations between Callimachus' οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκές (aet. fr. 1, 3 Harder) and Apollonius' ὅσσα τ᾿ ἔρεξαν (Ap. Rh. I 21) narrative strategies within the same 'Callimachean' aesthetic framework. On the basis of the conclusion of my 2014 article, Anchored in Time: the date in Apollonius' Ar-gonautica, which uses the poem's astronomical references to argue for 238 BC as the terminus post quem for the epic, these readings assume that the Aetia is the prior work and that the Argonautica is the alluding text. Stephen Hinds' example of the metapoetic dialogue between Ovid and Vergil in Allusion and Intertext provides the theoretical model for the kind of bi-directional readings offered here. This paper explores the programmatic and metapoetic functions that the Argonautic myth has within Aetia, reorienting Callimachus' allusions toward the archaic epic tradition and contextualizing the 'Argonautica' in the Aetia within longstanding metaphorical discourses of 'the ship of poetry' and 'the ship of state'. This analysis concentrates on the beginning of the Anaphe-aetion (frr. 7c-8 Harder) and the Cyzicus-aetion (frr. 108-109a Harder).
Cet article remet en question la valeur et la fiabilité du contenu du P.Oxy. X 1241, la liste dit... more Cet article remet en question la valeur et la fiabilité du contenu du P.Oxy. X 1241, la liste dite des Bibliothécaires d’Alexandrie. Plutôt que de traiter de la liste des grammairiens des colonnes i.5.-ii.30 pour elle-même, comme les savants l’ont fait depuis que le papyrus a été publié, cet article prend en considération le document dans son intégralité. Cette lecture plus attentive du P.Oxy. X 1241 démontre qu’il y a une évidente continuité thématique entre la liste des grammairiens et les catalogues militaires qui suivent, qui n’a jamais été observée précédemment parce que les deux parties du document ont été traitées séparement. Il en découle des questions concernant trois hypothèses essentielles émises par les éditeurs originaux, B. P. Grenfell et A. S. Hunt : (1) la liste des col. i.5-ii.30 est-elle en réalité une liste des Bibliothécaires en chef de la Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie ? (2) le document est-il une copie ou une compilation de quelque œuvre savante qui remonte à la période hellénistique, et non la production d’un savant/grammairien du deuxième siècle de notre ère environ ? (3) Est-ce que les contenus du papyrus reflètent l’œuvre d’un savant/grammairien compétent qui était suffisamment informé sur la chronologie de la période ptolémaïque pour donner un décompte historiquement exact de la succession d’individus liés à la cour des Ptolémées et à la Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie ? S’il est vrai que dans son contenu et son utilisation de citations savantes le P.Oxy. X 1241 partage de nombreux points communs avec les catalogues en prose des époques hellénistique et impériale, les stratégies du discours savant déployées par l’auteur dans le catalogue militaire ne sont pas conformes aux normes des exemples scientifiques fiables. En conséquence, la valeur du texte comme preuve documentaire de l’histoire de la Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie a besoin d’être réexaminée, car il semble probable que nous ayons affaire à une œuvre littéraire manquée.
Aitia. Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle, 2012
... ENS de Lyon - UMR 5189 Hisoma ANR Culture antiquaire et invention de la modernité. Articles d... more ... ENS de Lyon - UMR 5189 Hisoma ANR Culture antiquaire et invention de la modernité. Articles du même auteur. Les images dans les Alexipharmaques de Nicandre [Texte intégral]. Paru dans Aitia, 2 | 2012. M. Annette Harder, Remco F. Regtuit et Gerry C. Wakker (éd.), avec le ...
The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the the... more The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the theory of Edmund Buchner about the relationship of the gnomonical instrument known as the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pacis Augustae. As a result of this critique, the Montecitorio Obelisk could be situated with greater precision on the map of the city. A computer simulation showed that Buchner erred in positing that the shadow of the Montecitorio Obelisk went into the center of the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday. In this article, computer simulations are used to develop a post-Buchnerian interpretation of the relationship of the obelisk and altar. Over 230 hitherto unrecognized solar and shadow alignments are reported. The first part of the article defines four zones around the monuments where the solar and shadows observations were made. In the second part of the article, specialists interpret the significance of the annual solar and shadow spectacle from various points of view. The conclusion synthesizes the results, arguing that the monuments were intentionally aligned and situated in order to propagate the same message as the one inscribed on two sides of the Montecitorio Obelisk [CIL 6.702 = ILS 91]: that Augustus was a devoted worshipper of the sun god (Sol), who brings Rome victory in time of war, and prosperity in time of peace through his earthly representative, the emperor.
Aitia. Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle, 2012
ABSTRACT
This article calls into question the value and reliability of the contents of P.Oxy. X ... more ABSTRACT
This article calls into question the value and reliability of the contents of P.Oxy. X 1241, the so-called list of Alexandria Librarians. Rather than treating the list of grammarians at col. i.5-ii.30 by itself, as scholars have done ever since the papyrus was published, this paper considers the document in its entirety. This closer reading of P.Oxy. X 1241 demonstrates that there is clear thematic continuity between the list of grammarians and the military catalogues that follow which has never been observed before, precisely because the two parts have always been treated separately. Challenges to three crucial assumptions of the original editors, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt emerge: (1) Is the list at col. i.5-ii.30 in fact a list of the heads of the Alexandrian library? (2) Is the work a copy or compilation of some earlier scholarly piece that dates back to the Hellenistic period, and not a product of a circa second century CE scholar/grammarian? (3) Do the contents of the papyrus reflect the work of a competent scholar/grammarian who was well enough informed about the chronology of the Ptolemaic period to produce an historically accurate account of the succession of individuals connected to the Ptolemaic court and the Alexandrian Library? While it is true to say that in its content and use of learned citations P.Oxy. X 1241 shares many similarities with Hellenistic and Imperial prose catalogues, the strategies of learned discourse deployed by the author in the military catalogue do not conform to the norms of reliable scholarly examples. Accordingly, the value of the text as documentary evidence of the history of the Alexandrian library needs to be reconsidered as it seems likely that we are dealing with a failed literary work.
The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the the... more The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the theory of Edmund Buchner about the relationship of the gnomonical instrument known as the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pacis Augustae. As a result of this critique, the Montecitorio Obelisk could be situated with greater precision on the map of the city. A computer simulation showed that Buchner erred in positing that the shadow of the Montecitorio Obelisk went into the center of the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday. In this article, computer simulations are used to develop a post-Buchnerian interpretation of the relationship of the obelisk and altar. Over 230 hitherto unrecognized solar and shadow alignments are reported. The first part of the article defines four zones around the monuments where the solar and shadows observations were made. In the second part of the article, specialists interpret the significance of the annual solar and shadow spectacle from various points of view. The conclusion synthesizes the results, arguing that the monuments were intentionally aligned and situated in order to propagate the same message as the one inscribed on two sides of the Montecitorio Obelisk [CIL 6.702 = ILS 91]: that Augustus was a devoted worshipper of the sun god (Sol), who brings Rome victory in time of war, and prosperity in time of peace through his earthly representative, the emperor.
Predictably, when the BBC / Netflix series Troy: Fall of a City was released in 2018 (Figure 8.1)... more Predictably, when the BBC / Netflix series Troy: Fall of a City was released in 2018 (Figure 8.1), the production's bold casting choices triggered a white supremacist backlash on social media. The series featured a multiracial cast with Black actors playing prominent roles as gods and heroes. What enraged the racists in particular was the portrayal of Achilles by the Black london-born actor David Gyasi. As the 'know-it-alls' on social media assured everyone-often with paroxysms of expletives-the original Achilles, namely, Homer's Achilles, was white. 1 Classicists were swift to respond to this backlash against the creative license taken by the production. In particular, Tim Whitmarsh in his article for Aeon (2018) and the contributors to the website Pharos: Doing Justice to Classics (Ball et al. 2018a, b, c, d) assembled a vast array of ancient evidence demonstrating that a white supremacist vision of antiquity has no basis in how ancient Greeks and Romans actually viewed themselves racially or how they understood the social value of skin colour. Whitmarsh made a crucial observation that upends most contemporary racialized readings of the ancient sources: 'No one in Greece or Rome ever speaks of a white or a black genos ("descent group")' (2018). Distinctions in pigmentation had little to do with how racial categories were constructed in the ancient world. In fact, if skin colour had any social meaning to the Greeks and Romans, it tended to signify a gender distinction. In art and literature, white skin was closely associated with women and given the principle of female inferiority within the patriarchal ideology, white skin in men was a mark of effeminacy. If a Greek hero were to have white skin, he would have been eroticized (Figure 8.2). To the extent that some ancient writers show any interest in the potential for skin colour to mark racial distinctions, 2 they use them to mark peoples with very dark and very light complexions as morally inferior to themselves and locate them on a continuum at opposite extremes from their own light-to medium-brown complexion: the somatic
Harder This paper offers bi-directional readings of the intertextual allusions between Apol-loniu... more Harder This paper offers bi-directional readings of the intertextual allusions between Apol-lonius' Argonautica and Callimachus' Argonautic stories in the Aetia. It argues that the allusions represent direct confrontations between Callimachus' οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκές (aet. fr. 1, 3 Harder) and Apollonius' ὅσσα τ᾿ ἔρεξαν (Ap. Rh. I 21) narrative strategies within the same 'Callimachean' aesthetic framework. On the basis of the conclusion of my 2014 article, Anchored in Time: the date in Apollonius' Ar-gonautica, which uses the poem's astronomical references to argue for 238 BC as the terminus post quem for the epic, these readings assume that the Aetia is the prior work and that the Argonautica is the alluding text. Stephen Hinds' example of the metapoetic dialogue between Ovid and Vergil in Allusion and Intertext provides the theoretical model for the kind of bi-directional readings offered here. This paper explores the programmatic and metapoetic functions that the Argonautic myth has within Aetia, reorienting Callimachus' allusions toward the archaic epic tradition and contextualizing the 'Argonautica' in the Aetia within longstanding metaphorical discourses of 'the ship of poetry' and 'the ship of state'. This analysis concentrates on the beginning of the Anaphe-aetion (frr. 7c-8 Harder) and the Cyzicus-aetion (frr. 108-109a Harder).
Cet article remet en question la valeur et la fiabilité du contenu du P.Oxy. X 1241, la liste dit... more Cet article remet en question la valeur et la fiabilité du contenu du P.Oxy. X 1241, la liste dite des Bibliothécaires d’Alexandrie. Plutôt que de traiter de la liste des grammairiens des colonnes i.5.-ii.30 pour elle-même, comme les savants l’ont fait depuis que le papyrus a été publié, cet article prend en considération le document dans son intégralité. Cette lecture plus attentive du P.Oxy. X 1241 démontre qu’il y a une évidente continuité thématique entre la liste des grammairiens et les catalogues militaires qui suivent, qui n’a jamais été observée précédemment parce que les deux parties du document ont été traitées séparement. Il en découle des questions concernant trois hypothèses essentielles émises par les éditeurs originaux, B. P. Grenfell et A. S. Hunt : (1) la liste des col. i.5-ii.30 est-elle en réalité une liste des Bibliothécaires en chef de la Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie ? (2) le document est-il une copie ou une compilation de quelque œuvre savante qui remonte à la période hellénistique, et non la production d’un savant/grammairien du deuxième siècle de notre ère environ ? (3) Est-ce que les contenus du papyrus reflètent l’œuvre d’un savant/grammairien compétent qui était suffisamment informé sur la chronologie de la période ptolémaïque pour donner un décompte historiquement exact de la succession d’individus liés à la cour des Ptolémées et à la Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie ? S’il est vrai que dans son contenu et son utilisation de citations savantes le P.Oxy. X 1241 partage de nombreux points communs avec les catalogues en prose des époques hellénistique et impériale, les stratégies du discours savant déployées par l’auteur dans le catalogue militaire ne sont pas conformes aux normes des exemples scientifiques fiables. En conséquence, la valeur du texte comme preuve documentaire de l’histoire de la Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie a besoin d’être réexaminée, car il semble probable que nous ayons affaire à une œuvre littéraire manquée.
The communis opinio regarding the metapoetics of Mimiambi 6 (and 7) is that the allusions to the ... more The communis opinio regarding the metapoetics of Mimiambi 6 (and 7) is that the allusions to the female poets, Erinna and Nossis, contribute to a misogynist attack against them and the type of poetry they espoused. 1 Such a reading, however, assumes that Herodas is recycling the tired misogynist dildo-jokes found in Old Comedy. To my knowledge, scholars have never explored the possibility that Herodas may be invoking Erinna and Nossis to signal his appreciation and appropriation of their poetics in his Mimiambi. This paper revaluates Mimiambus 6 in light of this likelihood and contends that Herodas, like his contemporary Callimachus, adapted their transgendered poetics to create authentic female characters whose sex-talk reflected a female centered subjectivity. Accordingly, Mimiambus 6 features a new kind of dildo-joke that is oriented toward women and reflects female-centered sexuality. Far from being a metapoetic attack, the allusions to Erinna and Nossis in Mimiambus 6 express Herodas' appreciation for and indebtedness to their female-oriented poetry.
How is the far right (mis)appropriating classical antiquity to push their political and ideologic... more How is the far right (mis)appropriating classical antiquity to push their political and ideological agenda? How should the field of Classics react to this phenomenon? This dialogue between Professor Jackie Murray and Professor Katherine Blouin, two international scholars of classical antiquity, and Jonathan Montpetit, an award-winning journalist specializing in far-right politics in North America, will examine the ways in which far right political groups draw from the literary and material culture of Ancient Greece and Rome in order to justify their political views. Their conversation will shed new light on how this phenomenon affects Classics as a discipline (including the future of the discipline and the state of Classics curriculum), and consider the role of journalism and academia in acknowledging and resisting this trend. This event will be moderated by Junior Fellow Vittorio Bottini.
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This article calls into question the value and reliability of the contents of P.Oxy. X 1241, the so-called list of Alexandria Librarians. Rather than treating the list of grammarians at col. i.5-ii.30 by itself, as scholars have done ever since the papyrus was published, this paper considers the document in its entirety. This closer reading of P.Oxy. X 1241 demonstrates that there is clear thematic continuity between the list of grammarians and the military catalogues that follow which has never been observed before, precisely because the two parts have always been treated separately. Challenges to three crucial assumptions of the original editors, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt emerge: (1) Is the list at col. i.5-ii.30 in fact a list of the heads of the Alexandrian library? (2) Is the work a copy or compilation of some earlier scholarly piece that dates back to the Hellenistic period, and not a product of a circa second century CE scholar/grammarian? (3) Do the contents of the papyrus reflect the work of a competent scholar/grammarian who was well enough informed about the chronology of the Ptolemaic period to produce an historically accurate account of the succession of individuals connected to the Ptolemaic court and the Alexandrian Library? While it is true to say that in its content and use of learned citations P.Oxy. X 1241 shares many similarities with Hellenistic and Imperial prose catalogues, the strategies of learned discourse deployed by the author in the military catalogue do not conform to the norms of reliable scholarly examples. Accordingly, the value of the text as documentary evidence of the history of the Alexandrian library needs to be reconsidered as it seems likely that we are dealing with a failed literary work.
Presented here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GPPrZeeZpO4g3L0nnRW5RjJB7625XTtO/view?usp=sharing
This article calls into question the value and reliability of the contents of P.Oxy. X 1241, the so-called list of Alexandria Librarians. Rather than treating the list of grammarians at col. i.5-ii.30 by itself, as scholars have done ever since the papyrus was published, this paper considers the document in its entirety. This closer reading of P.Oxy. X 1241 demonstrates that there is clear thematic continuity between the list of grammarians and the military catalogues that follow which has never been observed before, precisely because the two parts have always been treated separately. Challenges to three crucial assumptions of the original editors, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt emerge: (1) Is the list at col. i.5-ii.30 in fact a list of the heads of the Alexandrian library? (2) Is the work a copy or compilation of some earlier scholarly piece that dates back to the Hellenistic period, and not a product of a circa second century CE scholar/grammarian? (3) Do the contents of the papyrus reflect the work of a competent scholar/grammarian who was well enough informed about the chronology of the Ptolemaic period to produce an historically accurate account of the succession of individuals connected to the Ptolemaic court and the Alexandrian Library? While it is true to say that in its content and use of learned citations P.Oxy. X 1241 shares many similarities with Hellenistic and Imperial prose catalogues, the strategies of learned discourse deployed by the author in the military catalogue do not conform to the norms of reliable scholarly examples. Accordingly, the value of the text as documentary evidence of the history of the Alexandrian library needs to be reconsidered as it seems likely that we are dealing with a failed literary work.
Presented here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GPPrZeeZpO4g3L0nnRW5RjJB7625XTtO/view?usp=sharing