Showing papers in "Classical Quarterly in 2014"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explain the very sharp contrast between the portraits of Critias found in Plato and Xenophon by considering the apologetic and polemic aims each author pursued.
Abstract: This paper aims to explain the very sharp contrast between the portraits of Critias found in Plato and Xenophon. While depicted as a monster in Xenophon's Hellenica, Critias is described with at most mild criticism in Plato's writings. Each of these portraits is eccentric in its own way, and these eccentricities can be explained by considering the apologetic and polemic aims each author pursued. In doing so, I hope to shed light not only on the relations between these portraits and the works that contain them, but also on the personal relations between Plato and Xenophon and their manner of expressing them in literary productions.
32 citations
TL;DR: Amores 1.1, as usually understood, ends in a way that seems a little flat: after an amusing account of how falling in love made him turn from epic to elegy, the poet concludes by ponderously invoking an elegiac muse as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Amores 1.1, as usually understood, ends in a way that seems a little flat: after an amusing account of how falling in love made him turn from epic to elegy, the poet concludes by ponderously invoking an elegiac muse. In this note I will argue that the ending is more entertaining, and more significant: the muse invoked in the last couplet, who is to inspire the poems to come, is none other than Corinna herself.
25 citations
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TL;DR: In the following pages, we will suggest that there is ample evidence of Caesar's familiarity with, and even imitation of, the Historiae by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Caesar's Commentarii have hardly been studied within the historiographical tradition – probably because of their generic difference from historia and, more generally, alleged overall sparseness, famously and influentially compared to nudity. While their relationship to Greek historians has received some haphazard attention, their possible debt to antecedent Roman historians is an even less explored question – admittedly compounded by the fragmentary state of early republican historiography. In the following pages, however, I will suggest that there is ample evidence of Caesar's familiarity with, and even imitation of, the Historiae by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna.
24 citations
TL;DR: As they appear in E.J. Kenney's Cambridge edition, these lines are:iam triplex animi est igitur natura reperta,nec tamen haec sat sunt ad sensum cuncta creandum,nil horum quoniam recipit mens posse crearesensiferos motus et mens quaecumque volutat as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: As they appear in E.J. Kenney's Cambridge edition, these lines are:iam triplex animi est igitur natura reperta,nec tamen haec sat sunt ad sensum cuncta creandum,nil horum quoniam recipit mens posse crearesensiferos motus et mens quaecumque volutat. 240quarta quoque his igitur quaedam natura necessestadtribuatur …
22 citations
TL;DR: The concept of mimēsis was shared by most authors, philosophers and educated audiences in the classical period, in antiquity as a whole, and even later, although it has probably never been developed into a well-articulated theory as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The concept of mimēsis was ‘shared by most authors, philosophers and educated audiences in the classical period, in antiquity as a whole, and even later’, although it has probably never been developed into a well-articulated theory. As far as we can judge from the extant evidence, the meaning of the expressions μίμησις and μιμέομαι differs from author to author and sometimes even from passage to passage. Ancient Greek views on mimēsis have often been discussed in modern scholarship, mainly within the field of history of art, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the traditional English translation ‘imitation’ is not always appropriate for the ancient texts and that in many contexts it is rather misleading. In the following study I aim to focus on this concept as it was employed in the oldest Greek cosmological and philosophical theories. As a rule, the study of these theories is complicated by their fragmentary state of preservation and by their distortion through the specifically Platonic views that were dominant among the later doxographers. I shall suggest that the Platonizing tendency still prevalent today, which tends to translate and interpret mimēsis as ‘imitation’ or ‘copy’, should be carefully revised in the light of the Hippocratic evidence and specifically in view of De victu, probably the oldest authentic, non-fragmentary, and non-Platonic document attesting the concept of mimēsis.
21 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue for a particular understanding of what authority consists in and how it was acquired in the re-emergence of Platonism as a dogmatic school of philosophy following the demise of the sceptical academy.
Abstract: Copyright © The Classical Association 2014. It is widely agreed that, in the re-emergence of Platonism as a dogmatic school of philosophy following the demise of the sceptical academy, Plato's works came to have an authoritative status. This paper argues for a particular understanding of what that authority consists in and how it was acquired.
16 citations
TL;DR: Canevaro and Harris as discussed by the authors have rejected, as forgeries or reconstructions of post-classical origin, all the laws and decrees appearing in the text of Andocides' speech On the Mysteries and purporting to be the documents which the speaker, at six points in that passage, directs the clerk to read out.
Abstract: Mirko Canevaro and Edward Harris, in their recent CQ article (henceforth C&H), have rejected, as forgeries or reconstructions of post-classical origin, all the laws and decrees appearing in the text of Andocides' speech On the Mysteries (77–98) and purporting to be the documents which the speaker, at six points in that passage, directs the clerk to read out. I have no quarrel with their arguments (pp. 100–19) for rejecting the documents presented as the decree of Patroclides (§§77–9), the decree of Tisamenus (§§83–4), and a series of new laws passed in 403/2 b.c. (§§85–7) – though in this last case, with the exception of one phrase, the genuineness of the laws themselves is confirmed by the fact that they are cited verbatim by the orator in the surrounding text (§§88–9, 93, 94, 99). I shall be concerned here only with the last document of the group, a decree ascribed to Demophantus (§§96–8), which C&H discuss at pp. 119–25.
14 citations
TL;DR: During the necromantic ceremony in Odyssey 11 Odysseus slits the throats of two sheep and then proceeds to drain their blood into the pit, which he has dug in the ground, and Tiresias has drunk the offering and offered a prophecy for the future.
Abstract: During the necromantic ceremony in Odyssey 11 Odysseus slits the throats of two sheep and then proceeds to drain their blood into the βόθρος, or pit, which he has dug in the ground (Od. 11.35–6). At this point in the ceremony the dead swarm up from the Underworld, displaying an innate attraction to the blood (Od. 11.36–7). Such is the overwhelming response of the dead that Odysseus must draw his sword in order to hold back the multitudes who clamour to drink the offering (Od. 11.48–50). Odysseus refuses to allow the dead to approach the blood until Tiresias has drunk the offering and offered a prophecy for the future (Od. 11.95–6). After Tiresias has concluded his prophecy for Odysseus some of the other dead step forward and drink the blood, but to what end? Odysseus does not seek prophecies from these figures, nor do they produce any, which means that their reason for desiring and drinking the blood must lie elsewhere.
14 citations
TL;DR: There is a general consensus that the Senate's role in Sulla's res publica was enhanced in comparison with earlier periods as discussed by the authors, based on the increase in the size of the Senate; on the monopoly it resumed of judicial decision-making in the iudicia publica; and on the extension, in practice, of its legislative capacity, given that its decrees could not be vetoed by tribunes of the plebs, who had also lost their capacity to put forward legislation.
Abstract: Pressing and urgent domestic problems were the justification for L. Cornelius Sulla's election to the dictatorship in 82 b.c. He responded with an extensive legislative programme which reorganized the judicial and legislative processes of the res publica. While there is agreement, in broad terms, about the nature of these changes, their purpose and significance remain debated. None the less, there is general consensus that the Senate's role in Sulla's res publica was enhanced in comparison with earlier periods. This conclusion is based on the increase in the size of the Senate; on the monopoly it resumed of judicial decision-making in the iudicia publica; and on the extension, in practice, of its legislative capacity, given that its decrees could not be vetoed by tribunes of the plebs, who had also lost their capacity to put forward legislation. Flower offers a recent and concise summary: ‘This new “consensus” of Sulla was based on force and on the necessity of agreeing with Sulla himself, and subsequently with his new, mighty senate that was expected to wield unprecedented power and absolute authority.’
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the importance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscurity of Lykophron in the Alexandra, which is a striking and unavoidable feature of the Alexandra.
Abstract: The subject of this paper is a striking and unavoidable feature of the Alexandra: Lykophron's habit of referring to single gods not by their usual names, but by multiple lists of epithets piled up in asyndeton. This phenomenon first occurs early in the 1474-line poem, and this occurrence will serve as an illustration. At 152–3, Demeter has five descriptors in a row: Ἐνναία ποτὲ | Ἕρκυνν' Ἐρινὺς Θουρία Ξιφηφόρος, ‘Ennaian … Herkynna, Erinys, Thouria, Sword-bearing’. In the footnote I give the probable explanations of these epithets. Although in this sample the explanations to most of the epithets are not to be found in inscriptions, my main aim in what follows will be to emphasize the relevance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscurity of Lykophron. In this paper, I ask why the poet accumulates divine epithets in this special way. I also ask whether the information provided by the ancient scholiasts, about the local origin of the epithets, is of good quality and of value to the historian of religion. This will mean checking some of that information against the evidence of inscriptions, beginning with Linear B. It will be argued that it stands up very well to such a check. The Alexandra has enjoyed remarkable recent vogue, but this attention has come mainly from the literary side. Historians, in particular historians of religion, and students of myths relating to colonial identity, have been much less ready to exploit the intricate detail of the poem, although it has so much to offer in these respects. The present article is, then, intended primarily as a contribution to the elucidation of a difficult literary text, and to the history of ancient Greek religion. Despite the article's main title, there will, as the subtitle is intended to make clear, be no attempt to gather and assess all the many passages in Lykophron to which inscriptions are relevant. There will, for example, be no discussion of 1141–74 and the early Hellenistic ‘Lokrian Maidens inscription’ (IG 9.12 706); or of the light thrown on 599 by the inscribed potsherds carrying dedications to Diomedes, recently found on the tiny island of Palagruza in the Adriatic, and beginning as early as the fifth century b.c. (SEG 48.692bis–694); or of 733–4 and their relation to the fifth-century b.c. Athenian decree (n. 127) mentioning Diotimos, the general who founded a torch race at Naples, according to Lykophron; or of 570–85 and the epigraphically attested Archegesion or cult building of Anios on Delos, which shows that this strange founder king with three magical daughters was a figure of historical cult as well as of myth.
14 citations
TL;DR: Ovid's disclaimers in the Ars Amatoria as discussed by the authors show that he does not necessarily warn off Roman wives and marriageable girls:==================este procul, uittae tenues, insigne pudoris,======quaeque tegis medios instita longa pedes,============nos Venerem tutam concessaque furta canemus======�
Abstract: Ovid's disclaimers in the Ars Amatoria need to be read in this context. My main argument is that, in his disclaimers, Ovid is rendering his female readership socially unrecognizable, rather than excluding respectable virgins and matronae from his audience. Ars 1.31–4, Ovid's programmatic statement about his work's target audience, is a case in point. A closer look at the passage shows that he does not necessarily warn off Roman wives and marriageable girls:
este procul, uittae tenues, insigne pudoris,
quaeque tegis medios instita longa pedes:
nos Venerem tutam concessaque furta canemus
inque meo nullum carmine crimen erit. Ov. Ars Am. 1.31–4
Stay away, slender fillets, symbol of modesty,
and you, long hem, who cover half the feet:
we shall sing of safe sex and permitted cheating
and there will be no wrong in my song.
TL;DR: The octave is a σύστημα, which is a musical structure resulting from an acceptable combination of two or more smaller intervals as mentioned in this paper, in this case, of a fourth and a fifth.
Abstract: The overall sense is clear enough: the Pythagoreans called the fourth συλλαβή, the fifth δι' ὀξειᾶν and the octave ἁρμονία. We are also told that the octave is a σύστημα, which is a musical structure resulting from an acceptable combination of two or more smaller intervals – in this case, of a fourth and a fifth. But the received text appears problematic: in particular, the double accusative τὴν δὲ διὰ πασῶν … ἁρμονίαν occurring in connection with the dative τῷ συστήματι seems quite difficult to account for. The phrase is perhaps to be taken as meaning that the Pythagoreans ‘posed’ or ‘defined’ the octave as ἁρμονία ‘because of the σύστημα’; nevertheless, the syntax still sounds troubled and, as Andrew Barker has suggested, the text is very likely to be corrupt in some way. An easy emendation would be τὴν δὲ διὰ πασῶν τῷ σύστημα … (‘they defined the octave as ἁρμονία because of its being a σύστημα, as Theophrastus also said’). The corruption could have taken place in two steps, the accidental loss of εἶναι having caused the correction of the ungrammatical τῷ σύστημα into the dative case.
TL;DR: The idea of scraping off old age was first attested in a counterfactual conditional sentence in Phoenix's speech at Il. 9.2.2 Bernabé = 6.37.2.
Abstract: It is well known that in early Greek epic old age was something that could be scraped off a man, and it is the purpose of this note to explore the image and to suggest a possible origin. The idea is first attested in a counterfactual conditional sentence in Phoenix's speech at Il. 9.445–6: ‘nor even if [a god] himself were to undertake to render me young and flourishing after scraping off old age …’ (οὐδ' εἴ κέν μοι ὑποσταίη αὐτός | γῆρας ἀποξύσας θήσειν νέον ἡβώοντα …); in a description of Medea's magical rejuvenation of Aeson in the Nostoi (fr. 7.2 Bernabé = 6.2 Davies, γῆρας ἀποξύσας); and in the account of Eos' botched attempt to make Tithonus immortal in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (223–4): οὐδ' ἐνόησε μετὰ ϕρεσὶ πότνια Ἠώςἥβην αἰτῆσαι, ξῦσαί τ' ἄπο γῆρας ὀλοιόν. Nor did lady Dawn think in her mind to ask for youth and to scrape off ruinous old age. This language also occurs in Late Antiquity, and Andrew Faulkner in his commentary on the Hymn (ad loc.) cites Greg. Nanz. Carm. 1.2.2.483 (PG 37.616) in the fourth century a.d. and the much later Cometas, Anth. Pal. 15.37.2. So far as the imagery implicit in these passages is concerned, S. D. Olson writes, ‘old age is imagined as a scurf or patina that can be scoured off a person’. Faulkner, however, prefers a more precise reference: ‘Griffin … relates it to the idea of old age as a skin that can be shed, as that of a snake’, and he helpfully cites Theodoros Prodromos, Carmina historica 24.18, ἀπόξυσαι τὸ γῆρας ὥσπερ ὄϕις (‘to scrape off old age like a snake’).
TL;DR: Aratus has been notorious for his wordplay since the first decades of his reception as discussed by the authors, and many Hellenistic readers such as Callimachus, Leonidas, or King Ptolemy seem to have picked up on the pun on the author's own name at Phaenomena 2, as well as on the famous λεπτή acrostic at PhAen.
Abstract: Aratus has been notorious for his wordplay since the first decades of his reception. Hellenistic readers such as Callimachus, Leonidas, or ‘King Ptolemy’ seem to have picked up on the pun on the author's own name at Phaenomena 2, as well as on the famous λεπτή acrostic at Phaen. 783–6 that will be revisited here. Three carefully placed occurrences of the adjective have so far been uncovered in the passage, but for a full appreciation of its elegance we must note that Aratus has set his readers up to notice a fourth.
TL;DR: A collection of fragments from a classical author is a risky business: the moment the book appears in print, it may already be outdated, as new fragments could have come to light as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Publishing a collection of fragments from a classical author is a risky business: the moment the book appears in print, it may already be outdated, as new fragments could have come to light. Or, in the words of Ecclesiasticus 18:7: ?When a man hath done, then he beginneth; and when he leaveth off, then he shall be doubtful? (???? ????????? ????????, ???? ???????, ??? ???? ????????, ???? ????????????). The same fate befell me shortly after the publication of my collection of fragments from Rufus of Ephesus' On Melancholy. Manfred Ullmann wrote to me that the late Rainer Degen had discovered a new fragment; in the course of my research, I came across some relevant quotations in the Hippocratic Treatments by the tenth-century author a?-?abar?; and recently, Klaus-Dietrich Fischer published two related fragments. The following short note contains these new fragments together with an English translation and commentary. At the end, I also offer some addenda and corrigenda, partly in light of the reviews that have since appeared.
TL;DR: Augustus as discussed by the authors opens the Res Gestae with his age: ‘nineteen years old’ (annos undeviginti natus). This places the reader firmly in the autumn of 44, rather than the aftermath of Caesar's assassination on the Ides when Octavian had been eighteen.
Abstract: Augustus opens the Res Gestae with his age: ‘nineteen years old’ (annos undeviginti natus). This places the reader firmly in the autumn of 44, rather than the aftermath of Caesar's assassination on the Ides when Octavian had been eighteen, presumably because the credibility of Octavian's claim to have liberated the res publica rested on his military intervention against Antony and the senate's commendation of it. Velleius Paterculus' summation (which echoes Augustus' formulation in the RG) is clear enough: although the domination of Antony was universally resented, no one was willing to take action against him ‘until Gaius Caesar, shortly after his nineteenth birthday, with marvellous daring and supreme success, on his private initiative (privatum consilium) showed a courage on behalf of the res publica which exceeded that of the senate. He summoned his father's veterans first from Calatia then from Casilinum; other veterans followed their example, and in a short time they united to form a regular army’. By raising an army, Octavian made himself politically relevant, but his move was strikingly illegal in two respects: he was too young (the entrance of politicians into public life had been subject to regulation since the formalization of the cursus honorum in 180 b.c.; Octavian, entering public life at the age of nineteen, was too young to have set foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, the quaestorship, for which the minimum age was thirty) and he was a private citizen with no authorization whatsoever to do anything of the sort. None the less, he advertises both aspects in the opening sentence: why?
TL;DR: Galen's stories about his successes in predicting the development of an illness belong to the best-known anecdotes drawn from his writings as discussed by the authors, and they set Galen apart from his peers, who tried to cover up their ignorance by levelling accusations of magic and divination against their superior colleague.
Abstract: Galen's stories about his successes in predicting the development of an illness belong to the best-known anecdotes drawn from his writings. Brilliant pieces of self-presentation, they set Galen apart from his peers, who tried to cover up their ignorance by levelling accusations of magic and divination against their superior colleague. These accusations are usually interpreted as very real threats, as Roman law punished illicit magic and divination. Pointing out that Galen sometimes likes to present himself as a mantis and a prophet, others have suggested that the accusations against Galen and his own self-presentation indicate that the border line between medicine and religion was still fluid. Both approaches correctly draw attention to the social reality that the accusations betray: they suggest that Galen belongs to a group of healers of dubious standing that populated the empire and thus show that medicine did not have a monopoly on healing. Yet such a socio-historical approach may not be sufficient. For one thing, both explanations have their limitations. Regarding the former, it can be said that Augustus' prohibition of divination aimed at controlling prediction about the emperor and one can doubt that a widespread clampdown of all forms of divination ever was intended. A possible objection to the second view is that throughout his oeuvre Galen emphasizes his medicine as a rational undertaking, even as a science (episteme). If one takes his self-presentation as a mantis to be more than metaphorical and to indicate the not yet fully crystallized identity of medicine as a separate scientific discipline, then Galen's usual way of understanding his own craft as a ‘science’ is in need of explanation. Besides such possible objections, a different set of questions still needs to be asked: why precisely were accusations of practising magic and divination levelled against Galen and why do they recur so frequently in his writings? Why divination and not, say, poisoning?
TL;DR: In the Peristephanon, a collection of hymns in praise of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (a.d. 347/8-c. 405) refers back to a time more than a hundred years before he was writing, when Christianity was not the predominant influence in the Roman world but the religion of a beleaguered minority.
Abstract: In the Peristephanon, a collection of hymns in praise of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (a.d. 347/8–c. 405) refers back to a time more than a hundred years before he was writing, when Christianity was not the predominant influence in the Roman world but the religion of a beleaguered minority. In the course of Prudentius' lifetime, the trials that were suffered by that minority under emperors such as Decius and Diocletian became an important point of reference for increasing numbers of Roman converts seeking to identify with Christianity and its sectarian past. At the time, however, those trials were recorded in only meagre written accounts. Prudentius, whose successful administrative career might have culminated in elevation to a senior position in the imperial scrinia, displays particular interest in the extent of the official archival material in the Peristephanon. In a number of passages in this work, he comments on the fragility of historical documents, which are easily destroyed by acts of malice or the effects of time. The following discussion will examine the ways in which he reflects on the permanence, or otherwise, of his own written texts. Analysis of his imitation of elegiac verse inscriptions will demonstrate how he draws attention to the inadequacy of even the most monumental types of human writing. But I will argue that, by identifying his poems with the martyrs' perishable bodies, Prudentius claims that they too can be a medium for a divine presence not confined to any perishable physical form.
TL;DR: The meaning of the word aparche and the nature of the theoroi in question have been the subject of disagreement among historians as discussed by the authors, and further suggestions to existing discussions have been made.
Abstract: One of the most baffling inscriptions has come down to us from the so-called ‘Passage of the Theoroi’ at Thasos. Situated at the north-eastern entrance of the ancient agora, and consisting originally of two walls on either side of a path paved by marble, the monumental passage way had a long list of names inscribed on the inside of its western wall; this is the so-called ‘great list of Thasian theoroi’. Two of its constituent lists bear the headings ἐπὶ τῆς πρώτης ἀπαρχῆς and ἐπὶ τῆς δeυ[τέρη]ς ἀπαρχῆς| οἵδe ἐθeόρeον. The meaning of the word aparche and the nature of the theoroi in question have been the subject of disagreement among historians. The aim of this article is to contribute further suggestions to existing discussions.
TL;DR: This article examined the influence of praise and blame within the Philippics of Cicero's speeches and found that the short-term use of blame was useful for pushing the senate to a particular course of action, but not to isolate strategies within the speeches.
Abstract: Cicero's level of success within the senate fluctuated throughout the period of his Philippic orations. These fluctuations reflect the very divisive nature of the conflict with Marcus Antonius, and the ever-changing circumstances that Cicero confronted. The orations themselves record Cicero's improvisational responses to these developments and allow us to study Cicero's range of persuasive techniques over a period of eight months, from September 44, when Cicero delivered his first Philippic, through to April 43, when he delivered his last. There has been a growing body of scholarship dealing with the Philippics, but there remains work to be done on the ad hoc nature of senatorial debate. Manuwald's recent study of praise and blame within the Philippics has provided a starting point, since she identifies strategic elements within the collection as a whole and how these elements functioned in terms of persuasion. She notes the short term use of praise and blame for the purpose of urging the senate to a particular course of action, but her avowed aims were not to isolate strategies within the speeches. And while Frisch provides full coverage of the historical context, he is less concerned with persuasive strategies within and between the speeches themselves. In this regard Philippics 10 and 11 provide an insight into the malleable and ad hoc nature of Roman oratory in the context of senatorial debate. We are able to follow Cicero's shifts in rhetorical strategies as he attempts to meet the exigencies of each situation. Philippics 10 and 11 have ostensibly similar rhetorical aims: to persuade the senate to appoint Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius to powerful military commands in the eastern provinces, and yet the rhetorical strategies that Cicero employs differ in various ways. My aim is to examine what factors influenced his choice of strategy in the delivery of the two speeches.
TL;DR: The authors demonstrate the inaccuracy of the Latin vocabulary in articulating the functional differences between various witches, but also to assert the essential uniformity of witch characters in so far as each witch is, in essence, a blank canvas onto which a myriad of fears and anxieties may be mapped.
Abstract: The Latin language is uncharacteristically rich when it comes to describing witches. A witch may be called a cantatrix or praecantrix, a sacerdos or vates. She may be docta, divina, saga, and maga, a venefica, malefica, lamia, lupula, strix, or striga. She may be simply quaedam anus. The available terms are copious and diverse, and the presence of such an abundant differential vocabulary might suggest (incorrectly, I shall argue) that Latin made clear linguistic distinctions between various witch types. It would seem a reasonable expectation that praecantrices, a word evocative of those who sing of events before they happen (prae + cantare), would be concerned with divinatory practices, while veneficae, given the term's close relationship to the word for poison (venenum), would deal in potions or philtres, leaving the lamiae (a Latinization of the Greek demon Lamia) or striges (personifications of the rapacious screech owl) to function as quasi-demonic bogeys posing threats to the lives of small children. However, this expectation of semantic and morphological concordance remains unfulfilled following any concerted attempt to correlate a witch's title with her function. Because of this disjuncture, this paper proposes to demonstrate not only the inaccuracy of the Latin vocabulary in articulating the functional differences between various witches, but also to assert the essential uniformity of witch characters in so far as each witch is, in essence, a blank canvas onto which a myriad of fears and anxieties may be mapped.
TL;DR: The De mundo as mentioned in this paper is a learned piece of protreptic addressed to Alexander, usually identified with Alexander the Great, and although it does espouse recognizably Aristotelian views, it contains various doctrinal and linguistic elements which have led the large majority of scholars to regard it as inauthentic.
Abstract: The short treatise known as Πeρὶ κόσμου (De mundo) is a learned piece of protreptic addressed to Alexander, ‘the best of princes’, usually identified with Alexander the Great. The treatise is traditionally attributed to Aristotle, and although it does espouse recognizably Aristotelian views, it contains various doctrinal and linguistic elements which have led the large majority of scholars to regard it as inauthentic. The dating of the treatise is a more controversial matter, though most scholars would put it somewhere in the Hellenistic period.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the significance that Telephus could have had for a Parian audience, and use this to investigate the political and rhetorical impact of his presentation within the poem.
Abstract: In recent years, our understanding of Archilochus has been transformed by the discovery of a major new fragment from the Oxyrhynchus collection (P Oxy. 4708), first published by Dirk Obbink. The new poem is not only the most substantial of Archilochus' elegiac fragments, but more importantly it is the first example we have of the poet's use of myth, for the surviving section narrates a mythological theme: the defeat of the Achaeans at the hands of Telephus during their first attempt to reach Troy. Scholars have found the choice and handling of the myth surprising, and the role that Telephus plays within the poem has been a subject of controversy. Yet this debate has tended to dwell on the Telephus myth in its general form, rather than focussing on the details of how Archilochus presents him in this particular context. This article will explore the significance that Telephus could have had for a Parian audience, and will use this to investigate the political and rhetorical impact of his presentation within the poem. I will argue that Archilochus highlights the aspects of Telephus' story which connect him most closely with Parian local myth, and that he does so in order to enhance the poem's central message: criticism and implicit mockery of the mythological battle and, by implication, of contemporary Parian military strategy.
TL;DR: In Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, Ovid expresses his increasing hopes for Germanicus' assistance in effecting his recall to Rome as mentioned in this paper, and the poem contains a petition to Germanicus (27−88), as a poet to a poet, which promises future commemoration in Ovid's poetry if he is removed from Tomis: "If my country is closed against me in my misery, may I be placed in any place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I might celebrate your praises while they are recent and relate your great deeds with the
Abstract: In Epistulae ex Ponto 4.8, one of the last poems written from exile (dated to 15 or 16 c.e.), Ovid expresses his increasing hopes for Germanicus' assistance in effecting his recall to Rome. Though ostensibly addressed to his stepdaughter's father-in-law, P. Suillius Rufus, the poem contains a petition to Germanicus (27–88), as a poet to a poet, which promises future commemoration in Ovid's poetry if he is removed from Tomis:
clausaque si misero patria est, ut ponar in ullo,qui minus Ausonia distet ab Vrbe loco,unde tuas possim laudes celebrare recentesmagnaque quam minima facta referre mora. (85–8)and if my country is closed against me in my misery, may I be placed in any place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I might celebrate your praises while they are recent and relate your great deeds with the least delay.
TL;DR: The authors made some additional observations on the way in which Nicander turned the Theriaca into a work of literature, focussing on some of the choices that he has made with regard to his less than veracious depiction of snakes and animals.
Abstract: The last decades have shown that Nicander's Theriaca (second century b.c.e.), a didactic hexameter poem of 958 lines on snakes, scorpions, spiders, and the proper treatment of the wounds they inflict, is a markedly more playful work than most readers thought. Rather than considering the poem as a vehicle of authentic learning, literary approaches to the nature of Nicander's strange poetic world have focussed on his eye for Alexandrian aesthetics, intertextuality, linguistic innovation, and awareness of the didactic tradition that started with Hesiod's Works and Days, but also on his predilection for horror, voyeuristic sensationalism, and gory details. Although literary-minded readers have found it hard to disprove convincingly that Nicander may have had some professional knowledge of his subject matter, a glance at his arcane language is enough to convince any reader that the Theriaca cannot be concerned solely with its explicit subject. In this article I will make some additional observations on the way in which Nicander has turned the Theriaca into a work of literature, focussing on some of the choices that he has made with regard to his less than veracious depiction of snakes and animals. While Spatafora rightly points to Nicander's eye for detail when portraying floral beauty, I will argue that the poet's play with the topos of the locus amoenus has a darker side. Rather than creating an epic world of beauty, Nicander shows his talent for taking the reader along an unpleasant path of apprehension and negative feelings, portraying a choice selection of afflictions. Not only does he have many ways of giving his quasi-scientific account a markedly negative atmosphere, but his world may well be a deliberate reversal of that other well-known Hellenistic portrayal of the natural world, Theocritus' bucolics.
TL;DR: This article proposed a new and more satisfactory context for a fragment from one of Ennius' tragedies preserved in Cicero and discussed by a late scholiast on the Ciceronian passage.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to propose a new and more satisfactory context for a fragment from one of Ennius’ tragedies preserved in Cicero and discussed by a late scholiast on the Ciceronian passage. It will be shown that the scholiast, or more likely the source upon which he drew, had in front of him a bit more of the Ennian passage than the partial line preserved in Cicero and that the scholiast drew a false conclusion concerning the identity of one of the interlocutors from the way in which one speaker addressed the other. Previous scholars have sought to remove the inconsistency in the scholiast's sketch of the scene either by changing the locale of the dialogue or by correcting the scholiast's identification of the out-of-place speaker. It will be shown that a more productive line of investigation is to seek to discover the underlying cause of the scholiast's apparent error. The identification of the cause not only sheds light on the fate of Ennius’ text in Late Antiquity but permits us to restore, by means of conjecture, an additional word to the corpus of Ennius’ tragedies, a word that is a favourite of his in the Annales, but until now has not been attested in a Roman tragedy before the age of Seneca.
TL;DR: In the Pro Plancio, the authors of as discussed by the authors argue that Cicero cunningly sets aside the dilemma of comparing two friends by constructing an alternative comparison between Laterensis and himself, and that such a comparison, which is highly selective, re-establishes his own positive public image.
Abstract: In the litigious world of ancient Rome patroni were often torn between conflicting bonds of loyalty, and this is the dilemma that Cicero laments in the exordium of the Pro Plancio (5). Both the prosecutor, Laterensis, and the accused, Plancius, were personal friends, and Cicero bemoans the quandary: either upsetting Laterensis by comparing him unfavourably with Plancius, or letting down his client. A second problem for Cicero was that the prosecution also took the opportunity to impugn him as the creature of Pompey and Caesar, so that Cicero had to defend himself as much as his client. Two examples of sermocinatio (an imaginary dialogue with a personified entity) helped him to face these challenges: these sermocinationes are Cicero's main strategy for getting out of the conundrum but, in spite of their relevance to his line of argument, they have received very little attention. In this article, after a brief historical contextualization, I analyse each sermocinatio, arguing that Cicero cunningly sets aside the dilemma of comparing two friends by constructing an alternative comparison between Laterensis and himself, and that such a comparison, which is highly selective, re-establishes his own positive public image. The two sermocinationes, moreover, also display some meaningful textual references which have remained unnoticed: in the final part of this paper I set them against the backdrop of Plato's Crito and of Cicero's letter to Lentulus (Fam. 1.9), arguing that the reference to the Crito supports Cicero's strategy of contrasting himself with Laterensis and that comparison with Fam. 1.9 illuminates the connection between the Pro Plancio and Cicero's broader post reditum self-defence.
TL;DR: In the New Kingdom period, the king's divinity was believed to be imbued by his possession of a divine manifestation of the god Amun-Re called the "living royal ka", which came upon him at his coronation, and which was also renewed during the yearly opet festival held in the Luxor temple in Thebes.
Abstract: It has long been known that the Egyptian pharaoh was regarded as divine in Egyptian culture. He was the son of Re and the mediator between the gods and humankind. During the royal coronation, he was transformed into a manifestation of the god Horus. He could be referred to as a ntr ('divine being','god'), and was regularly described in inscriptions as 'the good god' or 'perfect god' (ntr nfr).1 By the New Kingdom period, the king's divinity was believed to be imbued by his possession of a divine manifestation of the god Amun-Re called the 'living royal ka', which came upon him at his coronation, and which was also renewed during the yearly opet festival held in the Luxor temple in Thebes.2 As late as the period of Persian domination over Egypt in the fifth century B.C., Egyptian temple texts continued to describe their foreign king Darius I as a divine being, owing to the 'living royal ka'.3 This hieroglyphic formula proclaiming the king's divinity continues for Alexander the Great and even in Ptolemaic temple reliefs.
TL;DR: In their introduction to the recent excellent volume Plato & Hesiod, the editors G.R. Boys-Stones and J.H. Haubold as discussed by the authors pointed out that when we think about the problematic relationship between Plato and the poets, we tend to narrow this down to that between Proclus and Homer.
Abstract: In their introduction to the recent excellent volume Plato & Hesiod, the editors G.R. Boys-Stones and J.H. Haubold observe that when we think about the problematic relationship between Plato and the poets, we tend to narrow this down to that between Plato and Homer. Hesiod is practically ignored. Unjustly so, the editors argue. Hesiod provides a good opportunity to start thinking more broadly about Plato's interaction with poets and poetry, not in the least because the ‘second poet’ of Greece represents a different type of poetry from Homer's heroic epics, that of didactic poetry. What goes for Plato and Hesiod goes for Proclus and Hesiod. Proclus (a.d. 410/12–85), the productive head of the Neoplatonic school in Athens, took a great interest in poetry to which he was far more positively disposed than Plato had ever been. He wrote, for example, two lengthy treatises in reaction to Socrates' devastating criticism of poetry in the Republic as part of his commentary on that work in which he tries to keep the poets within the Platonic pale. This intriguing aspect of Proclus' thought has, as one might expect, not failed to attract scholarly attention. In Proclus' case too, however, discussions tend to concentrate on his attitude towards Homer (one need only think here of Robert Lamberton's stimulating book Homer the Theologian). To some extent this is only to be expected, since much of the discussion in the Commentary on the Republic centres on passages from Homer. Proclus did not, however, disregard Hesiod: we still possess his scholia on the Works and Days, now available in a recent edition by Patrizia Marzillo.
TL;DR: The most thoroughgoing of these criticisms is that offered by von Fritz, who argued that Livy and his sources completely misunderstood the tradition that they were interpreting as discussed by the authors, which led scholars to accept as genuine the tradition of an important reform of the Roman constitution took place in this year.
Abstract: The struggle for and passage of the so-called Licinio-Sextian rogations of 367 b.c. is generally regarded as the climactic moment of the ‘struggle of the orders’. According to Livy, this year saw the ratification of a package of three laws. One limited possession of land. Another required that all money having been paid toward the interest on a debt be counted against the principal, and that the remainder of the debt be paid off in three annual instalments. The third law, which has received far the most attention in the sources and in modern scholarship, ended the practice of the annual election of tribuni militum consulari potestate, restoring the two-man consulship and requiring that one of the two consuls each year come from the plebs. The centrality of the struggle over these laws in Livy's account of the fourth century and their obvious effect, as reflected in the fasti by the subsequent election of two consuls every year, have led scholars to accept as genuine the tradition that an important reform of the Roman constitution took place in this year. However, every element of the laws, and of the narrative of how those laws came to be, has come under the scrutiny of modern scholarship. The most thoroughgoing of these criticisms is that offered by von Fritz, who argued that Livy and his sources completely misunderstood the tradition that they were interpreting.