bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Making A Virtue of Perversity: The Poetry of Prudentius
Authors: Malamud Martha
Published: August 2016

Not long ago, the publication of two volumes of essays devoted to a rereading and rethinking of imperial Latin literature would have been held up as a classic example of professional Latinists making a virtue out of necessity — since we cannot all write on Vergil and Horace, some of us must therefore stiffen our upper lips and attempt to produce ‘sound’ scholarship on the reams of inferior poetry that make up the rest of Latin literature. The unspoken assumptions behind this attitude are beginning to be voiced, scrutinized, and rejected. Poetic works that until recently appeared mannered, degenerate, and even perverse are now being interpreted in new ways, and revealing hidden pleasures and unexpected virtues. It is thus an appropriate time to reconsider the work of Prudentius, poet of an age of radical experimentation in both language and culture. I try in this essay to maintain a kind of double vision, for it is important for those unfamiliar with Prudentius' poetry to realize the extent to which shifting cultural paradigms affect and are reflected in the poet's textual strategies. This is a somewhat amorphous task, and the article falls into two main segments whose relationship may not be entirely clear until the end. I begin with some examples of Prudentius' abstract and punning poetic technique, intended to provide the reader with an understanding of how to ‘decode’ the poems; I then offer a reading of two of his poems which illustrate his textual response to a contemporary cultural phenomenon, the increasing popularity of sexual renunciation. My title refers to two attempts at revision: ours, as we attempt to reclaim the ‘perverse’ poetics comdemned by generations of classical scholarship; and that of the men and women of Late Antiquity, who reversed a centuries-old paradigm and created a new virtue, virginity, out of what had been a form of perversity.
Tacitus/The World in Pieces
Authors: Henderson John
Published: August 2016

Time will say nothing but I told you so

Time only knows the price we have to pay

If I could tell you I would let you know

‘History is one of the most harmless products ever elaborated by the chemistry of the intellect.’ Siesta hammock of History, that ancient ‘bunk’ — ‘an old man pipes icing of concordance: oneiric cake of ungrasped memories’ …

But when thehistorianexorcises his work from his passions, theira et studiumof commitment, pastoral care, life-time, it gives pause: Why? — Whywrite procul habeo— the vatichekas hekasof the voice that means to speak the sacred ‘word’ of the community (1.1.)? The gesture does notsimplyseal Tacitus from implication in hisAnnalsbehind the impassive modality of the annalistic genre and a double safety-door of assassination and end of Dynasty. No, the formula invites inspection of its rhetorical role: disarming … disavowal, yes but/so challenging … conscription: any citizen ‘can’ and ‘must’ join this project, brought near to readers of Latin by the distance-annulling homoeostasis of affective discourse, that programme already spelled out by the opening text,Urhem Romam … et cetera. ‘Rome’ is, ahistorically, ‘the near’ the ‘here’ the ‘now’ the ‘us’ — the ‘wor(l)d’ thatwasin the beginning.
On the Pressure of Circumstance in Greek Tragedy
Authors: Ley Graham
Published: August 2016

It is an unfortunate weakness of most of the standard textbooks on Greek tragedy that they fail to communicate the immediacy of pressure that is of its essence. This particular inadequacy has hardly been corrected by the recent spate of books on either staging or the visual presentation of plays, which suggest themselves now as the standard adjustment to existing handbooks for students with or without the language.

One of the few certainties we have, in beginning the argument, is that tragedy is, if anything, about decisions and their consequences. This much is implied in Aristotle's intuition abouthamartia, which if it means ‘mistake’ can be taken to direct attention to the circumstances which dictate a decision. Indeed, decisions are far more prominent in Attic tragedy than mistakes as such: to take two examples from theOresteia, which as an Aeschylean trilogy should not seem so exceptional as people are inclined to make it, both Agamemnon and Orestes take decisions of terrifying consequence that can hardly be classed as ‘mistakes’ (namely to kill a daughter and to kill a mother, Iphigenia and Clytemnestra inAgamemnonandLibation Bearersrespectively). In this respect, Aristotle might be taken as considering more closely the sentimental drama that flourished in his day, and in this, if we judge by his perceptions, it may well be thatOedipus the Kingof Sophocles in fact marks a turning-point—in the desperate futility of Oedipus' errors—which is more readily, and perhaps with less justice, ascribed to Euripides.
Lucretius' Materialist Poetics: Epicurus and the ‘Flawed’ Consolatio of Book 3
Authors: Galloway Andrew
Published: August 2016

Book 3 ofDe Rerum Naturaends with a series of dramatic voices unparallelled anywhere in Lucretius (lines 894-1094). Mourners, the elderly, Nature and Memmius raise their voices to debate the issue of mortality. From Epicurean tenets Lucretius dramatises and creates images for the follies of superstitious fears, passions, ambitions, attachment to nature, guilty fears of retribution for sins, and the blinding desire to live. But this section has been seen to have failed both as effective persuasion of Epicurean ideals and as an artistically polished conclusion to the book. The tone, the arrangement and the ideas of the drama's conclusion have been criticised by commentators from Hadzsits (1935) to Kenney (1971); the most comprehensive and often-cited commentator, Bailey (1947), calls the section a ‘culminating triumph-song over the mortality of the soul’ but finds Lucretius’ response to the mourners ‘not altogether satisfactory’, his ‘consolation…inadequate’, and flatly judges the last eighteen lines ‘unsatisfactory as a conclusion’. Bailey, as well as the others, has stressed the departure from Epicurean doctrine in both tone and imagery.
The Tragic Mode of Seneca's Troades
Authors: Wilson Marcus
Published: August 2016

Titles count for something. When conferred upon poems and plays they have the capacity both to rouse and to control the expectations of potential readers and spectators. You buy tickets to a performance of the Antigone only to find when you take your seat that it is a modern comedy; whether you are furious or whether you are amused, you are at least surprised. The titles of literary works have implications; they may be designed to entice, to intrigue, to whet the appetite, to shock. Giving something a name enables it to be spoken about as a distinct entity; giving a text a name may also imply some particular fully or partially defined purpose or character. But while titles sometimes describe, they can also mislead. To the minds of critics, titles are apt to suggest certain issues and questions for consideration, but may also tend to discourage the consideration of other issues and questions of equal or even greater importance.
The Oedipvs of Seneca: An Imperial Tragedy
Authors: Henry D. , Walker B.
Published: August 2016

Aristotle in the Poetics repeatedly turned to the Oedipus Tyrannus for what he believed to be the finest examples of plot, structure, characterisation, and moral content in tragedy. Seneca's Oedipus contrasts with Sophocles' to a quite extraordinary degree; and it is these same elements, so much admired in Sophocles, which in Seneca are handled so differently. It is evident that Seneca was not in any sense trying to emulate Sophocles, or to meet the requirements of tragedy as laid down by Aristotle. What Seneca makes of his plot, characterisation and theme, derives only in the merest externals from Greek dramatic tradition; the nature of this Latin drama springs from sources often personal to Seneca, usually contemporary with him, and certainly Roman. We take the Oedipus as instructive example of Seneca's imperial tragedies, because its unlikeness to the Greek play often called Seneca's ‘model’ is so extreme and to many critics so disconcerting.
HIC Epvlis Locvs: The Tragic Worlds of Seneca's Agamemnon and Thyestes
Authors: Boyle A. J.
Published: August 2016

History … is a looking both before and after; as, indeed, the coming Time already waits, unseen, yet definitely shaped, predetermined and inevitable, in the Time come; and only by the combination of both is the meaning of either completed.

Carlyle, On History

When Numantia was captured by Scipio, they found mothers holding in their arms the half-eaten bodies of their own children.

Petronius, Satyricon

Tantalus as paradigm disturbs. The cooking and serving of one's children's flesh to test the omniscience of gods seems gruesome index of perverse ambition, a hunger for knowledge, superiority, power, for which the everlasting frustration of corresponding bodily appetites seems not only fitting punishment but emblem — emblem of man's status as appetite, his natural affinity with the beast. To the saga of the Tantalidae Seneca devotes two plays: Agamemnon and Thyestes. Dramaturgically and stylistically they differ. Verse-dialogue, lyric metre, prologue integration, interrelation between chorus and act, the choral persona, the structuring and unfolding of dramatic language and imagery, the messenger's speech, dramatic structure, movement, tempo are handled very differently in each play. Even the number of actors and choruses differs. Formal similarities of course abound: the ghost-prologue, the protagonist-attendant scene, the thematic employment of imagery (and similar imagery at that), chorus-act ‘joins’, the spectacular and thematic use of ‘theatre’, the use of postclassical dramatic conventions — the five-act structure, entrance monologue-asides, choral exit and re-entry. But these only underscore the marked dramaturgical differences between the two plays, their distinguishing characteristics and defining style.
A Man at a Spring: Horace, Odes 1.1
Authors: Pomeroy Arthur J.
Published: August 2016

The first poem in a new poetry book is of paramount importance. As the first that a reader — or browser — would see, it acted as a virtual preface by giving some indication of the content and style of the whole collection. While the initial poems in books of elegies and satires have often enough been examined for their ‘programmatic’ content, the function of the first of Horace's odes is less clear.
The Closet of Masks: Role-Playing and Myth-Making in the Orestes of Euripides
Authors: Zeitlin Froma I.
Published: August 2016

Of what interest would an Oedipus be who fell victim to the fate of marrying, say, his aunt?

Bert States,Irony and Drama

TheOrestesis the most Euripidean of all Euripidean plays, reflecting his typical techniques, emphases, interests, and outlook. All the familiar signs are present and perceptible: for example, novelty of plot, rapidity and multiplicity of action, sensationalism and theatrical virtuosity, lyrical experimentation, increase in the cast of characters on stage, comic and melodramatic elements, the illusion-reality game, the ergon-logos paradox, the use of cliché and rhetoric, a focus on the phenomenon of alienation, on the psychopathology of characters, their natural victimage and their subsequent retaliatory reflex, the secularization of myth, the questioning of inherited values, and compensatory themes ofphiliaandsōtēria, etc. etc.

What marks the difference in this play is the extent to which these implications are carried out, the outer limits to which these techniques are pushed; it is a question of intensification, escalation, a question of a relentless drive towards the achievement of a theatrical ‘style which deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its possibilities and borders on its own caricature,’ to quote Borges' definition of his own baroque technique. Yet the aesthetic boldness of the play's excesses moves it out beyond any formal definitions and limitations, beyond parody, beyond outrage into another mode, one might say, to a new level of self-consciousness and authorial extravagance that does not seem to have existed before. And it is a play whose surface of seeming incoherence, instability and chaos is, in reality, under that kind of artistic control that brings about that fusion of form and content we call art, even as it always seems to be trying to escape from it.
In Medio Caesar: Paradox and Politics in Virgil's Georgics
Authors: Boyle A. J.
Published: August 2016

The pessimism of the Eclogues is pronounced. Often denied, that of the Georgics is yet evident.

sic omnia fatis in peius ruere ac retro sublapsa referri, non aliter quam qui aduerso uix flumine lembum remigiis subigit, sic bracchia forte remisit, atque illum in praeceps prono rapit alueus amni. (G.I. 199-203)

So all things by law of fate Speed towards the worst, slip back, are swept away; Just as an oarsman struggling to drive his skiff Against the opposing stream needs but chance to drop his arms And the current whirls him away headlong down the river.
The Actian Miracle: Propertius 4.6
Authors: Connor P. J.
Published: August 2016

A revision of attitude toward Propertius' Actium poem has been gathering way for some time. An impressive list of scholars who took it at face value (whatever that can mean now that a closer, more sensitive, reading has altered our directions) would include P. Grimal, for example, who contended that, ‘La pièce se présente comme un hymne à Apollon protecteur du Prince; elle a comme prétexte le temple dont la construction, projetée dès 36 av. J.C., ne prit toute sa signification qu' apès la victoire d'Actium'. R. Pichon selected a different emphasis as the real point of the poem, but he shared the notion of a political panegyric, ‘C’est donc bien la victoire impériale que veut chanter Properce, c'est l'établissement de la dynastie césarienne: pour lui, Actium est le monument de la gloire des Julii'. More recent acceptance of Propertius as the glorifier of Augustus is seen in H. Pillinger, ‘His poem then is as much a hymn to Apollo as a glorification of Augustus, or perhaps we should agree with the poet that it is a hymn to both at once, the glory of Augustus being prefigured in the brilliance of Apollo.’ W. R. Nethercut describes 4.6 as the centre of Book 4 representing ‘a moment of illumination surrounded by poems set in night … Poem IV.6 thus indeed provides the whole of Book IV with illumination'. In his dissertation of 1963, Nethercut points out that Grimal and Eisenhut consider 4.6 the high point of Augustanism, and goes on to discuss how ‘even Paratore felt the need to account for this poem’.
Retreat from the Male: Catullus 62 and Sappho's Erotic Flowers
Authors: Stigers Eva Stehle
Published: August 2016

Catullus described a full emotional circle in his short life from delight in unconstrained aesthetic sensuality free of socially-defined patterns (cc. 5, 6, 13 for example) to longing for a stable bond in the relationship of man to woman. He pictured such a bond as placed within the traditional Roman frame of marriage and home, but cast in a personal mold; he wanted to preserve his aesthetic and sensual response to a woman while combining it somehow with the stability and intimacy appropriate to friendship (amare and bene velle). Poems 72 and 87, for instance, directly express the ideal in acknowledging its absence from Catullus' relations with Lesbia.

Catullus liked to feel that the possibility of complete union was what he offered Lesbia. Perhaps it was his inability to fashion a compelling synthesis of sexual intimacy and friendship with her that led him to write a series of poems exploring attempts, mainly failures, at full reciprocal love. The successful attempts are idyllic or mythic (Septimius and Acme, Peleus and Thetis, neither unambiguously positive). The failures come, in Catullus' portrayal, when union founders on the obstacle of the narcissistic personality, the man or woman unable to forfeit autonomy, desirous of holding others in thrall without being himself held. Catullus' highly developed sensitivity to narcissism must be a reaction to its prominence in the character of a certain kind of sexually attractive individual, the one who is alluring but uncapturable, the kind of woman, like Lesbia, with whom Catullus sought union. Catullus conveys the quality of narcissism in such a character in part through the image of the flower (appropriately, considering the source of the modern name for it).
A Passage to Hades: The Frogs of Aristophanes
Authors: Higgins W. E.
Published: August 2016

The Frogs continues to intrigue and to trouble. In structure it does not resemble any of Aristophanes' other plays, since the poet here inverts the sequence of scenes, contest, and parabasis he normally used; and the play does not possess, so many would argue, any overall organic unity of content. Even worse, Aristophanes' decision to make the literary contest of two tragedians the climactic issue of his comedy might be considered foolishly risky, involving him in matters dangerously ‘high-falutin’ and so conceivably boring to an audience whose intelligence he had too often cajoled to be deceived about. As if deliberately to defeat both unity and sense, Aristophanes also saw fit to add another chorus to his play, totally distinct in character from his main chorus and apparently unrelated to his theme: frogs and literature? Strangest of all, he leaves this additional chorus unseen, if not unheard, in a visual medium like the theatre where an audience in antiquity no less than today might be counted on for some prolonged laughter or applause at the sight of cleverly costumed performers hopping, croaking, and looking altogether ridiculous.
Judgement and Atmosphere in Epic
Authors: Gaunt David M.
Published: August 2016

These quotations exemplify a general consensus among critics that the narrative poet must not be seen in process of shaping our opinions for us. Most people would agree that moralising interruptions disrupt the reader's chain of thought and weaken his hold on the world which the narrator is creating. We want to see as little as possible of the author's thought-processes; he should follow Schiller's precept and remain as invisible behind his material as the Creator behind his Universe. When in The Eustace Diamonds Trollope begins a paragraph about Frank Greystock by saying ‘Within the figure and frame and clothes and cuticle, within the bones and flesh of many of us, there is but one person, — a man or woman, with a preponderance either of good or of evil. …’, the reader will, according to his nature, either grit his teeth and pursue the homily to its conclusion a page and a half later, or skip to the next point in the narrative. Most modern readers wish that Trollope would spare them. But in fact even Homer, ‘rapid and direct’ as he is, does sometimes pause for a word of moralising comment. Perhaps the most striking occasion is at Il. XXIII, 24, where Achilles has in mind the mutilation of Hector's body, and Homer describes such deeds as aeikea (‘unseemly’).
‘The Greatness of His Nature’: Fire and Justice in the Odyssey
Authors: Bradley Edward M.
Published: August 2016

In such terms Zeus instructs Athena to bind together the kingdom of Odysseus in enduring harmony and thereby brings to a happy conclusion the hero's long, painful nostos from Troy. The conditions of Odysseus' future contrast radically with the dangerous instability of his past; in the invocation to the poem (1.1-10), the accent falls somberly on wandering, destruction, suffering, helplessness, and frustration. By the end of Book 24, however, Odysseus is powerfully in control of his world, restored to his family and people, and assured of divine sanction for the enjoyment of peace and prosperity into a sleek old age and a gentle death (23.281-84).
A Lucretian Version of Pastoral
Authors: Betensky Aya
Published: August 2016

On the infrequent occasions when De Rerum Natura is discussed in terms of pastoral, it is assumed that Lucretius describes the typical locus amoenus familiar since Plato's Phaedrus, and critics concentrate either on tracing his Hellenistic sources or on the basic contrast between luxury and simplicity. But there is more to Lucretian pastoral, just as there is more to Lucretius' atomic universe, than meets the eye. The essence of his pastoral is original, centered around animals rather than shepherds, and his use of pastoral pervades the poem and is integral to its design.

The most inclusive definition of pastoral possible is Empson's, the expression of the complex through the simple. It is more useful, however, to think of pastoral as the expression of an unfulfillable longing for a simpler and happier life, which may include a return from the city to the country, from politics to the land, from the Iron Age to the Golden Age, from war to peace, from vice to virtue, or from adulthood to childhood. Traditional pastoral is usually set in the country among shepherds and flocks, and man and nature interact harmoniously according to what has been called since Ruskin the ‘pathetic fallacy’. Plato ‘creates’ pastoral by contrasting city and country in the Phaedrus. Roman poetry uses elements of the urban-rural contrast not only in pastoral poetry as such but in satire, elegy and epic as well. The varied directions in which individual poets take the generic pastoral form are as interesting as the persistence of the form itself, and Lucretius' version, occurring as it does in a didactic epic, is extremely individual when viewed both from within and without the classical tradition of pastoral.
Aspects of Theocritean Otium
Authors: Edquist Harriet
Published: August 2016

The nature of Theocritean otium (hasychia) is not a new topic in the general field of Theocritean studies; sooner or later those critics who wish to come to terms with the poetic intent of the major Greek bucolic poet will have to arrive at some definition of the precise significance of that movement towards peace, harmony, and spiritual and intellectual fulfilment which provides the overriding impetus in pastoral. Rosenmeyer has done much, possibly more than most, towards a complete description of this ideal (yet enigmatic) state, and he is right, I think, to stress not only the centrality of otium to the bucolic Idylls (‘Otium is a keyword in the discussion of the pastoral’), but the unmistakable Epicurean bias of the work. This affinity with certain fundamental goals of Epicureanism suggests that one is to regard otium as signifying a considerable amount more than that which can be deduced merely from the sum of its physical parts — shade, peace, music, sex. These aspects of existence are undoubtedly present in the poems, but ultimately they tend towards a definition of a more abstracted state, one which touches not simply pastores, Daphnis, and Lycidas, but the lot of man in general.
Landscape into Myth: Theocritus' Bucolic Poetry
Authors: Segal Charles
Published: August 2016

‘I no longer look upon Theocritus as a romantic writer,’ wrote Lady Montagu to Alexander Pope; ‘he has only given a plain image of the way of life amongst the peasants of his country … I don't doubt, had he been born a Briton, but his Idylliums had been filled with descriptions of thrashing and churning.’ Thanks to greater sophistication about the nature of pastoral and a better knowledge of Hellenistic poetry we have probably left behind forever the notion of Theocritus as the conveyor of a ‘plain image’ of rustic life. The alternative is not, of course, the ‘romantic’ Theocritus, but a poet of consummate literary artistry, wit, and irony.

Besides the critical commonplace of rustic realism the other stumbling block to a satisfactory appreciation of Theocritus has been the inevitable comparison with Virgil. Critics who have viewed Theocritus through lenses adjusted to Virgil have tended to emphasize the emotional complexity, inwardness, and seriousness of the Latin poet over against the outward-facing playfulness and lightness of the Greek. Theocritus certainly lacks the tension between historical reality and poetry which gives the Eclogues their special depth and poignancy; but he has a seriousness of a different sort. The simplicity and trivial realism which are sometimes attributed to the bucolic Idylls are in fact themselves part of the poetic fiction and often stand in deliberate self-contradiction with mythical elements in the form and structure of the work.
A Reading of Virgil's Eclogues
Authors: Boyle A. J.
Published: August 2016

Pastoral is a contemplative form. Created in the midst of social turmoil and political convulsion, the Eclogues constitute a meditation on the emotional, intellectual and moral dislocation of contemporary man. They investigate not only the brute historical fact of the destructive impact of the politico-military world — the world of the city, of Rome — upon the country, but also the psychological chaos and spiritual impoverishment which Virgil sees as the city's legacy and the corollary of technological growth. And within the context of a world dominated by urban values they scrutinise the question of poetry's function and efficacy. They present, in short, a poetic analysis of postlapsarian man measured against the yardstick of his finest ideals and, concomitant with this, a statement of poetry's impotence.
Male and Female in the Homeric Poems
Authors: Beye Charles Rowan
Published: August 2016

The following is an investigation of the nature of women in the Homeric poems. It is generally accepted that epic figures are typical rather than individual, idiosyncratic personalities. So it is reasonable to assume that the women of the two poems represent the general conception of female behaviour held by Homer's audience. Even if the poems represent a tradition which was a long time in the making, it remains true that what appears within the poems must have made sense somehow to Homer's contemporary audience. And that is the sense we must seek.

There has been very little said about the role of women in the Homeric epics. Discussion is bound to be uneven; women are glimpsed infrequently in the Iliad, whereas they are everywhere in the Odyssey. But this in itself perhaps offers insights into the nature of the difference between the two poems. In addition an analysis of the part women play in these poems helps to explain the continual appeal of the Iliad and the Odyssey. For the poems, like all truly great pieces of literature, say things that we humans need and want to hear. As is true of other facets of the poems the female characters are extraordinarily authentic. They manifest moods and psychological states which are true to women, at least in the Western world. Moreover the poems, especially the Odyssey, show with great profundity some important truths of male-female relationships. Whether these are inherent and never-changing or it is because women's situation has not much changed through the millenia is hard to say.
Pindar's First Pythian: The Fire Within
Authors: Gantz Timothy Nolan
Published: August 2016

‘If you speak at the right length, winding together the strands of many themes into one, the reproach of men will be less' (ll. 81-82). And in truth Pindar's First Pythian is filled with complex and conflicting elements twisted into a tightly knit pattern of myth, metaphor, advice, and historical allusion. The listener moves from celestial harmony to the volcano of Aitna, from the sack of Troy to the founding of a new city. He witnesses the battle of Cumae and the strivings of a tyrant for immortal fame. He is lulled to sleep by the lyre, startled awake by grim Typhon and the barbarians of Carthage, made to feel compassion for the sick Philoktetes, and confronted with the incarnate evil of a man who burned his enemies to death in a bronze bull. Yet at the same time, in counterpoint to this rapid succession of images, Pindar polarizes basic themes — music and discord, peace and pain, chaos and foundation — over the widest range his poetry will allow.
The Helen Episode in the Troiades
Authors: Amerasinghe C. W.
Published: August 2016

There is hardly any scene in Euripidean tragedy which is as baffling as the debate between Hecabe and Helen in the Troiades. So far, I have found no really satisfactory explanation of this scene. Of those who have dealt with it, Kitto recognises that ‘it interrupts the plot’. The reason for the interruption, according to him, is that it illuminates part of Euripides' thought, namely that ‘this war too was misconceived — its basis the worthlessness of a woman’. I doubt whether I could agree that the scene proves the worthlessness of Helen. But let that pass. There is a more important point to be raised. Would Euripides have interrupted his plot to illuminate part of his thought unless the part illuminated had some bearing on the theme of his play? Admittedly Euripides does love a debate and does sometimes wander from the point to make a point that is not very relevant. But that he has done so in this scene I find it very hard to believe. The scene is altogether too important to be brushed aside in that way. It is, in the first place, the longest scene in the play. In the second place, it interrupts the plot at a point when the interruption is most distracting because it occurs at the very climax of the tale of horrors inflicted by the Greeks upon the Trojans — the decision to kill Astyanax. Talthybius has just announced the decision to Hecabe and Andromache and has come to take Astyanax away.
In Defence of Persius
Authors: Sullivan J. P.
Published: August 2016

In the darkness of these times, it may well prove that we are the last generation to pursue the study of classics at all seriously, whether we are hewing squarely to the philological, or more modern, approaches to classical literature. The rights and wrongs of this particular ideological struggle will be settled, I suspect, by time and our students. One may, however, take for granted the perceptible erosion of anything like a real inwardness with Latin as a language among the protevangelists of either school. The gentlemanly dilettante stuck to his familiar authors, such as Virgil and Horace, ignoring their Alexandrian complexities for their human values; the supposedly serious scholar adopted such a scientific attitude to Latin that it would sometimes seem that his main pleasure consisted in correcting Lewis and Short, while putting together prose and verse compositions for his peers or pupils.

Certainly ignorance on the one hand and pedantry on the other are logical culprits, along with time, for this loss of inwardness with Latin as a language. One would like to think that Dr. Johnson (and some of his contemporaries) had something close to the careless familiarity with Latin displayed by Dante or Poggio: unfortunately a glance at the frigid exercises to Ms Thrale or to his Highland hosts, written during his tour of the Hebrides, quickly dispels this illusion.
Mythic and Non-Mythic Artists in Ovid's Metamorphoses
Authors: Lateiner Donald
Published: August 2016

The interpretation of Ovid's epic that is argued here has three related parts that have not been drawn together before:

I. Ovid's panoramic presentation of myth, theMetamorphoses, presents provocative reflections in dramatic guise concerning human psychology, society, and art. Ovid is an engaged poet as well as an amusing one.

II. TheMetamorphosesinclude, under the mantle of myth, pointed criticisms of the Emperor Augustus and his program of social, spiritual, and religious reform.

III. Stories about artists in theMetamorphoseswere invented or elaborated by Ovid in order to illustrate the primacy of art and its spiritual value. Respect for love, truth, and human wisdom counts for more than fealty to the artifice of the new Rome.

The relevance of these parts to each other and their consequences will be made clear in the Conclusion (IV), which examines the function of art in life for Ovid and his hopes for permanence in a world of transitions.
The Chorus of Prometheus Bound: Harmony of Suffering
Authors: Sienkewicz Thomas J.
Published: August 2016

Few extant Greek tragedies have been subjected to the sweeping formal and dramatic criticisms which have been directed towards thePrometheus Bound. Indeed, this play contains so many problems and idiosyncracies of metre, language, staging and structure that a large number of modern scholars have even come to question Aeschylean authorship of the play. The arguments on both sides of the authorship debate have been thoroughly presented by C. J. Herington and Mark Griffith, and little more of a decisive nature can be said on this subject unless further evidence should surface. This stalemate would, perhaps, be a fortunate circumstance, if it would encourage critics to put aside the unresolvable authorship question, to follow the commendable example of Oliver Taplin in hisStagecraft of Aeschylus, and to study thePrometheus Boundas a drama, as a theatrical production. It is time to seek dramatic answers to the dramatic problems which plague thePrometheus Bound.
The Poetics of Closure: Horace Odes III.17-28
Authors: Santirocco Matthew
Published: August 2016

One of the most important achievements of recent Horatian scholarship has been the rediscovery of structure — not the mechanical dissection of poems into component parts, but an awareness of how form is inseparable from content and how unity proceeds from design. Although the individual ode has by now received sufficient attention, the structure of the first lyric collection remains problematic. On the one hand, elaborate visual and numerological schemes have been proposed to account for the poems' placement. But such patterns could only be discovered by very selective handling of the evidence, and their neatness and level of abstraction raise doubts about their likelihood and significance. Partly as a corrective to these excesses, some recent scholars have gone to the other extreme, denying any extensive design. But while no single principle is likely to account for the disposition of all eighty-eight poems in twelve different meters, several considerations suggest that Horace had at least some concern for design. These include the well-documented interest in poetry books among Hellenistic and Roman writers; the aesthetic implications of the book roll, the physical format of which necessitates sequential reading; the existence of certain undisputed signs of arrangement in Odes I-III such as the frame of Odes I.1 and III. 30 or the grouping of Parade Odes (Odes I.1-9) and Roman Odes (Odes III. 1-6); and, finally, the relatively restricted thematic repertoire which facilitates the discovery of connections among odes by poet and reader alike. Since controls can be applied to this, as to all other literary study, the existence of larger structures and their relevance to an appreciation of the poetry is a legitimate subject for inquiry.
The Dramatic Structure of Agamemnon
Authors: Ewans Michael
Published: August 2016

In later antiquity it was universally held that Aeschylus was the most given, of the three fifth century Athenian tragic poets, to lavish spectacular display. This view rested on three foundations: first, consistent misinterpretation of the many jokes which Aristophanes makes in The Frogs about the archaic grandeur of Aeschylean drama — jokes which on close examination revolve almost entirely around the style of Aeschylus' language; second, the practice of importing scenes of spectacle and crowds of extras into Hellenistic and Roman productions of classical Greek tragedy; and, third, the ascription to this author of the play, Prometheus Bound, which undoubtedly calls for elaborate scenic requirements. The authenticity of Prometheus Bound has been increasingly called in question during the twentieth century: and no scholar who is prepared to accept the arguments and comparisons to be found in Mark Griffith's recent study would now care to place the composition of Prometheus Bound less than twenty years after the death of Aeschylus.

If Prometheus Bound is not to be ascribed to Aeschylus, six of his plays survive. They are distinguished by their extreme theatrical economy; no device is used in them unless it bears close relevance to the playwright's purpose and theme. In his pioneering study, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus, Oliver Taplin has drawn attention to a number of ways in which this feature is to be observed in the surviving plays; and his penetrating observations are by no means confined to the main subject of the book, which is the dramatic use made in Greek tragedy of the entrances and exits of the characters and of the chorus. But much remains to be done, before we can seriously claim to understand the genius of Aeschylus and his successors as theatre craftsmen. I want now to introduce and open up an area of debate which I find to have been seriously neglected in the work on Aeschylus which I have read.
The “Hospital Epidemiologist” in U.S. Hospitals, 1976-1977: A Description of the Head of the Infection Surveillance and Control Program Report from the SENIC Project
Authors: Haley Robert W.
Published: August 2016

As part of the first two phases of the SENIC Project (Study on the Efficacy of Nosocomial Infection Control), information was collected from the heads of the infection surveillance and control programs (ISCPs) in U.S. hospitals. The data were analyzed to describe these respondents and to determine whether differences among them were related to their areas of professional training or to characteristics of the hospitals where they were located. The findings indicate that the ISCP heads constitute a very heterogeneous group, with substantial differences in age, professional training (40% are pathologists), characteristics of their medical practices, memberships in professional organizations related to infection control, time spent in ISCP activities, approach to epidemiologic problems, and opinions on the preventability of nosocomial infections and the seriousness of infection problems in their hospitals. These differences are related strongly to the ISCP heads' professional training, size of hospital, and, to a lesser extent, medical school affiliation, but there is little evidence that the differences are related to regional or urban-rural location or type of ownership of the hospitals. The average ISCP head estimates that about half of all nosocomial infections are preventable, but these estimates vary inversely with tenure in the position and the tendency to approach a clinical problem epidemiologically.
Comparison of the Activities and Stabilities of Alkaline Glutaraldehyde Sterilizing Solutions
Authors: Pepper Rollin E.
Published: August 2016

The sporicidal activities and shelf life stabilities of three alkaline glutaraldehyde-containing sterilizing solutions were evaluated. The time required to reduce a population of spores by one log is the D-value. The test methods employed were the D-value and survival rates. Sporicidin, a new preparation containing a phenolic buffer, was both more stable and more active against test spores than two other test agents, Cidex and Cidex-7.
Prophylactic Antibiotic Therapy with Cefamandole and Tobramycin for Patients Undergoing Renal Transplantation
Authors: Townsend Timothy R. , Rudolf Leslie E. , Westervelt Frederic B. , Mandeli Gerald L. , Wenzel Richard P.
Published: August 2016

The incidence of infections among patients undergoing renal transplantation has been reported as high as 83% during the first post-transplant year. In an effort to reduce the occurrence of such infections, we evaluated the role of perioperative prophylactic antibiotics in these patients. Thirty-seven patients undergoing transplantation were assigned randomly to treatment groups (N=20, cefamandole, 1 gm IM every 6 hrs for 8 doses/tobramycin 1 mg/kg IM for 1 dose, starting 2 hrs prior to surgery) and control groups (N=17, no antibiotics). A uniform infection surveillance system was used. Eighty-one percent (30/37) of patients became infected; 70% (14/20) of treated patients and 94% (16/17) of controls (p=0.14). Since antibiotic prophylaxis might be expected to exert the greatest influence in the immediate postoperative period, we examined patient outcome data for both the first seven post-transplant days and for the entire hospitalization. Of the 38% (14/37) of patients who developed infections during the first posttransplant week, a statistically greater proportion came from the control group than from the treated group (10/17 vs. 4/20, p=0.04). These data suggest that this regimen is effective in reducing the occurrence of infections during the first week following renal transplantation.
Topical Antibiotic Ointments for Staphylococcal Nasal Carriers: Survey of Current Practices and Comparison of Bacitracin and Vancomycin Ointments
Authors: Bryan Charles S. , Wilson Rachel S. , Meade Patsy , Sill Louise G.
Published: August 2016

One measure used in the management of staphylococcal disease outbreaks in newborn nurseries is to obtain nasal cultures from nursery personnel and then treat nasal carriers with topical antibiotic ointments. Because recent infection control guidelines often omit reference to this measure, we surveyed current practices in larger hospitals in the U.S.A. Seventy-one percent of respondents indicated that they would obtain nasal cultures from personnel during a staphylococcal disease outbreak, and 40% indicated that they would prescribe topical antibiotic ointments for personnel with positive nasal cultures before the results of bacteriophage typing became known. Because little has been written about the efficacy of topical intranasal antibiotics within the past decade, we compared bacitracin ointment with a vancomycin ointment for treatment of the staphylococcal nasal carrier state. Both ointments reduced nasal carriage in the majority of instances. However, similar reduction was also observed in an untreated control group. The need for different approaches to the problem of nasal carriers is discussed.
Recommendations for the Control of Yersinia pestis Infections
Authors: White Mark E. , Gordon Diane , Poland Jack D. , Barnes Allan M.
Published: August 2016

Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of plague, is endemic in the western United States; 105 cases were reported between 1970 and 1979. Plague may manifest in one of three clinical forms: bubonic, septicemic, or pneumonic. Bubonic and septicemic plague represent relatively little risk for human-to-human transmission to contacts, although heavily infected secretions, such as drainage from a bubo, pose a theoretical risk, especially if they are aerosolized from a syringe during diagnostic aspirations. Pneumonic plague may be highly contagious to contacts and poses a greater risk. The Plague Branch, Center for Disease Control recommends that all patients with plague be placed in strict isolation for the first 48 hours of treatment because of the possibility that pneumonia may supervene. If it does not, wound and skin precautions are adequate for the duration of hospitalization. Untreated plague pneumonia is an epidemiologic emergency. All contacts must be identified promptly and those with face-to-face exposure should receive abortive antibiotic therapy. All contacts should be under surveillance, with twice-daily temperature checks, for seven days.
A New Synergized Glutaraldehyde-Phenate Sterilizing Solution and Concentrated Disinfectant
Authors: Leach Eddie D.
Published: August 2016

Research leading to the development of Sporicidin, a new (synergized glutaraldehyde-phenate) sterilant and concentrated disinfectant, is reported. Microbial evaluation and shelf life testing of the new formulation was done using AOAC tests—Use-Dilution, Sporicidal, Tuberculocidal—and the E.P.A. Virucidal Test. Full-strength Sporicidin sterilizes (is sporicidal) in 6% hours at both 20C and 25C, and disinfects in 1-2 minutes. When diluted with 15 parts of tap water, Sporicidin is tuberculocidal, virucidal, and germicidal in 10 minutes, qualifying as a hospital disinfectant that will not “yellow” the hands or skin. The shelf life of activated Sporidicin, full strength or diluted 1 in 16, is 30 days. According to the data presented, which were the basis of E.P.A. registrations, Sporicidin is: (a) the fastest glutaraldehyde sterilant at room temperature, and (b) the only glutaraldehyde product that can be diluted below 2% and still qualify as a hospital disinfectant.
Nosocomial Viral Infections: III. Guidelines for Prevention and Control of Exanthematous Viruses, Gastroenteritis Viruses, Picornaviruses, and Uncommonly Seen Viruses
Authors: Valenti William M. , Hruska Jerome F. , Menegus Marilyn A. , Freeburn Mary Jane
Published: August 2016

This communication is the third in a four-part series on nosocomial viral infections from the Strong Memorial Hospital. This third article discusses guidelines for prevention and control of exanthematous viruses, gastroenteritis viruses, adenoviruses and the picornaviruses other than rhinoviruses. Several uncommonly seen viruses, such as the virus of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Marburg, Ebola, and Lassa fever viruses, also are reviewed briefly.
Prophylactic Antibiotics in Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery Current Practices
Authors: Faden Howard
Published: August 2016

A limited survey of 90 orthopedic surgery programs throughout the U.S. A. was conducted to determine the use of prophylactic antibiotics in pediatric orthopedic operations. Prophylaxis was used most often in the Harrington rod procedure (80.7%); less often in hip (64.2%) and knee (44.7%) reconstructive surgery; rarely in meniscus repairs (8.0%) and in lengthening of Achilles tendǫns (2.3%). Cephalosporins (85%) were the antibiotics prescribed most frequently. The first dose was administered before surgery in 89.6% of the operations. Prophylaxis was discontinued within five days in 96% of the operations. These data provide a pattern of the use of prophylaxis in pediatric orthopedic surgery.
Nosocomial Viral Infections: IV. Guidelines for Cohort Isolation, the Communicable Disease Survey, Collection and Transport of Specimens for Virus Isolation, and Considerations for the Future
Authors: Valenti William M. , Menegus Marilyn A.
Published: August 2016

Virus transmission within the hospital is related to trans-missibility of the virus and susceptibility of the population at risk. General guidelines for the use of cohort isolation, for the control of virus transmission in the hospital, and for the use of the communicable disease survey for pediatric patients and visitors to the hospital are outlined. We also present a brief review of how to collect and transport specimens for virus isolation to assist the infection control practitioner and the clinician, and conclude with recommendations for future investigations in the areas of virology and infection control [Infect Control 1981; 2(3):236-245.]
Clinical, Epidemiologic and Microbiologic Features of a Persistent Outbreak of Amikacin-Resistant Serratia marcescens
Authors: Arroyo Julio C. , Milligan W. Lloyd , Postic Bosko , Northey Jimmie , Parker Ellen , Bryan Charles S.
Published: August 2016

This article describes a prolonged outbreak (January 1977 to February 1980) of amikacin-resistant Serratia marcescens (ARSM) urinary infections and the methods used for its control. Significant factors predisposing to ARSM urinary tract infection included an extended hospital stay, being in the urology ward, and undergoing urologie surgery. There had been no prior administration of amikacin or of other aminoglycosides in 20 of 27 patients with ARSM urinary tract infections. Chronically infected patients who required multiple hospitalizations represented a major reservoir for the perpetuation of the outbreak, overshadowing the importance of aminoglycoside use. Traditional control measures and even a major change in the inanimate environment were only partially effective in controlling the outbreak, but treatment of bacteriuric patients in the urology unit with “second and third generation” cephalosporins interrupted patient-to-patient transmission. No new cases of ARSM bacteriuria appeared in the urology unit in the ensuing 12 months [Infect Control 1981; 2(5):367-372.]