Showing papers in "Classical Quarterly in 2000"

The subjection of muthos to logos: Plato's citations of the poets

Abstract: According to Aristotle, Metaphysics (a) 2.3, 995a7–8, there are people who will take seriously the arguments of a speaker (including, it seems, those of a philosopher) only if a poet can be cited as a ‘witness’ in support of them. Aristotle's passing observation sharply reminds us that Greek philosophy had developed within, and was surrounded by, a culture which extensively valued the authority of the poetic word and the poet's ‘voice’ from which it emanated. The currency of ideas, values, and images disseminated through familiarity with poetry had always been a force with which philosophy, in its various manifestations, needed to reckon. As a mode of thought and discourse which proclaimed its aspiration to wisdom, philosophy could not easily eschew some degree of dialogue with an art whose practitioners had traditionally (and for much longer than anyone had been called a ‘philosopher') been ranked prominently among the sophoi. Even Aristotle, who keeps aloof from the assumption that philosophical contentions stand in need of poetic support, cites and quotes poetry regularly in his own writings in ways which indicate the influence on him of a prevailing mentality that regarded poets and philosophers as pursuers, up to a point at least, of a common wisdom.

Anthropology and the classics: war, violence, and the stateless polis

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTIONIt has become a commonplace in contemporary historiography to note the frequency of war in ancient Greece. Yvon Garlan says that, during the century and a half from the Persian wars (490 and 480–479 B.C.) to the battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.), Athens was at war, on average, more than two years out of every three, and never enjoyed a period of peace for as long as ten consecutive years. ‘Given these conditions’, says Garlan, ‘one would expect them (i.e. the Greeks) to consider war as a problem …. But this was far from being the case.’ The Greek acceptance of war as inevitable was contrasted by Momigliano and others with the attention given to constitutional changes and to the prevention of stasis: ‘the Greeks came to accept war like birth and death about which nothing could be done …. On the other hand constitutions were men-made and could be modified by men.’Moralist overtones were not absent from this re-evaluation of Greek civilization. Havelock observed that the Greeks exalted, legitimized, and placed organized warfare at the heart of the European value system, and Momigliano suggested that:The idea of controlling wars, like the idea of the emancipation of women and the idea of birth control, is a part of the intellectual revolution of the nineteenth century and meant a break with the classical tradition of historiography of wars.

Sallust's Catiline and Cato the Censor

Abstract: That Sallust owed a considerable debt to the writings of Cato the Censor was observed in antiquity, and the observation has often been discussed and expanded on by modern scholars. The ancient references to Sallust's employment of Cato are mainly in the context of his adoption of an archaic style, and specifically Catonian vocabulary. But the choice of Cato as a model had an obvious significance that went beyond the purely stylistic. Sallust's works articulate extreme pessimism at the moral state of late-Republican Rome, and do so partly by contrasting the modern age with a prelapsarian time of near-untrammelled virtue, brought to an end only by the fall of Carthage and the consequent dominance of Roman power, which in turn led to moral corruption. Similarly, Cato famously stood in his own day for moral rectitude—and specifically appealed to past virtue as the standard to which he wished to hold his contemporaries. Sallust, by writing in a Catonian style, aligns himself with that tradition.

Theoria and Darśan: pilgrimage and vision in Greece and India

Abstract: THEORIA IN GREEK RELIGIONWhat was the Greek for pilgrim? If there is no simple answer, the explanation is the great diversity of ancient pilgrimages and pilgrimage-related phenomena. People went to sanctuaries for all sorts of reasons: consulting oracles, attending festivals, making sacrifices, watching the Panhellenic games, or seeking a cure for illness; there were variations in the participants (individuals or state-delegations, small groups or large), and variations in the length of distance traversed to get to the sanctuary; finally, changes occurred in the shape of pilgrimage over time: pilgrimage is not the same in the Hellenistic period as it is in the classical period, and pilgrimage in the Roman world is different again.If we limit our scope to state-pilgrimage and to the classical period, we find a special vocabulary for pilgrimage in the word θeωρός and its derivatives θeωρέω, θeωρία, and θeωρίς2. θeωρία is the normal term for state-pilgrimage, as we see in the famous introduction to Plato's Phaedo (58b) describing the Athenian pilgrimage to Delos. The corresponding term for a pilgrim is θeωρός, found first in Theognis (Eleg 776), and frequently in the fifth century. The verb θeωρέω can mean ‘go on a pilgrimage to’, as in Thucydides' account of Ionian pilgrimage to the Delian festival (3.101). θeωρίς is the normal Attic term for a sacred ship used to convey sacred delegates to and from a sanctuary. One area where this family of words is never used is that of pilgrimage to healing sanctuaries; if we find any word used there, it is ἱκέτης, in later texts sometimes the neutral σνμϕοιτητής.

Who practised love-magic in classical antiquity and in the late Roman world?

Abstract: INTRODUCTIONVery soon after I began working on the identity of magic-workers in classical antiquity, I realized that it was necessary to come to terms with a thesis about depictions of erotic magic-working in Greek and Roman literature. It asserted that male writers engaged in a systematic misrepresentation of the realities of magic-working in portraying erotic magic as an exclusively female preserve; the reality was that men were the main participants in this form of magic-working. The thesis is based on the supposition that the truth about erotic magic and the people who performed it is to be found in the formularies or spell-books preserved in papyrus and in defixiones. These two sources of information are said to show us that erotic magic was performed by men and not by the women who are the persons depicted engaging in love-magic in literature. The scholar who first presented the thesis was the late John Winkler. A version of it is to be found in Fritz Graf's general account of Greek and Roman magic. There is agreement over what are taken to be the facts, but views diverge over their interpretation. Winkler appeals to the Freudian notion of denial and transference to offer an explanation not only of the discrepancy between life and literature, but of what he took to be the belief held by the young men who cast erotic spells that the girls who were the objects of their spells were as sexually eager as they were: men, when overwhelmed by sexual desire for unattainable women, through a process of denial transfer that feeling to women, whether old or young, whom they fondly imagine suffer the same intense sexual longings as themselves.

Iliad and Aethiopis on the Stage: Aeschylus and Son

Abstract: Aeschylus, according to a famous report, described his tragedies as ‘cuts from Homer's great banquets’. The anecdote has the ring of truth, particularly as ‘Homer’ here must include the Epic Cycle, which would hardly have been possible after the fifth century; and there is an obvious source from which Athenaeus might have taken the story, the ’Eπιδημαι of Ion of Chios, which he cites in three other places. This work had the character of a personal memoir describing notable Athenian statesmen, poets, and philosophers whom Ion had known. The emphasis was on their personalities as revealed in their public speeches and private conversation. One of Athenaeus’ quotations from it is about Sophocles, and we know from other evidence that as a young man Ion had met Aeschylus too. The anecdote would have been perfectly in place in such a book.

Nero's Luxuria, in Tacitus and in the Octavia

Abstract: According to Tacitus, this was Galba's verdict on Nero's fall. The tyrant's undoing had been of his own making. As for what determined the outcome, Galba is unequivocal. Two factors had proved decisive: Nero's immanitas and luxuria.

The social function of Attic tragedy: a Response to Jasper Griffin

Abstract: Jasper Griffin's polemic, in this journal, against what he calls the ‘collectivist school’ of interpretation of Athenian tragedy is welcome, as it encourages clarification of fundamental differences. I do not have the space here to tackle him wherever I think he is wrong, still less construct an argument to the effect that Athenian tragedy was a ‘collective’ phenomenon. Rather I want to do two things. Firstly, the casual reader may have formed the impression that whereas the ‘collectivists’ operate with vague and unsubstantiated notions, Griffin's view has the advantage of being firmly grounded in the ancient texts. This impression I intend to dispel. In doing so I will confine myself to some of G.'s general remarks and to his attack on my own views, as a sample of the quality of his argument. Secondly, I also adduce new material in the hope of advancing the debate on this important issue.

Rhetoric in the Fourth Academy

Abstract: Around 87 b.c. during the turmoil of the first Mithridatic war, Philo of Larissa, head of the so-called Fourth Academy, fled from Athens to Rome. There he gave lectures on philosophical topics and taught rhetoric. His classes were attended by a young man called Cicero, who was inspired by him to include in a work on rhetorical theory, somewhat inappropriately, a fervent confession of scepticism to which he stuck for the rest of his life. Later Cicero claimed to be—as an orator—not a product of the workshops of the teachers of rhetoric, but of the spacious walks of the Academy. And he developed the ideal of the philosopher-orator. Scholars disagree whether the idea to bring philosophy and rhetoric together is Cicero's own invention or an adaptation from someone else, for instance Philo.

Satyr and image in Aeschylus' Theoroi

Abstract: The enduring fame of Aeschylus as the earliest of the ‘three great tragedians’ has made him in effect the first dramatist of the Western tradition, in chronological terms at least. At the same time it is worth noting that among the ancients he also enjoyed a reputation as a master of the satyr play, as Pausanias (2.13.6–7) and Diogenes Laertius (2.133) tell us. It is to this kind of drama, which comprised one-quarter of his output as tragedian, that I would like to turn, with particular focus on his Theoroi or Isthmiastai, and its treatment of another visual medium, the plastic arts. Our fragments of this play begin with a figure presenting a chorus of satyrs with artfully wrought images made in their likenesses which bring them a startled delight. In the second discernible scene of the fragment the chorus receivesνeοχμᾰ… θρματα ([c] col. ii 50), usually understood as athletic equipment, which the satyrs find rather more unsettling. The following piece is primarily concerned with the first scene in which the coryphaeus urges his companions to dedicate the depictions as votives on Poseidon's temple, relishing the prospect of the comical, terrifying effect these images would have on his own mother and travellers, the latter probably on their way to the Isthmian games. At least this much is clear from the papyrus (esp. lines 1–22). This part of the fragment has attracted a good deal of attention for the evident ‘realism’ of the images that excites the satyrs so much in the first place.

The publica fames of a.d. 68 (Suetonius, Nero 45.1)

Abstract: In his account of Nero's last months Suetonius describes the various ways in which the emperor, after he heard the news that Galba had decided to take on the leadership of Vindex’ revolt, tried to raise troops and to extract money from the inhabitants of Rome. On top of all this, so says the biographer, Nero incurred invidia by profiteering from the high price of grain, and this invidia grew greater because it happened too that while the inhabitants were suffering from hunger, news came that a grain ship from Alexandria had arrived carrying nothing but sand for the court wrestlers (Nero 45.1: ‘ex annonae quoque caritate lucranti adcrevit invidia; nam et forte accidit, ut in publica fame Alexandrina navis nuntiaretur pulverem luctatoribus aulicis advexisse’). Although this episode undoubtedly belongs in 68, there is little to be said for the argument, now generally accepted, that this shortage of grain was caused by L. Clodius Macer, legionary legate of Africa Proconsularis. As I hope to show, the dearth resulted from Nero's own attempts at self-defence.

Creative rhetoric in Euripides’ Troades: some notes on Hecuba's speech

Abstract: Euripides' Troades was a work not much studied until the end of World War II. Since then the play, and in particular the part played by Helen and the debate concerning her accountability for her elopement and its consequences, have not ceased to attract scholarly attention. The recent interest in the rhetoric of this agon has thrown additional light on the entire scene, the third and last episode of the play. The debate is occasioned by Menelaus’ announcement (873–5) that the men who captured his runaway wife handed her over to him for execution—or, should he so choose, to take her back home. In the first speech (914–65) Helen tries to persuade Menelaus that she cannot justly be punished with death for having served as the tool of a most powerful goddess. Hecuba, in her answering speech (969–1032), strives to discredit Helen in order to prevent her reinstatement and oblige Menelaus to carry out the death sentence. In this paper I would like to draw further attention to some of Hecuba's arguments. Assuming general acquaintance with current readings of the agon, I shall start with a section-by-section discussion of the old queen's speech and its immediate effect, with an emphasis on significant motifs. Certain further implications will be pointed out at the end of the paper.

The Sicilian expedition was a Potemkin fleet

Abstract: The speeches of Nicias and Alcibiades in the debate leading up to the launching of the Sicilian expedition (Thuc. 6.9–14, 6.20–3, 6.16–18) contain a significant number of words, phrases, and themes that recur in Thucydides' later chapters reporting the launching of the expedition and its ultimate fate in Sicily. The verbal and thematic echoes often consist of words of sight and hearing; among the recurring themes are rivalry and competition, the contrast between public and private expenditures, and the desire for acquisition and financial profit.

Two unidentified senators in Josephus, A.J 19

Abstract: Names of Romans in Josephus are notoriously liable to corruption. Two minor characters in his account of the assassination of Caligula have so far defied plausible emendation, ‘Timidius’ in A.J. 19.33–4 and ‘Bathybius’ in 19.91. The sources of Josephus’ account of this dramatic episode were unquestionably high class—two, rather than one, Latin historians, as Wiseman has demonstrated, the main one (rather than the only one) being Cluvius Rufus, the other possibly Fabius Rusticus.

Cleon's hidden appeals (Thucydides 3.37–40)1

Abstract: πƤΟƩ ΗΔΟΝΗΝ ΛEƮEΙΝAt 2.65 Thucydides says of Pericles that he did not speak to please (πρoς ήδoνν λέγeιν): he had no need of such means for acquiring influence, since he already enjoyed it because of his recognized merits. But his successors were on the same plane as one another, each one striving to establish himself as the man first in influence with the demos. And in this drive for ascendancy, they began to allow the people's pleasures to shape the advice they gave (༐τράπoντo καθ’ ήςoνaς τŵ δήμω καi τa πράγματα ༐νδιδoναι).

'Fearless, bloodless … like the gods': Sappho 31 and the rhetoric of ‘godlike’

Abstract: Poem 31 in our collections of Sappho's fragments is so well-known both through the original version, quoted partially by ‘Longinus’ (De sublimitate 10.1–3), and through Catullus’ adaptation (no. 51), that it is difficult to achieve sufficient distance from one's preconceptions to permit reappraisal. For the poem has in the modern period elicited such startlingly contradictory responses that one wonders whether we may not all along have been missing, or misconstruing, some point which was obvious enough to Sappho and her listeners.A major source of dissent among modern interpreters of the poem concerns the question of jealousy: is Sappho moved to such convulsions of emotion by jealousy at seeing her beloved girlfriend in intimate colloquy with a man, or is she not? For the situation is, simply put, the following: a man is said to be godlike who sits opposite a certain girl, enjoying her conversation and her laughter. This, says Sappho, makes her boil over with a mixture of passionate emotions. Now one may take these emotions either as a response to the sight of her beloved girlfriend talking to a man (that is, jealousy), or one may refer the emotions described to the love Sappho feels for the girl under ‘normal’ circumstances: the man is simply extraordinarily fortunate (‘like the gods’) in enjoying her affection.

Valerius Maximus on the Domus Augusta, Augustus, and Tiberius*

Abstract: Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia provide an opportunity of seeing how an undistinguished talent responded to the demise of the republic and the establishment of an imperial system. Fergus Millar has argued that we should view Valerius as a contemporary of Ovid, that is as an author influenced by the last years of Augustus and writing in the early years of Tiberius’ reign, but the internal evidence of Facta et dicta memorabilia better fits publication in the early 30s a.d. in the aftermath of Sejanus’ unsuccessful conspiracy. Although this does distance Valerius further from the key years of transition, he is not remote—and because of the relative paucity of prose authors of the period his presentation of the domus Augusta and of Augustus and Tiberius repays attention.

Shifting Helen: An Interpretation of Sappho, Fragment 16 (Voigt)

Abstract: Denys Page, discussing this poem in his classic Sappho and Alcaeus, seemed unimpressed by its aesthetic merits. In his note on line 7 he says: ‘The sequence of thought might have been clearer.... It seems then inelegant to begin this parable, the point of which is that Helen found O Krλλιστον in her lover, by stating that she herself surpassed all mortals in this very quality’ (p. 53). His interpretative essay phrases further objections. ‘In a phrase which rings dull in our doubtful ears, she proceeds to illustrate the truth of her preamble by calling Helen of Troy in evidence’ (p. 56). About the Helen exemplum itself he says: ‘the thought is simple as the style is artless’ and ‘the transition back to the principal subject was perhaps not very adroitly; managed’ (p. 56). Page's criticism centres on the function of the exemplum of Helen. A close reconsideration of this exemplum, with special attention to the way in which it is embedded in the preceding and following context, will result in a better understanding and appreciation of this poem.

Athens and the Hellenistic kings (338–261 b.c. ): the language of the decrees

Abstract: It has been a widespread belief among historians of antiquity that Athens’ importance on the political scene declined rapidly after 338, and especially after 322; Athens, so it is assumed, succumbed to the will of Alexander and, later on, of his Diadochoi. Of course, it cannot be denied that Athens found itself in a very precarious and sometimes impossible position. Yet the attitudes of Athens towards one king or the other, as well as its status, vary considerably until 261, the end of the Chremonidean War against Antigonos Gonatas, king of Macedon.Certain aspects of the Athenian relationship with the various monarchs are reflected in the decrees of the assembly, passed in honour of royal officials, as well as in the decrees conferring the highest honours (proedria of the games, sitesis in the Prytaneion, and a statue) upon Athenian citizens who belonged to a king's court. My purpose is to examine precisely the image that Athens projects through the above-mentioned decrees with regard to its relations with the various rulers and their officials; and these in relation to its perception of its own position on the military and political scene on different historical occasions.

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 'De Intellectu' 110.4: 'I heard this from Aristotle'. A modest proposal

Abstract: The treatise De intellectu attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias can be divided into four sections. The first (A, 106.19–110.3) is an interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of intellect, and especially of the active intellect referred to in Aristotle, De anima 3.5, which differs from the interpretation in Alexander's own De anima, and whose relation to Alexander's De anima, attribution to Alexander, and date are all disputed. The second (B, 110.4–112.5) is an account of the intellect which is broadly similar to A though differing on certain points. The third (Cl, 112.5–113.12) is an account of someone's response to the problem of how intellect can enter the human being ‘from outside’ if it is incorporeal and hence cannot move at all; in the fourth (C2, 113.12–24) the writer who reported Cl criticizes that solution and gives his own alternative one.

Royal authority and city law under Alexander and his Hellenistic successors

Abstract: When the Macedonians had conquered Greece, city-states continued to exist along-side the more powerful kingdoms, and were often forced to accommodate their policies to the wishes of the powerful kings who were, in theory, their allies. If kings and cities were to co-operate effectively, there would need to be some way of adapting the authority of royal wishes to the theoretical rights of the cities to self-determination.The contrast between the powers of a king, theoretically all-powerful within his kingdom, and the autonomy of a city did not need to be total. Aristotle, who was acquainted with the Macedonian kingdom, made a clear distinction between kingship and tyranny, between rule by the law and autocracy. He listed Macedonia alongside Sparta and Epirus as kingdoms which were ruled in the interests of all.

Political developments in Boeotia

Abstract: Etude du developpement historique du pouvoir et de l'organisation politiques de la Beotie qui a contribue, depuis le VI e siecle, a l'hegemonie de Thebes et a la fondation de Platee. Retracant l'histoire de la guerre du Peloponnese en reference a Thucydide, Xenophon et Plutarque, l'A. examine la formation du systeme oligarchique et la mise en place de l'administration populaire dans les cites membres de l'alliance beotienne.

The disorders of the 170s b.c. and Roman intervention in the class struggle in Greece

Abstract: One or two early Archaic and even Classical representations [of lyres] have been interpreted as showing fixed pegs, but this is uncertain. What clearly was common, from the seventh century on, was winding the string round the yoke and binding in some kind of solid piece that the player could move up and down to adjust the tension. Sometimes it seems to have been a straight slip of wood or some other hard material. This is the same means of tuning as was used for the early Mesopotamian lyres.

Lysimachus, the Getae, and archaeology

Abstract: Among the principal successors to Alexander the Great, Lysimachus is probably the one that has suffered most by neglect in the scanty literary sources at our disposal. His wars with the Getae and their king Dromichaetes are among the few events in his long career which have received more than a casual notice in the historical tradition; no wonder that they have been examined repeatedly both in the context of Lysimachus' political biography and of the history of the region and its Thracian population, the Getae. However, many aspects of the circumstances remain obscure and dubious, and their discussion has more than once ended with the expression of hope that one day new archaeological finds might permit the solution of some of the associated riddles. The recent archaeological discoveries near Sveshtari in north-eastern Bulgaria seem now to warrant a re-examination of these problems.

Aristotle, Speusippus, and the method of division

Abstract: IntroductionAs Aristotle himself says, A.Po. 2.13 is an attempt to provide some rules to hunt out the items predicated in what something is, namely to discover definitions. Since most of this chapter is devoted to the discussion of some rules of division (diairesis), it may be inferred that somehow division plays a central role in the discovery of definitions. However, in the following pages I shall not discuss what this role is. Nor shall I discuss what place division has in the wider discussion of definition and explanation as it emerges from A.Po. 2. 1 shall rather focus on the argument that Aristotle reports and discusses in A.Po. 2.13.97a6–22, and which our extant sources ascribe to Speusippus. As will become clear later on, this argument undermines the possibility of giving any definition, and Aristotle deals with it here because he can block it by exploiting some properties of the method of division.

The Thracian camp and the fourth actor at Rhesus 565–691*

Abstract: Many scholars argue that only three actors were needed in this problematic scene. I believe four are required. The case for a fourth actor can be made much stronger if we take into consideration the location of the Thracian, Trojan, and Greek camps as presented in the play. This argument has been overlooked in previous discussions of the passage.

Ovid's Heroides 6: preliminary scenes from the life of an intertextual heroine *

Abstract: Ovid regarded the Epistulae Heroidum as a collection with a consistent theme. He indicates as much at Am. 2.18.18–26, where he describes the unified conception of nine or ten of the Heroides as the result of Amor's insistence that he be an elegiac poet:

Longinus, On Sublimity 35.1

Abstract: It is argued that the modern vulgate text of On Sublimity 35.1 (adopting Manutius' conjecture ho Lusias for the transmitted apousias) produces an unacceptable incoherence in Longinus' argument. A very tentative alternative (amousias) is proposed.

Notes on the epic poems of Statius

Abstract: At their first meeting Polynices and Tydeus come to blows. They are reconciled by Adrastus, who expresses the hope that their quarrel will lead to loyal friendship between them, as it did.Esse pro fuisse dixit, says Lactantius, more ingenuously than Klotz, who tries to make the same thing more palatable by saying esse est pro imperfecti quodammodo infinitiuo. Some have taken the accusative and infinitive to be a general statement, but Heuvel is clearly right in saying that it is Tydeus and Polynices whom the poet has in mind. The most favoured solution has been Grater's conjecture isse, but (as Helm says) that produces an unnatural expression (the passages adduced by Mueller are not parallels); Mozley renders it by ‘grew’, thereby translating not what stands in his text but what ought perhaps to stand there, namely esse, a conjecture of Gil, which has been almost entirely overlooked. This contracted form is found in extant literature only at Lucretius 3.683 and (concresse) Ovid, Met. 7.416 (at 3.200 Statius flesse). The first letters of a line are particularly liable to omission; despite Hill, I do not find it at all surprising that at 1.544 perseus lost its first letter and the remnant became aureus.