Showing papers in "Greece & Rome in 1971"

The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at its Height, Circa a.d. 90–130

Abstract: Precisely how long ago the Chinese began to export their silk westwards along the trade routes of Central Asia we do not know. Ezekiel seems to have been familiar with silk, and Isaiah may have heard of the Chinese. By 115 b.c. we are on firmer ground, for in that year Mithridates II of Parthia made an alliance with Wu Ti, the great Han emperor of China, designed at least in part to facilitate commerce between the two powers, who were for the first time within direct commercial reach of one another. Half-way through the following century Julius Caesar possessed silk curtains. But the trade throughout this period was no more than a trickle. The caravan routes from the Ordos region of North China to the eastern frontier of Iran passed through the territories of numerous Turkic tribes, whose possession of Central Asia had so far been virtually unchallenged.

The Birthplaces of Latin Writers

Abstract: In his introduction to the Loeb translation of Suetonius, J. C. Rolfe suggests that Suetonius' unknown birthplace may be Rome, adding: ‘There is no prominent writer of whom this [being born in Rome] can be asserted positively; it seems probable in the case of Caesar and Lucretius.’ One wonders, then, just where the writers in the Latin language were born, and what effect, if any, this had on the literature, especially that now extant. I have investigated the birthplaces of the major authors up to a.d. 200, and propose here to summarize my results and offer a few comments.

The Trojan Horse in Classical Art.

Abstract: The Trojan War has been perennially interesting, whether study centres on works of imaginative literature such as the epic poems of Homer and Virgil, the historical situation which provided the subject for those poems, the Bronze Age world of Troy and Mycenae which formed a background to the war, or the post-classical reworking of the material in the medieval Troy romances, Shakespeare, or Giraudoux. As well as supplying writers with incidents and episodes, the story of the war has given to artists a seemingly inexhaustible supply of themes on which their fancy feeds. A great proportion of Greek and Roman art can be connected with legends that stem from the Trojan War, and the whole complex of myths and history has proved a potent source for later artists. The theme chosen here is that of the Trojan Horse, and we shall look at some ways in which artists in antiquity viewed the incident.

Some Odyssean Similes

Abstract: Perhaps the one feature that makes the Iliad and Odyssey most characteristically Homeric—not Virgilian, nor Apollonian—is the similes. They allow Homer to turn from the material at hand for a brief moment to look at some other scene, and the intensity with which he looks at the new scene gives a heightened awareness to the original subject, the thing, person, or event which suggested the simile in the first place and was the simile's point of departure. It is well known that the poet's interest in this new subject occasionally goes beyond the strict needs of the poetic context; he often seems absorbed in and even distracted by the other scene, and so the poetic device to which he has lent his name is frequently understood to mean nothing more than an extended comparison whose development and details are thought to be somehow irrelevant. What I wish to do here is look closely at several of these similes in the Odyssey, not from a statistical point of view or to compare them with those of the Iliad, but rather to consider them as poetic devices which Homer uses in an expert way to achieve just the effect he intends; often, as I hope to show, the subtlety of the effect achieved is surprising.

The Continuity of Hellenism

Abstract: In The Twelve Lays of the Gipsy , one of the masterpieces of modern Greek poetry, Palamas puts into the mouth of his Gipsy these words, addressed to the Beautiful Immortals, who symbolize the achievements of ancient Greek civilization: What if you are immortal ? Your life is over, The full life that you lived in full bodily vigour In the sun and air of the blissful country of your birth. Now there is another sun, another air, and you are only Apparitions.

Herodas and the Kitchen Sink

Abstract: L_ like a glove. In school and university syllabuses, just as in our own private reading, we concentrate on the best authors; and a large number of the merely good authors stay on the library shelves, neglected and unread except by a steadily decreasing number of experts in forgotten fields. How many of us are on terms of easy familiarity with the bittersweet epigrams of Asclepiades, or that remarkably modern opening of Heliodorus' novel, or (for that matter) with the mimiamboi of Herodas? Herodas was the major Hellenistic author of mimes. His work was singled out by the younger Pliny (Ep. iv. 3. 4) as the standard by which to assess contemporary poetasters in the field. Yet before 1889 he was no more than a name, to whom a few dull fragments could be assigned. In fact before 1889 the whole genre of Hellenistic mime, literary and non-literary alike, was a dark mystery, doubtless consigned to oblivion during the ages of Byzantine antischolasticism. To the immense popularity of mimes in late antiquity countless references in contemporary sources bear a distinctly scandalized witness. Some descriptions survived, a few definitions, many condemnations, but no texts. In 1889 the picture altered, when the British Museum acquired through Sir Wallis Budge their Herodas papyrus (now Egerton pap. i). It was a roll written around A.D. I00. On it were preserved some 40 columns, with 15 to 19 lines to the column. There were six titled mimes of Herodas in a complete state, substantial portions of two others, and a few other scraps. Unfortunately the roll has lost its colophon, and the correct orthography of the author's name remains disputed.' The find was first published in 1891 by Kenyon, and the papyrus facsimile followed a year later. Between 1891 and 1929 a great deal of work was done on the text and interpretation of this difficult author, taking our understanding and appreciation of the mimes to a point from which they have not since advanced very far. A record of the contributions during this period would mark much that was illustrious and generous in scholarship, and much regrettably that was unpleasantly nationalistic or recriminatory. But I hope that I shall not be accused of recriminatory

Cicero's Philarchia and Marius

Abstract: In his biography of Cicero, Plutarch quotes from Augustus an admission that the future emperor had once made use of Cicero's lover of power (philarchia) by offering to support the orator for a second consulship in return for Cicero's help. This incident allegedly dates from the period after Caesar's death when Octavian feared that he would otherwise be left without political support.

The Cyclops of Euripides

Abstract: It might have been expected that the Cyclops , as our only complete surviving satyr-play, would attract wide attention among scholars In fact, it has largely been neglected: no edition (and very little else) has appeared for over forty years in English The present paper aims merely to suggest that the time may be ripe for reappraisal

Who were the Amazons

Abstract: Legend informs us that the Amazons were women, that they were not only warlike but successful above average as warriors, and that they had no breasts. The masculinity of the second and third characteristics ought to make us highly suspicious of the accuracy of the first, and the explanations provided by the ancient Greeks do not bear any very close examination.

Was Cicero Aware of Natural Beauty

Abstract: It has long been fashionable to believe that the Romans had little conception of natural beauty, and to assume that any sympathetic awareness of nature which they displayed could be accounted for in terms of their moral or utilitarian preconceptions. The moral relationship which in much of classical Greek literature was assumed to exist between man and nature had been reflected in and strengthened by the philosophical theories of Plato and, later, the Stoics. Yet this conception was already an anachronism by the time of the appearance of Lucretius' theory of Voluptas , and appears to have been progressively weakened in the later Republic and early Empire until in Ovid natural processes become the mere backcloth of human activity and emotion. Professor Segal has recently illustrated the employment of nature by Ovid as a literary symbol for the reflection of human emotion, and earlier work had revealed the emotional and moral attitudes to nature of Virgil and other poets, but it is questionable whether awareness of natural beauty as such , unalloyed by moral or emotional symbolism, is to be detected in Roman poetry, much less in Roman prose writing. This view may be supported by a careful scrutiny of Roman literature, where the reader will find it difficult to locate any obvious similarity to some of the commonest modern reactions to natural beauty; and further practical confirmation of this attitude may perhaps be derived from the apparent disdain of the Roman road-builders for any of those concessions to natural contours made by twentieth-century rural conservationists.

Thucydides and the Uses of History

Abstract: The question ‘Is History an art or a science?’ will be familiar to anyone who has answered more than a handful of General Papers, and it is tempting to think of it, not as a real question, but as a sort of logical puzzle, rather on the lines of ‘Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?’ To set it aside, however, or to answer it on a purely theoretical level, is to disregard a problem which is as old as History itself and which concerns historians now perhaps more than at any other time. Is History subjective ? Must it necessarily reflect the ideas and values and conceptual framework of those who write it ? Is the historian by his very nature a distorting medium? Or is this merely an excuse that historians themselves have invented? Is it possible, after all, to be objective ? Are there such things as historical facts, and is it possible so to arrange these facts that they speak for themselves and not with a voice from another and alien age ? Behind these questions, and to some extent bound up with them, there is, of course, another: if History is subjective, is this necessarily bad, and if it could be objective would this be desirable?

Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus: A Stoic Interpretation of the Greek Myth

Abstract: Seneca's shortcomings as a tragedian are a commonplace of literary criticism. On the one hand, the style of Seneca's plays is condemned for being excessively rhetorical; long, undramatic speeches, full of mythological references, alternate with bombastic utterances; or, as J. W. Duff states, comparing Seneca with his Greek predecessors: ‘in the Latin plays one has entered a new world where genius has been replaced by cleverness, and an eminently classic directness of expression by rhetoric.’ On the other hand, Seneca's detractors claim that extravagance of style is matched by a propensity for gory detail, such as the notorious piecing together of Hippolytus at the end of Phaedra. Thus, according to F. L. Lucas:if only to make up for the unreality of his ultra-academic drama [Seneca] tries to be vivid by being lurid, to stimulate the jaded imagination of his public by screaming atrocity. Seneca does indeed recall the man in Plato who had a morbid desire to view the corpses in the city ditch; long ashamed to yield to such an impulse, at last he ran to the edge and uncovered his eyes with the cry, ‘There, you wretches, take your fill’.

Form and Irony in Catullus XLV

Abstract: Catullus ' forty-fifth poem has become in recent years a focus for a certain amount of controversy. In this respect it has not been alone among the poems of Catullus' libellus; Catullan criticism has been undergoing a process of reassessment whereby a somewhat indiscriminate enthusiasm for certain poems has been challenged by an attitude in some cases more sophisticated, in others, perhaps, simply more devious. In the case of the poem under discussion, a traditional view, represented by J. Ferguson who quotes with approval Munro's estimate of the poem (‘the most charming picture in any language of a light and happy love’), has been rejected by several scholars who agree that the poem is, in some sense, ironical, while disagreeing in their reasons for so concluding. Before we examine their arguments we should, perhaps, be careful to define precisely what we mean by irony.

A Letter from Augustus to Tiberius

Abstract: Suetonius quotes some attractive specimens of Augustus' domestic correspondence. They include several sentences from letters to Tiberius by which Suetonius seeks to show that Augustus had a high regard for his adopted son as a military man and valued campaigner. One quotation (Suet. Tib. 21) is as follows:Vale, iucundissime Tiberi, et feliciter rem gere, ⋯μο⋯ κα⋯ ταῖς †μουισασαιστ στρατηγ⋯ν. Iucundissime et ita sim felix, vir fortissimo et dux νομιμώτατe, vale.

Lucretius V. 1442

Abstract: In G & R xvii (1970), 197–8, H. G. Lord discusses the textual problem in Lucretius v. 1442 and proposes tum mare velivolis florebat propter ad oras navibu', non ausi tum in altum vertere proras. Since the crux is one of those desperate ones of which it is almost true to say ‘quot editores tot sententiae, suos quoique mos’, and I have already published my own emendation, I will not attempt a refutation of a proposal which I myself find unconvincing. However, there are some inaccuracies in Lord's article upon which comment must be made. He states: ‘The only suggestions which attempt to deal with the reading of the manuscripts are that of Clodachzh (“in search of spices”, which in addition to its improbability uses propter in a causal, and not in a local sense; the latter alone appears to be the Lucretian usage) and that of Ellis.’

The Change of Plan in the Doloneia

Abstract: At the end of Iliad ix we see the Achaeans confined in their camp by the Trojans. Under cover of darkness they hold a council of war, at which Nestor suggests (x. 204 ff.) the need for a reconnaissance to discover the Trojan intentions: this idea had also occurred to Menelaus earlier (37–8). It may be done either by ‘cutting out’ some enemy on the edge of the sleeping army (the word used is ⋯σχατόωντα, 206), or by overhearing a conversation (φ⋯μις, 207) which may give information. There is no suggestion of any further exploit, for the Achaeans are hard-pressed and at this moment it is information which they chiefly need. Nestor suggests that the exploit will bring much glory; there will also be a substantial reward. Diomedes volunteers to undertake the task, and selects Odysseus as his companion: others also volunteer, but Diomedes feels that Odysseus' cunning makes him the most suitable choice. When they set off, Athene, well disposed as always towards her favourite, sends them a good omen (274). Both men offer prayers to her for success; Diomedes also promises a sacrifice if all goes well. Odysseus in his prayer expresses the hope that they will return ‘after accomplishing a fine deed’ (ῥέξαντας μέγα ἔργον, 282). This phrase may be significant, for the attentive reader will ask himself whether the exploit as planned does really merit such a description.