Love and Death in Latin Elegy

Love and death is a common and shared human experience that many poets of the ancient world explored in their various poetic works. The elegists of Rome famously wrote love poems in which each pined for a specific mistress or lover, and in some of these poems, love and death were simultaneously prominent themes. In this article I examine the relationship between the concepts of love and death in Propertius 4.7, Tibullus 1.3 and Ovid’s Amores 3.9. From this study it is evident that each poet, through means of their own style, depicted the ideal that love had the ability to overcome death. To support my analysis of these texts and the issues surrounding them, I refer to Papanghelis, Hinds and Maltby. While these authors consider many aspects of Proptertius’, Tibullus’ and Ovid’s works, the relationship and connection present between love and death has not been significantly considered. In order to establish each poet’s personal style I begin with a brief overview of elegiac poetry; then, an examination of each poem’s tone, word usage and thematic distinctions. I will begin the discussion with Propertius’ poems; Tibullus’ and Ovid’s poems will then be considered, first separately, and then as a pair. The concepts of love, death and those affected by the death in the poem will be analyzed. In addition, I will consider how love and death interact with each other in the poems. To further supplement the discussion, I will analyze how these three poets’ write in the same genre and about the same topics, but in different contexts and styles. This analysis leads to an understanding that each poet expressed their unique style in their poems, while maintaining a similar theme and genre, that love has the ability to overcome the unavoidable and inevitable force of death.

The Hungarian-Jewish Social Contract, its Rupture, and Jewish Death Rituals

This article explores the supposedly reciprocal social contract between “Greater Hungary” and its Jewish population from the “Golden Age” of the Dual Monarchy to its rupture in the Holocaust. The afterlife of this broken contract will be addressed through the upkeep and neglect of cemeteries in Subcarpathia and Hungary proper. Along the way, I present memoiristic vignettes that illustrate the challenge of loyalty to state / military authority and death rituals in the time of the 1918-1919 Hungarian-Romanian War, Jewish mourning in the context of Czechoslovakia’s loss of Subcarpathia, and the disjuncture between the normal praxis of death ritual and the spectre of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as the ritual contrast to Hungarian Jews who were deported, but not to Auschwitz. I also turn to the historical research of Tim Cole and Daniel Rosenthal, in conjunction with Hungarian (especially North-Transylvanian) Holocaust memoirs, to reflect on Holocaust-era suicide as a mode of victims’ resistance to their brutalization by Hungarian gendarmes -- the pinnacle of the betrayal of the erstwhile contract between Hungarian state authority and its Jewish population.

The Age of Questions: Or, a First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions Over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond, by Holly Case, 2018.

Holly Case’s most adventurous work as of yet seeks to juxtapose patterns common to nineteenth century publicists’ questions in order to reveal the contradictions of the age. Case devotes each chapter to a particular theme or ideological quality of the querists, which are in dispute with one another, and yet feature common idioms of progress and geopolitical reconfiguration. Internal to each chapter are the oxymoronic imbrications between conceptual polarities such as nationalism and the international public sphere, war through peace, gravitas with farce, and more. Case explains the prevalence of high-stakes public policy, prospects of war and the convulsive realignment of empires and nations through the persistent bundling of many of these questions. She addresses the ebb and flow of popularity of many era-spanning questions, which strengthens her attempt to provide a genealogy for the crises and ‘questions’ of our current era, and her accounting for how queristic contradictions were perceived to be transcended. It is reasonable to suggest that Case has provided a foundational step for an emergent niche of epistemological inquiry in the historical discipline, not unlike Benedict Anderson’s contribution to the study of nationalism through his magnum opus Imagined Communities.

The Dichotomy of Intimate Garments: Women’s Stays and Pockets in Georgian Britain

In John Collet’s 1777 print, Tight Lacing, or Fashion Before Ease a woman is depicted holding onto a bed poster as her maid and husband strain to tighten the lacing on her stays. Meanwhile, a large tie-on pocket can be seen hanging from the woman’s waist. Although they were worn closely together on the female body stays and pockets have been studied independently from each other. This is understandable, as at first glance, they appear incomparable. Stays were the precursor to nineteenth century corsets and they moulded the body into the desired and fashionable shape. Pockets on the other hand were utilitarian bags meant for carrying necessary items; separate from women’s clothing they were tied around the waist with string and were hidden under the skirts. Despite the initial differences, these garments did not function independently from each other. Using caricatures, etiquette books, and physical examples found in museum collections, this study demonstrates that when examined in tandem it becomes apparent that stays and pockets served distinct, yet overlapping functions in women’s lives. They informed women’s relationships with their surrounding environments, strengthened women’s connection to the domestic realm, yet also gave women freedom to move outside the home and participate within the public sphere. Furthermore, both items also acted as private spaces, which allowed women to actively partake in romantic courtship and sexual flirtations in a gender appropriate way. By juxtaposing stays and pockets this study contributes to the growing historical discussion surrounding these items, but also begins to piece together a larger picture of the role undergarments, as a whole, played in women’s lives.

Roman and Christian Just War: A Re-Analysis

There is no denying that the early Catholic Church grew up in a climate predominated by a rich and broad religious pantheon. Emerging at first as a perceived outgrowth of Judaism, Christianity was exposed to, among other things, Roman culture. Roman religious practice, which was typically very open to adopting foreign cults, felt threatened by Christianity, resulting in periods of persecution. As a result, the early Christian community had a very complicated relationship with Imperial Rome. The Church stressed non-collaboration, but evidence points that there was a divide between teachings and practice on the topic of military service. The patristic writings of the Early Church fathers are noticeably sparse until Ambrose and Augustine, who present what can generally be called a theory of just war. They also waver between support and condemnation, reflecting the needs of their congregations. Despite this relative absence of discussion, the prevailing attitude in the historical scholarship of the Early Church was that the pre-Constantine Church pushed for non-collaboration with Roman society, i.e. not serving in public office or the army. After Constantine, that same scholarship points towards an about-face in Church teachings, and a co-opting of the burgeoning Christian community. What this paper seeks to address is that Roman iustum bellum, and Christian just war, were developments specific to their contemporary societies and, while there is definitely a link, the two form distinct systems of thought. One might even say that iustum bellum was more concerned with justifying war, than the moral quandaries of Christian just war.

ἄριστον μέν ὕδωρ: An Examination of the Public Waterworks in Athens in the Early 5thC BCE

This article examines the design and social impact of waterways in Athens in the early 5thC BCE. While the Athenian political landscape transitioned from a series of tyrannies to democracy at the end of the Archaic period (ca. 650-480 BCE), the archaeological record also shows widespread innovation in the development of public water systems, particularly in sanitation and water supply. A movement away from buildings constructed by the Athenian tyrants facilitated the development of the Classical Agora and the creation of new public-use spaces and structures, like the Southeast Fountain House and the Great Drain in the Agora. The fountain has long been identified with the famous Peisistratid Enneakrounos (“Nine Spouts”) fountain, but through investigation into the arguments of J.M. Camp and Jessica Paga, I propose that a later date ca. 500 BCE is more suitable for the historical and archaeological context of the fountain. I investigate several Athenian waterworks built/maintained during the late Archaic period to the Classical period (~500-323 BCE): the Great Drain in the Agora, the Southeast Fountain House, the Klepsydra fountain, and the Asklepieion on the Akropolis. The works of Hippocrates, Thucydides, and—to a lesser extent—Pausanias, inform my examination of the implications of the construction of these waterworks and the development of democracy in the 5th century. These waterways show a dedicated shift from the private use of water and tyrannical building works, to a new, fully public and communal mode of engagement with the city and its resources.