Classics at Leeds is delighted to be hosting the 8th Annual Postgraduate Conference and wish you a warm welcome to the University of Leeds.

The committee would like to thank LEAP and The School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds for their generous funding, without which this conference would not have been possible. We would also like to thank Dr Marta Cobb from the Institute for Medieval Studies and Dr Bev Back from the department of Classics, LCS for agreeing to be our keynote speakers.

Finally, this conference would not have been possible without the efforts of the organising committee. Thank you for all your help today and over the past few months.

Organising committee:Elinor CosgraveNatalie EnrightMaria HaleySophie MilnerHenry ClarkeAndrea BassoClaudia Li

Are you on Twitter? Live Tweeting is welcome throughout the conference using the official conference hashtag #LeedsCC17. Follow the hashtag to keep track of what’s happening in parallel sessions to those you are attending and keep the conversation going online! We will also be compiling your tweets into a timeline after the conference using Storify. Finally, don’t forget to follow Classics at Leeds on Twitter via @LeedsClassics and like Classics at Leeds on Facebook.

Wireless internet access is available in Devonshire Hall via Meet at Leeds. If you experience any technical difficulties throughout the day, please ask a member of the committee for assistance.

Please join us for dinner and drinks after the conference at The Head of Steam in Headingley. For anyone staying in Leeds or travelling home this evening, there is a direct bus route from Headingley to Leeds City Centre, including to the train and coach stations.

9:00-9:30 Registration with Tea and Coffee9:30-9:50 First Keynote Speaker: Dr Marta Cobb, The University of Leeds

A Special Connection to the Afterlife?: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory in the Visions of Medieval Female MysticsFenton Room

9:50-11:30 Panel 1.1: Violence and the BodyChaired by Elinor CosgraveEvans Room

Panel 1.2: Justifying ViolenceChaired by Henry ClarkeFenton Room

9:50-10:10 ‘And their bodies were found’: Crime, Vulnerability, and Compassion in David Peace’s Nineteen Seventy FourMaximiliano Jiménez

The role of historical exempla in the depiction of “crudelitas” and “clementia” in Seneca’s De IraKyriakoula Tzortzopoulou

10:10-10:30 Tereus and the TragicomicMaria Haley

Frontiers of Empathy: Nationalism and Limited CommunitiesNiall O’Brien

10:30-10:50 Compassion in the Workplace: Impact and Importance in Nursing and PolicingFiona Meechan

“Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise, but he that is without it.”: Cruelty, Compassion, and the Middle-Class JokeWilliam Burgess

10:50-11:10 Bodies seeking viewer: power and violence in the Prometheus Boundfrom Aeschylus to Michel FoucaultElena Butti

“How to love your rapist,” by ThetisSophie Milner

11.10-11.30 Questions Questions11:30-11:40 Tea and Coffee Break

Panel 2.1: Compassionate ReadingsChaired by Natalie EnrightEvans Room

Panel 2.2: Violence and ‘The Other’Chaired by Sophie MilnerFenton Room

11:40-12:00 Suffering, Solipsism and ‘True Empathy’ in David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous MenAlyssia MacAlister

The Otherness of feminine Sexuality: Circe's echo in GilgameshNatasha Djukic

12:00-12.20 Euripides’ Andromache and the Politics of CompassionVasileios Boutsis

Predictable Cruelties? Women as Prisoners of War in the Roman WorldElinor Cosgrave

12:20-12:40 Dementia and Domestic ViolenceEmily Walsh

“Following the Drinking Gourd”: Metaphor and Hyperbole in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground RailroadSteven Beckett

12:40-1:00 Cruelty and Compassion in the PhiloctetesDerek McCann

Slave Experience – and Social Mobility? – in Fourth Century Athens: The Evidence of Funerary MonumentsCarrie Sawtell

1:00-1:20 Questions Questions1:20-2:20 Lunch2:20-2:40 Second Keynote Speaker: Dr Bev Back, The University of Leeds

Feminist Pedagogy (Title TBC)Fenton Room

2:40-4:00 Panel 3.1: Medicine, Magic, and Mental HealthChaired by Andrea BassoFenton Room

Panel 3.2: Responding to ViolenceChaired by Maria HaleyEvans Room

2:40-3:00 Iliadic ἄχος and Emotional Trauma Discrimination of the Forms of Sociability

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Melissa Gardner in Europe: Inquisition and Masonry in Spain from XVIII CenturyFernando Gil

3:00-3:20 Exposing Platonic CompassionNatalie Enright

Humanitarianism and Human CrisesHemn Seyedi

3:20-3:40 This Will Hurt You A Lot More Than It’ll Hurt Me: Horrible Healers in Medieval FictionRachel Fennell

Boudicca and Numantia: Resisting Rome and its Legacy Henry Clarke

3:40-4:00 Cruelty of Gods vs. Cruelty of Men. Punishments for Corrupt/Uncorrupt Seers in Homer and Apollonius of RhodesCorneliu Clop

‘Inward horror will be their first tormentor’: the public execution of Charles I and its impact on historians and the futureMatthias Wong

4.00-4.20 Questions Questions

End of Conference

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Abstracts

Panel 1.1: Violence and the Body

‘And their bodies were found’: Crime, Vulnerability, and Compassion in David Peace’s Nineteen Seventy FourMaximiliano Jiménez - maximiliano.jimenezromero@student.uva.nl

Through an analysis of David Peace’s noir-fiction novel Nineteen Seventy Four (1999), I intend to explore how the author addresses a complex notion of the boundaries between empathy and rejection in relation to violence. Taking as a starting point Judith Butler’s idea of the body as a site where vulnerability and identity converge, I would like to approach how Peace uses the generic conventions of crime fiction to present a more ambiguous and uncomfortable idea of sympathy, for even the protagonist—the young crime correspondent of the Yorkshire Post in the year 1974—goes through different stages in terms of his likeability and vulnerability: while at first he hopes missing ten-year-old Clare Kempley be found dead so that he can cover a good story, he experiences a shocking change when confronted with the gruesome details and images of the torture and painful end that the little girl had to endure; furthermore, when he decides to try and, ironically, uncover the truth for the sake of justice, his own body becomes a tool to exert violence on others, at the same time that it makes him the object of torture and abuse. In this sense, by paying attention to how the novel revolves around the motif of the limits between “justified” and “unjust” violence, “crimes” and “pranks,” I will also aim at exploring how Peace takes advantage of a very political and graphic genre to venture wider thematic reaches that go beyond the microcosms of 1974 Leeds.

Tereus and the TragicomicMaria Haley – cl11mh@leeds.ac.uk

Tereus rapes his wife Procne’s sister Philomela and cuts out her tongue so she cannot expose his crime. Philomela then weaves a shroud to tell her sister the story, thus the sisters resolve to kill Tereus and Procne’s child Itys and feed him to Tereus in revenge. Sophocles’ adapted the myth in his tragedy Tereus and Aristophanes’ parodied Tereus the hoopoe in his Birds. However fourth-century comedians staged now fragmentary burlesques of Tereus’ cannibalism. How could such a cruel, tragic myth be made comic?

No complete example of such mythic burlesques survives, leaving classicists to consider how comedies with titles from tragic myths such as Tereus, Medea and Thyestes could have been funny.1 For whereas comedies such as Aristophanes’ Birds could reference tragic themes in a domestic plotline, these burlesques followed a mythical plotline, travestying infanticide and cannibalism.2

So whilst Dobrov has provided an extensive comparison of Tereus in Sophocles’ and Aristophanes’ works, I will examine the fragments of Anaxandrides’, Cantharus’ and

1 Seidensticker 1982, Nesselrath 1993; 1990, Hanink 2014, Konstantakos 2014.2 Manuwald 2014 p.583.

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Philetaerus’ Tereus to uncover how Tereus’ story was travestied.3 Having explored the comic potential of the story I will then compare these fragments with Sophocles’ Tereus to argue that beyond travestying the tragic plot, the Tereus burlesques also travesty the tragic mode.

This paper will consider how these characters’ attacks were pitched as dramatic tropes, reducing the audiences’ compassion for the violence and allowing the cruelty to become comic.

BibliographyDobrov, G.W. 1993. The Tragic and Comic Tereus. The American Journal of Philology. 114. 2. 189-234.Hanink, J. 2014. Crossing Genres: Comedy, Tragedy and Satyr Play. In: The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy. ed. by M. Fontaine and A.C Scafuro. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Konstatakos, I.M. 2014. Comedy in the Fourth Century: Mythological Burlesques. In: The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy. ed. by M. Fontaine and A.C Scafuro. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Manuwald, G. 2014.Tragedy, Paratragedy and Roman Comedy. In: The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy. ed. by M. Fontaine and A.C Scafuro. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nesselrath, H.G. 1993. Parody and Later Greek Comedy. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 95. 181-95.Nesselrath, H.G. 1990. Die attische Mittlere Komödie : ihre Stellung in der antiken Literaturkritik und Literaturgeschichte. Berlin: de Gruyter.Seidensticker, 1982. Palindromos harmonia: Studien zu komischen Elementen in der griechischen Tragödie. Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Compassion in the Workplace: Impact and Importance in Nursing and PolicingFiona Meechan - fiona.meechan@manchester.ac.uk

Recent inquiries into failings in public services in the UK, including the handling of the Hillsborough tragedy and child sexual exploitation cases in policing, and high mortality rates in the Mid-Staffordshire and Morecambe Bay Hospitals, have exposed practices where there has been more concern for the status of the organisation than for the care of the service user. It is argued that these care failings are related to a lack of compassion in our public service organisations.

Much literature on compassion in the workplace starts from the ontological assumption that workplaces generate suffering, which is arguably compounded by capitalism and rising conservatism which furthers work intensification and workplace de-humanisation, facilitated by a functionalist focus on quantitative measures of organisational success at the expense of a focus on quality. However, ironically, in addition to reducing the suffering and exploitation of workers, compassion has also been found to generate individual and organisational resilience and effectiveness, which is arguably now of more importance than ever, following several years of austerity, and resultant organisational strain in UK public services.

3 Dobrov 1993.

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It is therefore of concern that studies amongst medics have found that their levels of empathy (an antecedent of compassion) reduce as they go through training. This research will examine if this reduction continues once medics enter the workplace, and will consider if the same phenomenon is experienced amongst police recruits. This is of particular importance in professions where recruits have traditionally been required to work ‘through the ranks’ before reaching influential management positions.

Bodies seeking viewer: power and violence in the Prometheus Bound from Aeschylus to Michel FoucaultElena Butti - elena.butti01@universitadipavia.it

I would like to highlight – starting from the translation and the study of the Greek text to a comparative reading of Michel Foucault – the ambiguous link between political power and violence that the first exercises over the bodies. The body-manifest of a quartered god on Scythian crag as a meeting point – and confrontation – between power and violence. This last one, in particular, is reducible to the appendix of the first but also jointly prereq-uisite and guarantee for the preservation of it: especially when the violence, and conse-quent suffering, are provided and (nevertheless) chosen consciously from Prometheus the Prescient, who he is famous for his μῆτις.

That faculty, leitmotif of the whole tragedy for the light (and shadow too) that sheds as on broad views of the past as on disturbing future prospects (regarding both Io both Zeus), allows the Titan of orchestrating an insidious game of political strategies nevertheless without allowing him to escape his fate of eternal πόνος.

Concluded the operation of "reading", I attempt in the equally necessary – albeit almost always overlooked – exercise of "vision" of the work. I chose to take care of three (and all dating arc last fifteen) projects of the Prometheus Bound: the staging first in Syracuse (2002) and then in Milan (2003) by Luca Ronconi, the performances of the Prometheus Project by Theodorous Terzopoulos, Sahika Tekand and Rimini Protokoll (2010) and finally the latest Syracuse representation of Prometheus, this time directed by Claudio Longhi (2012).

Panel 1.2: Justifying Violence

The role of historical exempla in the depiction of “crudelitas” and “clementia” in Seneca’s De IraKyriakoula Tzortzopoulou - kelytzortz@hotmail.com

Seneca’s philosophical treatise “De Ira” constitutes a considerable evidence of the prevalent cruelty that characterized the behavior of aristocrats and rulers within the Roman society of the Imperial Period (1st c. A. D.). Cruelty is closely related to the emotion of anger, since the latter is defined as the desire to exact harsh punishments (even death) and it is displayed with cruel actions. However, Seneca disapproves the common reality of his era by opposing to the generation of anger and its repercussion to society and by proposing an alternative value system, characterized mainly by compassion. For the reinforcement of his

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argumentation, Seneca presents a wide range of historical exempla that function as paradigms either of imitation or avoidance. These examples come both from the upper Greek past (Persian kings or Macedonian rulers) and the Roman history (imperators and emperors).

The aim of this paper is, in the first place, to examine the important role of exempla in the transmission of Seneca’s philosophical considerations regarding the social and psychological impact of cruelty and anger, due to the fact that exempla constitute a common means of pedagogy in Greco-Roman culture. In the second place, I intend to pinpoint the suitability and cogency of these examples, since they correspond with the cultural memory of the intended readership.

LiteratureMattern-Parks, S. P. (2001), “Seneca’s Treatise On Anger and the Aristocratic Competition for Honor”, στο Tywalski, E. & Weiss, C. (eds.), Essays in Honor of Gordon Williams: Twenty-five years at Yale, Haven, 177-88.Mayer, R.G. (1991), “Roman historical exempla in Seneca”, στο Hijmans, B.L. & Grimal, P. (eds.), Sénèque et la prose latine, Geneva, 141-76.

Frontiers of Empathy: Nationalism and Limited CommunitiesNiall O’Brien - hsnobrie@student.liverpool.ac.uk

Benedict Anderson posits that a nation is “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson, 2006, p.6). It is enough to say that the frontiers of empathy and emotional investment extend only as far as the people that a Nationalism encompasses; “No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind” (Anderson, 2006, p.7). One thinks of the provisions made for the Athenian war dead, the separation of the dead of World War I by nation, the poppy being worn only by allied nations, Douglas MacArthur’s encomium at Arlington fields, those cenotaphs that litter the towns and villages of the UK, that symbolically inter the dead community by community. All these phenomena necessarily limit and restrict, exclude and remove, leaving room only for those that belong. Whereas on the battlefield belligerents would lie together, haphazard, arranged in lines and fronts but essentially blurred and ambiguous. Human hands, the hands of community, guided by the imagination of a Nationalism, select, recognize, and remove the offending dead from those worthy of national sepulchre. Our empathy, sympathy, and emotional capital are directed towards the lists of Our Own. Greek culture defined itself by what it was not – that is oppositional definition. Particular emphasis is typically placed on the perceived femininity of the barbarian against the manly sosphronye (moderation) of the Hellene. Yet so much material confounds such simple generalization; sympathetic portrayals of the grieving Persians by Aeschylus, the positive ethnographic reminiscences of Herodotus, and extending our survey to the Roman world - Scipio Africanus’ words at the fall of auld enemy Carthage – remarking that Rome too may one day share a similar fate. Scipio’s words are related by the philohellenos (Greek-lover) Plutarch, and if we accept the oppositional generalization such cross cultural empathizing is confusing.

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We might say; the fall of the Carthage reminds Scipio only of Rome, the anguish of Aeschylus’ Persians schaudenfraude for the demos (people) of Athens, and Herodotus’ encomium of Persian achievement before meeting the Greeks only a warning sign before the Athenian slip down the chasm of hubris. Or alternatively that shared battlefield experience is but one way in which the limits of community are temporarily mitigated, at the very frontier of separate cultures the boundary literally mingles and blood shared and understanding created. Note Aeschylus and Scipio both experienced their conflicts first hand.

The problem is we can never be categorical with ideas such as empathy; the limits of community is only one factor of many to negotiate.

Anderson, B (2006) Imagined Communities. London “Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise, but he that is without it.”: Cruelty, Compassion, and the Middle-Class JokeWilliam Burgess - will.burgess@kcl.ac.uk

The mid Eighteenth Century is often characterised as an age of decorum, a time when middle-class manners were first codified, and social aspiration was defined by the twin idols of politeness and sensibility. Yet in this age of compassion, when exemplary literature was swaddled in tears and sympathy, the same middle-class readers of novels were consuming callous jest books in their thousands. This apparent contradiction between compassion and cruelty is only starting to attract critical attention, most comprehensively Simon Dickie’s excellent monograph Cruelty and Laughter, but even extended works have struggled to reconcile how an Eighteenth-Century reader might cry at the spectacle of destitution one day, and laugh at it the next. Through a textual and material analysis of a single, remarkable jest book from the 1760s (Mrs Pilkington’s Jests), and an examination of how it situates itself in the broader culture of middle-class jest books, I will suggest how the English genteel classes in the Eighteenth Century could reconcile their necessary compassion with their cruel sense of humour. I will argue that this often-overlooked phenomenon in fact forms the basis of some of our modern assumptions about class. I will demonstrate how jestbooks can create a liminal space that, in spite of their era of social mobility, served to increase the exclusivity of the polite classes.

“How to love your rapist,” by ThetisSophie Milner – cl13sm@leeds.ac.uk

Rape does not lead to marriage, but does in the case of Thetis and Peleus. The movement of Peleus’ cruelty towards Thetis to the compassion of their marriage provides an illustration of how cruelty and compassion combine. The perception of this rape builds upon the work of Deacy: ‘Rape in Antiquity’(1997). Evidence from vases of domestic rape as on Peithinos vase, (LIMC 13), and Eye-Siren Group vase, (LIMC 12) supplements evidence. Sexual violence was a crime, as Hansen(1991) shows, but was seen as committed against the father or husband of a woman. This reinforces “ honour culture”, as defined by Levi Strauss(1972). Do such notions grant men rights to

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sexual violence? It is clear in mythology that rape is common: so why is this, when sexual violence is a crime? Cruelty as we perceive, may not be how it was perceived then.Pindar Nemean 4 relates the metamorphoses of Thetis. Those changes can be seen in notions of ‘rites of passage’ as in Levi Strauss(1972) and ‘liminality’ as in Van Gennep(1960). The event is a “mythic archetype”, as Jung(1910) describes the struggle of Thetis. The Francois Vase and Cypria, the later Catullus 64 and Statius’ Achilleid present the grand mythological wedding where the rape is forgotten. The wedding is reward for the struggle over the body of Thetis. The size of the wedding reflects the prize: a goddess is marrying a mortal. This violence is forgotten because of cultural norms and the prize. The myth can only find credibility in the symbolism of the event and a different normality of sexual violence and marriage.

Panel 2.1: Compassionate Readings

Suffering, Solipsism and ‘True Empathy’ in David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous MenAlyssia MacAlister - alyssia.j.macalister@durham.ac.uk

Whenever critiquing David Foster Wallace, one makes an admission of personal moral principles in a more direct manner than with regards to other writers, as the momentum of Wallace’s work relies heavily on reader-reaction and self-awareness. In Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection of short stories, one all-encompassing theme is empathetic attempts to conquer solipsism by characters, readers, and the writer himself.4 The definition of empathy for this paper is sourced from three points: Hodges and Klein’s culminating definition that empathy is an attempt to ‘bridg[e] the gap that exists between the self experience and others’ experiences’, which we learn naturally through observation as we develop,5 Gumbrect’s version of the adapted German word Einfühlung, which is described as ‘imagining what is going on in another person’s psyche’,6 and Wallace’s seemingly intuitive use of the word in interviews and writings.7 By presenting moral dilemmas in what Nicoline Timmer calls a narrative ‘post post-modern’ style,8 Wallace draws out an empathetic epiphany moment, prompting the notion that everyone feels alone inside, suffers because of that aloneness, but is not necessarily alone. The ability to truly empathise is, according to Wallace, ‘impossible’, complicated by ‘sham-narrative-honesty’ and solipsism rooted in hurt. Attempts at empathy can be successful, though, when it is selfless and reciprocated. Where an attempt at reciprocal empathy can be made character, reader, and writer can be freed from their ‘solipsistic cages’.

Euripides’ Andromache and the Politics of CompassionVasileios Boutsis - vasileios.boutsis.14@ucl.ac.uk

4 David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, (London: Abacus, 2001)5 S. D. Hodges, and K. J. K. Klein, ‘Regulating the costs of empathy: the price of being human’, Journal of Socio-Economics, Vol.30.5 (2001), p.4386 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), p.xv7 Larry McCaffrey, ‘A Interview with David Foster Wallace’, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 13.2 (1993), p.1278 Nicoline Timmer, Do You Feel It Too?: The Post Post-modern Syndrome in American Fiction at the Turn of the Millennium, (New York: Rodopi, 2010)

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The themes of cruelty and compassion are prominent in the Andromache, a drama of successive supplications and an expanding relationship crisis that puts traditional alliances under pressure.Hermione and Menelaos justify and rationalise their offensive actions by evoking the legal framework for marital affairs, a “proper” notion of philia and the empirical Greek-barbarian bipolar. Modern readers justify the rhetoric of Menelaos and Hermione, both of which express a cold-hearted realism and a cruel letter of the law. This paper adds the parameter of compassion to the political discussion of the Andromache, attempting a novel evaluation of this emotion within a civic context and exploring its social potential. Contrasting the Atreids, Peleus expresses a communitarian, cooperative social profile. Peleus’ speech acts as a reformer of the Greek social space, centralising altruistic ideals as the core of the political identity of the polis. Employing a political allusion to Iliad 24, Euripides demonstrates that empathic behaviour lies at the core of social life and is a necessary and sufficient condition towards political coexistence. The play systematically subverts conventional legality moving towards a timeless communitarian value system where compassion has central position. My analysis will try to show that Euripides portrays compassion not merely as an irrational, emotional expression but also as a political behaviour, with an unshakable and unquestionable role in social life and with a positive effect on the community.

Dementia and Domestic ViolenceEmily Walsh - EKW358@student.bham.ac.uk

In my performance piece, I wish to argue that the well-being of carers of persons with dementia is severely compromised by a lack of appropriate guidance and support concerning the issue of domestic violence. I intend to argue that when a person is diagnosed with dementia an implicit assumption is made by society: that being that the person with dementia is no longer responsible for controlling and regulating their behaviour, even if it is of a violent nature, because they no longer possess autonomy over their actions. I wish to dispute this claim by arguing that in early and moderate stages of the disease persons with dementia do possess the requisite capacity to make autonomous decisions. I will argue from this that instances of domestic violence towards carers are prevalent in cases of dementia because patients with dementia have a tendency to get violent as a means of communicating a need or a desire. This topic is of ethical significance because carers who experience domestic violence have significantly reduced levels of well-being, which in turn makes them more prone to mental illnesses/health complications of their own. I will conclude that the appropriate societal action to take is to: firstly, decrease the stigmatization of carers seeking help with this issue, secondly, to empower the person with dementia, so that they feel in control, rather than controlled by, their disease and lastly, to provide appropriate care and guidance provisions for instances of domestic violence in this field.

Cruelty and Compassion in the PhiloctetesDerek McCann - derek.mccann.2011@mumail.ie

The account of Odysseus’ plot to fulfil the prophecy of Helenus and, luring the eponymous hero from his enforced seclusion on Lemnos, to break the lengthy siege of Troy, Sophocles’

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Philoctetes is a rich and complex work abounding in nuance. It has variously been interpreted, an examination of the nomos/phusis debate, a clash between collectivist and individualist values, or an allegory on the value of force, deceit or persuasion as a political tool. This paper proposes to advance a reading of the Philoctetes which recognises the centrality to the text of themes of compassion and of cruelty. In Odysseus, Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, the play presents its audience with three characters almost devoid of compassion on account of their callousness, their immaturity or their isolation. Over the course of the play the impersonal cruelty of Odysseus is contrasted to the developing compassion of Neoptolemus and the re-awakening empathy of Philoctetes. The importance of compassion in the text is realised, not only through characterisation, but through staging, in the form of the eponymous hero’s bow. This prop, passed from Heracles to Philoctetes to Neoptolemus and back to Philoctetes symbolises, through the circumstances surrounding each exchange, this reassertion of compassion. The resolution of the tragedy, the prophecy and of the characters’ own development, is only achieved through the re-establishment of compassion as the dominant principle in the social and political discourse presented in microcosm on the deserted isle of Lemnos.

Panel 2.2: Violence and ‘The Other’

The Otherness of feminine Sexuality: Circe's echo in GilgameshNatasha Djukic - N.DJUKIC.657741@swansea.ac.uk

The influence of The Epic of Gilgamesh on the Homeric epics is not a new idea. However, while Circe has been compared to other goddesses in the Gilgamesh Epic (particularly Ishtar), she is rarely linked with Shamhat, her distorted echo. In this paper, I postulate that Circe is Homer’s response to Shamhat.

Drawing on various ideas expressed by Burkert in Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (2004) and by West in The East Face of Helicon (1997), I hope to compare these two women, who, I suggest, embody the shifting attitude to the power of feminine sexuality.

Circe’s magic has the ability to rob a man of his very humanity and it is only through divine help that Odysseus is able to avoid this fate. Shamhat, on the other hand, is a mortal whose sexual power is potent enough to gift the wild man, Enkidu, with humanity.

When seen through the prism of Shamhat, the changes visible in Circe’s character illustrate the growing fear of feminine sexual power.

Predictable Cruelties? Women as Prisoners of War in the Roman WorldElinor Cosgrave – cl12egc@leeds.ac.uk

Today, there is an awareness of the role of women as captives taken in military conflict. One need only consider the high-profile kidnapping of schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014 or the international condemnation of Daesh's treatment of its captive females. However, whilst images of captive women are prevalent in the news, little scholarship has been devoted to the study of their treatment. This is especially true of female captives taken by the Romans

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during the course of their military campaigns. This paper begins by outlining Roman expectations of captive-taking, the so-called 'rules of war', and continues by considering the types of cruelties endured by female captives at the hands of their captors, including sexual assault, humiliation in public triumphal displays, enslavement, and execution. There are examples of compassion which should be acknowledged but such instances are often intended to illuminate an aspect or virtue of a Roman general or leader. In addition to considering high-profile women, such as Cleopatra, Thusnelda and Zenobia, this paper will also address the treatment of non-elite women and the position they held within the Roman world. Ultimately, I will demonstrate the Romans utilised female captives for their own purposes, disregarding any shared cultural norms which may have dictated treatment we would now consider cruel and inhumane.

“Following the Drinking Gourd”: Metaphor and Hyperbole in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground RailroadSteven Beckett - s.n.beckett@durham.ac.uk

Just as the songs of the Underground Railroad used metaphor and hyperbole tocommunicate truth about escaping to the North, this paper examines how Colson Whitehead presents metaphor as literal and fact as hyperbole in order to convey a truer than true account of American slavery, specifically the psychological misconception of real Northern freedom.

His depiction of the Underground Railroad as a physical series of tracks, trains, and stationstransforms the metaphorical into literal, which is accompanied by a hyperbolic portrayal offreedom being both greater and more easily acquired the further north one travels. Whileescaped slaves indeed gained freedom in the North during the period, Whitehead’s noveltakes this historical truth one step further, suggesting that true freedom did not exist forblacks at the time and that Northern freedom was merely relative when compared to the lack of freedom in the South.

Despite these alterations, Whitehead does not fundamentally distort the truth ofAmerican slavery, nor does he shy away from the cruel realities of how blacks were treatedduring this time, but the literalization of the railroad as a physical vehicle forNorthern/upward freedom/mobility allows him to paint a clearer picture of how slavesviewed the North. Furthermore, Whitehead’s inclusion of white characters, specifically thenarrative perspective of Ridgeway, a slave catcher, introduces readers to the varied views ofslavery held by whites at the time. It is the purpose of this paper to explore how Whiteheaduses various literary techniques in order to more clearly communicate the reality of American slavery to contemporary readers.

Slave Experience – and Social Mobility? – in Fourth Century Athens: The Evidence of Funerary MonumentsCarrie Sawtell - clsawtell1@sheffield.ac.uk

Classical Athens was a slave society, the institution of slavery conjuring images of forced labour and brutality, the ugly side of this and many other cities of the ancient Greek world. Certainly many of the slaves held in Classical Attica were subject to such brutality, toiling in

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the silver mines or else some equally labour-intensive, dirty and even dangerous position. Others, however, served in Athenian households as domestic help and child-carers, certainly a less dirty and dangerous role, in which they where perhaps even treated with affection. Individual cases from surviving literature show some slaves rising to more comfortable, independent positions in life and even achieving freedom. While enslavement always represented a loss of rights and transformation into the property of another person, the experience of all slaves in Attica was not the same, and servile status was not necessarily permanent. Though many experienced cruelty, others seemingly received compassion.

This paper will look at a small number of funerary monuments for slaves from fourth century BC Attica as evidence for slave experience and relationships. It will consider how we identify memorials commemorating slaves and to what extent the depictions on such memorials are in any way representative of the real experience of these individual slaves living and dying in Attica, but also if these portrayals, whether or not true for the individual, are in any way representative of the experiences of the slave population of Athens as a whole.

Panel 3.1: Medicine, Magic, and Mental Health

Iliadic ἄχος and Emotional TraumaMelissa Gardner - m.j.gardner2@durham.ac.uk

The question of how emotional trauma affects ancient warriors in combat has been widely debated in classics since the publication of Shay’s seminal work Achilles in Vietnam (1994). Scholars such as Tritle (2004) and Crowley (2012; 2014) have respectively argued for and against the usefulness of modern trauma models in analysing the ancient world. These works, however, have not addressed the ways in which texts use a highly nuanced language of suffering to present the warrior’s perspective on combat. My paper focuses on the matter of how the Iliad describes warriors’ reactions to overwhelming events on the battlefield, paying particular attention to the language of suffering. Specifically, I consider the role of the word ἄχος, which describes the ‘upheaval of emotion’ (Mawet, 1976) felt in response to an event, in Iliadic retaliation scenes. I argue that the word ἄχος in the Iliad describes a process that compels characters to respond to overwhelming events with violent action. This process is comparable to Herman’s model for trauma and recovery (1992). Characters’ retaliatory actions, which initially appear to be acts of cruelty, can instead be understood as traumatic responses to overwhelming events. The epic consistently prevents warriors from showing compassion whilst experiencing this response.

This paper, by drawing on research from the field of trauma studies, elucidates a hitherto little explored aspect of the word ἄχος. In turn, my examination of the word ἄχος sheds light on how Iliadic warriors respond to overwhelming events in combat.

Exposing Platonic CompassionNatalie Enright – cl09nae@leeds.ac.uk

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‘Compassionate’ is not usually the first word that we associate with 5th century Athens. Instead, ancient Athenian society is often thought of as militaristic, practical, or perhaps even cruel. For a city that faced the ever constant threat of plague, alongside losing thousands of residents every year to infection, or complications during childbirth, it is often assumed in the scholarly literature that little value is likely to have been placed on emotional well-being. More specifically, it might seem that depressive disorders would not have been of any real concern to ancient societies. However, within the Platonic corpus, I have identified an unexpectedly compassionate way of thinking in relation to depressive psychological disorders. This paper will first present my evidence for the Platonic conception of depressive conditions from Timaeus 86b-87a. By comparing the symptoms of psychological disorders discussed by Plato with the modern categorisation of Depression, I will show a surprising similarity between the two. Second, I will examine Plato’s presentation of Apollodorus within Symposium. I will show that Apollodorus could be thought of as a characteristic example of the ‘Timaean man’ with diseases in his soul. I will also examine the possibility that, through the interactions of Apollodorus and his peers, Plato might be taking an unusually compassionate position towards people with psychological disorders.

This Will Hurt You A Lot More Than It’ll Hurt Me: Horrible Healers in Medieval FictionRachel Fennell - rachel.fennell@durham.ac.uk

The figure of the healer in literature has always been associated with the uncanny and the liminal. With seemingly limitless power to kill or to cure and inextricably intertwined with both the base corruption of diseased humanity and the divine power of supernatural agency, the healer is simultaneously repellent and restorative, disturbing and desirable. In medieval fiction, medics were additionally also closely associated with morality and the policing of human sinfulness - healers cured sickness whilst simultaneously examining the patient’s soul. Unfortunately, whilst being medical and moral judges, many medieval fictional medics were far from impartial. Capricious, vengeful and capable of great acts of cruelty, they often supplied cures, but only at great cost to the patient. Curing someone of their disease and absolving them of wrongdoing sometimes simply meant orchestrating their righteous death. Positing God as the original physician and healers as agents of him, (capable of removing disease if the sufferer was penitent), this paper therefore aims to examine the dark side of healing, investigating medical acts in the medieval tales of Amys and Amylion and Hoccleve’s translations of two stories from the Gesta Romanorum, entitled Jereslaus’s Wife and the Tale of Jonathas. From bathing in the blood of child sacrifices to burning newly healed sinners, this paper explores the ways in which medieval authors presented and justified disease as divinely inflicted, examining the defence of the suffering of the innocent in order to exculpate the sinful and why immense anguish was necessary in order for miraculous acts of healing to occur.

Cruelty of Gods vs. Cruelty of Men. Punishments for Corrupt/Uncorrupt Seers in Homer and Apollonius of RhodesCorneliu Clop - corneliu_clop@yahoo.com

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In ancient times, seers had an important role because they were the ones who could interpret signs that were considered of divine origin. A fragment from Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 334, 380-389 shows us that a person who knows the secrets of the future does not benefit from a special protection; on the contrary they are forced to endure a wide range of aggressive gestures.

I will try to address some important questions: Is there a justification for cruelty and the use of coercive power? Can violence be a form of anti-corruption? My opinion is that we have to distinguish between two forms of violence: a legitimate one and an illegitimate one. There are two kinds of situations in which a seer can suffer some form of violence: when he (e.g. Prometheus, Phineus, Leiodes) violates the order imposed by Zeus, or when he (e.g. Alitherses, Idmon, Calchas, Theoclymenos, Teiresias) acts to restore the divine order and get to suffer various forms of aggression. I will point out conflicts and acts of cruelty. The aggressor of a seer is usually another man and only in exceptional circumstances (i.e. violation of divine commandments) is he a god (e.g. Phineus is punished by Zeus himself). Another interesting aspect that I will investigate is the chromatic universe associated with corruption and cruelty (e.g. black and red - HOM. Il. 1.101-107).

Panel 3.2: Responding to Violence

Discrimination of the Forms of Sociability in Europe: Inquisition and Masonry in Spain from XVIII CenturyFernando Gil - fernando_gilgonzalez@hotmail.es

The control of the Catholic Church over the forms of corporate sociability has existed since the enactment and sanction of the clementine bull in 1738 which considers them organizations suspected of being heresy. Another repressive element defended by the Catholic Church is the existence of the Masonic Secret. This is no more than a psychological conception that should not be revealed to the profane, that is, to those individuals who are not part of the Masonic corporation, because if this happens, it would be a crime against the organizing and regulating principles of the Masonry. So, because of these two characteristics mentioned above, by which the Catholic Church labels these forms of corporate sociability as an evil endemic and therefore, heretical as it has been wielding in Spain since its inception and now, to a greater or lesser extent. In sum, it is argued that Freemasonry does not pretend to violate political and / or religious freedoms but rather seeks to create new spaces of sociability in order to foster ritual and corporate work sponsored by the great values of the Enlightenment: Tolerance, fraternity, mutual help, fellowship, freedom with which, is intended to promote a set of distinguished spaces suitable for intellectual immersion and self-learning.

Humanitarianism and Human CrisesHemn Seyedi - hemn.seyedi@yahoo.co.ukThe concept of humanitarianism has been used widely in the world political discourse. After the Cold War, debates have been placed in the centre of international politics, and became one of the main concerns in both developed and developing societies. Its main product, humanitarian intervention, became even more divisive and controversial. It had been designed to prevent genocide and relief humanitarian suffering which happened in Biafra,

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Bangladesh and Cambodia during the Cold War, but it could do little to stop reoccurring of genocide in Somalia, Rwanda and Sudan.

The term humanitarianism like terrorism became more political and less humanitarian. Human rights became a part of formal foreign policies, claiming states’ sovereignties depend on their human rights records, but many developing countries look at these new policies as a sort of neo-colonialism for legitimizing intervention. There were always some connections between humanitarianism and imperialism.

In my 20 minute presentation, after surveying a short history of humanitarianism, I will assess the record of its main claims: impartiality, universality and its way in dealing with dilemmas of interests and values. While facing some paradoxes in this regard, I then will try to look at humanitarianism via the lenses of main political theories finding how liberalism, realism and Marxism count on humanitarianism. And finally, by providing some examples of geopolitics and political economy’s effects on humanitarian interventions, I argue that these actions are still too far from Kant’s anticipation of imposing morality in the world politics.

Boudicca and Numantia: Resisting Rome and its Legacy Henry Clarke – cl11hhc@leeds.ac.uk

Boudicca and the rebellion of the Iceni and the Trinovantes in AD 60/1 stands as one of the best known example of ‘British’ resistance to Rome. This is largely due to the nature of the depiction of the uprising by Tacitus in the Annals and the Agricola, and subsequently by Cassius Dio in his Roman History. The destruction of the pre-Roman settlement of Numantia in Central Spain in 133 BC and the fate of its inhabitants at the hands of the Roman general Scipio is a similarly powerful example of an ancient episode of antagonism between ‘Romans’ and ‘non-Romans’ that has been adapted to serve as a Modern Spanish symbol of the nation and its power to defend itself. In the wake of ‘Brexit’ and the current political climate, where questions of National Identity are rife, I will revisit Boudicca’s legacy as a Symbol of Britain, Britishness, and British Strength and Resilience. By doing so, I will consider the similarities between symbolic historical stories of local resistance to Roman cruelty, and their legacies in Britain and Spain. In this paper, I begin by exploring ancient literary narratives of the conflicts between Boudicca, Numantia, and Rome. I then compare how the tales of Boudicca and Numantia, and their responses to Roman violence have been adopted and adapted over the centuries. Ultimately, I reflect upon the ways in which these stories and their characters have taken on new meanings and ideologies as a consequence of subsequent re-imaginings of their resistance to Rome.

‘Inward horror will be their first tormentor’: the public execution of Charles I and its impact on historians and the futureMatthias Wong - myw22@cam.ac.uk

When Charles I was executed, the diarist Philip Henry recorded ‘such a grone by the thousands then present, as [he] never heard before and desire [he] may never hear again’. Charles’s public beheading was shocking: never had a reigning king been put on trial for treason by his own subjects, and then executed before a public crowd. Charles was God’s

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representative on earth, a legitimate monarch and head of the Church. In the months following, Englishmen commemorated Charles as a martyr, a Jesus-like character who died for the sins of his country. Charles’s passing also brought monumental changes to English politics and the birth of the English Republic.

This paper examines the impact of a cruel act – the execution of a reigning king – on the psyche of the English nation, specifically on the way historians wrote about the future. How did the future look like to these writers before the execution? And how did such a disruptive and unexpected event change these ideas? By comparing histories written before and after the regicide, this paper will show how historians were forced to reconsider notions of cyclical time and providence, and more broadly ideas of societal progress and evolution.By investigating the impact of public cruelty and trauma on historical writing, this paper shows how historians reflected the anxieties of their time in their work. It documents how historians came to terms with abominable cruelties they witnessed, and how they wrote to empower their readers to act in the face of trauma.

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