Wednesday, March 08, 2006

The Cento Revisited

It is well-known to students of Late Antique poetry that Vergil's lines were could be dismembered, reassembled, and turned into something completely different by Christian and non-Christian Latin poets. I was unaware that the same happened to Prudentius in a subsequent age. That, however, is what Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopaedie tells me in the section on the Hamartigenia in the Prudentius article. Apparently the close of the poem (by which I assume is meant Prudentius' closing prayer, ll. 931-66) was made into a cento by a Spanish bishop named Ascaricus. Here is the sentence from the article along with the references given:

Aus dem Schluss des Gedichtes machte der spanische Bischof Ascaricus einen Cento (Fr. Buecheler Carmina lat. epigr. nr. 927. C. Weyman Rh. Mus. L 1895, 154).

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Hexameter Verse/Prudentius (Updated)

Prudentius, in his Hamartigenia, is not afraid to use a fifth-foot spondee from time to time. Here are the examples I've come across so far, all with a quadrisyllabic word spanning the fifth and sixth feet:

76: una eademque tamen rota sideris indiscretis
266: ac velut artificis domini manus inperfectum
422: Postremum cuneum rex promovet Euuaeorum
713: imperio. Hoc mulier rea criminis exprobanti
859: ditibus et longo fumantibus intervallo

Monday, March 06, 2006

New books

The folks at Edgar Kent, a Canadian publishing house (apparently partnered with the University of Toronto Press), have asked me to forward the following to scholars who might be interested. The first, on Greek warfare, was written by a Marine who became a classicist, which intrigues me as a classicist whose father was a Marine. The second is by Frank Frost on Athenian historiography, which was lauded in the BMCR.

I guess there's no harm in giving them a little free publicity:

please find below details of our latest titles in Classics. We would appreciate if you would take the time to review these titles and forward this email to any scholars who may be interested in our books.



THE ATHLETES OF WAR

AN EVALUATION OF THE AGONISTIC ELEMENTS IN GREEK

WARFARE

by John C. Dayton



In this dramatically revisionist account of Greek warfare, John Dayton challenges the modern views that Greek warfare was more an aspect of the Greek spirit of competition than a desire to inflict drastic harm on an enemy. He examines all the ancient evidence bearing on the actual conduct of war and combat among the Greeks themselves and in struggles of Greeks with barbarians from the archaic period to the fourth century, and draws on Polybius for the evidence Roman warfare bears on the conduct of battles. A thorough analysis of casualty statistics shows that Greeks suffered heavily from warfare, and that there was no “tournament-like” limitation on the harm that one party might inflict on another. He places the scholarly analyses of Greek warfare in the context of the ideologies prevalent at the time modern historians study the question, and he uses the evidence of casualty figures suffered in modern conflicts to show that the damage Greek armies inflicted on one another is comparable to the losses suffered in modern “total war.”



The conception that Greek warfare was more an aspect of the Greek spirit of competition than a desire to inflict drastic harm on an enemy is a modern myth. The notion still exerts great cultural influence, and persists precisely because it is a myth, a durable belief in principled and ceremonial wars between Greeks that shares some elements with the belief in the peaceable savage who fights only for his own honor or in his own defense. Examining all the ancient sources that provide information on the nature and ideology of combat in the Greek world, John Dayton shows that this modern conception is thoroughly disprovable by any objective criteria. His presentation of the data also provides a basic source of information about Greek warfare and history for all studies in the future. This is a study essential to any understanding of Greek history, of which war was a constant feature.



Contents



Introduction • 1: The History of Agonism • 2: The Archaic Evidence •

3: The Fifth Century • 4: The Casualties • 5: The Fourth Century •

6: Polybius and the Roman Connection • Conclusion • Bibliography • Index



John Dayton combines military experience with classical training to provide an understanding of Greek attitudes towards war. Born in Michigan in 1966, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1987 to 1991. He studied classics at Princeton and the University of Kansas, and received his doctorate from Brown University in 2003. He was the Heinrich Schliemann Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens in 2000-01, and subsequently has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Massachusetts and the University of Indiana. He is currently a member of the classics faculty of the University of Calgary.



Hardcover Edition

ISBN 0-88866-651-9 • $82.50 • 200 Pages



Order From:

University of Toronto Press

Phone: (416) 667-7791 or toll-free 1-800-565-9523 in North America.
Fax: (416) 667-7832 or toll-free 1-800-221-9985 in North America.
E-mail: publishing@utpress.utoronto.ca

Mail U.S.
2250 Military Road
Tonawanda, New York 14150

Mail Canada
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, On M3H 5T6

United Kingdom and Continental Europe
NBN International,
Phone 44 (0) 1752 202301,
Fax 44 (0) 1752 202333
E-mail: orders@nbninternational.com







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------







POLITICS AND THE ATHENIANS

ESSAYS ON ATHENIAN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY



by Frank J. Frost





From the Foreword by Erich Gruen, Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics, University of California, Berkeley



“Frank Frost has been among the leading historians of archaic and classical Greece for the past four decades and more.… The articles assembled here…put on exhibit the coherence and continuity of his writing over the years on the political history of Athens in its most dramatic and productive time, the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., on the tangled historiography treating that era, and on the severe limitations as well as the exciting challenge of reconstructing it.…. One thinks particularly of ‘Pericles,’… a compelling deconstruction of Plutarch’s simplistic dichotomy of aristocrats vs. democrats which had misled more than a generation of scholars. [and] his “Themistocles’ Place in Athenian Politics.” These seminal articles exhibit Frank’s great strength in the dissection of historiographical traditions and the extraction of reliable evidence to rebuild the picture.… He argues for the circumstances in which stories were concocted, traces the tortuous paths that they followed, and exposes plausible reasons for their alteration and manipulation that shed as much light on the motives of the tellers as on the meaning of the tales.



“One finds this form of scrupulous scrutiny again and again in his essays… alive to the vast lacunae in our testimony but also to the potential of discovery and the value of weaving together the diverse strands that survive.… He both sobers and stimulates his readers.



Contents



Foreword • Author’s Preface • Attic Literacy and the Solonian Seisachtheia • Aspects of Early Athenian Citizenship • The Rural Demes of Attica • Solon Pornoboskos and Aphrodite Pandemos • Solon and Salamis, Peisistratos and Nisaia • Plutarch and Theseus • Toward a History of Peisistratid Athens • The “Ominous” Birth of Peisistratos • Peisistratos, the Cults, and the Unification of Attica • Faith, Authority, and History in Early Athens • Politics in Early Athens • Tribal Politics and the Civic State • The Athenian Military before Cleisthenes • The Dubious Origins of the “Marathon” • Themistocles’ Place in Athenian Politics • Themistocles and Mnesiphilus • Troizen and the Persian War • A Note on Xerxes at Salamis • Thucydides I. 137.2 • Some Documents in Plutarch’s Lives • Aristodemos • Phylarchus, Fragment 76 • Pericles and Dracontides • Pericles, Thucydides, Son of Melesias, and Athenian Politics before the War • A Frank Frost Bibliography



“Frank Frost has been one of the most penetrating researchers into the social and political structure of archaic Athens.…His work has always been marked by a careful evaluation of the sources and an awareness of the contemporary context… This is a valuable book. It not only brings together a group of papers important for the study of Athenian history, but it also allows us to appreciate the achievement of an important American historian of ancient Greece. Let us hope for more in the future..” J.A.S. Evans in Bryn Mawr Classical Review



Hardcover Edition

ISBN 0-88866-650-0 • $82.50 • 299 Pages



Order From:

University of Toronto Press

Phone: (416) 667-7791 or toll-free 1-800-565-9523 in North America.
Fax: (416) 667-7832 or toll-free 1-800-221-9985 in North America.
E-mail: publishing@utpress.utoronto.ca

Mail U.S.
2250 Military Road
Tonawanda, New York 14150

Mail Canada
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, On M3H 5T6

United Kingdom and Continental Europe
NBN International,
Phone 44 (0) 1752 202301,
Fax 44 (0) 1752 202333
E-mail: orders@nbninternational.com



*Please quote the title and ISBN when ordering your books.

The Cameleopard

As a great fan of the 'liger' dialogue in Napoleon Dynamite, I had to post this section on the 'cameleopard' which I just came across in Pliny the Elder while looking for something else. Both texts are copied from Perseus (Latin ed. K.F.T. Mayhoff), and I've included the notes from Perseus' English translation (ed. John Bostock and H.T. Riley).

XXXI.

harum aliqua similitudo in duo transfertur animalia. nabun aethiopes vocant collo similem equo, pedibus et cruribus bovi, camelo capite, albis maculis rutilum colorem distinguentibus, unde appellata camelopardalis, dictatoris caesaris circensibus ludis primum visa romae. ex eo subinde cernitur, aspectu magis quam feritate conspicua, quare etiam ovis ferae nomen invenit.

CHAP. 27.--THE CAMELEOPARD; WHEN IT WAS FIRST SEEN AT ROME.
There are two others[1] animals, which have some resemblance to the camel. One of these is called, by the Æthiopians, the nabun.[2] It has a neck like that of the horse, feet and legs like those of the ox, a head like that of the camel, and is covered with white spots upon a red ground; from which peculiarities it has been called the cameleopard.[3] It was first seen at Rome in the Circensian games held by Cæsar, the Dictator.[4] Since that time too, it has been occasionally seen. It is more remarkable for the singularity of its appearance than for its fierceness; for which reason it has obtained the name of the wild sheep.[5]

1 He speaks here of only one of the animals which resemble the camel; the giraffe, namely. The other, which he for the present omits, is the ostrich.

2 The description of the giraffe, here given, is sufficiently correct, but we have a more minute account of it by Dion Cassius, B. xliii. In the time of the Emperor Gordian, ten of these animals were exhibited at Rome at once; a remarkable fact, when we bear in mind that so few have been imported into Europe for many centuries past. The giraffe is figured in the mosaic at Præneste, and under it is inscribed its name, nabi.--B. It has been found that it is unable to bear the winters of Europe.

3 Its form being like that of the camel, while its spots resemble those of the leopard. Horace refers to it, when speaking of an object calculated to excite the vulgar gaze; "Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo"-- "The race of the panther mingled with the camel," Ep. B. ii.; Ep. i. 1. 195.

4 According to Dion Cassius, B. xliii., these games were celebrated A.U.C. 708.--B.

5 This comparison can only be employed to indicate the mild nature of the giraffe.--B.

"hoc opus, hic labor est"

'I conclude, therefore, that he excelleth history, not only in furnishing the mind with knowledge, but in setting it forward to that which deserves to be called and accounted good: which setting forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed, setteth the laurel crown upon the poets as victorious; not only of the historian, but over the philosopher, howsoever, in teaching, it may be questionable. For suppose it be granted, that which I suppose, with great reason, may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect of his methodical proceeding, teach more perfectly than the poet, yet do I think, that no man is so much philophilosophos, as to compare the philosopher in moving with the poet. And that moving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this appear, that it is well nigh both the cause and effect of teaching; for who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught? And what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine) as that it moveth one to do that which it doth teach. For, as Aristotle saith, it is not gnwsis but praxis must be the fruit: and how praxis can be, without being moved to practise, it is no hard matter to consider. The philosopher showeth you the way, he informeth you of the particularities, as well of the tediousness of the way and of the pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is ended, as of the many by-turnings that may divert you from your way; but this is to no man, but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive, studious painfulness; which constant desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholden to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much overmastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book: since in nature we know it is well to do well, and what is well and what is evil, although not in the words of art which philosophers bestow upon us; for out of natural conceit the philosophers drew it; but to be moved to do that which we know, or to be moved with desire to know, "hoc opus, hic labor est."'

--Sir Philip Sydney, from The Defence of Poesy

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Question

Does anyone know how I can convert digital pictures of the pages of a book into PDFs?