This is a summary description of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis and its construction history as revealed through its two phases of excavation, 1910-1914 and 1958-current.

In this introduction, I outline Proclus’ relationship with Aristotle and provide an overview of the state of the art. I discuss Proclus’ views on the so-called harmony of Plato and Aristotle and contrast it with the views of other, contemporary Neoplatonists, showing that Proclus stands out as more critical of Aristotle. I show that the concept of motion provides a perfect avenue for understanding how Proclus sees the tension between Plato and Aristotle. Lastly, I explain how Proclus differentiates distinct levels of motion which also structure my discussion in the monograph.

The field of Homeric studies is vast, marked by heated debates and unresolved issues. One of the most contentious issues is the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Some of the pieces of this puzzle relate to the identity of the creator(s) of the poems and the place and date of composition. Others pertain to the ways in which the Homeric epics are connected with oral tradition, literacy, and other early Greek epics. And other pieces concern the degree to which the epic portrayal of objects, sociopolitical norms, economic activities, religious beliefs, and geography reflect historical realities.

The Introduction establishes the primary arguments and scope of the book. It defines ‘Ovidian exile’ in two related ways: firstly, as the poetry written by Ovid in exile, namely the Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto and Ibis; and secondly, as Ovid himself as the figure of the exiled poet. Ovidian exile in these terms had a vast influence across medieval culture, informing teaching, preaching, reading and writing – among a host of activities Menmuir terms ‘responses’ – in the later Middle Ages, offering a mode of voicing exile, marginalisation and poethood itself. After describing the circumstances of Ovid’s exile and the primary concerns of the exile poetry, Menmuir introduces the Ovid, or Ovids, of the Middle Ages, including the common perception of Ovid as the tripartite mythographer, lover and exile. Ovid and his works were deemed ethical, and even Christian, in medieval exegesis: the fact of his exile created a penitential arc which enabled Ovid’s transformation into Ovidius ethicus. Menmuir defines ‘responses and respondents’, where ‘response’ comprises a more active expression of ‘reception’. The book’s scope primarily includes responses between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries and focuses on England, albeit as linked to the continent in several ways.

This introduction lays out the uses and methodology of comparative historiography. The larger suitability of Macedon and Qin for particular emphasis in a comparative study is addressed and defended based on their numerous historical features that are found to parallel each other.

This introductory chapter includes analysis of the earliest versions of Virgil: in eleventh-century Ireland, in the Roman d’Enéas and in Middle High German. It explains how I chose to organize discussion of the translation history of Virgil in the Western tradition. I explain the chronological, geographical and linguistic scope of the book and discuss the relevance of translation theory and reception theory to the project. I account for the organization of the book by considering what it might have been (and is not) as well as what it is; I include summaries of the ten following chapters along with indications of the major and minor translations tackled in each. Because the book is composed of numerous case studies, I close by facing the hermeneutic challenge of how to rise above the case study and by indicating the interpretative gains of this study and ways in which it opens up further avenues for exploration by other scholars.

During the crisis that the Hannibalic war provoked, the ‘old guard’ of consulars who had been consuls for the first time in the 230s assumed the leadership role in the military field and in politics. A number of ex-consuls once again held offices with imperium and were placed at the head of the army as consuls, praetors, or promagistrates. The state of emergency in Rome also led to the appointment of dictators, all of them ex-consuls. The military contribution of consulars also took place in intermediate positions, as legates under consuls or consulars, but also under imperatores who had not attained that rank, always with tasks of high responsibility. In 209, we find the last two censors who had not been consuls: from that year onwards, all censors were former consuls, and censorship became the potential culmination of a consular’s political career. From 209, the censors always designated as princeps senatus the man they considered to be the princeps civitatis. As before, the princeps senatus had to be a patrician consular and censorian, but the position was left open to competition. It was very unusual that consulars were co-opted for a priestly college. Two consulars were named triumviri mensarii to face up the economic crisis.

What is the rationale for bringing together archaic and classical lyric and imperial Greek literature, in the form of epideictic oratory? This chapter explains how such different genres and media (poetry/prose) were in fact akin as both genres ‘of presence’ centred on performance, embedded in well-defined occasions, and negotiating similar discourses of praise and blame. It then sets out the book’s aims and methodology by contextualising them within the ever-growing scholarship on imperial Greek culture. It clarifies what is meant by ‘lyric’ throughout the analysis, and how this use of the term marks a substantial departure from the few previous studies on imperial lyric reception. A similar departure concerns the approach to quotations, intertextuality and pragmatics of reading, which crucially distances this analysis from scholarship focused on Quellenforschung issues. The chapter ends by introducing Aristides’ distinctive engagement with lyric and its impact on our understanding of his works and figure.

This introductory chapter presents the book and its most important arguments; it also provides brief overviews of the arguments of each chapter.

This chapter introduces the concept of reparative reading and explains the benefits of reading Sappho and Homer through a reparative lens. It argues that previous scholarship has applied a notion of intertextuality that is competitive and hierarchical, thus missing out on key elements of Sappho’s engagement with Homer. It also introduces the reader to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a queer theorist, poet, and fiber artist and anticipates some of the parallels between Sedgwick and Sappho as reparative readers. An overview of Sedgwick’s career, her understanding of queerness and the social and historical contexts for her evolving sensibilities as a reparative reader are provided, as is a preview of the following chapters.

The Introduction reviews evidence and recent scholarship on private Orphic-Bacchic mysteries of the Classical period. Four recent developments are especially important for the book’s argument: Radcliffe Edmonds’s challenge to the idea of a common Orphic belief system; Walter Burkert’s model of Orphism as a “craft” of competing experts; the Derveni Papyrus, which shows the central importance of poetic performance in private mysteries; and the description of Orphic-Bacchic cults as bricolage, applying the category of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Taking these developments into account, I argue that private mystery cults can be understood as a poetic performance context, and that interactions between experts and clients mirrored the relation of poet and audience in other poetic genres. As products of a poetic performance setting, the tablets can be expected to apply and adapt the verbal and conceptual repertoire afforded by the traditions of early Greek poetry. On this interpretation, the inconsistency and semantic ambiguity of the tablets can be understood as an aid to performance, giving ritual experts flexibility to explain and adapt their performing repertoire in different ways.

In the late 1970s, the American artist, Stanley Roseman, undertook a project entitled The Monastic Life, during which he visited sixty monasteries located throughout Europe. He participated in their daily life and ‘made drawings of monks and nuns at prayer, work, and study. He drew them at the communal worship in church and in meditation in the quietude of their cells.’1 Roseman’s 1979 chalk on paper drawing of Benedictine monks at the Abbaye de Solesmes in France depicts two men with shaven heads who are dressed in long hooded robes. They are bent forward with their faces anchored towards the ground. Their eyes are closed, and their hands are carefully placed on their thighs. The men stand alone: they are the focus of the artist’s composition; they exist in isolation from their background; they are still, serene, frozen in perpetual worship and detached from their contemporary world. This is the essence of monastic life – the ideal – but it is not the full story.

This chapter explores how the local dimension of ancient Greek religion has featured in Classical scholarship. Kindt argues that the problem of location is intrinsic to the structure of ancient Greek religion, which, in the absence of traditional locations of authority, had multiple centres and peripheries. The way in which the Greeks conceived of the personalities of the gods and goddesses is a case in point: the idea of a unified existence as implied in the concept of the divine persona is challenged by the multiplicity of ways in which one and the same deity manifested itself in the human world. Three different ways in which Classical scholars have conceived of the categories of the local in relation to the Greek divine persona come into the picture here: as a realisation of the general, as the place at which variation occurs, and as two dynamic forces that variously intersect in different locations at which ancient Greek religion manifests itself.

The first chapter is divided into three sections. First, it presents a brief survey of previous scholarship concerning the history of late antique Arabia, the genesis of the Qurʾān and early Islam. It then discusses the sources available for historical research into pre-Islamic Arabia. Finally, it addresses the problem of identifying Arabia and the ‘Arabs’ from antiquity to the rise of Islam by analysing primary sources dated between the first millennium BCE and the sixth century CE. Were there any Arabs in pre-Islamic Arabia? Past scholarship has recursively translated the Semitic root ‘-r-b as ‘nomads’ and/or has used the term ‘Arabs’ to refer to the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula in pre-Islamic times. Because of recent archaeological discoveries, we now know that these interpretations must be revised. This chapter argues that the connection between the ‘Arabs’ is purely geographical. These people dwelled in Central and North Arabia but belonged to different tribes, each of which more than likely had different and distinguishable cultural heritages. Hence, it is preferable to use the geographic term ‘Arabians’ to the ethnic term ‘Arabs’ when discussing the inhabitants of pre-Islamic Arabia.

The ancient historian’s privileged discursive position within the text depends upon the creation of a circuit of consent with the audience, one that establishes the narrator’s power and authority in detailing the unfolding of past events, their causes, and the agents animating them. The contract between the narrator and audience is brought about by the careful curation of the historian’s agency in and out of the process of textual production. In antiquity, the stakes for this curation were even higher than in modernity because of the widespread association of literary production with individual character. The struggle for authority was uniquely pressing for Greek and Roman historians, as their texts could not call upon the inspiration of the Muse as the poets could. As a result, the self-positioning of the historian was highly self-aware and charged with meaning, constructed in relation to the authority of the poets, but with a degree of distancing from these figures and their Muse in the development of a new mode of narrative.