bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Laurion Silver Mines: A Review of Recent Researches and Results
Authors: Jones John Ellis
Published: September 2009

There appeared in Greece & Rome during the 1960's three articles devoted to aspects of the Athenian Silver mines in the Laurion district of southern Attica: a visitor's brief observations in C. Macdonald's ‘The Ancient Mine-workings of Laurion’ (vol. 8 (1961), 19–21, pis II–IV) and a scholar's description of the area and the history and organization of the mines in R. J. Hopper's ‘The Mines and Miners of Ancient Attica (ibid., 138–51), and then again an account of the geology of the area and the ancient methods of mining and ore-processing in C. J. K. Cunningham's, ‘The Silver of Laurion’, published six years later, but founded on visits made in 1962 (vol. 14 (1967), 145–56).
Facts from Fragments
Authors: Parsons Peter
Published: September 2009

‘He is the surgeon of old authors, and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. He converses much in fragments and desunt multas.’ This was the typical classical scholar, as described by John Earle in 1632; nowadays, the words would apply most readily to the papyrologist. Papyrology's business is with the papyri, the books and papers of the Greek-speaking settler-class which ruled Egypt for ten centuries (300 B.C.–A.D. 700). The Greek Egyptians dumped their waste-paper; and the Egyptian climate has preserved it – dirty, tattered, and worm-eaten – for our study. This vast rubbish-dump provides, and will go on providing, a whole range of new evidence for historians of Greek literature and Roman government. This paper sets out to survey some recent contributions.
The Symplegades
Authors: Pickard William F.
Published: September 2009

Classical literature abounds with references to natural phenomena which have no obvious counterparts in the present day; and it is always difficult to know how to interpret such references, whether they should be dismissed forthwith as the excesses of overwrought imaginations, or whether they should be classified as poetic licence, or whether they should be taken more seriously still and explanations sought in terms of subtle or uncommon natural processes which occurred in ancient times as well as modern.
Plato's Mother and other Terrible Women
Authors: Walcot Peter
Published: September 2009

In the eighth and ninth books of theRepublicPlato describes the four inferior or corrupt types of government – timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny – and the four related types of human personality – the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical man (544dff.). Closest to the ideal, and first therefore in sequence of decline, is the timocratic state, the term timocracy being employed not in the Aristotelian sense of a polity demanding a property qualification of its ruling class but with ‘the peculiar meaning of government by the principle of honour (τιμ). The timocratic state, it is claimed (545cff.), develops when its members no longer live in harmony but come into conflict as the guardians join brides and bridegrooms ‘inopportunely’ (παρ καιρν, 546d), so that their offspring are neither well-born nor blessed by fortune. The result is a form of government which retains some of the features of its good predecessor, anticipates some of the features of its worse successor, and also boasts some features unique to itself, such as a preference for the ‘spirited’, men better suited for war than for peace. Above all else such a state will be distinguished by a cultivation of competition and a passion for honour: διαϕανστατον δ’ ναὐστν τι μνον… ϕιλονκαι κα ϕιλοτμαι (548c).
Non Viribus Aequis: Some Problems in Virgil's Battle-Scenes
Authors: Horsfall Nicholas
Published: September 2009

Little of the ‘Iliadic’Aeneidis devoted to actual combat: two-fifths of books 7–12, on a generous count. Modern scholarship largely avoids the topic; certainly, Virgil has not yet found his Fenik. This paper grew from a desire to know just what determined victory in Virgilian combat, and though the actual answer may prove simple and unexciting, the question itself sheds new light upon the structure and personalities of the later books. The issue is vastly more complex in Homer's huge battle-scenes: there the ‘serious and grim Achaeans’ are more frequent victors and it is clear that the outcome of many duels will have pre-existed the creation of theIliadand could not be altered. In Homer too, the vastly greater number of heroes developed into figures of individual interest results in the establishment of what is in effect an unofficial ‘rating’ system: not only is ‘The minor warriors of theIliad'substantial and valuable study, but within that group, further clear discriminations of ranking apply: Idomeneus, Antilochus, Helenus, Deiphobus, for example, stand in mid-scale and Homer's system of ‘seeding’ excludes unexpected or improbable winners: thus when Aeneas meets Diomedes inIl.5, he is clearly outclassed, but also, traditionally, survives the battles against the Achaeans. An honourably drawn fight would be too good a result for Aeneas' talents and a divine rescue is an alternative fortunately open to Homer. What then happens in theAeneid?
An Augustan World History: TheHistoriae Philippicaeof Pompeius Trogus
Authors: Alonso-Núñez J. M.
Published: September 2009

The political unification of the Mediterranean world in the last epoch of the Roman Republic doubtless provided the stimulus for the composition of world histories. One of these is the only universal history written in Latin, under the titleHistoriae Philippicae, by Pompeius Trogus in the time of Augustus. The original work is lost, but we have anEpitomaproduced around the year A.D. 200 by Iustinus. Theprologi, which contain summaries of the original work, have been preserved, but there is no indication of authorship.
The Reunion of Penelope and Odysseus
Authors: Emlyn-Jones Chris
Published: September 2009

One of the most striking dramatic features of the climax of Homer'sOdysseyis the lengthy postponement of the reunion of Penelope and Odysseus. The sequence of scenes which lead finally to recognition begins at 17.508, when Penelope asks the swineherd Eumaios to summon the disguised Odysseus so that she may question him about her husband. But it is only at 23.205, after many diversions, that she breaks down in tears at the final realization that Odysseus is really home.
Cleon and Pericles: Sphacteria
Authors: Marshall M. H. B.
Published: September 2009

It may be argued that some inconsistencies in Thucydides are due to impartiality, to the prevalence of straight reportage based on available evidence, whereas narrative guided and coloured by opinions and judgements would more probably be consistent. The present writer, however, is more impressed by the view that many inconsistencies are due to imperfect integration into continuous narrative of different or even opposing attitudes.
Greek Attitudes Towards Women: The Mythological Evidence
Authors: Walcot P.
Published: September 2009

Students today demand that what they are taught or what they discuss is ‘socially relevant’. A topic appears to exhibit social relevance when it is related to some issue currently reckoned important and the subject of controversy. No topic at present is thought more socially relevant than the role of women in society. Extra-mural students can vote with their feet as undergraduates cannot, and it is significant how regularly the brochures of university extra-mural departments in Britain have come to feature courses with titles such as ‘Women's Studies’, ‘New Horizons for Women’, ‘Images of Women’, and ‘Women Speak’. Teachers of Classics have not been reluctant to devise their own courses on women in antiquity, and it is my impression that no university in North America is without a course of this type, while postgraduate seminars covering the same field of interest seem to have become firmly established throughout Western Europe. Books, articles, and notes on women and ancient society abound, and the resultant bibliography grows more and more daunting each year.
Augustus and the Senate
Authors: Talbert Richard J. A.
Published: September 2009

The relationship between Tiberius and the senate as a corporate body has attracted frequent attention. That between Augustus and the senate, on the other hand, has suffered comparative neglect. Explanations of the contrast quickly suggest themselves. Not only did Tiberius prove the more willing of the two emperors to participate at sessions; his relationship with the senate is also much better documented, since it forms one of the principal themes of Tacitus' account of the reign in his Annals. But although the relationship which Tiberius determined to establish did have its own distinctive character from the outset, it is important to recognize that it was developed from a foundation painstakingly laid by Augustus. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to trace the nature and growth of Augustus' relationship with the senate, and to assess briefly the significance for the corporate body of Tiberius' different attitude.
The Politician Lucan
Authors: Martindale Charles
Published: September 2009

TheBellum Civileis a poem great enough to appeal to readers in different periods for different reasons. Thus Dante hugely admired Lucan(quello grande poeta)while not sharing his political views, since he himself favoured a universal monarchy in which the Emperor in possessing all would be free from all appetite, and, therefore, just. Lucan's portrait of Cato so impressed him that in theConvivio, in an allegorical exposition ofB.C.2.326ff., Cato is taken as a figure for God, and in theDivine Comedyhe is the guardian at the foot of Purgatory, although he had been a pagan, a suicide, and an opponent of Julius Caesar whom Dante favoured (Brutus and Cassius are with Judas in the mouths of Satan). Nevertheless it is likely that many of Lucan's admirers have been attracted above all by the poet's espousal oflibertasand hatred for autocracy. This must account for Shelley describing theBellum Civileas ‘a poem as it appears to me of wonderful genius, and transcending Virgil’, a judgement that he conceded would be ‘no less unpopular than some of the others I entertain’, and may also help to explain Milton's interest in Lucan. However, in this century the idea has been widespread that theBellum Civileis not in any real sense a ‘Republican’ poem. There are signs that this view may be hardening into something like an orthodoxy, according to which the poem, if properly understood, and at least as originally conceived, is in no sense a poem of political protest or opposition, and contains no serious criticism of the Principate as such, even if parts of the later books are coloured by Lucan's personal resentment of Nero (it is sometimes even argued that Lucan intended to finish his epic with praise of the imperial peace and of the Principate as a restored Republic). Lucan's political views are thus taken to be (behind the rhetorical fireworks) approximately the same as those of his uncle Seneca. I shall here consider the principal arguments adduced in the debate, and shall indicate briefly why the question is an important one, even for readers primarily interested in theBellum Civileas poetry.
Homeric Society: A Shame-Culture?
Authors: Hooker J. T.
Published: September 2009

It is widely known that in the first two chapters of his Greeks and the Irrational E. R. Dodds borrowed the terms ‘shame-culture’ and ‘guilt-culture’ and applied them to early Greek society. According to Dodds, the society depicted by Homer knew nothing of guilt or the sanction of guilt: what acted as a motivating force was aidōs, ‘shame’ or ‘sense of shame’, of which the sanction was nemesis, ‘righteous indignation’. In other words, the warriors of the heroic caste were impelled to certain courses of action, or were restrained from others, by aidōs: they were ashamed of ‘losing face’ among their equals or inferiors, and this fear of public indignation kept before the mind of the heroes where their duty lay. As the Archaic age advanced (Dodds contends), the sense of guilt became manifest, without however displacing entirely the assumptions of the earlier ‘shame-culture’.
Reading Greek Performance
Authors: Wiles David
Published: September 2009

Simon Goldhill's Reading Greek Tragedy is a welcome publication – not for its originality but because it makes available an important and eclectic body of critical approaches to Greek texts. Goldhill gives no quarter to the idea that the Greekless reader cannot deal with complex theoretical arguments. The (post-)structuralist revolution in modern thought, associated with Derrida, Foucault, and above all Barthes, mediated for the most part through classical scholars such as J-P. Vernant, Froma Zeitlin, and Charles Segal, has here found its way into a book targeted at the undergraduate market. I welcome Goldhill's book as one which demonstrates, without mystification, both the complexity of Greek tragedy, and the contemporary relevance of the questions which Greek tragedy poses. At the same time, as one who teaches students of Drama, I cannot but feel frustration.
Greek Bronzes
Authors: Sparkes Brian A.
Published: September 2009

When I first began to study Greek art, back in the mid 1950s, a book on Greek sculpture had recently been published in Germany and in England that did much to encourage my interest. It was Reinhard Lullies and Max Hirmer's big picture book,Greek Sculpture, since enlarged and running into three German and two English editions. Its basic idea was not totally novel but was rare for its time and never previously done so well. It presented large, clear photographs of original Greek works (by Hirmer) with a scholarly commentary to each piece (by Lullies); it omitted anything that was known, or considered, not to be original. In doing so, it provided a strong contrast to the sort of book with which I had already come into contact, the sort best characterized perhaps by Ernest Gardner'sSix Greek Sculptorsof 19252which contains not one single original piece by the six chosen sculptors and in which all the photographs are seen through a glass darkly. Gardner's title and approach, with heavy emphasis on literary evidence and Roman copies, accompanied by a sprinkling of original, unattributed pieces for ballast, was typical of a traditional line of study-that ofKopienkritik, an approach not dead yet by any means and in fact one which must continue to be pursued, though nowadays it is tackled with more caution than earlier. But until one incontrovertible example of a named sculptor's work is found, all attributions must be arguable approximations.
The Death of Turnus and Roman Morality
Authors: Burnell Peter
Published: September 2009

Is Aeneas right or wrong to kill Turnus at the end of the Aeneid? Virgil himself has raised the issue by creating Aeneas' dilemma. In the equivalent scene of the Iliad the first wound which Hector receives in combat with Achilles is fatal, and so the possibility of sparing his life does not arise; but Turnus is not mortally wounded, he asks for mercy, begins to be successful, and then is killed after all. About this moral question all the logically possible opinions have been recently asserted by scholars: that the killing is right, that it is wrong, and that it is morally neutral. One of these must, of course, be right.
Language and Style in Tacitus' Agricola
Authors: Bews Janet P.
Published: September 2009

In the Agricola … Tacitus amalgamates biography and historical monograph. But the success of the combination is questionable. He gives roughly two thirds of the work to Agricola's governorship of Britain, and treats the climax of Agricola's campaigns at length, providing direct speeches for the two leaders, almost as if he were experimenting with full-scale history. Such extensive development of a part, albeit an important part, unbalances the whole. Again, most of what he tells us about Agricola's personality is conventional and unrevealing.… Some contend that Tacitus exaggerated Agricola's achievements and wilfully misconstrued his relations with Domitian. We cannot be sure, but certainly many matters in the Agricola are unclear or, like the insinuation of poisoning against Domitian, ill substantiated. There is, however, a case for the defence. Tacitus probably found little else worth relating about Agricola except the governorship, and hence made the most of it. In thus concentrating on military and administrative achievements, he followed a hallowed Republican tradition.… A Roman aristocrat should possess and display virtus, above all in warfare: to this pattern Agricola conformed. Thus one old-fashioned attitude underlies a work somewhat novel in conception.
The Cassandra Scene in Aeschylus' Agamemnon
Authors: Schein Seth L.
Published: September 2009

The Cassandra scene in Aeschylus' Agamemnon occupies over 250 lines, yet scholars and critics, preoccupied with such large issues as the changing conception of justice in the Oresteia and the male/female and Chthonic/Olympian conflicts, have tended to give it relatively little attention. In a sense this is understandable: the scene in no way Advances the action of the drama, and critics who have learned from Aristotle that the ‘plot’ is the ‘soul’ of a tragedy might well feel that it is unnecessary to bother about a scene which could be omitted with no effect on the movement of the story. Nevertheless, it is difficult to believe that Aeschylus would have inserted so long and unexpected a scene in his play, just at the point when the audience would expect Agamemnon to be murdered, if it did not have an important dramatic purpose. Furthermore, in actual performance, Cassandra frequently rivets our attention more than any other character; on stage her scene can be the most gripping and affecting part of the play. In this essay I shall try to account for the powerful effect that the Cassandra scene has on the audience; then I shall discuss its place and function in the Agamemnon and the trilogy as a whole.
Protagoras and Education at Thourioi
Authors: Muir J. V.
Published: September 2009

In 510 B.C. two of the most prosperous cities of the Western Greeks went to war. Croton was an Achaean foundation and the proverbially wealthy Sybaris was originally founded jointly from Achaea and Troezen; the immediate cause of the war seems to have been a local quarrel and is rather unclear, but there was a history of rivalry. The army of Croton was commanded by the hefty and redoubtable Milo who was appointed general after an astonishing record of success in the international wrestling ring (over thirty major crowns and five times a victor at all four great Games on ‘the circuit'). He now showed that he could be just as ruthless in a real battle and the results for Sybaris were disastrous; the city was destroyed, the inhabitants dispersed, and the site obliterated by the diversion of a local river, the Crathis. On two subsequent occasions the erstwhile citizens attempted with remarkable tenacity to refound Sybaris in the same area (by the second attempt, this must have been undertaken by the children and even the grandchildren of the original citizens), but Croton, still nervous of rivalry, successfully eliminated both attempts at settlement.
Theseus the King in Fifth-Century Athens
Authors: Davie John N.
Published: September 2009

Of all Greek heroes, Theseus, few would deny, has the greatest claim to enshrine all the best qualities of the Athenian citizen, not least in his championship of thedemos, celebrated by poets and painters alike of the classical period. It might seem at first sight contradictory to find in the same period in Athenian history an equally flourishing tradition concerning Theseus the heroic-age king. This ‘contradiction', however, as it might be perceived in abstract terms by a modern constitutional historian, would not have been felt so acutely, if at all, by a fifth-century Greek, for whom the ideas of monarchic rule and the heroic age were fundamentally connected. Our response to this type of problem owes more to the analytical method of such later works as Aristotle'sPolitics, with its thorough categorization of constitutions, and there is always the danger that we may impose on the Greek mythological imagination of the fifth century an unwarranted rigidity that fails to reflect the greater plasticity of the classical Greek mind. A review of the Theseus legend in fifth-century Athens reveals the extent to which such flexibility of attitude existed and throws some light on the classical attitude to one-man rule.
Morals, Politics, and the fall of the Roman Republic
Authors: Levick Barbara
Published: September 2009

Ancient writers ascribed Rome's political difficulties during the last century of theRepublic to failures of character, specifically to ambitio, avaritia, luxuria, and libido. Sallust gives the clearest and best known account in the introductions to his monographs on Catiline and Jugurtha. The danger of decline had already been noticed by Polybius, and he indicated one point for the beginning of the process: the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. (6.57; 38.21 f.). No longer confronted by the external threat, Romans could relax and give themselves up instead to greed, luxury, and personal ambition. Livy seems to have accepted the same turning point: the first fifty books were devoted to the expansion of Rome down to the destruction of Carthage; those that followed paid more attention to Rome's internal problems. At the same time, Livy was not unaware of the importance of Cn. Manlius Vulso's campaigns in the east and his return in 187 B.C. laden with the spoils which marked the beginning of foreign luxury, including such unmentionable instruments of corruption as pedestal tables and sideboards (39.6, 7).
Martial's Fascination with Lusci
Authors: Watson Patricia A.
Published: September 2009

Readers of Martial may be struck by the frequency with which one-eyed people make their appearance in the epigrams. Sometimes the deformity is satirized in conjunction with a moral failing, as for instance in the case of the one-eyed drunkard (6.78) who prefers his wine to his eyesight (and so, by continuing to imbibe against medical advice, loses the vision of his remaining eye). On other occasions, the physical defect itself gives rise to a witticism which forms the focal point of the poem. A striking example is the neat couplet 3.8: ‘“Thaida Quintusamat.” “Quam Thaida?” “Thaida luscam.” /Unum oculum Thais non habet, ille duos’, where the erotic commonplace of the lover who is ‘blind’ to his beloved's faults is given a novel twist by the suggestion that Quintus must be literally blind to love the repulsive Thais.
The Funeral of Achilles; An Epilogue to theIliadin Book 24 of theOdyssey
Authors: Whitehead Oliver
Published: September 2009

Critical comment on the end of theOdysseyhas centred on a two-fold question: first, is Book 24, together with the last 76 lines of Book 23, an interpolation? And secondly, does this final section of the poem add significantly to the content or meaning of the poem as a whole, whether or not its originality can be established? Two of Homer's early critics, Aristophanes and Aristarchus, are reported by the scholiasts to have placed the ending of the poem at Book 23, line 296. However, the terms used for ‘ending’ (πέρας, τέλος) are subject to varying interpretations. It is uncertain whether these expressions indicate that the text in its entirety ends at this point, or simply that the substance of the narrative ends here, in which case what follows is inessential. Recent commentators have carried on the controversy; however, despite some forceful arguments to the contrary, the dominant consensus now favours the Unitarian position. The present discussion will attempt to reinforce this position and specifically to explore some ramifications of the secondNekyiawhich have not yet been fully dealt with.
The Refutation of Callicles in Plato'sGorgias
Authors: Klosko George
Published: September 2009

In a well-known article appearing in 1967, E. L. Harrison examines Plato's manipulation of Thrasymachos in the first book of theRepublic. Harrison looks into certain peculiarities in the argument between Thrasymachos and Socrates and explores motives that may have led Plato to have Thrasymachos develop his doctrine in this particular fashion. Though Harrison's conclusions are widely discussed and frequently accepted, it strikes me as interesting that little scholarly attention has been focussed on equally striking features of the debate between Socrates and Callicles in theGorgias. For I believe it can be shown that Plato's presentation of Callicles contains numerous peculiarities of its own, that the powerful, vigorously argued doctrine of immoralism enunciated by Callicles in a celebrated portion of the dialogue is actually infected with glaring weaknesses. I do not believe that these weaknesses have been satisfactorily accounted for, nor has the possibility been explored that Plato could have put them there intentionally. The purpose of this paper, then, is threefold: (a) to examine the nature of these flaws in Callicles' position; (b) to demonstrate their apparently odd and gratuitous character; and (c) to explore possible reasons Plato may have had for incorporating them into his presentation of Callicles in theGorgias.
Attitudes to Work and Leisure in Ancient Greece
Authors: Balme Maurice
Published: September 2009

The Puritan ethic insists that work is both necessary and virtuous. But if automation makes work unnecessary, is it still virtuous? Indeed, if work is in short supply, may not industry actually be vicious, since it would mean taking more than one's fair share of the work available to the community as a whole, a new sort of πλεονεξία? A letter appeared in the national press recently which said: ‘Work is virtuous only when it is necessary, and much of what was done in the past and for which people were trained, no longer needs to be done. We already have butter mountains, beef mountains, barley mountains, lakes of milk, surfeits of electricity generating capacity, of shipping, of coal and so on.… Twenty thousand miners could be retired tomorrow on £10,000 a year and there would still be a surplus of £50,000,000 from the quarter of a billion pounds we spend on keeping open uneconomic pits. Rather than see these pits close, Mr Scargill wants to condemn his members in perpetuity to that unpleasant job, when they could have the money without doing the work. I see nothing virtuous in a miner doing that sort of work for its own sake.’
The Practical and Economic Background to the Greek Mercenary Explosion
Authors: Miller Harvey F.
Published: September 2009

For all its swashbuckling image, classical mercenary soldiering was, on the whole, as subject to the discipline of practical economics as less glamorous-sounding pursuits. Current economic and political considerations dictated whether and why a citizen would become a mercenary; what and how he would be paid; what negotiating power he possessed; whether a ruler would use mercenaries or his own citizenry to fight his wars, and the necessity for a recruiting centre or ‘mercenary market’ where prospective employers and employees could meet and strike a bargain.
The First Flight of Harpalus Reconsidered
Authors: Worthington Ian
Published: September 2009

The first flight of Harpalus is an enigma, more so than his second flight taking place some ten years later in 324, the motives for which are more apparent.
The Senex Amator in Plautus
Authors: Ryder K. C.
Published: September 2009

Of the twenty-nine series in the Plautine corpus, seven may legitimately be called senex amator – that is, an old man who for some reason contracts a passion for a young girl and who, in varying degrees, attempts to satisfy this passion. They are Demaenetus (Asinaria), Philoxenus and Nicobulus (Bacchides), Demipho (Cistellaria), Lysidamus (Casino), Demipho (Mercator), and Antipho (Stichus). Two others – Periplectomenos (Miles) and Daemones (Rudens) – still, perhaps, feel the sap rising, but they keep their instincts within acceptable limits, and both are regarded as senes lepidt, a description which usually denotes approval of a character.
TheMosellaof Ausonius
Authors: Kenney E. J.
Published: September 2009

‘A prodigious memory, a facile talent for versification, a cheerful and kindly optimism, and an avoidance of all that was serious or profound or disquieting’ – so Professor Robert Browning not unjustly sums up the poetic character of Decimus Magnus Ausonius. He was a professor of Latin, and it shows in his work. That is not surprising, since it was on his professional and professorial skill as teacher and rhetorician that his whole career was founded. It was by displaying proficiency in Latin Prose and Verse Composition that he rose to provincial governorships and to the consulate, and to the post of tutor to the future Emperor Gratian. It is to this last circumstance that we owe his best poem, theMosella, a celebration of the beauties of the river Moselle. InA.d.367 the Imperial court had been established at Trier in Gaul; and Ausonius was required to accompany the Emperor Valentinian, with his pupil, on his German campaigns. These, continuing a policy inaugurated by Valentinian's predecessors, were directed towards the consolidation of a Roman presence on the German bank of the Rhine, with the ultimate object of incorporating the Germans in the Empire and setting up a bulwark against further barbarian encroachments. It is against this political and military background that theMosellamust be read. It was clearly intended as propaganda. ‘The purpose of the poem was to inspire the Gauls with confidence in the renewed peace and security.’ They stood in need of such reassurance, for the recent past in Gaul had been far from secure.
Homer in Translation
Authors: Geddes A. G.
Published: September 2009

In the first term of last year I had two classes with whom I was reading the Iliad. In the Classical Studies class we had to read and discuss the Iliad in Richmond Lattimore's English translation, and in the Greek IIA class we read Book I of the Iliad in Greek.
Odysseus and the Return of the Swallow
Authors: Borthwick E. K.
Published: September 2009

In an article in CP 80 (1985), 33–34, entitled ‘Odyssey 21.411: the Swallow's Call', Luis A. Losada drew attention to the apparent oddity that the sound of Odysseus' bow-string, as he twanged it after stringing it in the presence of the suitors, is compared to the note of the swallow, since, for the most part, the swallow's twittering cry, in terms of sound quality, is traditionally associated in much of later Greek literature with either barbarian unintelligibility, loquacity, or sometimes lamentation – none of which is at all appropriate here. He suggests instead that a ‘thematic connotation’ was alluded to by Homer – the migratory cycle and vernal return of the swallow, and concludes that ‘the swallow and its call might well be called a quintessential metaphor for the idea of returning…No more appropriate bird call exists – the singing bowstring heralds the hero'sreturn.’
The Relevance of Aristophanes: a New Look at Clouds
Authors: Fisher Raymond K.
Published: September 2009

My aim in this paper is to discover in what sense, if any, Aristophanes can be considered relevant to our society in the 1980s. If we call a classical author relevant to contemporary society, we may mean that he or she presents issues and problems for which we can find modern parallels and from which we may gain a deeper insight into our own current affairs. Aristophanes deals with a wide range of social and political problems of the kind which recur in all cultures, as well as with the practicalities of everyday life, so that when dealing with these problems he is ostensibly as relevant now as he was in his own day. But is there anything in the nature of Aristophanic comedy which constrains us from making the kind of modern connections which we might wish to make? L. Spatz says ‘Aristophanes speaks directly to us through such topical themes as the battle of the sexes, the scandals of power politics, and the underdog's need to strike back at his oppressors. But sometimes this relevance results in a misunderstanding of his original intention.’
The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine)
Authors: Walsh P. G.
Published: September 2009

One of the more endearing of the seventy-eight treatises which make up the Moralia of Plutarch is one entitled ‘On not minding your own business'. The Greek title, Περ Πολυπραγμοσνης, reminds us momentarily of Plato's famous definition of justice in Republic 4, which is to do your own thing (μ πολυπραγμονεῖν). Plutarch was indeed an ardent Platonist, but here he is concerned not with political philosophy but with social habits. The treatise reminds me of nothing so much as of a famous Lancastrian comedian of my youth called Norman Evans, who in a sketch called Over the Garden Wall assumed the transvestite role of a nosy female neighbour, simultaneously pegging out clothes and retailing juicy items of gossip. For Plutarch, after defining this nosiness or πολυπραγμοσνη as ‘an unhealthy and harmful state of mind, a fondness for learning the misfortunes of others, a disease apparently free of neither envy nor malice’, condemns the common tendency to pry into the social origins of neighbours, their debts, and their private conversations. He likewise condemns people who read their friends' letters, and who watch sacred ceremonies which it is μ θμισ ρν (perhaps he had in mind Clodius' gate-crashing of the rite of Bona Dea). Such inquisitiveness, says Plutarch, is invariably accompanied by a wagging tongue, for what these people gladly hear, they gladly blab about: a ἃ γἔρ δως κοουσιν, δως λαλοσιν Pascal in his Pensees says much the same thing: ‘Curiosity is only vanity. Most often we only wish to know in order to talk about it.’
The Use and Abuse of the Attic Orators
Authors: Todd Stephen
Published: September 2009

How significant are the Attic orators as sources for Athenian history? Their intrinsic importance is certainly very great, greater perhaps than that of any other comparable category of material. On the other hand, they have received surprisingly little direct and systematic attention from ancient historians. This is something of a paradox, and like many paradoxes it is worth examining in some detail: in this case, it has significant implications for the ways in which the orators have been and ought to be studied.
The Mental Breakdown of a Roman Senator: M. Calpurnius Bibulus
Authors: Gray-Fow Michael J. G.
Published: September 2009

Some time early in 50 B.C. the two elder sons of M. Calpurnius Bibulus the Roman governor of Syria were killed in Egypt bymilites Gabiniani, Roman soldiers left there by A. Gabinius – an earlier governor of Syria. What Bibulus' sons were doingin Egypt is a mystery, partly because we do not know how old they were; all we know about them is that they were outstandingly gifted or outstandingly beautiful, or both. The soldiers had been left in Egypt (basically as mercenaries) by Gabinius in 54 B.C. when hehad been bribed by Ptolemy XII Auletes to restore him to the throne from which he had been driven by his exasperated subjects. Why these particular troops took it into their heads to murder Bibulus' sons is another mystery, which we will touch upon, but our main concern here is the effect which the death of his sons had on Bibulus. Our contention is simply that the incident is part of a rarely documented example from the classical world of a clear mental breakdown in one prominent individual. In Bibulus' case it took the form of paralysing shock, followed by grief, depression, and a frenzy of sleepless activity in which he eventually wore himself to death. To understand how this operated in the way it did in this particular case, we need to understand Bibulus the man and his personal history.
Philology at the Imperial Court
Authors: Billerbeck Margarethe
Published: September 2009

In contrast to philosophy the study of language and literature always enjoyed in Rome an unqualified esteem. For experiments such as Plato undertook with Dion in Sicily a Roman would scarcely have had much sympathy. We recall too how disappointed and irritatedthe rhetorician Fronto was when his illustrious pupil Marcus Aurelius was converted to philosophy: ‘May the immortal gods forbid,’ he wrote years later to the emperor, ‘that the Comitium, the Rostra, and the tribunals, which resounded to the speeches of Cato, Gracchus, and Cicero, should fall silent in this very age of ours, that the whole world, which was eloquent when you received it, should through you lose its powers of speech!… [For if] someone should write using the language of the dialecticians, he would describe a Jupiter who sighs, or rather coughs, not one who thunders.’
A Stranger in Town: Finding the Way in an Ancient City
Authors: Ling Roger
Published: September 2009

My subject concerns the practicalities of finding one's way round an ancient city. What aids were there to guide a stranger in town? How did he trace a particular house or other destination? I propose to examine the problem with reference to one of the best known of all ancient cities, Pompeii.
Expertidicimus: User-Reactions to Reading Latin By P. V. Jones and K. C. Sidwell
Authors: Booth Joan
Published: September 2009

The demands on a modern Latin course are formidable indeed: it must present all the requisite grammatical and syntactical material intelligibly and palatably to learners unfamiliar with the structure of even their native language, whet their appetite for the riches of Latin literature in the original, and allow them to graduate to it as quickly and painlessly as possible. University students, reared on nonlinguistic courses in ‘Classical Civilization’ (uel sim.), bulk large among today's consumers, and as one who has often in recent years had to teach them the Latin language, I wholeheartedly welcomed the appearance in 1986 of Reading Latin (hereafter RL), which expressly sets out to meet the aforementioned needs. Some brief reviews appeared shortly after its publication, but as the authors envisage the course ideally being spread over two academic years (Text p. v), now is perhaps the time for one who has so used it in a university department to appraise it again in the light of experience. Does it work? For some or for all? What are its strengths and weaknesses? How'could it be improved? In offering the following observations and suggestions, I am only too well aware of how easy it is to criticize such a project, and how hard to do better.
Seclusion, Separation, and the Status of Women in Classical Athens
Authors: Cohen David
Published: September 2009

It is a commonplace of contemporary classical scholarship that in the classical period the political and social status of Athenian women was deplorably low. Relegated to the ranks of slaves and children, scholars suggest that they were even much worse off than the women of earlier and later periods of Greek history. This paper proposes not to challenge this global judgement as a whole, but simply to focus upon one aspect of women's lives which has played an important role in such scholarly discussions.
Domestic Disharmony in Euripides'Andromache
Authors: Storey Ian C. , Miller Norma P.
Published: September 2009

TheAndromacheof Euripides has not had a good press. Sandwiched between more immediately attractive plays such asMedeaandHippolytosand the more controversial dramas such asElektraandHerakles, it has for the most part languished in obscurity with the other less appealing plays of the 420s (e.g.Herakleidai, Hekabe). More than one critic has been overtly hostile, and what interest has been shown has tended to focus on its odd tripartite structure, the elegiacs unique to tragedy in Andromache's lament (103–16), 1 the possibility of its production other than at Athens (Σadv. 445, evidence of a most doubtful kind), and the two well-known anti-Spartan diatribes (445–63, 595–604).
Vergil's Fama: a new Interpretation of Aeneid 4.173ff
Authors: Dyer Robert Rutherfurd
Published: September 2009

Vergil has an accurate eye for visual detail, and describes much as an artist might each cameo of his narrative. It is for this reason that we are shocked by images that cannot be easily translated visually. Perhaps the most arresting of such passages is the description of the monstrum Fama at A. 4. 173ff., which defies any reasonable attempt to convert it into a visual or narrative image.
‘The Uses of Literacy’ and theCena Trimalchionis:I
Authors: Horsfall Nicholas
Published: September 2009

Richard Hoggart'sThe Uses of Literacy, published in 1957, is subtitled ‘Aspects of working–class life with special reference to publications and entertainments’. He writes of industrial west Yorkshire before and after the last war. If we look for progress on similar topics elsewhere, in Italy Armando Petrucci – whose stimulus I gratefully acknowledge – has undertaken notably stimulating analyses of popular publications and low-level education, for instance in his exhibition catalogue ‘Scrittura e popolo nella Roma barocca’. For the Roman Empire – where some at least of the necessary evidence does exist – not only very little progress, but, I suspect, several steps in the wrong direction.
The Search for the Poet Homer
Authors: Willcock M. M.
Published: September 2009

It is difficult to prove the Unitarian view of a single author of the Iliad. The old-fashioned Unitarian scholars of this country, who paid little attention to analytical scholarship, had no doubts. They would just assume one poet; and all the extraordinary qualities of the Iliad could be discussed as the achievement of Homer. But simultaneously, in Germany, even more intelligent scholars were carving up the Iliad, arguing from inconsistencies in the story, or linguistic oddities, that what we have is the work of two or more poets, separated in time. Against this, the Unitarians suddenly seem rather simple-minded, as if they were arguing subjectively, avoiding the difficult questions, saying in effect, ‘I like it, and I wish it to have been the work of a single poet, and therefore it was’. My title may therefore cause a slight sinking of the heart. Am I going to say how wonderful Homer is, and give a list of the features that I think unbelievably brilliant, arguing from them that here we have the work of a single mind? The answer is no. I hope to present a more reasoned argument, based on certain features of the content and structure of the poem.
Ancient Amazons ‘ Heroes, Outsiders or Women?
Authors: Hardwick Lorna
Published: September 2009

The network of associations of the word Amazon still plays a part in the shorthand of modern discourse. Its connotations may vary from a slightly comic praise of sporting excellence in women to underlying insinuations that Amazons are not quite feminine. When applied by politicians and journalists to the women in the Peace Camp at Greenham Common during the 1980s, for example, the epithet Amazon carried the implication that these women rejected men and had developed a society apart (therefore (sịc) they must be subversives, lesbians, communists, hippies – etc. etc.). Modern usage perhaps emphasizes the unusual or even threatening associations; Amazons are, for whatever reason, outside the ‘normal’ parameters of life-style and achievements. Ancient usage presupposed an additional element, Amazons as a subject for artistic and poetic interest. The reasons why this was so do much to explain how and why the image of the Amazons communicated certain associations and how these in turn relate to underlying assumptions about the framework of Greek society and its values.
Rich and Poor: the Great Divide in Ancient Rome and Victorian England
Authors: Bastomsky S. J.
Published: September 2009

In his book, The Roman Empire (Fontana History of the Ancient World Series), Colin Wells mentions incomes and the cost of living in first-century Italy. He concludes that a wage of 4 sesterces a day was an ‘absolute maximum’ and goes on to comment that ‘it is hard to tell whether the discrepancy between the really rich and the labouring poor was greater in some third-world countries today, or in Victorian England… To prove his point Wells gives £300,000 per annum for the Marquess of Bute as an example of an enormous income in the nineteenth century, though he does not tell us what the poor would have earned then.
Structure and Strategy in Lysias XXIV
Authors: Carey Christopher
Published: September 2009

In the brief introduction to this speech in his recent commentary, S. Usher observes: ‘Little logical order can be discerned, though the speech has a clearly-defined prooemium in which the main ingredients of the speech are already present.’ There is an element of overstatement in this assessment. The organization of the speech as a whole follows the habitual practice of Lysias, who favours a neat division between sections. Thus we have prooemium (§§1–3), prothesis (§§4–5), proofs (§§5–20; τὴν μὲν οὖν in §5 should begin a new paragraph, since there is a clear break as the speaker moves from a summary of the factual case against him to the first point in his refutation), epilogos (§§21–27). There is naturally no narrative section, since the hearing is concerned with status, not events. Within the proof section the speaker tackles each of the allegations against him separately, wealth (§§5ff.), health (§§10ff.), and bad character (§§15ff.).2 Nonetheless, Usher's description of the speech is true to the extent that the progress of thought in the proof section is. often rambling and disjointed. However, a closer examination of the speech shows that this seemingly undisciplined and unstructured movement is the product of a logical ordering principle, which has its origin in the nature of the speaker's case. To appreciate the rationale behind this structure it will be necessary to preface our discussion with an assessment of the strength of the case.
The Aeneid and the Translator
Authors: West David
Published: September 2009

To every man his own Aeneid. Having spent the last six summers translating it as a Penguin Classic, I was delighted when the editors of Greece & Rome and Vergilius asked me to write a piece for them about this experience. The translator takes millions of decisions on points of detail. It must be useful, for him at least, to look back and ask what he has learned about the poem during this special relationship. I think of four points, the first of which I shall not discuss in this article:

(i) the political purpose of the Aeneid;

(ii) Virgil's gift for characterization, particularly of minor characters and particularly by means of their utterances;

(iii) the intensely rhetorical tone of the poem;

(iv) its passion.
The Virgil Commentary of Aelius Donatus ‘ Black Hole or ‘Éminence Grise‘?
Authors: Daintree David
Published: September 2009

Helen Waddell, in her charming Medieval Latin Lyrics, surely a book which inspired many a young person, trained in the classics, to become a ‘convert’ to the middle ages, described the collection of poems known as the Appendix Virgiliana, as coming ‘down through the Middle Ages bobbing at a painter's end in the mighty wash of the Aeneid’. This same description can, I think, be prettily applied to the Virgil scholia, the humble and often nameless attempts of innumerable scholars to elucidate the master's poems; notes and glosses sometimes wise and often banal, which exist, not like other literature as an end in themselves, but solely as a means towards a better understanding of Virgil.
Pliny The Elder and Man's Unnatural History
Authors: Wallace-Hadrill Andrew
Published: September 2009

Not everybody shares my enthusiasm for the elder Pliny. We all have a nodding acquaintance with theNatural History, but few wish to pursue the relationship to the level of intimacy. Critics who care for the purity of Latin prose take a particularly dim view of him. Eduard Norden's verdict inDie antike Kunstprosa(i.314) is much cited: ‘His work belongs, from the stylistic point of view, to the very worst which we have’. This negative judgement was firmly endorsed by Frank Goodyear in theCambridge History of Latin Literature: