At the same time that Greek literary studies have broken down boundaries of canon and genre, opening up for analysis previously ignored families of texts, the rise of reception studies has raised new questions about how our present cultural and historical position shapes our interpretations of them. These developments are explored through the case study of Greek tragedy, the most canonical of genres.

The “Brothers Poem” was one of two textual fragments by the poet Sappho recently discovered on a papyrus. The poem—which may be a sister’s prayer for the safe return of one brother, a merchant sailor, and the growth to maturity of another brother—is here translated into English by Rachel Hadas.

Classicists have turned to reception studies to understand the unique encounters that various historical audiences have had with Greek and Roman literature. This essay explores the cultural mobility of the classics through a Malawian reception of Sophocles’s Antigone.

Having published her celebrated English translation of the Iliad in 2015, Caroline Alexander is uniquely positioned to reflect on the process (and challenges) of rendering a modern translation of Homer. She analyzes her work, and that of previous translators, using the principles outlined by the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold.

Michael C. J. Putnam’s explication of a famous passage by Catullus displays traditional philological rigor, while also being informed by contemporary literary approaches, such as intertextuality, feminism, and genre studies. In this way, Putnam’s analysis is representative of the widening and cross-disciplinary methodological approaches of classicists.