How to be a good symposiast and other lessons from Xenophon'sSymposium

Xenophon'sSymposiumlies at a confluence between two trends in modern scholarship. On the one hand, its author and his writings have recently attracted a resurgence in interest and credibility. No longer is Xenophon regarded as merely a ‘literary dilettante’, a dull, unimaginative and ultimately incompetent philosopher, or a conservative gentleman of the British old school. He is rather a political radical, an innovator in literary form, and the defender of a ‘trendy and shocking philosopher’. In this vein, hisSymposiumhas been rescued from condemnation as a poor imitation of Plato's dialogue of the same name. No modern reader of Xenophon's work would go so far as Eunapius in declaring its writer to be ‘the only man out of all the philosophers to adorn philosophy in word and deed’. Yet, as Huss's comprehensive commentary has shown, theSymposiumis much more than the product of an amateur philosopher and writer. It is a work of considerable complexity which draws on a variety of literary influences beyond Plato'sSymposium, mixing seriousness with jest in order to explore, among other issues, beauty and desire.

Achilles' last stand: Institutionalising dissent in Homer'sIliad

Debate in theIliad– what form it takes, what significance that might have, whether or not it even exists – has been a matter of some controversy. One approach has been to examine debate in terms of a formal social context and to extrapolate from this some kind of political or – according to other accounts – pre-political community that theIliadpreserves. Scholars have, however come up with very different ideas about how to describe that society, how to interpret that depiction, or whether such attempts are even fruitful. An alternative approach focuses on the form of the speeches and analyses them as the production of thesis and antithesis: in these terms the cut-and-thrust of debate is understood as a form of proto-rhetorical theory.All this seems far removed from debate as it is represented in the narrative, which is the subject of this paper. I begin with four preliminary propositions. Previous approaches have tended to homogenise different scenes of debate, with little regard to differences in structure or context.

Greek tragedies in West African adaptations

Not so many years ago African adaptations of Greek tragedy would have been a most obscure subject for a classicist to write about. But since then, as a result of the everincreasing academic interest in post-colonialism on the one hand, and in the reception of Greek tragedy on the other, a number of discussions have been published, not only by experts in African, and more generally post-colonial literatures, but also by classicists. This article continues their work, focusing in more detail on a narrower, though still large and varied, geographical area:WestAfrica. Much more work, including work within Africa itself, will be necessary in the future to gain a more complete and nuanced picture. Moreover, I should state clearly that, as a classicist, I have only an incomplete knowledge of African literatures and cultures. Therefore, inevitably, much of what I say can itself only be a starting-point for more. However, I believe that such a start is well worth making, as the plays in question hold considerable interest for classicists.

Hiatus in Vergil and in Horace'sOdes

Our discussion will be primarily concerned with hiatus and prosodic hiatus in Vergil; emendations will be proposed atE. 3.6;A. 4.235; 7.226; it will also be suggested that some of the hiatus-free readings to be found in Carolingian and later MSS deserve consideration. Emendations will also be proposed at Horace,Odes1.28.24; 3.6.10. In order to evaluate Vergilian innovation and Vergilian influence, we will need to give some brief account both of his predecessors and of the other Augustan poets.Vergil's immediate predecessorsComedy of course has its own rules, and a full discussion would be irrelevant; however it will be seen that some aspects of comic versification can be used to illustrate later practice. The fragmentary Latin poets are also excluded; what little we have of them has been exposed not only to the ordinary accidents of transcription but also to accidental misquotation; it is thus hardly possible to draw any certain conclusions.

Minoanisation

‘Minoanisation’ is by common consent a fundamental element of Bronze Age Aegean cultural dynamics. It is a modern term of sometimes deceptive convenience for a heterogeneous range of ancient material culture traits and practices that indicate the adoption in places beyond Crete, through whatever means, of ways of doing things that originated directly or indirectly within that island. Examples include artefact styles and consumption, cooking habits, writing, weight systems, weaving, wall-paintings, design and use of built space, burial practices and ritual action. At a general level, Minoanisation is manifestly important, and related in some way to the expansion on Crete of complex palatial polities during the early to mid-second millennium BC. There the consensus ends. The interpretation of every other aspect of the phenomenon, or rather phenomena, remains locked in deep-seated controversy, notably concerning the potential implications for understanding of the nature of social, economic and political relations between Crete and its neighbours.

Sibylline syllables: The intratextual Aeneid

As recent scholarship on the poem has demonstrated, the Aeneid is punctuated by reiterated episodes of opening. These ruptures, often violently produced, release violence into the world of the poem, prolonging the epic action by postponing its appointed end. The pattern is set in the first book when Aeolus strikes at the mountain that houses the winds, unleashing the storm that drives Aeneas off course, from Italy to Carthage. What is ‘opened’ here is at once something within the poem (the cavernous prison of the winds) and the poem itself, which restarts, as it were, when it seemed on the verge, with Aeneas' approach to Italy, of shutting down. Much valuable work has been done to illuminate and complicate this convergence of the action in the poem with the action of the poem, with one focus being the agency of Juno, a figure especially closely linked here with openings and beginnings.

Roman Epic Theatre? Reception, performance, and the poet in Virgil'sAeneid

Past responses to ancient literature and the reading practices of previous centuries are of central relevance to the contemporary exegesis of Greek and Roman authors. Professional classicists have at last come to recognise this. However, accounts of reception still tend to engage in a traditional form ofNachleben, as they unselfconsciously describe the extent of classical influences on later literary production. This process of influence is not as straightforward as it may first seem. It is often taken for granted in practice, if not in theory, that the movement is in one direction only – from antiquity to some later point - and also that the ancient text which ‘impacts on’ on the culture of a later period is the same ancient text that we apprehend today. Of course it isneverthe same text, even leaving aside the problems of transmission. The interaction between a text and its reception in another place, in another time, in another text, is really a dynamic two-way process. That interaction (which has much in common with intertextuality) involves, or is rather constituted by, our own interpretation of it.