bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Women in Roman Life and Letters
Authors: Adcock F. E. 
Published: July 2013

The infant community of Rome grew up with neighbours who conceded a fairly high place to women. Etruscan sepulchral art suggests as much; the tomb paintings of early Campania show the womenfolk spruce, dignified, and house-proud; the authoritarian rule of the Sabine mother was traditional. Granted that in certain places and at certain times women were taboo, in a sense ‘infectious’, to use Warde Fowler's word, yet in the home the Roman wife had never been banished to a gynaeceum. The Atrium, the heart of the Roman house, was the wife's territory as much as the husband's. Though every Roman household was a monarchy with the paterfamilias as king, the womenfolk were no more, if no less, his subjects than the sons. When the Roman husband carried his wife into the Atrium, and she spoke the sacramental words ‘ubi tu Gaius ibi ego Gaia’, she made a claim that, in its due sphere, was admitted. In this sphere the Roman husband was more at home than the Greek, who hated not to be out of doors in the daytime. In a speech which Tacitus writes for Valerius Messalinus there is the truly Roman phrase ‘revertentibus post laborem quod honestius quam uxorium levamentum?’—‘the relief of a wife's society’—a society, that is, to quote another phrase from the same passage, ‘consortium rerum secundarum adversarumque’. When Lucretius writes:iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent the adjectives carry a weight of feeling.
Seneca the Satirist
Authors: Martin J. M. K. 
Published: July 2013

The fame of Seneca rests on his work as a philosopher and a writer of tragedies on the Greek model. But he can also lay claim to be a humorist. For in what perhaps was an unguarded moment he wrote an amusing satire on the emperor Claudius with the strange title Apocolocyntosis.The piece is so inconsistent with the high tone of his philosophical writings that it has received from critics almost universal reprobation. Seneca's admirers would be better pleased if his authorship could be questioned. But there is no ground for supposing that the satire is by another pen.It might be thought that the writer who composed the funeral oration on Claudius could not be so base as to switch so quickly from eulogy to satire. But the formality of a graveside encomium need not preclude more honest sentiments when the funeral is over. It may well be that even in the panegyric Seneca had his tongue in his cheek, for Tacitus remarks that when the speaker (it was Nero) referred to the wisdom and foresight of the dead prince no one could refrain from laughter.The title presents a problem, for there is no mention in the satire of the transformation of Claudius into a gourd or pumpkin. This has led some to the view that the work is incomplete. Others hold, with the support of Lewis and Short, that the word for a gourd, cucurbita, was used in the metaphorical sense of ‘fathead’ or ‘blockhead’, like the German Kürbiskopf, and thus it is assumed that the witticism is limited to the title.
Lycurgus in the Judgement of a German Eighteenth-Century Humanist
Authors: Elkan Lucy 
Published: July 2013

If we cast merely a cursory glance at Lycurgus’ laws we are really agreeably surprised. Of all similar institutions of Antiquity they are undoubtedly the most perfect, excepting the laws of Moses which they resemble in many parts, above all in the principles underlying them. They are really complete within themselves; everything is dovetailed, each part supported by the whole and the whole by each single part. Lycurgus could not have chosen a better way to reach the goal he had before his eyes: that of a State which, isolated from all others, should be self-sufficient and maintain itself through internal circulation and its own vital strength. No lawgiver has ever given a State such unity, such national interest, such public spirit as Lycurgus gave to his State. Now, how did Lycurgus accomplish this?Because he knew how to direct his fellow-citizens’ activities towards the State and closed all other outlets that might have drawn them away from it.All that captivates the human mind and arouses human passions, all save political interests, had been removed by his legislation. Wealth and luxury, science and the arts had no access to the Spartans’ minds. As all were equally poor the comparison of fortune which makes most men covetous was abolished. The longing for possessions ceased with the opportunity of displaying or using them. Profound ignorance of art and science dulled all minds in Sparta in an equal manner. By this means he safeguarded the State from any interference that an enlightened brain might have caused in the Constitution.
A School Virgil Society
Authors: Pope Stella R. 
Published: July 2013

The leaflet announcing the formation of the Virgil Society, and the reprint from The Times Literary Supplement revived pleasant, although dim, memories of evenings before the war spent reading Virgil with a small group of friends and former pupils…. It would be impossible now to reassemble that group…. And then the thought of the present VIth arose. School groups were mentioned in the leaflet. Could we not form a reading group and link ourselves to the main body of the Virgil Society? Tentatively I suggested it to two of the VIth and showed them the reprint. They were at once enthusiastic, and so others were told. In this way we formed our branch of the Virgil Society.As the most important thing is to read Virgil we have decided to hold six readings a year—one at the beginning and end of every term. In addition we hope to have two lectures. So far we have had two readings and we are having our first lecture on 20 September, when we shall have the pleasure of hearing Professor J. F. Mountford of Liverpool University on ‘Why Virgil wrote the Aeneid’. This is to be an open meeting, and we are inviting parties from other schools and our own parents and friends.Our readings are great fun and not a bit like lessons, although we read and translate Virgil just as we do in class. The atmosphere is quite different, probably because the readings take place out of school hours and are preceded by tea—provided, prepared, and washed up by the members.
A Joint Classical Association
Authors: Elsworth W. L. 
Published: July 2013

Arecent article in Greece and Rome on the formation of a school Virgil Society has had repercussions in the Potteries area of north Staffordshire which I think may interest other readers. When the article first appeared one of the sixth-form boys studying Classics at this school asked if we might start our own Virgil Society. I mentioned this suggestion to our headmaster, himself a Classical scholar, and he was able to show us some of the literature sent out by the Virgil Society. But a discussion in the sixth form soon made it clear that the boys, while keen on forming a society, did not wish to see it limited in scope. They envisaged the whole realm of Greece and Rome as their arena. With such a wide field in view it was obvious that the resources of one school would be severely strained to provide lectures, talks, and discussions at anything like frequent intervals, and permission was sought and obtained to invite representatives of two girls' schools and one boys' school, all situated fairly near to us, to an informal meeting to discuss ideas.That meeting in November 1945 was a great success. The representatives, staff and pupils, were enthusiastic to form some such society, which should take for its field of operations the whole life of the ancient classical world. We elected a committee of two representatives from each school, stipulating that not more than one should be a member of the staff, and invited all the other secondary grammar schools within easy travelling distance.
Virgil's Pilgrim's Progress
Authors: Ellingham C. J. 
Published: July 2013

Poetry has four appeals: the romantic, the sensuous, the intellectual, and the formal. We may enjoy the story, the sound, the thought, or the shape of a poem. Almost everybody can appreciate the first; and a reciter trying to convert an audience suspicious of poetry might begin with Alfred Noyes's ‘Highwayman’. Susceptibility to the second appeal seems innate in a fortunate few. Some men loved the music of Keats's ‘Nightingale’ long before they understood the words. But others are tone-deaf (I know a Doctor of Divinity who calls Kubla Khan rubbish), and in most of us the appreciation of verbal harmony grows but slowly. And the last two appeals are much more limited. Few can be bothered to master the ‘criticism of life’ of Arnold's ‘Resignation’ or Browning's ‘Rabbi ben Ezra’, or to estimate the place of Troilus and Cressida in Shakespeare's intellectual development, or to discuss the merits of the Spenserian stanza, or to criticize the structure of ‘The Lotus-Eaters’ or the arrangement of the books in Paradise Lost. Such conundrums are left to candidates for Honours in English and the dons who set the papers.Now if we have only read two or three books of the Aeneid we cannot enjoy the structure of the whole poem. And we shall not apprehend much of Virgil's thought. Indeed, we may misunderstand it, just as, if somebody insists that Milton's God is a bully and the rebel angels heroes, it is fairly safe to infer that he has read only the first two books of Paradise Lost.
A Greek Traveller In Tudor England
Authors: Eichholz D. E. 
Published: July 2013

In 1545, nearly two years before the death of Henry VIII, there came to England Nicander Nucius of Corfu. He stayed some months, and later wrote an account of his visit in classical Greek.There must be many like myself who are indebted to Mr. Stanley Casson's last published work, Greece and Britain, for their first acquaintance with Nicander. Unfortunately his chapter on Nicander is all too brief. Moreover, there is only one English edition of the Greek text, and this was published by the Camden Society over a hundred years ago.2 A more accessible edition is called for, as I hope this paper will show.Nicander came to England with his patron Gerard, whom the Emperor Charles V had dispatched as an emissary to Henry. We know little about Nicander himself, but there are hints that he had recently left his home owing to some personal tragedy. Corfu was then a part of the Venetian Republic and it was to Venice that he made his way, there to meet Gerard, who was travelling to the court of Sultan Suleiman. Nicander accompanied him to Constantinople. His knowledge of local conditions would make him a useful travelling-companion, and it is probable that he also proved helpful as a diplomatic assistant. At any rate, he remained a member of Gerard's suite and followed him faithfully on the long journey through Germany and Belgium which finally brought them both to Calais. Here they received a travel-permit (ἐυλóσιμον), and after a false start crossed to Dover.
The Artistry of Tacitus
Authors: Chapman C. S. 
Published: July 2013

Whatever may be his weaknesses in other fields, all will agree that as a literary craftsman Tacitus stands in the first rank. Like Lytton Strachey, he writes with an extraordinary verbal felicity, shows an uncanny genius for delineating character, and is a master of innuendo and suggestion.It would be an entertaining but profitless pastime for my readers to cast themselves for the part of Nero at the beginning of Book XIV and decide how they would elect to liquidate—pardon the modern term—a troublesome mother. I am sure we could each one of us propound half a dozen more convincing schemes than that adopted by the historical Nero. Judged by the standards of the modern novel, the story is utterly fantastic. Yet such is the artistry of Tacitus that we are held spellbound throughout and accept it as vera historia.He makes an excellent start: ‘Gaio Vipstano C. Fonteio consulibus diu meditatum scelus non ultra Nero distulit.’ How lucky it was for Tacitus he had no chapter-headings to give his secrets away! Subconsciously the reader draws in a breath of eager anticipation, feeling that if Nero is now about to bring off a long-meditated crime, then he is in for an interesting story. But what was the crime? Just wait and see. But to whet our appetite Tacitus gives us in his description of Nero one of those pungent quasi-epigrammatic touches of psychology of which he is so fond. ‘Vetustate imperii coalita audacia.… ’ ‘This unnatural power’, says Burke, ‘corrupts both the heart and the understanding.’
Rhetorical Influences in the Aeneid
Authors: Clarke M. L. 
Published: July 2013

At the beginning of the fifth book of his Saturnalia Macrobius makes his characters all agree that Virgil is to be considered an orator no less than a poet; such is his mastery of eloquence and his careful observance of the rules of rhetoric. Are we to dismiss this as an example of a type of criticism now fortunately outmoded, or is there something in it? Was Virgil to any important extent influenced by rhetorical precept, and, if so, how did this influence work? These are the questions which I propose to discuss in this paper.Let us begin with a comparison. Let us first imagine ourselves sitting in a village schoolroom eighty years or so ago. The occasion is a ‘penny reading’, and the rector has chosen for this evening's reading the poet laureate's recently published Enoch Arden. The tale draws to its close, and we reach the last three lines:So past the strong heroic soul away.And when they buried him the little portHad seldom seen a costlier funeral.Now we transfer ourselves to the year 23 B.C. and the palace of Augustus. Virgil himself is reciting, and the company includes Augustus and Octavia. The poet is reciting from his yet unfinished Aeneid, and he comes to the passage in the sixth book where Anchises shows Aeneas the young Marcellus among the souls yet to be born.quantos ille virum magnam Mavortis ad urbemcampus aget gemitus! vel quae, Tiberine, videbisfunera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem.
The Persistence of Greek Accent
Authors: Sedgwick W. B. 
Published: July 2013

It is well known that the Greek accent from about the Christian era gradually changed from pitch to stress, and that by about the fourth century stress had become so powerful that, if necessary, quantity was overridden—as in Modern Greek: e.g. νθρωπος came to be pronounced ánthrǒpus, and Xenophon's εЗωνοι are now éfzǒni.This fact has had some interesting consequences. The influence of Greek was not confined to the Byzantine Empire; even in the West the majority of slaves and freedmen would be Greek-speaking: St. Paul writes to the Christians at Rome in Greek: the Epistle of Clement in the next generation is in Greek, and all the men's names in Petronius are Greek (or Oriental). Vulgar Latin became infiltrated with Greek words, which sometimes assumed characteristic Vulgar Latin forms: e.g. μθοσ > muttus > mot; χωλόπος (stressed on the second syllable) > cloppus > clocker, clopin—forms only explicable by assuming a strong stress accent.1As popular influence became ever more overwhelming, we find that even those who must have known better scanned Greek words as they pronounced them: e.g. Ausonius trigǒnus, tetragǒnus, Prudentius Asclepiādem. Sidonius Apollinaris has been much ridiculed for assumed ignorance in scanning Euripīdis: it was not ignorance (we know, for instance, that he read Menander with his son), but the actual pronunciation of his day, both Latin and Greek.Christians normally scanned abssus, erěmus, idǒlum: even in the time of Plautus we regularly find Phílppus (the coin). Similarly būtrum (βούτρον) > Fr. beurre: Eng. butter seems to have come straight from Vulgar Latin (via Vulgate ?).
The Augustan ‘Constitution’
Authors: Grant Michael 
Published: July 2013

The Augustan constitution—if we may use this word, for which there is no ancient equivalent—is as important a subject as the large number of modern writings devoted to it would suggest, and to judge by their contradictory character, it is a difficult one. Anyone who attempts, as I am attempting to-day, yet another general statement, and that within the compass of a single paper, must hedge himself around with protestations and admissions of what he is going to leave out. I must also at once forestall the criticism, frequently launched at students of this subject, that I am the dupe of ancient propaganda, inscriptions including theRes Gestae, and the coins. I fully appreciate that their insinuating suggestions are constantly misleading; and yet they, as the principal contemporary sources, are what I chiefly propose to quote to you to-day. I must also concede that these sources show a meticulous correctness of terminology, concerning matters such as the legal nuances distinguishing various powers, which must have been lost on considerable sections of the general Roman public. But these sections of the public should not be the concern of a student of the Augustan constitution. His concern is rather with the governing class, the fabricators of this insidious publicity. They, at least, were very far from averse to constitutional niceties; and incidentally, against those who stress the ignorance of the public, these hard-headed men would never have taken so much trouble if nobody was going to be impressed by it.But I am not plunging into the full intricacy of their efforts to-day; for the compass of one paper requires simplification, and one way in which I shall simplify is by ignoring the many nuances between different categories of power, and considering them as subdivided into two main categories only—on the one side that sort of power which was part of the legal and formal machinery of the State, apotestas, including some powers carryingimperiumand some lacking it, and on the other side all those media of authority which were not based on anypotestas.
The Intention of Virgil's Georgics
Authors: Wilkinson L. P. 
Published: July 2013

Many and various have been the approaches to Virgil's Georgics. Dryden once stated roundly that they were ‘the best poem of the best poet’. The director of a well-known botanical garden maintains, rather oddly, that they are the best thing for starting boys on botany. It is worth while to try to discover what Virgil himself thought he was doing, and for what readers he intended his poem.Let me first recall the circumstances of his upbringing. He spent his childhood on his father's farm, amid the sights and sounds and smells of the country. But by his fifteenth year he was sent to school at Cremona, and from there on to Milan, after which he completed his studies at Rome and near Naples. There is every indication that his bent was for literature and philosophic speculation, and no good evidence that he was ever himself a farmer. By 37–6 B.C., when he was 33, he was already established as a poet, and with Varius had become the nucleus of Maecenas’ circle. He had run through the gamut of pastoral poetry, and was on the look-out for fresh woods and pastures new. His intense love of the country, attested in every line of the Georgics, would in itself suffice to account for his choice of subject, and the impact of Lucretius’ recent masterpiece for his choice of form.At the close of his breathless baroque overture Virgil alleges pity for the ignorance of the rustic as his motive for writing, but that is simply part of the game.
Studies in Character Agamemnon
Authors: Earp F. R. 
Published: July 2013

The more I study Aeschylus the more clearly I perceive how much he tells us of his characters. The exhibition of character is not his main purpose, and he spends less space upon it than Sophocles or Euripides, not to mention more modern dramatists, but his touches are so sure that the final picture is surprisingly complete. In one case this is generally admitted. Few will dispute that Clytaemnestra is one of the most vivid and striking figures in all tragic drama. But she is an exception, and Aeschylus shows her to us more fully than any of his figures except the still enigmatic Prometheus. (Eteocles in the Septem makes as many speeches as Clytaemnestra, but they are less revealing.) In most of his plays the speeches allotted to the characters are so scanty, and so much dictated by the requirements of the action, that one has to know the play very well before one perceives how much the spare touches of character reveal. That point was only impressed on me when I started to learn the Agamemnon by heart. Then I really grasped it and will try to illustrate it.Agamemnon himself is the best illustration to begin with, for he is less complex than his wife. He conforms to a well-known type, which most of us have met. He combines an imposing façade with inner weakness. Aeschylus, it is true, does not directly mention his appearance. That we learn from Homer (Iliad iii. 166 f.); and it is noteworthy how close Aeschylus keeps to Homer in depicting Agamemnon.
Oxyrhynchus and Its Papyri
Authors: Turner E. G. 
Published: July 2013

The nineteen volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri have contributed so much to classical studies over the last fifty years that it is surprising how little has been written on the town of Oxyrhynchus. There is no monograph from which the layman can obtain a balanced picture.2 No doubt scholars have been deterred from the task of compiling one by the thought of the enormous number of papyri still awaiting publication. In 1920 B. P. Grenfell estimated that of the material in the possession of the Egypt Exploration Society a little over half of the literary finds but ‘not nearly half’ of the documents had been published. The progress made since that date scarcely alters the figures. I shall try to show what sort of place Oxyrhynchus was so that its papyri may be related to their background. The layman, whose picture of the papyrologist is often that of a ‘back-room’ wizard producing something out of nothing, may thereby be helped to see these documents and texts as the expression of the life of a community, and as a result to understand both what is likely to be forthcoming from papyrological work and to assess the value of published texts. Because the quantity of material is so overwhelming, I have found it essential to restrict myself to the second and third centuries after Christ.Since the contrary is often asserted, I begin by emphasizing that Oxyrhynchus was an important place. This importance was recognized in A.D. 272, when the phrase λαμπρἀ καì λαμπρωτἀτπ ‘illustrious and most illustrious’ found a place in the town's official title, perhaps in direct connexion with the first occasion (namely in the following year A.D. 273) when the world-games, the Iso-Capitolia, were held in Oxyrhynchus.
An Experiment with Horace
Authors: Dale F. R. 
Published: July 2013

My first attempts at rendering ancient lyric metres in English quantity were made with Greek choruses. I was trying in this way to give boys some idea of the run of the Greek patterns. I found the experiment profitable at least to myself; I began to study and enjoy the shape of the strophes with a new liveliness of interest.I had used E. A. Sonnenschein's book What is Rhythm? in the teaching of English for some years before it occurred to me that here was the key to the old problem of writing quantitative verse in English. Of all the experiments made by poets and scholars, from the Elizabethans down to Robinson Ellis's Catullus and Robert Bridges's Ibant Obscuri, though some have been read with pleasure, none succeed in keeping the shape and balance of the ancient lines. Sonnenschein used a kymograph, and with most laborious care measured the length of English syllables as they are pronounced, counting the hundredths of a second taken in the pronunciation of each syllable. I have not tested him on any machine, because my ear accepts as valid the rules which emerge from his experiments. To show how this works I give a rendering of Horace, Odes, i. II:Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quern mihi, quern tibi ….Ask not thou what the end gods have assigned either to me or thee, Things not lawful to know, Leuconoe. Let Babylonian signs Rest unsearched; better far, just to endure all that shall come to pass.