bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Suggestions From a Scrap-Heap
Authors: Edge S. W.
Published: July 2013

When I was looking through some old books and papers recently, before committing them to the salvage dump, my attention was caught by two Italian books which, with several other volumes, had been salvaged from my house which had been blasted in one of the Mersey-side raids.

Glancing quickly through them I discovered in one of the volumes a source of interest and a certain amount of inspiration, as a result of which I pass on a few suggestions.

The book was the second volume of La Letteratura Latino by Professors Bassi and Cabrini, and published by the once well-known house of G. B. Paravia and Co. of Milan.

I make no attempt to pass judgement on the scholarship of these learned Italians; but the passages of wide range and high quality chosen to illustrate the prose and verse literature of the Silver and Post-classical periods not only serve their purpose admirably, but appear to me to afford a tolerably good anthology of Late Latin.

In Fifth and Sixth Forms the first consideration in the Classics course is no doubt success in public examinations, and any reading which the pupils may indulge in apart from the set books ought, I suppose, to be limited to the principal authors of the classical period. Yet I wonder if it would not be possible in the work of the Sixth, at all events in the year succeeding the School Certificate Examination, to vary the stereo-typed programme by introducing a little discursive reading, even if it be no more ambitious than the reading of selections.
Pairs Of Passages in Virgil
Authors: Knight W. F. J.
Published: July 2013

Increase in knowledge of the psychology of ordinary people, and still more of poets, added to recent progress in scholarship, has affected our necessary approach to old critical problems more than we fully realize yet. In trying to understand ancient poets old questions, such as how to make sense of a passage, how to prove that a poet is consistent with himself, and what the intention of the poet was, are coming to seem more and more insufficient and sometimeseven the wrong questions to ask. Further, it is dangerous to make a solution to a problem depend on answers to such questions, especially when the problem concerns a great and most authentic poet such as Aeschylus or Virgil. Again and again the text of Virgil has been emended for in- sufficient reasons; for example, to make sense, or to agree with the assumed intentions of the poet. The truth is that Virgil, like other great poets, wrote down sometimes not the precise, prosaic result of inten- tions, or any proposition accurate and coherent at some particular moment, but words that symbolized some long mental history, with reference to different meanings actual at different times, or else something that was true all at the same time, but ambiguous and complex, with meanings outreaching syntax, grammar, and words.

When Virgil wrote rapidum cretae or Cretae ueniemus Oaxen he invented the name Oaxes. It was partly a town in Crete, and partly several different rivers in Asia. In so far as it was in Crete, Cretae must be understood, and rapidum translated ‘swift’.
Spicilegia Ovidiana
Authors: Platnauer M
Published: July 2013

These few inconsequent notes have no excuse but the amusement their composition gave to the author. If they are of interest to a handful of readers the frivolous use in wartime of some horae subsecivae may be justified.

How fond Ovid is of using res in a personal sense! Augustus is addressed (Ars am. 1. 213) as pulcherrime rerum and Heracles (Her. 9. 107) as maxime rerum. In Fast. 1. 103 Chaos says somewhat comically referring to himself sum res prisca: ‘I'm an old thing’. Indeed Ovid is much given to the use of substantives with unusual meanings. Here are some examples: alea grandis inest (Ars am. 1. 376) ‘there is great danger’; discrimen=the parting of the hair (Ars am. 2. 303); color=a good complexion (cui color est, umero saepe patente cubet, Ars am. 2. 504. Did he borrow this from Vergil's nimium tie crede colori?). Elsewhere Ovid uses color=style; cf. Trist. 1. 1. 61, ipso noscere colore’, ‘your very style will bring you recognition’. In Ars am. 3. 172 a woman is asked quis furor est census corpore ferre suos, ‘why she wears her fortune on her back’—an expression of which he may have been reminded by Propertius’ matrona incedit census induta nepotum (3. 13. 11). What is the Latin for ‘dimples’? Ovid uses lacunae (Ars am. 3. 283 parvaeque utrimque lacunae), whereas Martial borrows the Greek word γɛλασīνοι (Mart. 7. 25. 6 nec grata est facies cui gelasinus abest). No doubt ‘inspiration’ might be expressed in Latin in many ways; Ovid uses pectus—aspicies quantum dederis mihi pectoris, he cries to Augustus at Trist. 2. 561. There seems at first sight little connexion between pecten and elegiac verse; yet at Fast. 2. 121 Ovid writes canimus… alterno pectine=‘I write in elegiacs’. In Fast. 5. 270 there occurs the word nebulae in the sense of the scum on wine—a use not noticed in Lewis and Short. Fatum=the evil genius (Fast. 5. 389 Troiae duo fata, of Heracles and Achilles) is not specifically Ovidian, for Cicero can write (pro Sest. § 93) duo ilia reipublicae paene fata, Gabinium et Pisonem.
Noises off: Some Sound-Effects in Virgil
Authors: Whately S.
Published: July 2013

Among the scanty stage directions in the present text of Shakespeare's plays one reads things like ‘Alarums’ or ‘Drum heard’ or ‘Noise and tumult within’ or ‘March afar off and shot within’. The Elizabethan producer had, it seems, little apparatus and made much play with such a device as ‘noises off’. The simplicity, not to say crudity, of the means at his disposal may not have served him ill. Perhaps an audience is more easily stirred to pity and terror by the sound of distant gunfire than by a realistic battle-scene elaborately produced on a modern stage with its many resources of furniture and lighting. The eyes of the ignorant may be more learned than their ears, but the ears are more imaginative: at least they were when Agamemnon and Henry VIII first walked the stage. Aeschylus, at any rate, and Shakespeare did make effective use of sound effects. It is not altogether fanciful to suppose that all ancient poets practise a similar technique. Homer, Od. 1. 351:
Vincent, or the Donkey
Authors: Freeman Kathleen
Published: July 2013

The relationship of man to his domestic animals is an ever-fascinating study: they are so near to us, yet so remote, so like us, yet separated from us by an abyss. Of some we make pets; others we merely use, to work for us or to give us food or clothing. To each species we assign a character, and we like or dislike its members according to our prejudice. In studying a people, we cannot ignore their attitude towards the animals which form part of their daily lives.

The most revealing relationship is perhaps that between man and the domestic cat; but the cat does not seem to have been known in Greece Proper as a domestic animal; and although it was known in the Greek colonies of southern Italy by the fifth century b.c., it remained almost an Egyptian monopoly until Imperial Roman times. When the αϊλoυρoς in Greece is mentioned, apparently the polecat, the ancestor of our ferret, is meant. The horse and dog are good subjects for this study; but I pass them over for the present, the horse because too much is said of him, the dog because what is said is not particularly interesting. Many pleasant things are said of pigs by the Greeks, the pig being to them the type of clumsiness, bad temper, and stupidity as well as of uncleanliness; for instance, there is ς óἀ ῥóωv of a brutish fellow in refined surroundings; and the Chorus Leader's threat in the Lysistrata λσω τἠν ἐμαυτς ν shows that the Greeks knew what it was to incur the wrath of a sow.
Riddles and Problems from the Greek Anthology
Authors: Forster E. S.
Published: July 2013

The riddle is probably the oldest form of humour and originated in the desire of primitive man to show off his cleverness. Having noticed some analogy in nature, he threw his discovery into the form of a question, hoping to score off a fellow-man who failed to produce the correct answer. The Riddle of the Sphinx is merely an interrogative form of the observation made by some early Boeotian that infants crawled, men walked upright, and old men employed a stick. It is a sign of the antiquity of riddles that among the Greeks they were usually expressed in poetry, showing that they go back to a time before writing was in common use and a verse form was a useful aid to memory.

The tradition of the riddle goes back to very early times. According to one account Homer is said to have died of vexation because he could not answer a riddle asked him by the boys of Cos: ‘What we caught we left; what we did not catch we have brought.’ Another early riddle is that propounded by Samson: ‘Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness.’ (It may be noticed that these two riddles are not actually put in the form of a question.) Dius, the historian of Phoenicia, tells us that King Solomon and Hiram, King of Syria, sent each other riddles for solution and an agreement was made that the unsuccessful competitor should pay a large sum of money to his successful rival, with the result that Hiram had to pay a large amount to Solomon until finally he gained the upper hand by calling in the help of Abdemun, one of his subjects.
The School Teaching of Roman Britain
Authors: Fox Aileen
Published: July 2013

This is no place, and to-day there should be no need, to attempt to justify the inclusion of a study of Roman Britain in the school curriculum, nor to stress its fundamental purpose of demonstrating the power, grandeur, and humanity of Roman civilization as expressed in one of the least and most remote—yet to us the most familiar—of the Imperial provinces. This article is concerned with ways and means of teaching the subject and is intended as a response from an archaeologist to the difficulties expressed by teachers in handling unfamiliar material.

As I see it, the problem of relating a study of Roman Britain to the study of Latin is part of the larger problem of devising methods of introducing the archaeological approach to the past into school teaching. And by the archaeological approach I mean getting in touch with the past through material things, the things that man has lost, or thrown away, the ruins of his home, his tomb, or his city for instance, the things that happen to survive to the present time; in short the things that are generally called ‘Roman Remains’. It is in this respect that Archaeology differs from History (even Ancient History), not in the aim, which they share—the recovery and interpretation of man's past—but in its methods and in the nature of its evidence. Of course it is not suggested for an instant that the textual and archaeological approach are conflicting, for it is generally recognized that they are complementary and must work together.
Xerxes and the Plane-Tree
Authors: Stubbings Frank H.
Published: July 2013

When Xerxes was marching through Asia to invade Greece, says Herodotus, he had to pass through the town of Kallatebos, not far from the crossing of the river Maeander. At this place (where, by the way, men make their living by preparing honey from tamarisk and wheatmeal) the king saw by the roadside a magnificent plane-tree, which on account of its beauty he presented with golden ornaments, and arranged that a man should stay there as its keeper or guardian for ever after. He then proceeded to Sardis.

The story became famous, and later centuries thought it rather silly. Aelian in particular declares that Xerxes, who ‘thought nothing of the works of God's hands, but must go and build himself newfangled roads and unusual ship-canals’—so he sneers at the eminent engineering feats of the Hellespont Bridge and the Athos Canal—made himself ridiculous (γɛλoīoς) by falling in love with a plane-tree, and decking it with golden necklets and bangles, and setting a guard over it, as he might set a slave to keep an eye on his harem. ‘What good did it all do the tree?’ Aelian rhetorically asks. ‘The apposititious ornament nothing suiting with it, hung there in vain… For to the beauty of a tree are requisite fair branches, leaves thick, a body strong, roots deep,… wideness of shadow, the successive seasons of the year, the nourishment of water by channels and rain.’ The criticism is rational. But Aelian, who though he wrote in Greek is recorded never to have left his native Italy, could hardly appreciate the feelings of admiration and delight, even of religious awe, shown by the dwellers on the arid plateaux of Asia for large and shady trees, feelings shared by the Greeks, and by any modern traveller in Greece who on a dusty summer's day has spied far-off a whitewashed chapel with trees at hand, and known that there he would also find a spring of cold dear water and rest from the road.
Special Course for Beginners in Greek
Authors: Hunt H. K.
Published: July 2013

The Department of Classics of the University of Melbourne held a special course for beginners in Greek throughout February 1946. The idea first came from discussion with the Professor of Philosophy: he felt that there was a real demand for Greek among students in Philosophy and other Arts departments who had not done it at school. The course was therefore offered without cost to present and intending members of the University, both staff and students. Seventeen were accepted, including five University teachers: History and Philosophy were both strongly represented; we had a number of men, including a high proportion of ex-servicemen, who were about to do Arts courses leading to Theology; and we had several students of a highly commendable type, namely those who, while fully committed to other courses, felt that a month's work in Greek would at least give them a worth-while experience. There were other applicants whom we could not fit in. It seems quite clear then that there does exist among adults a demand for opportunities to find out something about Greek. The sincerity of this demand is shown all the more by the fact that the applicants were required to undertake to give their whole time to Greek for a month, working all day and six days a week.

The conception of a full-time course was suggested by observation of the success of the Australian Army and Air Force schools in Japanese and by reports of similar courses in America, which by working at high pressure achieved results never dreamed of in the leisurely methods of peace.
Intermediate Thinking
Authors: MacDonald H. F.
Published: July 2013

Apologists for the Classics are apt to concentrate on the excellence of their matter and the perfection of their form. Much has been done, and notably in these latter days by Dr. Gilbert Murray and Sir Richard Livingstone, to enable English readers to appreciate the content of Greek and Latin literature by translations of the highest merit. But no translation can reproduce the perfection of the form, and nowadays there appears to be a tendency to accept this loss.

The reader of a translation may be compared with a man who flies in an aeroplane over a mountain. True, he gets the view; but without the peculiar satisfaction that comes to one who has climbed the mountain itself. The view may even be a wider one, but it is robbed of the detail that the climber has been able to enjoy at every stage of his climb. Indeed, the detail is distorted, and often false. Still, the aviator gets a splendid view, and it is pointless to minimize its splendour. All I would maintain is that it is a different view. This is recognized by the climber if he flies over the heights he has climbed, or by the man who has read the Odyssey in the original if he reads it again in ‘Butcher and Lang’.

But what of those who never get beyond the foot-hills, those from whose eyes the mountain tops, and even their lower eminences, are concealed by huge walls of rock, which none but experts can scale? These humble strivers often wonder whether they are not wasting their time in plunging about on the nursery slopes; and their instructors must often wonder too whether they are doing any good by dragging often unwilling pupils through the declensions and conjugations, and by getting them somehow or other up to the standard of the School Certificate.
Aristophanes and Euripides
Authors: Wycherley R. E.
Published: July 2013

An apology is needed for taking up this well-worn theme. My reason is that in discussions and in reading works on Greek literature I have often felt that Aristophanes' antipathy to Euripides is still as a rule too strongly stated, and his sympathy wholly or partly ignored. It is said that Aristophanes attacked Euripides mercilessly in the Frogs, or even throughout his career; that he condemns Euripides entirely, or counts him with Cleon and the sophists amongst his worst enemies. Others agree that he thought Euripides a great poet, and even felt a curious fascination in his poetry, but insist that from a moral standpoint he condemned Euripides' work uncompromisingly. I feel increasingly convinced that Aristophanes had a finer and more complete appreciation of Euripides' greatness. Professor Gilbert Murray gives a juster estimate of his feelings: Aristophanes, he says, loved Euripides with all his faults, and was inevitably drawn towards him. I should like to go a little further in the same direction, and try to show that in some important things Aristophanes must have been actively and strongly in sympathy with Euripides.

Let me say at once that I am still prepared to believe that Aristophanes preferred Aeschylus (I am not sure about Sophocles; Aristophanes no doubt loved and admired the man and his work, but perhaps his feelings were not so strongly aroused in either direction by Sophocles); and of course Aristophanes found many things great and small in the art of Euripides, in his morality and above all in his influence, which exasperated him beyond endurance and which he whole-heartedly condemned; he recognized the symptoms of great changes which he deplored, though he was by no means out of touch with the new spirit and perhaps not so completely out of sympathy.
The ‘Penguin’ Odyssey
Authors: Newman Bertram
Published: July 2013

If, as Colonel Lawrence claimed, his own was the twenty-eighth translation of the Odyssey, Mr. Rieu's must be at least the twenty-ninth, and it is a tribute to the eternal fascination of the poem. As Butcher and Lang remarked many years ago, there can be no final translation of Homer; translator after translator, whether he chooses verse or prose, will continue to render him in a manner which he considers to be most faithful to the original text, or in one which he thinks most congenial to the taste of his own day. Mr. Rieu has set out to fulfil both purposes. ‘It has been my aim’, he says, ‘to present the modern reader with a rendering of the Odyssey which he may understand with care and read with appreciation.… In the very attempt to preserve some semblance of the original effect I have often found it necessary—in fact my duty, as a translator—to abandon, or rather to transform, the idiom and syntax of the Greek. Too faithful a rendering defeats its own purpose; and, if we put Homer straight into English words, neither meaning nor manner survives.’ He disparages Butcher and Lang, whom he finds ‘turgid’, and appears to aim at a style with as contemporary a flavour as possible. He does not, however, hail as a predecessor Samuel Butler, who, as we know, likewise reacted against Butcher and Lang, and gave the world a translation of the Odyssey of which the diction was to display the same benevo-lent leaning towards the Tottenham Court Road as theirs had done to-wards Wardour Street.
The Scope of Virgil's Influence
Authors: Clarke A. K.
Published: July 2013

At first sight it might appear that the scope of Virgil's influence had been predetermined from the beginning, as far surpassing that of any classical author. His poems became a school-book within a few years of his death: he is one of the very few Latin writers whose work remained known, without any real break, from the day that it was written until now: his genius was recognized in his own lifetime and onwards with very little question, and wherever Latin has been read at all he has been one of the authors read. More than that, his text has been pored over, annotated, translated, and sedulously imitated, from his own time to ours, sometimes chiefly for antiquarian reasons, but usually with an appreciation of its beauty and a devotion amounting to a cult. This Society has been founded in the belief that Such an influence should be in one way or another permanent, and this conviction in itself raises the consideration of scope: the question, I mean, whether Virgil may be regarded as a European influence, part of the inheritance of European culture at its widest range, or whether there is anything in his poetry which makes him more even than the greatest European classic—one of the very few writers of universal importance. The question is bound up with the whole problem of classical education and how far it should be fundamental in the world-order of the future, which will not be wholly, perhaps not primarily, European.

Another question is relevant to this, though at first sight rather distantly so.
Odysseus in the Ajax
Authors: Guthrie W. K. C.
Published: July 2013

The outstanding feature of epic as displayed in the Odyssey is simplicity. It is the tale of the hero who has to pass many dangers on sea and land, outwit giants and other monsters, and accomplish in general a number of feats of courage and ingenuity before he reaches the final goal from which his purpose, so far as it is serious, has never swerved, and is welcomed by his dear wife at his own fireside. In all this he has working with and for him a goddess who has chosen him for her especial favourite. As Jason had the help of Hera, and Aeneas of his mother, so Odysseus was able to defeat all perils by joining to his own wits the divine powers of Athena. The assistance she gave him lay in such devices as hiding him in a cloud, or going before him in human form to ensure him a friendly reception, for help of this sort suited the problems he had to face. We are, that is to say, in a genuine fairy-tale world, not one indeed where human personalities are submerged, but where motives are simplified, where our chief joy is to see the hero first mocked, then outwitting or outdoing his mockers, where, to put the point briefly, there is no moral and no one but a fool would spoil a good story by looking for one.

It is otherwise with tragedy, and expecially with the tragedy of Sophocles. Human motives and their justification, the moral relations between gods and mortals, provide questions that have demanded, not perhaps to be answered, but at any rate to be probed and brought forcibly before the notice of men.
Keep Up Your Latin
Authors: Tillyard H. J. W.
Published: July 2013

Most students, when their last examination is over, are glad enough to sell their text-books and bid a long farewell to all subjects that lie outside their daily occupations. Not only Classics but History, Music, Mathematics, and even French are cheerfully ‘dropped’—a course that many will regret in after years. Up to the twentieth century Latin was not a dead or an alien tongue: it was part of an educated man's native language. But the overcrowded time-table, the ‘new’ pronunciation, and the so-called diffusion of culture have made a cleavage between young and old. Our Ciceronian accent sounds pedantic at home and is not understood by foreigners; so we no longer quote Latin, but join in the common hunt for second-hand American slang.

But is not this a foolish betrayal of the very citadel of sound learning and enlightenment? Who are the bearers of culture if not the young graduates from our Arts Departments? How can the tide of barbarism be stemmed if the leaders of thought are ashamed of their own know-ledge and literary taste? I do not mean that the art of classical quotation can be revived. But for our own pleasure, as well as for the ripening of our attainments, should we not make a little effort to keep up our Latin? Let me suggest one or two simple ways of doing this.

1. If you have an odd half-hour in a library, pick out an edition of any Latin author not too familiar. Read the introduction until you find out who he was and when he lived.
In Search of the Isles of the Blest
Authors: Griffiths J. Gwyn
Published: July 2013

‘Crete, for religion, as for civilization generally, was the stepping-stone from Egypt to Greece.’ This statement of Miss Jane Harrison is far from being the belief of the orthodox classical scholar, and it is not the aim of this paper to claim its truth except in relation to one aspect of religion.

The Haghia Triada sarcophagus shows that the Minoans were probably familiar with the Egyptian conception of the Isles of the Blest, and that this figured in their cult of the dead in the model of a ship which is being carried to the dead man, to facilitate his journey to that blessed region. It seems that it was this conception that survived in Greek religion.

Pindar in his Second Olympian Ode (lines 76–84) describes such a region. Virtue, he says, brings its reward, and the good are allowed after death to live a life free from toil of any kind, in the company of the Gods. But a still greater reward awaits those who have undergone the threefold probation without taint of evil. ‘Whosoever have dared in either world to live three times a life pure from all evil, pass on the road of Zeus by the tower of Cronus, where the breezes of Ocean breathe around the Islands of the Blest, and flowers are radiant with gold, some on the shore from the shining trees, while the water fosters others. With wreaths of these and with crowns they entwine their hands, living the while by the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthus.’
The Tactical Handling of the Elephant
Authors: Glover R. F.
Published: July 2013

Most people to-day are familiar with the elephant at the Zoo, and it is curious to recall that this vast, flabby-looking creature was first seen by Western men as a terrible and well-nigh irresistible weapon of war. When Alexander's men refused to follow him beyond the river Hyphasis in 326 b.c., one of the chief causes of their fear was a rumour that the people on the other side owned a squadron of ‘particularly large and courageous elephants’—six thousand of them, says Plutarch: and the Macedonians had recently seen all they wanted of elephants in their battle against Porus on the river Hydaspes. They had done their best against them, and indeed had won the day; but it had been a grim business. ‘The elephants’, we are told, ‘employed their massive bulk and their great strength in terrifying fashion; some men perished when they were trampled under foot, weapons and all, and their bones crushed to pieces; others were caught up in the elephants' trunks, lifted high in the air and dashed back to earth—and came to a shocking death. And many men were instantly killed on being gored by the beasts' tusks, and pierced clean through the body.’
Spicilegia Valeriana
Authors: Platnauer M.
Published: July 2013

These random jottings, the fruit of a recent re-reading of the poems of Martial, will not, it is earnestly hoped, be regarded as an attempt to appraise the work of the poet as a whole, though they may perhaps take as their starting-point Martial's critical estimate of his own epigrams.
Horace and Heraldry
Authors: Huxley H. H.
Published: July 2013

TheNew English Dictionary defines the word ‘motto’ as being ‘originally a word, sentence or phrase attached as a legend to an “impresa” or emblematical design and serving to explain or emphasize its symbolic import’. A wider definition of the word follows, in which two epithets are prominent—‘short’ and ‘appropriate’. The rightness of the former is emphasized by the etymology of the word under discussion. Indeed, the very word ‘motto’ is of modern use, since our forefathers preferred to speak of their ‘word’. This certainly is a caveat against undue prolixity. Of the mottoes listed below, most consist of four or fewer words.
Heresies VIII
Authors: Eyres L. E.
Published: July 2013

‘A participle of a verb of knowing and perceiving governs an infinitive, not a participle.’
In The Steps of Aeneas
Authors: Smiley P. O'R.
Published: July 2013

Few places in the world can possess more historical associations than the small stretch of country that reaches from Naples west-ward to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is known as the ‘Campi Flegrei’, ‘the Burning Fields’, on account of the volcanic activity that has characterized it from the earliest times, and which the recent eruption of Vesuvius shows to be still a formidable feature of the neighbour-hood. In a space of some fifty square miles it contains names which have become the commonplaces of history and legend—Baia, Cuma, Pozzuoli, Averno—places associated for ever with a thousand famous and infamous men—Nero, Ovid, St. Paul, Hannibal, Augustus, Gregory the Great, Totila, Petrarch, Garibaldi. But for many it will be best remembered and most eagerly studied as the scene of the sixth book of the Aeneid; for the story of the Trojan hero's descent to the regions of the dead, while it is one of the greatest pieces of imaginative writing in existence, has a solid foundation in reality. Not only its atmosphere but also its topography can be recaptured to this day in the ‘Campi Flegrei’ a few miles from Naples.

That Virgil was well acquainted with this district is beyond doubt, even without the evidence of the sixth book of the Aeneid. The Georgics were written at Naples; and the poet, as friend and admirer of Augustus, must have spent many days among the emperor’s favourite haunts, examinig the famous landmarks and whatching the progress of the great engineering programmes that were being carried out in the Gulf of Pozzuoli.
Creon and Angelo: A Parallel Study
Authors: Maxwell J. C.
Published: July 2013

There is a similarity in the critical treatment that has been accorded to the Antigone and to Measure for Measure. The parallelisms help to illustrate the way in which errors of emphasis in one direction lead to compensatory distortions in another; and the plays themselves, widely though they differ in many ways, cast some light the one on the other.

Both plays have a heroine more obviously than they have a hero. Antigone gives Sophocles' play its name, and Shakespeare's is commonly; thought of as primarily the story of Isabella, though the title lays stress on the abstract theme rather than on any of the characters, and though we may if we choose remember that the source-play was called Promos and Cassandra (i.e. Angelo and Isabella). Both heroines, moreover, more clearly ‘stand for’ specific moral values than is usual in drama— which, as R. W. Chambers has pointed out for Isabella, is not to say; that they are allegorical. The difficulty comes when we ask how far each play is the story of the heroine, and both have been adversely criticized because of unguarded answers to this question. It was perhaps easier with Measure for Measure. It was a ‘problem play’, and Shakespeare could not be expected to write a well-constructed comedy while he was ‘in the depths’ and ought to have realized that he was in his Tragic Period. In dealing with, but it has been thought that he took an unconscionably long time to learn that a play should be one and not two, and that the Ajax and the Antigone (and probably the Trachiniae) are specimens of what he did before he learnt it.
The Classics in Holland
Authors: Marples Morris
Published: July 2013

One is pleasantly surprised and at the same time a little bit envious to find the Greek and Latin languages playing the important part they do in the Dutch educational system. For whereas, I suppose, in this country we can no longer boast a single school where every pupil learns Latin and Greek, every town in Holland has at least one gymnasium, as such schools are called. In the country as a whole there are 53 of them, containing 9,370 pupils, both girls and boys. Their prestige is high, and they pride themselves on being the repository of classical culture in the modern age. In a country where there are no class distinctions in education they number among their pupils the most intelligent children of all classes.

These pupils come to them at the age of twelve, having been selected by methods similar to those now generally used in this country, and all of them, girls as well as boys, start Latin in their first year and Greek in their second, not to mention three modern languages, English, French, and German. It is a formidable assignment, of which only the most intelligent pupils are capable, but there are plenty of these in Holland. The course lasts for six years. There is no specialization, and only during the last two years is a slight bias introduced in the direction of either Arts or Science: the Alphas, as they are called, drop physics and chemistry and do a little extra classics, while the Betas retain those subjects and do rather less classics.
∑tpatiωtikoy ΛoГo∑ AnΔpo∑
Authors: Harley T. R.
Published: July 2013

‘IS that the villa up there?’ said Makarion, ‘like a star on top of the A cliff fronting the sunset?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, getting a grip of the reins, ‘and we take a sharp right turn directly. … Now. Hold tight to the bar.’

I whistled to Phloxy and pulled hard over. The car whirled round the corner crab-wise and then straightened up well to take the hill.

‘Holy Castor!’ screamed Makarion (nervous fellows, these Greeks) —‘Have a heart, Lucius. You'll have the wheel off. Why the speed?’

‘I told you this car could take anything and I want to prove it. Besides, we are behind time. Watch these two breast the hill.’

As we rose above the sea Makarion forgot his nerves and became absorbed in the view. I tapped the axle-gauge: it was pretty hot and the horses began to labour, so I eased them down to a walk.

‘What a view!’ he said suddenly. ‘Certainly Italy has something that Greece lacks. This long stretch of coastline, curving like a scimitar, the edge tempered silver with the surf. And all these splendid villas, pro-claiming wealth and comfort. Poor little Greece!’

‘The home of lost causes, perhaps,’ I replied; ‘still, it's very useful for education. The governor's got sense. I bless him for sending me to Athens. And I bless him no less for his choice of villas. It's good to be home.’

We now approached the level towards the drive, so I whipped up to a smart pace again and we were soon bowling for the gates and made for the house.
Tense-Sequence in Indirect Questions
Authors: Handford S. A.
Published: July 2013

In my Latin Subjunctive (p. 142) I stated that no one could produce any examples of the imperfect subjunctive used in primary sequence indirect questions of the type ‘It is not known who was reigning in that country at the time when the Romans invaded it’—with the exception of a few passages in which a preceding clause containing an imperfect or pluperfect prepares the way for the imperfect subjunctive (e.g. Cic. Amic. 2 ‘meministi … profecto, … cum is … capitali odio a Q. Pompeio … dissideret, quocum coniunctissime … uixerat, quanta esset … admiratio’).

In an article in Greece & Rome (vol. xvii, pp. 128–9) Mr. Eric Laughton claims to have found a clear example of the imperfect subjunctive so used without any historic subordinate clause to prepare the way for it. His instance is Cic. Att. 3. 20. 1 ‘tibi uenire in mentem certo scio quae uita esset nostra, quae suauitas, quae dignitas. ad quae reciperanda … incumbe, ut facis’. Laughton takes this to mean ‘I feel sure you recollect what a life mine was’; he is supported by Tyrrell and Purser (vol. i, p. 399), and in view of the following words (ad quae reciperanda) this interpretation seems to be the natural one at first sight. But I cannot help feeling that, if Cicero had meant this, he would have written quae uita fuerit. To my mind, this is not a case in which the sense specially calls for an imperfect. Indeed, in Cicero's mood of despondency, it would actually be more natural for him to say ‘what a life mine once was’—the perfect tense implying that that life is gone for ever. I therefore think it much more likely that quae uita esset means ‘what a life mine would be’.
Women in Livy's History
Authors: Smethurst S. E.
Published: July 2013

‘In the study of history’, says Livy in the preface to his work, ‘the most salutary and profitable advantage to the reader is that he sees before him examples of every kind set out in their true light. From them he may choose for his own benefit and that of his country what to imitate and what to avoid.’ Whether Livy's moralistic attitude to history is legitimate or not, the fact that he always has a moral purpose clearly in mind lends a unity to his work which bears a compelling appearance of truth. All events, all actions are recounted, interpreted, and judged according to a single norm: how far they reflect and illustrate the glory of ancient Rome or the decline of his countrymen from the Golden Age of times past. It is the purpose of this article to examine the part accorded to women in this scheme, and the history will be judged not as a factual record but, as Livy would have expected, as a work of art and moral instruction.
The Imperfect Subjunctive in Primary Sequence
Authors: Maguinness W. S.
Published: July 2013

InGreece and Rome, vol. xvii, No. 51, pp. 128–9, Mr. E. Laughton, referring to pp. 140 ff. of Mr. S. A. Handford's The Latin Subjunctive, put forward Cicero, Att. 3. 20. 1 (‘tibi venire in mentem certo scio quae vita esset nostra, quae suavitas, quae dignitas’) as an example of the imperfect subjunctive in an indirect question in primary sequence, where a preceding imperfect or pluperfect tense has not been employed in mitigation of the violation of sequence. In vol. xviii, No. 54, p. 138, Mr. Handford replies that esset probably means ‘would be’, as Tyrrell took it in Cicero in his Letters, and adds ‘so we are still without a clear example of imperfect subjunctive used in a primary sequence indirect question to express durative (or iterative) action’. In vol. xviii, No. 55, p. 18, Mr. Laughton ‘retreats fighting’, but hopes that ‘some day Mr. Handford's challenge may meet with an unequivocal response’.

In paragraph 3 of the Praefatio to book x of Seneca's Controversiae we read, of the brilliant, but casual declaimer, Scaurus, ‘ex his omnibus sciri potest, non quantum oratorem praestaret ignavus Scaurus, sed quantum desereret’ (‘all this goes to show, not how great an orator the lazy Scaurus was, but how great he missed being’). The variant scire posset in excerpt. Montepessulana can safely be ignored. Though I am sure we should all wish to see an example quoted from a more reputable author than the Elder Seneca, this sentence, occurring as it does in a carefully written preface, confirms Mr. Laughton's intuition that this ‘rational mode of expression’ is not impossible in Latin when the sense of the dependent verb is ‘obviously durative’.
Horace's use of Imagery in the Epodes and Odes
Authors: Andrewes M.
Published: July 2013

It is hard, at a distance of some two thousand years, to know when a metaphorical word in an ode of Horace is only a faded remnant of its original self, and when it was felt by Horace's contemporaries as a living image on which the poet was relying for a particular effect. Any attempt therefore to assess the force of an image is liable to be not only subjective but possibly unsound as well; we cannot always know enough about the stage of development of a word at the moment of use, nor about the composition of the soil on which that word was designed to fall. Still, it is possible to note some differences in the quality and intention of the imagery employed.
Quintus Filius
Authors: Božić I. M. Garrido
Published: July 2013

It is just 2,000 years since two boys complained that their schoolmaster furenter irasci. He, however, as such people will, had anticipated their complaint with a report of ambiguously qualified praise, and managed to retain parental confidence in his moral and intellectual qualifications. But the boys probably felt that lessons were out of place. They were abroad for the first time. There had been two grand feasts, a round of sightseeing, a voyage in open boats, a stay on an island, sleeping in tents, and six months at the court of a native prince. A story might have been written about this, but it was Cicero's proconsular year and he had other fish to fry. His was a province already subjugated more Romano with pilum and syngrapha, yet his anxieties were manifold: to meet the outgoing proconsul and tidy up the mess which that gentleman had made; to face a Parthian invasion; to catch a brigand; to square the legal and the economic rates of interest; to restrain his staff from making requisitions, and to dun the bankrupt king of Cappadocia. Then, at Rome, seven weeks' journey away, the republic was tottering, his daughter Tullia was on the marriage-market for the third time, water was being laid on at his suburban villa, and no—he really couldn't supply leopards for the arena, but please, please, would everyone see that his term of office in that dreadful province wasn't extended to a second year.

So Cicero only really noticed his son Marcus and his nephew Quintus when they were a nuisance.
Dante and the Classics
Authors: Hudson-Williams T.
Published: July 2013

Thus was Dante welcomed by Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, and invited to become a member of the select circle in Limbo, the upper section of Hell containing the souls of unbaptized infants and distinguished pagans. The commentators tell us that this account of himself has been adduced as a proof of Dante's modesty; I have never been able to discover who proposed this idea. The poets entered the Palace of Wisdom and later on took their stand on an eminence from which Dante had a good view of the noble souls on the green sward in front of him, and he was told who many of them were.

Owing to lack of space I must confine myself to the literary figures seen by Dante, although there were many other notable inmates of Limbo, e.g. Aeneas, Caesar, and Saladin in spite of his adherence to the religion of the renegade Christian Mahomet who was sent down to the circle allotted to the Schismatics.

This list, with its supplement in Purg. xxii, deserves study; both should, however, be used with caution: the omission of well-known names should not be taken to imply ignorance on the poet's part. As Dante had but little Greek, it is obvious that he had not read the works of all the authors named.

The writers and philosophers in the first list are: the five poets already mentioned, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zeno, Dioscorides, Orpheus, Cicero, Linus (v.l. Livy), Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen (Inf. iv. 131 ff.).
Vergil's Hexameter Line
Authors: Ashcroft A. H.
Published: July 2013

Introductory

In his preface to Some Oxford Compositions (Oxford University Press, 1949) Mr. T. F. Higham quotes with apparent approval the statement that ‘Mr. H. M. Butler was constantly haunted by the conviction that each metre had, more or less, a personality of its own’. Many years of Sixth-form teaching, and more recently the privilege of examining for the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board's Higher Certificate, have led the writer of this article not only to share Mr. Butler's conviction but also to realize that far too many pupils labour at verse composition without that sufficient knowledge of the underlying principles by which verse-making can become so fascinating a pursuit. It is believed that with this knowledge boys would not only maintain their deep interest in versification, on which they almost invariably enter with enthusiasm, but also—and this is far more important—would find, as the seven authors of Some Oxford Compositions have found, that they were not merely engaged in an elegant accomplishment but using one of the best means to a higher standard of scholarship.

This essay is written with the further conviction that the boy who has gained some knowledge of the inner ‘personality’ of Vergil's hexameter line—a personality that determines, as Mr. Butler claimed, both its spirit and its form—will have very little difficulty in learning to appreciate more fully all except the more recondite metres both in Latin and in Greek.

In the following paragraphs the majority of the quotations from Vergil have been taken from Aeneid, book iv; it is hoped that this will simplify the task of looking up the references; will encourage a closer study of a book which is not greatly dependent on the other books of the Aeneid for its full appreciation; and, most of all, will lead pupils to make a similar close study of one or more of those other books.
Roman Literature After The Gracchi
Authors: Smith R. E.
Published: July 2013

The Gracchi in literature as in all else mark a turning-point in Roman history; they brought one epoch to a close and inaugurated a fresh one; and by their choice of means to effect their end they unwittingly determined the direction of events for the following century. In order to be able to appreciate the literature as a reflection and a phenomenon of its society, we must first briefly consider the effects of the Gracchi upon political life, and then the effects of that political life upon Roman society. The Gracchi set out to solve certain problems; but owing to the twist that they gave to Roman history, those problems fell into the background, to be supplanted by a problem of politics which absorbed all the energies of the governing class to the exclusion of the problems which should have been their main concern and responsibility.

The problems that confronted the State at the time of the Gracchi were many; they were social, economic, political, and administrative problems of vast complexity that required wisdom, patience, and, above all, goodwill for their solution. By this time real political power was wielded by a comparatively small number of families, grouped round leading men; they had come to believe that they governed by divine right, and while the better among them were aware of their responsibilities, there were many to whom the emoluments of government were reason enough for restricting the profits of empire among the smallest number. During the second century the attitude of the governing class had become conservative, opposed to any change which might alter the existing organization or deprive them of some of their great power.
Émile Miriaux: Les Poèmes d'Homère et l'Histoire Grecque, II. l'Iliade, l'Odyssée, et les rivalités coloniales (Albin Michel, 1949)
Authors: Myres Sir John
Published: July 2013

In the first volume of this provocative book it was argued that, like the French chansons de geste, the Homeric poems were composed in a society with keen political and material interests, which are reflected at many points in the story, and may be identified with those of Ionian and Aeolian cities of Asia Minor, in the centuries from the eighth to the sixth. Further, that the parts of the poems which contain the simplest and probably the earliest sections of the narratives may be isolated, and present a consistent picture of this world in the early middle of the eighth century, when the Troad—including the site of the later Novum Ilium at Hissarlik—was occupied by the Thracian barbarians of the ‘Seventh City’; when Greek settlers were only in precarious occupation of the shores of the Hellespont, and their minstrels were preoccupied with the wars of occupation; while those of Chios were fascinated by the lands of the far west, newly opened by the sailors of Chalcis and Corinth. The poems of this earlier period—of the ‘first Homer’—form about a quarter of our two epics.

If this presentation of the matter be accepted, it is clearly the next question, under what political and social circumstances were the rest of the poems composed, and eventually combined with the original Wrath of Achilles and Return of Odysseus?