Animus Classics Journal: Vol. 2, Issue 1

ANIMUS

CLASSICS

JOURNAL

Winter 2022

Volume 2

No. 1

University of

Chicago

Cover art by E.G. Keisling

Funded in part by the University of Chicago Student

Government

ANIMUS

THE UNDERGRADUATE

CLASSICS JOURNAL

of the

UNIVERSITY OF

CHICAGO

VOLUME II

NO. I

HORACE ODES 4.7 10

by

Isobel Barlow-Busch

THE ODYSSEY DIPTYCH 14

by

Katherine Plunkett

ASTRAL SENECA: EXERCISING

ESCAPE AND ENGAGEMENT

AS A STOIC PROFICIENS 16

by

Hope Ladd

EXORDIUM EXTREMI 30

by

Cameron Miguel

ASTRONAUTILIA 1.1-37 34

by

Ben Broadbent

MAGICAL SPACES & SPHERES

OF RITUAL IN THE GREEK

MAGICAL PAPYRI 40

by

Brendan Kay

4

Table of Contents

SARAH POMEROY & THE

HISTORY OF GENDER OF THE

ANCIENT WORLD 52

by

Devon DeRouen

FROM SON TO MOTHER 66

by

Jordan Tyler Houston

THE SLAYING OF PERSEUS 68

by

Katie Milburn

ANTHESTERIA 69

by

Rachel Jung

THE FINAL PARTING 70

by

Rachel Jung

Table of Contents 5

6

STAFF

Editors-In-Chief

Don Harmon & Natalie Nitsch

Managing Editor

Sarah Ware

CREATIVE

ACADEMIC

TRANSLATION

Section Editor

Madeleine Moore

Section Editor

Hannah Halpern

Section Editor

Alexander Urquhart

Assistant Section Editors

Gabriel Clisham

W. Addison Wood

Assistant Section Editors

Josephine Dawson

Ken Johnson

Daniel Mark-Welch

Assistant Section Editor

Victor Tyne

Secretary

Gibson Morris

Blog Editor

Lucy Nye

Design Editor

Jacob Keisling

Assistant Blog Editor

Daniel Mark-Welch

7

REVIEWERS

PEER REVIEWERS

Jacob Botaish

Erin Choi

Gabriel Clisham

Josephine Dawson

Ziyu Feng

Holden Fraser

Levi Freeman

Harry Gardner

Hannah Halpern

Don Harmon

Elizabeth Harrison

Gwendolyn Jacobson

Emma Janssen

Ken Johnson

Shane Kim

Asaf Lebovic

Daniel Mark-Welch

Jae Won Moon

Madeleine Moore

Aashna Moorjani

Gibson Morris

Natalie Nitsch

Sophia Ozaki Kottman

Shama Tirukkala

Victor Tyne

Alexander Urquhart

Anushree Vashist

Sarah Ware

Katherine M. Weaver

W. Addison Wood

COPY EDITORS

Chloe Bartholomew

JD Collins

Elizabeth Harrison

Ben Huffman

Gwendolyn Jacobson

Shannon Kim

Avery Metzcar

Lars Nordquist

Shama Tirukkala

Matthew Turner

8

Letter

from the

Editors

At times, studying Classics as an undergraduate can feel isolating.

There are simply not many of us, and we tend toward solitude, not socializing.

Additionally, much of how we learn about “doing Classics”

can leave us feeling as if we were watching from the sidelines. Where

do undergraduates fit in the grand scheme of Classics Twitter, passionate

op-eds, and exciting new discoveries? When do undergraduates

become “classicists,” if we can even claim the title? The Covid-19 pandemic

has, of course, heightened this feeling of isolation; the first issue

of Animus, published in the spring of 2021, was planned, created, and

designed entirely over Zoom.

9

Animus, along with the University of Chicago Classics Society,

helped us to build a community when community was hard to come

by. So many students participated—as editors, designers, copy-editors,

and peer reviewers—in the production of our inaugural issue. By the

end of the year, even in the challenging circumstances of virtual learning,

there were fewer of us who could say we knew no other students

interested in the Classics.

Over the course of this publication cycle, the Editorial Board has been

grateful to meet each Sunday afternoon around a long table in the Classics

building. We have had the pleasure of welcoming our copy-editors,

peer reviewers, and staff face-to-face, and are developing closer relationships

with the Department of Classics and the Regenstein Library.

We thank them all for their diligent work and valuable support, especially

Classics Department Administrator Kathy Fox and Professors David

Wray and Jonah Radding.

The community Animus continues to develop extends beyond the

University of Chicago. Our innovative peer review process aims to engage

undergraduate students across a broad section of institutions in

academic conversation and critique. We foster connection and dialogue

through our online blog, as well as in our journal. The pieces the Editorial

Board selected for this issue represent the diversity of submissions

we received across a variety of mediums and classical topics. We thank

our authors and artists for sharing their illuminating thoughts and

ideas: without them, the academic conversation we so value would be

impossible. We are honored to be able to facilitate this conversation,

and it is our hope that our readers will enjoy engaging in it as well.

Warmly,

Don Harmon and Natalie Nitsch, co-editors-in-chief

Horace

Odes 4.7

10

A Translation in

Common Meter

Isobel Barlow-Busch

University of Guelph

Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis

arboribusque comae;

mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas

flumina praetereunt;

Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet

ducere nuda choros:

inmortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum

quae rapit hora diem.

frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas

interitura, simul

pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox

bruma recurrit iners.

The snow has scattered, grass returns,

and leaves are borne by trees.

The seasons change, and in their banks

the coursing rivers ease.

The naked Graces, joined by Nymphs,

start up their dance anew.

“Don’t hope to live forever,” warns the clock

“Time comes for you.”

Winter softens, summer crushes

spring beneath her heels,

the ripened crops slay summer’s bloom,

slow-moving ice congeals.

damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae:

nos ubi decidimus

quo pius Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus,

pulvis et umbra sumus.

The flight of time repairs such loss,

but when we humans die

and join the kings of old in hell

our bones, unmoving, lie.

quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae

tempora di superi?

cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis amico

quae dederis animo.

For who can say how many days

the gods to us bestow?

The gifts you fail to savour, trust

an heir to render low.

cum semel occideris et de te, splendida, Minos

fecerit arbitria,

non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te

restituet pietas;

Once Minos passes judgement and

admits your soul beyond,

not family, fame, or virtue can

restore the life you donned.

12

infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum

liberat Hippolytum

nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro

vincula Pirithoo.

If even great Hippolytus

is trapped in hellish night,

and friendship cannot break death’s chains,

what makes you think you might?

Translator's Note:

I took creative liberties with my translation of Horace’s Odes 4.7! I wanted it

to be as beautiful in English as it is in Latin, and thus prioritized maintaining

common meter over word-for-word accuracy to the original work.

I’d like to thank Dr. John Walsh at the University of Guelph – this translation

would not exist if not for his unwavering support and encouragement throughout

my Latin education.

13

THE ODYSSEY DIPTYCH

Katherine Plunkett

14

An exploration of two translations

School of Arts and Sciences at The Catholic University of America

15

16

Hope Ladd

ASTRAL SENECA: EXERCISING

ESCAPE AND ENGAGEMENT AS

A STOIC PROFICIENS

Hope Ladd

Hillsdale College

The theme of astronomical study is prevalent throughout Seneca’s

literary corpus. 1 He repeatedly emphasizes the importance for human

beings–especially Stoics–to spend time contemplating the universe.

Seneca discusses this imperative for astronomical study at length not

only in his treatises on nature, but also in his Epistulae Morales, his Consolationes

2 , and his tragedies. However, the reasons he proposes for such

astronomical study sometimes appear to conflict with one another. On

the one hand, Seneca often offers astronomical contemplation as a

means for the mind to escape from the troubles of the world. However,

at other times Seneca presents astronomy not as an act of escape, but

as one of intellectual engagement with nature and with the divine origins

of the soul. 3 At first blush, these two motivations for astronomical

study, escape and engagement, don’t seem to be compatible. Escap-

1 Jones, “Stoics and Astronomical Sciences,” 328. Seneca was not exceptional among Stoics for

valuing astronomical study. The study of astronomy was a highly important aspect of both Stoic and

Epicurean thought.

2 Tracy, Fallentia Sidera, 638. Tracy comments on the pervasiveness of astronomical escapism in

Stoic literature, explaining that “the use of astronomy as a mental refuge in adversity, a prominent

theme in all three of the consolatory essays composed by Lucan’s uncle Seneca the Younger on methods

of coping with the trauma of exile or death, is well-grounded in ancient philosophy, especially

Stoicism.”

3 For an alternative literary presentation of the value of astronomy for Stoics, see Tracy, Fallentia

Sidera, 636. Tracy analyzes Lucan’s presentation of astronomical escapism as attempted by Pompey.

Tracy concludes that Pompey’s attempt at mental escape is in vain, and that it mirrors Pompey’s

failed physical escape, condemning the effectiveness of astronomy as a valid means of escape.

Astral Seneca

17

ism, or withdrawal from imminent and physical reality, sounds like the

opposite of engagement. Further, Seneca doesn’t identify one as more

important than the other or make any explicit reconciliation between

the two. Can these two seemingly opposite motivations be reconciled?

Does their co-existence in the Senecan corpus indicate an inconsistency

in Seneca’s thought about astronomy?

In this paper, I propose that not only is there a way to reconcile

simultaneous intellectual escape and engagement as co-existent motivations

for astronomy, but also that, in the way Seneca sees them, the

Stoic proficiens 4 must use them in tandem with one another to make

progress in his Stoic journey and to prepare for a virtuous death. Further,

I will argue that the escapism Seneca talks about is not a total escape

from reality, but rather an escape from the corporeal bondage of

the world, and that this escape is actually a necessary prerequisite to

meaningful engagement with the temporal world. Finally, I will use a

passage from Seneca’s de Consolatione ad Polybium to show how Seneca

presents human death as the ultimate culmination of this escape and

engagement, and thus uses astronomical contemplation as a remedy

for the fear of death.

The first motivation for astronomical study—escape—is common

throughout Seneca’s work.Seneca presents this escape as functioning in

a twofold manner; it enlivens the mood and enlightens the intellect. For

Seneca, escape means releasing the Stoic proficiens from earthly weights

of every kind and lifting both the heart and the mind out of trouble.

Emotional encouragement, first, is the lifting of the mood from a state

4 The term proficiens (literally “the progressing one”) is the word Seneca uses to describe the Stoic

disciple who is progressing on the journey toward Stoic sagehood but has not yet reached it. The

proficiens is the intended greater audience of Seneca’s Epistulae to Lucilius, as the letters are geared

toward someone who accepts the validity of the Stoic way of life but has not yet perfected it and so

will be edified by the advice Seneca presents in the letters. Seneca’s explanations of the importance of

astronomical study, by extension, are also especially relevant to the proficiens, as the proficiens is in

need of instruction regarding how to live the best Stoic life possible.

18 Hope Ladd

of anxiety or depression about a current trial to a place of emotional

placidity and stability. 5 Seneca references this objective when discussing

the benefits of astronomical studies in Letter 65: “Quid te,” inquis,

“delectat tempus inter ista conterere, quae tibi nullum affectum eripiunt, nullam

cupiditatem abigunt?” Ego quidem ut potiora illa ago ac tracto, quibus pacatur

animus, et me prius scrutor, deinde hunc mundum.” 6 Here, Seneca justifies

his own study of astronomy to Lucilius, Seneca’s disciple, to whom he

addresses his letters and gives advice about the best way to progress

as a proficiens. 7 Seneca refutes the objection that natural inquiry has no

positive effect on the emotions (tibi nullum affectum eripiunt), 8 explaining

that after self-examination, study of the natural world (including,

of course, the heavens), is what best placates the spirit (quibus pacatur

animus) and keeps away negative emotions. The placation of the spirit,

in turn, constitutes an escape from the physical world through the liberation

of the mind from the influence of temporal trials. This excerpt,

then, serves as a clear indication from Seneca that the therapeutic effect

of emotional enlivenment is a key component of the escape provided

by astronomical study. For the proficiens especially, this aspect of

5 One example of this, as noted by Harry Hine, is how Seneca inserts a tangent in the Natural

Questions 4a.1.1 on the Nile “to offer Lucilius distraction from his own province in Sicily.” Hine,

“Rome, the Cosmos, and the Emperor in Seneca’s Natural Questions,” 47.

6 Sen., Ep. 65.15-16. “‘Why are you delighted,’ you say, ‘to waste your time on those questions,

which don’t take any of your emotions away, and don’t cure you of any desires?’ I, however, treat

them and talk about them as more important things, which ease my mind, and first I examine

myself, then this world.” All translations are my own unless otherwise specified.

7 Wagoner, “Seneca on Moral Improvement,” 241. That Seneca intentionally wrote his letters as

a philosophical project aimed at the moral improvement of his audience has been suggested and

discussed by Robert Wagoner. Wagoner argues that Seneca wrote to be widely read, wanted to help

his audience become philosophers, and thought both teacher and student should focus on progress

throughout their life.

8 Hine, “Rome, the Cosmos, and the Emperor in Seneca’s Natural Questions,” 60. Seneca often

refutes theorized objections to his claims in the Natural Questions. Hine, for instance, notes that

Lucilius is often presented as skeptical of the value of scientific study, so Seneca often takes a defensive

stance toward an audience that may not be immediately accepting of his promotion of physical

inquiry. Of course, as Hine notes, given Seneca’s meticulous curation of both his own self-image and

the image of other individuals, it is quite likely that the theoretical views of Seneca’s Lucilius were

not actually his own.

Astral Seneca

19

astronomical study is particularly important, as control over the emotions

is a key development in the journey toward Stoic sagehood.

In a similar way, Seneca presents intellectual enlightenment as the

cerebral counterpart to emotional escape. Just as astronomy can help

the Stoic feel better about the world, it can also help him meditate on

better, higher matters, and can lift his mind above those who focus only

on earthly pleasure. 9 In the same letter to Lucilius, Seneca suggests that

studies of nature lift the mind from its earthly burdens to an enlightened

state (attollunt et levant animum, qui gravi sarcina pressus explicari cupit

et reverti ad illa, quorum fuit). 10 Here, Seneca articulates the burdened

state of the mind, and the power of natural studies to relieve the mind

of that burden and allow it to rise to higher things. Seneca identifies

this intellectual elevation not only as helpful and relieving, but also as

natural, since the mind originated from heavenly material and so has a

natural inclination to return to the meditation of its origins (reverti ad

illa, quorum fuit). Additionally, in the preface to Book I of the Naturales

Quaestiones, 11 Seneca tells Lucilius that the enlightenment of the mind

also leads the Stoic toward a healthy apathy toward human struggles. O

quam contempta res homo, nisi supra humana surrexit! he exclaims, empha-

9 White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy,” (White, 124-125). The study of astronomy for moral improvement

is another widespread Stoic practice. Michael White discusses the innate moral aspect of

scientific inquiry for the Stoics. He notes that for Stoic philosophers, physics and ethics were deeply

connected, and that it was not possible for a Stoic to conceive of a “value-neutral” investigation of

the natural world. Physics, for the Stoics, was connected to the divine, to the origin of man, to the

purpose of man, and thus to the morality of man.

10 Sen., Ep. 65.16. “They elevate and enlighten the mind, which is overwhelmed by a weighty

burden and longs to be set free and to return to those things from whence it came.”

11 For a lengthy discussion of the “flight of the mind” in the preface to QNat.1, see Florence Julia

Gabriella Limburg, “Prefaces and Epilogues of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones,” ch. 4. Limburg

notes that while the flight of the mind was a common idea among Roman philosophers and literary

authors, Seneca’s version of the flight is distinguished from others in that it does not occur in a dream

(cf. Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis) or after death, but rather during an individual’s lifetime while

they are conscious. Limburg notes that a common feature of the flight of the mind is that it gives

the individual knowledge that would not otherwise be attainable, and that this certainly applies to

Seneca’s version of the flight.

20 Hope Ladd

sizing the critical role that intellectual enlightenment plays in the human

life. 12 He continues, tunc consummatum habet plenumque bonum sortis

humanae cum calcato omni malo petit altum et in interiorem naturae sinum

venit. Tunc iuvat inter ipsa sidera vagantem divitum pavimenta ridere et totam

cum auro suo terram. 13 For Seneca, the intellectual elevation also aids in

the process of emotional liberation from the temporal world, as he emphasizes

the sense of delight and joy (iuvat, ridere) that a proficiens may

possess as a result of intellectual meditation on heavenly things. Contemplating

the heavens, according to Seneca, is an escape of the mind

from evil (calcato omni malo) 14 and an escape from the cares of human

life. By focusing on the stars instead of on earthly affairs, the Stoic proficiens

can look down and laugh at the struggles of the Roman aristocracy

in their rat-race of striving for temporal wealth (divitum pavimenta ridere

et totam cum auro suo terram). 15 In this way, Seneca presents astronomical

study as a necessary activity that is beneficial both for enlivening the

emotions and for enlightening the intellect.

While Seneca identifies mental and spiritual escape from the world

as a motivation for astronomical study, he also characterizes the purpose

of astronomy as an act of intentional engagement with the world.

The types of engagement Seneca offers are engagement with the divine,

12 Sen., QNat. 1.5. “How pathetic is the human being, unless he rises above the affairs of men!”

13 Sen., QNat. 1.7. “Then (the mind) possesses the complete and fulfilled advantage of human

fortune when it tramples down all evil, seeks the higher things and arrives at nature’s intimate

embrace. Then it is delighted by wandering among the stars themselves and by laughing at the rich

man’s mosaics and at all the gold in the whole world.”

14 Wagoner, “Seneca on Moral Improvement,” 241. Robert Wagoner comments at length on

Seneca’s estimation of philosophy as the best and most efficient way to moral improvement, to the

extent that he considers other pursuits a waste of time. This, of course, would include astronomy,

as astronomy would be well within the bounds of natural philosophy in the Stoic mind, and Seneca

certainly saw potential for moral improvement for those who study the heavens.

15 Hine, “Rome, the Cosmos, and the Natural Questions,” 43-44. Hine comments at length on

this “zooming-out” effect of astronomical study, and whether Seneca, by focusing on this effect,

means to marginalize the importance of the Roman empire or bring it into close focus through

emphasis on Roman scientific discovery.

Astral Seneca

21

engagement with the self, and engagement with the full extent of nature.

16 First, Seneca proposes that the contemplation of the heavens is a

way to directly access the divine because the perfection of the heavens

is a reflection of the perfection of god. 17 In de Consolatione ad Marciam,

Seneca writes about Syracuse, a city known for its affinity for scientific

investigation, 18 Intraturus es urbem dis, hominibus communem, omnia

complexam, certis legibus aeternisque devinctam, indefatigata caelestium officia

volventem. 19 Here, Seneca links astronomical study with communion

between human and divine (dis, hominibus communem) and with deep

desire for (omnia complexam) and knowledge of the unchanging universe

(certis legibus aeternisque). In this way, Seneca is equating the study

of the universe with fellowship with and knowledge of god. This deep,

intentional engagement with the divine through astronomy aids the

proficiens on his Stoic journey by bringing him closer to the perfection

and divinity in heaven. 20

16 For another type of engagement through astronomy, see Aldo Setaioli, “Seneca and the Divine,”

333. Setaioli notes that for Stoic philosophers, and for Seneca in particular, contemplation of nature

was considered an act of worship, since god was present in all of nature. He also notes Seneca’s preference

of natural theology over mythological or political theology.

17 For a discussion of Seneca’s love for the perfection of the heavens, see Elaine Fantham, “Rome

Stargazing,” 28-9. This view of the heavens as perfect and obsession with that perfection was also

prevalent throughout Stoic thought. For instance, Alexander Jones’ comments on Stoic fixation on

spheres in the heavens, such as planets and stars, because of their apparent perfection in both shape

and orbit pattern. “Stoics and Astronomical Sciences,” 329.

18 Sen., Ad Marciam 18.7-8. Seneca describes the inhabitants of Syracuse as individuals who love

to explore unknown lands, “leaving nothing untried,” who attempt grand accomplishments (magna

conantium), who both learn and teach the arts, “of which some serve to maintain life, some to adorn

it, and others to regulate it.”

19 Sen., Ad Marciam 18.1. “You are going to enter a city that is common to gods and to men,

which embraces the whole universe, is held by fixed and eternal laws, which rolls along the unwearied

courses of the heavenly bodies.”

20 Hine, “Rome, the Cosmos, and the Natural Questions,” 68. Hine concludes that for Seneca,

to study astronomy is to enter an “in-between” space shared by the divine and mortal. However,

from Seneca’s text, it seems less likely that Seneca is referring to a liminal space between man and

god, but rather that he promises Lucilius direct access to the divine in heaven through the study of

astronomy.

22 Hope Ladd

Not only does Seneca propose astronomical study as a means to

engage with the divine in heaven, but he equally believes that the pursuit

of astronomy leads to a deeper encounter with one’s own soul. 21 As

Seneca explained to Lucilius in the preface to the Naturales Quaestiones,

the soul comes from heaven and longs to return to the contemplation of

those things from which it came (reverti ad illa, quorum fuit, Ep.65.16). 22

In identifying heaven as the origin of the human soul, Seneca implies

that for man to contemplate heaven is also to contemplate himself, his

own origin, and his very purpose for existence, since, as Seneca tells

Lucilius, for man to revert to the contemplation of heaven is to engage

with a divine mandate that he spend his life doing so. Seneca explains

in de Otio that ad haec quaerenda natus, aestima quam non multum acceperit

temporis, etiam si illud totum sibi vindicat. 23 Not only does man engage with

himself when he studies astronomy, but he also engages with the innate

purpose in life given to him by nature. Accordingly, Seneca’s view

of astronomy is that it brings man into better self-knowledge, which

propels him toward further development as a Stoic proficiens. Since, for

the proficiens, the highest purpose is to live according to nature, his

Stoic journey is most effectively advanced by engaging with that which

unites nature and the human soul. For Seneca, that unity is found in

astronomy.

From here, there still remains an apparent tension between Seneca’s

two motivations for astronomy. Escape from worldly troubles, on

the one hand, seems like a stark break with, and withdrawal from, re-

21 Setaioli, “Seneca and the Divine,” 333. Setaioli discusses at length the degree to which Seneca

saw the soul as “a particle of the divine” and thus concluded that better knowledge of the soul is

better knowledge of god.

22 Tracy, "Fallentia Sidera: The Failure of Astronomical Escapism in Lucan," 639. Tracy also comments

on the connection between heaven and human life. He notes that the stars serve a practical

benefit to sailors in navigation and farmers in their agricultural cycle.

23 Sen., De Otio 5.7. “(since) man was born to seek after these things (the study of the universe),

think about how little time he has received, even if he should claim the whole thing for himself.”

Astral Seneca

23

ality, while engagement with heaven, on the other, seems to be a purposeful

recognition of reality. However, a reconsideration of what Seneca

means by “escape” can help to reconcile these seemingly opposing

objectives. When he speaks to Lucilius about escaping from the world,

he does not mean an escape from reality, but rather a rejection of the

notion that earthly, temporal, immediate reality is the only existing reality.

For Seneca, the earthly and temporal world is not the only realm

of reality, and a full understanding of reality must include an understanding

of (but not a slavery to) the temporal world and a more privileged

engagement with the intellectual, heavenly, and eternal aspects

of reality. Consequently, an escape from earthly trouble is not a break

from reality, since there is so much more to reality than merely the affairs

of human society or the personal struggles of a human being. The

escape of the mind from the world is not a withdrawal into a state of

intellectual retreat, but rather an entrance into a full understanding

of reality. According to Seneca, to focus only on earthly things is the

real withdrawal, while the escape of the mind is what actually gives the

proficiens full access to reality. Consider Letter 65 again, where Seneca

touches on this very point of withdrawal: Interdicis mihi inspectione rerum

naturae, a toto abductum redigis in partem? Ego non quaeram quae sint initia

universorum?... Vetas me caelo interesse, id est iubes me vivere capite demisso? 24

Seneca makes it clear that escaping from temporal trials is not escaping

from reality but rather making space for a more complete engagement

with reality. True, the mind of the Stoic does escape from very real

troubles, but he does so while maintaining a firm grasp on reality itself.

Seneca’s twofold presentation of astronomical contemplation as both

escape and engagement is reconcilable in a productive way.

24 Sen., Ep. 65.19-20. “Do you prevent me from the inquiry of nature, and do you reduce me to a

part of it after dragging me away from the whole thing? Do I not get to ask what are the beginnings

of the whole world? Do you forbid me to partake in heaven, that is, do you order me to live with my

head downcast?”

24 Hope Ladd

This simultaneous escape and engagement through astronomical

study is not only a helpful exercise for the proficiens during his life but is

also a foreshadowing of the eventual and inevitable death of the Stoic.

This death will be the ultimate culmination of escape from bodily pain

and engagement with heavenly reality. Seneca often makes this connection

and uses it as a means to banish the fear of death. For instance,

in Letter 65, Seneca concludes his discussion of astronomical contemplation

with an explanation to Lucilius of why he does not fear death,

but actually sees it as a means of ultimate freedom. He says,

Numquam me caro ista compellet ad metum, numquam ad indignam bono

simulationem; numquam in honorem huius corpusculi mentiar. Cum visum

erit, distraham cum illo societatem; et nunc tamen, dum haeremus,

non erimus aequis partibus socii: animus ad se omne ius ducet. Contemptus

corporis sui certa libertas est. 25

First, he rejects the thought of fearing for his bodily health (numquam…

compellet ad metum), then claims that care for his body will never lead

him to be dishonest (numquam…mentiar), since the integrity of his body

is of so little value to him relative to the integrity of his soul. He then

explains that not only will his death be a deliberate severance with his

body, but that this severance comes from a contempt of the body that

leads to freedom (contemptus…libertas est). This freedom is the same type

of freedom that Seneca promised earlier to those who spend their time

contemplating heaven, except that it is a more extreme and final form

of that freedom. As such, the Stoic’s escape and engagement through

astronomical study is a form of progress on the Stoic journey not only

because it is beneficial to the living soul, but also because it is a mild

25 Sen., Ep. 65.22. “Never will this body of mine compel me to fear, never will it drive me to a

shameful imitation of a good man, never will I lie in order to help this trivial body. When it seems

right, I will destroy my union with it, and yet, now, while we cling to one another, we will not be in

a partnership with equal roles: the mind will be the judge of everything. Contempt of one’s body is a

freedom you can trust.”

Astral Seneca

25

form of preparation for death, an event which should be welcomed by

the Stoic.

In a similar way, Seneca uses astronomy as a tool of consolation

used by those grieving the loss of a loved one. Just as a Stoic should

not lament his own death, he also should not lament that of another

person. This comes up especially in de Consolatione ad Polybium, where

Seneca tells Polybius not to mourn his brother, because his brother’s

condition is better in the heavens than it was on earth:

fruitur nunc aperto et libero caelo, ex humili atque depresso in eum emicuit

locum, quisquis ille est, qui solutas vinculis animas beato recipit sinu,

et nunc libere illic vagatur omniaque rerum naturae bona cum summa

voluptate perspicit. Erras: non perdidit lucem frater tuus, sed sinceriorem

sortitus est. 26

Here, Seneca’s consolation is that Polybius’ brother is participating in

the very activity that Seneca encourages for every Stoic during his lifetime

– having escaped from earthly affairs (ex humili atque depresso), he

fully engages with and enjoys heaven (fruitur nunc aperto et libero caelo).

Since Polybius’ brother is not in a state of suffering, but has actually

escaped it, Seneca argues that there is no need for the survivor to put

himself through earthly torment in grief. The death of a loved one, Seneca

says, is a promise of the freedom and certainty of death to come,

and the survivor can look ahead to later joining the loved one who has

died: Quid fata deflemus? Non reliquit ille nos sed antecessit. Est, mihi crede,

magna felicitas in ipsa necessitate moriendi. 27 In this way, Seneca presents

26 Sen., Ad Polybium 9.8. “Now he is delighting in the open and unconstrained heavens, he has

leapt up from an obscure and lowly place toward that place - whatever that place is - which receives

the souls which are freed from bondage in its happy embrace, and now he freely wanders there and

looks out at the whole wealth of nature with the greatest delight. You are wrong: your brother

hasn’t lost his life, but he has gained a purer one.”

27 Sen., Ad Polybium 9.9. “Why are we mourning his fate? He didn’t leave us, but he has gone

ahead of us. Trust me, there is great happiness in the actual necessity of dying.”

26 Hope Ladd

death as both a final manifestation of the heavenly contemplation done

on earth, the ultimate simultaneous escape and engagement, and the

final step in the life of the Stoic proficiens.

Seneca values astronomical study as something with a far deeper

purpose than mere satisfaction of curiosity. He tells Lucilius of its manifold

purposes for emotional enlivenment, intellectual and spiritual enlightenment,

engagement with the divine and with the full extent of reality,

and fruitful preparation of eventual death. Further, Seneca presents

each purpose for studying the heavens as one that helps the proficiens advance

in his Stoic journey toward that coming day of death. In this way,

the apparently conflicting motivations for studying astronomy can be

reconciled, and Seneca makes a field of intellectual study into something

far more than that—something that affects the heart, mind, and soul of

the inquirer, and something that grants him freedom from earthly distress

and access to elements of the divine, both in heaven and in his own

soul. For Seneca, by studying astronomy, the Stoic proficiens achieves

all these ends and fulfills the very purpose for which he was made.

Astral Seneca

27

28 Hope Ladd

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gloyn, Liz. "Show Me the Way to Go Home: A Reconsideration of Seneca’s

de Consolatione ad Polybium." The American Journal of Philology 135,

no. 3 (2014): 451-80. http://0-www.jstor.org.library.hillsdale.edu/

stable/24560261.

Hine, Harry M. "Rome, the Cosmos, and the Emperor in Seneca's Natural

Questions." The Journal of Roman Studies 96 (2006): 42-72. http://0-

www.jstor.org.library.hillsdale.edu/stable/20430488.

Jones, Alexander. “The Stoics and the Astronomical Sciences.” In the

Cambridge Companion to The Stoics, edited by Brad Inwood. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Limburg, Florence Julia Gabriella. “Aliquid ad Mores: The Prefaces

and Epilogues of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones,” 2007. https://

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=ddu&AN=2E92DEDBC55072D3&site=eds-live.

Sandbach, F.H. The Stoics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company,

Inc., 1989.

Seneca. Epistles, Volume I: Epistles 1-65. Translated by Richard M. Gummere.

Loeb Classical Library 75. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1917.

Seneca. Moral Essays, Volume II: De Consolatione ad Marciam. De Vita

Beata. De Otio. De Tranquillitate Animi. De Brevitate Vitae. De Consolatione

ad Polybium. De Consolatione ad Helviam. Translated by John W.

Basore. Loeb Classical Library 254. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1932.

Seneca. Natural Questions, Volume I: Books 1-3. Translated by Thomas

H. Corcoran. Loeb Classical Library 450. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1971.

Astral Seneca

29

Setaioli, Aldo. "Seneca and the Divine: Stoic Tradition and Personal

Developments." International Journal of the Classical Tradition 13, no. 3

(2007): 333-68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30222152.

Tracy, Jonathan. "Fallentia Sidera: The Failure of Astronomical Escapism

in Lucan." American Journal of Philology 131, no. 4 (2010): 635-661.

muse.jhu.edu/article/407740.

Wagoner, Robert. "Seneca on Moral Theory and Moral Improvement."

Classical Philology 109, no. 3 (2014): 241-62. doi:10.1086/676292.

White, Michael J. “Stoic Natural Philosophy (Physics and Cosmology).”

In the Cambridge Companion to The Stoics, edited by Brad Inwood.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

30 Cameron Miguel

Exordium Extremi

Cameron Miguel

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Borne by cracks bound to sky, a bond was forged,

entwining forever you and I;

beneath clay tiles, where no soul will see, where

love was made, that broke us free.

with Dolos as guide, we mastered deceit, we sons

of Apollo and Aphrodite:

burn the bronze off my heart through acid kisses,

against crumbling stone walls;

between heated palm-presses we beg, I for you,

and in turn you for me;

possessed by that son of Aphrodite, made manic

by bacchic embrace; those

two brought me to a muse, whose shade will haunt

the halls of my dreams.

“be mine”—our arms wrapped, despite shortened

time. so I may bask in insanity.

we fashioned a promise, forged in Tartarean fire

to meet again below the amber sun.

breathless in Phoenician sand, I wept and thought,

I’d never see you again.

begging through nightless days, for a sign from

the Moerae, that I’d kiss you again.

while my time’s second decade dawned over me

I dreamt myself in Hades.

Exordium Extremi

31

so goes the lament I sang, to his majesty, my hope

to return you to me:

“King for whom the underworld’s named

I seek neither glory

or unneeded fame.

Queen who reigns over all that grows,

permit my seedlings,

new berth to be sewn.

I’ll cut no corners with my desperate prayer

even if the result’s

my soul on a pyre.

I only want my heart to soar once more;

to be untethered from

this black terran floor.

to avoid the grieving fields, where I’ll be

if you’ll deny me

my single plea.

a love long lost, who refuses to leave

my fractured memory, who

makes it hard to breathe.

our souls will reside in your kingdom

someday. just as all

life that blossoms;

time is all that separates he and I—

I beg for an opportunity

to love him, before I die.

without his light-giving smile, I’ve

been dead beyond my time,

join us, so I may thrive.”

32 Cameron Miguel

Thus is the plea sung only in my dreams, to blessed

Persephone and her Hades.

Danaus’ daughters dropped their metallic sieven

bowls; Atys and his fruit tree

wilted at my splintered soul, Alecto eased Salmoneus’

pain to watch the decision,

the exsanguine shades were stiff as stone now.

those rulers of Tartarean soil

deliberated my case before turning to me and they said:

“You may have him, however

once you wake in your world, a price will be paid with time.”

I woke from their words, and heard

that voice I thought would never return, to grace my

ears; how soft the sound of my name

from his lips: a whisper to let through Bacchus’ breath

was all that I needed. I still hear

the vibrant call of his soul, cross silken concrete roads.

how cruel that king of the dead

how foolish I was to prepare for the debt I owe.

I must wait to hear my name sung

by his lips, for eternity, fighting to find him

in an abyss I can’t escape.

at least there’s time in this shadowy box, time,

more than I can waste,

less than I can hope to grasp for now.

to have my patience

tested, teased, betrayed by the gods, to have my heart

unwound and made into thread

on the Fates’ line, how grand, how painful, to be

left like this, with no hope.

Exordium Extremi

33

a glass of the Lethe is all it would take, or maybe

I shouldn’t have looked back

in the first place.

ASTRONAUTILIA

1.1-37

this here voyage

of mine

through the

vacuous cosmos

34

The following translation is the opening of the Astronautilia, an

epic poem in 6,600 lines of Homeric Greek and styled on the Odyssey,

but passing through the stars and amongst the various aliens—it is the

first-person account of Oudeis (“No-one”), a space-captain from Earth

who travels the universe in pursuit of the cosmos-observing sheep,

stolen by Mandys. We have the poem in the dialect of Homeric Greek

thanks to Franta, an in-narrative accomplice of Oudeis who is a skunk

made from brain matter serving as the crew’s universal translator

throughout. Franta thought producing the poem as close to a Homeric

epic as possible, i.e. in its very idiom, would exalt and popularize the

story.

The poem is in reality the magnum opus of a little-known Czech

writer, Jan Křesadlo. Born in 1926 in Czechoslovakia, Václav Pinkava

(whose literary works were chiefly published under pseudonyms, Křesadlo

the one he is best known for) proved to be a twentieth-century

Renaissance man, accomplished in a dozen fields and more than 20

languages. He wrote the Astronautilia in six months shortly before his

death and it was posthumously published in 1995. It appears in Greek

alongside his hexametric Czech, though it is the former I translate, also

in that meter. The text has received virtually no scholarly attention, and

my English translation of the whole text from the Greek is the first of its

kind, the following being an improved version in the works. The interested

reader would do well to compare Od. 9.12-24, 364-7, which loom

large in Oudeis’ preamble.

The Greek text is published as a facsimile, which I transcribe here

preserving any oddities in punctuation or diacritics.

Ben Broadbent

Wadham College, University of Oxford

Ἀρχόμενος πρῶτον Μουσῶν χορῷ εἰξ Ἑλικῶνος

εὔχομαι ἐκπάγλως καὶ Ἀπόλλωνι ἄνακτι

Μουσάων ἄρχοντι καλῷ ἰδὲ δαίμον’ ἀοιδῶν

ὄφρ’ εἴποιεν ἐμὴν κόσμου γλαφυροῖο πόρευσιν

θαύματα πλανήτων καὶ ἀνδρῶν ὄμβριμα ἔργα

οἷα τε δειξάμενοι πλέομεν δνόφερον διὰ χάσμα

πλοίαρχος μὲν ἐγὼ καὶ ἐμοὶ ἐρίηρες ἑταῖροι

Μανδὺν ζητοῦντες καὶ μῆλον κοσμοθεωροῦν.

Ἔσπετε νῦν ἡμῖν τάδε, ὦ θεὸς, ἠὲ θέαιναι.

Ποῦ ἀρχήν γε λάβοιμι τίδε πρότερον καταλέξω;

Εἰρωτᾷς ὅτις εἰμί τέ μοι κλυτὸν οὔνομα ζητεῖς.

Τοίγαρ ἐγὼ φήσω· ἐπεὶ ἔσσομενός γε ἱκάνω

οὐχί κεν ἐκφωνεῖν δύνασαις, χαλεπὸν δὲ τόδ’ ἐστι.

Ἀλλά γε εἵνεκα σεῖο θέλω ἑτέρως καλέσασθαι.

Οὐδένα πλοίαρχόν περ ἐπίκλησιν κεκαλήσθω

ὥς εἰν βίβλοισιν μυστηρικὸν ἄνδρα καλοῦσι

τολμηρόν· Νήμω καπιτᾶνον Ῥωμαϊστί τε.

Οὕτως μὲν κέλεσον μετατιθεὶς ἥματα πάντα.

Ἀστύνομος μὲν ἐγὼ έν ἐσσυμένῳ πτολιέθρῳ

κοίραμος ἀστυνόμων ἰδὲ καὶ ταγός· μοὶ δὲ πίθονται

πάντες ἀστυνόμοι ἐν Μητροπόλει καλιπύργῳ.

Αὐτάρ μοι λύπη γέγονεν χαλεπὴ δέτε πρῆξις

Astronautilia 1.1-37

37

I, in beginning, do firstly the Helicon’s chorus of Muses

invocate fev’rish in fashion, and also the lordly Apollo,

radiant ruler of Muses, the god of the rhapsodists likewise:

that they will speak this here voyage of mine through the vacuous cosmos,

wonderments of and on worlds and the mightily makings man-madeth,

all that was flourished to we, as we sail through the tenebrous chasm,

I as the admiral in fact, and along with my trusty companions,

searching for Mandys and partner, the sheep that is cosmos-observing.

Tell now before we these matters, oh god, or conversely, goddesses!

Where should I take my beginning and what should I catalogue foremost?

You do inquire who I am, and you search for my glorious namesake.

Thusly I’ll make my reply: but because I arrive from the future,

helpless you’d be to pronounce it, in light of its being a hardship.

Though it’s my wish on behalf of yourself I be otherwise titled.

Oudeis the Admiral – permit me the right to be named such a namesake,

like how they name that one man who’s mysterious, daredevil also,

through his own books: in the language of Latin he’s Nemo the Captain.

Such is the way in translation I’d namesake myself at each instance.

Warden, in fact, I am going to be in an imminent city,

chief of the wardens and overlord too: they’d abide by my bidding,

all of the wardens of beautiful-towered Metropolis city.

But – then arose to me grief, and a dangerous mission besides it.

Ποῦ δ’ ἀρχήν γε λάβοιμι τίδε πρότερον καταλέξω;

δυσμαθεὶς τόδε πρῆγμα ἔγωγε κακῶς συνίημι:

Ἐξῑσωόσεάς φασιν φυσκοῖσιν ἔνειναι

λυγράς· κβαντιακῆς γε θεωρίης ἀπόδειξιν

Αὐτὰρ γράμματα λυγρά γ’ ἐξισώσων χαλεπαίνων

δείκνυται ὣς τίδε δεῖ εἶναι ὂν κοσμοθεωροῦν.

Εἰ μὲν οὔτις ἔῃ γε φύσις κόσμον ὁροῶσα

κόσμος εὐρυπόρος οὔκ ἀν δυνάσαιτο ὑπάρχειν

οὐ χρόνος οὐ ζακενὸν οὐκ ὕλη οὔτε τι ἄλλο.

Ἀλλά τι μὲν σκοπιὴν αἰὲν δεῖ ἔχειν παρατηροῦν.

Τίς κεν ἀνθρώπων τὸ λάβειν θνητῶν δυνάσαιτο;

Οἵδε σοφοὶ ἐσόφιζον ἀεὶ περὶ κοσμοσκοπιῆς

τίς γε φύσις εἶη καὶ ζῷον κοσμοθεωροῦν

ἀλλ’ οὐ δή τις πρῆξις ἐφαίνετο τοῖς φρονέουσιν.

Αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα τὸ πρῆγμα φάνη συμβλήματι μούνῳ.

Astronautilia 1.1-37

39

Where should I take my beginning and what should I catalogue foremost?

Poorly I grasp this affair that is grasped with dyscognitive thinking.

Gossip is given, reports that equations which desecrate physics

can be done: evidence, proof, of the theory of quantum mechanics.

Yet do the harrowing x’s and y’s of atrocious equations

prove that there must be some consciousness-thing that is cosmos-observing.

Were there in truth no such entity there to inspect out the cosmos,

wholly impossible being would be for the cosmos of wide-ways,

nor would for time and its correlate, space, nor for matter and all things.

Rather it’s always essential to station some vigil as viewer.

Which of mortiferous mankind has qualification to do this?

Wise men from time immemorial wondered the cosmos-observance,

which was the creature and actual entity cosmos-observing,

though a solution was found to be failing those brooding it over:

randomly, totally chanceful, did something then happen to change that.

40

Brendan Kay

MAGICAL SPACES &

SPHERES OF RITUAL IN THE

GREEK MAGICAL PAPYRI

Brendan Kay

Dalhousie University

It is common practice, especially regarding premodern eras, to recognize

symbolic divisions in the world—breaking down a given historical

moment into “spheres” or “spaces.” Generally, these spheres are

discussed in reference to worldly, societal distinctions (most important

to this paper are the “public” and “private” spheres), 1 but the same terminology

is often used to cite cosmic and supernatural fault-lines. 2 This

model provides a useful modularity to historical observation: we can

examine how a given historical element manifests throughout a single

“sphere” (e.g., “the influence of cuisine in public life”) and also how the

spheres, representing various social spaces, interact with each other,

interpenetrating and reacting as a social web. Further still, we can examine

how the supernatural, cosmic spheres inform the functioning

of societies, especially in discussions of antique spirituality. Notably,

in the ancient world, where supernatural events were thought to have

(and consequently did have) profound effects on individuals and empires,

religious rituals designed to affect these unpredictable forces

1 We might also contrast these societal spaces against “nature” or, on a different tack, compare

“secular spaces” to “religious spaces.”

2 For example, the tripartite cosmic division of “celestial” versus “earthly” versus “chthonic”—or

the still more abstract “sacred” versus “profane.” For more details on this, see Christopher Faraone,

“The Collapse of Celestial and Chthonic Realms in a Late Antique ‘Apollonian Invocation’ (PGM I

262–347),” Chapter, In Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions,

edited by Ra'anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004), p. 231.

Magical Spheres

41

permeated the various spheres of society. In many ways, ritual actually

becomes the key factor in defining the borders between public and private

space. However, in the recorded rituals of the Greek Magical Papyri

(abbreviated as PGM)—a collection of scrolls drafted in Greco-Roman

Egypt, ranging in origin from the 1st century BCE to 6th century CE—

we can see a fascinating intrusion into this already multi-layered web

of semiotic spaces: the creation of what I shall dub “magical space.”

Magical space is temporarily delineated by a ritual practitioner for the

purpose of executing a spell and, during the time of its delineation, exists

symbolically outside the standard societal and cosmic structure. In

this paper I shall review the major characteristics of public and private

ritual spheres and demonstrate how magical space temporarily disrupts

these paradigms in order to extend its own ritual power. Though

the PGM were originally written over a huge swathe of time, my investigation

will focus on the ritual practices of late imperial Rome—specifically

in the 3rd–4th centuries CE, as most of the extant PGM (and all

that I specifically reference) originate from this period. 3

Before examining the ritual delineation of magical space, it will be

beneficial to briefly review the formation of other ritual spheres, beginning

with the “public sphere” in the late Roman empire. This is a huge

topic, spanning numerous local cultures and religions, so my examination

will be largely gestural—noting common rituals and symbolisms.

Firstly, we might take the widespread and widely attested tradition of

performing founding rituals for new towns. In his chapter “Building

Ritual Agency,” Andrew Wilburn discusses several such founding rites,

ranging from sacrifices made to appease any supernatural forces that

3 The vast majority of the PGM were uncovered in collections that had been buried around Graeco-Roman

Egypt in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. These are the “Theban Magical Library (3rd-4th

c. CE), the “Hermonthis Magical Archive” (4th c. CE), the “Kellis Magical Archive,” and an outlier in

the “Multilingual Magical Archive (5th-6th c. CE). Jacco Dieleman, “The Greco-Egyptian Magical

Papyri,” Chapter in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, edited by David Frankfurter, (Leiden:

Brill, 2019): pp. 292-296.

42 Brendan Kay

hold sway in the area to minor divination rituals inquiring the best layout

for the new town. 4 We have numerous descriptions and archaeological

examples of sacrificial pits (mundī)—often located at the nuclei

of towns—in which citizens would place the first fruits of a harvest

and various sacrificial objects. 5 Though many of these founding rituals

would have occurred well before the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, when

most of the PGM were buried, Wilburn notes that these sites bear indications

of ritual deposition over substantial periods of time, so we

might infer that the re-enactment and symbolic influence of these rituals

extended well past their initial execution. 6 We might also look to

the famous legend of the founding of Rome, which obviously held sway

in the imaginations of Romans for centuries. Herein, Romulus uses a

bronze plow to delineate the new borders of the city by cutting them

into the ground. 7

These rituals, symbolically speaking, are the establishment of an

urban area, or public sphere, in contrast to the wilderness that existed

before. We might also phrase this act as the imposition of civilized

order over natural chaos. 8 The bounds of the city, no matter how porous

they actually are, symbolically hold back the disorder of the natural

world, just as a house symbolically shelters its inhabitant from all

external troubles. 9 All varieties of public ritual thereafter—commonly:

parades and processions, festivals, and variations of group sacrifice

4 Wilburn, “Building Ritual Agency,” 560-563.

5 Wilburn, 561.

6 Wilburn, 561.

7 Wilburn, 563.

8 Wilburn cites the legacy of the Ancient Egyptian cosmological perspective that order descended

from the King’s divine protection. Only in the ordered bounds of Egyptian civilization, of which

the pharaoh’s physical person was the nucleus, would a person be safe from the chaotic, demonic

creatures in the desert. This legacy would have continued to hold sway in Graeco-Roman Egypt. See

Wilburn, 560 & 580-581.

9 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 66-68.

Magical Spheres

43

open to any accepted member of the public sphere—symbolically reinforce

and renew the implicit claim of civilized space to orderliness.

Though I acknowledge the extreme variation and nuance of ritual practice

throughout the regions and religions of the Roman Empire in the

3rd and 4th centuries CE, I also feel confident in the blanket statement

that most public rituals, no matter their overt goal, implicitly reinforce

the symbolic boundaries of public space, simply by nature of being executed

within it. In this way, the public sphere is self-reinforcing against

the natural sphere.

We might now turn to urban domestic spaces, which define themselves

in contrast to the public sphere, just as the public did to the natural.

Again, as we saw in the foundation of a new town, various sacrificial

rituals were frequently employed in the construction of a new building

or home, influencing everything from the laying of a foundation to the

completion of the roof. Wilburn writes:

Ritual practices and decoration could impact each of the elements of architecture—power

objects can be deposited beneath the house as part of the

foundation, constructed into the surface of walls and floors, or crown the

building as part of the roof. Beneath, around and above, ritual activity reinforces

and even realizes the utilitarian function of each architectural element.

(Wilburn, 558)

Wards of various kinds were built into every part of a new structure,

augmenting a house’s natural sheltering capacity. These wards (which

were especially focused around the liminal weak points of a house’s

protective aegis: the door, windows, and chimney) would stave off any

malign forces—be they human or spiritual—that tried to enter or supernaturally

affect those inside.

These initial securing and sanctifying inscriptions, depositions,

and rituals were again renewed and reinforced by a staggeringly broad

44 Brendan Kay

category of domestic rituals. In an article on late antique ritual practice,

David Frankfurter notes that “domestic religion, in its embracing

of family line, health, and fortune, is deeply concerned with the protection

of space: the absolute division of outside from inside through

(a) threshold rites and protective symbols…and (b) the security of the

interior through exorcistic rites.” 10 Domestic rituals might be minor

devotional sacrifices and prayers (especially miniaturized versions

of public rituals following the shift of ritual practice away from temple-spaces

in late antiquity), 11 but Frankfurter notes that these rituals

“invariably extend from quotidian activities.” 12 For example, innumerable

minor household rites are simply reworkings of normal actions, like

sitting down to a meal as a family, lighting lamps at sundown, blowing

out lamps at sunrise, stoking a fire, wiping one’s feet before entering

a house, etc. 13 These daily offices implicitly recognize the stability and

security of the home simply through the ritualized acts of dwelling. 14

This pattern is almost identical to what we observed in the creation of a

public sphere: an explicit delineation of a new space (in contrast to the

pre-existing semiotic sphere) followed by frequent rituals that implicitly

renew the initial symbolic act of separation and protection.

Before continuing to the discussion of magical space, I would be

remiss not to clarify that, despite the explicit distinction between them,

the domestic and public spheres have huge areas of ritual overlap and

interpenetration. As Frankfurter says, “[W]e also must confront intermediary

spaces like courtyards, neighborhoods, marketplaces, and

cemeteries that oscillate in function and significance.” 15 Funerary rites

10 Frankfurter, “The Interpenetration of Ritual Spaces in Late Antique Religions,” 200.

11 Smith, “Trading Places,” 21-23.


13 Frankfurter, 202-203.

14 Wilburn, “Building Ritual Agency,” 558; Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 26-27.


Magical Spheres

45

are an especially poignant example of this overlap: they are a deeply

personal and intimate set of rituals, performed by family members

for family members (as well as for the health and fortune of the family

line) but executed in a public space with members of the public in attendance.

Though they are carefully symbolically divided, the public and

private spheres do profoundly affect each other. Moreover, as we see in

Smith’s writings on the miniaturization and decentralization of temple

sacrifice, rituals from either sphere can, over time, be assimilated into

or out of the home. 16

Finally, let us turn to the Greek Magical Papyri and the creation

of “magical space.” Within the many spells of the PGM, formulae frequently

(though subtly) instruct the ritual practitioner in the symbolic

delineation of a new ritual space. A ritual’s “spatial claim” can be made

in a huge variety of ways. One could certainly argue for or against the

legitimacy of some more abstract techniques, but for the purposes of

this paper I shall maintain an inclusive perspective in my examination

of this phenomenon. For example, one spell asks the mage to go to a

spot on the Nile floodplain and dig a circular trench around a sacrificial

fire. 17 Another bids the reader to “[t]ake broad cords of papyrus,

tie them to the four corners of the room so that they form an X. In the

middle of the X attach a ring-shaped mat made from single-stemmed

wormwood.” 18 Yet another asks the individual to spread a linen sheet on

the roof of their house before lying atop it. 19 There are nearly endless

idiosyncrasies to each instruction, but a huge portion of the spells do

indeed specify some way to physically delineate the space of the ritual.

Some of the most common instructions include spreading pure linen

over a surface, sanctifying the ground by pouring libations, construct-

16 Smith, “Trading Places,” 21-26.

17 PGM IV. 26-51.

18 PGM IV. 1085-1104.

19 PGM IV. 154-285.

46 Brendan Kay

ing and encircling altars or shrines, and smearing various substances

on key areas of the location. We might also identify some less obvious

techniques: remaining, for the duration of a ritual, within the pool of

light produced by a sacred lamp (common in lamp divination), scattering

paraphernalia over or beneath a surface important to the ritual, 20

or utilizing excessive incense smoke as a visual obscurant within an

otherwise mundane enclosed space. 21 “Magical space,” though most

frequently delineated at areas within the ordered public and private

spheres, renders itself symbolically separate from each in order to practice

cult rituals non-standard to either. In contrast to Romulus’ rendering

of civilized Rome from chaotic wilderness, such spatial claims symbolically

declare that, within their bounds, the standard order and use

of the location is being temporarily disrupted.

In “Trading Places,” J.Z. Smith notes that the vast majority of PGM

spells that actually specify where they are intended to be performed occur

within the house or another private space. 22 One of the key reasons

for this is, of course, that these rituals were illicit at the time—persecuted

by the Roman officials in control of Graeco-Roman Egypt. 23 Even

the rituals that do demand an outdoor setting generally imply a natural

environment (not an urban one) and never suggest the presence of nonparticipants

or onlookers. In fact, famously, many formulae request

that their content be kept as hidden knowledge that only an initiated

few can access. Such pledges to secrecy are frequent refrains throughout

the formulae. For example, lines 850–855 of PGM IV read, “I swear

to you by the holy gods and the heavenly gods not to share the proce-

20 For example, the olive twigs mentioned at line 220 of PGM V. 213-303.

21 See the copious burnt offerings in PGM IV. 1716-1870. C.f. Joachim Friedrich Quack, "Postulated

and Real Efficacy in Late Antique Divination Rituals," 54.

22 Smith, “Trading Places,” 23.

23 Fraser, “(Magic in) Roman Antiquity,” 120.

Magical Spheres

47

dure of Solomon with anyone.” 24 As such, we can confidently say that

these spells are decidedly not congruent with the standard rituals of the

public sphere, even though some borrow miniaturized sacrificial techniques

from once public rituals. 25 Moreover, semantically (though perhaps

pedantically, as this distinction was not the focus of his article), I

disagree with Smith’s statement that these rituals take place within purified

“domestic space.” 26 If we work from the earlier supposition that

ritual is a key factor in defining of which semiotic “sphere” a given physical

topos is considered part, 27 then we must consider that the domestic

space is disrupted by the delineation of a magical space.

These spells are incongruent with the domestic sphere because the

goals and techniques of PGM rituals are quite different from the aforementioned

goals of domestic religion. Where domestic rituals—and

public rituals, for that matter—implicitly reinforce an orderly “normality”

of domestic life and civilization, the PGM rituals promote a

transgressive liminality between order and chaos; they gain power by

leveraging the so-called “weirdness factor” of ritual and crossing lines

of typical behavior at the risk of hubris. Further, the PGM spells are,

as a whole, radically self-interested—they are often performed in order

to gain some kind of supernatural power, access divine knowledge,

or exert control over others. 28 These goals contrast sharply against the

family-centered, defensive, and generally prophylactic rituals of stan-

24 See for additional examples PGM I.130-132, PGM IV.734-750 and PGM XII. 401-444.

25 C.f: Smith, “Trading Places,” 24. This being said, an important observation that falls outside

the scope of this paper is that the public and private spheres do actually have their own initiation

rites. In many cases, only the privileged citizen class would have access to so-called public ritual

spaces (namely temples and shrines), and the rituals of marriage have clear initiatic overtones: the

acceptance of a new individual into a domestic group.

26 Smith, “Trading Places,” 23.

27 After all, were one to set up and hallow a public shrine or place of worship within a house and

stop inhabiting it as a dwelling place, surely we would no longer consider that building part of the

“domestic sphere.”

28 Dieleman, “The Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri,” 296.

48 Brendan Kay

dard domestic religion, though there are some overlaps in the PGM’s

formulae for healing and recipes for protective phylacteries. 29

We may observe a few more points of overlap and interpenetration

between the normal ritual spaces of society and the magical spaces of

the PGM. As Smith elucidates in “Trading Places,” the sacrificial elements

and verbal incantations of many PGM spells are miniaturizations

of once public temple practice. As numerous Abrahamic and Pagan religions

proliferated, were augmented, and commingled with each other

in the melting pot of third and fourth century CE Graeco-Roman Egypt,

these religious instabilities left clear marks on the PGM formulae,

which frequently cite syncretized deities and bear marks of successive

modifications over unknown periods of time. 30 In this way, the changing

playing field of public religion has necessarily affected the PGM.

Moreover, we can also observe what seem to be imports from domestic

ritual, like preparing ritual meals and dishes, lighting and extinguishing

candles or lanterns, and ritually washing oneself. 31 By semantically

recognizing magical space as a disruptive parallel to the public and private

societal and ritual spaces of the ancient world, we can more easily

and accurately extend discussions of these spheres to encompass the

PGM formulae.

In this way, magical space—produced by the PGM rituals—delineates

itself from the other semiotic spheres observable in a given historical

moment. This is a temporary and liminal space that, unlike more

permanent public and domestic spaces, is rendered anew during each

29 Frankfurter, “The Interpenetration of Ritual Spaces in Late Antique Religions,” 200; Wilburn,

“Building Ritual Agency,” 568.

30 See the combination of Helios/Horus/Osiris and Set/Typhon at PGM IV. 154-285; consecutive

invocations of Zeus, Helios, Osiris, Isis, Ammon, Isis and more in PGM IV. 2967-3006; Invocation

of “Helios Mithras” at PGM IV. 48; Syncretisms of Helios and Christ (also signaled with “IAŌ” and

“SABAŌTH) throughout the “8th book of Moses”, PGM XIII. 1-343. etc.

31 PGM I. 1-42, PGM I. 262-347, & PGM VII. 429-58 respectively.

Magical Spheres

49

ritual and deconstructed after the ritual’s completion. Distinguishing

magical space as separate from the other kinds of ritual space is largely

a semantic, theoretical change, affecting only how we interpret the

historical record. However, the distinction facilitates broader thematic

comparisons between the unique worldviews and rituals of the PGM

and the cultural and religious milieu of domestic and public ritual in

third and fourth century CE Graeco-Roman Egypt. Highlighting the

attention paid in the PGM formularies to acts of symbolic separation

between the working space of a ritual and the normal paradigmatic

spheres of social and religious practice may, conversely, more solidly

situate one’s understanding of the dialogue and interconnection between

these spheres. In so doing, one accesses a more holistic perspective

of the origin of the PGM and the magi who wrote them.

50 Brendan Kay

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas. New York:

Penguin Books, 2014.

Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including

the Demotic Spells. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Dieleman, Jacco. “Building Ritual Agency: Foundations, Floors, Doors

and Walls.” In Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, vol. 189, edited by

David Frankenfurter, 284-321. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Faraone, Christopher A. “The Collapse of Celestial and Chthonic

Realms in a Late Antique ‘Apollonian Invocation’ (PGM I 262–347).”

In Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions, edited

by Ra'anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed, 213–32.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. doi:10.1017/

CBO9780511497889.014.

Frankfurter, David. “The Interpenetration of Ritual Spaces in Late

Antique Religions: An Overview.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 58,

(2009): 199-210.

Fraser, Kyle. “(Magic in) Roman Antiquity: The Imperial Age.” In The

Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West, ed. David Collins,

115–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Graf, Fritz. “The Magician’s Initiation.” Helios 21. no. 2 (1994): 161-177.

Quack, Joachim Friedrich. "Postulated and Real Efficacy in Late Antique

Divination Rituals." Journal of Ritual Studies 24, no. 1 (2010): 45-

60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44368820.

Smith, Jonathan Z. “Trading Places.” In Ancient Magic and Ritual Power

129, edited by Paul Mirecki, 11-27. Leiden: Brill, 1995.

Magical Spheres

51

Wilburn, Andrew T. “Building Ritual Agency: Foundations, Floors,

Doors and Walls.” In Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic 189, edited by

David Frankenfurter, 555-605. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

52

Devon DeRouen

SARAH POMEROY & THE

HISTORY OF GENDER OF THE

ANCIENT WORLD

Devon DeRouen

College of Liberal Arts at California State University, Long Beach

The historian Sarah Pomeroy helped introduce the history of gender

as a serious subject of study in historiography in the 1970s, establishing

gender history as a significantly influential aspect of classical studies.

In her seminal scholarly work Goddesses, Whores, Wives, And Slaves: Women

in Classical Antiquity, Pomeroy writes, “The story of women of antiquity

should be told now, not only because it is a legitimate aspect of social

history, but because the past illuminates contemporary problems in relationships

between men and women.” 1 Pomeroy’s book was considered

the main turning point in the study of women in ancient history, previously

a largely ignored or glossed over aspect of classical studies. Consequently,

Pomeroy challenged the male-centric approach to history by

demonstrating that women’s history is more than a footnote of obscure

evidence in the ancient world. This essay will examine how gender history

became a pivotal turning point in classical scholarship in the 1970s,

particularly Sarah Pomeroy’s work; discuss the history of gender in ancient

studies the generation after Sarah Pomeroy; and examine modern

debates on ancient gender history.

Sarah Pomeroy (1938-) is an American scholar who served as a

longtime Professor of Classics and made her name in women’s ancient

history. Pomeroy considers the 1975 publication of Women in the Ancient

1 Pomeroy, Goddesses, xvii.

Pomeroy & The History of Gender of the Ancient World

53

World: The Arethusa Papers to have inaugurated the first serious study of

women in antiquity for our time. 2 The Arethusa papers, edited by John

Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan, were an attempt to collect the different, but

sparse, articles of the age that discussed women in antiquity. Pomeroy

contributed a selected bibliography on women in classical antiquity

and a suggested undergraduate reading syllabus. 3 When Pomeroy’s

Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity was first

published in 1975, it gained wide recognition not only in academia but

among lay readership as well. 4 As Pomeroy herself notes in a 1991 work,

“Classics was one of many disciplines to begin developing a subfield of

women's studies in the early 1970s.” 5 While teaching courses on women’s

studies in classical history, Pomeroy was inspired to write Goddesses

when she asked herself “what women were doing while men were active

in all areas traditionally emphasized by classical scholars.” 6 Furthermore,

in her book, Pomeroy writes how she realized that,

The overwhelming ancient and modern preference for political and military

history, in addition to the current fascination with intellectual history, had

obscured the record of those people who were excluded by sex or class from

participation in the political and intellectual life of their societies. 7

This realization, combined with the question she asked herself, is why

she began to write and introduce gender history into “mainstream”

classical scholarship. Having already taught courses on women’s history

and offered scholarly articles on the subject, Pomeroy wrote Goddesses,

Whores, Wives, and Slaves, leading to a major turning point in the

2 Pomeroy, "The Study of Women," 263.

3 Peradotto and Sullivan, “Women in the Ancient World,” 315-373.

4 Pomeroy, Goddesses, xviii.

5 Pomeroy, “The Study of Women,” 263.

6 Pomeroy, Goddesses, xiv.

7 Pomeroy, xiv.

54 Devon DeRouen

history of women in classical antiquity.

In Goddesses, Pomeroy employs the social historical approach to

gender in ancient history. Social history is a historical methodology

that became highly influential on academia in the 1960s and 1970s,

when Pomeroy began her work on women in antiquity. Pomeroy not

only promotes the history of women in antiquity as a significant aspect

of social history, but also believes that it can serve as a history of the

present:

The story of the women of antiquity should be told now, not only because

it is a legitimate aspect of social history, but because the past illuminates

contemporary problems in relationships between men and women. Even

though scientific technology and religious outlook clearly distinguish ancient

culture from modern, it is most significant to note the consistency with

which some attitudes toward women and the roles women play in Western

society have endured through centuries. 8

In constructing the gender approach to women in antiquity, Pomeroy

also employs the notion of intersectionality. Her book, which spans a

period of more than fifteen hundred years, decidedly does not cover

only the women of the ruling class, which is admittedly where most

of our information on women in antiquity is found. When writing

Goddesses, Pomeroy “felt that [her] task was to examine the history of

all women, and to avoid the emphasis on the upper classes in literature.”

9 Consequently, Pomeroy examines women of different strata in

ancient antiquity, including citizens, slaves, freedwomen, immigrants,

poor women, and rich women of an ancient state (e.g. Athens, Sparta,

Rome).

8 Pomeroy, Goddesses, xvii.

9 Pomeroy, xvi.


55

The wide recognition of Sarah Pomeroy’s Goddesses began the introduction

of gender history to mainstream classical studies. In her 1991

paper "The Study of Women in Antiquity: Past, Present, and Future",

Pomeroy asks, “Has the study of women in antiquity become part of

the ‘mainstream?’” 10 In it, she examines the impact the gender approach

had not only on ancient history, but also on the ongoing debates of the

early 1990s of the next generation of specialists in the gender approach

to ancient history. In the 1994 edition of Goddesses, Pomeroy notes while

she did not expect the reception and “long life” that the book has endured,

at the time of its publication, Goddesses was described as “the

first and only scholarly book on its subject in the English language.” 11 It

was widely reviewed in scholarly and popular media, coming about as a

publication in the early development of women’s studies in the field of

classics. 12 Consequently, Goddesses would establish “parameters for subsequent

studies of the history of women in antiquity.” 13 Pomeroy’s 1991

paper "The Study of Women in Antiquity" explores her question of the

position of the gender approach to ancient history in mainstream classical

scholarship. She conducted a survey in October 1990 by examining

articles and reviews published in periodicals that were on display at

the Ashmolean and Bodleian Libraries, assuming the available material

was a random sample. 14 Of the forty-five journals she looked at, twenty-three

included at least one title on women in ancient history. While

she notes the vast majority of the publications fell under the traditional

historical or literary studies, she doubts “that they would have been so

numerous without the inspiration of feminism, however remote from


11 According to Pomeroy in Goddesses (p. iv), the book was also translated into Italian, German,

and Spanish.

12 Pomeroy, Goddesses, iv.

13 Pomeroy, Goddesses, iv.


56 Devon DeRouen

the mind.” 15 Thus, Pomeroy ultimately concludes from her “little survey”

that, by 1990, “the study of women has, indeed, become part, albeit a

very small part, of the mainstream of Classical Studies.” 16

In her 1991 scholarly article "Reconstructing the Ancient Greek

Woman" for the academic periodical Gender and History, Edith Hall gives

a comparative analysis on the generation of historians who employed

the gender approach to ancient history following Pomeroy’s pinnacle

contribution of Goddesses. In the analysis, Hall takes historian Giulia

Sissa, anthropologist Roger Just, and classicist Raphael Sealey to task.

As noted by Hall, only one—Giulia—is a woman academic and a feminist

scholar. Giulia Sissa (1954– ) is an Italian-born classicist whose

1987 work Le corps virginal, published first in French and later in English

under the title Greek Virginity (1990), explores the gender approach

to women in history in classical antiquity through the lens of ancient

medical theory. Hall writes that Sissa’s “book implicitly challenges male

prejudices about the female body and the fetishistic value attached

to female chastity.” 17 By closely examining the contemporary medical

writings of Greek male physicians, Sissa develops the theory that the

ancient Greeks, prior to Christianization, did not have the physiological

concept of the hymen. 18 While Hall generally praises Sissa’s work,

remarking that it “deserves to exert a lasting influence on the study of

women in the ancient world,” 19 Sarah Pomeroy, in her 1991 article The

Study of Women in Antiquity, was far more critical. Pomeroy’s essay

also examines Sissa in addition to Just and Sealy. In regards to Sissa’s

book, Pomeroy dismisses it by stating that “one suspects an opportunistic

attempt to attract the large group of readers interested in wom-

15 Pomeroy, 264.

16 Pomeroy, 264.

17 Hall, "Reconstructing the Ancient Greek Woman", 363.

18 Hall, 363

19 Hall, 364.


57

en’s history.” 20 Pomeroy critically notes that, in order to construct her

thesis, Sissa’s sources are all male-authored and from the male viewpoint.

21 Consequently, Pomeroy writes that “Sissa does not address how

their views might have influenced the lives of actual women.” 22

Hall’s 1991 article discussing the new generation of scholars employing

the gender approach to history includes two male scholars, Raphael

Sealey and Roger Just. Sealey (1927–2013) penned the 1990 work

Women and Law in Classical Greece. The Englishborn Sealey’s book concerns

an assessment of the legal status and treatment of women in classical

Greece. However, despite using the gender approach, he is decidedly

anti-feminist, attacking feminist classical scholarship in Appendix

B of the book. 23 This drew criticism from both Hall and Pomeroy in their

respective 1991 articles. Hall dismisses Sealey as belonging “to the pseudo-objective

school of writing on ancient women.” 24 Regarding women

and Greek law as tackled by Sealey, Hall writes, “Students who want a

general overview of women in the ancient world would still do better to

consult the classic work by Pomeroy.” 25 Pomeroy notes that, while women

since Goddess have made substantial contributions to the study of

Greek women’s legal status, Sealey does not use any of the then-recent

scholarship on it by women scholars. Ultimately, Pomeroy believes that,

considering the content of Sealey’s Women and Law, the title of Sealey’s

book is overall misleading. 26 Both Hall and Pomeroy have slightly more

positively compared Roger Just to Sealey. British-born anthropologist

20 Pomeroy, “The Study of Women,” 267

21 Pomeroy, 265: Pomeroy notes that Sissa ignores female sources like Sappho, “who do provide

perspectives on how the loss of virginity affected women.”

22 Pomeroy, 265.

23 Hall, “Reconstructing the Ancient Greek Woman,” 362. Hall further called Sealey’s attack on

feminist theory in history as “unnecessary.”

24 Hall, 362.

25 Hall, 362. The classic work referred to is (1975).


58 Devon DeRouen

Just (1947–) wrote the 1989 book Women in Athenian Law and Life. His

book concerns the Athenian perception of women in the classical age of

Greece. Pomeroy expresses that unlike Sealey’s work, which also deals

with the legal state of the Athenian woman, Just’s demonstrates that

he is “even-handed in his use of sources.” 27 While she believes that the

book would work for undergraduate students, it has little new to offer

to scholars. 28 Similarly, Hall finds, “It is a useful source-book for the

study of the women of classical Athens by Greekless readers, but there

is very little in the way of new interpretations or ideas.” 29 Hall overall believes,

however, that “neither Just nor Sealey adequately addresses the

problem represented by a certain number of late fifth and early fourth

century sources which express discontent with the lot of women and

articulate arguments for their greater freedom.” 30

In her 1991 article The Study of Women in Antiquity, Sarah Pomeroy

alludes to debates that have yet to be explored. One, she writes, is that

“historians of women would like to know more about...women of various

ethnicities in the Hellenistic Kingdoms and Roman provinces.” 31

Today, the intersectional approach to the study of women in classical

antiquity is one of the main debates of modern scholarship on the gender

approach to history. One of the most recent essays employing the

intersectional approach to gender history was written by Canadian

classicist Gillian Ramsey entitled Hellenistic Women and The Law: Agency,

Identity, and Community (2016). It was part of a series of essays on women

in ancient history Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient

World (2016), edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean Macintosh Turfa.

Ramsey argues in her article that “women’s history of the Hellenistic

27 Pomeroy, 268

28 Pomeroy, 268.

29 Hall, “Reconstructing the Ancient Greek Woman,” 360.

30 Hall, “Reconstructing the Ancient Greek Woman,” 362.

31 Pomeroy, “Study of Women” 266.


59

period can be written as both the micro-history of individuals and on

the broad scale of regional comparisons.” 32 She argues:

Greek colonial expansion in the east meant that the lives of Egyptian and

Babylonian women were drawn into the ambit of Hellenistic society, producing

a constellation of women’s experiences shaped by ethnicity, economic

status, and politics. Ordinary women of all ethnicities whose persons and

stories would have in earlier centuries been obscured by the traditional male

construct of woman…now appear more fully in the Hellenistic evidence with

communities, occupations, and personal situations. 33

Ramsey centers her article on the legal activity of the ordinary Hellenistic

woman, employing the study of both public and private records

to reveal women’s choices concerning Hellenistic law. 34 She also introduces

in her intersectional approach the idea of social mobility, writing

that “the motives behind shifting the gendering of legal action in the

kyreia 35 in a particular Hellenistic community related to the potential

for social mobility and political successes.”

The study of women’s sexuality in classical antiquity has found

its framework in the debate over the female lyric poet Sappho (630–c.

570 BCE). The question of Sappho’s sexuality was discussed as early as

Sarah Pomeroy’s 1975 work Goddesses. The modern debate intersects

with queer/lesbian studies and has caused much scholarly comment

among historians, classicists, philologists, and queer studies scholars.

The 2002 book Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World Readings and

32 Ramsey, Hellenistic Women and The Law, 726.The Hellenistic age lasted from the death of

Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the fall of Cleopatra VII at Actium in 31 BCE. The period succeeds

the Classical Age, and is particularly notable for expanding the Greek powers outside the mainland,

with the Ptolemaic Empire (based in Alexandria, Egypt) and the Seleucid Empire (based in Antioch,

Turkey) the foremost Hellenistic powers in the world.

33 Ramsey, 726.

34 Ramsey, 726.

35 Greek term for “father’s guardianship.”

60 Devon DeRouen

Sources, edited by classicist Laura McClure, includes a major essay on

Sappho and the sexuality debate, entitled "Double Consciousness in

Sappho’s Lyrics" by philologist J.J. Winkler (1943–1990). Winkler begins

his monograph by noting “the relentless trivialization, the homophobic

anxieties and the cheer misogyny…[has] infected so many ancient

and modern responses to her work.” 36 Winkler notes the earlier useful

work of scholars such as the classicist Denys Page (1908–1978), but he

doubts that scholars like Page “would have understood our matrices

(feminist, anthropological, pro-lesbian) given that their expertise was

in such things as ancient metrics rather than ancient mores, whereas

we are able in some good measure to understand theirs.” 37 Ultimately,

Winkler believes older scholars were tone-deaf to the “deeper melodies”

of Sappho’s writing, particularly about sexuality and women. 38 Winkler

explains how the gender approach to history will concern Sappho in his

article:

...the centering on women and sexuality is not quite enough to explain the

mutilated and violent discourse which keeps cropping up around her. After

all Anakreon 39 speaks of the same subjects. A deeper explanation refers to the

subject more than the object of her lyrics—the fact that it is a woman speaking

about women and sexuality. To some audiences this would have been

a double violation of the ancient rules which dictated that a proper woman

was to be silent in the public world (defined as men’s sphere) and that a

proper woman accepted the administration and definition of her sexuality

by her father and her husband. 40

Winkler wants to recover in his article the traces of Sappho’s conscious-

36 Winkler “Double Consciousness in Sappho’s Lyrics,” 39.

37 Winkler, 40.

38 Winkler, 40.

39 A fellow Greek lyric poet who was a male.

40 Winkler, 40.


61

ness in the face of masculine norms of behavior prevalent in previous

scholarship and to an extent in Sappho’s own time, with Sappho’s “attitude

to the public ethic and her allusions to private reality.” 41 Winkler

notes that this is now a familiar topic and problem in today’s feminist

anthropology, asking, “Do women see things in the same way as men?

How can gender specific differences of cultural attitude be discerned

when one group is muted? Does their silence give consent?” 42

In the second edition (2002) of Women in Antiquity: New Assessments

(1995), edited by Richard Hawley and Barbara Levick, classicist Ken

Dowden (1950–) addresses the academic debate of the gender approach

to history that asks, “How much may we learn about Greek women

on the basis of the mythological evidence?” 43 In "Approaching women

through myth: Vital tool or self-delusion?", Dowden writes, “Women

in Greek mythology are of interest both to those studying the place of

women, and to those studying the nature of mythology. In this paper

I ask whether Greek mythology gives the former category good value.”

44 Attempts to determine women’s history, experiences, and identity

through Greek mythology and its literature have been questioned

as early as Pomeroy’s Goddesses 45 , and serious scholarship on the debate

came to fruition in the 1990s. In his article, Dowden outlines his plan to

tackle this newer major debate:

What follows is divided into three parts: in the first part I ask on what suppositions

Greek mythology might be thought to tell us about women; in the

second part I look at the instances of Helen and Clytemnestra; and in the

41 Winkler, 41.

42 Winkler, 41.

43 Dowden “Approaching Women through Myth,” 44.

44 Dowden, 44.

45 Pomeroy, in Goddesses, p. 1, believed that “an investigation of how myths arose and of their

connection to external and psychological realities is an essential prelude to the study of the history

of women.”

62 Devon DeRouen

third I try to set in context the apparently more concrete data that can be

assembled from mythology related to female initiation rites. 46

Dowden contends that it is erroneous to draw suppositions of historical

data and events from the language of ancient texts on Greek mythology.

47 Consequently, while the myths may be traditional, they are “predominantly

fictional and ideological, not documentary.” 48 He ultimately

concludes that “from the perspective of the historical age, mythic material

may enhance our picture of Greek ideas about society in general

and women in particular.” 49 However, he also notes:

It must be said that our knowledge of Greek, and Athenian, society has much

to tell us about the shaping and concerns of Greek Mythology. I thus conclude

that the subject of women in mythology offers better value to the student

of mythology than to the student of women. 50

Sarah Pomeroy’s Goddesses, Whores, Wives, And Slaves: Women in Classical

Antiquity had a significant impact on the study of women in classical

history. Prior to its 1975 publication, the gender approach to ancient

history was little discussed. Her first contributions to the gender approach

were two articles written in the scholarly source Women in the

Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (1973). Two years later, in 1975, she formalized

the history of women in classical antiquity as a serious cause of

study with the publication of Goddesses. Since then, the gender approach

to ancient history has become a mainstream aspect of classical scholarship

and has since spawned debates of its own. The next generation of

ancient historians following Pomeroy asked questions of medical the-

46 Dowden, “Approaching Women through Myth,” 44.

47 Dowden, 44.

48 Dowden, 44.

49 Dowden, 56.

50 Dowden, 56.


63

ory for women and the legal status of Athenian women. More modern

debates that came out of Goddesses include the intersectional approach

to the study of women in ancient history, particularly of women of various

ethnicities (non-Greek, non-Roman) in the classical world getting

appropriate scholarly treatment. The gender approach to history has

also intersected with lesbian/queer theory, with the debate of women’s

sexuality finding its framework in the heated debate around the sexual

orientation and writings of the poet Sappho. Additionally, with the

scant sources on the lives of women in classical antiquity, an important

debate that has arisen in the gender approach concerns the use of

mythic material and literature to construct a cultural or social history

of ancient women. Thanks to Pomeroy’s Goddesses, the gender approach

to ancient history has had a significant impact on classical scholarship

and has grown into a legitimate concentration of study in the fields of

history and classics.

64 Devon DeRouen

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dowden, Ken. “Approaching Women through Myth: Vital Tool or

Self-Delusion?” In Women in Antiquity: New Assessments, 64–77.

Routledge, 1995.

Fantham, Elaine, et al. Women in the Classical World. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1995.

Hall, Edith. "Reconstructing the Ancient Greek Woman." Gender and

History 3, no. 3 (1991): 359-365.

Peradotto, John, and J. P. Sullivan. Women in the Ancient World: The

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65

66 Jordan Tyler Houston

From Son to Mother

Jordan Tyler Houston

Wake Forest University

“Dear mother Thetis, can you hear me now?

Your son, Achilles, seeks your help again.”

So did he speak, and so did she reply

with soothing words and motherly embrace.

But there are no such soothing words for me;

Cold Boreas—my only company—

tugs at my clothes, and gropes my shiv’ring form,

his fingers wet with frost and frozen dew.

Oh mother, would that you were here to see

your son—your only son!—reduced to tears;

better that you are not. Your fragile heart

would break in anguish at so sad a sight:

that little boy that once you knew so well—

whom you watched grow slowly into a man,

who once knew only joy, whose chubby face

was smiling always, dripping with delight—

now broken, hopeless, wretched to behold.

So are we all, who roam the world like dogs

with deep-ridged sides betraying countless ribs

and bodies ravaged by both filth and mange.

From Son to Mother

67

For wolves have been let loose upon the world,

so feral and so wild, without restraint,

with gleaming eyes and fangs stained red with gore,

and they are ravenous, and gluttonous,

and but the bones remain where they have gone.

So are we left the scraps, we wretched dogs.

I wonder what will soon become of me.

I stand before the threshold of the sea

as clawing waves reach out their frothy hands

and bid me join them: “Leave the land behind,”

they roar at me, and hissing they recede.

I am alone, not even Echo comes;

her voice is drowned out by the whipping winds

that turn the wine-dark sea to salty mist.

I am alone; the ocean calls to me.

THE SLAYING OF PERSEUS

Katie Milburn / The Herron School of Art and Design at IUPUI

68

Anthesteria

RACHEL JUNG

the day whirls around

and whirls around again:

fossil-white breath of the bones

of the city that pulsed and sighed a thousand

years before my birth and will —

seized in the hand of this god,

a hand hot and gold—

continue for the next thousand.

a million times the size of me—

oh, how she shudders

and groans under the weight of jet-black grapes,

fat hunks of onyx in the sun.

a double sun, two suns

for good luck in a purple sky

hung by Dionysus, flooded

with red clouds that promise rain.

we come to drink at his fountain,

to lay bare brilliant, wet souls,

plant vines in the cracks, aching

and crawling blind like snakes.

in the glassy white water I see him reflected,

his round face like a clock beside my ear.

the city creaks with feet, with a

conscious echo of time not yet spent.

all hands linked: a chain of daisies

dizzy and pink with wine,

we weave on—the afternoon is forever.

69

the final parting

RACHEL JUNG

MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD

since moon-up when the Evening Star

first raised her frosty head,

I have lain on this wet rock,

lapped on every side by water

swelling with phosphorescence

and watched him on the beach,

twitching through broken sleep.

under the harvest moon his hair shines gold—

golden prince of the Greeks:

Achilles, armed in bronze the color of coffee.

lights from the huts on the shore shimmer

through walls built to last a year,

still standing after ten.

the seawater around his feet,

pink with Trojan blood,

gathers in foamy frills.

at his head I see a figure,

a statue of silver mist. he flickers

like a faraway torch: Patroclus.

empty as a shell picked clean by birds,

he parades his death in the moonlight.

70

“am I far from your thoughts,

Achilles? have you forgotten me,

lying under the stars while

I am amongst nothings,

hollowed out and deflating?

when I lived you thought of me always,

in the blood-din of battle,

between sips of honey-sweet wine.”

fitful sleeping stops.

Achilles, awake, screaming.

“you have forgotten me;

you have forgotten how we once were.

I met death at the hands of a god,

saw his snakes rip apart my belly,

and yet I find you here, bathing in

salt-water, leaving me behind.”

this echo of man, this prince of air—

I watch Achilles clasp nothing

when he reaches out a hand that shakes

in the absence of a hilt to grasp,

a throat to cut. he speaks:

71

the final parting

“take me—

take me with you to the shades,

gentle shepherd of men, lead me

down through stone and rock and ice.

every day here is a never-ending ache;

glory has grown sour on my lips—

without you at my side, I burn.”

head on the sand,

sandy hands

in his hair, on his knees

the hero weeps.

there is talk in the ocean

of the two-handled urn they will share,

how it glows beetle-wing gold,

how it will sit in blood-soaked ground,

how his blue mother and

her fish-skinned sisters will mourn.

their early lament has already started;

the tides are heavy with it.

72

Animus Classics Journal: Vol. 2, Issue 1

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