Project MUSE®: Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada.daily12026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. I, no. 2, Series I (1956) through current issueLatest Articles: Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of CanadaTWOProject MUSE®Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada1913-54161496-9343Latest articles in Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Rendering the Monstrous Feminine: Myth, Feminism, and Gender Flips in Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's ODY-C
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981345
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Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's comic series ODY-C offers a radical, gender-flipped reimagining of Greek myth. The comic—marketed as a "gender-broke science-fiction epic"1—depicts the interstellar returns of the heroines Odyssia (cf. Odysseus), Ene (cf. Menelaus), and Gamem (cf. Agamemnon), as well as the hero He (cf. Helen), after the destruction of the planet Troiia-VIIa. The series situates these heroic returns in a mythical universe ruled by goddesses, populated with female monsters, and (at least in the early issues of the series) largely devoid of men. This article explores ODY-C's "feminist" reception of Homer's Odyssey, paying particular attention to the ways that Fraction and Ward use the visual
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallRendering the Monstrous Feminine: Myth, Feminism, and Gender Flips in Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's ODY-C2026-01-31text/htmlen-USRendering the Monstrous Feminine: Myth, Feminism, and Gender Flips in Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's ODY-C2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®1260272026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Rule 63 Iphigenia(s): Sacrifice, Gender, and Toxicity
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981344
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The human sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, as the Greeks prepare for the Trojan War is a particularly traumatic event, even when it is contextualized within the troubled sequences of Greek myth and legend. The death of an innocent young girl for a war of foreign invasion is harrowing at best and made still worse when it comes with approval of her father. In fact, our earliest epic sources recounting the story of the Trojan war do not include it. There is no mention of sacrifice in the Iliad,1 while the Cypria2 and the Ehoiai3 present an alternative story featuring a divine intervention by Artemis.4 By the fifth century bc, however, Iphigenia's death is firmly established. Greek tragedy, with its sharp
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallRule 63 Iphigenia(s): Sacrifice, Gender, and Toxicity2026-01-31text/htmlen-USRule 63 Iphigenia(s): Sacrifice, Gender, and Toxicity2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®1325162026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Circe in Comics: Friend, Foe, Female Empowerment?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981343
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Circe has long been an important character in DC Comics, especially in the Wonder Woman mythos. First appearing in Wonder Woman #37 ("The Secrets of Circe!") in 1949,1 Circe's depiction (as Wonder Woman's) has varied a great deal since her earliest iteration. A great deal of work has already explored Wonder Woman in comics and other media, including works highlighting the explicitly feminist intention of her creator (William Marston), her comics' engagement with Greek culture and mythology, and the developments in her costume and sexuality.2 However, far less ink has been spilled over the character of Circe, despite the fact that Circe is a persistent antagonist of Wonder Woman.3 In this article, I address this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallCirce in Comics: Friend, Foe, Female Empowerment?2026-01-31text/htmlen-USCirce in Comics: Friend, Foe, Female Empowerment?2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®1643502026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Introduction: Breaking New Ground with Comics and the Ancient Mediterranean World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981342
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The connection between the ancient Mediterranean world and comics has a long history stretching back to the origins of the first superhero, Superman himself. Co-creator Jerry Siegel in fact reported that his inspiration for the character came from the heroes of the ancient world: "Lying in bed counting sheep when all of a sudden it hit me. I conceived a character like Samson, Hercules and all the strong men I have ever heard tell of rolled into one."1 Other superheroes would also find their origins in the ancient Mediterranean world, largely in Greek and Roman mythology. These superheroes include Wonder Woman, who emerged from the mythological Amazons, and interpretations of Hercules in both Marvel and DC. Indeed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallIntroduction: Breaking New Ground with Comics and the Ancient Mediterranean World2026-01-31text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Breaking New Ground with Comics and the Ancient Mediterranean World2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®197672026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Books—Dream—Stories: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Ovid's Metamorphoses
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981346
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The opening sentence of Ovid's epic Metamorphoses densely interweaves many of the poem's structural themes. This is no accident: ancient epics often announce their themes in their opening words ("Sing, goddess, of the wrath …"; "Tell me of the man …"; "Arms and the man I sing …"; "Of wars across Emathian plains …"; "Of Man's first disobedience …"). Ovid does so here with the opening words of his first two lines, In nova … corpora ("Into new bodies …"): this is going to be a poem about shape-changing. The poem's title, Metamorphoses (a Greek word), is represented in the opening line with the Latin mutatas … formas ("shapes changed"): "metamorphosis" is itself metamorphed through translation for a Roman audience.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallBooks—Dream—Stories: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Ovid's Metamorphoses2026-01-31text/htmlen-USBooks—Dream—Stories: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Ovid's Metamorphoses2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®1129362026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Minding the Gaps in Ovid's Amores
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981347
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When Apuleius (Apol. 10) revealed the "real" identities of Catullus' Lesbia, Propertius' Hostia, and Tibullus' Delia in the second century ad, this "truth" was given a kind of ancient legitimacy and was for a long time thereafter firmly embedded in elegiac scholarship. Today, of course, this view of elegy as narrative biography is generally considered not only quaint but naive. Yet, in moving away from the traditional Latin elegy-as-autobiography narrative, many scholars have similarly questioned elegy's purported "storiness" or narrativity as well.1 Beginning with Barchiesi's study of Ovid's Heroides,2 however, various scholars finally began to re-examine the genre's narrativity. It is in the 2008 collection Latin
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallMinding the Gaps in Ovid's Amores2026-01-31text/htmlen-USMinding the Gaps in Ovid's Amores2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®1037862026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Von Téchne zu Epistéme und Phrónesis: Zum Entstehen von Jurisprudenz im antiken Griechenland (im Rahmen des Entstehens von Wissenschaft) by Heinz Barta (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981348
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This is my favourite work by H. Barta (="B."). For the last quarter of a century, he has worked on a project aimed at rehabilitating Greek law, especially with respect to Roman law, to which it is routinely unfavourably compared.1 The consensus among classicists (which I was taught even as a high school student) seems to be that classical Greek culture lacked true legal science, which is a Roman invention: while Greek culture was instrumental in its inception in the sense that the mindset and methodology developed by Greek philosophy lie at the basis of Roman juridical science, the Greeks themselves did not develop a legal science or a legal doctrine of their own.Barta vehemently criticizes this view, which has
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallVon Téchne zu Epistéme und Phrónesis: Zum Entstehen von Jurisprudenz im antiken Griechenland (im Rahmen des Entstehens von Wissenschaft) by Heinz Barta (review)2026-01-31text/htmlen-USVon Téchne zu Epistéme und Phrónesis: Zum Entstehen von Jurisprudenz im antiken Griechenland (im Rahmen des Entstehens von Wissenschaft) by Heinz Barta (review)2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®146222026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Phryne: A Life in Fragments by Melissa Funke (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981349
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It was with pleasure I returned to a subject, one which I treated only in small part many years ago, but which I could explore more fully thanks to Melissa Funke's Phryne: A Life in Fragments. In this book, Funke sets out to explore how Boeotian Mnesarete, a sex worker in fourth-century bc Athens, could be transformed into Phryne, a symbol of elite culture in ancient Athens. What remains of Phryne are only fragments; as Funke puts it, she is "the ultimate fragmented dreamgirl" (1). Funke uses Phryne as a test case "to see how a life can be reduced to anecdotes that in turn are reassembled into what appears to be a fulsome narrative" (2) and come to embody Athens' intellectual legacy in later Greek literature, with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallPhryne: A Life in Fragments by Melissa Funke (review)2026-01-31text/htmlen-USPhryne: A Life in Fragments by Melissa Funke (review)2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®256852026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31Localism in Hellenistic Greece by Sheila Ager and Hans Beck (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/981350
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In the last 25 years or so, scholars have increasingly stressed the connectivity of the ancient world. This is seen as especially true after Alexander and his successors had brought almost the whole eastern Mediterranean under Macedonian control and even more so with the emergence of the Roman empire. Much of this has been under the influence of modern ideas of globalization. Hans Beck has recently pushed back against this view with his 2020 book, Localism and the Ancient Greek City-State.1 In that book, without rejecting the importance of connectivity, Beck makes the case for studying the local, arguing that people and their cities are to be understood as much in a local context as in any broader framework. The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/366/image/coversmallLocalism in Hellenistic Greece by Sheila Ager and Hans Beck (review)2026-01-31text/htmlen-USLocalism in Hellenistic Greece by Sheila Ager and Hans Beck (review)2026-01-312026TWOProject MUSE®117142026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-01-31