bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Structure and Dramatic Realism in Euripides'Heracles
Authors: Barlow Shirley A.
Published: September 2009

TheHeraclesas Euripides' other middle plays has not escaped censure for its faulty structure. From Swinburne's judgement of it as a ‘grotesque abortion’ one comes to Norwood who says of Gilbert Murray's view ‘A great Hellenist who is the last man to hunt for blemishes in Euripides has rightly calledHeracles“broken-backed”’, and he adds himself that the play ‘at best must be called ramshackle work’ or ‘The action falls into 2 halves visibly separate though tied together. In each instance a champion of the poet if ingenious and resolute enough can devise some statement that will force unity of action upon his recalcitrant material, but the mere fact that he must so labour refutes him’.
Timon of Athens – a Legendary Figure?
Authors: Armstrong A. MacC.
Published: September 2009

In his last days, after his defeat at Actium, M. Antonhis sojourned in solitude by the sea declaring that he was going to live like Timon, since the injuries and ingratitude which he hadsuffered from his friends had taught him, like Timon, to distrust and detest all mankind. So both Strabo (17.1.9) and Plutarch relate. Plutarch explains that this man Timon was a citizen of Athens who lived at the time of the Peloponnesian War, to judge from plays of Aristophanes and Plato Comicus, in which Timon was held up to ridicule as a surly misanthrope who repulsed all friendly advances but displayed unwonted cordiality towards the brilliant young politician Alcibiades, because he divined, and gleefully predicted, that Alcibiades would do infinite mischieftoAthens (Ant.69–70; Alc. 16). The reference to the ingratitude of Timon's friends is illumined by Lucian's dialogue Timon, or the Misanthrope, in which Timon, identified as son of Echecratides and demotes of Colyttus, has lavished his patrimony on flattering friends who abandon him once his funds are exhausted, and in consequence he has been reduced to labouring in the fields. Luckily he digs up a crock of gold, and when his former friends reappear one by one in the hope of battening on him again, he repulses them with blows and clods of earth.
Verism and the Ancestral Portrait
Authors: Jackson David
Published: September 2009

The subject of the so-called ‘veristic’ portraits of the late Republic holds a special fascination for the classical art-historian, especially on the vexatious question of the origins of the style; a question which still remains, essentially, open and unsolved. Yet despite the thoroughness with which the topic is debated, one possible influence upon the emerging veristic style, that of the ancestral portrait, continues to receive inadequate consideration.
Otho's Exhortations in Tacitus'Histories
Authors: Keitel Elizabeth
Published: September 2009

A striking feature of the speeches in Tacitus'Historiesis their responsion to one another. Previous discussions have centred round responsions of theme and argument between speeches given by different speakers. So Galba's advocacy of adoptive versus hereditary monarchy (1.15–16) is balanced by Mucianus' speech urging Vespasian to seek the throne for himself and his son (2.76–77), while Piso's attack on Otho's vicious character (1.30.1) is matched by Otho's criticisms of Piso as a deutero-Galba, harsh and avaricious (1.38.1). In this paper, I shall explore a different kind of responsion, hitherto unnoticed, between four speeches delivered by the same speaker. Tacitus binds Otho's first four speeches (1.21; 37–38; 83–84; 2.47) together through the consistent application of traditional motifs from the general's harangue before battle, although none of them is in fact acohortatio. Thetopoiof the battle harangue form a remarkably stable repertoire through ancient historiography and epic and they would have been very familiar to the ancient reader. He would, therefore, have been sensitive to any changes rung on these tropes by the author. An examination of Plutarch's versions of the speeches suggests that Tacitus may well have added these exhortation motifs to express his distinctive point of view. In closing, I shall suggest a possible antecedent for this particular technique.
Aristotle and Dido'sHamartia
Authors: Moles J. L.
Published: September 2009

Scholars have long recognized that the story of Dido in theAeneidis structured like a Greek tragedy and that several of Aristotle's concepts in thePoeticscan profitably be applied to it. Here I return to an old question, to which no answer yet given has commanded general assent: if Dido is a tragic heroine, what, in Aristotelian terms, is herhamartia?I shall argue that Aristotle's model of tragedy provides a useful blueprint for gauging both Dido's moral responsibility for her downfall and the moral and emotional response to it which Virgil expects from his readers. These matters have indeed been very extensively discussed by very distinguished scholars, but in many areas of classical literature – and nowhere more than in theAeneid– modern criticism has become so sophisticated and so attuned to the detection of subtleties such as irony, ambiguity, and ambivalence that it sometimes misses the significance of what is simple and obvious. Aristotle's model of tragedy, while not a refined critical tool, helps us to isolate some basic truths about the tragedy of Dido.
Euripidean Madness: Herakles and Orestes
Authors: Hartigan Karelisa
Published: September 2009

It would be possible to say, perhaps, that madness is a fundamental aspect of Greek tragedy, for the excessive act is committed when the tragic figure is in the grip of some passion larger than himself. Euripides, however, presents characters actually mad, acting under the influence of this affliction. The two plays I discuss here, theHeraklesand theOrestes, show two very different aspects ofμavia, and develop very disparate conclusions.
The Diekplous
Authors: Lazenby J. F.
Published: September 2009

Like ‘crossing the T’, the diekplous can sometimes seem a manoeuvre ‘more honour'd in the breach than in the observance’, for there are, perhaps, only three battles in which it is said to have been successfully used – Lade (Herodotos 6.15.2), Chios (Polybios 16.4.14), and Side (Livy 37.24.2) – and mostly what we hear about are reasons why it was not or could not be used. Nevertheless, it seems to have been regarded as at least a potentially effective tactic from at least the fifth to the second century: Thucydides has Phormio declare (2.89.8), for example, that diekploi and anastrophai ‘are the marks of bettersailing ships’ (νɛν ἄμɛινον πλɛουσν ἔργα στν), and Polybios (1.51.9) refers to the diekplous as ‘the most effective manoeuvre in sea-fighting’ (ὅφɛρ ν τῷ ναυμαχɛîν στι πρακτικᾡτατον).
The Periplous
Authors: Whitehead Ian
Published: September 2009

The naval tactic, the periplous, referred to by both Thucydides and Xenophon has yet to be convincingly identified by any scholar. πɛρπλους and πɛριπλω are widely used in their non-tactical sense to mean ‘a voyage round a stretch of coast’, and ‘to sail round’. The only passages in which we can be certain that Thucydides and Xenophon are writing about the naval tactic are not accounts of battles but passages setting the scene for naval battles, theorizing about sea warfare. The problem then is to separate and identify the tactical from the normal usage. If we study the nature of the theoretical periplous referred to by Thucydides and Xenophon, and then look for a battle manoeuvre of a similar nature, we may be able to make that distinction.
Second Reading of Pindar: The Fourth Nemean
Authors: Willcock M. M.
Published: September 2009

A few years ago, in Greece & Rome of 1978, I recommended an approach to Pindar whereby he should be seen first in his more straightforward and simple compositions, on the grounds that an initial experience of the conventions of the epinician genre in odes for relatively unimportant people would both have immediate value for the understanding of those poems and also enable the student to use that familiarity at a later stage as a background for the understanding of the exotic and untypical compositions which celebrate the victories of the politically important, especially the Sicilian tyrants to whom the first three Olympians and the first three Pythians are dedicated.
The Function of the Euripides Scene in Aristophanes‘ Acharnians
Authors: Harriott R. M.
Published: September 2009

Starkie wrote of this scene (Ach.393–489) that it was ‘perhaps the most successful piece of Aristophanic burlesque in existence'. Recently Dearden has written that the rag-borrowing scene exists only for the sake of the Euripidean parody. ‘Euripides is introduced into the play (it becomes apparent) to provide Dicaeopolis with rags in which he can plead his case before the Acharnians – though before he actually speaks to them he finds it necessary to apologize for these very rags (498). The whole scene is an obvious and elaborate parody of the spirit of Euripides’ plays and in particular of his realism in dressing his heroes in rags and it can hardly be claimed that providing the rags is the main object: they are, rather, the means of satirizing elements of his tragedies.’ I agree that Aristophanes is making fun of Euripides here, of his parentage and personality, his tragic style and dramatic technique, his presentation of a hero who is crippled or blinded and dressed in rags. But there is more to be said for, and about, the scene than that it equips Dicaeopolis and mocks Euripides.
Love Versus the Law: an Essay on Menande's ASPIS
Authors: Macdowell Douglas M.
Published: September 2009

Thus Khaireas, on being deprived of the girl he loves by a legal obstacle. Menander is renowned as an author, perhaps even the inventor, of romantic comedy; and love triumphing over obstacles is a common feature of his plays. Usually the obstacle is a personal one, such as a father who refuses to permit a marriage (as in Dyskolos), and in Aspis too the difficulties are made by an unpleasant old man, Smikrines. But he has the law on his side, as Khaireas says. This speech, and the play as a whole, presents a sharper conflict between love and the law than we find elsewhere, and I believe that Menander's purpose here is a more serious one than has generally been realized.
Aeneas' Reaction to the Defeat of Troy
Authors: Burnell Peter J.
Published: September 2009

When Aeneas wakes up and finds Troy overrun (Aen 2.298 ff.), he simply wants to die bravely, taking as many Greeks as possible with him. We are clearly meant by Virgil to consider this reaction inadequate to the realities Aeneas must face. There is enough in the structure of the poem and in Virgil's choice of words to leave us in no doubt about that. As K. F. Quinn says, ‘Aeneas’ surrender to impulse is as futile as Priam's pathetic, foolish gesture'. Aeneas says in retrospect that he did not have enough reason as he rushed into arms. As soon as he stops to think, he immediately becomes inclined to turn away from his mindless deathward career (559). Venus (589 ff.) confirms him in this new course, or returns him to it, by showing him the futility of any attempt at defence or revenge.
Juvenal's Libellus – A Farrago?
Authors: Cloud J. D. , Braund S. H.
Published: September 2009

Little attention has been paid to the implications of the form of the ancient book for literary, as opposed to textual, criticism until very recently. TheArethusavolume entitled ‘Augustan Poetry Books’ (13.1.(1980)) has begun to plug that gap and has provided the impetus for the present article. The ancient book as known to the Classical authors was very different from the vellum codex which superseded it under Christian influence in the Early Empire and in turn formed the model for the modern printed book. We wish to draw attention to one aspect of the papyrus roll which has important implications for the ancient writer and reader.
Menander's Dyskolos and Demetrios of Phaleron's Dilemma
Authors: Wiles David
Published: September 2009

Critics have been fairly unanimous in their assessment of Menander's concerns. F. H. Sandbach asserts that ‘the authors of New Comedy shut their eyes, generally speaking, to politics as a whole’. He writes of Menander that ‘the politics of his time were far too grim and frustrated to make a suitable subject for an audience that wished to be entertained on a public holiday.… It is within domestic and private life that he found the subjects for his comedy’. T. B. L. Webster agrees that recent political events were ‘too painful to be remembered in comedy’. E. W. Handley believes that in Dyskolos Menander's ‘basic point is an ethical and not a political one’; considering the possibility that ‘the thought and moral tone are politically inspired’, he dismisses the idea that Menander was a propagandist. Michael Anderson recognizes that Dyskolos, as an ‘ethical’ comedy in Aristotelian terms, must relate the behaviour of individuals to society, but he does not go on to relate the play to the particular society for which Menander wrote.
Priestess in the Text:Theano Menonos Agrylethen
Authors: Sourvinou-Inwood Christiane
Published: September 2009

Plutarch's account of the condemnation and punishment of Alcibiades by the Athenians (Plut.Alc.22.5) includes the following statement: … ἔτι κα καταρσθαι προσεϕηφίσαντο πντας ἱερεĩς κα ἱείας, ὧν μóνην φασ Θεανὼ τν Μνωνος Ἀγρυλθεν ντειπεīν πρòς τò ϕφισμα, φσκουσαν εὐχν, οὐ καταρν ἱρειαν γεγονναι.
Cornelius Nepos, ‘Atticus’ and the Roman Revolution
Authors: Millar Fergus
Published: September 2009

The biography of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos, covering the last eight decades of the Republic and written at the precise moment of the establishment of monarchy by Octavian, ought always to have been treated both as one of the best introductions to the period, and as an exposition, from a unique angle, of some of the values expressed in Roman society. But now, more than ever, there may be a place for a brief essay which attempts to bring out both some values exhibited in this particular text and the way in which these were taken up, distorted, and deployed in the propaganda of the Augustan regime. For, first, the larger background of late-Republican scholarship, antiquarianism, historiography, and biography has been fully explored by Elizabeth Rawson; second, Joseph Geiger has argued for the originality of Nepos as a writer of political biography; third, we have a major study of the ethical models which it is the purpose of the biography to hold up for emulation. Finally, John North, in an important review-article on recent works on Roman religion, has identified three significant characteristics of late-Republican religiosity: a scholarly or antiquarian perception of religious change, often seen as decline; the identification of religion as the subject of a particular form of discourse; and a shift in focus within the sphere of religion, from the community as a whole to great men within it. All three come together, as we will see below, in the passage of Nepos' biography in which he records how, some time in the 30s B.C., Atticus suggested to Octavian that the now roofless temple of Juppiter Feretrius on the Capitol should be repaired.
Temporal and Timeless in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae
Authors: Gruzelier C. E.
Published: September 2009

All works of art reflect the time in which they are created, but the mark of a good artist is that his work will transcend the limitations of his own era and thus construct a series of bridges over the gap of centuries.
Aristophanes and his Rivals
Authors: Heath Malcolm
Published: September 2009

Just as there was a canon of three tragic dramatists, so the ancient world recognized a canon of three dramatists of Athenian Old Comedy: Aristophanes, of course, but also Cratinus and Eupolis. This article is chiefly concerned with Cratinus and Eupolis — a frustrating and unsatisfactory subject. Their plays are lost, and we have to rely on meagre fragments, preserved in quotations or on papyrus, and on various kinds of indirect evidence about their work. There is therefore very little that can be said about them, and even less that can be said with confidence. Nevertheless, the attempt to say something is worthwhile, in part because of the light that it may shed on Aristophanes' surviving works if we can discern something of the context in which he was working, but also because these men were evidently masters of their craft. One word of warning is in order: despite their mastery of the comic craft, uproarious entertainment is not to be expected from a paper on Cratinus and Eupolis; if jokes that have to be explained are notoriously unamusing, what can we expect of jokes that have to be reconstructed conjecturally before they are explained?
Greece & Rome Editorial Policy
Authors: McAuslan Ian , Walcot P.
Published: September 2009

The editors wish to outline the current policy endorsed by the journal's Board of Management, in the hope that they may attract appropriate contributions from a wider range of contributors:

The journal publishes notes and articles on major authors and topics, not on the excessively technical or exotic;
Speaking of the Gods
Authors: Winterbottom Michael
Published: September 2009

In an excellent article on ‘The Philosophy of the Odyssey’ Dr. R. B. Rutherford draws renewed attention to the need to ‘distinguish between the poet's statements and the words of his characters’, and adds: ‘This principle also affects the view we take of the gods’ concern for justice in the Iliad: the Greeks, believing themselves in the right, sometimes declare that the gods must think likewise… But the scenes on Olympus which the poet allows us to witness do not generally bear this out.’
Virgil's Poetic Ambitions in Eclogue 6
Authors: Rutherford R. B.
Published: September 2009

The Eclogues, Virgil's earliest work, are also in some ways his most puzzling, and of these enigmatic poems the sixth is perhaps the most baffling. Since it clearly assumes a considerable knowledge of the contemporary literary scene, much that would have been clear at least to Virgil's fellow poets must remain opaque to us. But it would be over–pessimistic to suppose that we can make nothing of the poem; nor have modern scholars been slow to construct the most varied hypotheses. In this article I shall not be attempting a comprehensive survey of the most recent contributions even in English. Like Michael Winterbottom in his illuminating piece on Eclogues 1 and 9 (in G&R23 [1976], 55–59), I am trying to set down, as simply and concisely as possible, some considerations which, in the light of teaching and reflection, seem to me to contribute to the interpretation and enjoyment of the poem.
Aristophanes and Male Anxiety – The Defence of theOikos
Authors: Gardner Jane F.
Published: September 2009

The therapeutic value of laughter is a commonplace of psychology; it is recognized that one of the functions of comedy is to exorcize our fears by causing us to laugh at them. This is one possible meaning of Aristotle's generalization, with ‘many more than one facet’, that comedy represented people as ‘inferior’ to ‘men as they are now’ (Poetics1448a 18). So, in comedy, we should not expect to find realistic portrayals of people as they actually are, but rather stereotypes, embodying the fears and anxieties, the mild, underlying paranoia about whatmighthappen, of the audience for whom the author is writing. Aristophanes was writing for an Athenian male audience, and he had to strike a chord in them, if his plays were to be successful and win prizes. What, on the evidence of Aristophanes’ plays, were Athenian men worried about?
Aeneas: A Study in Character Development
Authors: Fuhrer Therese
Published: September 2009

Within the last fifty years, there has been a dispute among scholars as t whether or not Aeneas' character undergoes development. Did Aeneas learn anything during his trip to Italy and then change his attitude and behaviour or did he already have, from the beginning of the Aeneid, the same character and personality as he has at the end?
Nechung: a Modern Parallel to the Delphic Oracle?
Authors: Arnott Geoffrey
Published: September 2009

The definitive study of the Delphic Oracle by H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell published over thirty years ago assembled all the information then known about it and discussed the various theories both ancient and modern about its operation where reliable information was lacking. In the presentation and evaluation of these theories, however, Parke and Wormell take no account of the methods and practices of state oracles in other cultures, even though such oracles may still be functioning today at the end of the twentieth century and so be able to provide contemporary and authenticated evidence of their workings, power and credibility. In Tibet, for instance, the State Oracle has a history going back over 800 years. It was originally sited at the monastery of Nechung (‘Small Place’) some four miles west of Lhasa, operating there until the Chinese annexation of Tibet in the 1950's, when the monk who acted as the mouthpiece of the oracle followed the Dalai Lama in his flight to northern India. The Tibetan State Oracle now functions in exile at Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh some 250 miles north of Delhi. Its operations show some striking similarities to those attested for Delphi, and although the distances in time and space (not to mention the differences in cultural and religious background) obviously preclude any links between Nechung and Delphi other than those of common human experience and psychology, the parallels may at times help to shed some illumination on a few darker or confused areas in our knowledge of Delphic practice. Analogy admittedly is not argument, and the individual reader must judge for himself the applicability of the evidence.
Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' Medea
Authors: Barlow Shirley A.
Published: September 2009

The plot of the Medea concerns infidelity, a woman discarded by her husband for another younger woman and a more ‘suitable’ match. Infidelity by the husband was not an unusual occurrence amid the material of Greek myths. In Sophocles' play The Women of Trachis the heroine Deianeira, and wife of Heracles, must reluctantly take into her household Iole, a beautiful slave-girl whom her husband has taken as his concubine. Although she is made to give voice to her regret and to her jealousy, she has no thought of harming the girl or her husband. That Heracles is finally injured is not the result of an intentional act of revenge on her part but a mistake set in train by the malevolence of someone else.
Reading Performance Criticism
Authors: Goldhill Simon
Published: September 2009

Fred Astaire once remarked of performing in London that he knew when the end of a play's run was approaching when he saw the first black tie in the audience. Perhaps this is an American's ironic representation of the snobbishness of pre-War London (though he was the American who sang the top-hat, white tie and tails into a part of his personal image). Perhaps it is merely an accurate (or nostalgic) picture of the dress code of the audiences of the period. The very appeal to such a dress code, however – in whatever way we choose to read the anecdote – inevitably relies on a whole network of cultural ideas and norms to make its point. It implies tacitly what is easily recoverable from other sources about the theatre of the period: the expected class of the audience; the sense of ‘an evening's entertainment’ – attending the fashionable play of the season, with all the implications of the theatre as a place not merely for seeing but also for being seen; the range of subjects and characters portrayed on the London stage of the period; the role of London as a European capital of a world empire (with a particular self-awareness of itself as a capital); the expected types of narrative, events, and language, that for many modern readers could be evoked with the phrase ‘a Fred Astaire story’. If we want to understand the impact of the plays of Ibsen or Brecht or Osborne or Beckett, it cannot be merely through ‘dramatic techniques’, but must also take into account the social performance that is theatre. Ibsen's commitment to a realist aesthetic is no doubt instrumental to the impact of his plays, but it is because his (socially committed) dramas challenged the proprieties of the social event of theatre that his first reviewers were so hostile.
Mr and Mrs Ovid
Authors: Helzle Martin
Published: September 2009

The title of this paper will immediately make the informed reader ask himself ‘which of Ovid's three wives does he mean?’ Writing about the first two, however, would hardly be more than a paraphrase of the poet's own words:

paene mihi puero nee digna nee utilis uxor

est data, quae tempus per breue nupta fuit.

illi successit, quamuis sine crimine coniunx,

non tamen in nostro firma futura toro.

(When still almost a boy I was given a completely useless wife who was married to me for a short time. She was succeeded by a spouse who, although flawless, was still not going to remain faithful to me.)
Homer, The Poet of the Dark Age
Authors: Dickinson O. T. P. K.
Published: September 2009

This paper began as a lecture to an extramural weekend course on the Greek Dark Age, organized in Oxford by the Department of External Studies in December 1983. It was intended to suggest that the world of the Homeric poems, insofar as it had any relationship with reality, was more likely to reflect the conditions of the Dark Age than those of Mycenaean Greece, and it was born of increasing frustration at the dominance of what I will call the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation of Homer, particularly at the popular level. The recent BBC series In Search of the Trojan War has done nothing to lessen this dominance – indeed, it barely suggested that such an interpretation had been seriously challenged – and the theme of the lecture has therefore lost none of its relevance. In presenting a considerably revised version here, I have not attempted to offer an exhaustively argued and documented discussion, which would require a book, and must refer the reader to more extensive treatments of the topic for fuller details. Rather, I have decided to leave it as a rather provocative exposition of a case which deserves to be made. I have made some attempt to step outside the framework in which the discussion has often been conducted, which to my mind unduly favours the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation, but readily acknowledge that many of my arguments have been presented in similar form by others, and that some have been admitted to have force by those who in general support the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation. Given the quantity of writing on the topic, it is only too likely that I have neglected some discussions, and I have given references mainly to Homeric sources and to recent archaeological finds of relevance. Finally, I should make it clear that it is not my primary purpose to discuss the historicity of the Trojan War or of the Greek heroic legends generally, though this has often been made to depend on the supposedly Mycenaean content of the Homeric poems, at least in part.
Liberalitas – the Decline and Rehabilitation of a Virtue
Authors: Manning C. E.
Published: September 2009

By the end of the first century A.D., the teachings of the philosophers as expounded by Cicero on the practice of liberalitas had been largely accepted, often even in detail, by members of the governing class at Rome. Such would not have been the situation in the last generation of the Roman republic. This paper will seek to explain the cautious attitudes to the quality shown in the last three quarters of the first century B.C., and the declining relevance of these reservations, with the consequent rehabilitation of the virtue, in the early principate.
The Theodicy of Aeschylus: Justice and Tyranny in theOresteia
Authors: Cohen David
Published: September 2009

Along with theOedipus Tyrannus, theOresteiais perhaps the most discussed literary work of classical Greece. In recent years a substantial part of this interpretative effort has been devoted to various ongoing controversies, such as Agamemnon's guilt, or more generally, the interplay of necessity and freedom in the trilogy, but despite these numerousStreitfragenwhat is particularly striking about the criticism of theOresteiais its relative unanimity on certain fundamental questions. This will no doubt sound strange to the classical scholar, all too finely attuned to the various important particulars over which he and his colleagues differ in their reading of the plays, but it none the less seems to me to be undeniable that in their assessment of the general movement of the trilogy, most interpretations are, with some variation and shading, cut from the same cloth. By this I mean that in regard to the fundamental questions of the justice of Zeus, and the resolution of the conflicts developed in the first two plays by means of the famous trial which concludes the trilogy, most critics agree as to Aeschylus’ dramatic intention. In what follows, I will argue that this unanimity arises out of certain shared preconceptions concerning Aeschylus which, in my view, are not supported by the text. I will first discuss the main traditional views concerning Aeschylus’ presentation of what is commonly called the Justice of Zeus, and then try to demonstrate that, in reality, Aeschylus portrays a cosmic and political order which is neither moral nor just, but rather tyrannical, in the sense that its ultimate foundations are force and fear.
The Punctuation of Aeneid 1.1–7
Authors: Nussbaum G.
Published: September 2009

The Aeneid, like the Iliad, opens with a seven-line paragraph. The question arises: is this paragraph also a single sentence, consisting of the first three words arma uirumlque cano as main sentence, with all the rest forming one long relative clause of six and a half lines, introduced by qui in line 1, and organized round the one indicative verb apart from cano, namely, uenit in line 2? A glance at the editions confirms that we have a problem here. Everyone agrees on commas after cano, superum, iram, passus and of course on a full stop after Romae. The uncertainties arise after litora and after Latio. Whereas Sidgwick (1890) and Page (1894) put commas at both these points, Mynors (1969), followed both by Austin (1971) and R. D. Williams (1972) puts a comma after litora, but a semicolon after Latio, while Hirtzel (1900) puts a dash at both points. What difference does it make?
‘So Mischievous a Beaste‘? The AthenianDemosand its Treatment of its Politicians
Authors: Knox Ronald A.
Published: September 2009

I take the question in my title from a memorably worded passage in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch'sLife of Demosthenes26, where Plutarch is describing Demosthenes' exile in 323 B.C. Demosthenes was now 60 and after more than 30 years of active participation in Athenian political life, he had been condemned by an Athenian court for taking bribes from Harpalus, the late treasurer of Alexander the Great, who had fled to Athens with 700 talents. Demosthenes had been fined 50 talents by the court, and had been put in prison when unable to pay. But he had escaped from prison and now went into voluntary exile. North' Plutarch goes on:
In Defence of Catullus' Dirty Sparrow
Authors: Hooper Richard W.
Published: September 2009

Poliziano's theory that the sparrow of Lesbia in Catullus 2 and 3 is none other than the phallus of the poet has not fared well in recent years. H. D. Jocelyn has mounted a spirited attack against it, taking most effective aim against the arguments of E. N. Genovese and G. Giangrande, whose articles, as he points out, ‘seem to have no nineteenth or twentieth-century predecessors’. This attack has been facilitated by the tendency of both Genovese and Giangrande to dilute their arguments with extravagant claims. Thus Genovese would have the passer stand not only for the poet's phallus, but for an actual pet of Lesbia, a fascinum charm around her neck (with bells on it!), and a human rival, possibly named Passer, as well. Similarly, Giangrande spends too much of his time attempting to attach poem 2b to 2 by means of a tortuous interpretation of the Atalanta myth, just as he develops a convoluted argument about the tension between topoi of Totenklage um Tiere and impotence at the end of 3. Even Jocelyn gets too far away from the poems themselves with detailed examinations of masturbation and fellatio among the ancients (pp. 429–33) and a careful footnote on the missionary position (pp. 433 n. 65). There are only two ways to establish the probability of an obscene allegorical interpretation of Catullus 2 and 3: to examine the usage of passer in the poems themselves, and to see whether Catullus' imitators in antiquity – especially Martial – were aware of and exploited Catullus' double entendre. In defending Poliziano's theory, this paper will argue these two points in more detail than they have been treated in the past.
Illusion and Reality in Latin Topographical Writing
Authors: Horsfall Nicholas
Published: September 2009

From Cluverius and Holstenius, through Nissen and Hülsen to the distinguished contributors to theQuaderni dell' Istituto di Topografia antica, the study of Italian topography has achieved solid progress, sometimes with important consequences for military and economic history. New concords between battles and battlefields, between nameless sites and siteless names, continue to be proposed and the steady popularity of a subject involving archaeology, epigraphy, literary texts, and country walks is readily understandable: we must all be grateful for the very real improvements which continue to be made to our map of central Italy.
Thersites in the Iliad
Authors: Postlethwaite N.
Published: September 2009

The character of Thersites, as presented by Homer in Iliad 2, has received an almost universally bad press, typical of which are the comments of F. A. Paley: ‘one of the turbulent and insolent malcontents in an army, who use their best efforts to misrepresent the authorities and to incite sedition in others’. Paley's view is typical both in the unsympathetic view it presents of Thersites and in its tendency to see him as representative of a whole genre of subversive and recalcitrant soldiery. My concern in this paper is to examine Thersites within the context of the Iliad alone, without any regard for his treatment by subsequent authors, and to attempt to explain his portrayal solely in terms of the dramatic situation at the beginning of the Iliad. My contention will be that the episode of Thersites is an important element in Homer's introductory purpose of presenting the backcloth against which the poem's theme, the menis is acted out.
Livy's Death Notices
Authors: Pomeroy Arthur J.
Published: September 2009

quotiens magni alicuius  mors ab historicis narrata est, totiens fere consummatio totius vitae et quasi funebris laudatio redditur. hoc, semel aut iterum a Thucydide factum, item in paucissimis personis usurpatum a Sallustio, T. Livius benignus omnibus magnis viris praestitit; sequentes historici multo id effusius fecerunt.
Cassius Dio's Speech of Agrippa: A Realistic Alternative to Imperial Government?
Authors: Mckechnie Paul
Published: September 2009

In Dio's debate on constitutions, set in 29 B.C., the speech favouring democracy occupies chapters 2–13 of book 52, and the speech urging monarchy runs from 14–40: most of this speech, indeed the main content of the whole book, is a detailed set of proposals for the administration of the Roman Empire, written with a view to being applicable in the writer's own time, more than two hundred years after the dramatic date of the debate. the dramatic date of the debate. Millar calls these chapters ‘a political pamphlet’, and suggests that Dio abandoned an earlier plan to fit them in to book 52. There is evidence, though, that the book was planned in its present form, but for the lacuna between chapters 13 and 14, and that the relatively brief speech of Agrippa was composed not as part of what was intended to be a balanced debate (balanced in terms of length, with point answering point in the rival speeches), but as a brief preliminary piece in explicit and implicit contrast and opposition to the ideology of the speech which forms the main thesis of the book; in a coherently planned debate, Dio states first the case for democracy in order to provoke the reader to question whether it could have been put into action – whether it is realistic.
The Elderly in Classical Antiquity
Authors: Finley M. I.
Published: September 2009

We begin with an obvious but not simple question: Who are, or were, the elderly? There is, of course, a vague biological boundary-line, but the ‘concept of ageing is a statistical one, and no valid means ofmeasuring it in the individual are available'. Statistically, today as in antiquity, the agreed points at which to draw the line in general terms seem to be either sixty or sixty-five. In concrete terms, however, there are many lines, determined by social, economic, and political considerations, for which biology provides no more than crude limits. For example, in England today a woman qualifies as an old-age pensioner at sixty, a man at sixty-five. Retirement is normal in the civil service at sixty, compulsory in the universities at sixty-five or sixty-seven, depending on a vote taken in individual institutions more than twentyfive years ago, but in Scotland at seventy. Members of parliament and until recently judges, in contrast, are allowed to go on until they drop if they so choose, and many do so choose. That these variations are directly linked with political influence, pensions, the desire to spread employment, access to lucrative post-retirement employment, ideology, and so on, not with biology, is self-evident.
Imitation and the Poetry of Virgil
Authors: Lee Guy
Published: September 2009

Imitation, in the sense of the conscious adaptation and transference of an idea, a phrase, or a passage, from one poetical context to another, was a recognized procedure of ancient poetry, as it still is of modern. It is however a difficult art and on occasion, as we shall see, the re-working of alien material, though it may be poetically successful, is none the less achieved at some cost of clarity, accuracy, or literal truth.
Princesses and Others in Tacitus
Authors: Syme Ronald
Published: September 2009

The later books of theAnnalsexhibit a sharp divergence in structure and emphasis from the first hexad. Following upon Seianus and the sombre aftermath of Seianus in Book 6, the new epoch gave Tacitus welcome relief, with scope for colour and variety — and for dramatic effects of a different kind. The women of the Palace are on high show; and episodes like the follies and the fall of Messallina and the end of Nero's mother are accorded a treatment which some critics find lavish and disproportionate.
Catullus'Passer as Passer
Authors: Jones Julian Ward
Published: September 2009

Poem 2 of theLiber Catullianus– the first of thepasserpoems – was probably the poet's most famous piece. The poem presents a charming and fascinating picture of a Roman matron who is said by the poet to divert her mind from her passion by playing with her pet bird. Of this seemingly innocent picture a peculiar esoteric interpretation was offered in the time of the Italian Renaissance. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Florentine scholar Angelo Poliziano suggested that Catullus had woven an obscene allegory into his poem, and he supported his argument by reference to the sixth epigram of Martial's eleventh book. This epigram is a vulgar poem that ends with the words ‘passerem Catulli’. It will figure prominently in our discussion below. Poliziano only hinted at an indecent meaning. The Dutch scholar, Isaac Voss, in hisObservationson Catullus published in 1684, makes the matter explicit. The Greeks, he alleges, often used the names of birds to refer to a man's penis, and similarlypasserin poem is ambiguous and at one level represents the poet's penis. By this obscene interpretation, the basic allegory of the poem would be something like this. Lesbia has great familiarity with the poet's male member. She delights in playing with it and in this way seems to satisfy her erotic impulses. The poet by means of similar play would like to take similar satisfaction for himself. He cannot because masturbation gives him no pleasure. According to Voss, this allegory continues in poem 3, the famous dirge for the deadpasser. Here, he declares, we should suppose that the poet wishes to represent himself as ‘confectum et exhaustum lucta Venerea et funerata… ea parte quae virum facit’ (‘worn out and exhausted by a physical exertion erotic and deadly in regard to that part which makes a person a man’).
The Moralizing Message of the Senatus Consultum de cn. Pisone Patre
Authors: Cooley Alison
Published: September 2009

The recently published senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre provides the opportunity not only to explore afresh an episode in Tiberius' reign recounted by Tacitus, but also to reassess several aspects of political life during the early Principate. This decree outlines the Senate's judgement of the conduct of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso who had been accused of maiestas for seditious activities in the East, but had committed suicide before the conclusion of his trial. The document adds a considerable number of details to those recorded by Tacitus. Quite apart from its main theme, the text has shed light on such thorny problems as the definition of imperium maius, and the relationship between the fiscus and aerarium The aim of this article, however, is not to investigate such matters, but to consider the rhetorical language with which the Senate treats the whole affair.
A (Hi)story of Illyria
Authors: Wallace Jennifer
Published: September 2009

Throughout history, little has been known about the land of Illyria. ‘As ”savages” or “barbarians” on the northern periphery of the classical world’, the historian John Wilkes writes, ‘even today the Illyrians barely make footnotes in most versions of ancient history, and more often than not they are simply ignored.’ Shut in by mountains, north of the betterknown Greece and covering roughly the area of modern-day Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia, Illyria has remained a closed world to outsiders, dismissed as barbarian in ancient times and remembered in more recent centuries only as an unexplored outpost of the Ottoman or Hapsburg Empires. As a result, Illyria has become a place of mystery, the site of myth and legend as much as of historical civilization-building or battles, a by-word for the realm of the imagination. Oscar Wilde summed up the popular association of Illyria with fiction when, in a review of an amateur production of Twelfth Night, he wrote with characteristic succinctness: ‘Where there is no illusion there is no Illyria.’
LINEAGE AND SOCIETY IN PRECOLONIAL UGANDA
Authors: STEPHENS RHIANNON
Published: September 2009

This article examines the changing nature of patrilineality in east-central Uganda from the sixth century. While traditional anthropological models of lineality have been largely dismissed in recent scholarship, the problem remains that patrilineages and patriclans have played important roles in the lives of the Ganda, Gwere, Soga and their North Nyanza ancestors. By carefully examining changes and continuities in the form and content of patrilineality it becomes possible to understand it as historically contingent. In North Nyanza, patrilineal descent was the norm for inheritance and for household formation, but relationships formed through mothers were also crucial in the creation of new communities and in the legitimation of political power. This was not static: as communities negotiated their changing circumstances, so they adapted the form of their particular patrilineality to serve their needs.
A LASTING STORY: CONSERVATION AND AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICES IN COLONIAL MALAWI
Authors: GREEN ERIK
Published: September 2009

Historians have written extensively about agricultural extension services and the linkages between colonial administrations and rural communities in British Africa. Most studies argue that it is possible to identify a qualitative shift in strategies between the inter- and the post-war periods. The former is characterized by modest attempts at promoting soil conservation, while the latter is described as a period when colonial governments in British Africa – guided by scientific knowledge – tried to transform peasant agriculture to increase production. This article questions this division by using colonial Malawi as a case. It reveals that the strategies and intensity of agricultural extension services changed over time but that the aim of intervention, i.e. to combat soil erosion, remained the focal point throughout the colonial period. This shows that it is important to distinguish between strategies and scale of intervention on the one hand and their aims and contents on the other. Changes in the former took place within the conservation paradigm. Additionally, this article reveals that agricultural extension services were directed by colonial officials' perceptions about African farmers rather than detailed empirical knowledge about existing farming methods.
Prevalence and intensity of Paramphistomum daubneyi infections in cattle from north-eastern Algeria
Authors: Titi A. , Mekroud A. , Sedraoui S. , Vignoles P. , Rondelaud D.
Published: September 2009

Parasitological investigations on ruminal paramphistomosis were carried out in 2033 cattle over a 14-month period in three Algerian slaughterhouses to determine the prevalence and intensity of this disease. The prevalence of infection varied from different slaughterhouses (1.2% at El Khroub, 7.5% at Ferdjioua and 12.1% at Jijel). The worm burden was significantly higher in cattle from El Khroub than for those slaughtered in the other two sites (a mean of 984.1 parasites compared with 87.5 and 140.7 at Jijel and Ferdjioua, respectively). No significant correlation between prevalence, intensity of infection and age of cattle was noted. Overall, females were significantly more infected than males, whereas the sex of animals was independent of worm burdens recovered in slaughtered cattle. The climatic conditions of provinces in which the slaughterhouses were located (a more temperate climate for Jijel and semiarid conditions for the other two provinces) may partly explain variations noted in prevalence and intensity of infection. The present results will contribute to our understanding of the epidemiology of Paramphistomum daubneyi infections in north-eastern Algeria.
Trichinella nativain Iceland: an example ofTrichinelladispersion in a frigid zone
Authors: Skírnisson K. , Marucci G. , Pozio E.
Published: September 2009

In most Arctic and subarctic regions,Trichinella nativais a common zoonotic pathogen circulating among wild carnivores. The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is one of the most important reservoirs forT. nativain frigid zones. In Iceland,Trichinellainfection has never been detected in the local wildlife, despite the presence of one of the host species, the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus). In 2008, one of two polar bears that had swum to Iceland's coast was found to have been infected withTrichinellasp. (8.5 larvae/g in the tongue, 6.8 larvae/g in the masseter and 4.4 larvae/g in the diaphragm); the larvae were identified asT. nativa. This is the second report ofTrichinellainfection in polar bears that reached the Icelandic coast. In the present work, we describe this case of infection and discuss the epidemiological features that have allowedT. nativato spread in Arctic regions.