bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cicero's Political Ideal
Authors: Wheeler Marcus
Published: July 2013

The fragmentary state in which Cicero's treatise De Republica has come down to us has given rise to considerable speculation as to the exact nature of the political ideal contained in it. Very varying conjectures have been advanced as to the significance and status of the rector or moderator rei publicae, and very different answers given to the question: Is the ideal a revised and improved form of the πάτριος πολιτεία or is it some kind of enlightened monarchy? The assumption on which this paper rests is, however, that the issue has not yet grown so academic but that a further examination of it may serve either to reveal some new, or to stress some neglected, feature of the traditional problem.

It is first necessary to say something about the use of the word ‘ideal’ in reference to the Republic. It is customary to talk of the ‘ideal’ which Cicero propounds in that work, yet there is patently something unsatisfactory in the term, since historians are unable to agree as to what that ideal is. It may be suggested that the reason for this is in part an ambiguity of the word ‘ideal’ corresponding to a distinction in Cicero's intention in writing the Republic. What this might be is most easily seen from comparison with Aristotle's Politics, which similarly is said to contain its author's political ideal, and similarly has given rise to dispute as to what exactly that ideal is. In this case, however, there need be no doubt as to what is intended, since Aristotle explicitly distinguishes two senses of ‘ideal’ as applied to constitutions, namely that which is best a priori (ή κατ εὺχήν) and that which is the best that can be expected relative to circumstances (ή ἐκ τν ύποκειμένων).
Aim and Motive in Roman Writers Part II
Authors: Lelièvre F. J.
Published: July 2013

I

Utility lies at the root of much prose: in Cato it is only implicit, though indubitable, but here is the note in Varro: ‘Quare quoniam emisti fundum quem bene colendo fructuosum cum facere velis, meque ut id mihi habeam curare roges, experiar: et non solum ut ipse, quoad vivam, quid fieri oporteat ut te moneam, sed etiam post mortem’ (R.R. i. 1), and the prefatory remarks to books ii and iii reveal essentially the same motive: fructus is the aim of estate management and Varro is setting out to serve that end by compiling good advice. That such advice will survive etiam post mortem is one of the practical benefits of committing it to writing, but there is no suggestion of a larger immortality though the dialogue form is of course very much the expression of ars. Here is the note again in another of the earlier extant prose works, the rhetorical treatise ad Herennium whose recipient realizes ‘non… in se parum fructus habet copia dicendi’ (cf. III. 1 ad hanc utilitatem progredi): here fructus recalls Varro's fructuosum, but the difference between the literal and the metaphorical fructus is significant to the student of social history. From a social as well as a literary standpoint too there is interest in the explicit rejection by the auctor ad Herennium of certain possible motives for writing: Profit and Reputation—‘non enim spe quaestus aut gloria commoti venimus ad scribendum quemadmodum ceteri’, and in particular Reputation derived from a bogus erudition. ‘Illa quae Graeci scriptores inanis adrogantiae causa sibi adsumpserunt reliquimus: nam illi, ne parum multa scisse viderentur, ea conquisiverunt quae nihil attinebant ut ars difficilior cognitu putaretur.’
Greek Culture In Danish Schools
Authors: Krarup Per
Published: July 2013

AT the beginning of the twentieth century in Denmark, as in many other countries, the secondary school (since 1903 called ‘gymnasium’) underwent a fundamental reform. Until that time the secondary-school period had been six years, and Latin had been a subject in it. All pupils had to learn Latin for four years. The last two school-years the pupils could choose between two sides: a linguistic-historical one, with much Latin and Greek (the Greek course being of four years), and a scientific one, a division which was due to J. N. Madvig, the famous Danish latinist, whose influence on the practical organization of Danish schools was enormous through the greater part of the nineteenth century (he was for many years Inspector of Schools and for some years also Minister of Education). By the new law of 1903 the teaching of Latin and Greek was greatly reduced. The gymnasium got at that time the structure which it retains to this day: after a four years' middle school there is a three years' gymnasium, divided into three sides: classics (with Latin and Greek), modern languages (with English and German culture and language), and scientific (with mathematics and science). At the time when this organization of the gymnasium was carried through, the leading spirits of the reform (among whom again a well-known latinist, M. Cl. Gertz, was a primus motor) clearly saw that it would be an irreparable loss if the university men of the future were without the slightest knowledge of antiquity and its importance to modern European culture. Therefore, when they planned the scheme of the gymnasium, they introduced for all pupils of the secondary school one lesson a week throughout the three years which was to be consecrated to Greek literature and art. It was at once made an independent subject in the gymnasium, with marks, examinations, etc., as all other subjects.
‘Saturnia Iuno’—Its Significance in the Aeneid
Authors: Amerasinghe C. W.
Published: July 2013

Servius in his note on Aeneid iv. 92 comments that Virgil uses the epithet Saturnia of Iuno only ‘when she is about to do mischief, for he knows that the planet Saturn has a baleful influence’. An astrological interpretation of Virgil is doubtless interesting, but if, as none will question, Virgil is a poet before he is an astrologer, the only satisfactory explanation of an epithet is one that elucidates its poetic significance. An examination of Virgil's use of the epithet Saturnia does, I think, make it clear both that the epithet has poetic significance and that its significance is intimately bound up with Iuno's role in the poem. Her intervention in the action of the Aeneid determines that action in a way that distinguishes it from the interventions of the various gods and goddesses in the actions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and even from the interventions of other gods in the Aeneid itself. Venus behaves in the Aeneid in much the same way as the Homeric gods and goddesses do. She is at hand to perform little miracles for her son, as Athena was at hand to help Odysseus or Telemachus. Now it is a striking fact that the epithets used of Venus in the Aeneid have no special significance. On twenty-one occasions she is referred to as Venus without an epithet, once she is Venus aurea, and four times she is Cytherea. These are all conventional, and agree well with the conventional nature of Venus' intervention in the action.
The Last Scene of The Aeneid
Authors: Thornton Agatha H. F.
Published: July 2013

‘In the last lines of the poem he [Aeneas] killed Turnus, after relenting, just for revenge, in memory of Pallas, whom Turnus had killed, and because he saw the belt of Pallas, which Turnus was wearing. It was sheer vindictive vengeance. At the end of the Aeneid, Rome is sure; but we do not know that Dido would have liked the new Aeneas as much as the old.’ (Jackson Knight, Roman Vergil, p. 142.)

If the death of Turnus is an act of sheer vindictive vengeance which assures the foundation of Rome, then the Aeneid is, ultimately, a national epic, no less, but no more. Is this interpretation valid?

It is true that, after a moment of relenting in which the life of Turnus hangs in the balance, Aeneas sees the belt of Pallas, and, overcome with fury, kills Turnus. This is an act of vengeance, but what for?

The reference to the belt of Pallas leads us back to the tenth book. The death of Pallas at the hands of Turnus is described, not as an event of importance in itself, but in close parallelism and contrast to the death of young Lausus at the hands of Aeneas. These two deaths, which are the first outstanding events of the war, are carefully introduced: the book opens with a council of the gods, the return of Aeneas, a catalogue of the Etruscan forces which he is bringing with him, his encounter with the nymphs who warn him of the situation, and finally his landing.
The Date of The Supplices of Aeschylus
Authors: Earp F. R.
Published: July 2013

It is difficult to define exactly the difference between the early work of a poet (or of a dramatist in verse) and his later work. In fact any general definition is impossible, for poets vary. Some merely dry up and go on writing from habit; others change their style consciously and deliberately, others unconsciously—but all change. Anyone who has thought about and read poetry will agree that if a poet lives long enough, his work is bound to change. Any Shakespeare scholar can distinguish by style alone, not to mention other evidence, Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona from his Tempest. Similarly, any competent critic will admit that Milton could not have written Lycidas or his Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity after he wrote Paradise Lost. Again Dante could not have written the poems in his Vita Nuova after he finished the Divine Comedy. In both cases some people prefer the earlier poems. A poet does not always improve with years, but his mind changes gradually and his work reflects that.

Poets differ so much that we are usually content to enjoy their works without noticing their order. But it is not always possible to ignore it. A fragmentary papyrus has lately been discovered which appears to be the remains of an extract from the Didascaliae prefixed to a play of Aeschylus. It states that Aeschylus was victorious with a group of plays which contained the Danaides and Amymone, and that Sophocles was second. As it is generally agreed that the Supplices belonged to the same group as the plays mentioned it can be assumed with confidence that this name was to be found on the part of the papyrus now missing.
The Greeks—A Norman Parallel
Authors: Droop J. P.
Published: July 2013

To one student whose early training was concerned with the study of the tangible remains of the Greek past the proof that the Linear B script concealed the Greek language came as a great shock. Nothing to my mind was more certain than that a great gulf separated the later Greek world from the Mycenaean world. In my view those who would trace through a hypothetical Bauernstil a kinship between the Geometric ware of early Helladic times and the post-Mycenaean pottery were wishful thinkers of the softest kind. In my eyes they held their views against all evidence because they wanted to hold it. The Greeks who held this view, urged by patriotism and the wish to show the world that the glories of Mycenae were Greek, I could forgive; but for the foreigner, spurred only by the love of the theory that he had invented, I could feel nothing but contempt; so perverse did the view seem. And now this perverse view is buttressed by the new linguistic evidence, so convincing in its nature to the layman, the man in the street.
Propertius among the Poets
Authors: Townend Gavin
Published: July 2013

The dissatisfaction which orderly-minded schoolboys generally feel when they first attempt to read the works of Propertius all too often persists among more mature readers who turn to the elegies in search of genuine literary experience. After tasting the immediate attraction of the other Augustans, whether the inexhaustible richness of Virgil and Horace, the brilliance of Ovid, or the gentle music of Tibullus, the reader continually turns away frustrated from Propertius. What, after all, is one to make of a poet whose words simply do not make sense by any accepted standard; who cries aloud for textual emendation, but never has enough of it until he has been utterly transformed by transpositions and by marks of long lacunae, as in Richmond's edition, or whittled away into something like a pedestrian Ovid; who describes a society which interests us intensely, yet hardly ever succeeds in transmitting to the reader any sort of direct experience of the life he lived and the sights he saw; who continually invites the reader by the overpowering emotion of the opening of a poem, often with some particle to indicate that we are arriving in the middle of a pre-existing train of thought, and then tails off into that artificial Alexandrianism which he plainly thought so admirable, but which we can appreciate only as an odd historical phenomenon? After considering these characteristics, one is more than ever convinced that Horace was speaking of Propertius, and speaking justly, when he criticized the pretensions of the self-styled ‘Roman Callimachus’.
A Plea for Aeneas
Authors: Dudley D. R.
Published: July 2013

In this paper I want to challenge a view of the Aeneid which I believe to be widespread, and indeed to have had the support of distinguished scholars. I could summarize it like this: The Aeneid has, of course, many great passages; indeed, over whole books, it reaches the heights of epic poetry—Bk. ii, The Fall of Troy; Bk. iv, Aeneas and Dido; Bk. vi, The Underworld; Bk. viii, Aeneas at the Site of Rome; Bk. xii, Aeneas and Turnus. But, on the whole, it is inferior in interest to the Iliad or the Odyssey; and the chief cause of this is the unsatisfactory nature of its hero. Aeneas, in short, ‘will not do’. Now it is no part of my purpose to try to set Virgil against Homer: that is a rash undertaking, and one against which we have a salutary warning. ‘It is easier’, we are told, ‘to take a cub from its she-bear than to take a single line from Homer.’ If that is so, what of the dangers of trying to take two whole poems? Instead, I wish to join issue on the character of Aeneas, while agreeing so far with his critics, that he is indeed vital to the whole poem—if you cannot understand and sympathize with Aeneas, you cannot understand the Aeneid. Virgil himself makes that clear in the first twenty lines, in which he strikes all the notes which are to be sustained throughout the poem.
ΓΛΑΥΚΩΠΙΣ 'ΑΘΗΝΗ
Authors: Watson-Williams E.
Published: July 2013

Athene is mentioned in the Iliad nearly 200 times and almost as often in the Odyssey. On ninety-two occasions Homer calls her γλαυκ⋯πις. How should we translate this constantly recurring epithet? Neither Chapman nor Pope claims to provide a literal translation. Often they are content with ‘Athenian Maid’ or ‘Minerva’: but when they do attempt to render γλαυκ⋯πις they offer ‘Blue-eyed Goddess’, ‘Blue-eyed Maid’, &c. Cowper prefers ‘Pallas cerulean-eyed’, and Lord Derby ‘blue-eyed Pallas’.
The Battle of Lade, 494 b.c.
Authors: Myres John
Published: July 2013

This decisive engagement in the Revolt of the Ionian Cities against Persia has its name from Lade Island, a dissected ridge of rock in the entrance to the roadstead of Miletus, where the naval contingents of the allied Ionian cities were concentrated to oppose a fresh Persian armada of Phoenician, Cypriote, Cilician, and Egyptian ships, 600 in all (vi. 9), of which 353 were war-vessels, probably the provincial levies; but their commanders collaborated (vi. 6). They had two immediate objects: to destroy the Greek squadrons, and to effect a landing in the home territory of Miletus, where a provincial land-force was to meet them for the siege of the city, advancing by the Maeander valley road from beyond Mount Grion and probably based also on the fertile valley of Mylasa about twenty miles south-east.
The Basis of Ancient Parody
Authors: Lelièvre F. J.
Published: July 2013

This article attempts to survey certain aspects of parody as it appears in ancient literature: it is concerned mainly with the nature and purpose of parody, the techniques which it employs, the relation of parody to certain other literary forms, and its origin. In any such discussion the principal difficulty is likely to be one of definition and classification, for the terms ‘parody’, пαρῳδή, &c., cover a range of divergent meanings, and a certain looseness can sometimes be detected in their use. What then is the basic meaning which пαρῳδή in itself conveys?
The Sacred Grove
Authors: White K. D.
Published: July 2013

Students of comparative religion have long been familiar with the evidence furnished by ancient Mediterranean myth and ritual pointing to the existence of a common fund of religious experience amongst the early civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. In spite of wide divergences between the views of anthropologists of the extreme diffusionist and anti-diffusionist schools, there has in the last twenty-five years or so been a decided reaction in favour of the historical method in this field of study, and there appears to be general agreement that a common culture-pattern, embodied in a common fund of myth and ritual, existed in Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. This hypothesis of a common pattern is supported by an ever-increasing volume of archaeological evidence. Routes of migration of peoples and commercial and other cultural contacts indicate a complex interchange of ideas between the Near East and the Mediterranean region generally. Of cardinal importance for the understanding of these mutual relations in early times are the discoveries in Crete, where evidence of extensive cultural relations with the Orient and Egypt, as well as with the mainland of Greece, has come to light.
A First Visit to Greece
Authors: Hodgkinson K. W.
Published: July 2013

Not far north of the city of Cadmus a low bluff juts out into the flat plains of gravel and mud, alternately dry-cracked with summer drought or spongy with irrigation. The waters of Lake Copais no longer sluggishly daub its slopes, but are drained and channelled and fed—for fifty drachmas an hour—through the tiny pumping station at its base to the fields of maize and cotton. Peasant wives and daughters, barefooted, tend the subsidiary flow, raking rivulets down the planted aisles, drawing little earth dams open or shut with their odd Greek spades, skirts tucked up from clay-sloshed calves, and heads swathed in scarves against the merciless sun.
Erotion Again
Authors: Kenney E. J.
Published: July 2013

Of Martial's three poems on Erotion (v. 34, v. 37, x. 61) this has found least favour with the critics. Their coldness towards it is more than compensated by the warmth of the tributes which they pay to v. 34. ‘We must go to the best work of the Greek Anthology to surpass [it]’; ‘c'est là une des plus tendres et des plus délicates epigrammes de Martial’; ‘there can be few things in leterature more touching’. In contrast v. 37 has appeared a frigid jest or at best an unhappy marriage of pathos and satire. ‘Where there is no depth of feeling a piece of sarcasm will do well enough’; ‘the remaining lines of the poem [i.e. 18–24] are tasteless and unworthy of the portion quoted, and raise a doubt as to the poet's sincerity in the particular case’. These critics might have appealed to high authority in support of their views, for Lessing noticed what seemed to him a lack of unity in the poem and felt in the ending an unwelcome surprise and disturbance of mood.
The Eureka
Authors: Blandford D. W.
Published: July 2013

In view of the attention now being paid to translation machines, it is of interest to recall a composition machine which was made over a hundred years ago and is still functioning. When wound up and set in motion this remarkable machine is capable of producing over 26,000,000 different Latin hexameters. With rare exceptions each line scans and makes sense. Typical lines are:

MARTIA CASTRA FORIS PRÆNARRANT PROELIA MULTA

PESSIMA REGNA DOMI PRODUCUNT VULNERA MIRA

TURPIA TEMPLA FERE PROMITTUNT JURGIA DENSA

The inventor (Fig. 1) was an eccentric genius named John Clark, who was born at Greinton in Somerset in 1785. After leaving school he lived for a time with his uncle at Glastonbury until about 1809, when he settled in Bridgwater. At first he was a grocer, and then about 1817 he became a printer. In his spare time he invented a pneumatic mattress and also patented a water-proof cloth. To his great financial loss he later sold this patent to a certain Mr. Mackintosh, who developed the Mackintosh raincoat and made a fortune. His own fortune (such as it was) came from his Hexameter Machine.
The Greek Dialects and Greek Pre-History
Authors: Chadwick John
Published: July 2013

One of the disadvantages of specialization is that other scholars often wish to make use of, but cannot evaluate, work in other fields. Moreover, it usually takes some time for a new theory to spread beyond the confines of a narrow specialist circle. The purpose of the present article is to summarize in English, and comment on, a new theory of the relationships of the Greek dialects and the historical facts to be deduced from them. The theory is mainly the result of the application to the ancient Greek dialects of the new technique of linguistic geography, which was first devised for the study of the Romance languages. The basis of what follows is an important article by E. Risch, following on a remarkable study by W. Porzig. The latter, though only recently published, was written some time ago, and some of its conclusions are disproved by the new evidence made available by the decipherment of the ‘Minoan’ Linear B script. Risch has been able to make some use of this, and it provides a valuable check on the soundness of the new theory.
The Renunciation Poems of Catullus
Authors: Ferguson J.
Published: July 2013

Few poems ever written have the poignancy of those in which Catullus finally turns aside from Lesbia and renounces her. They are the more poignant because of their finality, a finality clearly expressed as he deliberately looks back across the course of their love, and with that backward glance points his rejection of her. This is most clearly seen in the eleventh poem. When Catullus first came to Rome as a young provincial, he was doubtless encouraged by Metellus Celer (who had been in Cisalpine Gaul in 63 b.c. and presumably, like Caesar later, stayed with Valerius Catullus the elder) to visit Metellus' house on the Palatine. There he met Clodia. She overwhelmed him; and, unable to find words of his own in which to express this new and overpowering emotion, he turned to a poem of Sappho's, conveying rather than translating it in perhaps the first Latin Sapphics ever written (li).
The Art of Juvenal and his Tenth Satire
Authors: Eichholz D. E.
Published: July 2013

In his Sather Lectures on Roman Satire, J. Wight Duff writes (pp. 160–1): ‘Indignatio facit versum, says Juvenal: “Wrath is the maker of my verse”. The author ought to know whence his main inspiration comes; and the thunder of explosive anger is abundantly audible in the earlier books. Yet there is a sense in which this familiar quotation tells only part of the truth. People can be immeasurably angry without achieving the satiric; for anger, to rise above mere invective into satire, must be artistically directed; and this is where Juvenal's own talents are necessary for the complete recipe.’
‘Greek in our Schools’: Two Replies
Authors: Collins Adrian
Published: July 2013

Mr. Francis Elliot's eloquent plea for substituting the ‘beautiful modern Greek pronunciation’ for the so-called ‘reformed’ pronunciation of the ancient language is at first sight very attractive, and there is no doubt that the reformed pronunciation is itself in need of some reforming. I would agree that the modern language in the mouths of most Greeks is more beautiful than the ancient language in the mouths of most Englishmen—this is partly due to the Englishman's inability or reluctance to fit his mouth to continental vowels and consonants—and that the modern Greek way of stressing the syllables bearing the acute or circumflex accent should be universally adopted in our schools instead of being the hobby of a few eccentric teachers. The ancient Greek accent was no doubt one of pitch, but there are traces of the transformation of this into a stress accent as early as the fourth century a.d.; in any event there is a tendency for a higher-pitched syllable to carry a stress with it, whereas there is no case at all for foisting the Latin trisyllabic rule of stress on to ancient Greek. Even to utter the stressed syllables at a higher pitch is no impossible feat.
New Light on Linear A
Authors: Davis S.
Published: July 2013

With the decipherment of the Linear B tablets found at Knossos in Crete (dated to c. 1400 B.c.) and on the Greek mainland at Mykenai and Pylos (dated to c. 1275 B.c. and c. 1200 B.c. respectively) which have been shown to be written in Mycenaean Greek, the attention of scholars has been drawn to the problem of the language of the earlier Linear A tablets which have been found in Crete alone.
The Mood of the Persai of Aeschylus
Authors: Clifton G.
Published: July 2013

Much of the imagery of Aeschylus' plays is vivid and startling. It runs through his tragedies like a thread of bright colour, setting the mood and atmosphere of the drama. Yet often the playwright creates his effects by hints, by a subtle use of a pictorial word here or an unusual verb there. His words are like the quick close-ups of a film which stimulate the imagination to see more, and often it is by a series of visual ideas that he creates the effects he is aiming at.
Ennius The Mystic—: The Terms of the Debate
Authors: Newman J. K.
Published: July 2013

Every schoolboy knows that Ennius was the first Roman poet to use the hexameter. This series of articles is an attempt to put his action into its literary and social context.

There can have been few more intellectually exciting periods than that which in Rome followed the successful conclusion of the Second Punic War. By their victory over Carthage the tough, brutal, superstitious, conservative peasants who formed the Roman people and most of its rulers had forced their way into the arena of Mediterranean politics. In unmistakable terms they had made it plain to the Hellenistic monarchies of the East that their country was no longer the negligible training-ground on which a Pyrrhos might try his skill, their troops no longer the ignorant levies so easily put in their place by a Xanthippos. Like Peter the Great, when he burst into the England of William and Mary; like Tom Paine, had he lived to see the baroque splendours and know the world-weary diplomats of the Congress of Vienna; perhaps indeed, if we allow ourselves a little hindsight, like the self-confident Oedipus before the Sphinx, the Romans, ambitious, lusty, cunning, and doomed, now encountered for the first time the full impact of a mature civilization.
Music for theAeneid
Authors: Dickinson A. E. F.
Published: July 2013

Inmodern times the rendering of treasured legend through the sung, as well as the spoken, word moved from biblical to classical sources during the fifteenth century. In 1472 a lyric drama on the Orpheus fable was so produced at Mantua, to a text by the poet Poliziano. The music is lost; it must have been in the madrigal style. But, rather more than a hundred years later, scholars and musicians gathered at the house of the Count of Vernio in Florence in an attempt to recover the supposed methods of Athenian tragedy (the musical details of which remain too imprecise to be cogent) in a new kind of declamatory stage-song. The subsequent, comprehensive, and altogether creative achievement of Monteverdi'sOrfeo, produced at Mantua in 1608, established the first point in a fresh trickle of operas on classical subjects, which in the eighteenth century became a downpour. Operas that still hold a place on the public stage are mainly of Greek provenance. They range fromIphigénie en Tauride, the culmination of Gluck's late abandonment of light opera for ‘nature’ and classical librettos, and Mozart's exceptional, not at all comic,Idomeneo, to Strauss's equally exceptionalElektra, with Tippett's opera on the death of Priam on the way. (Mozart'sLa Clemenza di Tito(1791) appears to have been a reluctant struggle with a fresh version of Metastasio's text of 1734, which will become pertinent later. Mozart was preoccupied withDie Zauberflöte.)
Animals in the Greek Theatre
Authors: Arnott P. D.
Published: July 2013

Animals on the stage are usually more trouble than they are worth, and producers are notoriously chary of using them. There are several instances in ancient drama, however, where they seem to be essential to the plot; and it may be worth while to consider the Greek approach to the problem, and see their stage technique for overcoming the difficulties involved.
The Dying Storm
Authors: Blaiklock E. M.
Published: July 2013

A phrase of Mr. Middleton Murry in his chapter on the imagery of Shakespeare suggests some interesting possibilities of literary speculation. Noting the odd association of dogs and sweetmeats in four widely separated tragedies Murry remarks: ‘What is to be noted is that the image, having its roots in some vital experience, grows steadily more complex.…’ He goes on to suggest that the origin of a notion so obsessive lay in some unpleasant memory of Sir Thomas Lucy's hall.
Greek Literature in Translation
Authors: T. J. B. S.
Published: July 2013

This has become quite a popular subject for the G.C.E. It is doubt-less a useful ‘extra subject’ in the sixth form, especially for those hoping to read English or modern languages at the university. One examiner, however, has during a few years collected a number of observations from examination scripts which reveal a certain amount of misunderstanding of the intentions of some of the great Greek writers.
Homer and the Poetry of War
Authors: Harrison F. E.
Published: July 2013

Homer has been called the Bible of the Greeks. These two, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were certainly their traditional books par excellence. They offered a vivid picture of their heroic past, where fact merged indissolubly into fiction, but each enjoyed the truth of high art; they offered a living panorama of their Olympian religion, now serious, now gay and mocking; more important, a panorama of men and manners, and a vision of nature almost incidental to man the foreground, but seen with an intense awareness and enjoyment. They were recited at public gatherings, they formed the staple of education for several centuries, were learnt by heart, and passed into the common stock of knowledge and feeling and conduct.
Lucretius: The Personality of the Poet
Authors: Wormell D. E. W.
Published: July 2013

In 1883 M. Patin published his Études sur la poésie latine, and devoted his seventh chapter (pp. 117 ff.) to Lucretius under the heading ‘Du poëme De la Nature. L'anti-Lucrèce chez Lucrèce’. His theme was that behind Lucretius' poetry one can detect a deeply divided personality, a man dedicated indeed to the doctrines of Epicurus, but revealing in his language and imagery a naturally religious spirit chafing, perhaps unconsciously, against the constraints of his philosophy. On reading this chapter one becomes aware of a certain apologetic undertone. M. Patin is preoccupied with justifying his almost excessive enthusiasm for a pagan poet to a Christian audience. Two of the pitfalls confronting the literary critic are that he will identify himself in his own imagination with the author whom he is criticizing, and that he will be so identified by his readers. In his eagerness to avoid the second M. Patin slips into the first; for all its brilliance, his chapter illuminates the personality of its writer rather than of Lucretius, and might almost be entitled ‘L'anti-Patin chez Patin’. Yet his chapter, and especially his chapter-heading, have set the tone for much subsequent criticism of Lucretius. Taking up his main thesis, critics have arbitrarily broadened its terms of reference, drawing attention to such apparent inconsistencies as the contrast between the picture of Mars and Venus as lovers and as open to be moved by prayers for suffering humanity (i. 29 ff.), and the picture of the gods living a life of untroubled contemplation in the interstellar spaces, remote from our world and uninterested in its affairs (iii. 18 ff.). And the tensions and contradictions of the poem have been linked by some with the story of the poet's madness and suicide.
Confessio Grammatici
Authors: Colman D. S.
Published: July 2013

καὶ μισθοὺς αἰτεῖτε, διδάσκαλοι. ‘You schoolmasters actually expect a salary as well! What an ungrateful lot you are!’ Well, I must allow there is something in Strato's jibe. It is a pleasant life, and after thirty years spent in teaching boys and undergraduates from thirteen to about twenty-two, I can say I have enjoyed it all; and certainly, like Solon, I continually learn new lessons as I grow older. I wish I could justify my reading this paper by claiming that I had something to offer that would fulfil that one of the objects of our Association that is described as ‘to improve the practice of classical teaching’. But I fear no such illumination is likely to reward my audience. Still, another of our Association's objects is ‘to create opportunities for intercourse among lovers of classical learning’, and that your kind invitation to me has provided.
Cretan Hieroglyphs: The end of a Quest?
Authors: Davis S.
Published: July 2013

Themysterious writing on Cretan seals first attracted Arthur Evans to Crete. His own words are well worth quoting. ‘In the course of a visit to Greece in the spring of 1893 I came across some three- and four-sided stones perforated along their axis, upon which had been engraved a series of remarkable symbols. The symbols occurred in groups on the facets of the stones, and it struck me at once that they belonged to a hieroglyphic system. They were, however, quite distinct from Egyptian in character, and though they seemed to show a nearer approach to Hittite forms, it was evident that they belonged to an independent series. My inquiries succeeded in tracing these to a Cretan source. … I therefore determined to follow up my investigations on Cretan soil.’
The Starting-Point of Tacitus' Historiae: Fear or Favour by Omission?
Authors: Hainsworth J. B.
Published: July 2013

Tacitus' Historiae begin in the middle of a series of civil wars: initium mihi operis Servius Galba iterum Titus Vinius consules erunt. This point of time leaves the revolts of Vindex and Galba behind and the revolts of Otho and Vitellius just about to begin. Such a plunge in medias res, more suitable for the novelist than the historian, was at one time sharply criticized. It would have been more logical, it was argued, to begin with the proclamation of Galba at the beginning of April A.d. 68, with the death of Nero on 9 June following, or with the death of Galba himself on 15 January A.d. 69. These points, or others even earlier or later, are better ‘natural breaks’ in the story, and consequently more satisfactory from the literary point of view than the arbitrary breaks of the calendar. On behalf of Tacitus it was maintained that in Roman historiography the annalistic method had the force of law (but what then of the starting-point of the Annales—ab excessu divi Augusti?), or that Tacitus took up the tale where some other historian, Cluvius Rufus perhaps or Fabius Rusticus, had left off (why then the long introduction extending to ch. II? Xenophon, for example, felt no such need for the Hellenica). Tacitus himself does not attempt to justify his choice of starting-point. In fact the use of the future tense (erunt) may be thought to imply that the matter is scarcely worth discussing at all. That was likely, I think, to have been Tacitus' hope and intention. If it was so, it has been realized in the most recent scholarship, which, having failed to make out a conclusive case for or against any other date, has fallen back on the belief that 1 January A.d. 69 was, faute de mieux, inevitable.
More Beasts from Herodotos: An Essay by a Schoolgirl
Authors: Poynton J. B.
Published: July 2013

The bird I am going to write about is the owl. The owl cannot see at all in the daytime, and at night it is as blind as a bat. I do not know much about the owl, so I will go on to the beast I am going to choose. It is the cow. The cow is a marnai, and it is tame. It has six sides, right, left, fore, back and upper and below. At the back it has a tail, on which hangs a brush. With this it sends the flies away, so that they do not fall into the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing horns, and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to butt with. The mouth is to moo with. Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking. When people niilk, the milk comes, and there is never any end to the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet realized, but it makes more and more. The man cow is called an ox, but what it eats it eats twice, so that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says nothing, it is because its inside is full up of grass.
A Note on form and Meaning in theOresteia
Authors: Amerasinghe C. W.
Published: July 2013

Thevolume of scholarly literature on Aeschylus is already so large that an attempt to make even the minutest addition to it may well appear rash. But the standard literature has most often dealt with the dramatic technique of Aeschylus and with the moral or social issues raised by him. This is true even of Kitto's work,Form and Meaning in Drama. Thus, in his preface, he states, ‘The presumption with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare, when he wroteHamlet, is that the dramatist was competent. If the dramatist had something to say and if he was a competent artist, the presumption is that he has said it and that we, by looking at the form which he has created, can find out what it is’; that is to say, he was thinking of dramatic form. This article is concerned with an aspect of form which does not appear to have received sufficient attention. I would call it the ‘poetic’ aspect of form. ‘Poetry’ is not easy to define, but one of the ‘tentative formulas’ given by Lattimore expresses what I mean. ‘What is directed’, he said, ‘neither to the emotion nor the intellect but to the imagination is the poetry of the plays.’ Aeschylus is a poet even more than he is a dramatic artist. One would naturally, therefore, expect to find in his plays much of the stuff that is directed towards the imagination. This ‘poetic’ element is to a large extent communicated through the form, which will enhance his meaning or will even be an image of his thought. It is from this point of view that I propose, in this note, to examine theOresteia, in the hope that it may throw some light on many of the peculiarities of construction that are so prominent a feature of the trilogy.
Peripatos: The Athenian Philosophical Scene—I
Authors: Wycherley R. E.
Published: July 2013

One day in 79 b.c., when he was studying at Athens, Cicero and a group of friends took a walk along the same road as Lucian's Philosophia, but in the opposite direction. They had listened, as usual, to a lecture by Antiochos, who was then head of the Academy, delivered in the gymnasium called Ptolemaion, which was in the middle of the city; and they resolved to take an ambulatio postmeridiana (Latin for Περίπατος δειλινός) in the Academy, which at that time of day would be quiet (and comparatively cool). Forgathering at Piso's, they traversed the six stadia from the Dipylon, and reached the justly famous walks (non sine causa nobilitata spatia) of the Academy. There Piso remarks, ‘Whether by a sound instinct or by an illusion (natura an errore) when we set eyes on the very places frequented by great men, we are more deeply moved than when we merely hear of their deeds or read their writings. Plato used to hold discussions here; I can almost see him walking in those little gardens near by (illi propinqui hortuli). Here taught Speusippos and Xenokrates and Polemon, who used to sit on the very seat which we can see over there. The power of suggestion which places possess is indeed great (tanta uis admonitionis inest in locis).’ Quintus Cicero is more attracted to the Kolonos near by, with its Sophoklean associations.
The Overworked Playwright A Study in Euripides' Cyclops
Authors: Arnott Peter D.
Published: July 2013

TheCyclops is a neglected play. Although commending itself by its brevity to teachers as an easy introduction to Euripides, it has received little critical attention and is only rarely performed. Nevertheless the feeling persists that even this slight work, being by Euripides, must be treated with respect. A recent school edition comments, ‘The preservation of ancient literature does seem in some measure to have illustrated the principle of the survival of the fittest; and the Cyclops may have been one of the few satyric dramas which really deserve to be handed down to us.’ Similarly J. Duchemin, in his critical edition published a few years earlier, cautiously suggests that the characterization of Polyphemos embodies familiar themes in later fifth-century thought: ‘Son Cyclope est, semble-t-il, auprès des autres, une figure évoluée, et par certains côtés vraiment moderne: le materialisme intellectuel affiché dans l'⋯γών avec Ulysse, et où l'on a voulu retrouver les traces de la sophistique (v. 316 sqq.), marque de toute evidence une étape nouvelle dans le développement du personnage.’ The purpose of this article is to re-examine the status of the play, and inquire whether such tributes are really justified. I hope to gather together certain considerations, some already familiar, others perhaps less well known, which suggest that the value of the Cyclops, both as drama and as an illustration of Euripides' thought, is negligible, and that the illustrious name of its author has led us to look for merit where none exists.
One Hundred and Fifty Years of Teubner Texts
Authors: Doer Bruno
Published: July 2013

It is always agreeable to offer congratulations to someone who is celebrating a jubilee. It is a particular pleasure to do so when the ‘child’ whose birthday it is can look back over 150 years of existence, and all those who have a share in the jubilee may reflect that the thanks for the achievements of the past and wishes for the future serve the cause of publicity. For no one who sets out to discuss the state of classical studies in Germany can, or should, fail to mention the Leipzig publishing firm of B. G. Teubner. Here publishing and scholarship have in the past century and a half formed an indissoluble partnership which has made it its duty to provide the best texts for use in the study of classical antiquity.
Terracina and the Pomptine Marshes
Authors: Dilke O. A. W. , Dilke Margaret S.
Published: July 2013

We were interested to read Dr. Bertha Tilly's recent article in Greeceand Rome. Such studies do much to infuse life into our ‘dead’ language, and help not only to bring reality to the student and throw light on Latin literature but to add interest to modern travel. We should like to add some further points on Terracina, which we recently visited. It provides a fascinating remnant of classical times, almost unaltered until this century, when the first truly successful draining of the Pomptine marshes took place.
P. Sextius Baculus
Authors: Horn Theodore
Published: July 2013

In the Gallic War Caesar mentions rather less than fifty Roman soldiers by name. Naturally the names of his legati occur most frequently, though he does not always give the rank. Eight, possibly nine, are centurions, and one is the standard-bearer of the Fourteenth Legion. None is a legionary soldier, though we know the name of one, Lucanius, because his father, a senior centurion, Q. Lucanius, was killed trying to rescue him in the disaster at Atuatuca. There are certain surprising omissions. For example, we are not told the name of the standard-bearer of the Tenth Legion, whose gallantry rallied the faltering troops at the first landing in Britain. Surely Caesar knew the name of this distinguished man in his crack legion. One officer, P. Considius, receives an unenviable mention. He made a mistake. Perhaps in extenuation, or in regret, Caesar remarks that he had won a good reputation under Sulla and Crassus.
Artemis of Troy
Authors: Mattingly H.
Published: July 2013

Any attentive reader of the Iliad and the Odyssey will have been struck by some very odd features of Homer's religion—the sudden shift from reverence to frivolity, for example. What I want to glance at in this article is something rather different. The gods and goddesses worshipped by the Trojans are called by Greek names. Some deities are definitely partisan—Hera and Poseidon, for example, for the Greeks; Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Ares for the Trojans—while Zeus is strictly impartial. But, if the Trojans were, as we are always told, of a race distinct from the Greeks, Trojan gods will have been translated out of a native idiom into a Greek. Whenever you translate, mistakes in rendering are possible; I want to suggest one particular mistranslation here.
Daphnis and Chloe: An Interpretation
Authors: Turner Paul
Published: July 2013

When Fielding fathered the modern English novel in 1742, he left his readers in no doubt about his intentions. The Preface to Joseph Andrews states clearly enough that his purpose was to ridicule affectation. The ancient Greek novelists were generally less explicit about their aims: of the five novels which survive complete, four are without any sort of preface, and we can only guess from the text what the authors were trying to do. Probably their sole object was to entertain. But the man who wrote the fifth, Daphnis and Chloe, was evidently a highly conscious artist with clear ideas about the purpose of his art, and he has left us a preface explaining them—or rather hinting at them, for the full meaning of his words is not immediately apparent. The aim of this article is to bring out the deeper implications of the preface, and to interpret the text in the light of them.
The Bees of Virgil
Authors: Haarhoff T. J.
Published: July 2013

‘And so,’ said Appius, in Varro's De Re Rustica, ‘in the matter of farmyard-feeding we come to the third act, which is about fishponds.’ ‘Third act be hanged!’ said Axius; ‘do you suppose that, because you were so very economical when a young man as not to drink wine and honey at home, we are going to neglect honey ?’
Two Passages in the Third Book of the Aeneid
Authors: Witton W. F.
Published: July 2013

Conington, after duly reporting that this is a solitary instance in Virgil of a hemistich where the sense is incomplete, concludes a lengthy comment as follows: ‘On the whole, there seems no good reason to doubt that we have the passage as Virgil left it. If we cannot complete the hemistich satisfactorily, we may console ourselves with thinking that he could not either.’ But why should we be so ready to limit the poetic invention of Virgil? Have we learnt nothing from ‘sic uos non uobis’? Consider the situation. Andromache has met Aeneas unexpectedly, and asks about his son Ascanius. ‘Is he still alive?’ The question brings back to her mind the terrible fate of her own son, Astyanax, and her emotion chokes her. Virgil could not complete the line, because its speaker could not.
The Secret of Medea's Success
Authors: Hanson J. O. Deg.
Published: July 2013

The story of Medea as pieced together from the numerous references in both Greek and Latin literature represents to my mind a most fascinating picture, both because of the enormity of the crimes she commits and the impunity with which she commits them. She is not the only wicked character in Greek mythology: there are others who are distinguished for their atrocious crimes; but while in almost every other instance the guilty character pays the penalty for his or her crimes, ultimately either with his or her life, like Clytemnestra, or wins release from punishment through the ritual of purification or the intervention of some divine personality, like Orestes, Medea seems to be the one possible exception, whose life history presents an unbroken series of murders, including the most heinous of crimes, child murder, coupled with a constant triumph over her enemies, so much so that her Nurse can confidently assert: ‘Not easily will anyone who clashes with her in hatred carry off the palm of victory’ (44–45). In fact so successfully does she get away with her deeds of wickedness that Aristotle might well have chosen her to exemplify the type of successful villain least suitable as the hero of Greek tragedy.