It may be small in size, but CWRU's department of classics is mighty in intellectual power.

Recently its only two regular full-time faculty members received two of the 25 inaugural Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowships from Harvard University to conduct research in classical literature during 2003-04.

"It is a major feat that two scholars from such a small department as ours have won two of these fellowships in the same year," said Martin Helzle, chair and associate professor of classics.

Helzle along with assistant professor Angeliki Tzanetou received the honors.

Fellowships range in awards from $1,000 to $30,000. Helzle received $30,000, and Tzanetou was awarded $26,150.

The professors will focus on topics related to exile in their separate research projects. Beyond death for a crime, exile in Greek and Roman society served as one of the harshest punishments meted out.

Epistulae ex Ponto

Helzle will write the second volume of Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea) that explores word by word and line by line the meaning of 46 letters that the Roman poet Ovid wrote in the last decade of his life (A.D. 13-18) and while exiled from Rome by Augustus Caesar to Tomis (modern Constanza in Romania) on the Black Sea. Ovid lived from 43 B.C. to 18 A.D.

His first volume of the Black Sea letters was completed and published in December 2002 by Carl Winter UniversitStsverlag in Heidelberg, Germany. The two volumes will comprise more than 800 pages and provide the first in-depth examination of the letters and will provide comments about Ovid's use of style and the political, social and religious meanings of the text.

According to Helzle, most of the letters to Ovid's wife, friends and political leaders back home have a "plaintive tone" with "rhetorical pitches" to work influence on the leaders to allow him to return home to comforts of Roman society.

History leaves little evidence as to why Ovid was exiled, but Helzle speculates that Ovid either knew about a member of the imperial family committing adultery or was the victim of some political conspiracy.

He elaborated that Ovid—known for his light, erotic poetry and his mythical epic Metamorphoses—complains about the isolation of the frontier-like life where it "seemed like it was always winter" and that "wild barbarians from the Russian steppe" were invading the lower Danube River.

Helzle said the reality was that the Romans had a garrison in Tomis and that the climate was mild and warm in the summers. Ovid's letters have left a lasting influence in the literary world, according to Helzle.

"Ovid's experience, although stylized, strikes many of the chords found in modern exile literature, such as the failure of language, unwillingness to acculturate or experiencing banishment as quasi-death," he said.

Helzle, who teaches Latin classes and has been a faculty member for 14 years, undertook the major project because very little scholarly research had been done on this body of works, which comprises four books or what is known today as scrolls similar to a torah.

The project also has emotional connections. Helzle's father, a Latin teacher in Stuttgart, Germany, worked on rewriting the Latin curriculum for his state while Helzle was in high school. These letters were included in the new Latin curriculum, and he was one of the first students exposed to the new syllabus.

Staging Citizenship

Tzanetou, who has taught Greek language classes for the past six years at CWRU, will spend the 2003-2004 school year at the University of Chicago's Joseph Regenstein Library and the University of Illinois to complete Staging Citizenship: Exile and Return in Athenian Tragedy (working title). The book is under contract with Texas University Press.

Besides revenge, exile is a theme that threads its way through 20 of the 34 existing Greek tragedies written in the fifth century B.C. during the heyday of Greek classical theater.

For Athenians, exile was a social death, according to Tzanetou, a native of Greece.

"The question, I want to ask is why do Athenians depict themselves as ones who open their arms and welcome the suffering, the weak, oppressed and disenfranchised," she said.

Tzanetou said she wonders about this welcoming gesture since many of these exiles who sought refuge in Athens-Orestes, who killed his mother; Oedipus, who slept with his mother and murdered his father; and Medea and Heracles who took the lives of their children-were considered "polluted" with the blood of their victims.

Homicide "stained you as contagious and harmful to the group around you" and among other things created a moral revulsion, she said.

Tzanetou said the exile theme raises the question of self-definition and how the Greek tragedies portrayed exile really might define what being an Athenian citizen was.

By accepting mythical exiles from other cities, Athenians could boast of the openness and inclusiveness of their city, which was a motto of Athenian democratic ideology, according to Tzanetou.

Tzanetou also has come to realize that Oedipus and other mythical characters in the plays were elevated to a "cult hero" status and had gained acceptance despite their heinous crimes.

Her new book also will explore the meaning of hero, which is different from that of a saint. Although the Athenian scholar qualifies that these heroes have religious significance, nonetheless they also serve social and political goals. Oedipus, for example, was a talisman for the Athenians who feel particularly honored to have the "hero" buried in their community.

Tzanetou said she views the study of exile a very timely topic and hopes that her book will draw attention to ancient and modern practices of exclusion of foreigners in democratic states.

She added that "like in the Athenian theater, we too are confronted daily with images of refugees from around the world and the pressing question of how to alleviate such suffering through political action."

In addition to writing Staging Citizenship, Tzanetou will co-edit a volume of essays called, Women's Rituals in Context, based on works presented last year during a conference co-sponsored by CWRU and the University of Illinois.

Loeb Fellowships The Loeb Classical Library Foundation, housed at Harvard University, is best known for its critical and bilingual series of most surviving Greek and Latin texts. James Loeb willed the collection to Harvard University with stipulations that any proceeds from the sale of the pocket-sized books go to the maintenance of the library, with additional funds used to encourage research in the classics.