bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lycurgus in the Judgement of a German Eighteenth-Century Humanist
Authors: Elkan Lucy
Published: July 2013

If we cast merely a cursory glance at Lycurgus’ laws we are really agreeably surprised. Of all similar institutions of Antiquity they are undoubtedly the most perfect, excepting the laws of Moses which they resemble in many parts, above all in the principles underlying them. They are really complete within themselves; everything is dovetailed, each part supported by the whole and the whole by each single part. Lycurgus could not have chosen a better way to reach the goal he had before his eyes: that of a State which, isolated from all others, should be self-sufficient and maintain itself through internal circulation and its own vital strength. No lawgiver has ever given a State such unity, such national interest, such public spirit as Lycurgus gave to his State. Now, how did Lycurgus accomplish this?

Because he knew how to direct his fellow-citizens’ activities towards the State and closed all other outlets that might have drawn them away from it.

All that captivates the human mind and arouses human passions, all save political interests, had been removed by his legislation. Wealth and luxury, science and the arts had no access to the Spartans’ minds. As all were equally poor the comparison of fortune which makes most men covetous was abolished. The longing for possessions ceased with the opportunity of displaying or using them. Profound ignorance of art and science dulled all minds in Sparta in an equal manner. By this means he safeguarded the State from any interference that an enlightened brain might have caused in the Constitution.
A School Virgil Society
Authors: Pope Stella R.
Published: July 2013

The leaflet announcing the formation of the Virgil Society, and the reprint from The Times Literary Supplement revived pleasant, although dim, memories of evenings before the war spent reading Virgil with a small group of friends and former pupils…. It would be impossible now to reassemble that group…. And then the thought of the present VIth arose. School groups were mentioned in the leaflet. Could we not form a reading group and link ourselves to the main body of the Virgil Society? Tentatively I suggested it to two of the VIth and showed them the reprint. They were at once enthusiastic, and so others were told. In this way we formed our branch of the Virgil Society.

As the most important thing is to read Virgil we have decided to hold six readings a year—one at the beginning and end of every term. In addition we hope to have two lectures. So far we have had two readings and we are having our first lecture on 20 September, when we shall have the pleasure of hearing Professor J. F. Mountford of Liverpool University on ‘Why Virgil wrote the Aeneid’. This is to be an open meeting, and we are inviting parties from other schools and our own parents and friends.

Our readings are great fun and not a bit like lessons, although we read and translate Virgil just as we do in class. The atmosphere is quite different, probably because the readings take place out of school hours and are preceded by tea—provided, prepared, and washed up by the members.
The Catapult and the Ballista
Authors: Whitehorn J. N.
Published: July 2013

Primitive man defended his community from the ravages of his enemies by a thick thorn hedge or a wooden palisade. But a spear could penetrate these meagre defences, and the next stage in the race of better defences to ward off methods of attack, better methods of attack to penetrate the defences, and so on, was to build mounds of earth to ward off the enemy's spears. When the defenders realized that they needed defences which the enemy could not climb over, they made their mounds relatively higher by digging a ditch round the outside. Thus increased in height, the mound kept off the enemy for a time, but before long they in turn had learned to fill up the ditch with earth and faggots and thus to neutralize the depth of the ditch. So the wall had to be made higher, and as there is a limit beyond which one cannot pile up a mound of earth, the mound was strengthened with logs. The enemy had a counter-measure to this too, and made a breach in the defences by setting fire to the logs which formed the basis of the mound. This incendiarism was checked for a time by piling layers of earth and hides on the logs and so placing the logs that they could not be got at easily by the attackers. But this did not prove satisfactory, and we come at last to the wall of masonry or brick as the best means of defence. To this basic element many additions and improvements were made—the defenders learned, for instance, to make their perimeter curved as opposed to angular, because it was easier for the enemy to undermine a corner than a curved stretch of wall; and they learned to build towers out from the walls from which they could give flanking fire against the enemy who reached the bottom of the wall, at whom those on the main part of the wall could not fire with impunity.
A Joint Classical Association
Authors: Elsworth W. L.
Published: July 2013

Arecent article in Greece and Rome on the formation of a school Virgil Society has had repercussions in the Potteries area of north Staffordshire which I think may interest other readers. When the article first appeared one of the sixth-form boys studying Classics at this school asked if we might start our own Virgil Society. I mentioned this suggestion to our headmaster, himself a Classical scholar, and he was able to show us some of the literature sent out by the Virgil Society. But a discussion in the sixth form soon made it clear that the boys, while keen on forming a society, did not wish to see it limited in scope. They envisaged the whole realm of Greece and Rome as their arena. With such a wide field in view it was obvious that the resources of one school would be severely strained to provide lectures, talks, and discussions at anything like frequent intervals, and permission was sought and obtained to invite representatives of two girls' schools and one boys' school, all situated fairly near to us, to an informal meeting to discuss ideas.

That meeting in November 1945 was a great success. The representatives, staff and pupils, were enthusiastic to form some such society, which should take for its field of operations the whole life of the ancient classical world. We elected a committee of two representatives from each school, stipulating that not more than one should be a member of the staff, and invited all the other secondary grammar schools within easy travelling distance.
Virgil's Pilgrim's Progress
Authors: Ellingham C. J.
Published: July 2013

Poetry has four appeals: the romantic, the sensuous, the intellectual, and the formal. We may enjoy the story, the sound, the thought, or the shape of a poem. Almost everybody can appreciate the first; and a reciter trying to convert an audience suspicious of poetry might begin with Alfred Noyes's ‘Highwayman’. Susceptibility to the second appeal seems innate in a fortunate few. Some men loved the music of Keats's ‘Nightingale’ long before they understood the words. But others are tone-deaf (I know a Doctor of Divinity who calls Kubla Khan rubbish), and in most of us the appreciation of verbal harmony grows but slowly. And the last two appeals are much more limited. Few can be bothered to master the ‘criticism of life’ of Arnold's ‘Resignation’ or Browning's ‘Rabbi ben Ezra’, or to estimate the place of Troilus and Cressida in Shakespeare's intellectual development, or to discuss the merits of the Spenserian stanza, or to criticize the structure of ‘The Lotus-Eaters’ or the arrangement of the books in Paradise Lost. Such conundrums are left to candidates for Honours in English and the dons who set the papers.

Now if we have only read two or three books of the Aeneid we cannot enjoy the structure of the whole poem. And we shall not apprehend much of Virgil's thought. Indeed, we may misunderstand it, just as, if somebody insists that Milton's God is a bully and the rebel angels heroes, it is fairly safe to infer that he has read only the first two books of Paradise Lost.
A Greek Traveller In Tudor England
Authors: Eichholz D. E.
Published: July 2013

In 1545, nearly two years before the death of Henry VIII, there came to England Nicander Nucius of Corfu. He stayed some months, and later wrote an account of his visit in classical Greek.

There must be many like myself who are indebted to Mr. Stanley Casson's last published work, Greece and Britain, for their first acquaintance with Nicander. Unfortunately his chapter on Nicander is all too brief. Moreover, there is only one English edition of the Greek text, and this was published by the Camden Society over a hundred years ago.2 A more accessible edition is called for, as I hope this paper will show.

Nicander came to England with his patron Gerard, whom the Emperor Charles V had dispatched as an emissary to Henry. We know little about Nicander himself, but there are hints that he had recently left his home owing to some personal tragedy. Corfu was then a part of the Venetian Republic and it was to Venice that he made his way, there to meet Gerard, who was travelling to the court of Sultan Suleiman. Nicander accompanied him to Constantinople. His knowledge of local conditions would make him a useful travelling-companion, and it is probable that he also proved helpful as a diplomatic assistant. At any rate, he remained a member of Gerard's suite and followed him faithfully on the long journey through Germany and Belgium which finally brought them both to Calais. Here they received a travel-permit (ἐυλóσιμον), and after a false start crossed to Dover.
The Artistry of Tacitus
Authors: Chapman C. S.
Published: July 2013

Whatever may be his weaknesses in other fields, all will agree that as a literary craftsman Tacitus stands in the first rank. Like Lytton Strachey, he writes with an extraordinary verbal felicity, shows an uncanny genius for delineating character, and is a master of innuendo and suggestion.

It would be an entertaining but profitless pastime for my readers to cast themselves for the part of Nero at the beginning of Book XIV and decide how they would elect to liquidate—pardon the modern term—a troublesome mother. I am sure we could each one of us propound half a dozen more convincing schemes than that adopted by the historical Nero. Judged by the standards of the modern novel, the story is utterly fantastic. Yet such is the artistry of Tacitus that we are held spellbound throughout and accept it as vera historia.

He makes an excellent start: ‘Gaio Vipstano C. Fonteio consulibus diu meditatum scelus non ultra Nero distulit.’ How lucky it was for Tacitus he had no chapter-headings to give his secrets away! Subconsciously the reader draws in a breath of eager anticipation, feeling that if Nero is now about to bring off a long-meditated crime, then he is in for an interesting story. But what was the crime? Just wait and see. But to whet our appetite Tacitus gives us in his description of Nero one of those pungent quasi-epigrammatic touches of psychology of which he is so fond. ‘Vetustate imperii coalita audacia.… ’ ‘This unnatural power’, says Burke, ‘corrupts both the heart and the understanding.’
A Note on Sophocles' Antigone, Lines 531–81
Authors: Simpson A. W. , Millar C. M. H.
Published: July 2013

This scene constitutes the first meeting between Antigone and her sister Ismene since their dramatic parting at the end of the first scene, in which, as Jebb says (Antig. Introd., p. xxix), there has been shown to be ‘a spiritual division which no emotional after-impulse can cancel’. It is plainly seen that Ismene can never rise to taking part with Antigone in Polyneices’ burial; Antigone realizes this; so do the spectators, and no further scene should be required to emphasize it.
‘Meet General X’
Authors: Howell Sir Evelyn
Published: July 2013

‘Here the prince held a review in the park and took a muster of our countrymen and they amounted all told to 11,000 heavy-armed and about 2,000 light-armed infantry. Thence he marched to—, a populous town, where he halted five days. More than three months’ pay was now owing to the troops and they came often to his gates and demanded it. He talked hopefully and tried to put them off, but was obviously worried. For it was not like him to withhold money when he had it. At this place the wife of a neighbouring king came to the prince and, it was said, gave him a large sum of money. At any rate he gave the troops four months' pay. This queen had a body-guard of her own men, but according to camp gossip the prince knew how to pass the sentries. Thence he proceeded another two marches further inland to another large town. There he halted three days and there, it was said, the queen asked him to show her his army. This was in accord with his own wishes. So he held a review of our countrymen and of his own troops. He ordered our men to draw up in their accustomed order of battle, each general in command of his own contingent. So they formed up four deep. The prince inspected his own forces first and they marched past, the horse by squadrons and the foot by companies.Then he inspected our men, driving up and down the lines in a chariot, and the queen following in an armoured wagon.
Rhetorical Influences in the Aeneid
Authors: Clarke M. L.
Published: July 2013

At the beginning of the fifth book of his Saturnalia Macrobius makes his characters all agree that Virgil is to be considered an orator no less than a poet; such is his mastery of eloquence and his careful observance of the rules of rhetoric. Are we to dismiss this as an example of a type of criticism now fortunately outmoded, or is there something in it? Was Virgil to any important extent influenced by rhetorical precept, and, if so, how did this influence work? These are the questions which I propose to discuss in this paper.

Let us begin with a comparison. Let us first imagine ourselves sitting in a village schoolroom eighty years or so ago. The occasion is a ‘penny reading’, and the rector has chosen for this evening's reading the poet laureate's recently published Enoch Arden. The tale draws to its close, and we reach the last three lines:

So past the strong heroic soul away.

And when they buried him the little port

Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

Now we transfer ourselves to the year 23 B.C. and the palace of Augustus. Virgil himself is reciting, and the company includes Augustus and Octavia. The poet is reciting from his yet unfinished Aeneid, and he comes to the passage in the sixth book where Anchises shows Aeneas the young Marcellus among the souls yet to be born.

quantos ille virum magnam Mavortis ad urbem

campus aget gemitus! vel quae, Tiberine, videbis

funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem.
The Persistence of Greek Accent
Authors: Sedgwick W. B.
Published: July 2013

It is well known that the Greek accent from about the Christian era gradually changed from pitch to stress, and that by about the fourth century stress had become so powerful that, if necessary, quantity was overridden—as in Modern Greek: e.g. νθρωπος came to be pronounced ánthrǒpus, and Xenophon's εЗωνοι are now éfzǒni.

This fact has had some interesting consequences. The influence of Greek was not confined to the Byzantine Empire; even in the West the majority of slaves and freedmen would be Greek-speaking: St. Paul writes to the Christians at Rome in Greek: the Epistle of Clement in the next generation is in Greek, and all the men's names in Petronius are Greek (or Oriental). Vulgar Latin became infiltrated with Greek words, which sometimes assumed characteristic Vulgar Latin forms: e.g. μθοσ > muttus > mot; χωλόπος (stressed on the second syllable) > cloppus > clocker, clopin—forms only explicable by assuming a strong stress accent.1

As popular influence became ever more overwhelming, we find that even those who must have known better scanned Greek words as they pronounced them: e.g. Ausonius trigǒnus, tetragǒnus, Prudentius Asclepiādem. Sidonius Apollinaris has been much ridiculed for assumed ignorance in scanning Euripīdis: it was not ignorance (we know, for instance, that he read Menander with his son), but the actual pronunciation of his day, both Latin and Greek.

Christians normally scanned abssus, erěmus, idǒlum: even in the time of Plautus we regularly find Phílppus (the coin). Similarly būtrum (βούτρον) > Fr. beurre: Eng. butter seems to have come straight from Vulgar Latin (via Vulgate ?).
The Augustan ‘Constitution’
Authors: Grant Michael
Published: July 2013

The Augustan constitution—if we may use this word, for which there is no ancient equivalent—is as important a subject as the large number of modern writings devoted to it would suggest, and to judge by their contradictory character, it is a difficult one. Anyone who attempts, as I am attempting to-day, yet another general statement, and that within the compass of a single paper, must hedge himself around with protestations and admissions of what he is going to leave out. I must also at once forestall the criticism, frequently launched at students of this subject, that I am the dupe of ancient propaganda, inscriptions including theRes Gestae, and the coins. I fully appreciate that their insinuating suggestions are constantly misleading; and yet they, as the principal contemporary sources, are what I chiefly propose to quote to you to-day. I must also concede that these sources show a meticulous correctness of terminology, concerning matters such as the legal nuances distinguishing various powers, which must have been lost on considerable sections of the general Roman public. But these sections of the public should not be the concern of a student of the Augustan constitution. His concern is rather with the governing class, the fabricators of this insidious publicity. They, at least, were very far from averse to constitutional niceties; and incidentally, against those who stress the ignorance of the public, these hard-headed men would never have taken so much trouble if nobody was going to be impressed by it.

But I am not plunging into the full intricacy of their efforts to-day; for the compass of one paper requires simplification, and one way in which I shall simplify is by ignoring the many nuances between different categories of power, and considering them as subdivided into two main categories only—on the one side that sort of power which was part of the legal and formal machinery of the State, apotestas, including some powers carryingimperiumand some lacking it, and on the other side all those media of authority which were not based on anypotestas.
The Intention of Virgil's Georgics
Authors: Wilkinson L. P.
Published: July 2013

Many and various have been the approaches to Virgil's Georgics. Dryden once stated roundly that they were ‘the best poem of the best poet’. The director of a well-known botanical garden maintains, rather oddly, that they are the best thing for starting boys on botany. It is worth while to try to discover what Virgil himself thought he was doing, and for what readers he intended his poem.

Let me first recall the circumstances of his upbringing. He spent his childhood on his father's farm, amid the sights and sounds and smells of the country. But by his fifteenth year he was sent to school at Cremona, and from there on to Milan, after which he completed his studies at Rome and near Naples. There is every indication that his bent was for literature and philosophic speculation, and no good evidence that he was ever himself a farmer. By 37–6 B.C., when he was 33, he was already established as a poet, and with Varius had become the nucleus of Maecenas’ circle. He had run through the gamut of pastoral poetry, and was on the look-out for fresh woods and pastures new. His intense love of the country, attested in every line of the Georgics, would in itself suffice to account for his choice of subject, and the impact of Lucretius’ recent masterpiece for his choice of form.

At the close of his breathless baroque overture Virgil alleges pity for the ignorance of the rustic as his motive for writing, but that is simply part of the game.
Studies in Character Agamemnon
Authors: Earp F. R.
Published: July 2013

The more I study Aeschylus the more clearly I perceive how much he tells us of his characters. The exhibition of character is not his main purpose, and he spends less space upon it than Sophocles or Euripides, not to mention more modern dramatists, but his touches are so sure that the final picture is surprisingly complete. In one case this is generally admitted. Few will dispute that Clytaemnestra is one of the most vivid and striking figures in all tragic drama. But she is an exception, and Aeschylus shows her to us more fully than any of his figures except the still enigmatic Prometheus. (Eteocles in the Septem makes as many speeches as Clytaemnestra, but they are less revealing.) In most of his plays the speeches allotted to the characters are so scanty, and so much dictated by the requirements of the action, that one has to know the play very well before one perceives how much the spare touches of character reveal. That point was only impressed on me when I started to learn the Agamemnon by heart. Then I really grasped it and will try to illustrate it.

Agamemnon himself is the best illustration to begin with, for he is less complex than his wife. He conforms to a well-known type, which most of us have met. He combines an imposing façade with inner weakness. Aeschylus, it is true, does not directly mention his appearance. That we learn from Homer (Iliad iii. 166 f.); and it is noteworthy how close Aeschylus keeps to Homer in depicting Agamemnon.
Economists in The Agora
Authors: Clarke A. K.
Published: July 2013

Socrates. Good-morning, Eleutheros. Obviously something delightful has happened to you, to make you leave your work so early in the day—and to hurry along too, with your head in the clouds and a smile on your face, not even recognizing your friends! And Polytechnos has thrown down his chisel, too! Whatever is the good news?
A New View of the Epic
Authors: Mireaux Émile , Michel Albin , Myres Sir John
Published: July 2013

Much has been written about the origin of the Homeric Poems, and the processes, more or less long, by which they were given eventual literary form. The archaeological discoveries of Schliemann and his successors, from 1870 to about 1910, lengthened the perspective and changed the point of view, diverting attention from the latest to the earlier phases, from an ‘Ionian’ to an ‘Aeolic’, ‘Achaean’, and even Mycenaean epic or saga or folk-tale. But not only was there no recovery of early literary texts related to the Minoan scripts, but the decline and fall of the Minoan régime revealed even more clearly the wide interval between the traditional date for the ‘Fall of Troy’ and the emergence of the ‘Ionian’ epic. Political circumstances unfortunately terminated the American excavation of Hissarlik before the questions asked by M. Charles de Vellay about the north side of the fortress could be completely answered; but it seems certain that there was a north wall, and that this was deliberately destroyed at a rather late date, as in the story of the foundation of Achilleum. In Aeolis and Ionia, too, no large excavation is possible yet; so attempts to find archaeological equivalents for the latest indications of material culture in the poems are still conjectural.
Oxyrhynchus and Its Papyri
Authors: Turner E. G.
Published: July 2013

The nineteen volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri have contributed so much to classical studies over the last fifty years that it is surprising how little has been written on the town of Oxyrhynchus. There is no monograph from which the layman can obtain a balanced picture.2 No doubt scholars have been deterred from the task of compiling one by the thought of the enormous number of papyri still awaiting publication. In 1920 B. P. Grenfell estimated that of the material in the possession of the Egypt Exploration Society a little over half of the literary finds but ‘not nearly half’ of the documents had been published. The progress made since that date scarcely alters the figures. I shall try to show what sort of place Oxyrhynchus was so that its papyri may be related to their background. The layman, whose picture of the papyrologist is often that of a ‘back-room’ wizard producing something out of nothing, may thereby be helped to see these documents and texts as the expression of the life of a community, and as a result to understand both what is likely to be forthcoming from papyrological work and to assess the value of published texts. Because the quantity of material is so overwhelming, I have found it essential to restrict myself to the second and third centuries after Christ.

Since the contrary is often asserted, I begin by emphasizing that Oxyrhynchus was an important place. This importance was recognized in A.D. 272, when the phrase λαμπρἀ καì λαμπρωτἀτπ ‘illustrious and most illustrious’ found a place in the town's official title, perhaps in direct connexion with the first occasion (namely in the following year A.D. 273) when the world-games, the Iso-Capitolia, were held in Oxyrhynchus.
An Experiment with Horace
Authors: Dale F. R.
Published: July 2013

My first attempts at rendering ancient lyric metres in English quantity were made with Greek choruses. I was trying in this way to give boys some idea of the run of the Greek patterns. I found the experiment profitable at least to myself; I began to study and enjoy the shape of the strophes with a new liveliness of interest.

I had used E. A. Sonnenschein's book What is Rhythm? in the teaching of English for some years before it occurred to me that here was the key to the old problem of writing quantitative verse in English. Of all the experiments made by poets and scholars, from the Elizabethans down to Robinson Ellis's Catullus and Robert Bridges's Ibant Obscuri, though some have been read with pleasure, none succeed in keeping the shape and balance of the ancient lines. Sonnenschein used a kymograph, and with most laborious care measured the length of English syllables as they are pronounced, counting the hundredths of a second taken in the pronunciation of each syllable. I have not tested him on any machine, because my ear accepts as valid the rules which emerge from his experiments. To show how this works I give a rendering of Horace, Odes, i. II:

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quern mihi, quern tibi ….

Ask not thou what the end gods have assigned either to me or thee, Things not lawful to know, Leuconoe. Let Babylonian signs Rest unsearched; better far, just to endure all that shall come to pass.
A Matter of Stratification
Authors: Hooker G. T. W.
Published: July 2013

Did Sir Arthur Evans find Linear B tablets on or underneath the floor of the Room of the Stirrup Jars? Do they belong to about 1400 b.c., as he maintained, or to 1200 b.c.? These may seem recondite questions, but when Professor L. R. Palmer raised them in the Observer last summer he stirred up a hornets' nest. After finding that his text had been cut, his title changed, and a reference to the Piltdown Man fraud gratuitously thrown in by the newspaper, he may have felt ruefully that he should have used a longer spoon; but his challenge to the authority of The Palace of Minos was real enough. Not unnaturally the archaeologists bristled at an intrusion by a philologist, however distinguished, into their territory, and deplored this questioning of their masterful hero, this use of the vulgar arts of publicity to advance a scholarly argument. Charges and rejoinders flew briskly to and fro; there were reproaches of sensationalism and vilification, of putting discredited technical arguments before lay readers to blind them with science. For a while an old-fashioned whiff of odium philologicum hung in the air, until the two parties agreed to await the full publication of the disputed facts, and hostilities were followed by an uneasy truce.
Waiting for the Barbarian: New Light on the Persian Wars
Authors: Jameson M. H.
Published: July 2013

Few periods in all ancient history are more familiar than the months from May to September of 480 b.c., when the enormous army and navy of Xerxes, King of the Persians, crossed from Asia to Europe and bore down upon the heart of Greece. Few battles are more famous than Salamis, where Xerxes, after carrying all before him, crushing Leonidas at Thermopylai and forcing the Greek fleet to withdraw from Artemision, sacking and burning Athens, saw his navy defeated by a far smaller force and the tide of Persian might begin to ebb. How did the Greeks prepare to face the Persian threat, the greatest they had ever met, and what planning achieved this remarkable result?
An Approach to the Teaching of Roman Republican History
Authors: Carney T. F.
Published: July 2013

These notes are prompted by experience gained teaching Roman Republican history to a first-year Latin class over a period of a few years at Victoria University (then College), N.Z. The suggestions they contain arose largely from discussions with students and other teachers, university and otherwise, from all of whom I have learned a great deal. Basically, my problems were threefold. The course was very short, and tune limitations demanded the utmost selectiveness. The course was also voluntary, and so had to be interesting in itself and of immediate value and significance for students busied with Latin and generally with three other degree subiects, too.
Wholly Spondaic Lines in Homer
Authors: Pye D. W.
Published: July 2013

In his notes T. E. Page often points out Virgil's ‘accommodation of sound to sense’. Postgate declares ‘Spondees are employed to express Seriousness or Melancholy’. But spondees of course are employed otherwise as well; and in general we are often warned against finding in the text what the poet did not intend. The cautioners too should beware, of missing a relevant point.
St. Paul and the Greek World
Authors: Howell E. B.
Published: July 2013

Σαῦλος ὁ καὶ Παῦ λος: or St. Paul and the Greek World. That is my subject, but before I come to it, I should like to say two words about myself—both by way of apology and to explain how I am dealing with it.
Stress as a Factor in Classical Greek Accentuation
Authors: Sealey Raphael
Published: July 2013

Every literary language differs more or less from the spoken language. Most of the ancient Greek that is studied today is written in a literary language. Yet the student should not ignore pronunciation. In a society that did not practise silent reading sound mattered for prose as well as for verse. Accentuation deserves as much attention as any other feature, if the attempt is made to accustom the ear to the sound of a language. Blass, Postgate, and others have discovered a great deal about the accentuation of ancient Greek. More recently the evidence has been collected and the main conclusions stated by E. H. Sturtevant in The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin.
Hannibal's Route Across the Alps
Authors: Brown J. E. T.
Published: July 2013

One should perhaps apologize for reopening the question of Hannibal's route over the Alps after the publication of Sir Gavin de Beer's recent book. It is, however, a perennially fascinating problem, and some of de Beer's points are not entirely satisfactory, though I accept his main conclusion. The cruces of the argument, as I see them, are: (1) the crossing of the Rhone; (2) the position of the Island; (3) the river Isaras/Skaras; (4) the two passes, the first where Hannibal was attacked by the Allobroges from the front, and the second the main Alpine pass into Italy; (5) the attack in the gorge by local tribesmen on his approach to the main pass; (6) did Hannibal cross the Durance?
The Dramatization of the Theban Legend
Authors: Baldry H. C.
Published: July 2013

Modern scholarship has devoted much time and ingenuity to the problem of the sources from which the Greek tragic poets drew the plots of their plays. It has been commonly assumed that somewhere in that largely unknown area of literature which lies between Homer and the fifth century b.c. most legends had already crystallized into more or less the shape in which we know them from drama; and that the Attic playwrights (with the possible exception of Euripides) made little more than minor alterations in tales already familiar to their audience. But there is little evidence to support this assumption, either in the scanty remains of Cyclic epic and choral lyric, or in the occasional remarks on the subject by ancient commentators. In this article I attempt to illustrate by a single example a different point of view: the belief that in dealing with this aspect of tragedy we should put the same emphasis on the creative artistry of the dramatists themselves which it has received from Kitto and others in discussing other sides of their work; and that where (as in most cases) the source of their version is unknown, the very fact that it is moulded to suit a dramatic purpose should lead us to give the author, rather than a hypothetical and perhaps imaginary tradition, the benefit of the doubt.
Correction
Authors: G. T. W. H.
Published: July 2013

Greece & Rome, Second Series, ii (1955), 138, n. 3: for ‘By J. B. Skemp’ read ‘By H. LI. Hudson-Williams’. Both are Professors of Greek in Durham University: Professor Skemp in the Durham Division, and Professor Hudson-Williams in the Newcastle Division. This confusion, for which the Reviews Editor was not responsible, is much regretted.
Tacitus and Seneca
Authors: Henry Denis , Walker B.
Published: July 2013

Seneca has long been regarded as one of the supreme—one might say notorious—examples of the way in which the human personality can be divided and compartmentalized. To live in two entirely different worlds at the same time can never be easy: to combine the contrasts present in Seneca without outward sign of strain is almost miraculous. Seneca took a leading part in Nero's education and training, both before and after he became Emperor; he lived for eleven years during his reign and then committed suicide at his behest; he played a central role as chief counsellor in his administration. At the same time he wrote treatises on the perfectibility of the human race under the flag of liberty, equality, and fraternity, not as a vision of the future, but associating its realization with Nero himself; he discussed the moral duty of the philosopher in terms which were completely inconsistent with his own mode of life, and composed ten (or is it nine?) tragedies which have as one of their main themes the rule of moral chaos in human affairs, often under a tyrant. In these plays there is a vision much less pleasant, that of the coming disintegration of the world, expressed in terms like ‘In nos ultima aetas uenit?’
Foreign Policy for thePolis
Authors: Macmullen Ramsay
Published: July 2013

Modernphilhellenes often show an impatience with the relations that existed between the city-states, suicidally quarrelsome, in Perikles' or Demosthenes' day. The inability of thepolisto get along with its neighbour, and of allpoleistogether to shape some rational permanent peace, is all too clear. But to the excuses usually offered—to fierce local pride, to the love of independence, to the divisions imposed by geography—still another consideration should be added. The foreign statesman of fifth- or fourth-century Greece had to reckon with a peculiar fact.
The End of Terence's Adelphoe A Postscript
Authors: Arnott W. G.
Published: July 2013

In a recent number of Greece and Rome Dr. T. A. Dorey has criticized those scholars who call the concluding scenes of the Adelphoe ‘a masterpiece of dramatic construction’. Arguing that at the end of the play the treatment of Micio is unsatisfactory or at least unsatisfying, the change in attitude of Aeschinus and Demea insufficiently motivated, and the transition from comedy to satire unnatural and excessively abrupt, Dorey seeks to explain these alleged flaws by reference to two passages of Donatus' commentary on the play: the note on v. 938, ‘apud Menandrum senex de nuptiis non gravatur: ergo Terentius ερετικ⋯ς’, and part of the praefatio (iii. 5), where Donatus observes that Demea is the means whereby ‘multa in comoedia nova’ are introduced into the final scenes of the play. Dorey's interpretation of these passages leads him to suggest that ‘the last scenes of the play were not in the original comedy of Menander, but were invented by Terence himself.’
Eternal Summer
Authors: Ellis D. B.
Published: July 2013

The first few hours on Greek soil are a fantastic and whirling jumble. Tumult is too feeble a word for the excited and inextricable chaos that is Peiraeus. The road thence to Athens must be at once the busiest and the worst in Greece. The main streets of the city are bedlam. Then suddenly, as a glimpse of the Parthenon is won, the mind skips the last twenty-four centuries and is lost to today. When it returns and you look about you, you might reasonably wonder where in time you are. The signs in the streets and the shops—ΟΔΟΣ ΤΡΙΠΟΔωΝ or ΑΡΤΟΠωΛΕΙΟΝ—are they ancient or modern? ‘All the Athenians … spent their time in nothing else but either to hear or to see some new thing.’ They live today, as they have always done, by talk and argument, be it over St. Paul's teaching or merely the price of a newspaper. Generations of foreign influence, Roman onwards, have left Greece unchanged, uncertain itself which century it is living in. The Unknown Soldier of modern war is represented by a dead hoplite, and beside him are written up two sentences from Thucydides.
An Olympic Epigram: The Athletic Feats of Phaÿllos
Authors: Harris H. A.
Published: July 2013

The natural desire to know how the performance of Greek athletes compared with those of today has caused a great deal of attention to be paid to one of the very few pieces of evidence we possess, the anonymous epigram which speaks of a long jump of 55 feet and a discus throw of 95 feet:
How Credulous was Herodotos?
Authors: Baldwin Barry
Published: July 2013

This title is redolent of crambe repetita, and nobody is more aware JL of this fact than the present writer. Herodotos enjoyed an almost universally bad press from ancient critics for his alleged mendacity and gullibility, and his lack of the scientific spirit of historiography when compared with Thucydides. Modern critics, though more reasonable, have often tended to agree with this damning verdict, or at least to assume the superiority of Thucydides as unquestionable. A few years ago, however, the case for Herodotos was cogently stated by Arnaldo Momigliano in an inspiring article in History. I should like merely to set down and discuss again some examples of what Herodotos himself really says about his sources and methods, in the hope of assisting Momigliano's work of rehabilitation.
Copa Today
Authors: Wilkinson L. P.
Published: July 2013

TheCopa in the Virgilian Appendix is a fascinating but baffling piece. It has verbal connexions with the Eclogues, notably the second, and with Propertius' last book of elegies, notably iv. 2 (Vertumnus). Wilamowitz took it to be an expansion of an epigram, composed by some follower of Propertius. He thought the speaker to be the poet throughout. Büchner interprets the poem quite differently. He considers lines 18–19 and 21–22 to be interpolations. To begin with, they mix autumn fruits with summer (though by the same token the lines in Lycidas ordering various flowers for the ‘laureate hearse’ would be an interpolation: botanical purists have protested that they do not bloom simultaneously). They also contain the connexions with Propertius. Remove them and the poem is certainly a little more consistent; and Büchner is then able to argue that the poem was composed between Catullus and the Eclogues and known to Virgil. But who would want to interpolate in such a poem? At any rate, more evidence would be needed if the lines are to be discredited.
Beast and Man in the Third Book of Virgil's Georgics
Authors: Liebeschuetz W.
Published: July 2013

When we compare Virgil's Georgics with Varro's textbook of farming, we find that what is cast in the form of a book of instruction in the prose work is transformed into a series of pictures in the Georgics. Virgil is not content with teaching his readers how to farm, he also sets before their eyes a panorama of country life. An example of this procedure is provided by the lines on animal husbandry found in Book iii. Following the framework of Varro, by leaving out certain of Varro's categories, Virgil transforms a schematic textbook arrangement into a life story, and tells this life story with the sympathy of a poet.
Ad Lectores—Bis
Authors: Bailey Cyril
Published: July 2013

Twenty-Five years ago I was privileged to write a welcome to the infant Greece & Rome at its birth. Now I have been asked to welcome the adult journal, celebrating its Jubilee.
In Defence of Homer
Authors: Hardie Colin
Published: July 2013

In his two talks on Homer today Professor Dodds has given an excellent report on the Homeric question as it now is and presented his own moderate and pacific view with candour and persuasiveness. I am delighted to find myself in agreement with him in many questions, most of all in his appreciation of the work of Milman Parry. Milman Parry's proof that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in an oral tradition is the most important and original contribution to the Homeric question in this century, and its importance is only gradually being seen. But Milman Parry's work does not seem to me to remove the creative poet from the Iliad and Odyssey, as some scholars, including Professor Dodds, seem to think. It shows only that their originality does not consist in their language, but in the use they put it to, and in the creation of plot and character.
Marcus Crassus: A Revaluation
Authors: Cadoux T. J.
Published: July 2013

When I recall my earliest impressions of Roman history I find that M. Crassus figures in them as a not very important and rather unattractive person. In contrast with Caesar, who conquered Gaul, he was defeated by the Parthians; and he accumulated wealth in a thoroughly sordid fashion and to a sordid extent. This impression was probably derived from the standard textbooks. For example, Mommsen's Roman History says: ‘Marcus Crassus had for years been reckoned among the heads of the three-headed monster without any proper title to be so included. He served as a makeweight to trim the balance between the real regents Pompeius and Caesar, or, to speak more accurately, he threw his weight into the scale of Caesar against Pompeius. The part of a supernumerary colleague is not a very honourable one; but Crassus was never hindered by any keen sense of honour from pursuing his own advantage. He was a merchant and was open to negotiation.’
How Tacitus Came to History
Authors: Syme Ronald
Published: July 2013

It is a question worth the asking, at what season in his life a man comes to the writing of history, with what equipment for the task, and under what impulsion. Cornelius Tacitus did not discover his vocation until he had passed the age of forty. Was that late or early? Late, in the opinion of some scholars, late and almost anomalous. Gaston Boissier avowed his surprise on the first page of his Tacite, a book published just over fifty years ago, and held in merited esteem for its combination of elegance and judgement. And, more recently (in 1947), Ernst Kornemann, the last survivor of that notable company, the pupils of Theodor Mommsen, affirmed it as an axiom that Tacitus came late to history.
Thucydides, Isocrates, and the Athenian Empire
Authors: Wilson C. H.
Published: July 2013

Thucydideswas,inter alia, a political thinker of rare insight, Isocrates an avowed propagandist. Their works present several passages of apparent congruity in their assessments of the Athenian Empire; but all such appearances are illusory. For by the nature of their personalities they view their subject from entirely different standpoints, and, in citing the same facts, only underline the differences that exist between them.
The Trial of Clutorius Priscus
Authors: Shotter D. C. A.
Published: July 2013

The trial of Clutorius Priscus, as Walker says, ‘gives the first instance of a condemnation based only on trivial charges’. Even so, it is clear that the charges against Clutorius had been made possible by Augustus' extension of the law to cover famosi libelli, although Tacitus' words on that occasion (‘cognitionem de famosis libellis specie legis eius tractavit’) may indicate that no formal change in the law was made. Similarly, then, at the beginning of his reign, Tiberius was instructing Pompeius Macer to observe the spirit rather than the letter of Augustus' law. Support may be lent to this view by the fact that both Augustus and Tiberius were prompted in their actions by particular incidents which annoyed them. In the case of Clutorius, the delator may well, in view of Tiberius' absence from Rome, have been encouraged to attempt a similar rather loose interpretation of the law. But is there a ‘false emphasis’ in Tacitus' presentation of the case?
Tacitus and the Principate
Authors: Tanner R. G.
Published: July 2013

In the 1957 volume of Greece & Rome the Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford gave readers a preview of certain opinions subsequently developed in the two volumes of his study of Tacitus.
Larger than Africa and Asia?
Authors: Andrews P. B. S.
Published: July 2013

So much has already been written about Plato's myth of Atlantis that one hesitates long before adding anything more. But it can equally be argued that to make just one more suggestion can at least do no harm now.
Meander, Qui Vitae Ostendit Vitam…
Authors: Arnott W. G.
Published: July 2013

Theghost of Aristophanes still breathes over the shoulder of any body who wants to discuss, praise, or debunk Menander. Aristophanes' spiritual presence is both inevitable and irrelevant. Inevitable, because to our western world Aristophanes is the Athenian comic poetpar excellence, who achieved that miraculous synthesis of imaginative fantasy, vicious satire, elegant parody, comic invention, civic shrewdness, witty obscenity, and the evocative poetry of precise observation. But the ghost of Aristophanes is also an irritating irrelevance when one is considering Menander. An irrelevance, because Aristophanes and the genre that he and other contemporary practitioners had perfected in the last quarter of the fifth centuryB.c.were as extinct as the great auk a century later, when Menander and a new type of comedy reigned supreme if not unchallenged.
The Chorus in Oedipus Tyrannus
Authors: Vellacott P. H.
Published: July 2013

I Recently saw a film of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus containing some fine performances and some sensitive direction. One scene I particularly remember because it made clear a point which has usually been either shirked or muddled through both in production and in scholarly comment. When Oedipus was listening to locasta's speech about the oracle given to Laius, he followed her with close attention as far as the phrase ‘a place where three roads meet’. Then he started, turned away from her, and walked past her towards the camera with a brooding face. Behind him we saw locasta continuing the speech which Oedipus obviously was not hearing. The two lines 718–19 which Oedipus did not hear contain some scope for emotion on locasta's part (ἔρριψεν, and the rare tribrach in the fifth foot), but Oedipus was unaware of it, thinking about the road to Daulia, and heard nothing to remind him of what he knew very well, that he was standing on two scarred feet.