Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World

Graeco-Roman literary works, historiography, and even the reporting of rumours were couched as if they came in response to an insatiable desire by ordinary citizens to know everything about the lives of their leaders, and to hold them to account, at some level, for their abuse of constitutional powers for personal ends. Ancient writers were equally fascinated with how these same individuals used deceit as a powerful tool to disguise private and public reality. The chapters in this collection examine the themes of despotism and deceit from both historical and literary perspectives, over a range of historical periods including classical Athens, the Hellenistic kingdoms, late republican and early imperial Rome, late antiquity, and Byzantium.

Andrew J. Turner, Ph.D. (2000) in Classics, University of Melbourne, was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow from 2005-2008. He is co-author of Eadmer of Canterbury (Oxford, 2006), and co-editor of a digital edition of a manuscript of Terence (Oxford, 2010).

James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, Ph.D. (1999) in Classical Philology, University of Michigan, is a Senior Lecturer in classics at The University of Melbourne. He is author of Gender and Communication in Euripides’ Plays: Between Song and Silence (Brill, 2008).

Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Ph.D. (2002) in History, Ghent University, is a Lecturer in ancient history at The University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on Roman republican history in such journals as Klio, Latomus, and Athenaeum.

Contributors: Bruno Bleckmann, Brian Bosworth, Amelia R. Brown, Cristina G. Calhoon, James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, Christopher J. Dart, Jonathan M. Hall, Frédéric Hurlet, Martijn Icks, Parshia Lee-Stecum, Peter Londey, John Penwill, Francisco Pina Polo, Jonathan Prag, John W. Rich, Ron Ridley, Enrica Sciarrino, Andrew J. Turner, and Frederik Juliaan Vervaet.