#amy richlin

[finelythreadedsky]

JSTOR Wrapped: top ten JSTOR articles of 2023

Coo, Lyndsay. “A Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles’ Tereus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 2 (2013): 349–84.

Finglass, P. J. “A New Fragment of Sophocles’ ‘Tereus.’” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 200 (2016): 61–85.

Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 167–82. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Garrison, Elise P. “Eurydice’s Final Exit to Suicide in the ‘Antigone.’” The Classical World 82, no. 6 (1989): 431–35.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Eine Anthropologie Des Essens: Der Essensstreit in Der ‘Ilias’ Und Die Erntemetapher in Il. 19, 221-224.” Hermes 133, no. 3 (2005): 257–79.

McClure, Laura. “Tokens of Identity: Gender and Recognition in Greek Tragedy.” Illinois Classical Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 219–36.

Purves, Alex C.  “Wind and Time in Homeric Epic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140, no. 2 (2010): 323–50.

Richlin, Amy. “Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 202–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Rood, Naomi. “Four Silences in Sophocles’ ‘Trachiniae.’” Arethusa 43, no. 3 (2010): 345–64.

Zeitlin, Froma I. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149–84.

[dionysus-complex]

you mentioned you specialize in roman violence. can you rec any good works on the subject, especially during the late antique period? how much (or little) time/writing did latin authors spend on the question of the necessity/morality/glory of violence, especially when bound up with empire and borders? did rhetoric around domestic violence evolve?

It's obviously a massive topic, so it's difficult to know where to begin! For looking at violence in Late Antiquity, I highly recommend the work of Maijastina Kahlos as a starting point - most of her scholarship deals with tensions between religious communities in the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, and I've found it extremely clear and illuminating. For Late Antique slavery, I'd look at Jennifer Trimble's work, especially "The Zoninus Collar and the Archaeology of Roman Slavery" (2016, JSTOR link here). On the intersections of violence and the legal system, I'd recommend Sarah Bond's 2014 article "Altering Infamy: Status, Violence, and Civic Exclusion in Late Antiquity" (JSTOR link here) as well as Julia Hillner's 2015 book Prison, Punishment and Penance in Late Antiquity. Amy Richlin is essential reading on Roman violence in general, and I'd highly highly recommend her piece "Cicero's Head" in Constructions of the Classical Body (ed. James Porter, 1999) if you have access to an academic library and can get a hold of it; it's explicitly framed as a Jewish, post-Holocaust reflection on the violence of the Roman proscriptions and civil wars and has been profoundly influential on my own thinking.

In general, Imperial-era Latin authors spend a lot of time thinking about the necessity/morality/glory of violence, to the point that I'd say violence is the key theme in Imperial Latin literature. It's often bound up with Stoic philosophy (in the 1st-2nd c. CE; Seneca's De Ira is a key text - you might take a look at sections 3.18-19 on torture under Caligula), and given the bias of our sources which skew toward the elite/senatorial-class perspective, it can be harder to track down texts that explicitly make the link between violence and Roman imperium. One famous example is the speech of Calgacus in Tacitus' Agricola 29-32 (link to a translation here), which purports to be the speech of a Celtic general in Britain rousing his troops to battle against the Romans in the 80s CE. Given that speeches in Roman historiography are generally regarded as being compositions by the historian, it's important to ask why exactly Tacitus of all people gives a prominent place to a scathing critique of Roman imperium - there are lots of ideas on this and few definitive answers, but it's a startling passage to say the least.

Imperial Latin epic poetry (e.g. Lucan's Bellum Civile; Statius' Thebaid) is well known for being graphically violent in the extreme (as in brutal torture, dismemberment, and one infamous instance of brain-eating in Thebaid 8), and there's a lot of work on how and why violence becomes highly aestheticized for Imperial Latin poets. There's also the genre of Roman declamation (difficult to explain, but essentially something like mock trial cases that were used for rhetorical education and showmanship), which frequently explores extremely violent scenarios involving torture, kin-killing, etc. Most scholars these days tend to read declamation as a space where (elite, male) Romans worked out and interrogated various cultural anxieties and taboos. Because of this, you get some of the strongest condemnations of violence found anywhere in Latin literature in the declamatory corpus, but it's difficult to extrapolate from that because again it's something like mock trial and rhetorical showmanship that does not necessarily map on to real-life Roman attitudes.

I've barely scratched the surface and there's a lot more I could say but I'll cut myself off here - I might be able to offer more specific recs if you're interested in e.g. violence as spectacle, aesthetics and artistic representations of violence, etc.

[thoodleoo]

not on the third servile war, but if someone is interested in the role and reality on slaves in the Roman Republic, “Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy” by Amy Richlin is quite the read. I read large parts of it for a class on Slavery in Roman Comedy, and I highly recommend it. It also has lots of references to expand reading since it is a culmination of Richlin’s career of research and thinking. I think some parts of the book miss the mark a little on discussing queerness in Roman comedy (specifically talking about gender, drag, and men performing as women) but it’s overall an absolutely amazing and difficult read. It talks about how slavery appears in Roman comedy, to what extent Plautus’ comedy is sympathetic to and indicative of the Roman enslaved person’s experience, etc. HUGE warning for human trafficking, sexual assault, long discussions of sexual exploitation, gendered violence, torture…because it’s about the realities of slavery in Rome. I’m not going to be able to do the book justice in an ask, but there are academic reviews aplenty out there! (Also note, the book explains a lot of things but I suggest having read at least one of Plautus’ plays and having a passing familiarity with the concept and conventions of Roman comedy)

that sounds like a super interesting read! might have to check that out myself!

[garland-on-thy-brow]

[Old Boys: Teacher-Student Bonding in Roman Oratory by Amy Richlin.]

[achillessulks]

We would all like to know the top 25 books you’ve read this century please pleaseeeee 🙏🏽

(Context.)

OK, so the limitations I’m setting for myself are that these books must:

have been published some time after 1st January 2000 (in the edition I read them);

be good.

That’s it. The books are in alphabetical order by author’s surname, because there’s enough variety here that I wouldn’t feel comfortable (or rational) trying to rank each book objectively.

Fiction:

Bloodchild and Other Stories (2005) by Octavia E. Butler - The eponymous story is one of my favourite short stories of all time, and it counts within the time constraints because this is the second edition, with additional stories added. Butler’s commentary on her own works is always insightful.

Gone Girl (2012) by Gillian Flynn - Iconic story of an apex predator who wasn’t getting enough enrichment in her enclosure.

The Vegetarian [채식주의자] (2007) by Han Kang - Specifically the original version in Korean, not the translation.

Slave Play (2020) by Jeremy O. Harris - Very unsettling! The double (triple?) entendre in the title is a good summation of the play entire, I think.

OUT (2004) by Kirino Natsuo tr. Stephen Snyder - Often described as ‘feminist noir,’ Kirino’s writing explores the grimy underbelly of the daily lives of women and girls in modern Japan. Predictably, I have enjoyed all of her novels I’ve read.

The Sympathizer (2015) by Viet Thanh Nguyen - This novel is to me what Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ is as a poem to me. That will make sense if you’ve read both.

Theory of Bastards (2018) by Audrey Schulman - I adore every novel by Schulman I have read so far, but this one is definitely my favourite.

Impératrice (2003) by Shan Sa - I read this book as a teenager and was absolutely obsessed with it. Wu Zetian is boss.

Terminal Boredom (2021) by Suzuki Izumi tr. Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O’Horan - I also recommend the sequel collection by the same team, Hit Parade of Tears (2023).

Nonfiction:

Voices from Chernobyl (2005) by Svetlana Alexievich tr. Keith Gessen - Originally published in 1997, but I read the English translation first. I recommend everything Alexievich has ever written, honestly.

The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy (2006) by Casey Dué - You know when you read a book and it makes you feel like your entire body has been transferred to a different plane of existence? I love Dr. Dué’s writing about Euripides and Greek tragedy so freaking much.

Delusions of Gender (2010) by Cordelia Fine - If you’ve ever been trying to explain to a bigot that ‘basic biology’ is not as straightforward as ‘male brain’ vs. ‘female brain,’ this is the book for you. Dr. Fine is super knowledgeble, and the book is excellent at explaining the relevant neuroscience while debunking misogynistic and transphobic misconceptions about how the human brain functions.

How To Survive a Plague (2016) by David France - Really comprehensive book on the history of the AIDS epidemic and how it was solved.

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (2007) tr. Andrea Purvis ed. Robert Strassler - The entire Landmark series is excellent, and I highly recommend it. I chose the Herodotus because the maps really are invaluable, but the Thucydides and Arrian were close seconds.

People Love Dead Jews (2021) by Dara Horn - My favourite joke from this book is when Horn describes Anne Frank as ‘everyone’s second-favourite dead Jew... after, of course, Jesus.’

Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women (2014) by Amy Richlin - Really I recommend everything Richlin has ever written, but I would like to specifically acknowledge her essay ‘Hijacking the Palladion’ (1992), which remains one of the best articles I’ve ever read on feminism and classics.

Appropriate: A Provocation (2021) by Paisley Rekdal - Really really interesting thinky book about cultural appropriation, appreciation, and interaction.

19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways) (2016) by Eliot Weinberger - OK, this book is from 1987, but the expanded edition is eligible. This is a delightful and informative, albeit short, explanation of (some of) the difficulties inherent in translation.

Poetry:

The Collected Poems (2010) by Ai - This is also kind of cheating… Ai’s best poetry can be found in her Killing Floor (1973), which is included in this anthology.

The Iliad (2015) tr. Caroline Alexander - I enjoyed Emily Wilson’s translations of Homer as well, but Alexander’s translation of the Iliad is the first complete translation into English by a woman, ever. That’s really cool. Also, it’s a very good translation; I definitely prefer it to Wilson’s translation of the same. (I could go on for hours about the differences in translations of Homer.)

Phone Bells Keep Ringing for Me (2020) by Choe Seungja tr. Won-Chung Kim and Cathy Park Hong - My absolute favourite poetry by Choe Seungja can be found in her book ‘내 무덤, 푸르고’ (1993), some of which can be found in this collection of translated poetry.

Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (2003) by Mahmoud Darwish tr. Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché (with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein) - This is cheating, somewhat, since I originally read most of Darwish’s poems in Arabic, and those versions were published mostly before the relevant time period. However, I do consider this translated collection of his works to be one of my favourite books, especially now that I have ‘edited’ it by hand-writing the Arabic versions of the poems in the margins. It counts.

Li Shang-yin (2018) tr. Chloe Garcia Roberts - Li Shangyin is one of my favourite Tang-dynasty poets, and this bilingual(!) edition of his poems is an excellent read.

Ilias und Odyssee (2008) tr. Johnn Heinrich Voß - Yes, another translation of Homer. Voß’s translation is from the late 18th century, but this particular edition has a bunch of specific appendices and stuff...! Anyway, this translation rocks.

Yi Sang: Selected Works (2020) tr. Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi, and Joyelle McSweeney - Once again this is on the line, because I definitely prefer Yi Sang’s writing in the original Korean/Japanese... no translation adequately captures his style, in my opinion, but this one comes the closest.

Closing thoughts:

I do not usually read a lot of newer books (backlog, you know how it is), so I am extremely out of touch with the current literary zeitgeist. This is mostly by design. All of my favourite books in French, for example, were published before 1990, and my single favourite book (Les Misérables) was published in the mid-19th century.

Several of the books on this list I originally read in a different language (mostly French), but I’ve included the English version here if it’s the original OR if it’s the relevant edition for the timeframe.

This was incredibly difficult. Mostly because I had to flip through each book to see if it fit the requirements. I would be much better at curating a list of my favourite 100 books of the 20th century, I think. Or of the 19th century. Or even further back.

Everything about this list is subject to change 😅

[the-darkness-of-a-lamppost]

"Reading Ovid's Rapes"

Apollo and Daphne, Francesco Albani, 1615-1620, Louvre, Paris

"A woman reading Ovid faces difficulties. In the tradition of Western literature his influence has been great, yet even in his lifetime critics found his poetry disturbing because of the way he applied wit to unfunny circumstances. Is his style a virtue or a flaw? Like an audience watching a magician saw a lady in half, they have stared to see how it was done. I would like to draw attention to the lady.

"Consider Ovid's Metamorphoses, cast as a mythic history of the world: more than fifty tales of rape in its fifteen books (nineteen told at some length). Compare his Fasti, a verse treatment of the Roman religious calendar: eleven tales of rape in six books. These vary in their treatment; some are comic. In general, critics have ignored them, or traced their literary origins, or said they stood for something else or evidenced the poet's sympathy with women.

"But we must ask how we are to read texts, like those of Ovid, that take pleasure in violence - a question that challenges not only the canon of Western literature but all representations. If the pornographic is that which converts living beings into objects, such texts are certainly pornographic. Why is it a lady in the magician's box? Why do we watch a pretended evisceration?" (emphasis is mine)

~ Excerpt from Amy Richlin, "Reading Ovid's Rapes" in Arguments with Silence (2014), p134.

{Posted by @the-darkness-of-a-lamppost (me), Tumblr}

[marwyn]

Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I’m told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole?

Philip II had a daughter, Thessalonike, by a Thessalian wife, so that she was Alexander’s half-sister. . . . The story goes that Alexander once made her immortal, so that, when she tried to drown herself in the sea at the news of his death, she turned into a mermaid.

AGOT and “The Kings of Comedy” by Amy Richlin, from Roman Drama and its Contexts

[hexjulia]

books i'm thinking about reading sometime encountered this evening;

The Chronicle of Morea: Historiography in Crusader Greece

'The Chronicle of Morea, one of the most important and controversial historical narratives written in the late Middle Ages, tells the story of the formation and government by the Villehardouin dynasty of a remarkably successful Crusader State following the conquest by western invaders of the capital - Constantinople - and the provinces of the Byzantine Empire. By examining all the Chronicle's surviving Greek, French, Spanish and Italian versions, this study, the first of its kind, explores in depth the literary and ideological contexts in which the work was composed, transmitted and re-written. The result is a fascinating analysis of cultural exchange in a rich and vibrant eastern Mediterranean world where different ethnicities were obliged to live alongside each other, and outside political interests frequently intruded in dramatic fashion. Translations into English have been provided of all the material discussed.'

The Universal History of Stepʻanos Tarōnecʻi: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary

'The Universal History (Patmut'iwn tiezerakan) of Step'anos Taronec'i is a history of the world in three books, composed by the Armenian scholar at the end of the tenth century and extending from the era of Abraham to the turn of the first millennium. It was completed in 1004/5 CE, at a time when the Byzantine Empire was expanding eastwards across the districts of historic Armenia and challenging key aspects of Armenian identity. Step'anos responded to these changing circumstances by looking to the past and fusing Armenian tradition with Persian, Roman, and Islamic history, thereby asserting that Armenia had a prominent and independent place in world history. The Universal History was intended to affirm and reinforce Armenian cultural memory. As well as assembling and revising extracts from existing Armenian texts, Step'anos also visited monastic communities where he learned about prominent Armenian scholars and ascetics who feature in his construction of the Armenian past. During his travels he gathered stories about local Armenian, Georgian, Persian, and Kurdish lords, which were then repeated in his composition.'

Marcus Aurelius in Love; Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto. Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction and Commentary by Amy Richlin

In 1815 a manuscript containing one of the long-lost treasures of antiquity was discovered—the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, reputed to have been one of the greatest Roman orators. But this find disappointed many nineteenth-century readers, who had hoped for the letters to convey all of the political drama of Cicero’s. That the collection included passionate love letters between Fronto and the future emperor Marcus Aurelius was politely ignored—or concealed. And for almost two hundred years these letters have lain hidden in plain sight.

The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Time. Adrienne Mayor

Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology

Ausonius: Moselle, Epigrams, and Other Poems

Ausonius provides translations of the key works of Ausonius, an important later Latin poet whose poems detail the social and cultural life of Gaul and its environment. His often difficult and playful Latin is presented in English by the award winning poet Deborah Warren, enabling a new generation of students to use and understand the poems. With notes and commentary throughout, this volume will be important not only as an example of later Latin poetry but also as a window onto the Later Roman Empire and the beginnings of early Christian writing.

[princetonarchives]

It stinks.

Amy Richlin ’73, reviewing Dirty Harry for the Daily Princetonian, January 7, 1972

[ancientyaoi]

At the outset, we should get it out of the way that I'm partial to social constructionist interpretations of ancient texts rather than essentialist ones. Everything on this blog will be informed heavily by social constructionist views.

What is Social Constructionism?

Social Constructionism is a "a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts." (Source)

In other words, from the social constructionist's view, the category "homosexual" did not exist in ancient times, although people may have committed homosexual acts. Thus, in interpreting ancient texts, we should remove modern categories of gender and sexuality from our minds and stop assuming they are timeless and universal, and attempt instead to analyze the text with the gender and sex conventions of the concerned period in history.

For instance, on the relationship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu it has been said:

"... at the end of the day, whether they have sex does not matter. The heroes are said to râmu each other, and the Akkadian term covers both erotic and platonic love: the difference between them is not central to the vocabulary of the epic. As Assyriologist Joan Goodnick Westenholz puts it, to a Babylonian audience emotional love and sexual attraction "were not perceived as two separate forces. The physical and emotional sides of love were different reflects of the same relationship."" (Helle, 172)

Even our modern understanding of love cannot be applied to Gilgamesh and Enkidu. When we read the epic, it must be with the understanding that the distinction between "friends" and "lovers" might not been significant to babylonian readers, and indeed to Gilgamesh and Enkidu's understanding of their own relationship.

To give another probably more famous example, in Ancient Rome, homosexual intercourse was acceptable for the Roman Elite so long as one took the active and not passive role. Here we can use our modern categories a bit more readily: the Romans looked down on bottoming in gay sex, not gay sex per se. (Richlin, 16) (See Also)

TL;DR - In this blog, historical conception of gender and sexuality >>> modern categories for gender and sexuality or so-called universal categories.

References:

Helle, Sophus. Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic. 2021 Ed. Yale University Press.

Richlin, Amy. Marcus Aurelius in Love: The Letters of Marcus and Fronto. 2006 Ed. The University of Chicago Press.

Burton, Neel. Love, Sex and Marriage in Ancient Rome. June 24, 2012. Accessed at:

An Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies: Grounding Theoretical Frameworks and Concepts: Social Constructionism. Accessed at: https://openbooks.library.umass.edu/introwgss/chapter/social-constructionism/

[palindromeparadox]

Letter 12

“What should I add, unless it’s that I love you as you deserve? But what do I mean, ‘as you deserve’? I only wish I could love you as you deserve! And that’s why I’m often angry with you when you’re away, and I get so mad, because you won’t let me love you as I want to, that is, you won’t let my spirit follow the love of you up to its highest peak” 

Marcus Aurelius to his teacher, Fronto. 142 or early 143 CE

Translated by Amy Richlin as found in her book, Marcus Aurelius in Love: The Letters of Marcus and Fronto

[finelythreadedsky]

"a Roman orator must have looked more like a hula dancer than like a television anchorman"...........

[rubysevens]

developing a parasocial relationship towards the neh institute for roman comedy (2015)

[garland-on-thy-brow]

[Old Boys: Teacher-Student Bonding in Roman Oratory by Amy Richlin.]

@renegirard meets @trialsinthelateromanrepublic

[baeddel]

something interesting is that while the infamous first line of Catallus’ Carmen 16 was originally either untranslated, omitted or mistranslated out of moral decency (because of its obscenity), it still didn’t receive an adequate translation for decades after the first attempts at rendering it accurately and with the obscenity preserved, because the word irrumabo had no English equivalent. Sisson, in 1967, actually reverses the meaning entirely and renders it “I’ll ... suck your pricks.” Amy Richlin was the first to render it accurately in 1983, but she has to spell it out in circumlocution, rendering it “fuck your mouths.” It’s still kind of an analogy which we have to picture, as if for the first time. It was difficult-to-impossible to put the blowjob reciever in the active role in a grammatically ordinary sentence. In the 21st century we finally invented a word adequate to irrumabo, and today the line is typically rendered: “I will sodomize and facefuck you.” What does it mean that we had no word for facefucking in those days, and what does it mean that we do now?

[titleleaf]

More Information Than You Perhaps Require: Gossip In Late Republican Rome

Skazka has officially one canned cocktail too many and discusses salacious Roman gossip and its uses. At length. Commissioned by @noxelementalist.

Topics include: rhetorical uses of bullshit; bygone effeminate gestures; throwing rocks at your enemy’s clitoris; how one vomits into a toga. Special guest star: the velvet-voiced allons_donc as the voice of Cicero.

More reading: • The Garden Of Priapus: Sexuality & Aggression In Roman Humor, Amy Richlin • “Mark Antony’s Assault of Publius Clodius: Fact Or Ciceronian Fiction?”, Anthony Alexander • “Problematic Masculinity: Antony and the Political Sphere in Rome”, Rachael Kelly (Kelly’s scholarship on Antony as a figure of flawed masculinity, especially in HBO’s Rome, is really neat) • “Perusinae Glandes and the Changing Image of Augustus”, Judith Hallett

Music and image licenses at the link -- if you’d like to commission a drunk ramble of your own, hit up my Ko-Fi.