http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/ Recently published papers in Leeds International Classical Studies, a peer-reviewed on-line journal which publishes articles and interim discussion papers on all aspects of Greek and Roman antiquity, and of the history of the classical tradition. en-gb http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2011/201104.pdf This paper offers a critical reassessment of Prop. 1.3 through a careful re-examination of the poem’s representational mechanisms of erotic desire. So far, critical attention has concentrated primarily on the poet’s manipulative rhetoric. My investigation focuses on Cynthia's feminine speech (language, structure and content) and its rhetorical efficiency in view of the poem’s gendered antagonism between male desire and feminine subjectivity. http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2011/201103.pdf In this paper, I focus on Propertius' Tarpeia-elegy (IV.4) and revisit its place within Propertius' broader aetiological plan by exploring the importance of the (hitherto unremarked) Neopythagorean/Empedoclean echoes within it. These echoes justify the presence of the figure of Vesta, which has otherwise been considered eccentric, to the extent that the text has been corrected so as to remove her name. Within this framework, I explore the possible cultural influences (especially by Ennius and Varro) which made possible the syncretistic representation (Neopythagorean/Empedoclean) of Vesta as personification of the Empedoclean Strife. The contrast of the Empedoclean elements of water and fire within the elegy is accordingly seen as the progressive elimination of Love from the poem. In order to demonstrate Propertius' flirtation with philosophical ideas further, I analyze Ovid's double rewriting of the same myth (Met. 14.775-804, Fasti 1.255-76) and consider his cunning reaction to Propertius' philosophical echoes in the myth of Tarpeia. http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2011/201102.pdf Callicles, Socrates' main interlocutor in Plato's Gorgias, has traditionally been interpreted as a kind of sybaritic hedonist, as someone who takes the ultimate goal in life to consist in the pursuit of physical pleasures and, further, as someone who refuses to accept the value of any restraint at all on a person's desire. Such an interpretation turns Callicles into a straw man and Plato, I argue, did not create Callicles only to have him knocked down in this easy way. Plato's construction of Callicles' position is much more formidable and not reducible to any simple classification. In the first part of this paper, I challenge the traditional interpretation of Callicles. In the second, I speculate as to why Plato has attributed this much more formidable position to Callicles, one which Socrates is never really made to get at the heart of. http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2011/201101.pdf This article examines Aristophanes' Clouds within the framework of the ritual events of the Great Dionysia, drawing parallels between those events and various textual and performative aspects of the play. It is argued that scholarship to date has largely subordinated the play's ritual aspects, examination of which reveals that in fact Aristophanes has crafted a vigorous defense of polis religion against the 'new thinking' and 'new gods' represented by the play's foil, Socrates. http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2010/201002.pdf Ovid's Heroides 20 and 21 are the literary epistles exchanged by Acontius and Cydippe in the effort of the former to win the love of the latter. The two letters rely heavily on the oath Acontius inscribed on the apple, which he then threw at the feet of Cydippe. She in turn picked up the apple, uttered the oath and unwittingly bound herself to Acontius whose wish was to represent the fruition of this union by the dedication of a sculpted golden apple. Through the movement of the apple and the fixity of its golden effigy, the poet alludes respectively to the process leading to their union and then to its stability. Furthermore Ovid uses a variety of techniques to highlight the materiality of the letters as written objects that can be moved in space: the various positions the letter can take suggest, at least for Cydippe, the fluctuation in her feelings prior to her final union with Acontius. To help the reader grasp the correspondence of the internal course of sentiments and feelings to the external movement of things, the poet employs a number of ways which prompt his reader to 'see' the situations the text describes. http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2010/201001.pdf HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) employs the latest digital technology to develop an innovative methodology to the study of spatial data in Herodotus' Histories. Using a digital text of Herodotus, freely available from the Perseus on-line library, to capture all the place-names mentioned in the narrative, we construct a database to house that information and represent it in a series of mapping applications, such as GIS, GoogleEarth and GoogleMap Timeline. As a collaboration of academics from the disciplines of Classics, Geography, and Archaeological Computing, HESTIA has the twin aim of investigating the ways geography is represented in the Histories and of bringing Herodotus' world into people's homes.