This conference aims to bring together researchers applying network analysis to pre-modern manuscripts and manuscript texts. Key topics include:

• Theoretical reflections on the challenges and advantages of applying network analysis, including social network analysis, to pre-modern written cultures;
• Application of network analysis to cor…[Read more]

Reflections on living in Greece during the summer of 1988.

C. Lanham, ed., Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: Classical Theory and Modern Practice, Continuum Press 2002, pp. 139–179.

This collection of sixteen essays, as the subtitle indicates, aims to explore the role of fictionalization in biographies composed in Greek and Latin.

This book is a learned study of biographical texts from both the Greek and the Roman traditions, ranging in time from the Greek Classical period to the Second Sophistic.

This volume was inspired by a colloquium on Plutarch’s Table Talk (or Quaestiones convivales, QC), but the editors seek to do more than present a simple miscellany of conference papers. The eight essays, along with the brief introductory and concluding essays by the editors, are intended ‘to mark a new departure’ for interpreting the QC and to ‘p…[Read more]

In this essay, I argue that in Odyssey 19, when Eurycleia recognizes Odysseus despite his disguise, she does so not simply because she sees the scar but because she has shared with Odysseus a meaningful experience in the past. The recollection of this experience plays a central role in the larger scheme of disguise and recognition that is…[Read more]

This chapter explores two central themes that appear in the prologue to Plutarch’s Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero, that virtue is independent of environment and that self-knowledge is critical to success. I argue that these themes establish a framework for the contents of the book, and I show how they are elaborated in the pair of Lives.

An overview of how Plutarch describes the sexual activities and erotic desires of his biographical subjects in the Parallel Lives to demonstrate their character and, in part, to explain the trajectory of their political careers.

Many students in introductory myth classes assume that Greco-Roman myth is comprised of a canonical collection of well-known stories, and that those stories might be entertaining but ultimately have little relevance to the modern world. This essay explores ways to address these assumptions and help students to understand the complexity of myth,…[Read more]

The chapter compares Plutarch’s Sertorius to other Late-Republican Lives (Lucullus, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar) to explore Sertorius’ character, and especially to establish the context for his decision to withdraw from civil war and to attempt to live peacefully in Spain.