Search

The article focuses on an analysis of Machon fr. 16.258-284 Gow, highlighting the nuances of comic receptions and the interplay between symposia and literary criticism. Topics include the examination of the anecdote's setting at a symposium, its potential for oral performance, and its implications for the relationship between comedy and symposia in ancient culture.

This note identifies a new acrostic in Christodorus' sixth century c.e. Ekphrasis of the Baths of Zeuxippus (Anth. Pal. 2) and explains its significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the narrator's viewing of Jerusalem and Judea, the Jerusalem Temple, and the high priest's performance of the liturgy in the Letter of Aristeas (§§83–120). The first section considers the aesthetics that Aristeas views as operative in Jerusalem and demonstrates how his art-critical analysis of Jewish objects reveals them to follow Greek aesthetics more closely than Alexandrian artworks, which instead bespeak imperial excess. The second section proposes that, although he may appear to be on a military reconnaissance, the Letter highlights Aristeas' experience of witnessing and being overwhelmed by the high priest Eleazar performing the liturgy. In concluding, it suggests that Aristeas' mind-altering experience of viewing the liturgy in Jerusalem has great import for the narrative of the Torah's translation into Greek. Telling the story of a Jewish translation involves a Greek transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how two Jewish Greek prose writers refer to aspects of the Greek and Jewish literary traditions. The first section studies the fragments of Aristobulus and the multiple models of reading and making meaning that they exhibit and the extent to which this aimed at aligning Greek and Jewish ideas. In the second section, I turn to the Letter of Aristeas. In this text, I propose that an application of Aristobulus's theorizing can be observed in practice. Through three case studies of under-appreciated and previously unobserved allusions, I demonstrate that the entire range of allusive strategies implied by Aristobulus's discussions are to be found in the Letter 's narrative and I argue that their use demands a readership able to set Greek and Jewish literary traditions in various configurations. What will emerge is a Jewish Greek literature attuned to the cultural politics of allusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the first-century c.e.Laus Pisonis, an anonymous panegyric for a certain Piso that lays particular emphasis on his skill at lyre-playing, ball games and the board game, the ludus latrunculorum (155–210). Whereas this focus has often been a cause of consternation among critics, this article argues that play is a crucial element of the poem's poetic and political operations. The first section shows that the poem employs images of poetic maturity and of temporality in order to justify a light or ludic topic for an allegedly young poet. The second section identifies a hitherto unobserved telestich (M-O-R-A) in the passage describing the ludus latrunculorum and argues that this letter game defines a positive period of play within the poem. The third section further demonstrates that this letter game is aimed specifically at the patron Piso as he is represented within the poem. That is, the poet parallels Piso's potential to uncover the telestich in the text and his ability to uncover the poet's hidden talent. The concluding fourth section explores the wider impact of this reinterpretation of the Laus Pisonis for the literary history of the Early Principate. It proposes that the poem's playfulness should not be seen as reflecting the progressive disempowerment of the political elite. Rather, the poem is an early case of Roman political discourse encroaching on the value of the trivial and the boundaries of otium. The Laus Pisonis makes play political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276-194 B.C.E.), the third head of the Alexandrian Library, sent a letter to King Ptolemy outlining his solution for the geometric problem, the doubling of the cube. Although traditionally the preserve of historians of mathematics, the text quotes from tragedy, recounts mathematical research at Plato's Academy and concludes with an epigram. Here, I address each generic gesture and its particular audience and aim. This article reads the letter not only as a dynamic unified whole which innovatively integrates mathematics and literature, but as a text which lays out the mechanics of the Ptolemaic empire for its readership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]