Marguerite Johnson

Athens to Aotearoa: Greece and Rome in New Zealand Literature and Society

Classical Reception Studies has developed over the last twenty years, with Classicists and Ancient Historians finding never-ending sources of academic inspiration. With its origins in Comparative Literature Studies and the Classical Tradition, Classical Reception Studies has extended beyond textual analyses to include the visual arts, film, popular culture, and sociopolitical histories and philosophies. It has also extended beyond Britain and Europe – its traditional strongholds – to research embedded in the influence of ancient Mediterranean cultures on the Antipodes. Athens to Aotearoa: Greece and Rome in New Zealand Literature and Society is the first collection dedicated to Classical Reception Studies in the Southern Hemisphere. The book is the result of a conference held at Victoria University of Wellington in 2014, on the GrecoRoman influences in New Zealand culture. Comprised of fourteen chapters and carefully edited, Athens to Aotearoa not only aims to champion New Zealand’s classical inheritance, but also to interrogate it. Perris’ Introduction (7-47) provides a detailed appraisal of Greco-Roman antiquity in New Zealand’s history from past to present, and aims to open a dialogue on a subject prone to controversy, post-colonial examination and cultural debates. For international readers, in particular, the Introduction includes a useful contextual analysis of New Zealand as a ‘settler nation and former British colony’ (13), and situates the beginning of Classical Reception therein; for example: Early observers often turned to the classical tradition to make sense of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Joel Polack’s New Zealand (1838), cluttered with French and Latin, includes numerous classical references. In Excursion in the Northern Land of New Zealand (1844), William Colenso recalled how, noticing his Māori guides’ happiness at seeing open-woodland plants again after days in dense bush, he was reminded of Xenophon’s Greeks in the Anabasis, happy to see the ocean again. (14-15)

Porphyry and ‘Neopythagorean’ Exegesis in Cave of the Nymphs and Elsewhere

Porphyry’s position in the ancient hermeneutic tradition should be considered separately from his place in the Platonic tradition. He shows considerable respect for allegorizing interpreters with links to Pythagoreanism, particularly Numenius and Cronius, prominent sources in On the Cave of the Nymphs . The language of Homer’s Cave passage is demonstrably distinctive, resembling the Shield passage in the Iliad , and such as to suggest an ecphrasis to early imperial readers. Ecphrasis in turn suggested deeper significance for the story. While largely content to follow Numenian trends in interpreting Homer’s cave symbolically and in relation to multiple belief-systems, Porphyry shows occasionally signs of wanting to adhere more closely to Homeric evidence, resorting to symbolic interpretation mainly when no more straightforward truth is on offer.

Drawing down the goddess: the ancient {female} deities of modern paganism

The rise of neo-Paganism and its scholarly analysis is now an established field of academic enquiry, yet there is a paucity of analysis as to the ancient origins of this multifaceted religion. This chapter attempts to rectify this under-researched area of neo-Pagan studies and offers some possibilities as to the influences of ancient religious and magical traditions on modern spiritualities. It focuses on the societies of Greece and Rome, which were imbued with magical and occult sensibilities that permeated many facets of day-today life, and it is the female deities of the ancients that are of chief consideration. To modern Pagans and Witches, Hecate is an important goddess. Modern worshippers embrace Hecate as a deity to be worshipped in one of two ways: as a bounteous and beneficent goddess reminiscent of Hesiods portrayal or as the figure of later times, namely the chthonic, threatening goddess of curses and dark crossroads. Keywords: female deities; goddess Hecate; modern Paganism