CONTENTS
Articles

Fenno, Jonathan Brian, 1963- "A Great Wave against the Stream": Water Imagery in Iliadic Battle Scenes

Abstract:
This article investigates the figurative role of water in martial similes, metaphors, and personifications in the Iliad. Such imagery, it is argued, is generally informed by a thematic association of Greeks and their camp with the sea, and Trojans and their territory with rivers; as heroes sound and move like waves and streams, bodies of water become sympathetically animated warriors, and gods of sea and river rush into battle. The conclusion is that an ancient antithesis between saltwater and freshwater lends the Iliad a sense of unity in setting and plot and endows heroic action with greater cosmic and theological significance.

Dillery, John, 1961- Greek Sacred History

Abstract:
This paper contends that there was a distinct branch of Greek local historiography that focused on the past viewed through regional cult: sacred history. After an introductory look at Atthidography, a number of cases of local cult history referred to in inscriptions from the Hellenistic period are examined; additionally, an instance where historia sacra is itself preserved on an inscription is also discussed, namely, the Chronicle of the temple of Athena at Lindos. The paper analyzes this type of historical writing from the perspective of "intentional history," historiography written both to articulate the identity of a given region of the Greek world and to proclaim the region's importance in a larger, changing world.

Holmes, Brooke, 1976- Daedala Lingua: Crafted Speech in De Rerum Natura

Abstract:
This article examines the creation of words in De Rerum Natura through a close reading of two extended passages concerning the problem of where words come from and what they do. The first is the account of speech production, work entrusted to the daedala lingua in Book 4. This physiological process is mimicked at the phylogenic level in the discussion on the origins of language in Book 5, where voice is first shaped by a body responding to the impact of objects, then by utilitas. The adjective daedalus and the intervention of utilitas both signal, I argue, a shift away from an understanding of language as reaction towards an understanding of language as fabrication, a shift with important implications for the relationship of words to the world they represent.

Whitmarsh, Tim. The Greek Novel: Titles and Genre

Abstract:
Were the Greek novels titled according to a consistent convention? This article confronts the view that the original titles were always historiographical in form (Assyriaka, Lesbiaka, Aithiopika, etc.) and that readers were thus steered to expect, in the first instance, realistic narrative. Examining the evidence in detail, it argues that the formula the novels were likeliest to have shared was ta kata + girl's name (or girl's + boy's names). On this basis, it is concluded that what the titles of the novels promised was primarily invasive narratives of private life.

Brief Mention
Gamel, Mary-Kay. The Triumph of Cupid: Marlowe's Dido Queen of Carthage

Book Reviews

D'Ambra, Eve, 1956- Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 315 (review)

Lorenz, Katharina. The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples (review)

Haynes, Holly. Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History (review)

Bruster, Douglas. Shakespeare and the Classics (review)

Books Received

Index to Volume 126, 2005