Virgil utilizes descriptions of and comparisons to various animals in The Aeneid, which may represent how contemporary Romans and the ancient world in general viewed the wildness and domestication of animals. Animals are ridden in battle and interpreted as omens; possessed as property and feared as predators; emulated as models and admired for beauty. Animals of all sorts appear across the landscape of the text and inside the imagination of the reader. The interplay between domestic animals and wild beasts in this epic poem highlights how Romans thought of themselves: beastly comparisons are used to demonstrate viciousness and courage in battle, and domestic animals are used as tools to appease the gods (in sacrifice) and as a way of showing human dominance. Dangerous animals remind humans (and Romans) of their place and size in the world, while domestic animals help enforce the social hierarchy and define humanity. However, the wildness of the beasts highlights the negative space behind “humanity” as well. When wildness is necessary in man’s definition of “self”, one must ask: what is the purpose of conquering (in some cases, even destroying) wildness, how is this utilized in literature, and what does it mean in ancient times or today? Exploring the animals of The Aeneid helps to define not only Virgil’s textual landscape and the world of ancient Rome, but in fact our own humanity and the role of wildness in it.

Despite the growing interest in studies of gender and sexuality, little has been published about the figure of Attis since the initial monographs almost three decades ago. Not only does this figure, who was imported into Rome from Asia Minor during the Republican period, represent an important instance of gender ambiguity and nonconformity living in the heart of Roman society, but these issues play out in an incredibly vivid way on the body of Attis. Because of a fit of madness and grief induced by his lover in retaliation for his perceived infidelity, Attis commits suicide by castrating himself. Therefore, the choice made by artisans working in central Italy (Latium and Campania) to obscure Attis’ genitals through his characteristic and unique garment gives insight into distinctly Roman concerns with the integrity of the male body and how to construct the masculine gender. By analyzing one class of the sculptural representations of Attis that combine aspects of both masculine and feminine iconographies of dress and selectively obscure Attis’ genitals, I will demonstrate that these representations were produced under specific social conditions that differed from those in the Hellenistic world and in the periphery of the Roman Empire. In so doing, I hope to rescue Attis from what I feel are oversimplified and typologically driven analyses that obscure the active dialogue between these figures and Roman notions and representations of masculinity. In the process, I also wish to raise questions about other less valorized male bodies that place their owners into liminal gender categories: the hermaphrodite, the androgyne and the eunuch, with the hope of engendering future discussion about alternative masculinities in Rome.

Among writers both ancient and contemporary there is great interest in magic and wonder --- thaumata, thelxis, and cognates in the Greek. From the shining gods of the Homeric epics, through the second-century collection of spells known as the Papyri Magicae Graecae, down past the the occultism of Yeats, to the popularity of the Harry Potter series today, the western literary tradition has long been held fascinated by the imaginative power of such factors. Beyond popular culture, today's wealth of scholarly articles, anthologies, and monographs on the study of magic attests to a lively academic discussion around magic's cultural import. This paper aims to participate in that perennial discussion. Although it can be traced back to Platonic philosophy, it has become something of a commonplace that stories themselves work magical effects. This paper seeks to unpack the claims about narrative magic through a literary analysis of its representative deployment in selected works of Classical Antiquity. The Greek Magical Papyri are my main source for the internal terminology of magic, as it was employed in the Imperial period. For language scrutinizing magic, external to the practice itself, and for the fictional representation of both registers, I primarily examine two particularly important oeuvres: those of Lucian of Samosata, in Greek, and Apuleius, in Latin. Lucian's Philopseudes and Alethe Diegemata are key examples of fantastic stories, containing as they do the first versions of the ``Sorcerer's Apprentice'' and the ``Voyage to the Moon'' tales, respectively. Equally significant, Apuleius' Metamorphoses tells a series of magical accounts in a well-wrought masterpiece of early novelistic prose. Furthermore, both these authors are careful and clever, expressing within their texts a self-awareness of the narratological process itself. Outside these decisive thaumata, further comparative examples will be brought to bear as tangental explorations of storytelling's magical properties.

The figure of the mala or “bad woman” is present in much of Ancient Greek and Latin literature. In this context, being a mala means being a woman who participates in the process where an older woman advises a younger woman about how to profit from men who will pay to sleep with her. The mala assumes many different forms from the lena (madam) and the puella (girl) of Roman love elegy to the ἑταίρα (courtesan) of Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans and is also present in Roman comedy. Although, mala is a Latin word, Lucian’s work provides examples of the same type of “bad women” who advise other women how to profit from their lovers. Despite the fact that the mala is one of the most pervasive characters in classical literature, my research project is one of the first to look specifically at the figure of the mala as a distinct character type across several literary genres. The characteristics of the mala that are present in all of these genres highlight the fact that this character is an important vehicle for expressing cultural anxieties surrounding women. I am most interested in defining the characteristics of the mala in these different literary contexts and genres, and documenting the ways in which the language of power and control is used with malae. Above all, power characterizes the mala. She has power over men, language, and worst of all, she has the power to transform other girls into malae through her teaching. In this paper, I will define the characteristics of the mala and document the ways in which the language of power and control is used with malae in Plautus’ Casina; the elegies of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid; and Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans.

The Homer Multitext Project at the University of Washington is participating in a collaborative effort to create a digital edition of the Venetus A, the earliest extant and complete medieval manuscript of Homer’s Iliad. Our purpose is to form a definitive digital version of this text, which scholars and students alike can then refer to in future research. Our method is to carefully analyze an online facsimile of the Venetus A, and then manually record any discrepancies between the facsimile and other versions of the text. Using this data, we will then construct a final digital version. This final version of the text will be supremely useful in scholarship, because its quality and accuracy will be guaranteed by our careful work.