Abstract Adriana Vazquez is an assistant professor of Classics at UCLA specializing in Latin literature of the Augustan period, with particular interest in its legacy in the Lusophone literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is currently working on a monograph on the legacy of Latin literature in the poetry of colonial Brazil, which analyses the literary output of the poets of the Arcadia Ultramarina, a literary academy which emerged in colonial Brazil, for its dialoguing with the ancient poetic tradition. She has published articles on topics ranging from religious language in Augustan poetry to the legacy of Virgil in Portuguese epic and Brazilian poetry. She held the Andrew Heiskell/Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize in Ancient Studies at the American Academy of Rome in 2021–2022 and a Loeb Prize Fellowship in 2024–2025. She is a cofounder and former steering committee member of Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-Hispanic World, an interest group focusing on Ibero-global reception. The appearance of Fama in The Lusiads is of tremendous importance for cementing her status as a fixture of Lusophone epic and for coining a Portuguese lexicon for her representation, but it is by no means the end of her story. This article seeks to identify a topos of receptive engagement here termed ‘aggregative reception’ through a case study of the appearances of Fama, the divine personification of ‘rumour’, in five Portuguese epics published over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, each one interesting in its own right for its unique contribution to an expansive vision of Virgil’s monstrous figure: Gabriel Pereira de Castro’s Ulisseia, ou Lisboa Edificada (1636), António Sousa de Macedo’s Ulyssippo, Poema Heróico (1640), Miguel Mauricio Ramalho’s Lisboa Reedificada (1780), Vicente Carlos de Oliveira’s Lisboa Restaurada (1784), and Teodoro de Almeida’s Lisboa Destruída, Poema (1803). By reading the appearances of Fama in Portuguese epic together as not competing, but rather complementary, diffused across texts, aggregative reception offers a framework for reading receptions sympathetically by accommodating, and even encouraging, a diachronic consideration of the afterlife of a topos with its contextualization in a literary longue durée. The consideration of her appearances as cooperative allows for apparent inconsistencies to present opportunities for increasing complexity.

Abstract This paper considers the role of costume in the depiction of ‘barbarians’, looking Eastwards to the Persians, as seen in The 300 Spartans (1962), 300 (2006) and Alexander (2004), and then to the West, focusing on the Celts and the Germans depicted in Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011) and Barbarians (2020–22). It examines the ways in which costuming is exploited to manipulate audience attitudes towards these peoples, who are presented as a foreign ‘other’, but with a marked contrast between them. In the case of the Persians, their colourful clothing, luxurious fabrics, hairstyles and cosmetics mark them out as spoilt, pampered and effeminate, weakened and corrupted by their own riches. The Celts, on the other hand, in Centurion and The Eagle are lacking in civilization, depicted as rough, wild, primitive peoples who lack any kind of elegance or sophistication. Thus, the Persians are over-civilized and the Celts under-civilized, in contrast to the Classical world. In Barbarians, by contrast, the Germans are the heroes and therefore more attractive in appearance than the Romans. In every case the costuming sets up expectations regarding the virtue or vice of the characters, conditioning the spectator to admire or despise the non-Classical ‘other’.

Abstract This study examines the reconfiguration of Greco-Roman mythology within eighteenth-century Central and Eastern European Jewish cultures. Through an analysis of rabbinic and kabbalistic writings, urban processions, and early Hasidic storytelling, it demonstrates how figures such as Apollo, Hercules, and the Amazons were woven into Jewish religious and intellectual life in innovative ways. The study traces the origins of this phenomenon to the sixteenth century, when Iberian and Italian Jewish scholars — under the influence of Renaissance humanism — incorporated classical mythology into Hebrew literature. It then explores the diverse eighteenth-century manifestations of this tradition in Central and Eastern Europe, where classical elements became embedded in Jewish religious thought and cultural expression, addressing various contemporary challenges. These included responses to Enlightenment scepticism, the desire to systematize rabbinic knowledge, messianic aspirations, and kabbalistic interpretations of Jewish and global history. By tracing the embeddedness of mythology within Jewish religious and mystical frameworks, this study reveals a complex and previously overlooked cross-cultural exchange in early modern European Jewish thought. It argues that, rather than fading in the Age of Reason, Greco-Roman mythological elements gained renewed religious significance in the eighteenth century, shaping Jewish esoteric, messianic, and intellectual traditions in unexpected ways.

Abstract In 1981, Brice Marden started an unusual practice. He began painting on marble fragments which he found lying around the garden of his residence in Hydra, Greece, after some works for the construction of a marble bench. He would dedicate himself to this practice during the following summers spent in Greece until 1987 only to re-engage with this practice many years later, in 2011, and continued until his passing. In this paper, I would like to argue that Marden’s marble fragments can embrace multiple and different aspects of the artist’s relationship with the Mediterranean, including two main axes of this influence in his work, antiquity and landscape. My purpose is to examine these complex relationships through different approaches which will show how in Marden’s hands, these stones present key readings of the Mediterranean.

Abstract This article explores the role of money in Plato’s Sophist in light of Jacques Derrida’s essay ‘On the “Priceless” or the “Going Rate” of the Transaction’. I argue that money plays a more significant role in Plato’s thinking than has previously been acknowledged. Though Plato would like to present money-making as a contemptible activity, money also provides the basis upon which he develops his more abstract ideas. I trace the role of money from the beginning of the dialogue through to the account of Non-being that is developed towards the dialogue’s end. I also analyse the role of the term ἕτερον within this account. I argue that this term poses irreducible problems for translation: for, in the Sophist, Plato develops two incompatible notions of ‘otherness’. On my reading, these two notions of ‘otherness’ are more closely related than Plato would have us believe. My reading of ἕτερον provides us with a frame through which to read Plato’s ontological account. It encourages us to attend to the role played by notions taken from the realm of exchange. I show how these notions underlie Plato’s thinking of Non-being. Money thus plays a more determining role in Plato’s thought than he lets on.

Abstract This essay reconsiders the relationship between Lucan’s Pharsalia and Samuel Daniel’s The Civil Wars. Unlike previous essays, which have largely focussed upon individual verbal echoes between the two poems, this essay argues that Daniel draws upon Lucan’s particular narrative strategies. Rather than offering a clear account of the Wars of the Roses, Daniel — like Lucan — repeatedly interrupts, questions, and even intervenes in his own narrative. Through this engagement with Lucan, Daniel thus calls attention to the problematics — and the power — of historical narrative. The Civil Wars becomes a poem which teaches its readers about the dangers of the historical poem itself, refusing to offer any neat reconstruction of past events.

Abstract This article examines from a feminist perspective the representation of Briseis in Homer’s Iliad, Ovid’s Heroides 3, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, and Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. First, it shows how Homer’s Briseis, in her single speech of lament over Patroclus, critiques masculine heroic values yet, nonetheless, conveys her own lack of importance and agency and reinforces an androcentric, patriarchal, and aristocratic narrative. Second, it analyzes how Ovid, even as he gives Briseis a more developed voice and psychology, removes her Homeric dignity and makes her into a one-note character entirely submissive to her enslaver Achilles. Third, it argues that Barker alone makes Briseis into a rounded person narrating her complex relationships with other women as well as with the men in her life. An addendum contrasts Barker’s painful but authentic portrayal of Briseis with her rather fantastical treatment in Miller’s more popular novel.

Abstract Both Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 (1998a) and the movie it inspired, 300 (2007), were phenomenal popular successes and still stand as a major gateway to ancient history for many people today. Scholars have examined external influences on Miller’s vision and also made a connection between his personal perspective and common themes among his works, but they have not fully appreciated the significance of the graphic novel 300’s place as both a chronological midpoint and a creative turning point in the evolution of Miller’s career from the breakout success of The Dark Knight Returns (1986) to the nadir of Holy Terror (2011). I argue that Miller’s political ideology and creative vision underwent a parallel evolution in which he deceived himself into believing that the heroic-mythical worldview that he expressed through the fictional superhero Batman not only applied to the historical Battle of Thermopylae but also to the contemporary reality of the post-9/11 world. Seen in this light, Miller’s mythologizing of history in 300 is not simply a case of harmless dramatic license but rather a perilous step down a slippery slope toward the political propaganda of Holy Terror.

Abstract Academic interest in classical reception and video games is thriving, but one dimension that has so far escaped scholarly attention regards the various concerns functioning in the design of such games. This article moves away from the predominantly text-oriented focus of previous investigations (that is, close readings of games as texts) and instead focuses on the production processes and contexts of games set in the ancient world. Specifically, this article is interested in the design of mythological characters in video games: which development choices impact the characterization of these figures, and how do different game design motivations relate to ancient sources? First, I survey the available literature on game production from the field of historical game studies, and establish a framework of different design motivations that impact the works of reception that players experience. Second, I investigate the design of mythological characters in three titles — Apotheon (2015, Alientrap), Hades (2020, Supergiant Games), and Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (2024, Polygon Treehouse) — having either interviewed people involved in these games, or consulted available design testimonials. Ultimately, this article establishes a new critical vocabulary with which classical reception in games can be approached.

Abstract Although not typically known for his close engagement with classical texts, William S. Burroughs (1914–97) incorporates writings by ancient historiographers into several of his later publications, Cities of the Red Night (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981), The Place of Dead Roads (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983), and Apocalypse (New York: George Mulder Fine Arts, 1988). This article analyses the alterations that Burroughs makes in these works to Herodotus (4.72), Tacitus (Hist. 3.33), and Plutarch (de defectu oraculorum 419b–e). It demonstrates how Burroughs deliberately alters ancient prose writings as part of a larger aim to rearrange his own physical reality — what the author terms ‘a magical theory of history’. On the one hand this alteration of ancient texts emphasizes a particular technique in Burroughs’ later writing practice, where working on a larger scale the cut-up technique becomes looser and more akin to re-writing, thus echoing more conventional prose. On the other hand, Burroughs’ subversion of canonical classical authors adds a further example to recent scholarship that has examined the forgery of classical texts as a form of queer reception practice.