bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Herodas and the Kitchen Sink
Authors: Arnott W. Geoffrey
Published: July 2013

‘Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.’ Voltaire's epigramfits Greek literature like a glove. In school and university syllabuses, just as in our own private reading, we concentrate on the best authors; and a large number of the merely good authors stay on the library shelves, neglected and unread except by a steadily decreasing number of experts in forgotten fields. How many of us are on terms of easy familiarity with the bittersweet epigrams of Asclepiades, or that remarkably modern opening of Heliodorus' novel, or (for that matter) with the mimianiboi of Herodas?

Herodas was the major Hellenistic author of mimes. His work was singled out by the younger Pliny (Ep. iv. 3. 4) as the standard by which to assess contemporary poetasters in the field. Yet before 1889 he was no more than a name, to whom a few dull fragments could be assigned. In fact before 1889 the whole genre of Hellenistic mime, literary and non-literary alike, was a dark mystery, doubtless consigned to oblivion during the ages of Byzantine antischolasticism. To the immense popularity of mimes in late antiquity countless references in contemporary sources bear a distinctly scandalized witness. Some descriptions survived, a few definitions, many condemnations, but no texts.
The Large House at Dystos in Euboea
Authors: Luce J. V.
Published: July 2013

Thesite of ancient Dystos in south-central Euboea deserves to be better known. The imposing circuit of the city wall with its main gate and eleven towers bears comparison with the fort at Eleutherae or the walls of Messene or Thasos. The numerous remains of private houses are of considerable interest for the history of Greek domestic architecture.
‘Classics in the Curriculum’
Authors: B. W. K.
Published: July 2013

Many of the readers of Greece & Rome will have received a copy of the pamphlet ‘Classics in the Curriculum’ recently published by the Department of Education and Science in the series ‘Education Information’. Those who have not may obtain one gratis by applying to the Publications Officer, Department of Education and Science, Curzon Street, London, W.I.
Form and Irony in Catullus XLV
Authors: Singleton David
Published: July 2013

Catullus' forty-fifth poem has become in recent years a focus for a certain amount of controversy. In this respect it has not been alone among the poems of Catullus' libellus; Catullan criticism has been undergoing a process of reassessment whereby a somewhat indiscriminate enthusiasm for certain poems has been challenged by an attitude in some cases more sophisticated, in others, perhaps, simply more devious. In the case of the poem under discussion, a traditional view, represented by J. Ferguson who quotes with approval Munro's estimate of the poem (‘the most charming picture in any language of a light and happy love’), has been rejected by several scholars who agree that the poem is, in some sense, ironical, while disagreeing in their reasons for so concluding. Before we examine their arguments we should, perhaps, be careful to define precisely what we mean by irony.
Horace, Odes III. 19. Does it Contain ‘A Gap in Time’?
Authors: Gornall J. F. G.
Published: July 2013

Admirers of Horace's Odes have cause to be grateful to Professor Gordon Williams for his recent edition of Book iii, with its illuminating and fascinating introduction and commentaries on individual odes. It is arguable, however, that he has misinterpreted iii. 19, ‘Quantum distet ab Inacho’.
Hybris in Athens
Authors: MacDowell Douglas M.
Published: July 2013

In the speech Against Konon the speaker, a young man named Ariston, complains that one evening when he and a friend were walking in the Agora they were victims of what would now be called ‘a mugging’. They were set upon by Konon and some other men, who pulled Ariston's cloak off him, tripped him up, threw him into the mud, and jumped on him. While he was lying on the ground, they said a lot of things which Ariston does not like to repeat in front of a jury of respectable men; ‘but’ he goes on ‘the thing which shows Konon's hybris, and indicates that he was the ringleader, I will tell you: he crowed in imitation of cocks that have won fights, and the others suggested he should beat his sides with his elbows like wings’ (Dem. 54. 8–9). So Ariston has taken steps to prosecute Konon. But his prosecution is not for hybris, although hybris was an offence in Athenian law, but for assault (aikeia).
Virgil and the Confiscations
Authors: Winterbottom Michael
Published: July 2013

This brief article tries to make sense of the first and ninth Eclogues with as little recourse as possible to evidence from outside the poems. In particular, it does without the doubtful aid of Servius, who arguably knew little more than we about the meaning and background. Where I give no references (except for the most familiar historical events) I am conjecturing, or adopting the conjectures of others. I have cut secondary references to a minimum, because the doxography of the Eclogues is too vast to be entertaining. Those who are new to the problems can easily find their bearings in the books of H.J. Rose, L.P. Wilkinson, and Gordon Williams. Old hands will know where I am being original: rarely, of course, if ever, for in this field of scholarship more than most it is true that ‘nihil iam dictumst quod non dictum sit prius’.
The Delphic Oracle
Authors: Lloyd-Jones Hugh
Published: July 2013

The ancient Greeks believed that the oracle at Delphi went back to immemorial antiquity. But were they right? The history of the site has been traced through excavations that are among the greatest achievements of modern archaeology. The interest of the French school in Delphi goes back to 1861, but for political reasons systematic excavation could not begin till 1893; since 1902 the series of volumes of the Fouilles de Delphes has appeared regularly. Mycenaean Delphi has been shown to have amounted to very little; and the chief centre seems to have been not on the site of the great temple, but at Marmaria, near the temple of Athene Pronaia. A few clay figurines may pertain to a private, but hardly to a public cult; an isolated Minoan marble drinking-horn shaped like a lion's head proves little. By the beginning of the Dark Age the settlement seems to have been destroyed by fire; before its life resumes during the Protogeometric period, there seems to have been a complete break in continuity. Only when the Dark Age is over does Delphi become important.
Weightlifting in Antiquity: Achievement and Training
Authors: Crowther Nigel B.
Published: July 2013

The late Professor H. A. Harris, who made many contributions to this journal, has added much to our knowledge of Greek and Roman athletics. Like Gardiner before him, he valued highly the opinions of modern athletes and was proud to be considered in their ranks; but it is difficult for a scholar (even when athlete) fully to understand all the intricate fields of sporting endeavour. Harris is so clearly right in his discussions of many fields of athletics that one is reluctant to take issue with his interpretations in a few areas, but he was unfortunately not fully versed in some of the ‘heavy’ events, as discus throwers have seen. In the case of weightlifting Harris discounts many of the ancient achievements without an adequate discussion of their feasibility. Since it has become almost fashionable for modern scholars not to take seriously these recorded feats, it is worth while to review them in the light of modern weightlifting—a comparison which has not been closely examined before—and to discuss the various lifts and training techniques of the ancients.
Swan Songs
Authors: Arnott W. Geoffrey
Published: July 2013

The legend of the dying swan's melancholy song is given its first expression in extant Greek literature by Aeschylus in 458B.c., and it has obsessed poets, commentators, and natural historians ever since. Poets like Tennyson may sing of the dying swan's ‘music strange and manifold’, unaffected by the scoffing doubts expressed by ancient scientists and modern editors of classical texts. But do dying swans really ‘sing’? The answer has been known now for over a century and a half, and is mentioned briefly in one or two works on ancient zoology such as C. J. Sundevall'sDie Thierarten des Aristoteles(Stockholm, 1863), p. 152, and O. Keller'sDie antike Tierwelt(Leipzig, 1913; reprinted 1963), ii.215. English commentators on ancient texts and D'Arcy Thompson's standardGlossary of Greek Birds(second edition, London and Oxford, 1936; reprinted 1966), however, tend either to neglect or unscientifically to dismiss the correct explanation. For this reason a restatement of the facts both ancient and modern seems advisable.
Plato on Poetry
Authors: Gulley Norman
Published: July 2013

The ‘poetry’ of my title has at least the virtue of brevity as a description of the sort of literature Plato discusses in Books 2, 3, and 10 of the Republic. But in its Platonic sense ‘poetry’ is too narrow a description. Two characteristics recognized by Plato as invariably belonging to poetry (poiēsis) are (i) that what it composes are fictional stories (muthoi) (Phd. 61 b), and (ii) that it composes them in verse (Grg. 502 c; Smp. 205 c; R. 393 d, 601 d, 607 d; Phdr. 258 d). And the sort of literature discussed in the Republic, while it invariably has characteristic (i), does not invariably have (ii).
Techniques of Rape: Variety of Wit in Ovid'sMetamorphoses
Authors: Stirrup Barbara E.
Published: July 2013

Variety is a keynote of Ovid'sMetamorphoses: variety of myth is complemented by variety of structure and style to create a symphony of sophisticated versatility. From this arise complex techniques of wit and it is the purpose of this paper to investigate these within myths which are basically similar. It is our purpose to examine comparatively three myths in order to elucidate the particular form of wit which predominates in each.
Bos Piger or Piger Caballus?
Authors: Baldwin Barry
Published: July 2013

Professor Huxley's article on ‘Bos, Bentley, and Byron’ was delightful to read; it provokes these thoughts of mine.

Majority opinion proves nothing, but it is solidly on the side of bos piger. Kiessling, for instance, and F. Villeneuve (in his 1967 Budé text) place the comma after piger. So do Lewis and Short, the TLL, the compilers of the new Oxford Latin Dictionary, and Dominicus Bo in his Lexicon Horatianum. Acron, Pseudo-Acron, and Porphyrion offer no comment. Piger is attached to caballus by Lane Cooper, and rather hesitantly by A. S. Wilkins. The latter felt that this better fitted the general sense of Horace's argument, a point to which I recur later. Wilkins was less confident of the rhythm of the line as a pointer to the ascription, and mentioned that many (unspecified) editors took piger as going with both nouns; this, indeed, might be an attractive compromise.
The Search for the Real Homer
Authors: Kirk G. S.
Published: July 2013

I am not of course going to talk about a very concrete person, a little bearded man who lived in Chios or Smyrna. Yet that there was someone called Homer, who was primarily responsible for the creation of the Iliad at least, I take for granted, and accordingly spare you the old jokes. They applied to an entirely different situation in scholarship from the one we have today, and the cause of the difference is the realization that the Homeric poems are in essence oral rather than written poetry.
On Translating Aristophanes: Ends and Means
Authors: Sommerstein Alan H.
Published: July 2013

There will never be a perfect translation of Aristophanes. There have been many translations, with many and diverse merits: one thinks of the poetical grace of F. L. Lucas, the deftness of Godley and Bailey, the easy naturalness of John and Patricia Easterling, the zest of B. B. Rogers, the modernity of Douglass Parker and his associates; but combine all these and you are still left a long way from a perfect translation—for there is much truth in the paradox that the only really perfect translation is the original. The Greek and Latin scholar is more aware of this than most people, and the lover of Aristophanes more still. Yet translations there must be—not only for the ‘general reader’, but increasingly nowadays for the student who wants to know more about ancient literature but is not yet (and in too many cases may never be) competent to study it in the language in which it was written; nor should we forget those who produce plays, and those who go to see them. And it matters a great deal whether the people who meet Aristophanes in these ways are brought to appreciate his qualities as comedian and dramatist. For Aristophanes' own contemporaries did, Plato among them; and if he was really boring or obscure or both (so the reader may argue), his contemporaries must have been so too.
Dramatic Structure in the Persae and Prometheus of Aeschylus
Authors: Ireland S.
Published: July 2013

In contrast to earlier works of scholarship directed towards resolving the problems of authenticity and date of composition through considerations of metre, language, and style, there has been a tendency for more recent studies of the Prometheus Bound to concentrate upon those aspects of thematic development which some have seen repeated in the Supplices, now dated to 464–463 B.c., and the Oresteia of 458. So, for instance, C. J. Herington has demonstrated on more than one occasion the apparent divergence that exists between the cosmic system portrayed by Aeschylus in the Persae and Septem and that found in the later plays, including the Prometheus. In the former group he says: ‘the Divine is united against man: let a human being swerve by a hair's-breadth from the rules, and the powers of earth and heaven will join together to castigate him’, while in the later plays ‘the human and divine cosmos is divided into the enemy camps of male and female, and of the opposites that go with them respectively: light/dark, heaven/earth, new/old; the universal fabric is torn in two.’ Certainly the ideas he puts forward here are acceptable in the case of the Oresteia, but for their extension to the Supplices and Prometheus they depend largely upon reconstructions of the lost plays that made up their respective trilogies: a hazardous course, though perhaps not altogether unjustified in the light of the available evidence.
Science, Philosophy, and Technology in the Greco-Roman World II
Authors: Lee Desmond
Published: July 2013

In very general terms, the physical scientist is concerned to identify and define certain regularities in the material world, and to embody them in laws or theories which both furnish an explanation of them and enable him to predict and to some extent to control particular kinds of future event. It is noticeable at once that the elements of prediction and control are largely absent from Greek speculation, and this is due partly to certain of its inherent characteristics (to which I return in a moment), and partly to its lack of three further particular features which are an essential part of the natural sciences today. These are briefly that they are experimental, quantitative, and laboratory-based. This generalization is, of course, at once too wide and too narrow. Not all scientific theories rely on experiment in the narrow sense or on laboratory operations; the observations of the astronomer and the activities of the field-biologist can, up to a point, dispense with both. But it remains true that the experimental test and the laboratory and its instruments are essential elements in modern science, and neither the astronomer nor the biologist can in the last resort dispense with them. Similarly, quantitative measurement plays an indispensable role in the physical sciences and is the basis on which they have been built up, even though the theoretical physicist may spend little time measuring or experimenting and be mainly concerned with the mathematical analysis which is so vital an element in modern physical theory.
Poetry in the ‘Circle’ of Messalla
Authors: Davies Ceri
Published: July 2013

Our views on literary patronage in the Augustan Age may be dominated to such an extent by the personality of Maecenas that other, contemporary, patrons are forgotten or, worse still, seen as pale reflections of the ‘ideal’ patron, Maecenas, and so best disregarded. Professor Ronald Syme, for example, in his notable chapter on Augustus' ‘Organization of Opinion’, writes that ‘Augustus’ chief of cabinet, Maecenas, captured the most promising of the poets at an early stage and nursed them into the Principate. Augustus himself listened to recitations with patience and even with benevolence. He insisted, however, that his praises should be sung only in serious efforts and by the best poets. The Princeps succeeded: other patrons of literature were left far behind.’ This article looks briefly at the work of those poets who were closely associated with one of these ‘other patrons’, M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and attempts to show that his patronage, and the poets' attitudes towards it, were essentially Republican in nature—a factor which should be kept in mind in making any comparison between Messalla's poets and those more directly concerned with the Princeps.
Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Project: A Summary
Authors: Jones P. V.
Published: July 2013

The Project is working to produce a new course in Ancient Greek, directed at maturer students, and lasting one or two years. Its aim is to promote the fluent and intelligent reading of fifth- and fourth-century Greek, and Homer. The team, supported by a Steering Committee and Advisory Panel drawn from scholars and teachers in Great Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and Europe, started work in September 1974. The first half of the course has been produced and is being tested in some 35 schools and universities in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States; the second half is currently being produced and will be used for the first time in the J.A.C.T. Summer School 1976, and after that in the testing institutions. The Project is due to end in August 1977, but it is hoped to finance a fourth year. We hope that, when published, the course will be available in the American and Australian/New Zealand markets: discussions with publishers over the cheapest possible methods of publication are currently being held.
Schliemann and the Shaft Graves
Authors: Dickinson O. T. P. K.
Published: July 2013

Though not the earliest excavator, Schliemann is surely one of the best known, and though he is perhaps most famous as the excavator of Troy his work at Mycenae was equally spectacular in its results and ultimately of greater importance for the study of Aegean prehistory. It seems appropriate, in the centenary year of his excavation of the Shaft Graves in 1876, to present an up-to-date assessment of their significance and of Schliemann himself. This study has developed from the chance discovery that in a letter to Max Müller at Oxford Schliemann reported a detail of the excavation that is not in the published account; in an ensuing hunt for other documents contemporary with the actual excavation, I learned much about Schliemann that seemed to me of considerable interest, as I hope it will be to others outside the small circle of Aegean specialists.
Poets and Patrons at Rome
Authors: Clarke M. L.
Published: July 2013

The relation of poet to patron is one which we today find rather difficult to understand. In our present society the theory, and to a considerable degree the practice, is that everyone has an equal opportunity and owes his position to his merits. It was not always so. The old way of doing things was by influence and interest and patronage. It was thought only right to do the best for your relations and friends and those who had done you some service, and those without wealth and power could only get on with the help of the wealthy and powerful. And as talent does not always go with wealth and power, men of talent such as writers often found themselves in a position of dependence. The invention of printing, the spread of literacy, and the establishment of a system of copyright, have now made it possible for a writer to be independent—dependent, that is, on the general public instead of on individuals. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no one would have had any difficulty in understanding Virgil's and Horace's relation to Maecenas.
What Sort of Translation of Virgil do we need?
Authors: Hill D. E.
Published: July 2013

Our first need is to define closely the sort of people for whom we intend the translation. Then we must be clear as to what we aim to achieve with them and it. Our audience, presumably, consists of young people many of whom have a primary allegiance to some other Arts discipline, chiefly English, Modern Languages, or History. Almost all will have some experience of studying literature in their own tongue, some will be familiar at first hand with foreign literatures, few will have more than a nodding acquaintance with Latin. By and large they will be used to taking a text and pressing it so as to establish a close understanding of it. Unhappily, if they attempt that with any translation known to me disaster will inevitably ensue. At this point, many readers will no doubt feel that all their doubts about the wisdom of attempting to teach Virgil through translation are being vindicated, while, in my experience, those who wish to defend the practice will tend to do so by granting the proposition that much will inevitably be lost in translation, conceding that students must learn not to press translations, and then making a number of ill-defined generalizations on what can be achieved. What I wish to argue is that none of the popular Virgilian translations was composed with our needs in mind, all make certain assumptions which were possibly quite proper for their audiences but which render their work unsuitable for ours. I shall argue further that we are far too lenient in the demands we make of our translators.
Herodotus on the Trojan War
Authors: Neville James W.
Published: July 2013

Herodotus' reputation as a critical historian has been increased by such a wealth of articles and papers recently that it might seem superfluous to add to the bulk of material already available. There are, however, some radical notions embodied in Herodotus' treatment of the Trojan War to which further attention should be drawn.
Tacitus' Narrative Technique
Authors: Miller N. P.
Published: July 2013

The basic principles of successful narrative presentation are simple to state, if difficult to achieve. Selection and organization of material to make the desired point; sufficient variety of tone and pace to hold the audience's interest and to emphasize the point; and a proper appreciation of the context in which the point has to be made: these requirements seem to be valid, whether the narrative being presented is a literary history, an imaginative novel, or an archetypal story which starts with ‘An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman …’ For each of these narrative forms implies intellectual judgement by the narrator on his material, artistic judgement about its presentation, and assumptions about the audience for whom it is intended. I should like to consider some aspects of Tacitus' art of narrative presentation, and the connection of that art with his historical judgement.
The Judgement of Paris
Authors: Walcot P.
Published: July 2013

Where ought we to begin the story of the Trojan War? If we follow Homer, we shall begin with Paris and his mad folly oratein abducting Helen (Iliad24.28; cf. 3.100 and 6.356, and contrast 5.62–64 and 22.115–16). But the rape of Helen was a direct consequence of Paris awarding the prize for outstanding beauty to Aphrodite, when, while tending animals on Mount Ida, the prince was approached by Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite and required to adjudicate between their conflicting claims to be thought the fairest.
Ovid's Metamorphoses
Authors: Griffin Alan H. F.
Published: July 2013

The amount of Ovid's surviving poetry is almost exactly equal to the sum total of poetry which has come down to us from Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius. Ovid wrote because he was a compulsive writer, ‘a poet utterly in love with poetry’ as Gilbert Murray aptly put it. He was the only classical poet to leave an autobiography, and in it he records that as a boy ‘I tried to write words freed from rhythm, yet all unbidden song would come upon befitting numbers and whatever I tried to write was verse.’ The quantity of Ovid's poetry, of course, cannot be made an excuse for lack of quality, but no indulgence need be begged and no allowances made for his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses. When the blow of exile fell on Ovid in a.d. 8 the Metamorphoses was substantially complete, much more so than the Aeneid had been when Virgil died in 19 b.c.
Argo and the Gods in Apollonius Rhodius
Authors: Gaunt David M.
Published: July 2013

In 1925 Miss J. R. Bacon wrote concerning Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica: ‘If the centre of the story is sought, that feature which above all others is indispensable, it must be found in the Argo. It is Argo—sea-adventure—that differentiates the Argonautica on the one hand from pure fairy-tale, the six soldiers of fortune and the like, and on the other from the stories of great human appeal like the Homeric poems. The Odyssey, as its name implies, is the story of a man: the Argonautica too is well named—it is the story of a ship and of a voyage.’ It was no doubt because he shared such feelings that Nathaniel Hawthorne in his Tanglewood Tales (1853) made so much of the ‘personality’ of the ship, or, more exactly, of its figurehead, ‘the daughter of the Speaking Oak of Dodona’, which in his version of the story of the Golden Fleece so often advises Jason in his difficulties.
Dido, Aeneas, and the Concept of Pietas
Authors: Mcleish Kenneth
Published: July 2013

Various attempts have been made, over the years, to assess the character of Dido, and explain her presence in, and extraordinary influence on, the Aeneid. Some critics have seen her as the heroine of an Aristotelian tragedy; others believe that Virgil emulated Pygmalion, and fell in love with his own creation; the most perverse of all call her a digression, a fatal flaw in the construction of the poem, and one which irretrievably weakens our view of Aeneas himself.
Diocletian's Palace at Split
Authors: Brothers A. J.
Published: July 2013

The existence of the great ‘palace’ which the Emperor Diocletian built for his retirement on the Dalmatian coast near his birthplace of Salona and which forms the nucleus of the present city of Split has been well known for over two hundred years. It was in 1757 that the celebrated Scottish architect Robert Adam visited Spalato, as it was then known; several years later he published his famous book of beautifully executed engravings of the ruins which, quite apart from its importance for the development of European neo-classical architecture in general and of the so-called Adam style in particular, first widely publicized the details of the palace in Europe. Since then the remains have deservedly been the subject of several complete studies and have featured prominently in many books on Roman architecture and on Dalmatia. With such a large amount of literature available in a comparatively accessible form, it is not my intention in this short article to provide either a complete historical account or a complete description of the place; it is rather to look briefly at its history from the time of Diocletian up to the point at which it stopped being a palace and started being a town, and to consider certain aspects of its architecture.
Propertius ii. 19
Authors: Wilkinson L. P.
Published: July 2013

It is only in comparatively recent years that critics have come to realize the extent of humour that is to be found in Propertius. The view of Postgate (1881), ‘Occasionally he shows a vein of humour we should not have expected’, is still that of Butler and Barber in 1933: ‘It [iv. 8] is his one humorous poem, and surprisingly successful.’ But by 1966 Eckard Lefèvre could write a whole book on Propertius Ludibundus, who was in this respect, as in so much else, the inspirer of Ovid: ‘In accordance with the principles set out the present study is an attempt at a contribution to the understanding of Roman love-elegy, in that it seeks to establish the achievement of Propertius as the decisive step in the development of the humorous element in elegy before Ovid set that particular stamp on it’ (p. 20).
Formal Debates in Euripides' Drama
Authors: Collard C.
Published: July 2013

The prime dramatic character of Greek tragedy is agonistic. Its myths for the most part show men struggling toward some goal, in conflict with one another, or against some force of circumstance or destiny, which is often personified in a god. Tragedy is at the same time a dramatic form restricted severely by theatrical conditions. The number of its speaking actors is held to three. It avoids the staging of any physical action like an assault or battle, let alone catastrophe, or death—for whatever reasons of narrative tradition, aesthetic convention, or simple impracticability. Despite certain ritual or symbolic aids to representation such as music, dance, and gesture, it is in consequence a drama of extreme, sometimes exclusive, verbal concentration. Exposition, development, climax, resolution, action and reaction—all movement occurs in the narrow room of at most three stage persons at any one time debating to confirm or change their attitudes or intentions—often, with a single character so placed debating within himself, in monologue or soliloquy, or in relief or opposition to another voice. My subject here is this last mise-en-scène: the deliberate working up of the ordinary exchange between characters into the opposition of one character to one or two others in a formal debate.
Critical Appreciations IV: Ovid,Amores2.10
Authors: Booth Joan , Verity A. C. F.
Published: July 2013

The following is the fourth of the series which began inG&R20 (1973), 38 ff. and 155 ff. and was continued inG&R21 (1974), 165 ff. and in the current volume, 70 ff.
The Philosopher and the Cave
Authors: Hall Dale
Published: July 2013

This Note is a supplement to J. C. Davies's discussion of the Republic's declaration that when the philosophers of the kallipolis have been trained in dialectic, they must be compelled to forsake pure contemplation of the forms and return to the Cave to rule (519 c–520d).
Medism in Athens 508–480 B.c.
Authors: Holladay James
Published: July 2013

There is some ancient evidence, and much more modern conjecture, about the existence of Medizers in Athens during the period 508–480 B.c. The present article attempts to take further the clarification of the term Medism which was begun by A. W. Gomme, and to suggest that there has been too uncritical an acceptance of the label in many, if not most, of the cases to which it has been applied.
The Roman Surveyors
Authors: Dilke O. A. W.
Published: July 2013

It is curious that so little has been written in English about the Roman land surveyors and their work. Most of the nineteenth-century study of the subject was carried out by German scholars. In 1812 Niebuhr stressed the importance of the extant writings of the agrimensores and suggested that field-work in Italy would contribute to our understanding of them. In 1833 a Dane, Captain Falbe, noticed that the squares into which the land round Carthage was divided had sides corresponding to 2,400 feet and thus equalled a normal centuria. The standard edition of the agrimensores, edited by Blume, Lachmann, and others, appeared in 1848 and 1852. Mommsen contributed to this work, and he and other German scholars extended the study of Roman surveying. Before the First World War it was a Swede, Thulin, who furthered research on the ancient writings. Apart from that in German the bulk of the work on the subject is in Italian.
Picasso and the Classics
Authors: Ferguson John
Published: July 2013

It may seem odd at first glance to include Picasso among those who have taken the torch from Greece. What, it will be asked, have these cruelly distorted images to do with the serenity of classicism? The question is ill conceived. Hellenistic art sought to explore the range of human experience as Picasso has done, and to respond to the violence of the world around as he has responded. The Laocoon or Skopas' Maenads were as shocking to their day as The Charnel-House or The Weeping Woman were to our fathers. Picasso has never been able to limit himself to the confines of one style. His restless, Alexander-like genius has always sought for new worlds to conquer. The man who at fourteen could paint The Girl with Bare Feet or the portrait of Don Ramón Perez Costales was not going to spend sixty years repeating what he had already achieved. Speaking of a contemporary who was trying to find a single solution to the problem of depicting forms he said: ‘There is no such thing as a solution.
Ancient Corinth
Authors: Hopper R. J.
Published: July 2013

The student of anniversaries who is not particular to a year or two will recall that some two thousand years ago this year Corinth was refounded by Julius Caesar, following its destruction a little more than a hundred years before by Mummius. ‘Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum’, said Horace, translating what seems to have been a Greek proverb. Whether or not this means that a merchant and his money were soon parted amid the less respectable joys of Corinth, it seems to turn on the wealth and luxury of what was once the second city of Greece: a city, despite the fact that she suffers in our ideas from having played second fiddle politically and culturally to Athens and Sparta, of exceptional importance in the history of Greece. Thus is justified an effort to outline her history on this anniversary occasion.
The Daughters of Troy: A lecture
Authors: Rheby
Published: July 2013

This very great play was first produced in 415 B.c. and must have been a favourite from the beginning, for it was chosen, with eight others from the same author, to be broadcast as one of the world's masterpieces. In spite of such a good start, however, it has been largely misunderstood in modern times, and the interpretation I am about to give must, unfortunately, be regarded as something new. Yet, of course, if it is the correct explanation, it is not new at all but exactly as old as the play itself. The author was Euripides—the youngest of the three great tragedians who were producing plays at the same time in one town—not as big as Newcastle-under-Lyme. Think of it—three Shakespeares at once. The construction of the play is brilliant, and that means, among other things, that it will contain its own explanation; we shall look for it and probably find it in the prologue. The scene displayed on the stage is one of desolation—much like a bombed site on the morning after a heavy raid. In the background we see smoking ruins and some rather poor tents or sheds evidently knocked up on the spur of the moment to accommodate a few desolate and homeless survivors.
Cicero on Private Property: Theory and Practice
Authors: Walcot P.
Published: July 2013

It was towards the close of his life in 43 B.c. that Cicero wrote the three books of the de Officiis. The attractions of a philosophical treatise whose theme is moral duty are likely to appear slight to the modern reader, especially if that reader thinks its author to be merely the purveyor of second-hand ideas borrowed from Greek sources. Yet the de Officiis epitomizes, in an intensely Roman way, the political beliefs and ideals of the Senatorial order at Rome as the Republic finally succumbed to autocracy. The political philosophy of the ancients may be more immediately relevant today than their ethical speculation, for, while it is folly to interpret political activity as if the Roman Republic enjoyed a two-party system composed of left-wing populates and right-wing optimates, it is true that much of the turmoil generated during the last century of the Republic was related to proposals for agrarian reform and the redistribution of land; similarly, much of the debate currently being conducted between supporters of the rival ideologies is centred about the ownership of property and assets. Perhaps we may be encouraged to survey the de Officiis more sympathetically if we approach it as political scientists and as students of this subject mindful of the writings of another ancient, the historian Thucydides, and his opinion that, human nature being a constant, situations will repeat themselves in the same or a very similar form.
Splendide Mendax: Horace Odes III. 11
Authors: Cairns Francis
Published: July 2013

Studies of Horace's imitation of Greek lyric in his Odes have tended to concentrate on particular supposed echoes. Given that the surviving Greek texts are few and fragmentary, this method is bound often to lead to dubious and unsatisfactory results. A broader approach directed at the syntax, structure, and myths of the Odes produces, in my view, a clearer understanding of how Horace hoped to enter the canon of lyric poets (Odes i. 1. 35 f.). This paper expounds Odes iii. 11 exempli gratia as a serious Horatian attempt to write the Latin equivalent of an early Greek lyric. It shows some of the ways in which Horace has concentrated the characteristics he observed in his predecessors and composed an ode which is a close-knit complex of Greek lyric linguistic and conceptual mannerisms.
The Modernity of Menander
Authors: Arnott Geoffrey
Published: July 2013

Is Menander, in any sense of the word, ‘modern’?1 And if he is, what relevance does this have to the quality of his plays? Such questions will perhaps be asked more in our present age, when some of our critics appear to idolize modernity in art, literature, or music at the expense of quality; and they are questions capable of a wide variety of positive answers. In one way Menander is modern because a large section of his work—the Dyskolos, several hundred lines complete of the Aspis and the Samia, significant fragments of several other plays—has been discovered in Egypt and printed for the first time during the last sixteen years. Or again, Menander is modern because indirectly at least he has influenced the modern world's comedy of manners down to the time of Oscar Wilde and P. G. Wodehouse. He is modern, too, because he writes about the recurrent problems of families, young and old alike, as they wrestle with love and greed, worry about status and reputation, and flounder in a morass of misconceptions. But the aspect of Menander's modernity that interests me most of all is his apparent concern with certain dramatic and stylistic techniques which living writers deliberately apply in their novels and plays, techniques which our modern critics love to label as undisputedly modern.
The Classics and History
Authors: Colman D. S.
Published: July 2013

In May 1862 one of the members of the Public Schools Commission asked Dr. Moberly, the Headmaster of Winchester, whether it was the habit in his school to teach modern or ancient history by set lessons, and he got the frank reply, ‘No; I should not know how to do it.’ And C. E. Graves, in the course of his evidence before the same Commissioners, said of the Greek history that he had studied a few years earlier at Shrewsbury, ‘We used to get it up from a small book by a German, written in Latin.’ The century that has passed since then has seen astonishing changes both in the content and in the methods of education, and in particular the promotion of historical studies to a place of central importance has made considerable alterations in the frontiers even if it has not been the result of deliberate ‘re-drawing the map of learning’, and it certainly constitutes one of the main factors which the contemporary cartographers of education must take into account.
Teaching Latin
Authors: Vellacott P. H.
Published: July 2013

‘You know, sir—you're absolutely right!’ This heartening remark, accompanied by the ingenuous smile of intellectual discovery (or was it just kindly encouragement?) came from a member of the Classical Sixth in response to a five-minute impromptu discourse of mine in which I had said something like this:

In the Fourth Form we show you, two or three times a week, how to set about translating a complex Latin period. We ask you, ‘What verb is introduced by ut?’ You say, ‘Esset’. We say, ‘Look again’; and you say, ‘Oh, no, esset is introduced by quod; ut goes with perciperent’. ‘Right; then what clause comes before the ut-clause?’ ‘An Ablative Absolute.’
The New Menander
Authors: Hooker G. T. W.
Published: July 2013

Clandestine excavation may never quite have attained the status of a national sport in Egypt, but it has none the less been undertaken there on a considerable and no doubt profitable scale for several millennia: tomb-robbing began almost as soon as there were tombs worth robbing. But it is only in the last 150 years or so that these operations have been extended from depositories of real or imagined treasure to rubbish dumps; and only in the last two generations that business in the new branch of the trade has become really brisk. Papyri have been the new attraction, and interest in them has grown as discoveries have multiplied. Vast numbers of papyri have now been found, and by one means or another more are still being brought to light. Of recent finds the most outstanding is a substantial manuscript in the Martin Bodmer collection, of which the editio princeps is just being published in Switzerland, and which is discussed in the following pages by one of its editors. This new papyrus, it seems, came from Alexandria; but beyond that, as so often happens, its provenance is unknown.
Pan's Prologue to the Dyskolos of Menander
Authors: Photiades Penelope J.
Published: July 2013

About two years ago the papyrus of Menander's Dyskolos was seen in Alexandria, and was afterwards sent, in two instalments, to the library of M. Martin Bodmer, the famous collector, in Geneva. There it was decisively identified and its authenticity was established by Professor Victor Martin. This unique papyrus of a complete play by Menander, which was hitherto known only from the scanty fragments to be gleaned from anthologies, forms a beautifully preserved codex which may be dated around a.d. 200. (See Plates III–V.) At the time when this article was being written, the Dyskolos was about to be published by Professor Martin in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana series, with the requisite textual reconstruction, translation, and notes, to which I have had the privilege of contributing. As will be seen from the editto princeps, out of a total of about 969 verses, there are only about 9 verses missing—in two places in the fourth act; but about 30 verses in the first and second acts are incomplete, and approximately 200 require some sort of emendation, usually to compensate for the scribe's metrical inaccuracies.
Caesar and Lucretius
Authors: Dale F. R.
Published: July 2013

SirFrankAdcock, in his book, Caesar as Man of Letters, observes (p. 72) that Caesar's description of his defeat at Dyrrhachium, in B.C. iii. 69, shows a change of style. ‘Here, as Caesar lives again through this crisis in his fortunes, the plain style is for a moment infused with the vividness of his recollection’; and we note especially the words omniaque erant tumultus timoris fugae plena, which recall plena erant omnia timoris et luctus, found in the description of Curio's disaster in B.C. ii. 41. But long before that, in E.G. v. 33, Caesar had written: ‘Praeterea accidit, quod fieri necesse erat, ut uulgo milites ab signis discederent, quae quisque eorum carissima haberet ab impedimentis petere atque arripere properaret, clamore et fletu omnia complerentur.’ This is in the vivid and moving account of the disaster which befel Sabinus and Cotta in 54 b.c.; and indeed Sir Frank Adcock does note that here ‘there is a more dramatic treatment of the situation’.
Prudentius in the Classroom?
Authors: Tillyard H. J. W.
Published: July 2013

Prudentius ranks as the third lyric poet after Horace and Catullus; he is also the greatest of the early Christian poets. In a short poem, which is the prelude to his chief collection, he gives a sketch of his career, but, unlike Ovid, affords only vague indications. At school he was put under a stern master:

aetas prima crepantibus flevit sub ferulis.

Then, after a stormy youth, he took to the law. Later he entered on a public career and held two high provincial governorships. Afterwards the Emperor (probably Theodosius) brought him to court as his own minister. Finally, when past the age of fifty, with hair already turning white (nix capitis), Prudentius resolved to devote the rest of his life to the praise of the True God.
The Return of Orestes in the Choephori: An Arab View
Authors: Tregenza L. A.
Published: July 2013

‘You read in books’, Suliman said to me; ‘our book is the sand’. In the course of many long and fascinating journeys with the Arabs in the Eastern desert of Egypt, not a day—hardly an hour—passed in which I did not witness their powers of observation or listen to their comments on the footprints of man or bird or animal beneath us in the sand. From childhood to the grave the ground at their feet is an ever-open book, the reading of which is second nature with them, a constant occupation of vital importance to their desert lives. What would they think of the recognition scene in the Choephori? The few paragraphs that follow, extracts from the journal I made of a threemonth walk with three or four men of the Ma'asa tribe in the summer of 1949, are a record of my conversations with two of them on this subject.
Plague at Athens
Authors: Salway P. , Dell W.
Published: July 2013

The recent revival of interest in the Athenian Plague suggested to us that it would be worth while re-examining the evidence. The very fact that it has troubled so many scholars in the last hundred years lends it a certain distinction, but their conclusions are so contradictory and unsatisfactory that many have agreed with Poppo ‘eam rem diiudicare non grammaticorum atque interpretum est, sed medicorum’. Yet it is clear that the inquiry can hardly be effective without co-operation between classical and medical men.
Peripatos: The Athenian Philosophical Scene—II
Authors: Wycherley R. E.
Published: July 2013

The fourth century saw a withdrawal of philosophy to its more secluded haunts, but it was only a partial withdrawal. There remained and developed a certain antithesis, physical and topographical as well as spiritual and philosophical, between the stoa (and the agora) and the garden.
Platonis Aemvlvs?
Authors: Douglas A. E.
Published: July 2013

‘M. Tvllivs … etiam in hoc opere [i.e. philosophia] Platonis aemulus exstitit.’ There is a fallacy underlying Quintilian's judgement here—he is not by any means at his best in this famous chapter—which is interesting in that, with very different consequences, it also underlies the almost total neglect of Cicero's philosophical works prevalent in this country in our own day. (That Cicero's philosophical works were once popular everyone knows; but many would, I fancy, be surprised to learn how much serious and scholarly attention they are still receiving in America, France, and Germany.) The fallacy which is the common basis of Quintilian's approbation and our neglect is the belief, explicit or implicit in much modern criticism, that Roman literature is to be assessed by comparison, man for man and genre for genre, with Greek. Some such comparisons can be made, and with profit for those who do not prejudge the issue of the investigation and, since the Roman writers often seem deliberately to invite such comparisons, for those who are equipped with the necessary understanding of what ‘imitation’ means in the context of ancient literature. But these comparisons are silly and fruitless when conducted with the kind of naïveté which can see in Cicero's philosophical writings only a ‘poor man's Plato’. To compare Cicero and Plato in this field is to compare incomparables. This becomes clear if we forget our presuppositions and ask, as I propose to do, (1) what was Cicero in his philosophical writings trying to do and was it worth doing, and (2) how did he set about his task, and were his methods the right ones ? Only then can we attempt, as I shall do briefly in concluding, an estimate of his achievement.