bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
To Do As Rome Does?
Authors: Cox A. S.
Published: July 2013

‘Moral idealism in pre-Christian Rome’ will strike many as an unpromising topic, and two preliminary doubts may well arise. Was there any moral idealism? And, if so, is it worth talking about? To the first of these questions the answer is an emphatic yes. For in the literature of the first century B.c. the proportion of moralizing is remarkable and perhaps unique. Historians such as Sallust and Livy moralized explicitly in their prefaces and implicitly on every other page. Cicero, whether as philosopher or politician, moralized at every opportunity. And poets for the most part accepted their traditional role as preachers with enthusiasm, Lucretius with his thundered message of hope through despair, Horace with his more sophisticated poetic sermons, and Virgil his monumental moral epic. Every branch of Roman literature had moralizing as an accepted part of its function. Now the ‘message’ differed in detail from author to author, and was in some cases highly individual: Lucretius, for instance, preached an ideal which bore little relation to that of any other writer and aroused as little reaction in the Roman public. But it remains true that numerous common features are discernible in the moral thinking of Rome's writers, and to these we may give the label ‘Roman morality’.
Some Escapes and Escapers in the Ancient World
Authors: Millar C. M. H.
Published: July 2013

The present vogue for prisoners' escape stories gives rise quite naturally to an inquiry about the ancient world: has Greek and Roman history or literature any comparable stories to offer? One might expect their pages to be crowded with such stories; escapes are usually made in time of wars and tyrannies, of upheavals and rapid changes of fortune; and heaven knows there were enough of all these in the history of Greece and Rome.
Below the Horizon
Authors: Thomson J. O.
Published: July 2013

When an observer on land watches a receding ship, the hull is the first part to sink below the horizon, and the masthead is last (conversely, when a ship is approaching, the masthead is first to rise over the horizon). The fact was familiar to Roman poets. Ovid insists on it at length in the Metamorphoses (xi. 466–71), in the story of Alcyone and Ceÿx. Valerius Flaccus puts it very neatly in the Argonautica (i. 494–7), where the women gaze at the departing sails till the sea overtops the mast, donec iam celsior arbore pontus immensusque ratem spectantibus abstulit aer.
The Macedonian Background
Authors: Griffith G. T.
Published: July 2013

Macedonia was the springboard of the movement which led to the conquest of the Persian Empire. Though Philip and Alexander ostensibly embarked on war with Persia as Leaders (Hegemones) of the Greeks, and though the Greek cities did make their military and naval contribution—not to mention the comfort and support furnished by certain Greek publicists, intellectuals, and politicians—nevertheless the essential power which had harnessed Greece and now was to harness Persia came from Macedonia and the Macedonians, officially unmentioned, and in many Greek circles unmentionable.
Alexander and India
Authors: Narain A. K.
Published: July 2013

Noarmy leader has become more famous in history than Alexander. He has been praised and admired as well as blamed and cursed. But even if blemishes can be found in his career and character, no one can deny his ‘daemonic’ strength of will and leadership, which alone are sufficient to mark him out as one of the greatest generals history has seen. Opinions may, however, differ as to whether he was more than that.
The Portraits of Alexander
Authors: Bieber Margarete
Published: July 2013

Theunusual personality of Alexander the Great is reflected in an extraordinary number of portraits. They begin in his early youth, and do not end with his death. They continue during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and all subsequent periods down to modern times. The portraits of Alexander not only reflect the different phases of his short life but become an artistic motif for all following periods.
On Reading Plutarch'sLives
Authors: Russell D. A.
Published: July 2013

This of course was Renaissance enthusiasm. The fame and influence which Plutarch enjoyed in the days of the rediscovery of antiquity could not survive the revolutions in historical and scholarly attitudes that marked the nineteenth century. Instead of being thought of as a mirror of antiquity and of human nature, he became a ‘secondary authority’, to be used where the ‘primary sources’ failed, himself to be quarried by theQuellenforscherand left a ruin. The present neglect of theLivesin education is a consequence of this. And yet it should be obvious that, for the very historical purposes for which the book is now chiefly studied, it is misleading and dangerous to use what is plainly one of the most sophisticated products of ancient historiography without constant regard to the plans and purposes of its author. Fortunately, a good deal has been written, especially in the last twenty years, to redress the balance.
The Golden Art of Apuleius
Authors: Dietrich B. C.
Published: July 2013

A brief glance into almost any modern history of Latin literature will show that the age of Silver Latin came to an end with Suetonius, whose death marked the beginning of two centuries during which Roman letters trickled away to nothing in a wind-swept desert. A sad fate for a great literature at such an early date, for Suetonius still belonged to the first quarter of the second century a.d. Fortunately we may beg to differ from our historians: there was yet life in the old body even after Suetonius.
Tiberius and the Spirit of Augustus
Authors: Shotter D. C. A.
Published: July 2013

There are a number of instances in Tacitus' treatment of Tiberius which concern the emperor's behaviour when some mention of his predecessor was made. Critics of Tacitus have apparently overlooked Tiberius' extreme sensitivity on this subject, with the result that interpretations have been offered which tend to obscure what Tacitus is trying to say about Tiberius. It is the intention of this note to examine such passages, in an attempt to clarify Tiberius' attitude and Tacitus' presentation of it.
Portraits of Julius Caesar
Authors: Toynbee J. M. C.
Published: July 2013

A Number of statues representing early national heroes, and presumably quite imaginary as portraits, were, according to the ancient sources, erected in Rome before the second century b.c. But our earliest reference to honorific portraits of contemporary, or near-contemporary, public persons relates to the year 158 b.c., when an order was issued, so the elder Pliny informs us, for the removal from the Forum of all statues of magistrates which had not been officially authorized— populi out senatus sententia statutae. What these second-century honorific statues of magistrates were like we do not know for certain, since none of them has survived. It would, however, be a fairly safe conjecture that they were the work, not of Romans or Italians, but of immigrant Hellenistic artists. We have no knowledge of any school of specifically Roman portrait-sculptors of this period; while from Greek lands, and particularly from Delos, comes abundant evidence that Greek portraitists, natives of Athens and of other east-Mediterranean centres, were carving portrait-statues of Roman officials and of other contemporary individuals precisely at this time. Some of these statues carried on the ‘baroque’ tradition of the idealized, heroized, or heaven-inspired Hellenistic ruler-portrait that began with Alexander's likenesses. Others, on the other hand, exemplify a new and highly realistic, one might almost say prosaic, development in Hellenistic iconography.
The Rise of Julius Caesar
Authors: Taylor Lily Ross
Published: July 2013

When Caesar was born, probably in 100 b.c., it is doubtful whether anyone at Rome would have expected a son of this secondary branch of the patrician Iulii Caesares to rise to great eminence in the state. The family, to be sure, was very old; it was said to have come to Rome from Alba Longa when King Tullus Hostilius destroyed the city, and the Iulii kept the tradition alive by maintaining associations with Alba and the Alban gods. But, in spite of the family's antiquity, the nobility of the Iulii, to paraphrase Cicero on another patrician, was better known to men of letters and to historians than it was to the voters. It was not even very well known to men of letters and historians, for the ten or eleven lulii who reached high office in the fifth and fourth centuries hardly average a line apiece in the six books that Livy devotes to their period—books crowded with vivid stories of patrician families like the Fabii, the Manlii, and the Valerii.
Caesar the Soldier
Authors: Cuff P. J.
Published: July 2013

It is a poor age which does not throw up a giant. Whether he responds to a crisis or whether he creates his own opportunity, rising unbidden to tyranny, the genius dominates the contemporary scene. His achievements linger with posterity. Yet without that character which can attract loyalty and absolute devotion, without that personal magnetism which can turn dependable associates into fanatical adherents and servants into slaves, no run of successes can lift a man out of the rut of leadership into that position from which he bestraddles his contemporaries like a Colossus.
The Conspiracy and the Conspirators
Authors: Smith R. E.
Published: July 2013

The conspiracy which so tragically and so dramatically ended Caesar's life on the Ides of March, 44 b.c., is one of the best-known episodes of Roman history; for it has been given its tragic and dramatic setting by Shakespeare himself, who saw so clearly its tragic quality. Yet as we look back over two thousand years upon this incident, pregnant with fate, as it was, for Rome's and the western world's future, we tend naturally, I think, to regard with something of contempt the conspirators, many of them Caesar's friends, who could thus dare to dishonour friendship with their great friend's blood, and cloak envy and selfishness with hypocrisy's specious covering. Yet it must be remembered that sixty men, no less, were joined in this conspiracy; we cannot lightly condemn all of them for hypocrisy and spite; and even if our final verdict should be unfavourable, it is wrong to pass it without attempting to penetrate to some degree into the minds and motives of these men, to try to understand why they could, and thought they should, commit a crime so seemingly damnable.
The Aftermath of Caesar
Authors: Chilver G. E. F.
Published: July 2013

A Few decades afterwards Livy doubted whether Caesar's birth had been a blessing or a curse. That was an extreme doctrine: ‘Pompeianism’ like Livy's could be licensed under Augustus, but it was not orthodoxy; and to say that Caesar had been justly killed was a crime. Yet the one clear judgement on Caesar in the Aeneid is a rebuke, and in Horace there is virtual silence except in extolling Augustus the avenger. It was Ovid's clear language which was best fitted to sum up the Government's position:

neque enim de Caesaris actis ullum maius opus, nisi quod pater exstitit huius.
The Revision of Aristophanes' FROGS
Authors: Russo Carlo Ferdinando
Published: July 2013

The evidence of the Marmor Parium confirms that Sophokles ‘died under Kallias’, who was archon from the summer of 406 to the summer of 405. The Frogs was produced during the archonship of the same Kallias, at the Lenaia: that is, in January/February 405. The Frogs refers to the dead poet in the prologue, in the second prologue, and in the exodos (76–82, 786–94, 1515–19): in the prologue and in the exodos Sophokles is mentioned in connexion with the return of Dionysos from Hades with a good tragic poet (cf. 71–85 and 1414–1533), and in the second prologue in connexion with the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the tragic throne in Hades (cf. 757–1410).
Tityrus and Meliboeus
Authors: Coleman Robert
Published: July 2013

The poem that stands first in Vergil's bucolic collection is a dialogue between two herdsmen. It begins with five of the most exquisite lines in Latin literature, and it is worth while examining them in some detail:

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi siluestrem tenui musam meditaris auena: nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arua. nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas. (1–5)
Early Greek Travellers in Egypt
Authors: Macfarquhar C. F.
Published: July 2013

Exploration in ancient Egypt was fostered originally by the militaristic designs of the Pharaohs. Between the end of the Third Dynasty (c. 2600) and the Eighteenth (1570–1304), the Egyptian kings were continually extending their southern frontier, and bringing under their control the Ethiopians or Kushites of Nubia. The Sahara blocked any expansion westward, although it was certainly less extensive in those times and contained more abundance of water. The camel, however, had probably not been introduced into Egypt, and there was little incentive for traders to make long marches across the desert. Nigerian gold, ivory, and slaves were brought in by sea. Travel by boat up the Nile therefore remained the sole means of opening up new areas. Along with the military expeditions went scholars and explorers who brought back tales of the Upper Nile, which gradually came to the ears of Greek visitors to the Delta region in Mycenaean times. From the Homeric poems we may see in what form they were assimilated by the Greeks. At the edge of the river Ocean were said to dwell the Aithiopes, ‘burnt-faced men’, probably Somalis, while the story of the Pygmies who fought with cranes shows knowledge of the tribes of the interior. It is significant, too, that the name given to the Nile in Homer is Aigyptos, the river being equated with the country. There is however hardly any mention of Egypt in Greek literature between Homer and Hekataios. Not until 664 were Greeks encouraged to visit the country, and then Psammetik I brought in Lydian and Carian mercenaries perhaps by arrangement with the Lydian tyrant Gyges. By means of these troops he was able to break the power of the Kushites, who had established themselves as rulers over Egypt.
Theseus: The growth of a myth in history
Authors: Boer W. Den
Published: July 2013

Athens had a founder. His identity lies concealed in the twilight of myth. When the historians first sought him, and that was centuries after the city had been established, they constructed a traditional picture which—with the necessary modifications to fit current needs—persisted into late Antiquity. A historical picture, even one of a past as distant as the founding of Athens, is never created out of thin air, however. Remnants of ancient customs, no longer understood, remained part of social and religious practices. When the Greek—in the time that also saw the first written recording of history, roughly in the fifth century B.c.—posed his questions about the how and why of the relics, he encountered the stories belonging to oral and written tradition that mentioned and honoured a founder. These shreds of ideas about an ancient past he used, together with the products of his tireless imagination, to create a picture with such a general appeal that it has remained alive and has even become a piece of history whose development can be followed, even though the journey is a difficult one and does not always hold to one path or lead to the same conclusion. The legend becomes history in two ways. Firstly, the human spirit, which loves to make fables and cannot accept its own ignorance, fills out shadowy images from an ancient and incomprehensible past until they become distinct figures. These elaborations then give rise to a new development, which might be called the history of the legend. To trace and describe the evolution of the legend is an extraordinarily fascinating occupation.
The Casualty Lists in the Trojan War
Authors: Armstrong C. B.
Published: July 2013

The casualty lists in the Trojan War, owing to their late publication, are not very accurate, but they have some interesting features. The named casualties of officers total 238, and unnamed 26. Other ranks are not recorded. Of these 24 seem to have been wounded only, though in some cases it is left uncertain whether a man was only wounded, and not killed. To the wounded must be added Ares and Aphrodite, who obviously could not be killed, though they seem to have suffered considerably. Apparently the Gods and Goddesses who engaged in the fighting had a convention that they must not kill anyone themselves: they only interfered by encouraging their respective sides, and protecting certain favourites or balking their would-be killers. Ares, Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus were thus active on the Trojan side, and Athena, Hera, and Poseidon for the Greeks. Unlike us, the early Greeks appear to have been more proud of the killers than sorry for the killed.
The Prologues of Sophocles
Authors: Hulton A. O.
Published: July 2013

How to begin is not the least of the dramatist's problems. It is essential, in the construction of any play, not only to establish at the start a suitable mood, but to make clear, without undue delay, the place, personalities, and general antecedents of the plot. Of the two methods of doing the latter that offer themselves—that by which such information is contained in a ‘prologue’ or set speech, and that by which it is introduced in the course of the action—the former is simpler for the author, and, for the spectator too, it may be more convenient to have these details given once and for all. But it tends to artificiality, and the impression is often created that here is something outside the plot, a mere introduction to the play rather than a part of the play itself. In Greek tragedy the method was of course much used by Euripides, and he has perhaps been over-criticized for it, both in his own time and since. But later writers have not shunned it, and its final development is found in the splitting-off of the initial ‘address’ and its assignment to an extraneous speaker dubbed ‘Prologue’ or ‘Narrator’. This has at least the merit of logical clarity. But, while a definite line cannot be drawn between them, the more informal method must be accounted artistically superior. This was especially that of Sophocles, and his opening scenes (or ‘prologues’ in the technical sense), in both their informational and other aspects, are worth attention in themselves, as well as being indicative of his general approach to his art.
Action and Emotion in Aeneas
Authors: Wilson John R.
Published: July 2013

In the Aeneid there is a tendency to dissociate action from emotion. Action is often dictated by a strong sense of duty, while emotion, instead of being a motivating power, becomes an idle accompaniment that contradicts the meaning of the act. This is most clearly observed in the person of Aeneas, particularly in those Odyssean books when he schools himself in a ‘new heroism’ whose very basis seems to depend on such a dissociation. Thus, in the midst of Troy's destruction, his natural desire is to die fighting for his city. If he had acted out this desire (as he begins to do) he would have been conforming to the standards of the old, Homeric, heroism. But he is caught in the complicated fabric of Rome's future, and the old, simple heroism, founded on a natural and impulsive nobility, is not for him. He must go against his natural desire and, as a runaway, escape the doomed city to refound it elsewhere. And yet his heart is set on the city he has lost, not on the city he must build, as becomes clear in the succeeding books. In Book iii he envies the miniature Troy which Helenus and Andromache have built in Epirus, while in Book iv he longs to stay with Dido and share in her city. The division he so frequently evinces in these early books between what he has to do and what he wants to do can be considered as part of a training in pietas, in devotion to his highest duty, which is consummated in the underworld encounter with his father Anchises in Book vi.
Caesar's Encounter with the Usipetes and the Tencteri
Authors: Lee K. H.
Published: July 2013

His rebus gestis, ex litteris Caesaris dierum viginti supplicatio a senatu decreta est. With these words Caesar ends the account of his campaign in Gaul in 55 B.c.
Omens in theOdyssey
Authors: Podlecki Anthony J.
Published: July 2013

TheOdysseyis principally the story of a return. A man has spent ten years fighting a war in a distant country and another ten years trying, against all sorts of obstacles and distractions, to get home to his wife and family. Will he make it?
Martins and Swallows
Authors: Arnott W. Geoffrey
Published: July 2013

In Book iv of the Georgics, Virgil prescribes the beginning of spring as the time for producing bees abiogenetically:
hoc geritur Zephyris primum impellentibus undas,

ante nouis rubeant quam prata coloribus, ante

garrula quam tignis nidum suspendat hirundo. (305–7)
Lessing's Creative Misinterpretation of Aristotle
Authors: Dickson K. A.
Published: July 2013

German life and letters in the earlier eighteenth century were dominated almost exclusively by French influences. The fragmentation of the German-speaking world within the clumsy and largely imaginary framework of the Holy Roman Empire, the appalling devastation of the Thirty Years War, and the consequent dearth of a living autochthonic cultural tradition had led German intellectuals to look to the impressive achievements of Versailles as the only alternative to barbarism. Leibniz, the greatest philosopher of the German Enlightenment, wrote in Latin and French; Gottsched, an ardent admirer of the Grand Siècle, translated Corneille and Racine and urged imitation of their style upon his fellow countrymen; Frederick the Great, whose indifferent French verse Voltaire had the irksome privilege of correcting, possessed at his palace of Sanssouci (itself an imitation of Versailles) a magnificent library which contained not a single work in German, and though he is said to have had an eloquent command of German expletives, spoke only French at court.
Assisted Resonance in Ancient Theatres
Authors: Landels J. G.
Published: July 2013

Looking back, as we do, from the films and television of the twentieth century, we are inclined to think of Greek theatregoers as very serious-minded people, who suffered hard stone seats for days on end to watch a succession of tragedies, each with a solid intellectual content, performed against an austere stage setting by actors who could achieve only a distant approach to realism. We are constantly reminded of the very severe treatment meted out to Euripides for his experimental innovations. He tried out the use of blasphemous expressions—the equivalent, in his dramatic setting, of the four-letter words in modern ‘realistic’ drama: but Hippolytus' cry, ⋯ γλ⋯σσ' ⋯μώμοχ', ⋯ δ⋯ φρ⋯ν ⋯νώμοτος, was parodied mercilessly by the comic poets for years afterwards. Another of his ‘gimmicks’ was the tragic hero in rags, a device which anticipates in some respects the recent trend of ‘kitchensink drama’.
Pathos in the Poetics of Aristotle
Authors: Rees B. R.
Published: July 2013

The past thirty years have brought us much closer to the meaning of many puzzling terms employed by Aristotle in the Poetics. But there are still many whose meaning may never be established with any certainty, partly because of inconsistencies or deficiencies in the argument and partly because of our own ignorance of the dramatic and critical terminology of the fourth century. For example, it is reasonable to assume that the terms used by Aristotle to describe his three μ⋯ρη of tragedy—пεριп⋯τεια, ⋯ναγνώρισις, and п⋯θος—were all part of the technical vocabulary of the contemporary theatre, and that if only we were familiar with that vocabulary, we should not find Aristotle's vagueness and carelessness in explanation such a hindrance to understanding.
The Historical Imagination of Lucretius
Authors: Kenney E. J.
Published: July 2013

ProfessorParatore, in a book that I suspect is too little known to students of Lucretius, has called the Fifth Book of the De Rerum Natura ‘perhaps the richest in poetic inspiration’ in the poem. No part of his subject, it seems, fired the poet's imagination more; and it is the quality of Lucretius' imagination as it is seen in his account of the early history of mankind that I have chosen to discuss. The role of the imagination in the work of the historian is reviewed by Professor G. R. Elton in his book The Practice of History: ‘The discovery of truth requires not only the equipment already discussed–acquaintance with the available evidence and scholarly assessment of it—but also imaginative reconstruction and interpretation. Evidence is the surviving deposit of an historical event; in order to rediscover the event, the historian must read not only with the analytical eye of the investigator but also with the comprehensive eye of the story-teller. The truth is the product of this double process.’ For a good deal of what he says about the history of early man Lucretius had very little evidence as we account it. He had some previous scholarly literature at his disposal, but most of that was theoretical: neither he nor his sources had access to the archaeological and geological record. Yet in certain parts of his subject, as we shall see, this enforced ignorance did not hamper him as much as might be expected, even in comparison with a modern investigator.
Tranio's Laconian Key
Authors: Barton I. M.
Published: July 2013

The second act of Plautus' Mostellaria begins (348ff.) with the panicstricken return from Piraeus of the slave Tranio. He has seen at the harbour his master Theoropides, just returned from abroad; now immediate and drastic action will be needed to prevent him from discovering what his son Philolaches (abetted by Tranio) has been up to during his absence. The first essential is to hustle Philolaches and his drinking-companions indoors before the old man has time to get home. Only when that has been done will Tranio have leisure to think out a plan for duping his master. It takes 28 lines (371–98) to clear the stage; then, having at last got the drinking-party safely inside the house, Tranio can tell Philolaches what he wants him to do. His final instruction (404) is:

Clauem mi harunc aedium Laconicam iam iube ecferri intus: hasce ego aedis occludam hinc foris.
More thoughts about Thera
Authors: Luce J. V.
Published: July 2013

In 1965 the notable paper ‘Santorini Tephra’ by D. Ninkovich and B. C. Heezen provided the first firm evidence that the Late Bronze Age eruption of the Thera volcano directly affected the eastern part of Crete through ash fall-out. In July 1967 Professor Marinatos's initial exploration of a settlement buried under volcanic ash near the village of Akrotiri on the south coast of Thera received worldwide publicity, partly for its intrinsic interest, but perhaps even more because the discovery was linked with the magic word Atlantis. The whole subject was then extensively aired in newspaper and magazine articles, and three books on the theme of Thera-cum-Atlantis appeared in 1969.
Virgil's Polyphemus
Authors: Glenn Justin
Published: July 2013

Weare told by an ancient life of Virgil that the poet had a ready reply for those who chided his extensive borrowing from Homer: ‘Cur non illi quoque eadem furta temptarent? verum intellecturos facilius esse Herculi clavam quam Homero versum subripere’ (Vita Donati, 46). To recapture a Homeric figure, however briefly, was indeed a demanding challenge, but Virgil's task was unusually difficult in the case of Polyphemus. If he followed his model too slavishly the outcome would undoubtedly be disappointing. In going beyond Homer, however, he would immediately find himself on treacherous ground. The danger here was that the intervening centuries between theOdysseyand theAeneidhad overlaid the Cyclops completely with comic and pastoral associations. Most scholars have thought of Virgil as going back directly to Homer for his portrait of Polyphemus atAen. iii. 588 ff., and I have no doubt that they are correct. In 1959, however, C. S. Floratos attempted at some length to establish that the Polyphemus of theAeneidhas been greatly influenced by the Hellenistic treatments of this figure. No one has replied to his arguments, and, in fact, K. Quinn recently has inclined toward a similar position. It seems, then, that this question deserves closer attention.
Cicero at School
Authors: Clarke M. L.
Published: July 2013

Towards the end of his Brutus Cicero gives a memorable account of his education. He begins at the year 90, when he was sixteen, had assumed the toga uirilis, and so was no longer a boy. He was now apprenticed to public life, and while continuing his academic education, in rhetoric and philosophy, was learning the ways of the forum. Of the first sixteen years of his life the Brutus tells us nothing. We have to look elsewhere for evidence about his earlier education, his schooldays as we may call them, and there is such evidence, though his biographers have not made full use of it.
On Enjoying Bentley's Horace
Authors: Christie J. T.
Published: July 2013

My feelings for Bentley's Horace are best shown by an account of the steps by which I came to study the book. As a schoolboy one knew the name of Bentley; he was mentioned in the notes almost always with disagreement, especially by Page. When one passed on to the Satires and Epistles, he was mentioned with more frequency and on the whole more sympathy by Palmer and Wilkins; his name, or his symbol B, occurred continually in the apparatus criticus, though even so his suggestions very rarely appeared in the Text. As an undergraduate, one came to regard him as something more than a name: in scholarship apparently he was regarded as a ‘giant’ by Wickham and Munro and Jebb; as a man he was seemingly a high-handed and tyrannical Master of Trinity, for years battling single-handed against lawful authority. And then one began, as a Sixth Form Master, to con the Text of Horace more closely; but the result was not to increase one's admiration of Bentley. In youth one looked for dazzling and palmary emendations, but most of his suggestions one saw to be supported by some manuscript or other. In the Oxford Text of the Odes his name appears fairly often in the critical notes, but in only nine places is there mention of his own conjectures and not one is admitted to the Text. Further research showed that these were only a small selection from a host of emendations, some eight hundred in the whole Horatian Corpus—many of which struck one as arbitrary and improbable. Why then, one asked, all this fuss about Bentley, or at least about Bentley's Horace? In his Terence many of his changes are generally accepted and he laid the foundations for a knowledge of Terentian metre. His Manilius shows a number of emendations which have appeared in every edition since his; and one read of his brilliant reconstructions of Greek Comic Fragments. But why should Wickham speak of him as vir omnium maximus qui Horatium attigerunt ‘who collected all that editors had achieved before him and laid the foundations for all who came after’? And one remembered Housman's chastening dictum: ‘Bentley admired by all admirable scholars and despised by all despicable scholars’.
A Note on Lessing's Misinterpretation of Aristotle
Authors: Anderson Michael
Published: July 2013

One of the aspects of Lessing's misinterpretation of Aristotle1 which deserves a comment is the question of the Greek text used by the author of the Hamburg Dramaturgy for his translation and discussion of Aristotle's sentence describing the nature and function of tragedy (Poetics vi. 2; 1449b). Mr. K. A. Dickson (p. 54) quotes the text of the modern editions:

(1) ἔστιν ον τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν τοῑς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι' ἀπαγγελίας, δι' ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν.
The Slaves of Plautus
Authors: Stace C.
Published: July 2013

Before drama ever appeared in Rome, comedy in Greece had passed to its final stage of evolution; and it was this form of comedy—New Comedy—which was to provide the stimulus for Roman Comedy. It is necessary, therefore, very briefly to describe the various stages of Greek Comedy, especially New Comedy, before passing on to Plautus. This will raise at least two important issues: (i) the reason for Plautus' choice of New Comedy for his models, and (ii) his treatment of the originals.
Mystery Site on Mount Lutraki
Authors: Pollard John
Published: July 2013

During the Corinthian War Agesilaos, after capturing the port of Lechaion in 391 B.c., returned to Corinth the following spring. He found the Corinthians and Argives, who had formed a defensive union, on the point of celebrating the Isthmian Games. When the Spartans approached, the celebrants decamped, whereupon Agesilaos bivouacked in the sacred enclosure, sacrificed to Poseidon on his own account, and waited until the pro-Spartan Corinthian exiles had done the same. On the king's departure the Corinthians and Argives returned and celebrated the games all over again.
English Seneca: a Preamble
Authors: Rees B. R.
Published: July 2013

Theinfluence of Seneca's tragedies is now a commonplace: it was Seneca, not Aeschylus, Sophocles, or even Euripides, who provided the classical models for Renaissance and Elizabethan Tragedy. To quote the considered judgement of a distinguished English scholar, the late H. B. Charlton: ‘Seneca's influence on the serious drama of most of Western Europe is almost immeasurable.… In effect, the Latin dramatist founded a tradition which at least until the 19th century passed through Europe in secure and often undisputed triumph.’ The precise extent of his influence and the ways in which it was exercised are matters which are still in dispute, and I cannot hope to say anything new about them in the space at my disposal. What I hope to do, however imperfectly, is to try to look at Seneca through the eyes of those on whom he made his first impact in England and to examine in retrospect the sources of his appeal to dramatists in the second half of the sixteenth century: why was it that he came to be described as ‘our Seneca’ even by one who was able to recognize the superiority of the Greeks, as those who were most influenced by the Roman were not?
Juvenal, Statius, and the Flavian Establishment
Authors: Griffith John G.
Published: July 2013

Juvenal's Fourth Satire has not attracted the critical attention to which its interest and literary merits entitle it. It has a further claim to extended discussion inasmuch as it is precisely those features that make it an untypical specimen of Juvenal's work as a whole which throw light on his technical resources and, paradoxically perhaps, on some of the distinctive qualities of his own particular brand of satire.
Misit Frumentatum
Authors: Lydall C. W. F.
Published: July 2013

This article, which makes no claim to scholastic profundity, arose from a discussion as to whether the use of a supine to translate a purpose clause after misit was admissible in G.C.E. ‘A’ level Latin Prose.

This construction, which describes action as a goal of motion, is explained in probably all syntax books used in schools: e.g. North and Hillard, Latin Prose Composition, has a note (p. 110) in which the following examples are given of ways to express purpose:

Legates misit ut pacem peterent

qui pacem peterent

ad pacem petendam

pacis petendae causā

pacem petitum

It is also noted that the future participle (pacem petituros) occasionally occurs in this sense. This use is so rare that I do not propose to consider it.
The Epigrams of Callimachus
Authors: Ferguson John
Published: July 2013

Callimachus was the Housman of antiquity. He had formidable learning, combative pugnacity, and a rare capacity to put both aside and write with exquisite simplicity. His learning is seen in the traditions about his pupils, who were reputed to include Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Apollonius of Rhodes, with whom he was later on terms of enmity. It is seen in his association with the library at Alexandria. A scholiast to Plautus says that he held the post of librarian. That he was not chief librarian is proved by the list preserved in a papyrus at Oxyrhynchus, but there is no reason to doubt that he served on the library staff, especially as his published works included a library catalogue. It is to be seen in his later reputation: thus to Philippus Callimachus is the main weapon of the dry-as-dust army of commentators (AP 11. 321) and to study him is an investigation in the dark (AP 11. 347). It is seen in the volume of his works which numbered over eight hundred, and their general character. They show a taste for curious learning; one may instance a series on Local Nomenclature which included a book on Local Month-Names, or another on The Rivers of the World with separate volumes for Europe and Asia, or a volume on Foundations and Name-Changes of Islands and States, or Geographical Wonders of the World.
Behind the New Testament
Authors: Smallwood E. Mary
Published: July 2013

It has been the fate of the Jewish people to spend most of their history under foreign rule, and Rome, who governed Palestine during the period of the New Testament and for centuries after it, was only one of a series of powers who throughout the ages became masters of the country for varying lengths of time and controlled it with varying success.
The Oxford Latin Dictionary
Authors: Barrow R. H.
Published: July 2013

The dictionary compiled by Ælfric, who became Abbot of Eynsham, was perhaps the first work to which the title Latin—English Dictionary can be given. Before A.d. 1000 there had been many glossaries explaining difficult Latin words in simpler or contemporary Latin words; the arrangement had regard to subjects. There had also been lists rendering selected words into a language other than Latin, e.g. the St. Gall manuscript which rendered Latin words into Old High German; the arrangement is in groups, though an alphabetical index is provided in an appendix. But Ælfric's dictionary was probably the first to offer the framework of what we should require in a Latin—English dictionary.
On Reading Plutarch's Moralia
Authors: Russell D. A.
Published: July 2013

So Clerimont in Ben Jonson's The Silent Woman; and it is to be feared he speaks for many. Plutarch's miscellaneous works, commonly and perhaps unfortunately called Moralia, have never enjoyed the popularity of the Lives. Yet they have enormous interest. They are a collection of short works on all kinds of subjects, the record of a life devoted to learning and a heart both generous and devout. Without them we should not only have lost a mass of knowledge, we should also have a different impression of many of the moral, social, and religious attitudes of the ancient world. Besides, as Bernays told Wilamowitz and Wilamowitz told the world, you can't say ‘I know Greek’ until you have read them.
Classical Allusions in Shakespeare's Henry V with Special Reference To Virgil
Authors: Betts John H.
Published: July 2013

To assess the influence of one author on another and the extent of one's use of another is always difficult. When the authors assessed are poets who each give a highly individual stamp to material, it is doubly difficult. When they are separated by one and a half millennia and by a language difference, the assessment is open to pitfalls almost too enormous to bear contemplation. What follows, therefore, does not attempt to be a categorical statement that Shakespeare used Virgil solely or in part in any one particular instance or in any one particular way; it rather offers a juxtaposition of lines, images, or ideas which appear to be similar in both authors, in the hope that the comparisons may prove interesting in themselves and that the sum total of them may lead at least to some guarded and cautious conclusions about the use of classical authors and in particular of Virgil's poetry and thought by Shakespeare in Henry V.
Pliny and the Panegyricus
Authors: Radice Betty
Published: July 2013

The younger Pliny was consul suffectus from September to October, A.d. 100, and delivered in the Senate his official gratiarum actio to the Emperor Trajan for his appointment. This practice went back to the days of Augustus, according to Ovid (Ep. ex Ponto iv. 4. 35), though nothing is known of the senatorial decree which made it obligatory. Nor do we know if both consuls made speeches, or whether Pliny was following normal practice when he spoke on behalf of his colleague, Cornutus Tertullus. In Ep. ii. 1. 5 he tells us that Verginius Rufus was rehearsing a similar speech (to be addressed to Nerva) at the time of his fatal accident, and elsewhere (iii. 13) he writes of the boredom of having to listen to speeches of this kind, brief though they could be, and the distasteful duty of addressing words of insincere flattery to an emperor (Domitian) under whom freedom of speech was impossible. The custom of the official vote of thanks continued; M. Cornelius Pronto was suffect consul in July-August 143, and delivered his speech to Antoninus Pius on 13 August (Pronto, Ep. ii. 1).
Lucretius and his Message: A Study in the Prologues of the De Rerum Natura
Authors: Cox A. S.
Published: July 2013

That the De Rerum Natura has a message is not clear from a cursory survey of its subject-matter. Book I (we read in the Penguin table of contents), Matter and Space; Book II, Movements and Shapes of Atoms; Book III, Life and Mind; Book IV, Sensation and Sex; Book V, Cosmology and Sociology; Book VI, Meteorology and Geology. Is this nothing more than a science textbook—and a potted one at that? One may be forgiven for thinking so. Even Bailey accepted that emphasis when he wrote that Lucretius' aim was ‘to set forth the physical theories of Epicurus’ and that other aspects of Epicureanism such as the moral theory ‘crop up from time to time in the poem, but only incidentally and in a partial treatment, which is subordinated to the main purpose and structure’. As a description this is misleading to the point of distortion. The work is indeed structured upon an exposition of physical theory, but its main purpose is to win converts to Epicureanism—and the ‘incidental’ non-technical passages do not ‘crop up’ by some chance intrusion but form a series of deliberate reminders of the overriding evangelical aim. We may guess at the tactical considerations which led Lucretius to adopt this form. His call to the Epicurean way of life would consist of two elements—impassioned appeals (appropriate to the central moral theory) and systematic exposition (needed for the supporting technical arguments): since the former had the greater potential impact but much less bulk, he chose to deploy them as a series of interjections in the latter. Thus what are in structural terms ‘digressions’ lie closest of all to the heart of the work.
The Continuity of Hellenism
Authors: Thomson George
Published: July 2013

InThe Twelve Lays of the Gipsy, one of the masterpieces of modern Greek poetry, Palamás puts into the mouth of his Gipsy these words, addressed to the Beautiful Immortals, who symbolize the achievements of ancient Greek civilization:

What if you are immortal ? Your life is over,

The full life that you lived in full bodily vigour

In the sun and air of the blissful country of your birth.

Now there is another sun, another air, and you are only

Apparitions.
Monastic Corruption
Authors: Ogilvie R. M.
Published: July 2013

Scholars have always tried to find plausible explanations why certain sorts of error have occurred in manuscripts, and much progress has recently been made in trying to analyse such sources of corruption. However, it is not always remembered that scribes were usually monks and that their minds may often have been on higher things than copying Livy's history for the umpteenth time. Over the last few years I have been collating the primary manuscripts of the first five books of Livy and so large a number of revealing corruptions came to light that it seemed valuable to collect them together as evidence of subconscious or unconscious preoccupations of scribes. The result is important, because it means that editors must not be over-mechanical in their approach to the transmission of texts.
The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at its Height, Circaa.d. 90–130
Authors: Thorley J.
Published: July 2013

Precisely how long ago the Chinese began to export their silk westwards along the trade routes of Central Asia we do not know. Ezekiel seems to have been familiar with silk, and Isaiah may have heard of the Chinese. By 115 b.c. we are on firmer ground, for in that year Mithridates II of Parthia made an alliance with Wu Ti, the great Han emperor of China, designed at least in part to facilitate commerce between the two powers, who were for the first time within direct commercial reach of one another. Half-way through the following century Julius Caesar possessed silk curtains. But the trade throughout this period was no more than a trickle. The caravan routes from the Ordos region of North China to the eastern frontier of Iran passed through the territories of numerous Turkic tribes, whose possession of Central Asia had so far been virtually unchallenged.
Some Odyssean Similes
Authors: Podlecki Anthony J.
Published: July 2013

Perhaps the one feature that makes the Iliad and Odyssey most characteristically Homeric—not Virgilian, nor Apollonian—is the similes. They allow Homer to turn from the material at hand for a brief moment to look at some other scene, and the intensity with which he looks at the new scene gives a heightened awareness to the original subject, the thing, person, or event which suggested the simile in the first place and was the simile's point of departure. It is well known that the poet's interest in this new subject occasionally goes beyond the strict needs of the poetic context; he often seems absorbed in and even distracted by the other scene, and so the poetic device to which he has lent his name is frequently understood to mean nothing more than an extended comparison whose development and details are thought to be somehow irrelevant. What I wish to do here is look closely at several of these similes in the Odyssey, not from a statistical point of view or to compare them with those of the Iliad, but rather to consider them as poetic devices which Homer uses in an expert way to achieve just the effect he intends; often, as I hope to show, the subtlety of the effect achieved is surprising.
The Image of the Limen in Aeneid ii
Authors: Bullock-Davies Constance
Published: July 2013

The part of Aeneid ii which deals with the death of Priam has something in common with the murder of Duncan in Macbeth. Against a background of treachery and darkness, fitfully illumined by the flare of torches and the fiercer glare of fire, we witness the brutal murder of an old and kindly king. To the audience in the classical world, who knew the story of Ilium's fall in its every detail, the scene in which Sinon plays false must have been, like the opening act of Macbeth, top-full of dramatic irony.
Milites Gregarii
Authors: McDermott William C.
Published: July 2013

TheRomans were oriented toward warfare and their highest honour was theiustus triumphusof the successful general. For the commanders glory, but the soldiers in the legions were subject to severe discipline and rarely received mention in the literary sources. This was natural because of the numbers involved, but the aristocratic nature of the Roman Republic made even more striking the difference between the treatment of aristocratic officers and the men in the line. After Cannae, Varro, the general responsible for the disaster, and Cornelius Scipio, tribune of the soldiers, both escaped death. Varro was publicly thankedquod de re publica non desperasset(Liv. xxii. 61.14). He was not given an army command again, but Scipio was given the highest commands and lived to gain thecognomen ex virtute Africanus. The fate of the common soldiers who survived was very different: various penalties, including service to the end of the war (xxiii. 25. 7), and service without pay in 215 (xxiii. 31. 2), Later their plea for remission of punishment was met with chill haughtiness by the Senate (xxv. 5. 10–7. 4).