Project MUSE®: Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics.daily12026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 17 (2009) through current issue
Latest Articles: Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the ClassicsTWOProject MUSE®Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics2327-64360095-5809Latest articles in Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Books Received
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985276
<p></p>
Publishers are invited to send review copies to Arion, 745 Commonwealth Ave., Suite b03, Boston, ma, 02215. Most Arion reviews are commissioned. Qualified reviewers, however, are invited to apply to review a book by writing arion@bu.edu and identifying their book of interest and their
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallBooks Received2026-03-16text/htmlen-USBooks Received2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®241412026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16Writing in This Issue
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985277
<p></p>
Piero Boitani, FBA, FMAA, Lincei, INAF, is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Rome "Sapienza." In 2016 he received the Balzan Prize for Comparative Literature and is the general editor of Fondazione Valla's series of Greek and Latin Writers. His most recent books include Il grande racconto dei classici (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2024); "Reconnaître est un Dieu." L'anagnorisis dans la littérature occidentale (Paris: Garnier, 2025); Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2025). His poem, Two Wanderers Meeting, appeared in THINK. A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays in the Summer/Fall issue, 2024. Plato's Poem, ed. and trans. P. Febbraro, was
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallWriting in This Issue2026-03-16text/htmlen-USWriting in This Issue2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®66602026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16The Snake That Eats Itself
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985279
<p></p>
The eco-philosopher Timothy Morton (2016), repurposing a motif that was developed in ancient Egypt and in the Greek and Roman world, invites us to think of the ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail, not as a symbol of immortality but as an image for our contemporary climate crisis. The snake reminds us of the deadly feedback loop that our actions have created, maintain, and exacerbate. Our damage to the natural world causes climate change, which in turn harms our own interests and motivates us to cause still greater damage to the environment (think, for instance, the ever-greater use of air conditioning in response to ever-greater summer temperatures). In a similar vein, Richard Seaford (2009) has drawn on
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallThe Snake That Eats Itself2026-03-16text/htmlen-USThe Snake That Eats Itself2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®232012026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16On History and Storytelling
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985280
<p></p>
In "The Storyteller," the twentieth century essayist Walter Benjamin uses his reflections on the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov as an occasion to examine why storytelling is falling out of practice. "Less and less frequently," Benjamin writes in the 1960s, "do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest of our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences."1 Benjamin goes on, "One reason for this phenomenon is obvious: experience has fallen in value." Benjamin associates this decline in storytelling with growing
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallOn History and Storytelling2026-03-16text/htmlen-USOn History and Storytelling2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®231412026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16Six Poems
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985282
<p></p>
for Bill and Catherine McGurnVia del Piè di Marmo, RomeNovember 2022(ca. 460 bce)"My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallSix Poems2026-03-16text/htmlen-USSix Poems2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®152092026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16Oedipus Unredacted
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985284
<p></p>
There is no doubt that the most remarkable and disturbing moment of Robert Icke's Oedipus, which I saw at Studio 54 in New York, was not created by Sophocles. Lesley Manville (Jocasta), seated downstage, delivers an intensely shattering monologue detailing the sexual abuse inflicted on her by Laius when she was a 13-year-old child. He does not know it yet, but Oedipus (Mark Strong), who listens almost dumbstruck, was the result of this rape, and despite Laius's continued proclivity for acts of child abuse, this much older leader is forced to marry Jocasta. Brilliantly, Icke loops the Sophoclean story back in by having Jocasta tell us that years later Laius was killed on his way to an out-of-town hotel and another
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallOedipus Unredacted2026-03-16text/htmlen-USOedipus Unredacted2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®211012026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16Crete's Asphendou Cave and Greece's Oldest Figural Art: A Debate and Historical Archive
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985285
<p></p>
Since its inception, and well before it had a nation and a national ministry to promote it, Greek archaeology has been defined by twinned areas of historical interest. The first is the Bronze Age: Mycenaean on the mainland, Cycladic in the Aegean islands, and—after its discovery in 1900—Minoan on Crete. The second is loosely called Classical, and primarily, though not exclusively, Athenian. All archaeological roads tended to lead to, or flow from, those hallowed Hellenic sources. It is symbolically telling that by far the most oft-visited archaeological sites in Greece today are the Classical Akropolis in Athens and the reconstructed Bronze Age Palace of Knossos on Crete. One of the most striking developments in
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallCrete's Asphendou Cave and Greece's Oldest Figural Art: A Debate and Historical Archive2026-03-16text/htmlen-USCrete's Asphendou Cave and Greece's Oldest Figural Art: A Debate and Historical Archive2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®950712026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16Metamorphoses
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286
<p></p>
Leda11 in. x 20 in., white ash, photo by Stephen Petegorsky[Hermione, daughter of Helen, addresses Orestes:] "I shall not rehearse the lying words of the swan upon the stream, nor complain of Jove disguised in plumage." (Ov. Her. 8.65, tr. Showerman)The Grief of Ceres10 in. x 18 in., white ash, photo by Stephen PetegorskyProserpina's girdle, well known to her mother, had accidentally dropped into Cyane's sacred pool and still lay floating on top of the water. Once [Ceres] recognized this, as if the truth of her daughter's abduction had dawned on the goddess at last, she wildly tore at her unkempt hair and beat on her breasts again and again. She still did not know where Proserpina was, but she cursed every region
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985286">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/834/image/coversmallMetamorphoses2026-03-16text/htmlen-USMetamorphoses2026-03-162026TWOProject MUSE®89142026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-03-16