bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Apology for the Practice of Latin Verse Composition
Authors: Ellingham C. J.
Published: July 2013

‘As I battled with this wind, miserable and blue-nosed, I reflected that if—which heaven forfend—I had had to write a copy of verses about it, I should have called it Eurus, coupled with the most horrific epithet to be found in the Gradus; further, that it was a pity that no one had ever thought of names for the golfing winds. The names of the winds, that one used in doing Latin Verses, gave one a distinct picture of their different personalities, even if it were not quite the same picture that a Roman young gentleman would have had. One thought of them, I am afraid, not as blowing from any particular quarter, but as fitting into a particular part of those jig-saw puzzles called Hexameters and Pentameters. Thus those two entirely opposite characters, Boreas and Zephyrus, seemed to me rather like one another in that they were both sulky, disagreeable creatures who declined to help one in one's utmost need, namely, in getting the end of the line first. They would do no more than fill some position in the middle. That is to be a fair weather friend indeed, since every one knows that when once you have got your tag for the end the deuce is in it if you cannot fit in the rest somehow. Eurus and Auster were far more obliging; they were good, willing fellows, who would lend a hand anywhere in reason if you were not too fussily particular about the sense. Favonius was not trustworthy. As long as he was only wanted to serve in a hexameter he was friendly and useful, but try to use him in a pentameter, and he would plant his four feet firmly on the ground like an obstinate mule so that nothing could be done with him.’
Who Were The Romans? Evidence From Religion
Authors: Rose H. J.
Published: July 2013

If I had asked ten years ago the question I am asking to-day, I should have answered it with a good deal of confidence. I should have told you that we have irrefragable evidence of a group of very ancient cults, those of the di indigetes or native Roman gods, in whom we might safely recognize the reflection of purely Roman thought, untouched by the influence of Etruria, of Greece, or even of the other Italian states. I should then have proceeded to describe briefly the general characteristics of these gods and deduce therefrom the mental development and social status of their worshippers. I should probably have added that one of the most ancient of Roman institutions, the templum, showed clear traces of being derived from the customs of the terramara people, and therefore that that interesting branch of the Bronze culture had a good deal to do with the founding of the Eternal City. Then I might have gone on to tell you of other elements known or supposed to exist in the earliest cults, as revealed by modern investigation.
Roman Cookery
Authors: Pickstone Joan E.
Published: July 2013

A small volume has come down to us from the Imperial Roman period entitled De Re Coquinaria. It is attributed to Apicius, the notorious gourmand of the first century a.d., who paid the equivalent of £50 for a particularly large red mullet. This fish had been presented to Tiberius, but he thought it too luxurious for himself, and sent it to the market in Rome, saying, ‘It is too much of a dainty for me. If I am not out in my reckoning, either Apicius or Octavius will have it.’
Caesar: De Bello Gallico, Book I, cc. 1–41
Authors: Russell A. G.
Published: July 2013

From about the fourth century b.c. Rome had a long-standing alliance with the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) whose territory was constantly raided by southern Gallic tribes; these incursions called for military intervention from the Romans from the middle of the second century, culminating in a series of successful campaigns, the enlargement of Massilia's territory, the founding of the colony of Aquae Sextiae (Aix, 30 miles north of Marseilles), and the annexation of southern Gaul in 121 b.c. after the defeat of the Allobroges and Arverni. The province stretched from the Pyrenees up to Tolosa (Toulouse), then the frontier skirted the Cevennes to the Jura Mountains and the south-west corner of Lacus Lemannus (Lake Geneva); then it came in a south-south-easterly line to the Mediterranean coasts, by the Maritime Alps. It formed a very valuable corridor from Italy to Spain, and through it ran the Via Domitia beyond the Rhone; in 118 b.c. Narbo Martius (Narbonne) was founded, and so flourishing a Roman civilization grew up that Pliny later described it as ‘Italia verius quam provincia’.
Plato's Commonwealth
Authors: Carritt E. F.
Published: July 2013

Parallels between ancient and modern, when drawn with the knowledge and skill of Mr. Cornford, are fascinating: they give new life to antiquity and help us to stand away from the pressure of our own days and to note their form. It would be pedantic to ask more of them; but there is a dangerous temptation to make more of them.
Heresies III—Will You?—Won't You?
Authors: Witton W. F.
Published: July 2013

It falls to the lot of every teacher of Latin at some time to enunciate the rule, ‘If a question expects the answer “yes”, use nonne; if it expects “no”, use num’; and then, unless he is teaching a class of dummies, the trouble begins. ‘What if you don't expect any particular answer?’ ‘Why, if there are only two possible answers to a question, should there be three ways of asking one?’ ‘What if you don't get the answer you expect? Do you have to go back and amend the question?’
Heresies V—Si Quid Habeam
Authors: Witton W. F.
Published: July 2013

The presentation of conditional clauses in Latin involves but little difficulty until we come to those that are expressed by a verb in the present subjunctive. It is easy to understand that the past tenses of the subjunctive convey an unreal or imaginary supposition, one contrary to the facts of the case, while with a verb in the indicative we have an open supposition, in which there is no implication as to the facts: but what of the present subjunctive? How does si quid habeam differ from si quid habebo, if both suppositions have regard to future time?
Latin for To-Day
Authors: Chambers R. L.
Published: July 2013

In volume iv, no. 10, of Greece and Rome, dated October 1934, appeared an article entitled ‘Latin by the Mason Gray Method’, from the pen of C. McEvoy. We were told that the Mason Gray method finds practical expression in the book Latin for To-day. This book is edited by C. McEvoy, and assuming that this is the same C. McEvoy who wrote the article in Greece and Rome, we cannot be surprised that the book appears there in a good light. It is the purpose of the present writer to put forward certain points which he believes to be important after an examination of Book I of Latin for To-day.
Archaic Greek Sculpture
Authors: Barton J. E.
Published: July 2013

Five years ago, in these pages, I ventured to suggest the ‘urgent need of a finely illustrated new book on Greek art before 460’. The new appreciation of the earlier Greek masters, so fervent among young people whose perceptions belong to their own age, and who have had the luck to see ‘archaic’ Greek sculpture at first hand, has long demanded some adequate presentment from the vastly enlarged resources of modern photography for the benefit of the general public. This aspiration is now being gradually realized. The remarkable work produced in Paris (1934) by Christian Zervos, and entitled L'Art en Gr`ce, laid stress on aspects of Greek sculpture which appeal to twentieth-century taste, and supplemented admirably what had already been done for Parthenon and Erectheum art by the Berlin publication, Die Akropolts. The photography of L'Art en Grèce was actually too good for some critics. I have heard it described as tendencious, and its producers have been charged with the serious crime of manipulating light and vision so successfully as to upset the still prevailing academic standards of judgement. They had the audacity to photograph, direct from Greek vases of the fifth century, large-scale details of drawing which might readily be mistaken for products of twentieth-century Paris, distortion and all. That Pericles and Picasso should kiss each other is a notion revolting to staid minds, and the indignation it caused is not surprising to those who know our universities.
Aeneas and History
Authors: Knight W. F. J.
Published: July 2013

Thelegend of Aeneas grew up in the fifth centuryb.c.among Greeks. In the fourth it was adopted at Rome, and developed. Then it remained static for a century, until the Julii further developed it in the interest of family policy.

This is roughly the result to which the criticism of the Italian foundation legends has led. No single early and original form of them can be defined. They are confused and self-contradictory. Archaeology gives little if any direct confirmation of them, as they stand. Before the end of the nineteenth century few believed that they represented any historical reality. They were supposed to be a poetic invention, by which Greeks in the west sought to adorn the history of their new homes by connecting it with the poetry of their old. At the end of the century a kind of principle could be stated: that peoples naturally tend to claim false origins in lands far from their historical home. Even now pre-historians of Italy can almost disregard the possibility that the legends may have truth in them; for much of the early archaeological evidence is coherent without assuming infiltrations by sea.
The Confessions of a Latin Specialist
Authors: Eustance A.
Published: July 2013

The constant inquiry of a backward boy in an ‘A’ form or an average boy in a ‘B’ form is ‘What's the good of Latin ?’ I even know of an overwrought master who rapped out: ‘It keeps me off the dole. Get on with your work!’ Colleagues, mostly those who never took it themselves at school, humorously hint at its uselessness as compared with the inestimable blessings of their own subject. Parents, too, though a few have a vague notion about a little Latin being part of the make-up of a gentleman, are often a hindrance. There is the authentic case at my old school where an irate mother challenged the headmaster with the query, ‘Why should my Tom learn Latin? To-day I asked him the Latin for tea-pot and he could not tell me.’
The Jews, The Roman Empire, and Christianity, a.d. 50–180
Authors: Russell A. G.
Published: July 2013

The attitude of an imperial government towards the religions of the different peoples whom it controls has always interested historians since it is one of the criteria by which empires are judged and since it also throws considerable light on the mentality, if not the religion, of the governing people itself. We have only to look at the British Empire to realize how complex and baffling the problem can sometimes be; take India as an example—there we find an inextricable medley of peoples and beliefs, with their daily life shot through and through with a religious system and philosophy alien to Western minds, and presenting a diversity of practice and outlook bewildering to officials who often like to have even religions arranged in a nice orderly manner. How was the problem tackled there? In the proclamation at the end of the Mutiny Queen Victoria's ministers stated: ‘… we disclaim alike the right and the desire to impose our convictions on any of our subjects. We declare it to be our royal will and pleasure that none be in any wise favoured, none molested or disquieted by their religious faith or observances, but that all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law; and we do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority under us that they abstain from all interference with the religious belief or worship of any of our subjects on pain of our highest displeasure.’ That attitude of non-interference with religious belief or practice sounds simple enough, but it soon brought its own problems when faced with such practices as suttee and child-marriage which had the sanction of religion. It was a long time before the British Government could succeed in abolishing suttee, and its recently proposed legislation on child-marriage provoked more than a storm of protest. These are but two instances which may well illustrate the complexity of the problem; Rome found herself in somewhat similar situations when from time to time new religions as Christianity or Mithraism came into being, or when she brought under her sway races with beliefs and practices differing from her own.
Persepolis
Authors: Stott G.
Published: July 2013

Forty miles north-east of Shiraz, in the Mervdasht plain near the confluence of the Bandamir and Pulvar rivers, stand the palaces of Persepolis on a spur of the little mountain Kuh-i-Rahmet. Across the valley to the west at Husein Kuh are the tombs of the kings. Farther up the Pulvar, at Istakhr, are the barren ruins of the town of Persepolis; and at a spot twenty miles to the north-east (but forty by the windings of the Pulvar) Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, built his residential capital, Pasargadae.
Horace's Criticism of Life
Authors: Macnaughton Donald A.
Published: July 2013

In the opening satire of his second book Horace makes a spirited reply to his contemporary critics. It is such an excellent example of his sprightly wit that I cannot do better than make use of a summary of this satire as the introduction to my paper. His published writings up to this date (29 b.c.) were the Epodes and the first book of the Satires, his earliest efforts, many of them composed in the grimmer period of his life when the poet had reason for depression, disillusionment, and anxiety, and before he had attained that philosophic calm which gives to the works of his maturity a mellow quality, dear to many subsequent generations of cultivated readers in all countries.
Caesar's Campaign Against the Maritime States
Authors: Van Der Veer J. A. G.
Published: July 2013

Among the episodes from Caesar's De Bello Gallico that strike a Dutchman most (and this will equally apply to the English, I suppose) are those that treat of the sea. When we read how at the landing in Britain the Roman ships are too large to reach the coast, and how the soldiers leap from the vessels and wade fighting through the water, we can vividly imagine such a scene. Not that we see troops land every day, all Dutchmen are acquainted with the North Sea and its flat beach, so that a perusal of this passage evokes familiar ideas. Personally I find the episode of Caesar's campaign against the maritime States in Brittany very interesting. Now we discover a very similar situation in our own regions, then again we come across differences. Driven by a desire for personal observation we set out to this part of France during the summer holidays to see if Caesar's description agrees with the present situation, and how far the aspect of modern Brittany elucidates the passage in Caesar. And this has in no small measure proved to be the case.
‘The Troades’ of Euripides
Authors: Mead Louise M.
Published: July 2013

It is a commonplace that Greek drama is more intellectual than modern. We look for marks of this intellectualism in the speeches, the dialogue, the characterization, the method of supplying relief of tension in the most tragic situations, and the maintaining of the old convention by which action takes place off the stage, so that the interest of the audience is sustained by vividness and clarity of narrative rather than by actual portrayal of incident; but we seldom look for it in the actual construction of the dramas. Yet here too it can be seen. A good example is Euripides' Troades, which is but a poorly constructed play, if judged by standards which require a play to have a plot founded on incident, but not so poorly constructed if a theme be allowed to take the place of a plot.
Persius—Poet of the Stoics
Authors: Martin J. M. K.
Published: July 2013

There can be little doubt that the extant remains of Persius form the whole of his writings. In his boyhood he had indulged in the literary exercises of the classroom, and these immature efforts included a tragedy, a book of travels, and some lines on the elder Arria, whose Non dolet1 was an appropriate subject for a young Stoic to commemorate. These experiments had little merit, otherwise they would not have been destroyed on the advice of Cornutus, his friend and teacher and literary executor.
Virgil and Wordsworth the Poetry of Romanticism
Authors: Raymer A. J.
Published: July 2013

Every creative age in history, since Greek times, has held some belief on the nature and purpose of poetry, and the results have varied from song for the joy of singing to verse as a medium for the propagation of Communist propaganda. The short and splendid flower of Greek lyric in Sappho and Alc-man, the Homeric epic, Greek drama, Alexandrian pastoral, the love lyrics of Catullus, the imperial self-consciousness of Virgil, and the indignant satires of Juvenal, all these reflect some deep-rooted conviction of the true form and purpose of the poet's craft. Some people have thought of poetry as an ‘accomplishment’ like those of a polished young Victorian lady who had learnt deportment and a repertoire of sentimental drawing-room songs. Others, perhaps more profoundly, conceive of poetry as the hidden elixir of a mind aware of life, the reaction of a feeling, thinking person to the world of nature, human life, and the vast concourse of ‘rebel powers that thee array’. These reactions, being concerned with the significance and enchantment of what the poet sees, can only find adequate expression in words so ordered and grouped in a significant form as to transfuse into the reader something of the poet's vision and emotion, 'to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer’.
Greek Plays in 1939
Authors: Mason P. G.
Published: July 2013

This year has been noteworthy for the number of Classical plays which have been presented upon the stage, and for those of us who are sometimes asked to justify the pursuit of Classical studies they are a welcome sign that Classical thought and technique is contributing in the most vital of all ways to modern appreciation. For it is only by constant reinterpretation in each generation that a cultural influence is maintained; and if it is confined to the study it stagnates only too quickly, till it joins the limbo of ‘dead’ literature and art.
Slavery—The Graeco-Roman Defence
Authors: Raymer A. J.
Published: July 2013

The social and economic life of the ancient world was reared upon a substructure of slavery. The commercial greatness of Carthage, Tyre, and Babylon had depended on the same principle. Amid all the variety of notions and dominant ideas current in classical civilization there was one point of agreement. ‘It was universally assumed’, as Dr. A. N. Whitehead expresses it, ‘that a large slave population was required to perform services which were unworthy to engage the activities of a fully civilized man.’
John Owen, The Epigrammatist
Authors: Jones J. Henry
Published: July 2013

No class of writers is more neglected than the men who wrote in Latin after the Renaissance. Medieval studies usually stop at that point, and thenceforth the attention of scholars is absorbed in the young literatures written in the vernacular languages of Europe. Classical scholars are chary of venturing even as far as St. Augustine or Ausonius, and the Middle Ages are to the majority a closed book. Yet these post-Renaissance authors, no less than the writers of the Middle Ages, are witnesses to the endurance of Latin culture. Fracastoro, no less than Dante or Augustine, is instructive as being under the influence of Virgil. Both Medievalists and Classicists can benefit from a study of such Late Latin poets as G. Buchanan, Joannes Secundus, and John Owen, to name only the more prominent. Even the historian can derive much interesting material from their work as signposts of opinion in an age of transition and symbols of the enduring value of the Latin tradition. For Owen in particular may be pleaded his enormous popularity in his lifetime, which suggests that his epigrams were more than academic exercises to charm the indolent at the court of James I. They were soon translated into French, German, and Spanish, and there were five English versions. His reputation was truly international and appealed beyond the circle of those who spoke Latin freely.
Strabo: The Anatolian who failed of Roman recognition
Authors: Richards G. C.
Published: July 2013

Josephus almost invariably calls Strabo the Cappadocian. But he belonged not to Great Cappadocia, the home of Basil and the two Gregories, but to Cappadocia Pontica, more usually called Pontus. ‘Amaseia, my fatherland, a very strong city’ was his birthplace. ‘My city is situate in a large, deep valley, through which flows the river Iris. Both by human design and by nature it is admirably laid out, affording the advantage of both a city and a fortress: for it is a high, precipitous rock which descends steeply to the river, and has on one side the wall on the river edge where is the settled city, and on the other the wall that runs up on either side to the twin peaks.’ It had a water-supply which could not be cut off, passages being cut through the rock to the springs, and two bridges, one to the suburbs and another from the suburbs to the outside country. Its territory was larger and better than that of any other Pontic town. Within its walls were the palace and tombs of the Pontic kings: he certainly means the Pontic Achaemenids, not the Polemones. He adds that it was given to kings, but is now provincial. The era is fixed by coinage to 2 B.C., when it was annexed to the province of Galatia. It was still a metropolis in Christian times with many subordinate bishoprics, and we last hear of it as wrecked by an earthquake in the reign of Justinian. It is generally agreed that Strabo did not return to his native place to spend the last years of his life: he probably had no relatives left there.
Philip Alias Hitler
Authors: Adam Adela M.
Published: July 2013

Towards the end of the winter 1939–40 I was asked by a nephew, who is the Mayor of a Midland town and had to request his Council to confer the freedom of the borough on some notable, whether there was not in Demosthenes an appropriate compliment for him to quote, expressing the high qualities of the candidate for the honour. I guessed that my nephew had a vague recollection from his school-days of the De Corona, and I found what I thought was in his mind in § 84—the spurious decree granting a crown to Demosthenes because he had always been friendly to the city, and had always said and done all the good in his power on its behalf. My nephew was pleased and used the quotation in his speech. I was then moved to explore the De Corona for myself, and very soon was startled by remarkable parallels to events in Europe in 1940; and the idea of this paper came to me. In the presence of experts, may I ask indulgence for my ignorance? My knowledge of Greek history, especially of this period, is but the sediment of what was never more than a very small cupful.
Antiochus the Last: The Tale of a Freedman
Authors: Mattingly Harold
Published: July 2013

I don't quite know why I have decided to set down the story of my life on tablets. It is very doubtful whether anyone will be interested in it but myself. But that is, perhaps, the reason; it has seemed interesting to me, as I have lived it, and, now that it is near its end, I have the wish to unroll it again and judge whether it really has been what it has seemed. It has been a hard climb over steep, rough rocks; my hands are sore, but not as dirty as they might have been. But the time is short now. Since my master Pallas died, I have lost my chief motive for living. Whether I hold my post here in Rome or fly, in quest of safety, to my native Antioch, there will not be much to add to the tale. I do not grumble. I have known the upward, as well as the downward turn of Fortune's wheel.
Tiryns, Argos, Mycenae in Legend and Literature
Authors: Fletcher Frank
Published: July 2013

[The following paper was written originally for the last Hellenic Tour of 1939. It was delivered to an audience interested but not in the main learned, who wanted to be informed or reminded about the associations of places they were about to visit. To-day, when peaceful travel is denied to us, it may serve perhaps to recall a few pleasant memories and to awaken hopes of happier days to come.]
Nescioquid Maius Nascitur Iliade
Authors: Ellingham C. J.
Published: July 2013

The patriotism of Propertius' line is more evident than its truth, especially to the schoolboy. He can read the second, fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid with enjoyment, and some consciousness of their greatness, and will patronize the fifth with his interest, though the footrace is unfair, the boxing grotesque, and the archery miraculous. But the later books have no appeal. The last Sixth Form with whom I read Aeneid x–xii for Higher Certificate were unmoved, and thought they knew why. It was but adulterated Homer. Incidents which are telling in the Iliad are reproduced and embellished with a care that shows that Virgil's direct inspiration had run dry.
Another Word on Dogs in Ancient Warfare
Authors: Fletcher G. B. A.
Published: July 2013

Readers of Professor E. S. Forster's paper in Greece and Rome, x, 1941, pp. 114–17, may be interested in some of the passages which he does not quote or mention. He refers to Aelian, Varia Historia, xiv. 46, but not to Pollux, v. 47, who speaks of Paeonians as well as Magnesians: Μάγνητας μὲντοὺςἐπὶ Μαιάνλρῳ τρέΦειν φασὶ κύνας πολέμῳ ύπασπιστάς τοιοũτοι Δ̕ἦσαν καὶ Παίοσιν οἱ σύνθηροι κύνες. We hear of a Paeonian and a Perinthian dog in Herodotus, v. I μουνομαχίη τριφασίη έκπροκλήσιός σφι έγένετο καί γάρ άνΔρα ἀνΔρὶ καὶ ἵππον ἵππῳ συνέβαλον καὶ κύνα κυνί.
The Women of the Caesars
Authors: Mullens H. G.
Published: July 2013

Two scandalous passages in Tacitus and Suetonius seem to hint at a project for a marriage between Nero and his mother Agrippina. There seems reason, as will be seen, to suppose that there was policy rather than a much lower motive behind the manœuvres recorded in these passages, if indeed they actually occurred. But whereas Tacitus, quoting Cluvius as his authority, represents the overtures as coming from Agrippina, Suetonius, giving the story according to Fabius Rusticus, makes Nero responsible.
‘A Greater Than Leonidas’
Authors: Harley T. Rutherford
Published: July 2013

The thesis of this paper is that Brasidas, while being second to no Spartan in courage and endurance, excelled them all, if not other Greek generals as well, even during his short life, in grasp of military principles, in energy, enterprise, leadership, in military genius.
Guilty Or Not Guilty? Four Athenian Trials
Authors: Forster E. S.
Published: July 2013

The Corpus of Attic Orators is one of the richest legacies which has come down to us from antiquity. It is invaluable from many points of view. It provides us with unique material for tracing the evolution of Greek prose style; it illustrates the administration of public and private law at Athens; it supplies important evidence for Greek history; and, since the private orations deal with the personal affairs of ordinary citizens, it throws a flood of light on everyday life at Athens. It is with the last point that I shall attempt to deal.

The private orations were composed by professional speech-writers for delivery by clients who were obliged by law to plead their own causes in the courts. Being concerned with real or alleged crimes, they naturally do not show human nature at its best.

I propose to take as examples two speeches dealing with murders, one with an accusation of falsely claiming a dole, and one with a charge of assault and battery.

Two Murder Cases.

Antiphon, the earliest of the Attic Orators, who was also well known as a politician and took a prominent part in the establishment of the Four Hundred in 411 B.C., was head of a school of rhetoric which was attended by Thucydides. Fifteen of his speeches have survived, all of which deal with murder cases, three having been written for actual delivery and the rest as specimen speeches on fictitious themes.

The speech On the Murder of Herodes was composed for a certain Euxitheus and is concerned with an incident which took place on the island of Lesbos off the coast of Asia Minor.
Lost Greek Historians Judged by Their Fragments
Authors: Pearson Lionel
Published: July 2013

The fragments of ancient historians are regarded by many people as a storehouse of unrelated scraps of historical evidence. It is natural that a modern student of history should take this attitude, since he welcomes any new piece of evidence offered to him and is likely to be more interested in the information itself than in the source from which it comes. Indeed, it may happen that an isolated fragment quoted from an obscure lost historian has an almost absolute value for him. For example, according to the account in Plutarch, Diyllus, ‘by no means an insignificant historian’, recorded that the Athenians, on the motion of a certain Anytus, voted a gift of ten talents to Herodotus, presumably as a reward for giving readings from his history. We know next to nothing about Diyllus, except that he wrote twenty-six books dealing with the last quarter of the fourth century b.c., and this isolated remark of his, preserved by Plutarch, tells us little more. But a fragment of this kind has considerable interest for the historian; its value is like the value of an inscription which records the proposal and passing of a law. At the same time, since a single instance does not justify a general conclusion, it does not give enough information on which to base any conclusive opinion about the rewards given to literary men in Periclean Athens. No more does a single inscription make it possible to pass judgement on the legislative activities of any particular period. The historian must collect and compare a number of such inscriptions before he is entitled to form an opinion.
The Golden Age and the KYKΛOΣ ΓENEΣEΩN (Cyclical Theory) in Greek and Latin Literature
Authors: Martin R. H.
Published: July 2013

The belief in a golden age is not confined to any one age or civilization. In every civilized community there tends to grow up a nostalgia for the simpler life of bygone days; and other races besides the Greeks (particularly the Chinese) have shown the same desire to exalt their origins and ancestry; But there are peculiar factors which for the Greeks make this belief more real. Their civilization was, they believed, a new one without a forerunner; immediately previous to it lay the period of barbarity in which the idealized naturalism of the age of Cronos was supposed to have flourished. At the same time the subconscious memory of the glories of the Aegean civilization and, perhaps, of the peaceful civilizations such as that of the Indus valley, furnished material to embellish the legend of the Golden Age.

The scope of this article is somewhat diffuse, and a brief mention of the points which are discussed in it will help to make the oudine more clear. First I shall recapitulate the main characteristics of the Golden Age as it is portrayed in classical literature; next I shall discuss the significant fact that it is only used by some writers, while others adhere to the competing theory of ascendant evolution. Then I shall attempt to settle the position, first of the writings of Lucretius, secondly of the Prometheus legend with reference to these competing theories of degeneracy and evolution. Finally, after a brief outline of the causes which lead to a belief in a cyclical theory, a comparison will be made between the views of Hesiod (in Works and Days, 109 ff.) and Plato (Politicus, 269 ff.).
Rudens
Authors: Herington C. J.
Published: July 2013

Dear Caecilius,

Here is an account of Plautus' latest play, which will, I hope, give you some entertainment, and relieve the boredom which you must feel after six months spent in the wilds of Sardinia.

The play is called The Rope, and is said to be an adaptation of Diphilus' Wallet. I inquired among my friends for a copy of the Greek original, but was unable to find one; I must therefore judge the Latin without reference to its merits as a translation. It is full of wit, of course —all Plautus' work is—but I am afraid that some of the Latinized Greek jokes were above the heads of the audience. You should have heard them groan when the slave likened a storm to the ‘Alcmene of Euripides’! The very name of a Periclean author is enough to make them angry.

The plot is not very original—the usual recognition story, you know, which was so popular in New Comedy. An old Athenian, Daemones, is living in retirement on the coast near Cyrene. His long-lost daughter Palaestra has become the property of a bawd Labrax, who is carrying her away aboard ship from Cyrene to Sicily. The ship, however, is wrecked within sight of Daemones' house, and the eventual wayvwpuns is carried out by means of certain tokens belonging to Palaestra. These are discovered in a basket which Daemones' slave, Gripus, salvages from the sea. I need hardly say, my dear Caecilius, that there is a great deal of by-play of one kind and another. There is a particularly funny scene in which Gripus quarrels with the bawd's slave, Trachalio, for the possession of the basket.
Hellenism and Christian Education
Authors: Moore R. W
Published: July 2013

The Roman poet Ennius said he had three hearts, one Oscan, one Greek, and one Roman. That is to say he was native Italian by birth and upbringing, Greek by education, and Roman by adoption. By what species of co-operation the three worked as one it may be hard to determine; that they did work as one is clear; the poetry of Ennius, or some of it, lives in testimony. Somehow Italian dearness and the Greek inspiration were fused in the Roman mould to a dynamic end. Est locus Hesperiam quam mortales perhibebant… the anthropological elements have been fused in the crucible of history and the poet's magic is whole-hearted and complete. Yet it is a hybrid product, and it must have been hard at times, even for an Ennius, to escape the pain of a divided heart.

A similar sickness and a similar division must beset all scholars nourished on a culture, let me not say alien, but inherited from a past beside which their native tradition is young. I, an Englishman, born and bred in the fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land, I who

have prepared my peace

With learned Italian things

and the proud stones of Greece,

only to find it troubled and broken by the more searching simplicities of Judaea and Christ, how shall I find my spiritual home?

On my study wall is a half-inch Ordnance Map of the Cotswolds. Its greens and browns in subtle half-tones and harmonies epitomize for me days of solid experience in sun and rain and wind and other days walked there only in the mind.
Dictators and Philosophers in the First Century A.D.
Authors: Toynbee Jocelyn M. C
Published: July 2013

It was just over half a century ago, in 1892, that Gaston Boissier published a discussion of the Stoic ‘martyrs’ under Nero in the second chapter of his well-known work L'Opposition sous les Cèsars. Since then two especially noteworthy studies of the ‘philosophic opposition’ in the first century A.D. have appeared in English, that of M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926), pp. 108 ff., and, more recently, that of D. R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism (1937), pp. 125 ff. The story of men who maintained a critical or, at the least, independent attitude in the face of a totalitarian règime is obviously of great significance for us to-day. Theoretically, of course, the term ‘autocracy’, in its strict sense of ‘unaccountability’ of government, cannot be applied to the imperial system of the early Empire. On paper the ‘tyrants’, Tiberius, Gaius, Nero, and Domitian, no less than the ‘enlightened monarchs’, Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, were delegates senatus populique Romani, chief magistrates and servants of the state. But in practice the ever-expanding range of the imperial provincia, coupled with the unceasing growth of the ‘mystical’ auctoritas bequeathed by the first Princeps to his successors, had produced an effective absolutism comparable, in many respects, to that of the autocrats or ‘dictators’ of modern authoritarian states. How did political thought and action in the Roman Empire respond to this de facto autocracy? How, above all, did they respond to its abuse? For us these are no merely academic questions. The parallelism, such as it is, between the ancient and the modern situations must serve as an excuse for presuming to rehandle a familiar theme.
Why Latin?
Authors: Melluish T. W
Published: July 2013

When the twentieth century ushered in the State Secondary School its fond foster-parents, gazing with delight on their new pet, gave it the only food they knew, an old-fashioned type of mixed classical and mathematical biscuits. The puppy was just getting its teeth into this when a friend dropping in, himself a bit of an expert, forthwith pronounced the food too hard and dry, and substituted a coloured and powerfully smelling preparation based on a scientific formula. The bewildered hound then transferred his attention to this. Soon, however, History came knocking at the door and placed before the dog what was pronounced to be the only real canine diet, a large meaty bone. When again a dish of Economics was offered, the pup leapt playfully towards this, disregarding the French, German, and Spanish recipes which had meanwhile been used to tempt the pampered pet. Before long all available floor space had been used up with an assortment of pabula varia, the dog drifting hopelessly from one plate to another in a vain effort to appease all the dog-fanciers. Now the owners are gazing with concern at the resultant dog. What promised to be a magnificent specimen, the pride of all Crafts, is but a sickly cur, and a martyr to chronic belly-ache.

A state of affairs has in fact been reached which must not and cannot last. Among the manifold changes that seem to be imminent, a reform of the Secondary School curriculum is overdue. If nothing else, then Mr. Butler's Act will render such changes necessary.
Tragedy at Syracuse
Authors: Blaiklock E. M
Published: July 2013

Mr. chips, one might imagine, would be likely to associate bombs with Caesar for the rest of his quiet days. One Latin lesson tied the two together. A young officer in a New Zealand regiment had that thought in mind when he wrote his belated New Year greetings. ‘You will always think of us’, he said, ‘when you open Thucydides VII. Aren't we vain, Mr. Chips?’ There is no vanity about it. It is not only the memory of a very able Greek class which will entangle for ever the Sicilian Expedition with the events of 1941. There are grimmer reasons. Rommel arrived ominously at Tripoli on the day we read of Gylippus’ coming to Syracuse. We backed to Egypt step by step with the first Athenian disasters. The same moon shone on the Athenian attempt on Epipolae and on the opening of the German Balkan drive. Larissa, Athens, Corinth, Argos! The Anzacs retreated through Greece as the Athenians fought their last fight at Syracuse. They struggled back across the hills of Crete as Demosthenes and Nicias began the disastrous retreat. And then the Navy broke the spell. No ships filled the southern bays of Sicily to take Athenians home on the moonless nights. There was no Dunkirk, no evacuation. Misfortune was complete. Ours might have been. There will be no forgetting those months when another class reads Macaulay's favourite book again.

Macaulay was quite strikingly correct. Thucydides’ seventh book passes all the tests of classic excellence. Its narrative, like a Greek tragedy, is interwoven with the universal of human experience.
Works and Days
Authors: Herington C. J
Published: July 2013

For antiquarians Hesiod is no doubt a more useful poet than either Homer or Euripides. He differs from Homer in having a definite character and even an approximate date; from both Euripides and Homer in dealing with the concrete, everyday facts of contemporary life. It is from him, for instance, that we have our earliest account of a plough made artificially with separate pieces of wood; Homer never troubled his head with such banal matters, but here is a chance for the antiquarians to make merry. The Works and Days above all other works is the antiquarian's thesaurus.

But if we subtract Hesiod's descriptions of ploughs, his list of days and similar paragraphs which are admittedly boring, we are left with a good three-fourths of the Works and Days still intact. For example, we have the three λòγoi with which the poem begins. Here, if we expect the glitter of Homer, the ‘surge and thunder of the Odyssey’, we shall be disappointed; but we shall find that monstrous familiarity with the gods, and that astonishing intimacy with the universe before man's creation, which only Greek literature can show us. Shelley indeed, as Francis Thompson observed, had in some degree this Greek characteristic— ‘the universe is his box of toys… he dances in and out of the gates of heaven’—but only Hesiod and Aeschylus in the Prometheus have yet succeeded in opening up the full prospect of eternity. Hesiod knows the origin of everything, divine and human; he had the effrontery to write a Theogony, and knew the exact life history of the second sort of Strife: ‘she was born of dark gloomy Night, and high Zeus, who dwells in heaven, set her in the roots of earth’ (Works and Days, 11. 17–19).
The Epileptic
Authors: Blaiklock E. M.
Published: July 2013

‘When we come to Euripides’, writes Pearson, in his introduction to the Phoenissae, ‘we are let down to earth…. If our notions of ancient art are shaped on the ideal pattern, we experience a feeling as of a sudden jar or shock when brought face to face with the realistic aspect of a Euripidean play; there is what seems at first sight a blending of the ancient point of view with the modern, an acquiescence in the ugliness of certain features of suffering which we are apt to think more appropriate to the twentieth century…. With every fresh disaster we are forced to utter the question—why should such things be? And at the same time we are driven to admit that, though we cannot explain them, they are none the less true.’ This is pre-eminently true of the Hercules Furens.

The Hercules Furens rivals the Bacchae in the strangeness of its theme, and if it can be demonstrated that these two plays were built out of the stuff of real life, an important point has been made in support of the contention that Euripides’ prime interest was the character of men and women, and that his dramatic presentation of humanity is marked by psychological insight of the highest order, and based upon a notable acuteness of observation. What, we may ask, led Euripides to choose as a subject of tragedy the strange tale of the madness of Heracles? The Attic associations of the myth, which were his main concern in the Heracleidae, cannot have been his chief motive in this case.
Greek Biography Before Plutarch
Authors: Osley A. S.
Published: July 2013

The desire to celebrate the lives of famous men has no doubt been a fundamental characteristic of human nature since the beginning of time. The picture of ‘primitive’ man, squatting at night by a fire in the smoky cave, which served him for a home, relating his brief, rude, ancestral tales to an appreciative audience of two or three, rapt and forgetful (for a moment) of the harsh life outside, is neither unplausible nor improbable.

It is perhaps possible (on the principle of ex pede Herculem) to disentangle some of the elements which contributed to the experience afforded by the relation of such stories. In an uncivilized community the dead exact a tyrannical homage from the living in order that the consequences of their imagined wrath may be averted. Hence they are to be placated by all means, and their memory is to be revered by the enumeration of the glorious exploits which they performed whilfe living. For, in the ‘next world’, whither they have been translated—call it the Elysian Fields, or what you will—they are conceived of as taking joy in the celebration of their valour and the recital of their achievements.

Again, the tribe or race must be preserved, and there is no more suitable medium for the crystallization of tribal or racial virtues than oral tradition. The young men, as they listen to the deeds of their forefathers, are stirred by ‘this constant renewal of the good report of brave men’ and are themselves fired with the desire for an immortal name.
Classics Pure and Applied
Authors: Taylor D. G.
Published: July 2013

In the somewhat unusual situation of a mathematician invited to address a Classical Society, there is one question which I am forced to put to myself. Can anything of interest to present-day students of the Classics survive from a modest Classical course taken over forty years ago, and followed by a lifetime of activity in a very different academical groove? Any slight merit which the following remarks may possess will arise from their character as a personal testimony.

I begin by putting a question to you. What influences led you to take up a course in Classics at college? I can imagine many possible contributory causes: the accident of the particular school you attended, high success in your School Certificate Examination, a real pleasure in getting up the rudiments of Latin or Greek grammar; or a teacher who bound you with a spell and gave you glimpses of romance. Whatever the cause, you have made the choice, and, like all choices, it imposes a limitation. To some extent, and at least for a time, you are debarred from specializing in some other subject: Philosophy or Modern Languages, Physics or Biology. You are approaching the vast unity of human knowledge and achievement from a specific angle, and along a very definite path.

Pascal, the great literary, scientific, and religious genius of seventeenth-century France, has a fine saying: ‘The whole succession of men through the ages should be considered as one man, ever living and always learning.’ The unity of human knowledge and achievement cannot be broken up without serious loss.
The Character of Alexandrian Poetry
Authors: Trypanis C. A.
Published: July 2013

It is hard to conceive and define the general characteristics of Alexandrian poetry (c. 323–146 B.C.), a poetry which we know mostly in fragments and of which the greatest representatives show so wide a divergence.

Between the poetry, for instance, of Callimachus, with its austere and scholarly character intended for an educated and courtly audience, and the mimes of Herodas, with their sensual and humorous character designed to appeal to the broad masses of the cities, there is an abyss which cannot be bridged. Yet we can discern common elements and qualities which differ both from classical Greek poetry and the poetry which followed.

The Alexandrian poets are all in some way or other, directly or indirectly, hampered and fettered by the weight of classical Greek poetry. They looked at the Greek poetic tradition with awe mingled with despair; they were spellbound by the rich and beautiful language, the perfection of form and the grandeur of the classical creative imagination from Homer to Menander, but the more they studied those works the more deeply were they convinced of the utter impossibility of creating anything of equal originality; they realized that they were incapable of freeing themselves completely from the classical tradition or of breaking it and creating new types of great poetry, as the Ionians had created the epic, or the Athenians drama. The furthest they dared venture was to mix and to mingle the old pure and clearly defined types of poetry. The result, neither the same nor completely new, flattered their vanity by persuading them that they were creating, without breaking way from the spell of tradition.