HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.edu
Subject: Re: UNIX
Date: 11 Dec 1992 20:29:05 GMT
Organization: New York University, School of Medicine
NNTP-Posting-Host: mchip00.med.nyu.edu

dobrien@kean.ucs.mun.ca writes:
> Up to 50 terminals can be run on UNIX, provided they are all doing work
> which doesn't hog time on the CPU to a great extent

	That's a pretty meaningless statement.  I happen to be using a
DECstation 5000/240 which is limited to 3 terminals (or, at least, 3
concurrent terminal sessions) by silly licensing rules.  On the other hand,
even if I had an unlimited user license, I'm sure the machine would roll
over and die long before I could get 50 people logged in, even if they were
only running telnet sessions; even if I had enough CPU power and memory, I'd
probably run out of some vital system resource (file descriptors, process
table slots, etc) long before I got close to 50 users.  Yet, given a big
enough machine, say some big multiprocessor with 100s of Mbytes of ram,
Gbytes of swap space, and dozens of cpus, or maybe a Cray, you could
accomodate hundreds of users.  But then again, if you're logged into a Cray,
you're probably not "doing work which doesn't hog time on the CPU to a great
extent".  I suspect most people don't log into Crays to read usenet.

	To say that UNIX can accomodate 50 terminals is like saying you can
fit 500 people in a room with carpeting on the floor.  Are we talking my
bedroom or the Convention Center?
From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: sci.classics
Subject: Re: Did decadence really cause classical societies to crumble?
Date: 14 Dec 92 14:54:38 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

In article <Bz2pqL.5G9@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca> 
msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:

>. . . Certainly in Livy there is a theme of early moral excellence
>contrasted with a later slackness. The commander who, when a city he was
>besieging was betrayed to him, sent the traitor back in to the city
>in chains, thereby winning such admiration that the city fathers opened
>the gates to him anyway. The commander, whose son went out and won
>a glorious David/Goliath encounter with the enemy's champion, who
>congratulated his son then had him put to death for disobeying standing
>orders not to fight in single combat. OK, well a lot of this is no
>doubt legendary.  

>But, Rome really held together during the Hannibalic
>War, overcoming disaster after catastrophe eventually to win. 
>[Mike Morris]

Speaking of wars with Carthage, let's not forget the hero of
Horace's Ode, "Caelo tonentem," the famous "Regulus Ode."  According
to the Ode, which sure enough contracts early moral excellence with
a later slackness, Regulus and his soldiers were captured by the
Carthaginians.  His captors sent him on parole to Rome to ask the
Senate to pay ransom for his troops.  Instead, Regulus told the
Senate that it would be a waste of money to ransom men who had
surrendered in battle, because they would no more become courageous
soldiers again than dyed wool would ever return to its original
whiteness.  When he finished his speech, Regulus kept his word to
the Carthaginians who had paroled him and went back to Carthage to
be put to death with them.  "OK, well a lot of this is no doubt
legendary."

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus"
From: ada612@huxley.anu.edu.au (Avery D Andrews)
Newsgroups: sci.classics
Subject: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Date: 17 Dec 92 23:59:58 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

For general amusement, here is a little excursion well beyond the
bounds of science & scholarship.

Not long after coming up with what seemed to me to be a reasonable
way of implementing the AG pitch accents when reciting Homer (which
turned out, interestingly, to be pretty close to the Devine & Stephens
reconstruction), I felt impelled to switch from the fricative
pronuncation of theta, phi, chi & zeta that I learned in school
to the right ones (the first three, aspirate, the last, zd).  The reason
was that using fricatives seemed to impair the rhythm significantly,
presumably due to the omission of various stop onsets & their associated
percussive effects.

This is certainly 100% subjective, and perhaps idiosyncratic as well,
but if there's anything to it it may in part that if you can manage
to disentangle pitch from the other aspects of stress (duration and
loudness), your general perception of rhythm changes in interesting
(and rather enjoyable) ways.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.classics
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 19:34:08 GMT

In article <ada612.724636798@huxley>, ada612@huxley (Avery D Andrews) writes:

>Not long after coming up with what seemed to me to be a reasonable way of
>implementing the AG pitch accents when reciting Homer (which turned out,
>interestingly, to be pretty close to the Devine & Stephens reconstruction), I
>felt impelled to switch from the fricative pronuncation of theta, phi, chi &
>zeta that I learned in school to the right ones (the first three, aspirate,
>the last, zd).  The reason was that using fricatives seemed to impair the
>rhythm significantly, presumably due to the omission of various stop onsets &
>their associated percussive effects.
>
>This is certainly 100% subjective, and perhaps idiosyncratic as well, but if
>there's anything to it it may in part that if you can manage to disentangle
>pitch from the other aspects of stress (duration and loudness), your general
>perception of rhythm changes in interesting (and rather enjoyable) ways.

Those teachers of Greek who have heard me do this seem to like it, even if they
warn the rest of the class that this is a reconstruction.

In addition to aspirates and pitches, I pronounce ETA and O MEGA as mid-low
long vowels, E PSILON and O MIKRON as mid-high short vowels, U PSILON as high
back rounded, and the digraphs EPSILON+IOTA and OMIKRON+UPSILON as a mid-high
long vowels alternating with diphthongs.

In ASCII IPA, then, the enchantress with whom Odysseus lived for a while is

	ki'rkE:`

or in English transcription

	keerkehhhh

with a high pitch on the first syllable falling to a low pitch on the long
final vowel.

This gives results acceptable to me, if not to anyone else.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
Newsgroups: sci.classics,soc.culture.greek
From: barring@cs.washington.edu (David Barrington)
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 19:13:44 GMT

In article <liqcv2INNdr6@news.bbn.com> ingria@BBN.COM writes:
>In article <9DEC199218045046@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill) writes:
>   In article <DRG.92Dec9150144@candidus.ma30.bull.com>, drg@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes...
>
>   >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>   >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
>
>   Another FAQ!!!!  See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
>
>I would also recommend:
>
>[two more books]
>--
>-30-
>Bob Ingria

Is there an FAQ list for this group?  If not, perhaps one way to create
a quick and dirty one is as follows.  As in Mr. Hill's answer above, the
best answer to an FAQ is often an entire book.  Maybe the thing to do is
for some of the various professional classicists here to look over their 
libraries and formulate FAQ's for which their favorite book is the answer.

ObClassicalContent:

Quote for exam week (Aeneid, hope I've remembered right)

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit."

Dave MB

Newsgroups: sci.classics,soc.culture.greek
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Followup-To: sci.classics
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 01:57:53 GMT

In article <liqcv2INNdr6@news.bbn.com>, ingria@bbn (Bob Ingria) writes:
>In article <9DEC199218045046@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill) writes:
>   In article <DRG.92Dec9150144@candidus.ma30.bull.com>, drg@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes...
>
>   >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
>   >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
>
>   Another FAQ!!!!  See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
>
>I would also recommend:
>
>Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University
>Press, which goes through the phonological, morphological, and (more
>sketchily) syntactic changes from the Koine period up through the
>Modern Period.
>
>Carl Darling Buck, The Greek Dialects.  I believe Buck discusses
>pronunciation differences between ancient dialects, in addition to the
>paradigm differences, but it's been a long time since I last looked
>into it.

You should also look at W. B. Stanford, _The Sound of Greek_, with its 45rpm
record.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
Newsgroups: sci.classics
From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Did decadence really cause classical societies to crumble?
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:28:51 GMT

                                     Friday, the 11th of December, 1992

Robert Hill writes:
  What about the Delian League?  Didn't that happen under Pericles?
  The Athenians made a tributary empire (the same type as the
  Persian, ironically) out of the League, then had trouble holding
  it together.  Plus, they underwent a major plague.  All very bad
  for morale, all a long time before Alcibiades.

I'm sorry, but I don't happen to buy your starting assumption
that all imperialism is necessarily wrong. Nor do I begin by
maximizing the cynicism of my interpretation. The Delian League
made sense at the time. It became something different, something
more sinister, only later. And I well understand how Pericles can
be blamed for much of what came about, but there is nevertheless
a definite contrast between the early war and the later war.
Also between Marathon and Salamis and the Sicilian expedition.
And this, I claim, is a moral contrast.

  You mean, the way the Japanese liberated Korea and Manchuria?   Modern
  writers are a little concerned about the way the Romans treated, e.g.,
  Corinth.

I'm sorry, but did you read what I said? After the Second Punic
War, the Romans held a grudge match against Philip. The Romans won
under Titus Quinctius Flamininus. To the astonishment of the Greeks,
the Romans then left Greece free. Corinth was sacked by Lucius
Mummius 50 years later (146 B.C.), at the beginning of the era
of decadence of the republic I was suggesting. 

  The empire was not a product of moral decay, it was a product of
  success, i.e., conquering a vast multi-ethnic domain. People always go a
  little haywire when they get themselves into new situations where they
  face vast new problems, and the opinions of their relatives are no
  longer helpful.  :-)  

Well, this of course is the sex, drugs, and rock & roll argument.
The problem was, as Rome took Syracuse, defeated Carthage, became
involved in Greece and in Asia, new wealth and new ideas were
introduced. And they could maintain the old solidarity no longer.
It seems to me perfectly reasonable to think that the
acquisition of territory led directly to all the civil wars and
revolts and conspiracies and proscriptions and, eventually, to the
caesars.

  Every army goes through bad morale once in a while, and the symptoms can
  be _severe_.  I still don't buy this decadence business.

Maybe your problem is emphasis on armies. I wasn't talking military
strength or morale, but more about the contrast between the Marshall
Plan and Iran-Contra skulduggery. Clearly, the Roman armies went on
to win militarily for many years after the republic folded.

                    Mike Morris
             (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)
From: juliand@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Julian Day)
Newsgroups: sci.classics
Subject: The Days Of The Week In Latin
Date: 11 Dec 92 21:55:12 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK



	Starting with Sunday they are:

		dies Solis
		dies Lunae
		dies Martis
		dies Mercuri
		dies Iovis
		dies Veneris
		dies Saturni

	It will be seen that the names survive pretty well
	intact in Romance languages. (The English ones honour
	the Germanic equivalents of the same gods, except
	Saturn, which survives in its Latin form.)

	Does anyone know which one of these days (if any) was
	a weekly holiday for Romans in pre-Christian times?
Newsgroups: sci.classics
From: bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill)
Subject: Re: lesbia's labia?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: Hughes STX Corp./NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Distribution: sci
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:07:00 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.3725.975@dosgate>, "david meadows" <david.meadows@canrem.com> writes...
>The authoritative J. ODonnell wrote:
> 
>JO>> When Catullus wishes to write about sex, he is quite
>  >>capable of doing it himself, without later readers doing it for him!
>
>Richard Anderson replied:
> 
>RA>When Catullus writes about sex in blatantly obscene terms, his intent is to
>  >shock the reader.  And those words *were* obscene and shocking to the general
>  >public.
>RA>So I, for one, disagree that it is an over-reading.
> 
> 
>If that is the case, let's overread Catullus' sparrow some more ... if 

>That's the problem with literature -- it's just too darned easy to 
>take it to its illogical extreme. Lesbia masturbating? I think not.
> 

But does an double or triple entendre have to entail a complete
systematic view of the poem?  I really have to question that
methodological assumption.  This is a lyric poem, not an allegory.  It
is Catullus about Lesbia [I almost said, `on Lesbia'], not Jean de Meung
in the Romaunt of the Rose.  

See, it's easy:  I can allude to Jean de Meung without having read word
one of the Romaunt.  So also can Catullus can put in an `allusion' to
masturbation without intending a point-by-point extended metaphor.

A question for you experts:  Didn't Propertius do this kind of thing all
the time? Isn't that part of what the Latin Elegists got from the
Alexandrians? Or am I full of beans?

As a professional techie, I'm tempted to coin a phrase and say that
Catullus is not afraid of `entendres of order two or higher.' Certainly
modern writers are not.  Indeed, I am incapable of reading some modern
poets (e.g. Ashbery) in any other way than associatively and allusively. 
Clearly,  Catullus does not go nearly that far.  But I can't believe 
that such methods are as absent as Mr. Meadows claims.


Robert S. Hill                  
bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Newsgroups: sci.classics
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Followup-To: sci.classics
Date: 16 Dec 1992 17:50:07 GMT
Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
In-reply-to: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU's message of Wed, 16 Dec 92 01:57:53 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.015753.29916@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
   In article <liqcv2INNdr6@news.bbn.com>, ingria@bbn (Bob Ingria) writes:
   >In article <9DEC199218045046@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill) writes:
   >   In article <DRG.92Dec9150144@candidus.ma30.bull.com>, drg@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes...
   >
   >   >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
   >   >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?
   >
   >   Another FAQ!!!!  See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.
   >
   >I would also recommend:
   >
   >Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek,
   >
   >Carl Darling Buck, The Greek Dialects.

   You should also look at W. B. Stanford, _The Sound of Greek_, with its 45rpm
   record.

Yes!  I had wanted to include Stanford's book, as well, but I could
only remember the book's title, not the author's name.
--
-30-
Bob Ingria
Newsgroups: sci.classics
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Looking for the Title of a Poem
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 00:43:25 GMT

In article <102350@netnews.upenn.edu>, jim@vivarium (Jim O'Donnell) writes:
>The notion that Lesbia's sparrow is phallic in significance was a commonplace
>in Renaissance scholarship, on which see the forthcoming volume *Catullus in
>the Renaissance* by J.H. Gaisser of Bryn Mawr College.  The idea is a silly
>over-reading, and requires no party-pooper, merely a scholar, to confute it.
>The idea that Catullus 2 or 3 refers to Lesbia's masturbation is a novel one,
>but equally far-fetched.  When Catullus wishes to write about sex, he is quite
>capable of doing it himself, without later readers doing it for him!

Ahh.  But then, there's sex and there's sex.

When Catullus writes about sex in blatantly obscene terms, his intent is to
shock the reader.  And those words *were* obscene and shocking to the general
public.

He does, however, seem to have had a romantic side, and to have delighted in
making the same kinds of subtle (and not-so-subtle) jokes in which we used to
delight.

Sort of the difference between

	Come live with me, and be me love,
	And we will all the pleasures prove...

and a University of Texas fratboy's

	Hey, sweetmeat, wanna fuck?

So I, for one, disagree that it is an over-reading.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
From: ada612@huxley.anu.edu.au (Avery D Andrews)
Newsgroups: sci.classics
Subject: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Date: 12 Dec 92 00:32:17 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

In article <1g79ahINN6ef@frigate.doc.ic.ac.uk>,
  kd@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kostis Dryllerakis) writes:

  >	So the controversy will remain live. For us greeks, we would like
  >to believe that our language is not only close to ancient greek to its 
  >symbols but also to its sounds. I beleive that I speak for all of the fellow


I haven't noticed that the `traditionalist' view (that classical
Greek pronunciation  was pretty much like Modern Greek) has many
non-Greek adherents, which suggests that its basis is more emotional
than scholarly or scientific.  And 2500 years is a *long* time for
the pronunciation of a language to remain essentially unchanged.
And what is the traditionalist position on Greek pronunciation in
the vicinity of 700 BC, which is around when the Homeric poems seem
to be currently thought to have been written down?

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au


Newsgroups: sci.classics
From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 21:25:52 GMT

In article <jv!rhkh@lynx.unm.edu>, rsquires@cyclops (Roger Squires) writes:
> pef@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Panayotis Fouliras; TA PhD) writes:
>>In  rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
>>>       You may wish to locate a copy of a set of two cassette tapes
>>>       called _The Sound of Ancient Greek_, ...
>>>       to provide an introduction to pronunciation of classical
>>>       greek in Athens in the 4th-5th centuries B.C.
>
>	[Mr. Fouliras notes that
>	1) noone really knows what the *real* pronunciation was like,
>	2) that accent marks were added later to help with the learning task,
>	3) that there were various dialects of ancient Greek.]
>
>	As my final contribution to this thread, I will note that the author
>	of the above tape set spends many minutes at the beginning

Just for the record (or tape :-):  The tapes are produced by Stephen Daitz.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Newsgroups: sci.classics
Subject: Re: e: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Date: 16 Dec 92 17:54:22 GMT
Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
In-reply-to: JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU's message of Wed, 16 Dec 1992 02:17:34 GMT

In article <168BE12B6E.JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU> JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:

   For some reason I am reminded of a class I was teaching some years back, in
   which the problem of the pronuncition of Latin in "Classical" times became a
   topic.  "How," I began to ask rhetorically and pedantically, "would we go
   about determining the way ancient Romans pronounced Latin?"

   Back came the answer from a young gentleman in the front row, "Ask a priest!"

   So much for Socrates and his method!

Not really.  Though that reply does add quite a few more steps to the
elenchic process than you were envisioning, I imagine.
--
-30-
Bob Ingria

``Sherman, set the Way Back machine for 811, BC, Asia Minor.''
Xref: sparky sci.classics:1152 soc.culture.greek:11482
From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Newsgroups: sci.classics,soc.culture.greek
Subject: Re: Pronunciation of Greek names in Homer's Odyssey
Date: 15 Dec 1992 01:24:50 GMT
Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
In-reply-to: bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov's message of Wed, 9 Dec 1992 23:04:00 GMT

In article <9DEC199218045046@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> bhill@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert S. Hill) writes:
   In article <DRG.92Dec9150144@candidus.ma30.bull.com>, drg@candidus.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes...

   >Maybe someone from s.c.g can comment on some of the differences
   >between Ancient Greek pronunciations and modern Greek pronunciations?

   Another FAQ!!!!  See W. Sidney Allen's Vox Graeca.

I would also recommend:

Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University
Press, which goes through the phonological, morphological, and (more
sketchily) syntactic changes from the Koine period up through the
Modern Period.

Carl Darling Buck, The Greek Dialects.  I believe Buck discusses
pronunciation differences between ancient dialects, in addition to the
paradigm differences, but it's been a long time since I last looked
into it.

--
-30-
Bob Ingria