bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: November 2023

This is a major study of conceptions of selfhood and personality in Homer, Greek tragedy, and philosophy. The focus in on norms of personality in Greek psychology and ethics. The key thesis is that, to understand Greek thinking of this type, we need to counteract the subjective and individualistic aspects of our own thinking about the self. The book defines an 'objective-participant' conception of personality, symbolized by the idea of the person as an interlocutor in a series of types of psychological and ethical dialogue. The book is both an original contribution to the history of ideas of personality and the self and also offers sustained analysis and new interpretations of a number of important topics in Greek philosophy and literature. These topics include: Homeric decision-making; the problematic hero in Homer's Iliad and Greek tragedy; monologues of self-division in Greek poetry; the tripartite division of the soul and ethical education in Plato's Republic; Aristotle's ideas about 'being yourself' and meeting the claims of others; Greek philosophical thinking about what it means to be fully 'human' or 'divine'. The book is shaped as a response to recent work in the philosophy of mind, ethics, personhood, as well as in classical scholarship. Clear and non-technical, with all Greek translated, the book brings out the continuing importance of ancient Greek thinking for contemporary study of ideas of personality and selfhood.
Making up Your Mind
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: November 2023

As a point of access to the issues of this book, I use the question of how to interpret Homeric decision-making. This is a well established topic of scholarly debate; it is also one in which the crucial importance of the psychological and ethical assumptions brought to the topic has been underlined by some recent contributions.1 I develop the latter point in a way which brings out some of the aspects of the contrast between subjective-individualist and objective-participant conceptions of the person. I take the comments on Homeric deliberation by Bruno Snell and A. W. H. Adkins as expressing certain leading features of post-Cartesian and post Kantian thinking about the self and personhood. I note some of the recent criticisms of that way of thinking by philosophers of mind and ethics, particularly those which are linked with a favourable re appraisal of Greek thought.
Being Yourself and Meeting the Claims of Others
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: November 2023

In this chapter, I take up, in connection with a number of Greek philosophical theories, especially Aristotle's, a general question which raises similar issues to that raised by Plato's presentation of the philosopher-rulers' attitude to re-entering the cave. The question is how to describe, and to resolve, the conflict between pursuing your own happiness and meeting the ethical claims of other people.
Being a Person and Being Human
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: November 2023

In this final chapter, I take up a topic which enables me to examine in a more general way the contrast between subjective-individualist and objective-participant conceptions of personality, and to clarify the way in which this contrast has informed the more specific discussion in previous chapters. This topic also provides a way of pursuing the question of the relationship between Greek and modern thinking, which has formed a fundamental element in my argument from the start of the book. In addition, it serves as a means of high lighting other questions that could be pursued usefully in the light of the conceptual and interpretative framework developed here.
Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution
Authors: Vaggione Richard Paul
Published: November 2023

The study of 'Arianism' has proved one of the abiding fascinations and the abiding problems of early Christian studies in recent years. In this book Richard Vaggione addresses the definition of the doctrine and why it generated such intense social turmoil by examining the standpoint of one of 'Arianism's' principal supporters, Eunomius of Cyzicus. Eunomius' life is used as a framework within which to discuss changes in the doctrine of the Trinity. His origins, personal history, education, theology, and works are discussed in detail, as well as his unique philosophy of language. Dr Vaggione examines the relationship of Eunomius and his movement to the non-Nicene movement, and considers the meaning of the liturgical and other changes he made. He also traces the fortunes of the Eunomian following are traced through its final disappearance in the sixth or seventh century. One of the principal themes of the book is the nature of doctrinal change, especially the contribution of ordinary people, including those of women and ascetics. Richard Vaggione argues that the process of doctrinal change is not exclusively the task of the religious 'professional' but of the Christian community as a whole, involving a prolonged dialogue between nave and pulpit leading finally to a new doctrinal and devotional synthesis.
Ariomaniac
Authors: Vaggione Richard Paul
Published: November 2023

Located in what could then be reckoned the centre of the inhabited world and regarded by many as the most populous city of all,Alexandria in the second quarter of the fourth century could still provide its visitors with abundant justification for the superlatives of previous centuries:‘world’s greatest emporium’,‘cross-roads of the world’,‘all-nurturing city inhabited by every kind of human being’.For while it had suffered heavily in the troubles of the previous century, and under Aurelian had lost not only the glittering palace quarter of the Ptolemies but the original site of the Great Library,it was still arguably the empire’s greatest city, outranked in political importance only by Rome, and, in the east, by the upstart new capital on the Bosporus.
Logic Chopper
Authors: Vaggione Richard Paul
Published: November 2023

One of the things which most astonished almost all the participants in these controversies was the sheer inability of their adversaries to understand the plain meaning of scripture.Indeed, the very fact that so much else was held in common made their disagreement on this all the more puzzling—foes who had begun as members of a single eucharistic assembly,and who continued to share a common liturgical inheritance,found themselves bitterly divided over the interpretation of a book they regarded as ‘the common possession of all’.Their problem was neither canonical nor textual.
Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology
Authors: Healy John F
Published: November 2023

The Elder Pliny's Natural History is essentially a work of reference providing a wide-ranging account of human mores and achievement in the arts and sciences in the first century AD. It influenced the content and character of subsequent technical literature, but errors in transmission of the manuscripts led to undeserved criticism from the time of Niccolo Leoniceno, the late fifteenth-century Italian humanist. Pliny's work is here re-examined for the first time since the 1920s. Modern experiments, simulating the techniques described by Pliny, and an in-depth study of his development of a technical language, confirm his unique contribution to our knowledge of science in early imperial Rome. Pliny does not, in general, understand the principles underlying the phenomena he observes but makes a significant input - especially in the fields of crystallography, chemistry, and physics as well as of the applied sciences - from which beginnings those scientific disciplines would evolve many centuries later. Ironically, Pliny's scientific curiosity led to his death in AD 79 while observing the eruption of Vesuvius at close quarters.
Pliny’s Life and Career
Authors: Healy John F
Published: November 2023

Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus, was born in late AD 23, or early 24, during the principate of Tiberius, a period of great political unrest, mutiny within the legions, and rivalries in the struggle for imperial power.
Science in the Vatural History
Authors: Healy John F
Published: November 2023

A recently published diagram, illustrating ‘Field of Research’ classifications,1 provides a useful framework within which to examine Pliny’s contribution to the Natural Sciences (as well as to the Social Sciences and the Humanities).
Metals
Authors: Healy John F
Published: November 2023

A metal possesses all, or many, of the following properties: it is solid (except for mercury)1 at ordinary temperatures, opaque, a good reflector of light when polished, and a good, or fairly good, conductor of heat. When melted it solidifies as a compact mass of crystals generally invisible to the eye but clearly visible in metallographic analyses.
Technology
Authors: Healy John F
Published: November 2023

Some advances in technology in the ancient world were attributed to accidental discoveries, among them the basic metallurgical processes. Lucretius, in a well-known passage (DRN 5. 1255—64), ascribes the rise of civilization to its acquisition of the technology needed for smelting and casting of metals.1 Similarly Pliny (36. 191 ff.) records the traditional account of the origin of glass.2
Pliny and the Environment
Authors: Healy John F
Published: November 2023

It has often been claimed—but more often implied—that Pliny’s moral diatribe against luxury is the result of an uncontrolled, spontaneous outburst, reflecting little more than the declamations against luxury he had learnt in the Schools.
Structure and Cohesion
Authors: Hutchinson G O
Published: November 2023

We turn now to explore directly and on a larger scale the question of form which has already concerned us on a smaller. The audacity, and the cohesion, which we have seen there also appear here. In the past this literature has often been accused of devoting its attention chiefly to the individual episode, or even the individual sentence, and of disregarding wider entities. This view continues to find very distinguished adherents. More positive judgements are now often delivered on particular authors, frequently on the basis of detailed and rewarding study. Yet in justly stressing how works cohere, scholars perhaps fail to stress sufficiently how bold and strange these works can be. It is not enough to attack disunity or defend unity: unity of one kind (say in theme) can effectively be combined with disunity of another (say in plot), and rupture and excursion can be positively valued, for their daring or their expressive force or both.
The Gods in Prose and in Lucan
Authors: Hutchinson G O
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we shall concentrate chiefly on Seneca, whose works dwell far more on the divine than any other writer’s in prose.By considering some particular passages, we shall be able, among other things, to savour the difference of his philosophical writing on the the divine from writing on the divine in poetry. We could have made that difference seem smaller, at least theologically, by concentrating on certain types of passage in poetry, and by taking less interest in play; our purpose, however, is not to arrive at an absolute measurement of the interval but to glimpse characteristic differences between the genres in scope, atmosphere, world, and manner. Many divergences are obvious, but less simple than they appear. From the harmony and theological optimism of Seneca’s explicitly Stoic universe polytheistic discord, and sinister or entertaining anthropomorphism, utterly disappear.
The Work of Seleukos Nikator
Authors: Grainger. John D
Published: November 2023

By the time Seleukos came to Syria as its ruler, in 301, that land had been under Macedonian rule for a full generation, since its conquest by Alexander in 333. Alexander had occupied it without opposition in the exploitation of his victory at Issos. The only substantial political authority in Syria at the time, apart from the Persian governor, had been the city-kingdom of Arados, which had been speedily surrendered to him as he approached; in return he allowed the kingship to continue. A detachment of Macedonian troops was sent to Thapsakos on the Euphrates to block any Persian attempt to recover Syria and to prepare two bridges to allow Alexanders army to cross over in pursuit of further conquests.
The Kings and the Cities
Authors: Grainger. John D
Published: November 2023

The evolution of the Syrian cities in terms of size and the gradual development of their hierarchy was not simply a matter of geographical factors working themselves out to an inevitable conclusion. There was nothing definitive about the process. After all, the artificiality of the urban system in Syria. during Seleukos’ reign was such that the ‘natural’ evolution of the system would need to contend with the determination of Seleukos’ heirs and successors to maintain the system unaltered. The foundation of the cities—most of them—had been a royal act, and the royal will was one of the factors which geography could not take account of.
The Classical Athenian Democracy
Authors: Stockton David
Published: November 2023

The Greeks had a word for it, and the word was demokratia, a compound of demos (`the people') and kratos (`power or rule'). But it is significant that the first occurrence of the word in surviving Greek literature is in Herodotus' History, which he was writing during the third quarter of the fifth century BC. It was perhaps coined in the period following the reforms of the last decade of the sixth, which later won fame for Cleisthenes as `the man who gave the Athenians their democracy'. In 431 BC Pericles could claim that the Athenian system of government was unique, and an example to every other society in Greece. It is the object of this book to explain to the modern reader what the institutions of the classical Athenian democracy were, how they worked, and what assumptions underlay them. It is principally concerned with the fully developed democracy of the post-Ephialtic period; but a chapter is devoted to tracing the broad development of the Athenian constitution from the reforms of Solon in the early sixth century to those of Ephialtes in the late 460s, so that the developed democracy can be seen in its proper historical context. Stockton incorporates recent important work by historians, epigraphists, and archaeologists into his study, which is easily accessible to the sixth-form and first-year undergraduate student as well as interested general readers since all Greek is translated, difficult terminology explained, and full suggestions for further reading made in endnotes to each chapter.
Terminology
Authors: Dasen Véronique
Published: November 2023

The most informative text is the letter of congratulation sent by King Pepy II (c. 2246-2152 bc) to Harkhuf, a high official who had successfully led a fourth trading expedition to the southern kingdom of Yam. Harkhuf had the king’s letter carved beside the accounts of his journeys on the facade of his tomb in the necropolis of Aswan.2 We read that he brought back many precious exotic products, such as incense, ebony, and ivory 3. He also had an unusual present from the land of Akhtiu, ‘of the horizondwellers(?)’, a small man called a ‘dng of the god’s dances’, whom the king longed to see: You have said in this dispatch of yours that you have brought all kinds of great and beautiful gifts, which Hathor mistress of Imaau has given to the ka of King Neferkare, may he live forever.
Iconographic Conventions
Authors: Dasen Véronique
Published: November 2023

Iconography reflects the sensitivity of the Greeks to the human body, its proportions, its integrity. Greek artists, like Egyptian, had little interest in showing human physical anomalies. Monsters are usually composed of human and animal elements otherwise normal when looked at separately. The hundred eyes of Argos are neatly designed and scattered over a well-proportioned body, Geryon has three normal upper bodies, and apart from his single eye, Polyphemos has no conspicuous malformation; even the Giants are muscular naked men, seldom strikingly tall, only sometimes distinguished by a peculiar bushy hairstyle.
General Conclusion
Authors: Dasen Véronique
Published: November 2023

This study has shown that in ancient Egypt and Greece, dwarfs had a specific place in the socio-religious system of the community. They were regarded as full humans, and perhaps also as lifelong children. Their physical abnormality was accepted and valued because of religious associations specific to each culture. In Egypt, dwarfs were regarded as manifestations of the sun-god Re and of Horus; in Greece, they were equated with satyrs and included in the world of Dionysos. These associations are reflected in the different models used to depict them in each culture: in Egypt their connections with youthful solar deities, such as Horus, are suggested by their ideal youthful faces and flattopped heads, while in Greece snub noses, half-bald heads, and large genitals stress their resemblance to satyrs.
Commentary
Authors: Scourfield J H D
Published: November 2023

Ad Heliodorum Epitaphium Nepotiani: though epitaphium dues not appear in the title in all the MSS, it is Jerome’s own word for the letter; cf. 1. 2, epist. 77. 1. 1, and esp. epist. 112. 3. 2, amid discussion of the proper title of De viris illustrihus: ’epitaphium autem propne scribitur mortuorum, quod quidem in dormitione sanctae memoriae Nepotiani presbyteri olim fecisse me novi’.
The Version iuxta Hebraeos and the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim
Authors: Kamesar Adam
Published: November 2023

When did the first volumes of the translation from the I-lebre,v begin to appear? This question may be ans,vered on the basis of the following chronological data. From Ep. 48(49). 4, we learn that Jerome had already translated 16 books of the Prophets ( = 3 major Prophets, 12 minor Prophets, and Daniel), Samuel and Kings, and Job. Nautin has recently dated Ep. 48 to early 394. In De viris illustribus 134, Jerome states that his versions of the Prophets and the Psalms had already been translated into Greek by Sophronius. Vir. ill. ,vas probably ,vrittcn in the spring of 393. lt is also well known that Jerome employs his versions of the minor prophets in his commentaries on five of them. These commentaries were composed during the winter of 392-3. In short, by early 394 Jerome had completed, according to a calculation based on page numbers of modern editions of the :v1asoretic Text, roughly 55 per cent of the Hebrew Bible. On the basis of this fact and the information from Vir. ill., it must be concluded that the first translations based on the Hebrew date back to at least 392 if not 391. For as F.
Jerome and his Jewish Sources
Authors: Kamesar Adam
Published: November 2023

It has long been recognized that rabbinic sources play a major role in QHG. As early as in 1861, Rahmer published his study of QHG, in which he collected parallels to Jerome’s comments from the rabbinic corpus. His study was supplemented by that of L. Ginzberg. However, these works remain very much collections of parallels rather than attempts to understand the function of rabbinic sources in Jerome’s philological system. Among patristic scholars it has also been acknowledged that in composing QHG Jerome had the intention of introducing the Latin world to rabbinic exegesis. However, this objective has been seen as separate from the ‘other’ objective of the work, the defence of the Hebrew text. F. Cavallera terms the work ‘hybrid’, and A. Penna regards the rabbinic material as merely ornamental. Bardy puts forward a similar view, claiming that while Jerome is quite serious about the Hebrew text, he is collecting rabbinic traditions without accepting them for himself. His motive would therefore be curiosity. Such views, in which Jerome’s presentation of rabbinic material is seen as distinct from the defence of the Hebrew text, result in an indirect deprc:ciation of the textual character of QHG. The idea that Jerome is collecting rabbinic views for the sake of curiosity or ostentation is not altogether without support.
Idea- Theory
Authors: Rutherford Ian
Published: November 2023

The most complex of these theories is the one in Peri Ideon, and its author probably wrote it in awareness of the other two. Peri Ideon belongs to a group of five rhetorical works known as the Corpus Hermogenicum. They are Progumnasmata (Elementary Exercises), Peri Staseon (On Stases or On Argumentative Stances), Peri Heureseos (On Invention), Peri Ideon, and Peri Methodou Deinotetos (On the Technique of Power). Hermogenes claims in Peri Ideon 378. 18 ff.) to have written works with titles corresponding to the last four of these, so the first is presumably a later addition. There is no reason to think that the second and fourth are not correctly attributed, but the third and fifth are probably spurious.1
The Position of Poetry
Authors: Rutherford Ian
Published: November 2023

Another implication of the reading list concerns the pos1t10n Hermogenes assigns to poetry. In the earlier lists poetry always comes first, and Homer is said to be the source of all literature. There is partly no doubt a reflex of a general idea that poetry is a more important art than prose. There is also the historical view that prose develops from poetry. But it is also clear that rhetoricians believed that knowledge of poetry was of great importance in building up a stylistic facility. In transferring poetry from first position in the list to last, Hermogenes is perhaps intending to rebut this view, suggesting that poetry is only of limited value in rhetorical training. The last place is not necessarily a dishonourable one (one should perhaps bear in mind the structure of the hypothetical Hellenistic poetry list referred to earlier in which the last place seems to have been reserved for the poet whom one Hellenistic critic at least regarded as the second greatest writer of Greek literature), but it probably is meant to be here, especially since poetry is not even a major category on its own and is discussed relatively briefly in comparison with the prose genres.
Introduction
Authors: Forbes Irving P M C
Published: November 2023

Metamorphosis has always been considered one of the most fantastic of mythical motifs, and there were attempts to explain it even in ancient writers. Transformation stories figure prominently in the works of the rationalizers Palaephatus and Heraclitus, where they were seen as misunderstandings of everyday events, or as springing from metaphors or exaggerations. Sometimes the stories are taken more seriously; in particular those stories which were recounted in the Homeric poems were seen as examples of philosophical allegory. Proteus, for instance, was explained as the original undifferentiated substance which contained all the forms. For Augustine stories of metamorphosis presented special theological problems: these changes could not have been worked by a god, and yet devils have no power to change or create physical substance. Transformations are therefore illusions caused by devils.
Homer
Authors: Wright G M , Jones P V , Jones P V
Published: November 2023

This book translates into English ten influential articles and extracts from books about Homer written in German over the past fifty years. The work of prestigious scholars such as Wolfgang Schadenwaldt, Karl Reinhardt, and Hermann Fraenkel are represented. These key works, which cover such topics as similes, the end of the Odyssey, the adventures of Odysseus, the meeting of Hector and Andromache, ring-composition, the Telemachy, and Homeric social life will now become easily accessible for the first time to teachers and scholars in the English-speaking world. An accompanying introduction develops the arguments in the light of contemporary scholarly concerns.
Introduction
Authors: Jones P V
Published: November 2023

Strasburger (pp. 47-70) is interested in the essentially agrarian nature of Homeric society and the way in which the military world of the hero is integrated into it (see further Redfield 1983; Griffin 1986b). But as Strasburger was well aware, the sociology of a literaryarte fact looks like a contradiction in terms: a book is not a society. At the same time, one cannot avoid the question of the extent to which the world of the poems at any moment reflects (a) society or constructs a society or is simply in the business of constructing itself (that formulation is far too neat, but we have to start somewhere) and each discipline will bring its own priorities with it (for a good survey of the archaeological problem and an attempt to correlate archaeological ‘layers ‘ with ‘layers ‘ of the Homeric epics, see Sherratt 1990). Historians will look for history, sociologists for sociology, folklorists for folklore, mythographers for myth, oralists for orality, and so on.
The Sociology of the Homeric Epics
Authors: Strasburger Hermann
Published: November 2023

The age of Homer has been called The Greek Middle Ages ‘ by several renowned interpreters of Greek culture and history. Points of comparison with the Germanic and Romance Middle Ages can indeed be found on the small and the large scale. Just consider the parallel which lies in the conquest of a high culture now past its best by the assaults of a fresh and talented immigrant nation, and the ensuing period of pacification and ethnic cleansing, fusion, and settling down. Here, as there, we find the same vigorous, non-literate perspective on life, the prerequisite soil where great heroic epic flourishes.
The Inheritance of Land
Authors: Rowlandson Jane
Published: November 2023

In Roman Egypt, as in the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world, property was transferred from one generation to the next primarily through succession by close kin. The law of intestate inheritance prescribed general rules of succession on death; but most people, both men and women, were legally entitled to draw up a written will modifying or overriding the intestate inheritance rules. The transmission of inherited property need not take place only at the death of the previous owner. Parents could choose to divide their property among their children during their own lifetime. Again, a written document was required for such a division to have legal validity. Unlike Roman and Greek law, Egyptian law traditionally did not employ a distinct type of document for making individual inheritance provisions; instead marriage contracts often included provisions for the ultimate disposal of the couple’s property to their heirs. By the Roman period, the interaction between Egyptian and Greek custom had resulted in similar provisions being incorporated in marriage contracts written in Greek. The practice of providing daughters with a dowry also, of course, transmitted parents’ wealth to the younger generation before their own death. This chapter must therefore encompass not only succession on death, but also how this relates to the various other means, especially on the occasion of marriage, by which property was conveyed to future generations.
Miasma
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

Anyone who has sampled a few of the most commonly read Greek texts will have encountered pollution. In tragedy, the plague at the opening of the Oedipus Tyrannus is caused by it, it precipitates Creon’s repentance in the Antigone, while Orestes in the Oresteia, although he is driven to the matricide by the fear of one pollution, is seized by another after performing it. In history, it plays, perhaps, a larger part than any other religious motif in the austere Thucydides. A Greek state in the fifth century, we learn from him, might attribute a natural disaster to a pollution it had incurred, and he shows us the Athenians expelling the Delians from their island to ensure the purity of this religious centre. In the fourth century, Aeschines could envisage Demosthenes as the ‘demon who pollutes all Greece’, and brings it to misfortune. A glance at evidence of a different kind, inscriptions regulating cult, shows how the concern for purity affected the individual in his everyday religious practice. The threat of pollution is, it seems, the dominating concern of the Superstitious Man of Theophrastus.
The Works of Aphrodite
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

‘Apart from Egyptians and Greeks’, says Herodotus, ‘almost the whole of the rest of mankind copulate in sacred places and go into shrines without washing after sleeping with a woman.’ In Greek ideology, therefore, sexual activity is in some sense incompatible with the sacred. Such activity is, of course, indisputably natural; for man and woman intercourse is themis, that which is natural and right. It thus joins birth and death to form a trio of inescapable human processes from which the gods require insulation. As Herodotus indicates, this takes two forms, physical separation (no intercourse in sacred precincts) and lustration (washing after intercourse before entering a shrine). Both are well attested independently. Cautionary tales describe the dramatic retribution that strikes those who copulate in shrines, while a long series of sacred laws regulates access to temples ‘from a woman’ or the like. The earliest of these permits immediate entry after intercourse during the night (passage of time here replaces washing as a mode of separation), but requires washing after intercourse by day.
The Shedding of Blood
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

That the blood of his victim clings to the hand of a murderer, and, until cleansed, demands his seclusion from society, is a belief attested in a bewildering variety of literary, oratorical, historical, mythographical, and pictorial sources - although other sources preserve a stolid and no less perplexing silence on the same subject. Two texts illustrate the matter in some detail, Book 9 of Plato’s Laws, and the Tetralogies ascribed to Antiphon. The Tetralogies are an obvious starting-point for a discussion, although not an ideal one. Their sophistical author, whether Antiphon or another, is perhaps not himself committed to the doctrines he manipulates, and may not know where to draw the line in his imitation of belief; and the relation of these hypothetical cases to actual legal process is a long-standing difficulty. On the other hand, it is now generally agreed that the audience to which they are addressed is Athenian, which means that they can be confronted with the one body of homicide law that is well known to us; and the very form of the tetralogy, designed to show how the same topic of argument can be exploited and re-exploited by both parties, means that the full potential of the argument from pollution is here displayed as in no other text.
Disease, Bewitchment and Purifiers
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

What do I suggest you do? If there had really been anything wrong with you, then you’d have had to look for a real cure. But there isn’t. Find an imaginary cure for your imaginary disease and persuade yourself that it’s doing you some good. Get the women to wipe you round in a circle and fumigate you. Sprinkle yourself with water drawn from three springs, with salt and lentils added.
Divine Vengeance and Disease
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

A claim such as ‘You’ll go mad if you enter that precinct’ has two levels of significance. It is on the one hand a way of insisting on the sanctity of the gods’ property, a threat in support of a value rather than a hypothesis about the causes of disease. The system of taboo is not, as it has seemed to some observers, the product of a cultural neurosis, but a way in which ‘attitudes to values are expressed in terms of danger’.sOn the other hand, it is natural that, if a case of madness occurs in a society where such threats are rife, breach of the rule should be suspected as its cause. In the previous chapters, we have surveyed a large number of religious dangers, but primarily in their role as sanctions. It remains to consider to what extent they were appealed to in explanation of actual afflictions. Where they were not applied, it will obviously be necessary to pay attention to the alternative explanations that supplanted them.
Purity and Salvation
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

Socrates in the Phaedo is made; to uphold a radical dualism of mind and body. The philosopher cannot but welcome death, because then he will be able to achieve that spiritual contemplation of spiritual reality which he has, indeed, always aspired to, but which the body with its incessant demands and deceptions has barred him from attaining. The separation of body and soul in death does not in itself lead to such a vision. Reality is pure and unadulterated, but during its sojourn in the body the soul may acquire a taint of corporeality that is not dissolved even in death. If he is to enjoy the heavenly vision, the philosopher, while still alive, must seek to escape this taint by resisting the intellectual and emotional demands of life in the body. This purposeful asceticism is repeatedly expressed in the language of purification. The soul that has shunned the body and turned in upon itself escapes ‘pure’ at death, dragging nothing corporeal with it; but the soul that has been a slave of sensation departs ‘polluted’, so enmeshed in the physical that it can still be seen as it flits, a spectre, around the place where its body lies buried. Again and again Socrates speaks in the same way of the need to approach death with a soul ‘purified’ from bodily desire. Such language is by no means unknown elsewhere in Plato, but in its concentration here is a distinctive feature of the Phaedo.
Some Scenes From Tragedy
Authors: Parker Robert
Published: November 2023

For the historian of religious beliefs tragedy provides, as was noted in the introduction, elusive evidence. In one sense, its value is unique, since, read aright, it offers insight into the minds and feelings, at a level of intense seriousness, of actual Athenians, the tragic poets themselves. The mind of Aeschylus is a much solider historical reality than any synthetic hypothesis about the Athenian mind; and fundamental beliefs that, for various reasons, lie well below the surface of everyday life may find expression through literature. The concerns of the tragedians are sometimes consigned to the melancholy category of religious philosophy, but that is justified only in so far as every believer is also a philosopher of religion; there is no reason to think that the ordinary Athenian’s relations with the gods were merely magical, and that the justice of Zeus was a problem left to theologians. On this other hand, when tragedy is asked to provide historical information on lower levels than this, its answers become ambiguous and hard to interpret, largely because of its setting in the mythical past. Several instances of this lack of realism have already been encountered. The situation of Oedipus, the incestuous parricide, belongs to the world of nightmare, not everyday experience. Though Orestes’ dilemma had once been a real one, the emergence of homicide courts had removed it from the level of literal plausibility long before the first tragedy about him was written. Even an Oedipus left destitute by his sons could, in fifth-century Athens, have sought redress from a magistrate. The plague at the start of the Oedipus Tyrannus leads to a hunt for the polluter of the city, but historical parallels for such a man-hunt are hard to find. Even the family curse of the tragedians is a metaphor as much as a dogma with fixed practical implications.
Cicero’s Definition of Res Publica
Authors: Schofield Malcolm
Published: November 2023

In his Politics in the Ancient World Moses Finley had this to say of Cicero’s Republic (p. 128): ‘Like Mommsen, I find the central idea of the Republic "as unphilosophical as unhistorical" and I am not persuaded otherwise by the unending flood of adulatory commentaries.’ In a footnote he added (p. 128 n. 17): ‘As an extreme illustration of the nonsense Cicero continues to evoke, I submit the still regularly cited book by V. Pöschl, Römischer Staat und griechisches Staatsdenken bei Cicero (Berlin, 19 36), which concludes (p. 173) that the Republic "fused into one the Roman empire, perhaps the greatest creation of that world, and the philosophy of Plato, the most sublime spiritual creation of antiquity".’ Cicero’s attempt to represent Scipio’s Rome as the ideal city annoys most historians and leaves philosophers cold. So when Finley went on to dub as ‘mere rhetoric’ what Mommsen had called ‘a singular mongrel compound of history and philosophy’ he was preaching to the converted, at any rate so far as an English-speaking readership was concerned.
Silencing the Troublemaker: De Legibus r. 39 and the Continuity of Cicero’s Scepticism
Authors: Gorler Woldemar
Published: November 2023

Until recently it was a near to unanimous assumption that Cicero was an unswerving adherent of the sceptical Academy throughout his life: from his early youth, when he followed Philo’s lectures in Rome (88-84 BC), up to his latest period. This view was questioned now and then, e.g. by Rudolf Hirzel, who argued that Cicero from 79 onwards was not a sceptic but adhered to the dogmatic views of Antiochus of Ascalon. Hirzel’s suggestion, however, was partly ignored, partly rejected for more than a century.
Cicero and the Therapists
Authors: White Stephen A
Published: November 2023

When Alcibiades, flush from carousing in the streets, bursts in on Agathon’s symposium and launches his exuberant eulogy of Socrates, he begins by likening his friend the philosopher to the satyr Marsyas whose looks repelled but whose piping enchanted. Whenever I listen to him, my heart pounds more than a Corybant’s and his words move me to tears; and I see many others affected in the same way. When I listened to Pericles and other good speakers, I thought their speeches were good, but I wasn’t affected like that at all. My soul wasn’t in turmoil and I wasn’t upset at myself for behaving like a slave. But this Marsyas here has often moved me to judge life not worth living in my present condition.
Causes and Necessary Conditions in the Topica and De Fato
Authors: Sharples R W
Published: November 2023

Cicero’s treatise De Fato (On Fate) was written in some haste1 in late May or early June of 44 Bc.2 His Topica (Topics) were written on board ship while he was sailing between Velia and Rhegium, with the intention, which he finally abandoned, of leaving Italy for Greece, in July of the same year.3 It is hardly surprising, given the closeness of date and the circumstances of composition, that Cicero utilizes some apparently similar material; in both works the prologue of Ennius’ Medea, based on that of Euripides, is used to illustrate the distinction between a necessary condition for an event’s coming about and what actually brings it about, and in both works the discussion of necessary conditions is connected with the Stoic doctrine of fate. But whereas in the Topica we are told that necessary conditions are causes, in the De Fato Cicero attacks the Stoic doctrine of fate by arguing that they are not. There is thus an apparent contradiction. On the other hand, the two works have different concerns; the Topica is concerned to distinguish between different types of cause with a view to their treatment in rhetorical argument, while De Fato exploits, in the interests of its own antideterminist argument, a limitation of what is to count as a ‘cause’.
‘A self-indulgent misuse of leisure and writing’? How Not to Write Philosophy: Did Cicero Get it Right?
Authors: Smith Philippa R
Published: November 2023

(... there are said to be many books in Latin now, written injudiciously by men of the finest character indeed, but without the right breadth of accomplishment; for it can happen that a man has the right ideas and yet cannot put what he thinks into words in a polished fashion. To commit one’s thoughts to writing, however, without being able to give them a proper arrangement or exposition or to win the reader over with any charm is the behaviour of someone who makes a self-indulgent misuse of leisure and writing.)
Philosophical Badinage in Cicero’s Letters to his Friends
Authors: Griffin Miriam T
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this discussion is to focus on a problem that is more historical than philosophical, but which may suggest to philosophers the use of valuable material which they have not previously explored. The problem is how to gauge the extent, the depth, and the nature of philosophical knowledge and interest at Rome. To do this we need to extend our reach beyond those few figures to whom no one would deny some degree of expertise. For the Late Republic, that would mean looking beyond Cicero, Brutus, Cato, and Varro, three of whom were authors of philosophical works while one, Cato, was a well-known purveyor of Stoic arguments, as Cicero attests in Pro Murena and the Paradoxa Stoicorum.
Roman Culture and Society
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

The late Elizabeth Rawson (1934-1988) was a distinguished specialist in the history, society, and culture of the later Roman Republic and Augustan period, whose sudden death at the end of a visit to China came when she was at the height of her powers, and had just been elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. Her papers form a closely related group, published over a short period of time between 1971 and 1989. The topics covered include the workings of Roman politics and society, historical and antiquarian thinking at Rome, and literary and cultural history. They are reproduced here in the order in which they were published, and together form an essential contribution to the understanding of the central period of Roman history.
More on the Clientelae of the Patrician Claudii
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

In Historia 1973 I published an article on ‘The Eastern Clientelae of Clodius and the Claudii’ [ =pp. 102-24 above], setting out material gathered over a number of years on the subject of the patrician family’s connections with the Oscan and Greek-speaking world, and suggesting that these might help to explain some of the acts of P. Clodius. Nothing can be more irritating for the reader than to find mostly minor corrections and additions–some of them this time rather speculative–dribbling in a little later. My excuse must be that one or two points of general interest are raised, and one matter is of some importance to the career of that significant figure, T. Quinctius Flamininus.
Discrimina Ordinum: The Lex Julia Theatralis
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

The games in Rome were not simply a supreme expression of euergetism, or a method of their giver to gain popularity with the plebs and impress foreigners with Rome’s splendour; they were central to its culture in innumerable ways. They had also always been to some extent, and were even more after Augustus’ death, as the people lost its right to elect magistrates and pass laws, political gatherings where public opinion was made known and political demands put forward. But they were more yet; not only where the Emperor met his People, but where the whole of society met to do honour to the gods.
The Social and Legal Background
Authors: Grubbs Judith Evans
Published: November 2023

Many of the characteristics we associate with the world of ‘late antiquity’ had already begun to appear under the Antonines: the pressure of barbarian peoples on the borders of the Empire, the legal division of society into honestiores (‘more honourable’) and humiliores (‘more lowly’), a heightened sense of religiosity and concern for the individual In the chaotic and troubled times of the third century, these forces gained momentum, though lack of evidence prevents us from understanding exactly when and how the process occurred. Because of frequent military crises and the rapid turnover of emperors during this period, the Roman state was unable to recognize fully or to deal with these enormous changes in society until the restoration of order and imperial authority by Diocletian at the end of the third century. Constantine constructed his Empire on Diocletian’s foundations, although in some respects his policies differed significantly from those of the Tetrarchy.
Sex and Status: Legislation on ‘Mixed-Status’ Unions
Authors: Grubbs Judith Evans
Published: November 2023

Constantine’S legislation includes ten constitutions on quasimarital relationships outside the Roman concept of legitimate marriage ( iustum matrimonium). These laws penalized and sometimes banned unions between partners of widely differing social status. This legislation has never been discussed as a whole, nor has there been an adequate explanation of its place in Constantine’s legislative policy. When individual laws are discussed by scholars, they are often mistakenly attributed to Christian influences. But, when they are examined together and considered as a comprehensive (though imperfectly worked out) policy, a rather different explanation of their purpose emerges.
Hellenistic Phoenicia
Authors: Grainger John D
Published: November 2023

The Phoenicians have long been known for their trading, colonizing, and seafaring skills, but their history has too often seemed to stop short at the time of Alexander the Great. Alexander's destruction of the city of Tyre, however, only marked a new stage in Phoenician history, not its end. During the next three centuries this numerically small people had to live in a violent world dominated by Greeks and Macedonians. Their cities were destroyed, their land was reduced in size, and then divided up among mutually hostile kings. Yet they survived and enjoyed long periods of peace in which they evidently prospered. This is the first full account of Hellenistic Phoenicia. Within the basic chronological framework of their political history, the study pursues the themes of trade and economic history and the Hellenization of the Phoenicians' culture. The adaptation of the Phoenicians to life in the Hellenistic world shows a number of features common to that world as a whole, but also some which are distinctive to the Phoenicians themselves. A final chapter considers the changes in their role in the world outside their homeland.
The Time Of Troubles, 360-287 BC
Authors: Grainger John D
Published: November 2023

The coastlands of the eastern Mediterranean can be described in various ways. A modern geographer will probably begin with the coast itself and move inland, detailing the successive longitudinal zones, first the coast, then the mountain ranges, the trench of the rift valley, and finally the desert. The Roman compiler Pliny the Elder, reflecting the political situation of his own day, started from the south and moved northwards, dealing first with Palestine, then Phoenicia, and finally northern Syria. The sailor Skylax in the mid-fourth century BC began in the north and listed the places he would call at on a coasting voyage from Greece to Egypt, ignoring the inland areas.
The Roman Take-Over, 64-15 BC
Authors: Grainger John D
Published: November 2023

The arrival of Cn. Pompeius Magnus in Syria in 64 BC marks, to historians, the point at which the people of Syria became Roman subjects. Their history is thus now, technically, part of Roman history, and no longer Hellenistic. To the people of Syria, however, this distinction would have been largely academic, had it ever occurred to them. In particular, it would have seemed ludicrous to them to divide their history at 64 into a preceding disturbed, civil-warring, unpleasant Seleukid phase, and a succeeding Roman phase, peaceful and prosperous, because for over thirty years after 64 they were subject as never before to a series of the most unpleasant rulers Syria had faced since the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The year 64 marks, for Syrians, only the arrival of yet another group preying on their apparent wealth. Syria’s agony continued and intensified.