Research Statement by Tom Hawkins
"I am interested in the various ways that societies create social hierarchies and how the lower e... more "I am interested in the various ways that societies create social hierarchies and how the lower ends of those hierarchies interact with the higher. I study this topic from two complementary perspectives – traditional classical scholarship dealing with ancient Greece and Rome, and projects that interrogate the classical legacy in modern contexts. My early articles and first book, Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire (Cambridge 2014), focus on the ways that elite authors use low-register verbal abuse as a rhetorical position to negotiate relationships within their communities. My next book project, preliminarily titled The Beautiful Ugly, investigates the intersection of verbal and bodily rhetoric as a key constituent in community-formation. This study draws upon recent analyses of disgust by psychologists, legal experts and evolutionary biologists in order reveal the ways in which classical societies articulated a social order in large part through the discourse about ugly bodies.
I am also engaged in projects that situate classics in our global community. Works in progress on adaptations of Greek tragedy in Haiti, Mali and along the California-Mexico border aim to show that Classics need not be tethered to traditions of Western hegemony but can, in fact, serve as a modern discourse of innovation, resistance and progress. In the wake of the genomic revolution we are moving toward new understandings of humanity, particularly in terms of our involvement in ecosystems, notions of personhood and the relationship between human and non-human animals. As we stand on the cusp of what many are now calling the anthropocene era, Classics has the opportunity to influence new patterns of thought by emphasizing the rhetorical traditions of civic discourse and ethically engaged citizenship as a means of navigating conflict and building informed public consensus."
Curriculum Vitae by Tom Hawkins
Books by Tom Hawkins
This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambi... more This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambic poetry on Roman imperial authors and audiences. It demonstrates how authors as varied as Ovid and Gregory Nazianzen wove recognizable elements of the iambic tradition (e.g., meter, motifs, or poetic biographies) into other literary forms (e.g., elegy, oratorical prose, anthologies of fables), and it shows that the humorous, scurrilous, efficacious aggression of Archilochus continued to facilitate negotiations of power and social relations long after Horace's Epodes. The eclectic approach encompasses Greek and Latin, prose and poetry, and exploratory interludes appended to each chapter help to open four centuries of later classical literature to wider debates about the function, propriety, and value of the lowest and most debated poetic form from archaic Greece. Each chapter presents a unique variation on how each of these imperial authors became Archilochus -however briefly and to whatever end.
This volume provides the first expansive treatment of the reception of Athenian comedy in the Rom... more This volume provides the first expansive treatment of the reception of Athenian comedy in the Roman Empire. The development of Comedy from the fifth to the second centuries BCE is well established, and the reception of Greek tragedy has been carefully studied well into the Roman Imperial era, yet the legacy of Athenian comedy in the Roman Empire is less well understood. With this collection of essays we begin to rectify this situation.
The Roman-era author who most famously engages with Athenian comedy is Lucian of Samosata (2nd c. CE), but to date he is the only imperial author whose debt to classical Athenian comedy has been seriously studied. To a great degree, therefore, our goal with this volume is to expand this scholarly discussion beyond Lucian and to provide a network of engaged and engaging studies that demonstrate that lasting impact of classical Athenian comic drama.
Morisseau-Leroy (1912-1998) was a champion of Haitian Creole, and he devoted much of his career t... more Morisseau-Leroy (1912-1998) was a champion of Haitian Creole, and he devoted much of his career to having this language, the main language spoken by the overwhelming majority of Haitians, recognized as an official language on par with French, which is spoken by an elite minority. Supposedly on something of a dare to prove the literary potential of Haitian Creole, Morisseua-Leroy composed his version of Sophocles’ Antigone. His text asserts the expressive power of Haitian Creole and challenged the dominant position of French neo-classical drama in 20th century Haitian theater. His Antigone shows that Haiti, too, has a role to play in the classical tradition.
This book offers the first English translation of Morisseau-Leroy’s Antigone in Creole, considered to be the founding text of Haitian Creole literature, and his follow-up play, King Creon, which explores Creon’s life in the aftermath of the traumatic events recounted in Antigone. Tom Hawkins edits and provides explanatory notes to the translation by Guilene Fiéfié, an Episcopal priest working in rural Haiti, and his introductory essay connects the classical tradition with the rhetoric of cultural identity in Haiti.
Articles/Chapters by Tom Hawkins
In Twilight of the Idols (1895), Nietzsche suggested that Socrates exemplifies the criminal profi... more In Twilight of the Idols (1895), Nietzsche suggested that Socrates exemplifies the criminal profile of being monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo, “deviant of face, deviant of soul.” In this chapter I shift this physiognomic slogan into a question about Aesop. Far more hideous than Socrates--hideous to the point of eliciting disgust--Aesop’s biographical tradition emphasizes his monstrous, barely human appearance, yet when Aesop retools Alcibiades’ comment about Socrates and asks us to consider his soul rather than his face (Vit. G 26), we realize that Aesop’s appearance is designed as a challenge. I suggest that Aesop’s disconcerting form participates in a discourse about disgusting bodies, behaviors and materials in the Aesopic vita tradition that uses our disgust response as a springboard for personal and social transformation.
Locating Popular Culture in the Ancient World
This chapter discusses the role of popular invective in shaping imperial politics. Starting from ... more This chapter discusses the role of popular invective in shaping imperial politics. Starting from Asinius Pollio’s quip to Octavian that ‘it’s not easy to play the scribe against one who can proscribe’ these pages chart the transformation of invective strategies at the end of the Republic that highlighted the political dimension of popular abuse directed at leading figures. The chapter falls into three parts: first, a discussion of invective in terms of its social register and the difference between literary analysis and interpersonal communication; next, an outline of republican patterns of politicized invective (both popular and elite); and finally, a closer examination of the imperial situation. The argument throughout is that the presence of the emperor changed the rules of the Roman invective game such that popular invective took on a greater role in Roman life. The two primary reasons for this change were the constraints on elite behaviour vis-à-vis the emperor and the close relationship between the imperial regime and massive, monumentalized spectacle architecture. The imperial consolidation of political and military power constrained the freedom of elite speakers, but non-elite invective, because of its diffuse nature, could engage the emperor more freely.
Morisseau-Leroy (1912-1998) was pushing a stridently political agenda when he composed his adapta... more Morisseau-Leroy (1912-1998) was pushing a stridently political agenda when he composed his adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone in Haitian Creole, the language of the vast majority of Haitians, rather than in the French spoken by Haitian elites and in the neo-classical tradition of Racine. Morisseau-Leroy's quest to gain formal recognition for Haitian Creole contrasts with the more eclectic agenda of Luis Alfaro (b. 1963) who has composed three adaptations of Greek tragedy in Spanglish (Oedipus el Rey, Electricidad, and Mojada). This article interrogates the contrasting rhetoric about the relationship between language and culture in these two playwrights, particularly in terms the socio-linguistic relationship between the high register of Greek tragedy and the demotic and colloquial aspects of Haitian Creole and the Spanglish of southern California.
This project connects two moments in the history of African cinematography to argue that Orestes’... more This project connects two moments in the history of African cinematography to argue that Orestes’ matricide trial, made famous in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, serves as a metaphor for the traumas of the colonial and post-colonial relationship between Africa and the West. Pasolini’s ‘Appunti per un’Orestiade africana’ (1969) uses the myth of Orestes as a platform from which to discuss, in largely Marxist terms, relations between West Africa and Europe and the promise of African decolonialization. In 2006, Abderrahmane Sissako debuted ‘Bamako,’ which stages a mock trial pitting the continent of Africa against transnational economic institutions, such as the IMF and WTO. This surrealist scenario has a deeply personal edge to it, however, since the court-room rhetoric plays out as an expression of the anguish of Chaka, the owner of the home in which this bizarre trial unfolds. As a post-modern version of Orestes, Chaka decries the impotence of globalized politics and the impossibility of judicial justice.
Aeschylus’ Oresteia concludes with a hymn to the triumph of a new vision of justice. Through this myth Pasolini comments upon the challenges and opportunities of the African independence movements of the 1960’s. Sissako’s adaptation of the Aeschylean trial scene, however, bemoans a neocolonial rhetoric that has hijacked the promises of globalization, which is presented as a form of Western fiscal tyranny that court trials can do nothing to save.
Dio rarely makes use of comic material, which makes the prominence of comic allusions and citatio... more Dio rarely makes use of comic material, which makes the prominence of comic allusions and citations in his Alexandrian and First Tarsian orations all the more striking. In both speeches, probably delivered to large audiences in those cities’ theaters, Dio positions himself as the heir to the licensed rhetorical abuse (loidoria) of Athenian comedy. This bid to assimilate himself to the comic tradition makes the most sense if we understand Dio to be primarily interested in the Old Comic parabasis, in which the ‘playwright’ offers a rollicking admonitory harangue on some civic issue to the Athenian audience. In Dio’s era (broadly understood) both Pollux and Aelius Aristides seem to understand the parabasis not so much as a formal feature of a comic play but, rather, as a functional opportunity for an author to speak his mind freely to a civic audience.
In these speeches Dio presents himself as a Cynic who wants to give a beneficial slap in the face to the cities of Alexandria and Tarsus. His Cynic appearance is modelled on Socrates, but it also brings him close to the general contours of a shabby comic hero, such as Dicaeopolis. In these orations Dio focuses on the shortcomings of his audiences in hopes that they might mend their ways, and he does so in a manner that mimics the rhetorical position of the poet delivering a parabasis. More than a literary flourish, this rhetorical strategy casts Dio as a knowing insider who can rightly and effectively address the polis’ problems.
In his 1692 'Discourse on Satire', John Dryden sought to confirm Quintilian’s opinion that Roman ... more In his 1692 'Discourse on Satire', John Dryden sought to confirm Quintilian’s opinion that Roman satire was purely Roman. As part of his proof, he discounts Horace’s Epodes and Ovid’s Ibis on the grounds that they represent an overly-narrow sub-category of satire that originated with Archilochus’ attacks on Lycambes. Dryden dismisses such poetry as ‘the Under-wood of Satire’ and does not deign to treat it on a par with the hexametric ‘Timber-trees’ of Roman satire, but I show that Ovid’s Ibis reacts to, even upends, Horace’s Epodes as part of a discourse about the rhetorical structure of society that goes well beyond the narrow confines of personal invective that Dryden scorned.
Ovid’s late-career move toward Archilochean iambos sets his Ibis as the apocalyptic antipode to Horace’s Epodes. He constructs the years between the Epodes and his Ibis as an interregnum devoid of Archilochean carnage and his angriest poem puts a menacing twist on his repeated pleas for imperial mercy. The long catalogue of mythological curses that comprises the bulk of the Ibis (paralleling the similar, smaller inventory at the end of Epode 17) threatens to throw the world into the chaos of myth, a hellish abyss that evokes Roman civil war through the figure of Remus, who appears in the closing lines (635-36; cp. Epod. 7.19-21). After analyzing several key issues that link the Epodes and the Ibis - the word ibis, Archilochus fr. 1, and the themes of sailing and stinking - I suggest that we can access and assess the rhetorical climate in Rome through Ovid’s choice not to give Ibis’ true name as an inversion of Horace’s apparent willingness to name names.
Hipponax frequently evokes Odyssean mythology in a lowered poetic register, and at least in a few... more Hipponax frequently evokes Odyssean mythology in a lowered poetic register, and at least in a few instances he also conflates Homeric and contemporary contexts. I analyze Hipponax’s engagement with the mythology of Odysseus by drawing upon modern theories of parody, especially Hutcheon’s model of ‘transcontextualization’ (Hutcheon 1985), to show that Hipponax urged his audiences toward an evaluative process of decoding his parodies that differs from what we find elsewhere in archaic poetry. When Hipponax tells the story of Odysseus among the Phaeacians with Bupalus somehow inserted into the tale, he demands a thoroughgoing and protracted involvement with his Homeric model.
After assembling the remains of Hipponax’s Odyssean parodies and suggesting that Homer’s Thersites offers a relevant parallel to his construction of a degraded Odyssean persona, I show that Hipponax frr. 120-121 contrast sharply with Homer’s account in terms of social context and register and fr. 39, which inverts the discourse strategies in the Homeric encounter between Odysseus and Circe. By way of conclusion, I turn to the painted images of Odysseus and Circe from the Theban Cabirium to suggest that they may preserve a classical era reception of Hipponax’s parodic poetry. These vases, like his poetry, draw viewers into an active intellectual assessment of their artistic programs by overlapping seemingly inharmonious contexts into a new synthetic and multilayered whole.
Forthcoming in J. Gonzalz, ed., Diachrony: Diachronic aspects of ancient Greek literature and culture
This paper will explore the role of iambic poetics in Dio Chrysostom's First Tarsian Oration and ... more This paper will explore the role of iambic poetics in Dio Chrysostom's First Tarsian Oration and the two prologues to Babrius' choliambic fables. These authors deal in different ways with the weight of this literary mode's ancient associations (dangerous, funny, scurrilous, shameful). Although they seem to share few points of contact, Dio and Babrius offer us an opportunity to see how two authors of roughly the same era (Babrius' dates remain uncertain, but he is typically assigned to the first or second century C.E.) and provenance (the provincial world of Asia Minor) present very different faces of an iambic inheritance that each goes out of his way to emphasize. As I will demonstrate, Dio shows more interest in using the person and personal voice of Archilochus as a model for confronting a crisis of masculinity in Tarsus, whereas Babrius is more concerned with how matters of his modified Hipponactean form interact with issues of content, register, and performance. In other words, each author activates different aspects of the iambic tradition to different effect. By sharpening these differences and ferreting out certain similarities, I will sketch a synchronic outline of how iambic poetics was conceptualized in the early imperial East and, more importantly for this volume, a diachronic assessment of how things got to this point.
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 2012
Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2009
The relationship between Archilochus's poetry and the account of his life preserved in the Mnesie... more The relationship between Archilochus's poetry and the account of his life preserved in the Mnesiepes Inscription is intimate but obscure. Here I present one avenue for elucidating this connection by focusing on two episodes of social breakdown. In the first section I propose a reading of Archilochus fragment 230 in terms of wider patterns of ecological collapse. In the second, I contrast this reading with the episode of impotence visited upon the men of Paros as told by Mnesiepes. By reading these crisis narratives against one another we can better understand Mnesiepes' dynamic authorial role in the Hellenistic reception of the iambic tradition.
Classical Antiquity, 2008
Archilochos and his Age, 2008
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 2002
N ARISTOPHANES' Lysistrata, the female half-chorus cast Timon, the most famous of all ancient mis... more N ARISTOPHANES' Lysistrata, the female half-chorus cast Timon, the most famous of all ancient misanthropes, as It heir unlikely ideological ally in their bid to take over the Acropolis and impose peace on war-ridden Athens. While the male half-chorus' song of "Melanion the misogynist" is undermined by traditional erotic associations with Atalanta, the women's song of "Timon the philogynist," on the other hand, gains power from the crafty redirection of his misanthropy against the men by means of a verbal game. This short choral interaction highlights two important patterns which pervade the entire play. First, female characters in the play consistently employ to their advantage more sophisticated discursive strategies than their male opponents. Second, even at moments of the strictest and most antagonistic gender separation, the aggressive rhetoric of both male and female characters contains the seeds of an eventual resolution. 1
In preparation by Tom Hawkins
One day, when he was feeling woozy and generally under the weather, Dio Chrysostom decided to go ... more One day, when he was feeling woozy and generally under the weather, Dio Chrysostom decided to go back to bed. Rather than sleeping, however, he chose to review the three versions of the myth of Philoctetes as told by the great Athenian tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Scholars have long studied Dio’s account (Or. 52) for what it tells us of these now lost plays by Aeschylus and Euripides, but I propose to interrogate Dio’s choice of mythological topic in terms of narratives of healing. While he is feeling sick, Dio turns to a famous myth of physical suffering, and his examination of three versions of that myth demonstrate the flexibility of healing narratives. Just as the tragedians were all free to direct their narratives in whatever direction they preferred, Dio too was able to take control of his own story. As he loses himself in these plays about Philoctetes, Dio’s narrative piggy-backs upon that of the wounded hero. Importantly, at the end of these plays Philoctetes has not been physically healed but, through his interaction with other characters, he has become reinvigorated and exits the stage with only the promise of a release from his constant pain. In this text Dio uses the variations of Philoctetes’ mythology to show how rhetorical control of his own narrative of health can be achieved through the contemplation of great literature.
The Parian Marble, the Mnesiepes Inscription, the first episode in Callimachus' Aetia, and Posidi... more The Parian Marble, the Mnesiepes Inscription, the first episode in Callimachus' Aetia, and Posidippus' 'seal' poem were all composed within a few decades of one another in the 3rd century, and they all stake claims to controlling different aspects of the narrative history of Paros. This article untangles the different threads of the rhetoric of cultural influence on this prosperous island that found itself wedged among the imperialist powers of the Hellenistic era.
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Research Statement by Tom Hawkins
I am also engaged in projects that situate classics in our global community. Works in progress on adaptations of Greek tragedy in Haiti, Mali and along the California-Mexico border aim to show that Classics need not be tethered to traditions of Western hegemony but can, in fact, serve as a modern discourse of innovation, resistance and progress. In the wake of the genomic revolution we are moving toward new understandings of humanity, particularly in terms of our involvement in ecosystems, notions of personhood and the relationship between human and non-human animals. As we stand on the cusp of what many are now calling the anthropocene era, Classics has the opportunity to influence new patterns of thought by emphasizing the rhetorical traditions of civic discourse and ethically engaged citizenship as a means of navigating conflict and building informed public consensus."
Curriculum Vitae by Tom Hawkins
Books by Tom Hawkins
The Roman-era author who most famously engages with Athenian comedy is Lucian of Samosata (2nd c. CE), but to date he is the only imperial author whose debt to classical Athenian comedy has been seriously studied. To a great degree, therefore, our goal with this volume is to expand this scholarly discussion beyond Lucian and to provide a network of engaged and engaging studies that demonstrate that lasting impact of classical Athenian comic drama.
This book offers the first English translation of Morisseau-Leroy’s Antigone in Creole, considered to be the founding text of Haitian Creole literature, and his follow-up play, King Creon, which explores Creon’s life in the aftermath of the traumatic events recounted in Antigone. Tom Hawkins edits and provides explanatory notes to the translation by Guilene Fiéfié, an Episcopal priest working in rural Haiti, and his introductory essay connects the classical tradition with the rhetoric of cultural identity in Haiti.
Articles/Chapters by Tom Hawkins
Aeschylus’ Oresteia concludes with a hymn to the triumph of a new vision of justice. Through this myth Pasolini comments upon the challenges and opportunities of the African independence movements of the 1960’s. Sissako’s adaptation of the Aeschylean trial scene, however, bemoans a neocolonial rhetoric that has hijacked the promises of globalization, which is presented as a form of Western fiscal tyranny that court trials can do nothing to save.
In these speeches Dio presents himself as a Cynic who wants to give a beneficial slap in the face to the cities of Alexandria and Tarsus. His Cynic appearance is modelled on Socrates, but it also brings him close to the general contours of a shabby comic hero, such as Dicaeopolis. In these orations Dio focuses on the shortcomings of his audiences in hopes that they might mend their ways, and he does so in a manner that mimics the rhetorical position of the poet delivering a parabasis. More than a literary flourish, this rhetorical strategy casts Dio as a knowing insider who can rightly and effectively address the polis’ problems.
Ovid’s late-career move toward Archilochean iambos sets his Ibis as the apocalyptic antipode to Horace’s Epodes. He constructs the years between the Epodes and his Ibis as an interregnum devoid of Archilochean carnage and his angriest poem puts a menacing twist on his repeated pleas for imperial mercy. The long catalogue of mythological curses that comprises the bulk of the Ibis (paralleling the similar, smaller inventory at the end of Epode 17) threatens to throw the world into the chaos of myth, a hellish abyss that evokes Roman civil war through the figure of Remus, who appears in the closing lines (635-36; cp. Epod. 7.19-21). After analyzing several key issues that link the Epodes and the Ibis - the word ibis, Archilochus fr. 1, and the themes of sailing and stinking - I suggest that we can access and assess the rhetorical climate in Rome through Ovid’s choice not to give Ibis’ true name as an inversion of Horace’s apparent willingness to name names.
After assembling the remains of Hipponax’s Odyssean parodies and suggesting that Homer’s Thersites offers a relevant parallel to his construction of a degraded Odyssean persona, I show that Hipponax frr. 120-121 contrast sharply with Homer’s account in terms of social context and register and fr. 39, which inverts the discourse strategies in the Homeric encounter between Odysseus and Circe. By way of conclusion, I turn to the painted images of Odysseus and Circe from the Theban Cabirium to suggest that they may preserve a classical era reception of Hipponax’s parodic poetry. These vases, like his poetry, draw viewers into an active intellectual assessment of their artistic programs by overlapping seemingly inharmonious contexts into a new synthetic and multilayered whole.
In preparation by Tom Hawkins
I am also engaged in projects that situate classics in our global community. Works in progress on adaptations of Greek tragedy in Haiti, Mali and along the California-Mexico border aim to show that Classics need not be tethered to traditions of Western hegemony but can, in fact, serve as a modern discourse of innovation, resistance and progress. In the wake of the genomic revolution we are moving toward new understandings of humanity, particularly in terms of our involvement in ecosystems, notions of personhood and the relationship between human and non-human animals. As we stand on the cusp of what many are now calling the anthropocene era, Classics has the opportunity to influence new patterns of thought by emphasizing the rhetorical traditions of civic discourse and ethically engaged citizenship as a means of navigating conflict and building informed public consensus."
The Roman-era author who most famously engages with Athenian comedy is Lucian of Samosata (2nd c. CE), but to date he is the only imperial author whose debt to classical Athenian comedy has been seriously studied. To a great degree, therefore, our goal with this volume is to expand this scholarly discussion beyond Lucian and to provide a network of engaged and engaging studies that demonstrate that lasting impact of classical Athenian comic drama.
This book offers the first English translation of Morisseau-Leroy’s Antigone in Creole, considered to be the founding text of Haitian Creole literature, and his follow-up play, King Creon, which explores Creon’s life in the aftermath of the traumatic events recounted in Antigone. Tom Hawkins edits and provides explanatory notes to the translation by Guilene Fiéfié, an Episcopal priest working in rural Haiti, and his introductory essay connects the classical tradition with the rhetoric of cultural identity in Haiti.
Aeschylus’ Oresteia concludes with a hymn to the triumph of a new vision of justice. Through this myth Pasolini comments upon the challenges and opportunities of the African independence movements of the 1960’s. Sissako’s adaptation of the Aeschylean trial scene, however, bemoans a neocolonial rhetoric that has hijacked the promises of globalization, which is presented as a form of Western fiscal tyranny that court trials can do nothing to save.
In these speeches Dio presents himself as a Cynic who wants to give a beneficial slap in the face to the cities of Alexandria and Tarsus. His Cynic appearance is modelled on Socrates, but it also brings him close to the general contours of a shabby comic hero, such as Dicaeopolis. In these orations Dio focuses on the shortcomings of his audiences in hopes that they might mend their ways, and he does so in a manner that mimics the rhetorical position of the poet delivering a parabasis. More than a literary flourish, this rhetorical strategy casts Dio as a knowing insider who can rightly and effectively address the polis’ problems.
Ovid’s late-career move toward Archilochean iambos sets his Ibis as the apocalyptic antipode to Horace’s Epodes. He constructs the years between the Epodes and his Ibis as an interregnum devoid of Archilochean carnage and his angriest poem puts a menacing twist on his repeated pleas for imperial mercy. The long catalogue of mythological curses that comprises the bulk of the Ibis (paralleling the similar, smaller inventory at the end of Epode 17) threatens to throw the world into the chaos of myth, a hellish abyss that evokes Roman civil war through the figure of Remus, who appears in the closing lines (635-36; cp. Epod. 7.19-21). After analyzing several key issues that link the Epodes and the Ibis - the word ibis, Archilochus fr. 1, and the themes of sailing and stinking - I suggest that we can access and assess the rhetorical climate in Rome through Ovid’s choice not to give Ibis’ true name as an inversion of Horace’s apparent willingness to name names.
After assembling the remains of Hipponax’s Odyssean parodies and suggesting that Homer’s Thersites offers a relevant parallel to his construction of a degraded Odyssean persona, I show that Hipponax frr. 120-121 contrast sharply with Homer’s account in terms of social context and register and fr. 39, which inverts the discourse strategies in the Homeric encounter between Odysseus and Circe. By way of conclusion, I turn to the painted images of Odysseus and Circe from the Theban Cabirium to suggest that they may preserve a classical era reception of Hipponax’s parodic poetry. These vases, like his poetry, draw viewers into an active intellectual assessment of their artistic programs by overlapping seemingly inharmonious contexts into a new synthetic and multilayered whole.