bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Tragedy at Syracuse
Authors: Blaiklock E. M 
Published: July 2013

Mr. chips, one might imagine, would be likely to associate bombs with Caesar for the rest of his quiet days. One Latin lesson tied the two together. A young officer in a New Zealand regiment had that thought in mind when he wrote his belated New Year greetings. ‘You will always think of us’, he said, ‘when you open Thucydides VII. Aren't we vain, Mr. Chips?’ There is no vanity about it. It is not only the memory of a very able Greek class which will entangle for ever the Sicilian Expedition with the events of 1941. There are grimmer reasons. Rommel arrived ominously at Tripoli on the day we read of Gylippus’ coming to Syracuse. We backed to Egypt step by step with the first Athenian disasters. The same moon shone on the Athenian attempt on Epipolae and on the opening of the German Balkan drive. Larissa, Athens, Corinth, Argos! The Anzacs retreated through Greece as the Athenians fought their last fight at Syracuse. They struggled back across the hills of Crete as Demosthenes and Nicias began the disastrous retreat. And then the Navy broke the spell. No ships filled the southern bays of Sicily to take Athenians home on the moonless nights. There was no Dunkirk, no evacuation. Misfortune was complete. Ours might have been. There will be no forgetting those months when another class reads Macaulay's favourite book again.Macaulay was quite strikingly correct. Thucydides’ seventh book passes all the tests of classic excellence. Its narrative, like a Greek tragedy, is interwoven with the universal of human experience.
Works and Days
Authors: Herington C. J 
Published: July 2013

For antiquarians Hesiod is no doubt a more useful poet than either Homer or Euripides. He differs from Homer in having a definite character and even an approximate date; from both Euripides and Homer in dealing with the concrete, everyday facts of contemporary life. It is from him, for instance, that we have our earliest account of a plough made artificially with separate pieces of wood; Homer never troubled his head with such banal matters, but here is a chance for the antiquarians to make merry. The Works and Days above all other works is the antiquarian's thesaurus.But if we subtract Hesiod's descriptions of ploughs, his list of days and similar paragraphs which are admittedly boring, we are left with a good three-fourths of the Works and Days still intact. For example, we have the three λòγoi with which the poem begins. Here, if we expect the glitter of Homer, the ‘surge and thunder of the Odyssey’, we shall be disappointed; but we shall find that monstrous familiarity with the gods, and that astonishing intimacy with the universe before man's creation, which only Greek literature can show us. Shelley indeed, as Francis Thompson observed, had in some degree this Greek characteristic— ‘the universe is his box of toys… he dances in and out of the gates of heaven’—but only Hesiod and Aeschylus in the Prometheus have yet succeeded in opening up the full prospect of eternity. Hesiod knows the origin of everything, divine and human; he had the effrontery to write a Theogony, and knew the exact life history of the second sort of Strife: ‘she was born of dark gloomy Night, and high Zeus, who dwells in heaven, set her in the roots of earth’ (Works and Days, 11. 17–19).
The Epileptic
Authors: Blaiklock E. M. 
Published: July 2013

‘When we come to Euripides’, writes Pearson, in his introduction to the Phoenissae, ‘we are let down to earth…. If our notions of ancient art are shaped on the ideal pattern, we experience a feeling as of a sudden jar or shock when brought face to face with the realistic aspect of a Euripidean play; there is what seems at first sight a blending of the ancient point of view with the modern, an acquiescence in the ugliness of certain features of suffering which we are apt to think more appropriate to the twentieth century…. With every fresh disaster we are forced to utter the question—why should such things be? And at the same time we are driven to admit that, though we cannot explain them, they are none the less true.’ This is pre-eminently true of the Hercules Furens.The Hercules Furens rivals the Bacchae in the strangeness of its theme, and if it can be demonstrated that these two plays were built out of the stuff of real life, an important point has been made in support of the contention that Euripides’ prime interest was the character of men and women, and that his dramatic presentation of humanity is marked by psychological insight of the highest order, and based upon a notable acuteness of observation. What, we may ask, led Euripides to choose as a subject of tragedy the strange tale of the madness of Heracles? The Attic associations of the myth, which were his main concern in the Heracleidae, cannot have been his chief motive in this case.
Greek Biography Before Plutarch
Authors: Osley A. S. 
Published: July 2013

The desire to celebrate the lives of famous men has no doubt been a fundamental characteristic of human nature since the beginning of time. The picture of ‘primitive’ man, squatting at night by a fire in the smoky cave, which served him for a home, relating his brief, rude, ancestral tales to an appreciative audience of two or three, rapt and forgetful (for a moment) of the harsh life outside, is neither unplausible nor improbable.It is perhaps possible (on the principle of ex pede Herculem) to disentangle some of the elements which contributed to the experience afforded by the relation of such stories. In an uncivilized community the dead exact a tyrannical homage from the living in order that the consequences of their imagined wrath may be averted. Hence they are to be placated by all means, and their memory is to be revered by the enumeration of the glorious exploits which they performed whilfe living. For, in the ‘next world’, whither they have been translated—call it the Elysian Fields, or what you will—they are conceived of as taking joy in the celebration of their valour and the recital of their achievements.Again, the tribe or race must be preserved, and there is no more suitable medium for the crystallization of tribal or racial virtues than oral tradition. The young men, as they listen to the deeds of their forefathers, are stirred by ‘this constant renewal of the good report of brave men’ and are themselves fired with the desire for an immortal name.
Classics Pure and Applied
Authors: Taylor D. G. 
Published: July 2013

In the somewhat unusual situation of a mathematician invited to address a Classical Society, there is one question which I am forced to put to myself. Can anything of interest to present-day students of the Classics survive from a modest Classical course taken over forty years ago, and followed by a lifetime of activity in a very different academical groove? Any slight merit which the following remarks may possess will arise from their character as a personal testimony.I begin by putting a question to you. What influences led you to take up a course in Classics at college? I can imagine many possible contributory causes: the accident of the particular school you attended, high success in your School Certificate Examination, a real pleasure in getting up the rudiments of Latin or Greek grammar; or a teacher who bound you with a spell and gave you glimpses of romance. Whatever the cause, you have made the choice, and, like all choices, it imposes a limitation. To some extent, and at least for a time, you are debarred from specializing in some other subject: Philosophy or Modern Languages, Physics or Biology. You are approaching the vast unity of human knowledge and achievement from a specific angle, and along a very definite path.Pascal, the great literary, scientific, and religious genius of seventeenth-century France, has a fine saying: ‘The whole succession of men through the ages should be considered as one man, ever living and always learning.’ The unity of human knowledge and achievement cannot be broken up without serious loss.
The Character of Alexandrian Poetry
Authors: Trypanis C. A. 
Published: July 2013

It is hard to conceive and define the general characteristics of Alexandrian poetry (c. 323–146 B.C.), a poetry which we know mostly in fragments and of which the greatest representatives show so wide a divergence.Between the poetry, for instance, of Callimachus, with its austere and scholarly character intended for an educated and courtly audience, and the mimes of Herodas, with their sensual and humorous character designed to appeal to the broad masses of the cities, there is an abyss which cannot be bridged. Yet we can discern common elements and qualities which differ both from classical Greek poetry and the poetry which followed.The Alexandrian poets are all in some way or other, directly or indirectly, hampered and fettered by the weight of classical Greek poetry. They looked at the Greek poetic tradition with awe mingled with despair; they were spellbound by the rich and beautiful language, the perfection of form and the grandeur of the classical creative imagination from Homer to Menander, but the more they studied those works the more deeply were they convinced of the utter impossibility of creating anything of equal originality; they realized that they were incapable of freeing themselves completely from the classical tradition or of breaking it and creating new types of great poetry, as the Ionians had created the epic, or the Athenians drama. The furthest they dared venture was to mix and to mingle the old pure and clearly defined types of poetry. The result, neither the same nor completely new, flattered their vanity by persuading them that they were creating, without breaking way from the spell of tradition.
Questions about Marathon
Authors: Loader W. R. 
Published: July 2013

When did the Athenians march out to meet the Persians?In an attempt to sort out the confused chronology of events before the battle of Marathon, J. A. R. Munro, in the Cambridge Ancient History, vol. iv, maintains that the march must have taken place whilst Eretria was still in a state of siege, and was designed to save that city.His supposition is based on a statement in Aristotle's Rhetoric, iii. 10, 1411 a 10, where Cephisodotus παρακαλν ποτε τούς 'Aϑηναíους εìς Eὒβοιαν ἐπισιτισαμένους ἒϕη εīν ἐξιἑναι τò Mιλτιἁλου Ψἡϕιαμα. Munro points out that the only possible context for this decree of Miltiades is the Persian investment of Eretria; he then goes on to presume that the decree was implemented, and that the Athenians set out from Athens some time before the date given by Herodotus for their march. To account for their non-arrival at Oropus he suggests that the Persian forces divided, and by an early invasion of Attica diverted the Greek army from its original intention.A ψἡϕιαμα was a most binding enactment, and could only be can-celled by another ψἡϕιαμα. Because there is no record of such a cancellation, Munro seems to think that the decree must have been carried out. But both Herodotus (vi. 102 seq.) and Plato (Menexenus, 240 b) expressly declare that only after the subjugation of Eretria and the landing at Marathon did the Athenians move from the city.Munro's difficulty about the ψἡϕιαμα could surely be better dealt with if we suppose that the force of the decree was completely invalidated by the fall of Eretria.
The Lammergeyer Comparative Descriptions in Aristotle and Pliny
Authors: Pollard J. R. T. 
Published: July 2013

Aristotle's account of the περκνóπτεος the Black Eagle (H.A. ix. 32. b), is, in the main, an accurate enough description of the Lammergeyer (Gypaetus barbatus): λευκἠ κεϕαλἠ, μεγέθει ἠ μἑγιοτος, πτερἀ ἠ βραχύτατα, καì ὀρροπύγιον πρóμκες, γυπí ὃμοιος ὀρειπέλαργος καλε¯ται καí ὑπάετος. οἰkgr;ε’ ἂλση, τἀ μἐν κακἁ ταὐτἀ ἒχων τοῐς ἂλλοις, τν ’ ἀγαθν οὐἑν. ἁλíσκεται γἀρ καì ιὠκεται ὑττò κορἁκων καì τν ἂλλων, βαρύς γα καí κακóβιος καì τἀ τεθνετα ϕἑρων πειν’ ἑεì καì βοᾀ και μινυρíℑει. The birds which I observed in Abyssinia and Kenya appeared very black, and the white head (λευκἠ κεϕαλἡ) was very noticeable when the bird turned in the sun.Again it is in fact the largest of the Old World raptores (μεγἑθει μἑγιατος), for specimens have been recorded which measured 10 feet between wing-tips. But it is untrue to say that its wings are βραχύτατα, for it possesses the graceful spread of a gigantic falcon. Sundevall, as Professor D'A. W. Thompson points out in A Glossary of Greek Birds (pp. 146–7, new edition, 1936), suggested that βραχύτατα was an error for μακρóτατα, but it is more likely, in view of Pliny's alts minimis, quoted below, that Aristotle was confusing the lammergeyer with another bird, perhaps Bonelli's (Nisaetus fasciatus Vieill.) or the Dwarf Eagle (Aquila naevia). In flight the lammergeyer's most prominent feature is its long, streamlined rump, which is faithfully described by ὀρροπὑγιον πρóμηκες (this characteristic is well portrayed in Leonard Gill's A First Guide to the Birds of South Africa).
Some Methods of Research into the origin of Greek Deities
Authors: Chittenden Jacqueline 
Published: July 2013

There are flaws in the usual methods of research into religious origins which have become apparent to the writer during several years' work on the cult of one Greek god. It has therefore seemed desirable to restate and to examine these methods so as to demonstrate the merits and the faults of each. To do so is one aim of this paper; another is an elucidation of the many important advantages of the historical approach, and, although it is hoped that the principles herein erected as guides to study are applicable to all ancient gods, the illustrations of these principles will derive very largely from Hermes, the god with whose cult and concept the writer has been most closely concerned.It would be hard to exaggerate the difficulties which beset a student when he turns to the problem of an ancient god's origin. Even a partial solution demands his utmost caution, for the easy explanation is hardly ever the right one. He must guard himself against the beguilements of the attractive theory which will very often beckon him down the wrong path. To avoid this and to enter upon his task most wisely he will meditate upon two main initial difficulties.The first one to present itself is, of course, the fact that the origin of most gods worshipped by the Greeks lies in the past far behind Homer. Therefore the student is faced with an almost total lack of literary and epigraphical material—at least which he can understand— to aid him in the search.
Catullus X: A Rambling Commentary
Authors: Sedgwick W. B. 
Published: July 2013

This has always been one of my favourite poems, but if I were asked why, I should be hard put to it for an answer. I suppose it is because it seems to me the most perfect example of urbanitas in Latin poetry. Others will prefer Horace—those who prefer curiosa felicitas, and I admit at once there is nothing here to match such an exquisite felicity as ‘tange Chloen semel arrogantem’ (o si sic omnia!). But even in Horace such apparently effortless grace is rare; usually we find as much curiositas as felicitas: we marvel at the art, but I for one feel uneasily conscious of the tour de force. In other words, I feel the effects are calculated, whereas I always feel that Catullus dashed down his shorter poems, at least, in a few minutes—as we know Schubert did many of his songs: even Mozart composed in his head, though without the necessity of writing. Of the labor limae the outstanding examples are Horace and Beethoven. For Horace we have his own word: in the case of Beethoven no one would suspect to what an extent he carried it, if his note-books had not been preserved.However de gustibus non disputandum: it is the old controversy between Munro, who favoured Catullus and Lucretius, and Conington, who preferred Horace and Virgil. (Those who have access to Conington's Miscellaneous Writings will find there a most interesting statement of his views: Munro's reply will be found in Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus.)
Some Early Greek Epitaphs
Authors: Jeffery L. H. 
Published: July 2013

In Westminster Abbey lie the bones of Ben Jonson; in the little parish church of Cookham in Berkshire lies a local squire named Arthur Babham, who died and was buried at about the same time as the poet. The world knows Ben Jonson, and his epitaph. Who has heard of his contemporary? Yet listen to the first lines of the Cookham memorial:To Cristall Skyes let Fame resounde the Vertuous Praise aright Of Arthor Babham here depicte in alabastere bright.Ten further lines record his lineage, his offspring, the expense of his monument, and his ultimate happy destination; but to the reader they mean little, compared with the directness of the words on the Abbey flagstone: ‘O rare Ben Ihonson.’There is a similar simplicity and lack of pretension in certain of the sepulchral epigrams on individuals contained in Book VII of the Greek Anthology, which marks them out among the multitude of ‘poetical exercises in the form of epitaphs’ (to quote the introduction of the Loeb edition) which form the greater part of the collection. Some of these outstanding examples are attributed, though often on very slender evidence, to famous poets from the seventh to the fifth centuries, while others are anonymous (); but, contrasted with the mass of rhetorical questions, imaginative speculations, and elaborate descriptions which so often detract from the compositions of the later writers, the epitaphs in question all have this common virtue, that the bare facts to be commemorated are stated briefly and lucidly, some-times with the transcendent clarity of great poetry, sometimes with a halting plainness which has equal power to transfix the mind.
Horace's Ars Poetica: A Systematic Argument
Authors: Tracy H. L. 
Published: July 2013

The reproach of careless organization has become a commonplace in the criticism of the Ars Poetica. Some commentators have been satisfied with merely putting on a derogatory label. Others have tried transposing passages in order to reduce the work to a system. Others, with or without appeal to Horace's sources, have tried in various ways to discern or to reconstruct some plan underlying the alleged disorder. None, so far as can be discovered, have made a successful attempt to find the key to the argument in the mode and manner of its presentation.The aim of this paper is to suggest such a key; to show that the proposed key is valid for the interpretation of all Horace's work; and particularly to show that the proper application of the key reveals in the Ars that lucid and logical thought-structure that is a constant characteristic of the Horatian manner.Horace is a writer of one idiom only. His method in all his works is an essentially ‘lyrical’ method, whether he is working on lyrical material proper or on satire, epistle, or didactic verse. The seeming casualness of the Ars is a mannerism of the lyrical style. Everywhere in Horace a disarming informality appears on the surface. But closer reading reveals a lucid and closely patterned sequence of thought. Once the lyrical manner is understood, once the key to its interpretation is applied, Horace's typically clear logic, in ode, satire, or treatise stands revealed.
Ships in Greek Vase-Painting
Authors: Williams R. T. 
Published: July 2013

From the several references to the crews of ships in theIliadand theOdysseyit can be seen that the complement of oarsmen is usually twenty. I assume that Homer is describing the Heroic ships, the ships of the Achaeans, and not necessarily the ships of the time in which he lived. However, naval specialists from the west of Greece, like the Phaeacians, were able to build larger ships; for they sent Odysseus home to Ithaca in a ship with a crew of fifty-two. The ship, too, in which Odysseus left Troy must have been about this size; by the time it had reached Circe's island its complement had been reduced to forty-six, including Odysseus and Eurylochus, but then there had been casualties. Each of the ships which originally left Troy with Odysseus had lost six men during the attack of the Cicones; had it not been for this loss, then, the crew would have been fifty-two. It is true that Odysseus' particular ship had lost six men to Cyclops as well; but it is likely that Odysseus' ship would have been made up to strength from the other ships after the incident. It is at any rate clear that Odysseus' ship had a crew ofabout fifty, and that the pentekontor, although Homer does not use the actual word π∊ντηκóντoρoς, was in use at the time of the Trojan War.This deduction is supported by a Mycenaean vase decorated with a ship, found during the excavation of the Tragana Tholos Tomb at Pylos (Koryphasion) and dated by Furumark to 1230–1100.
Homer to the Rescue a New Method in Beginners' Greek
Authors: Schoder Raymond V. 
Published: July 2013

The trouble with Greek is that too few are taking it. This is a great loss, for Greek has unique cultural value and is in itself the most educative item on the highly varied menu for young minds which our schools set forth. A small percentage of students are taking Greek, and finding it a real benefit. But there are surely many more who could be profiting from a substantial helping of Greek yet are not. Why? And can anything be done to remedy the situation?I would like to diagnose the ill and suggest a feasible cure—one which has worked out quite satisfactorily in practice in over ninety schools of the United States and Canada where a new technique has been used the past few years. Considerable interest in this experiment has developed in England and Scotland, and it has been repeatedly suggested to me that I describe the innovations entailed, for wider notice and under-standing on the part of those who might find it adaptable to their own needs. The following report endeavours to meet this desire.It is a harsh fact, in Britain as across the Atlantic, that under present educational conditions and economic urgencies the proportion of able young students who can afford to devote six or more years to intensive study of Greek is very small. Why not take up their problem and work out a compromise? If we can assure them that on a special method and programme they could in only two years (at four or five hours a week) learn enough Greek to read a substantial portion of at least one major author before the two years are up, would not many of them accept the opportunity and take that much Greek at any rate? It would mean, too, in practice, many more students taking Greek, if only on a short-term basis.
A Sixteenth-Century Humanist
Authors: Hudson-Williams T. 
Published: July 2013

‘This language [Latin] was my mother tongue’, says a country squire, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–92), in the first volume of his Essais, c. 25. This is how it came about. Before the boy could speak his father engaged as tutor a German latinist who did not know a word of French. Orders were given that no member of the household was to speak anything but Latin in the boy's hearing. The father and mother as well as the servants, including the chambermaid, picked up the foreign language; ‘we became so soaked in Latin that it flooded the villages around us, and even to-day (1580) the Latin names of artisans and tools are still heard in the neighbourhood. I was above six years of age before I understood any more French or Périgordin than I did Arabic’ (i. 25). He tells us elsewhere that the only verses he ever composed were in Latin. Among his tutors was the Scottish poet Buchanan, a distinguished latinist: Scott tells us that the Laird of Tully-Veolan ‘read the classic poets, to be sure, and the Epithalamium of Georgius Buchanan’ (Waverley, c. 13).At the age of six Montaigne was sent to the ‘Collège de Guienne, the best in France’. There, under the influence of the macaronic jargon spoken around him, his Ciceronian diction soon ‘became debased’ (s'abastardit). ‘When I was about seven or eight, I used to escape from all other pleasures to read the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the easiest book known to me, and, because of the subject-matter, the best-suited to my feeble age.’