CAMPVS MAWRTIVS

The CAMPVS has a new home

2009-03-26T18:57:00.003-04:00

We're making the move to a new site:

the CAMPVS (rss)

I've successfully migrated all of our old posts and comments, and am in the process of cleaning up the design etc.

Please redirect your readers and bookmarks to the new site as we quickly approach our five year anniversary.

The Old Etymology Game

2009-03-23T18:52:00.005-04:00

Charlotte Higgins mentions two etymologies that she wishes she'd known for her book It's All Greek to Me, and which she'd gotten from the recent Why Socrates Died by Robin Waterfield and A Woman Scorn'd by Michael Burden, but I have to dispel these notions:

To paraphrase Waterfield: one of the vagaries of the classical Athenian judicial system was that it gave people the opportunity to make money out of threatening to take others to court.

These blackmailers were called sycophants. The origin of the word is this. Since the beginning of the 6th century it had been illegal to export food, except olives, from Athenian territory. Sometimes, though, people would try to smuggle figs over the border. If someone denounced you as a fig-smuggler, he was a sykophantes – a "tale-teller about figs". Waterfield: "If it was part of his purpose to ingratiate himself with the authorities, he was close to being a sycophant in the modern sense of the word."

Others have tried to link this with the fig sign as though the verb in Greek could be read as "to give the fig sign to."

But it is entirely clear to me that the word is built on sukon as it referred not to a fig but to a fig-like growth on the skin (e.g., a wart, a tumor). The verbal root phant- then adds the notion of revealing someone's 'warts', a metaphor that we still use. A sycophant to an ancient Greek was probably easily understood as someone who made known another's shortcomings or sins, whether real or trumped up.

As to the other etymology, namely for sardonic, the usual ancient etymology is derived from the plant sardanios, with reference to the contorted faces of those who've ingested the poisonous herb. The notion that it is named for the feigned joy of the victims of ritual child-sacrifice in Carthage is unthinkable on so many levels.

Each of these smacks of folk-etymology, and more than that the sort of folk-etymology that lends credence to the old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

New Housman Book

2009-03-23T16:19:00.002-04:00

I received the Duckworth catalog for 2009 in the mail today, and I see that there is a new book on Housman as a classical scholar (as opposed to a study of Housman the poet or Housman's private life), edited by David Butterfield and Christopher Stray. It is scheduled for publication in the UK in August of this year, and in the US in November. I just did a quick search of their website and couldn't find anything about it there yet, but thought that, at the very least, Dennis and our 1-2 readers might want to know if they didn't already.

The Fox and the Hedgehog

2009-03-21T11:21:00.002-04:00

In the last paragraph of her column yesterday, Peggy Noonan says the following:

These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership the hedgehog has certain significant advantages, focus and clarity of vision among them. Most presidents are one or the other. So far Mr. Obama seems neither.

I haven't attempted to track down the Isaiah Berlin reference, but, of course, the idea about the fox and the hedgehog is much older. Remember Archilochus (fr. 201 West)?

πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα.

'The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one. One good one.' (Lattimore's tr.)

Latin Hexameter Pangrams

2009-03-15T23:11:00.005-04:00

I'm sure most of us remember the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," which we saw over and over again as children learning to write or to type. But if you're like me you didn't know that it's called a pangram, a name which makes perfect sense once you know it.

I intend to focus on proper pronunciation this week in Latin II and had the novel idea of finding such a sentence in Latin, to have my students memorize it, and to have them recite it back to me individually for a grade.

My search turned up little at first, until I stumbled upon the following by Pedro Madariaga (published as an illustration for handwriting in 1565):

gaza frequens Libycum duxit Karthago triumphum

This has caused those who've discussed it online no end of difficulty, and I think I know why. Others want to take Libycum as an accusative singular with triumphum, which leads them to read gaza as an ablative, or to make other unnecessary changes that destroy the meter as well as the sense.

But gaza must be nominative singular, and the progression of thought leads one to read Libycum as a poetic genitive plural (for Libyc(or)um). Read it like this:

gaza frequens Libycum: duxit Karthago triumphum!

At once the ellipsis of est is clear, as is the sense: "The treasury of the Libyans is full: Carthage has led a triumphal procession."

(Incidentally, variants appear with the forms "libycos ... triumphos", a sort of hyper-correction following the common misreading.)

Following upon this I devised my own, though I've omitted K and Y:

heu Zama, quam Scipio celeber dux frangit inique!

"Alas (poor) Zama, whom the famed general Scipio is shattering unequally!"

Here our make-believe poet apostrophizes Zama in his sympathy at the heavy losses on the Carthaginian side. With inique I was aiming at the imbalance in losses between the two sides.

I think I'll offer both lines to the students, teach them in meter and with proper pronunciation, and give them a choice as to which they recite for credit.

FVROR IMPIVS

2009-03-03T18:57:00.002-05:00

My AP students are about to read the Jupiter's prophecy (and yes, we are behind, but blame block scheduling, standardized tests, and now snow days).

And I can't help but wish that someone would recreate the image that inspired the scene. Vergil's description is a apparently an ecphrasis of a painting by a certain Apelles, a painting that showed Alexander essentially gloating over the bound figure of raging Furor.

Now there's a theme for a neoclassical painter. Or some talented kid with lots of time on his hands. Any takers?

Eh. It was worth a shot.

TEMPESTAS

2009-03-02T22:36:00.004-05:00

Chapter 16 of the popular textbook Lingua Latina finds the author very explicitly advocating for his own faith in the events that beset his characters. I'll admit that the manner in which Medus' prayer to Neptune is silenced is funny, but I'm not comfortable with a narrative in a Latin textbook offering proof of Christ's divinity, and so I've adapted the text to include a bit about other religions without giving primacy to any, and rather than allowing the textbook to feel preachy to my students, it'll provide a nice branching-off point to talk about religions under the Roman empire.

Just after Lydia prays to her 'dominus', prompting a dismissive response from her boyfriend, the runaway slave, I have the following:

Lydia: “sed dominus meus est deus!”
Mēdus: “iam satis deōs habeō, et Neptūnus me servāre potest!”
...
Lydia, tollēns manūs ad caelum, Chrīstum invocat, et Mēdus iterum magnā vōce Neptūnum invocat. Omnēs nautae, quī ex multīs terrīs sunt, deōs suōs invocāre incipiunt. Aliī Magnam Mātrem invocant, aliī Sōlem Invictum. Sed vocēs omnium vix audiuntur propter tonitrum.

Don't get me wrong: I would never censor an authentic text. But when a textbook author tries to slip in an inauthentic proof of his own religious beliefs (in this case making it clear that Christ is real and Neptune a figment) I have to draw the line. Nothing in my version prevents a Christian from assuming that Christ stopped the storm, nor does it instruct any of the other students that their faith (or lack thereof) is inferior.

Pindaric Metre

2009-03-02T14:36:00.002-05:00

I've finally received my copy of Kiichiro Itsumi's hot-off-the-presses Pindaric Metre: The Other Half. I managed to get an amazing deal at the APA meeting in Philly, but after more than a month we decided that the first shipment was lost in the mail. This time they used UPS and it arrived within four days.

I see that the book is on offer from the BMCR, but maybe I'll manage to post a review of my own here at the Campus.

I have a great love of metrics and am really looking forward to this book.

Ancient markup language?

2009-03-01T17:25:00.005-05:00

I've begun Rick LaFleur's methodologies class, and I'm sure this blog will see a resurgence as a result of my new focus on matters pedagogical. For anyone who's still following, Eric has been very busy being a professor and obtaining a proper degree (applause all around), while I actually silently left the blog some months back. I'm no longer affiliated with Bryn Mawr College, but the Campus Mawrtius is too much a part of me, so I've come back.

And the first thing I want to tell you about is something I found in reviewing a few sites for my first assignment: a ten year old program for creating your own Latin and Greek pages marked-up for Perseus-style glosses.

I can't believe I didn't know about this already, but now I've got ideas for how this might applied both to homework assignments and in mobile labs (i.e., laptops in the classroom). It's something I've always wanted to be able to do, especially with odd little texts that would never make their way to Perseus. There are contexts in which this is not a crutch, but a tool for confirmation or correction, and I'm looking forward to using it.

How to be a Classical Philologist, pt. 2

2009-01-30T16:53:00.003-05:00

Thomas Corsten's BMCR review of the Choix d'écrits of Louis Robert (2007) spoke to me:

In sum, this book--like each individual publication by Robert--shows clearly the method every epigraphist or, rather, every historian should follow, i.e., to start from the evidence (not from theories), that is from all available sorts of evidence, in this case inscriptions, coins and literature, and from there to move to drawing conclusions. ... Robert's Choix d'écrits as well as everything he has written should be compulsory reading for every student and scholar of antiquity--and especially for the many in our times who are busy destroying the foundation on which all serious research is based: the study of ancient documents.

How to be a Classical Philologist

2009-01-28T15:14:00.002-05:00

This is adapted from a passage in Laurand's Manuel des études grecques et latines (v. 3, VII 353-6). It's simple, commonsensical, and generally good advice. And classicists need to be reminded now and again to do the actual work of philology lest they be, as one old professor used to say, all hat and no cow.

The Reading of ancient texts.

This is too often neglected. People read about but never read Plato, for example.
How to read (different but indispensable approaches):

In-depth, slow reading (lente, pace Nietzsche)

understanding all of the questions
produces much fruit
one can never read all of Plato in this way, or can read Herodotus but misses the big picture

Very rapid reading

understanding the big picture, outside connections
ensures that you never become too narrow-minded

You need calm, privacy, tranquility if you are to be moved by reading the great works.

The Reading of Modern Works.

These should be read in so far as they aid comprehension.
Commentators, critics, historians, philologists, linguists, grammarians, etc. can offer many insights in your goal of understanding ancient texts.

Should you take notes?

Often people take too many, then seeing the futility, never take enough.
How you should take notes:

Briefly give your general impression.
Note the general value of a modern work and how it might be useful.
Consider how useful your note will be. Be economical and
practical.

If the index or some other reference will make it easy to find a reference, you're wasting time and effort in writing too much.

Use notebooks. Note cards are generally inefficient, inconvenient, and easily lost. They have only limited use in organizing certain kinds of research.

The importance laid upon reading here is at the heart of Housman's famous remarks in the classic essay on The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism. This long quotation is well worth reading through (and gives context to the harshest of his words often viewed as pure invective):

[It] is only a minority of those who engage in this study who are sincerely bent upon the discovery of truth. We all know that the discovery of truth is seldom the sole object of political writers; and the world believes, justly or unjustly, that it is not always the sole object of theologians: but the amount of sub-conscious dishonesty which pervades the textual criticism of the Greek and Latin classics is little suspected except by those who have had occasion to analyse it. People come upon this field bringing with them prepossessions and preferences; they are not willing to look all facts in the face, nor to draw the most probable conclusion unless it is also the most agreeable conclusion. Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain; and it is hardly possible to step aside from the pursuit of truth without falling a victim either to your stupidity or else to your vanity. Stupidity will then attach you to received opinions, and you will stick in the mud; or vanity will set you hunting for novelty, and you will find mare's-nests. Added to these snares and hindrances there are the various forms of partisanship: sectarianism, which handcuffs you to your own school and teachers and associates, and patriotism, which handcuffs you to your own country. Patriotism has a great name as a virtue, and in civic matters, at the present stage of the world's history, it possibly still does more good than harm; but in the sphere of intellect it is an unmitigated nuisance. I do not know which cuts the worse figure: a German scholar encouraging his countrymen to believe that "wir Deutsche" have nothing to learn from foreigners, or an Englishman demonstrating the unity of Homer by sneers at "Teutonic professors," who are supposed by his audience to have goggle eyes behind large spectacles, and ragged moustaches saturated in lager beer, and consequently to be incapable of forming literary judgments.

I've put the most oft-quoted passage in bold italics.

The essential point to my mind is that one should forgo all secondary considerations, such as traditional interpretations, faddish theories, and personal or national interests, and rather seek truth in the evidence. In the case of classical philology, the evidence is to be found in the remnants of the past aided by the proven methods of allied fields (such as archaeology and palaeography). There is a science to much of the study of antiquity, but there is also an art to the study of literature, and it is one that can not be mastered without reading the texts, as much as one can, now for the forest, now for the trees.

But read, damn it!

Bulgarian archaeologists discover ancient chariot

2008-08-07T09:39:00.000-04:00

By VESELIN TOSHKOV, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 13 minutes ago

SOFIA, Bulgaria - Archaeologists have unearthed a 1,900-year-old well-preserved chariot at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Thursday.

Daniela Agre said her team found the four-wheel chariot during excavations near the village of Borisovo, around 180 miles east of the capital, Sofia.

"This is the first time that we have found a completely preserved chariot in Bulgaria," said Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

She said previous excavations had only unearthed single parts of chariots — often because ancients sites had been looted.

At the funerary mound, the team also discovered table pottery, glass vessels and other gifts for the funeral of a wealthy Thracian aristocrat.

In a separate pit, they unearthed skeletons of two riding horses apparently sacrificed during the funeral of the nobleman, along with well preserved bronze and leather objects, some believed to horse harnesses.

The Culture Ministry confirmed the find and announced $3,900 in financial assistance for Agre's excavation.

Agre said an additional amount of $7,800 will be allocated by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for an initial restoration and conservation of the chariot and the other Thracian finds.

The Thracians were an ancient people that inhabited the lands of present day Bulgaria and parts of modern Greece, Turkey, Macedonia and Romania between 4,000 B.C. and the 6th century, when they were assimilated by the invading Slavs.

Some 10,000 Thracian mounds — some of them covering monumental stone tombs — are scattered across Bulgaria.

Bad comic Latin

2008-07-20T00:30:00.006-04:00

This came through on one of the listservs:

This is some of the worst bad Latin we've seen.

"My infancy ... because ... my traveling money ... I seek ... O Romus! ... ???"

Try something like this:

ACADEMIAE ROMANAE ADSVNT MEI PVER PECVNIAQVE

UPDATE: I've touched a nerve. Something calling itself "Psy" had this to say:

um...who the hell cares...it's a comic...you know...HUMOR? Latin is called a dead language for a reason. Cause no one gives a ****.

You can guess what I've censored, and why I rejected the comment.

Psy, I like my humor to be humorous and literate when appropriate. Take a look at Monty Python's Life of Brian for a good example of Latin humor.

But this careless mess could just as well have been done with a conquistador on horseback with this nonsense slogan stitched to his pack: "mi infancia porque gastos de viajes pedo Spain universidaded." Oh, ho, ho! What merry fun we have!

Cicero'Reilly?

2008-07-09T23:00:00.002-04:00

Here's a stunning example of praeteritio from what passes for an orator in the cable news age: it's Bill O'Reilly on playing the tape of Jesse Jackson's whispered comments re: Barack Obama's testiculi:

We held back some of this conversation ... we didn't feel it had any relevance to the conversation this evening. We are not out to get Jesse Jackson. We are not out to embarrass him and we are not out to make him look bad. If we were, we would have used what we had, which is more damaging than what you have heard...

BMCRn't you glad you're not Stuart?

2008-07-09T12:15:00.005-04:00

My all-time favorite BMCR contributor, Steven J. Willett, has a new review of Stuart Lyons's Horace's Odes and the Mystery of Do-Re-Mi.

He touches on some of my favorite topics:

1) The fallacy of biographical reading.

The Roman Odes have long been a quarry from which critics try to extract hard traces of sincerity or insincerity, as if these were binary opposites, but the job of a court-poet is to reflect court agendas and not his own private opinions. ... Sincerity is a poetic illusion created by the poet's verbal and structural dexterity. We have no instrument to probe behind the illusion to mental states, even in the case of modern poets where we possess letters and contemporary documents.

2) The performance of Latin verse.

Whatever Horace's own theatrical performance might have involved, there is nothing to suggest his contemporary readers sang such complex, intricate, allusive, ambiguous and rhetorically informed odes. The only way to comprehend their riches is by reading. Lyons shows himself far too confident in drawing "inescapable" conclusions from literary conventions that lack the slightest external corroboration.

3) Versification.

[Lyons's] decision to use traditional English versification has dressed Horace in such traditional garb that he vanishes into the mob of pallid imitations that stretch back to the sixteenth century. No matter how hard Lyons tries to make the odes sing, they sound like Thomas Gray on a bad day when he had nothing better to do than write his "Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat."

Ouch.

CONGRATULATIONS!

2008-06-30T14:34:00.002-04:00

You just may be the 50,000th visitor to the site!

The prize committee is still working out the details so an announcement is still forthcoming, but it will most likely involve bragging rights and a free lifetime pass to view the site free of charge.

Yes, Campus Mawrtius, after four years filled with tears and laughter, wisdom and tomfoolery, has finally reached 50,000 hits and 75,000 page views.

So thanks to all of those who made this possible: Eric and me. Sometimes Coke.

But mostly to all of you. What? You thought I'd forgotten you?

Constantine's Silver Medallion: Ticinum, 315

2008-06-28T11:59:00.003-04:00

I was doing a search for a specific silver medallion of Constantine struck in 315 and, surprisingly to me, the third google result was apost from here from a few years ago, in which I quoted Averil Cameron as follows:

Like other Christian signs, the chi-rho emblem is in fact rare on Constantine's coins, and the early silver medallions of 315 from Ticinum (Pavia) showing the Emperor wearing a high-crested helmet with the Christogram are exceptional.

As it turns out, the medallion referred to there was the one I was looking for today, from here:

What is interesting about this one especially is the chi-rho on the helmet, and the traditional she-wolf suckling the twins in the bottom right on the shield.

Bad tattoo Latin!

2008-06-28T08:20:00.005-04:00

Okay, this one actually makes me feel bad. I hate the thought that some well-meaning Marines have (semi-)permanently scarred themselves with something nonsensical:

It's supposed to say, "Father and Son: Brothers Forever." Of course it really says "Father and Growth: Brother! Endlessness!"

(Punctuation added, of course, for emphasis.)

NOTE: I know that natus (2nd declension) can mean son (or at least man-child), but why not use filius? I think it's funnier this way (4th declension).

Studia Callimachea

2008-06-26T13:00:00.003-04:00

There was a footnote in something I was reading today referring to Koenraad Kuiper's discussion of oppositio in imitando, so I decided to check Google Books to see if they have it, and they do:
Studia Callimachea (1896)

Actually, use this one instead. I went to p. 114, which is the page to which the footnote pointed (or toed) me, and a little bit of the right side of the page is cut off. This is not a problem in the second link.

The discussion starts thus:

Studia Callimachea By Koenraad Kuiper

Luttwak on Millar

2008-06-26T08:11:00.003-04:00

Just when I was considering dropping my BMCR subscription (how many times can I delete a dry paean to pedantic postmodernist drivel?), along comes the HESPEROS review and now something perhaps more intriguing: the controversial American military historian Edward Luttwak reviews Fergus Millar, the great British historian of the Late Roman Near East, on the transition of Rome from a Latin- to a Greek-speaking empire. Has someone been reading my thoughts?

HESPEROS: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to M. L. West on his Seventieth Birthday

2008-06-25T18:05:00.006-04:00

The cleverly-titled Hesperos, a Festschrift for M.L. West (get it?), has just been reviewed in the BMCR and has opened a hole in my library that I hadn't noticed. As the reviewer notes in his curt close, "The price of the book is hideous." It's listed at $199, a small sum for Croesus, but Amazon has knocked off 32% for the moderately wealthy among us.

I'm most intrigued by Kenneth Dover's contribution, a 'lyric Encomium' that

sets itself the familiar task of encoding the honorand's achievement in a few well-chosen phrases. In West's case, this would be hard enough to do in English, but Dover pulls it off in clever and elegant Greek. His epode praises West's pioneering efforts to make students of Greek poetry more aware of its interactions with Near Eastern culture.

So without further ado:

ΕΣΠΕΡΩΙ
ΣΟΦΙΑΙ

μελετᾶν ἄνδρ' ἔμπειρον ἀκριβέων      (στρ.)
ἔδοξε βουλᾷ συνετῶν ἐπαινέσαι
ἀφνειόν τ' οὐ κατὰ δαμόταν θέμεν,
ἄξιον ὄντα χρέος πράσσειν μέγ' ὀφειλόμενον·
τοσαῦτα κείνου μεμαθήκαμεν ἄμμες.      (5)

γενεὰς τὰς καθ' Ἡσίοδον θεῶν      (ἀντ.)
σαφανίσας κ' Ἀρχίλοχον καὶ Θεόγνιδας,
τέτραπται πρὸς Διόνυσον ἠδ' Ἄρη
ἁρμονίας τε λυρᾶν καὶ τέθμα Τερψιχόρας
ὥστ' ἐξικέσθαι σοφίας ἐπ' ἄωτον.      (10)

τολμᾷ δ' ὑπερβαίνειν ὅρους ἐθνέων παλαιῶν·      (ἐπ.)
ἀλλ' οὐ γὰρ ἑλλανίδα μῆτιν ἐλέγξας
ἀπώσατ', ἰχνεύει δ' ἰδέας ἀοιδᾶν
φαίνων ἄρα μοῦνον ἐὸν Μοισᾶν γένος.
     K.J.D

I should point out the synizesis in Θεόγνιδας at the end of line 7.

'Silver Age' Again

2008-06-25T17:02:00.004-04:00

Chris comments in the post below:

If I recall, some "silver age" authors actually first designated Cicero, Vergil, and company as authors of the "Golden Age". So naturally taken up from that Silver Age would be a complement. My OED is packed before the move, so I cannot check it at the moment.

I would be interested in any references in which 'silver' writers refer to the Augustan writers (or even to late Republican literature if we want to extend back to Cicero, as we probably should) as having written in a 'Golden Age'. To be sure, 'silver' writers sometimes made a trope of their secondariness; for example, Statius Thebaid 10.445-6 (Hinds discusses this and other passages relating to 'secondariness'):

vos quoque sacrati, quamvis mea carmina surgant
inferiore lyra, memores superabitis annos.

Also of interest is the pseudo-Ovidian Argumenta Aeneidis, praefatio 1-4 (text from Ziolkowski and Putnam's The Virgilian Tradition):

Vergilius magno quantum concessit Homero,
tantum ego Vergilio, Naso poeta, meo.
Nec me praelatum cupio tibi ferre, poeta;
ingenio si te subsequor, hoc satis est.

Vergil refers to the return of a golden age in general terms in Eclogue 4, which he specifically relates to Saturnian myth (e.g., redeunt Saturnia regna, 6): ac toto surget gens aurea mundo (9); but a quick glance through Ziolkowski and Putnam's index s.v. 'golden age' didn't yield anything relating to literary designations (but I was skimming pretty quickly and don't have time at the moment for a really thorough search).

In English, the term 'golden age' to refer to Augustan literature seems to have come into play earlier than 'silver age'. The OED's earliest reference is from Dryden in 1700: 'With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue.' Interestingly, Dryden uses the term mythically 15 years previous to this: 'Those first times, which Poets call the Golden Age.'

'Silver Age' Literature

2008-06-25T15:27:00.004-04:00

I was intrigued by a footnote in Stephen Hinds' Allusion and Intertext regarding the post-antique designation of early imperial literature as 'silver'--namely, how long this designation has been around, which according to the OED goes back at least to 1736 (p. 83 n. 66).

So I went to the OED entry for 'silver age'. The first meaning is the mythical one: 'The second age of the world, according to the Greek and Roman poets, inferior in simplicity and happiness to the first or golden age.'

Definition 1.b is the literary meaning: 'The period of Latin literature from the death of Augustus to that of Hadrian.' And indeed, the first use is from 1736, where Ainsworth writes: 'Tacitus, Pliny the historian, Suetonius, and some other prose writers, flourished in the silver age.' The next use comes in Charles Butler's Life of Hugo Grotius:'The language of the Pandects is of the silver age.'

What I find most interesting is the way in which a term used to describe a mythical period in ancient literature (cf. subiit argentea proles, Ovid Met.1.114) has made its way into English as a literary-historical term to describe the actual poetry (and prose) of certain ancient writers. Huh.

Cumont on Google Books

2008-06-24T11:50:00.003-04:00

I was just poking around on Google Books and thought I'd post some Franz Cumont bibliography.

The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain

After Life in Roman Paganism

Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans

The Mysteries of Mithra

Die Mysterien des Mithra

Les mystères de Mithra

Sur l'authenticité de quelques lettres de Julien

Alexandre d'Abonotichos: Un épisode de l'histoire du paganisme au IIe siecle de notre ere

Philonis de aeternitate mundi (ed. + prolegomena)

Seven Hills Mnemonic

2008-06-24T09:21:00.004-04:00

I picked up Robert Harris's Imperium as a little bedtime reading and as I opened to the map of Republican Rome just before the start of the book my eyes passed over the first letters of Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline. In a flash I'd read them as QVE, and it wasn't a second before I read the top half of the map as CapitolinvsQVE.

The bottom half gave me AC Palatinvs, but putting these two together in that order didn't quite work, so I decided to take another tack:

What are the three most important hills in the city's history?

Ianicvlvm
AC Palatinvs
CapitolinvsQVE.

This has the advantages of (1) requiring students to memorize only three names (while they can more easily recall the others from the abbreviations), (2) using Latin conjunctions for the abbreviations, reinforcing a bit of the language, and (3) being somewhat visual. It gives the Seven Hills and the Janiculan, an important defense across the Tiber, read in a kind of S shape from bottom to top. I can't help but visualize a map of Rome when I recite this and follow a steady S-shaped trail (Janiculan, then Aventine, Caelian, Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline).

You can also think of the first line as giving what's west of the Tiber, the second line naming the hills of the southern half of the city, and the third line those of the northern half of the city.

However you break it down, I think it may turn out to be effective and I plan to use it next semester.

'Profusely Illustrated'

2008-06-23T20:41:00.001-04:00

I got a kick out of the title page of Rodolfo Lanciani's Pagan and Christian Rome and thought I'd post it here.
""
That's right. If you've got a lot of illustrations, own it.

Henry Chadwick, R.I.P.

2008-06-23T11:29:00.001-04:00

Rowan Williams' obituary of the great church historian is here.

(L/v Ref21.)

Macrobius Stuff

2008-06-23T10:13:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to post some links here to a couple of items on Google Books that are useful for the study of Macrobius.

Ludwig von Jan's edition of Macrobius' Works (2 voll., 1848-52):
Volume 1
Volume 2

The older Teubner edition of the text, ed. Eyssenhardt, here (There is also a newer Teubner edition, ed. J. Willis, but not available on Google Books.)

O TEMPORA! O FVRES!

2008-06-22T11:07:00.005-04:00

The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information before passing it off as their own work.

The group singled out online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows entries to be logged or updated by anyone and is not verified by researchers, as the main source of information.

(Emphasis added.)

Remember the good old days, when students plagiarized from BOOKS and actually PASSED the exams and wrote respectable papers? And then along came Wikipedia!

Isn't the real problem that students are passing something off as their own (and probably always have?)--not that they're now using a less reliable and more easily identifiable source?

Do we really want to hearken back to the days of unverified theft?

Google Books, however, is beginning to make it more difficult for the old school plagiarists.

NOTE: The best and easiest way to prevent plagiarism is to give students very specific guidelines with a personal response component. I would assign a set number of paragraphs (say 5), with limits as to where the student is expected to report facts or research, and where opinion and reactions should be recorded. Citations are a must. When reading 60 or more essays the uniformity helps in so many ways: you already know what belongs where, and have a better idea which bits should be checked on the internet for plagiarism. But next year I may use www.turnitin.com, as many other teachers do already.

On the Virtues of Keeping Your Mouth Shut

2008-06-20T11:47:00.003-04:00

Inspired by Dennis, I was looking through the Disticha Catonis and found a few good ones on holding your tongue, and thought I'd post them here.

3. Virtutem primam esse puto compescere linguam:
Proximus ille deo est, qui scit ratione tacere.

10. Contra verbosos noli contendere verbis:
Sermo datur cunctis, animi sapientia paucis.

12. Rumores fuge, ne incipias novus auctor haberi,
Nam nulli tacuisse nocet, nocet esse locutum.

New Latin School in Philadelphia

2008-06-18T12:13:00.002-04:00

A really interesting article on the new Boys' Latin School in the Philadelphia Weekly. Here's the beginning:

An ambitious Southwest Philadelphia charter school uses an ancient language as a new formula for learning.

There are minefields on the path to maturity for every young person in this city. But for many young male Philadelphians, the danger runs deeper.

Young men in Philadelphia public schools are more likely than most to live with one parent, have a parent in jail, reside in drug-addled neighborhoods or experience violence. Students in too many Philadelphia public schools can’t be guaranteed basic safety, let alone a decent education.

Enter the Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School, a new college prep school at 55th and Cedar in Southwest Philadelphia with an ambitious plan to avert the tragedy that defines the city’s public school system. Boys’ Latin’s first batch of students—144 ninth-graders—occupy a 10-room temporary structure as they wait for contractors to finish renovations on the building next door.

Last year there were 11 murders within five blocks of where Boys’ Latin sits. “I worry about the students,” says teacher Paula Sahm, who lives in the Art Museum area of Philadelphia. “I’ll sit and watch the news, and if I even hear Southwest Philly, I get chills.”

Next to the trailer setup is the shell of a former school, once attached to Transfiguration Church, which was destroyed by fire in 2006. Boards cover most of the windows, and pickup trucks occupy most of the adjacent lot. But by next year the school building plans to house 300 Boys’ Latin students, with plans to grow enrollment to 600 by 2010.

The school's website is here.

Blog Spam from fellow classicists?

2008-06-14T17:12:00.003-04:00

On my recent post on the tattoo, I found an oddly proselytizing "comment" which I have refused to publish. (Comments are moderated to prevent blog spam.)

The comment seemed automatically generated, but if it wasn't it was posted by someone who has no sense of etiquette or no shame. Expounding off-topic upon the benefits of the Latinum podcast and the Schola social networking community, then telling me that "These sites should be enough to help you get on with learning to read, write and if you want to, even learn how to speak Latin" smacks of insult or ignorance.

This blog, as spotty as our record has been in keeping the posts current, has been around far longer than either Latinum or Schola, and I don't need help in getting on with learning Latin, despite what a certain dark moment (since deleted) on Catullus might suggest to long-time readers.

In other news, my job, the school's internet filters, and my mother's battle with cancer all had their hand in keeping me away from the site for much of the past year. I even suggested to Eric at one point that we retire the site, and reserved another site name ("Campus Mortuus: Long Live the Campus." Ha ha.). But my year ends officially on Tuesday, I've got lots of things on my mind, and a mountain of reading to work through. There's bound to be enough material for the summer and beyond.

Latin tattoo (p.s.)

2008-06-13T08:51:00.002-04:00

I forgot to add (and I'm forced to post via e-mail thanks to the school's filters) that I think the butterfly that accompanies the Latin phrase adds to the reading "I have been raised well," as a metaphor of it's own. The cocoon = the tutela of the parents, the woman who has emerged is the butterfly.

Latin tattoo

2008-06-13T08:47:00.002-04:00

Rogueclassicism has a post about a Latin tattoo on the back of the "escort" whom Eliot Spitzer had employed, and there are a lot of very bad interpretations, including silly jokes by those laughing at the supposedly bad Latin and punning on her work as a call girl. (David's reading, at least, was sensible and accurate, unlike those cited in the piece.)

The phrase in question is tutela valui.

Some of the bad ones (inadvertently, I think) approach a decent and amusing reading: it should be "I have been well-kept" (literally "I have been well through guardianship"). This is in keeping with the Roman tutela mulieris. The less provocative (and more likely) reading would be something like "I was raised well."

But my genuine reaction (again, taking tutela is an ablative of means) was that the phrase -- written by her bikini line -- means "It takes work to maintain a figure like this." Literally "I have been well through upkeep." This works through a metaphorical usage, e.g., where tutela refers to maintaining a building.

If that's the case I think it's a pretty cool tattoo, though I've never been one for "body art."

Wise man say ...

2008-05-18T07:26:00.004-04:00

multa legas facito, tum lectis neglege multa;
nam miranda canunt, sed non credenda poetae.

"See to it that you do much reading, and then overlook much of what you've read; for poets sing things to be admired, but not to be believed."

This comes from the famous Distichs of Cato. At least they were famous in past ages. Since it's been established that they were not written by Cato the Elder, they've lost their luster.

They were famous enough even in Byzantine that the great scholar Maximus Planudes wrote a Greek translation (I'm sure I've mentioned it before). It was for centuries a textbook, and was apparently used by Benjamin Franklin as a schoolboy, and later quoted frequently and published by him in translation (though not his own).

I should like to bring selections into the classroom early. The benefits are many: they offer authentic Latin with a long history of readership; they present the meter of epic in self-contained, digestible couplets; they offer a small, manageable context from which one might easily introduce new vocabulary or grammatical concepts; they are generally of intrinsic interest.

Few things are more memorable than maxims, and this collection has the additional merit of having influenced centuries of students, influencing the the makers of the middle ages and beyond. Is there any disadvantage in allowing students to share in this tradition, perhaps to understand the spirit of past ages? They need not agree, or take it as moral council, yet they may still feel connected to the past. And tis collection more points for discussion than "canis latrat" or "Quintus ad terram cadit".

Looking back where we began, I think some of my students could benefit from this advice today, as could many scholars who want to mine poetry for biographical or social data, or to apply theories and produce results.

Communicating in the classroom

2008-04-27T21:25:00.003-04:00

Eighty-some years ago a Latin teacher by the name of Wren Jones Grinstead (and what a name it is) wrote a piece for the Classical Journal about the use of projects in the beginning Latin class.

By far the most interesting and provocative part of this most interesting article is the suggestion that we introduce our students to two characters whom they should always keep in mind: Romanus (who knows no English) and Barbarus (who knows no Latin). The argument goes that Language exists in a dualistic mode, between the first and second person, one aiming to be understood, the other to understand.

Now one of the chief reasons for the stiff and silly translations too often offered in our classes lies in the fact that the pupil does not visualize Romanus as the speaker of the Latin sentence, and then in turn make himself the utterer of the same thought to the English- speaking Barbarus in his own vernacular. Hence he is merely solving a puzzle, and his only criterion of success is the teacher's authority; whereas it should be found in the socialization of his own imagination. For the perennial query to the teacher, "Is this right?" the pupil should come to ask Barbarus (or Romanus, as the case may be), "Do you get me?"

This is shockingly good, and I plan to introduce these guys immediately.

(Grinstead, Wren Jones. "The Project Method in Beginning Latin." The Classical Journal 16.7 (1921): 388-398.)

Dormouse

2008-04-14T09:14:00.002-04:00

In the derivatives of dormio in the vocabulary section of ch. 31, Wheelock lists 'dormouse'. I gave it a quick look-up in the OED. The etymology was interesting, so I thought I'd post it here.

[Origin obscure: the second element has been, at least since c 1575, treated as the word mouse, with pl. mice, though a pl. dormouses is evidenced in 16-17th c. The first element has also from 16th c. been associated with L. dormire, F. dormir to sleep, (as if dorm-mouse; cf. 16th c. Du. slaep-ratte, slaep-muys); but it is not certain that this is the original composition.
(Skeat suggests for the first element ON. dár benumbed: cf. also dial. ‘dorrer, a sleeper, a lazy person’ (Halliwell). (The F. dormeuse, fem. of dormeur sleeper, sometimes suggested as the etymon, is not known before 17th c.).]

stomachor!

2008-04-11T11:41:00.002-04:00

What makes a "teacher's guide"? Is it the editor's helpful notes on lesson planning or specific problems in the text? Is it the guidance in effective approaches, or making connections to secondary material? Is it the insight into the editor's intent and the choices made in selection and presentation, that allow you to make up your mind as to whether you agree, and if not how to adapt?

I suspect it's all these things and more. What a "teacher's guide" is not, however, is a bare set of translations for teachers who don't have enough Latin to read the texts they're assigning to their students.

This is what I found today when I received a new classroom set of Minkova & Tunberg's Reading Livy's Rome (Bolchazy-Carducci).

When ordering the book, one receives no hint of the subtitle: "Translation of Paraphrases," or the blurb headed "Ease the Time Crunch of Daily Classroom Preparation." Reading bits of Latin is the least of my concerns as a teacher, and yet it's the one area in which a teacher of Latin can least afford to cut corners. I neither need nor can benefit from translations: I know Latin well enough to read it, and only by reading it (rather than a translation) can I anticipate and respond to the difficulties my students will face.

Was I wrong to expect a "guide" or was Bolchazy-Carducci wrong to call it that?

I was acting a time crunch when I ordered the materials, being told during the last period of the day that I had until the final bell to put together an order. So it may be argued that I was rash in ordering copies of the "guide" for my colleague and myself. And yet if it had been appropriately titled, or explained at all, on the publisher's site, my school could have purchased two more student texts instead.

Then again I might have guessed from the "guide" to Boyd's Aeneid selections.

Isn't there a better name for this sort of thing? Like "trot"?

AP Latin

2008-04-11T08:44:00.001-04:00

With all of the hullabaloo being made over the cancellation of AP Latin: Literature, I just wanted to express my appreciation to College Board for administering the Vergil exam. I'm the minority (vocally, at least) in thinking that Catullus is less suited to an AP course than is Vergil, and I would not want to teach the Literature option because my students read much of Catullus before the AP year. What I'm really thankful for, however, is that College Board has somehow made it possible for me to read lots and lots of Vergil. Without the test I would not likely be able to offer a full semester of him.

I will never understand why so many teachers seem to think that reading Vergil is a chore. There's far less reward in counting kisses or feigning invitations to dinner.

Memory, Pleasure, and Suffering/Aeneas, Odysseus, and Eumaios

2008-04-08T09:54:00.005-04:00

It is well known that Aeneas' speech in Aeneid 1.198-207 draws on a speech of Odysseus in Odyssey 12.208ff. (see, e.g., R.D. Williams ad A.1.198f. Here is Aeneas' speech (online text here):

'O socii—neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum—
O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem.
Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis 200
accestis scopulos, vos et Cyclopea saxa
experti: revocate animos, maestumque timorem
mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum
tendimus in Latium; sedes ubi fata quietas 205
ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae.
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.'

The first 9 ll. of Odysseus' speech run as follows (12.208-16, Lattimore's translation):

'Dear friends, surely we are not unlearned in evils.
This is no greater evil now than it was when the Cyclops
had us cooped in his hollow cave by force and violence,
but even there, by my courage and counsel and my intelligence,
we escaped away. I think that all this will be remembered
some day too. Then do as I say, let us all be won over.
Sit well, all of you, to your oarlocks, and dash your oars deep
into the breaking surf of the water, so in that way Zeus
might grant that we get clear of this danger and flee away from it.'

A quick glance at the two passages will make clear some of the similarities (e.g., the first line of each speech and the reference to the Cyclops). In addition, Williams (at A.1.203) states that forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit recalls Od.12.212 (here rendered 'I think that all this will be remembered some day too'), and the infintives for 'to remember' (meminisse and mnhsesthai) certainly point in that direction. I was recently struck, however, by the similarity in sentiment to 1.203 that is found in Eumaios' words in 15.400-1 (again in Lattimore's translation):

'For afterwards a man who has suffered
much and wandered much has pleasures out of his sorrows.'

These words come as Eumaois is about to tell (that is, in a sense, to remember) the story of his sufferings to Odysseus. Perhaps there is a secondary reference in the Aeneid to this passage, in which the idea of pleasure in the memory or recounting of sufferings is foregrounded.

If that is not the case and I am over-reading, the words of Aeneas in Book 1 still still line up with those of Eumaois quite nicely.

Literature in translation?

2008-04-06T07:42:00.003-04:00

I have long wanted a reader in classical literature in translation to build into the early years of my Latin language courses, but have come up empty. Several years ago in the course that put me on the path toward classics (a brilliant course called simply 'Humanities'), one of the two instructors lamented that there wasn't a better or more affordable set of anthologies than the little paperback Penguins by Michael Grant. If memory serves they were boring and scatter-shot to my young college brain, and even if they were not now out of print, I could not see purchasing them for high school students.

Surely I am not alone in wanting something like this to help contextualize the study of Latin, and to help communicate things like values that do not translate from the pages of introductory textbooks.

Has anyone a suggestion?

Dover's Theocritus a review (reprint: Bolchazy-Carducci)

2008-04-05T20:00:00.009-04:00

As I make my (not so) triumphant return to the field of Mawr's I feel myself compelled to do something I ought to have done a long time ago. The good folks at Bolchazy-Carducci once thought well-enough of this blog to send along a review copy of my choice with the note, "Be honest about the book, because an honest review will be of more use to your readers. While we at Bolchazy-Carducci are hoping for a good review, a useful review would be better for everyone."

Good advice, which I will now follow.

Dover, K.J., ed. Theocritus: Select Poems. Wauconda IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1994. (Pages: lxxii + 323) $46.00. isbn: 978-0-86516-204-2

As an eager undergraduate (after the turn of the century) disheartened at the lack of advanced Greek offerings, I cooked up a plan with two friends to hit up a young professor for an independent study in one of his pet areas: Hellenistic Greek poetry. It happened that the subject was heating up at the time, and good commentaries were easily attainable. We purchased our own copies of a handful of Cambridge green and yellows: (1) Argonautica: Book III, (2) Theocritus: A Selection (both edited by R.L. Hunter), and (3) A Hellenistic Anthology (edited by Neil Hopkinson). We had recourse to other texts from the library, relying on Pfeiffer for much of our Callimachus, with the aid of the brilliant commentaries that have surfaced on various of the hymns, and used sources ranging from Hutchinson's (somewhat disappointing) Hellenistic Poetry to Peter Bing's (somewhat brilliant) The Well-Read Muse.

To this day it remains one of the most rewarding courses I've taken, and thinking back I'm reminded of a sense of awe for learning and scholarship that has never quite been matched.

I'm also reminded of my professor's recommendation of K.J. Dover's Theocritus: Select Poems (a classic red Macmillan), and his disappointment that the book was no longer in print.

If only he had known of Bolchazy-Carducci's reprint, available since 1994. Since neither he nor I knew that we could buy it, I purchased the Hunter and settled for a library copy of Dover. I have distinct memories of the book's excellence, and while I appreciated Hunter, Dover I loved.

Both editors followed Gow, whose edition has been a holy grail--unattainable yet a source of hope--for me and others like me for some time, and thus stands without compare. It is difficult, however, to not compare Dover and Hunter, and one of the simplest and most significant comparisons for the general reader (if there is a general reader of Greek bucolic) is bang for the buck.

Hunter (the more recent of the two) printed just eight Idylls (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, & 13). By way of comparison, Dover printed eighteen, inclusive of Hunter's eight (1-7, 10, 11, 13-16, 18, 22, 24, 26, & 28). Both teacher and student benefit from the greater variety of texts.

As a struggling student I found Dover's notes more readable, less discursive, and on the whole more useful. Hunter, of course, had the advantage of being more 'current', and his references are a boon to graduate students dealing with an ever-growing bibliography. But to a reader making his way through the poems, Hunter is cumbersome. His rewards come later, to a smaller audience. Dover, by contrast, reaches more broadly and achieves his aims with great elegance.

One need look no further than the first note of the book to see just how effective Dover's style is:

ἁδύ...μελίσδεται:Lit., 'something pleasant the whispering that pine-tree...makes music', i.e. 'sweet is the whispered music which that pine-tree makes'. καί...καί is superimposed on ἁδύ...ἁδὺ δέ, thus:
ἁδύ τι ... καὶ ἁ πίτυς ... μελισδεται
ἁδὺ δὲ ... καὶ τὺ ... συρίσδες

At once and concisely Dover shows us the music of the line (which transcends the simple position-to-position correspondence that students too often adhere to), and waves his magic wand of the mist that would cloud many a student's mind: the literal rendering tells the student that he does in fact know his forms. The 'id est' that follows is a lesson in adjusting one's thinking, encouraging the student to read intelligently and to make the leap from translation to meaning. While the literal translation sounds like stilted nonsense, the paraphrase helps us to bridge the gap between Translationese and English.

Add to this the undeniable link in meaning and sound that would, without Dover's note, have escaped most students, and you catch a glimpse of the sort of useful and encouraging information that is to be had throughout, and how skillfully it is presented.

By contrast, the reader loses himself in Hunter's pages wherein such things as the linguistic and sound connections (visually displayed by Dover) are buried in explicit prose. Hunter gives a page to a general note on lines 1-11, then another paragraph to lines 1-3, then more than a page to line 1 alone. By the time we've reached συρίσδες, which Dover has in a few lines of text, Hunter has written nearly three pages of notes.

Some might say that this brevity has its price. When Dover tells us, for example, that Apollonius and earlier poets 'represented Herakles as never reaching Kolchis at all' (Idyll 13.75), some will want to know more about the sources. Dover is unconcerned, but Hunter discusses the scholia on Apollonius, the fragments of Dionysius Scytobrachion and Demaretus, as well as Antoninus Liberalis (who would have gotten his version from Nicander). On the one hand this clarifies an indistinct reference, yet on the other bears little on the poem.

It seems necessary here to stop and ask myself which commentary I use when I want to read Theocritus, and the answer is Dover.

And when I want to study Theocritus? Dover with Hunter. And yet I find myself more likely to read than to study Theocritus, and so it is my Dover whose spine is cracked more often.

A final note on the introductory matter: like much else in the books, Hunter is more current, more discursive, and more laden with references. This again makes Dover more readable, and, though it may seem counter-intuitive, more timeless.

With all sincerity I extend my deepest appreciation to Bolchazy-Carducci for keeping this commentary in print (in a clean, durable paperback) and would love to see more reprints like it. Imagine reprints of Stanford's Odyssey, or Marchant's Thucydides, just to name two personal favorites.

Call me old-fashioned.

Bad Guests in the Odyssey

2008-04-02T17:12:00.003-04:00

(Lattimore's translations again.)

When we first come upon the estate of Eumaios in Odyssey 14 and receive a description of his property, it is noted that the suitors have been eating the best of the pigs:

These were
the breeding females, but the males lay outside, and these were
fewer by far, for the godlike suitors kept diminishing
their numbers by eating them, since the swineherd kept having
to send them in the best of all the well-fattened porkers
at any time. (14.15-20)

The reader is reminded, perhaps, of the behavior of Odysseus' men on Thrinakia. As the hunger becomes more and more unbearable, Eurylochos exhorts his companions:

Come then, let us cut out the best of Helios' cattle,
and sacrifice them to the immortals who hold wide heaven... (12.343-4)

So spoke Eurylochos, and the other companions assented.
At once, cutting out from near at hand the best of Helios'
cattle... (12.352-4)

Odysseus' men were punished for being bad guests on Thrinakia and eating what was not rightfully theirs. The fact that the suitors too eat 'the best' of the animals reminds us of the punishment Odysseus' men received and reinforces the inevitability of the coming vengeance on the suitors, who seem to parallel the men on Thrinakia in this respect.

Fairies and Fate

2008-04-02T09:25:00.003-04:00

In the Ch. 29 vocabulary list in Wheelock, 'fairy' is listed as a derivative of Lat. fatum. I hadn't known this, so I decided to look it up quickly in the OED. The etymology for 'fairy' is: a. OF. faerie, faierie (mod.F. féerie), f. OF. fae (mod.F. fée) FAY n.2.

And 'fay' is derived from fatum as follows: ad. OF. fae, faie (Fr. fée) = Pr. and Pg. fada, Sp. hada, It. fata:--Com. Rom. fata fem. sing., f. L. fata the Fates, pl. of fatum FATE.

One can perhaps see how 'fairy' came from fatum in definition A.4.a.: 'One of a class of supernatural beings of diminutive size, in popular belief supposed to possess magical powers and to have great influence for good or evil over the affairs of man.'

Pigs and Ships in the Odyssey (Updated)

2008-04-01T23:26:00.007-04:00

(I use Lattimore's translation in what follows.)

As Odysseus approaches the home of the swineherd Eumaios in Book 14 of the Odyssey, we get a description of the property. One of the things we learn is the following:

Inside the enclosure he made twelve pig pens
next to each other, for his sows to sleep in, and in each of them
fifty pigs who sleep on the ground were confined. (14.13-15)

Interestingly, the number of pig pens kept by Eumaios, who functions as a loyal representative and relic of the old Odyssean order (cf. 14.3-4: '...who beyond others/cared for the house properties acquired by noble Odysseus'), is the same as the number of Odysseus' ships (9.159: 'Now there were twelve ships that went with me...'). The number of pigs in each of Eumaios' pens even seems to be close to the Odyssean norm for the number of men per ship if the ship of the Phaiakians is any indication, for Alkinoos, when promising that he will give Odysseus conveyance to Ithaka, says:

Come then, let us drag a black ship down to the bright sea,
one sailing now for the first time, and have for it a selection
from the district, fifty-two young men, who have been the finest
before. (8.34-7)

The Phaiakians, however, perhaps do not provide an ideal indication, since Odysseus' own ships seem to have had slightly more men. When Odysseus and his companions come to Aiaia, they split up into two groups led by Odysseus and Eurylochos, each with 22 men under their command (10.203-8), making for a total of 46 (at this point, only Odysseus' ship is left after the Laistrygonian debacle earlier in Book 10). His ship, along with every other ship, had lost 6 men to the Kikonians in Book 9, along with 6 men to Polyphemus, bringing the total to 58. In addition, one of Odysseus' men from his own ship (cf. 10.95-102 and 116-17) was killed by the Laistrygonian Antiphates, giving us a total of 59.

Update: P.V. Jones, in his companion to Lattimore's translation ad 9.60, makes it clear that a ship in the Odyssey could get by with a much smaller crew, noting that Homer states in 2.212 that Telemachos needed only 20 companions for his journey.

Logic(s)

2008-03-13T14:12:00.002-04:00

'It was the myths, above all, that seemed to defy rational analysis and to give rise to the idea that their makers were rambling around in a kind of mystical fog. Yet closer observation, and the whole tendency of anthropologists to treat tribal peoples with increasing respect, have shown that most of the apparently illogical connections in 'primitive' myths are not really so. Rather, the logical systems involved are different from those standardized in western cultures. Levi-Strauss showed in La Pensee sauvage that many simple societies, far from having no category structure at all, have systems of immense range and complexity. That is fact; yet one has to guard against sentimentality at this point, for it is all too easy to add (as many now do) that these alternative logical structures are 'just as good' as the ones we happen to use. After all, they say, even Aristotelian logic has had to be replaced by different kinds in certain conditions, much as the Euclidean system, which once seemed the essence of logical geometry, is now recognized as too restricted for study of the world at large. But the truth is that for many purposes Aristotelian logic, which has established simple and consistent rules of cause and effect, is greatly superior to alternative systems depending on loose grades of symbolic association. Some aspects of myths can be appreciated more fully by these alternative systems, but there are also elements and qualities to which discursive analysis can properly be applied, at least as a preliminary stage.'

--G.S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths, pp. 42-3

Ancient Brain Surgery

2008-03-13T09:47:00.002-04:00

Just saw this on Yahoo News, though I'm sure it's been reported on other Classics sites already. Here's the intro:

THESSALONIKI, Greece - Greek archaeologists said Tuesday they have unearthed evidence of what they believe was brain surgery performed nearly 1,800 years ago on a young woman — who died during or shortly after the operation.

Although references to such delicate operations abound in ancient writings, discoveries of surgically perforated skulls are uncommon in Greece.

Site excavator Ioannis Graikos said the woman's skeleton was found during a rescue dig last year in Veria, a town some 75 kilometers (46 miles) west of Thessaloniki.

"We interpret the find as a case of complicated surgery which only a trained and specialized doctor could have attempted," Graikos said.

A bone expert who studied the finds said the skeleton belonged to a woman up to 25 years old who had suffered a severe blow to the crown of her head, Graikos said. The operation was apparently an attempt to save her life.

An Allusion to Keats?

2008-03-12T16:42:00.002-04:00

Another of Mifflin's classically-themed sonnets is called 'An Elegy'. I was reminded of Keats due to the following bolded rhyme.

Immortal laurel of no growth terrene,
Gather, ye Muses, in Olympian air;
'T is for a shepherd, loved of Pan, to wear;
Behold him lying on the headland green
That juts above the sea in this demesne,
As still as sculptured marble, and as fair.
Ye will not wake him if ye crown him there;
Wreathe him the while he seems to sleep serene.
The syrinx now lies useless by his head...
Was that a sigh within the cypress near?
Oh, soft, ye Muses!--softly round him tread,
Bring all your late reluctant garlands here;
Relax your haughty mien; ye need not fear
To crown this Dorian now--for he is dead!

The rhyme of 'demesne' and 'serene' occurs here in lines 5 and 8. Keats' poem 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' is also in sonnet form. In addition, the rhyme-scheme is the same in the two poems except for the last two lines (Mifflin: abbaabbacdcddc; Keats: abbaabbacdcdcd). But Mifflin's 'a' line-ending ('-ene') is Keats' 'b' line-ending. Thus, though the 'demesne-serene' rhyme occurs in the same four-line segment of Keats' poem, it is in lines 6 and 7 instead of 5 and 8.

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

(Text here.)

It seems probable to me that this particular rhyme (especially with the rather uncommon 'demesne') was borrowed from Keats, but of course I may well be wrong about that. Has anyone come across it elsewhere before?

Graves Found in Thessaloniki

2008-03-12T09:17:00.000-04:00

Sic incipit:

ATHENS, Greece - Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday.

Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement.

The remainder is here.

Lloyd Mifflin

2008-03-11T17:12:00.002-04:00

I confess I'd never heard of the Pennsylvanian sonneteer Lloyd Mifflin until recently. He has a goodly number of poems on classical subjects. The following, called 'The Ship', is a nice little reflection on the effects that the reading of Homer can bring to bear on the imagination. You can find it at Google books here.

I LAY at Delos of the Cyclades,
At evening, on a cape of golden land;
The blind Bard's book was open in my hand,
There where the Cyclops makes the Odyssey's
Calm pages tremble as Odysseus flees.
Then, stately, like a vision o'er the sand,
A phantom ship across the sunset strand
Rose out of dreams and clave the purple seas;
Straight on that city's bastions did she run—
Whose toppling turrets on their donjons hold
Bells that to mortal ears have never tolled—
Then drifted down the gateway of the sun
With fading pennon and with gonfalon,
And dropped her anchor in the pools of gold.

Artemis Comparisons in the Odyssey

2008-03-10T16:49:00.002-04:00

A female figure is compared to Artemis in both books 4 and 6 of the Odyssey. The first one makes me chuckle. Here it is (Lattimore's translation):

While he was pondering these things in his heart and his spirit,
Helen came out of her fragrant high-roofed bedchamber,
looking like Artemis of the golden distaff. (4.120-2)

Helen, of all people, is liked to the chaste, virgin Artemis. I can't help but picture Homer snickering as he wrote (or recited?) that.

The second is more appropriate. In 6.99-109, we read:

But when she and her maids had taken their pleasure in eating,
they all threw off their veils for a game of ball, and among them
it was Nausikaa of the white arms who led in the dancing;
and as Artemis, who showers arrows, moves on the mountains
either along Taygetos or on high-towering
Erymanthos, delighting in boars and deer in their running,
and along with her the nymphs, daughters of Zeus of the aegis,
range in the wilds and play, and the heart of Leto is gladdened,
for the head and brows of Artemis are above all the others,
and she is easily marked among them, though all are lovely,
so this one shone among her handmaidens, a virgin unwedded.

Accent & Rhythm

2008-03-07T19:31:00.003-05:00

This is just to brag that I've finally gotten my very own copy of W. Sidney Allen's Accent and Rhythm, Prosodic Features of Latin and Greek: a study in Theory and Reconstruction. With shipping from the UK it was far below what it normally goes for.

It will keep Wilkinson's Golden Latin Artistry good company within easy reach here in the study.

The times, they aren't a changin'

2008-02-23T09:00:00.005-05:00

The following comes to us from "A Professional Debt" by Robert L. Ladd, published in
The Classical Journal, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Jan., 1935), pp. 203-211.

A bit of vocabulary aside this could have been written today.

During the period characterized by the supposed financial suc-
cesses of the twenties, when success was synonymous with the
acquisition of wealth, the subjects of the high-school curriculum
had to justify their position in the schools almost exclusively on
the basis of their practical value in the promotion of this material
end. Many and strange have been the activities of the classroom
to demonstrate the practical value of Latin. For the instructor in-
terested in teaching pupils the language the task has been well-
nigh impossible because of the necessity of making the process
painless, practical, and even delightful. In many cases these ac-
tivities of the classroom have deteriorated into a process of learn-
ing much about Latin and of learning very little Latin. Too often
this process has the same result as in the case of the little tot who
had been ill and was in need of a tonic. The doctor prescribed
quinine. The child was difficult to manage when it became neces-
sary to administer any kind of medicine. The mother seized upon
the happy thought of disguising the quinine by making a pill of it
and placing it in the centre of a luscious cherry. The little girl took
the cherry gleefully and went away eating it. With outstretched
hand she soon returned to her mother, saying, "Mother, I've eaten
the cherry, and here's the seed!" We regret that the essential tonic
of Latin is frequently returned to the teacher untouched, after the
nonessentials have gone the way of the luscious cherry.

Now, once you get past this it's very jarring to read about the threat of child labor laws flooding the classrooms with more students, and the 'problem' of what to do with leisure time now that all classes are seeing a reduction in work hours. Still, that opening is right on.

Typhoeus/Typhon/Typhoon

2008-02-20T15:58:00.004-05:00

In The Nature of Greek Myths (p. 48), G.S. Kirk makes the following comment:

'Typhoeus (in his alternative form Typhon the origin of 'typhoon') succumbed to Zeus, but in a later epoch Boreas, the north wind, snatched away Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus King of Athens, much as Hades had ravished Kore-Persephone.'

In other words, Kirk derives our English word 'typhoon' from the Greek monster. Barry Powell, on the other hand, remarks in Classical Mythology as follows (5th ed., p. 100 n. 5):

'Our word typhoon, really from the Chinese term tai fung, "violent wind," derives its form by analogy with Typhon (= Typhoeus). Typhus and typhoid fever also come from the Greek monster, for both arouse a wild delirium in the patient.'

This made me curious to check the etymology in the OED. Here is what they give:

[Two different Oriental words are included here: (1) the {alpha}-forms (like Pg. tufão, {dag}tufõe) are a. Urd{umac} (Persian and Arabic) {tdotbl}{umac}f{amac}n a violent storm of wind and rain, a tempest, hurricane, tornado, commonly referred to Arab. {tdotbl}{amac}fa, to turn round (nouns of action {tdotbl}auf, {tdotbl}awaf{amac}n), but possibly an adoption of Gr. {tau}{gumac}{phi}{gwfrown}{nu} TYPHON2; (2) the {beta}- and {gamma}- forms represent Chinese tai fung, common dialect forms (as in Cantonese) of ta big, and fêng wind (hence also G. teifun). The spelling of the {beta}-forms has apparently been influenced by that of the earlier-known Indian word, while that now current is due to association with TYPHON2.]

(Sorry, the formatting did not transfer, and I'm not sure how to fix it.)

The earliest citations for 'typhoon' and 'typhon' (this latter derived from the Greek), with current spellings that are nearly identical, present an interesting contrast. The OED's earliest citation for 'typhoon', from 1588, is:

I went a boord of the Shippe of Bengala, at which time it was the yeere of Touffon. Ibid. 35 This Touffon or cruell storme endured three dayes and three nightes.

The OED's earliest citation for 'typhon', from 1555, mentions the Greeks explicitly:

These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones that is whyrle wyndes) they caule, Furacanes.

The second citation (1585) does as well:

A wind called by the Gretians Typhon, of Plinie Vertex or Vortex.

No Monolithic Theories

2008-02-06T16:31:00.001-05:00

'My own conviction, nevertheless, is that there can be no single and comprehensive theory of myths--except, perhaps, the theory that all such theories are necessarily wrong.'

--G.S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths, p. 38

Pre-Zeus Altar in Arcadia

2008-02-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

Read the interesting story here.

The lead:

PHILADELPHIA — Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to their own gods and goddesses, whose nature and identities are unknown to scholars today.

But archaeologists say they have now found the ashes, bones and other evidence of animal sacrifices to some pre-Zeus deity on the summit of Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. The remains were uncovered last summer at an altar later devoted to Zeus.

Fragments of a coarse, undecorated pottery in the debris indicated that the sacrifices might have been made as early as 3000 B.C., the archaeologists concluded. That was about 900 years before Greek-speaking people arrived, probably from the north in the Balkans, and brought their religion with them.

Solon in English

2008-01-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

I didn't realize until today's Merriam-Webster Word of the Day that the name of the Athenian lawgiver Solon had made it into English as a (lower-case) noun. I find it even more interesting that its current use is for the most part ironic.

solon \SOH-lun\ noun

1 : a wise and skillful lawgiver
*2 : a member of a legislative body

Example sentence:
“The bill will likely look quite different by the time the solons in Congress are through with it,” the pundit remarked.

Did you know?
Solon was a particularly wise lawgiver in ancient Athens who was born in approximately 630 B.C. and lived until about 560 B.C. He was one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, and he implemented a number of reforms in Athenian law. In English, his name has been used generically since at least 1625 to refer to any wise statesman. Contemporary American journalists, with whom the term is especially popular, have extended the meaning even further to include any member of a lawmaking body, wise or not. In fact, today the word is sometimes used ironically for a legislator who displays a marked lack of wisdom, rather than a profusion of it.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Latin: The Ne Plus Ultra of Languages

2007-12-11T09:48:00.000-05:00

A quick look by Michael Poliakoff at two new books on Latin. Here's the opening:

For generations of adults, the simple word-series "amo, amare, amavi, amatus" used to act as a kind of madeleine, calling to mind long classroom hours spent conjugating Latin verbs (including this one, meaning "love"), then exploring Gaul in its three parts and eventually trying to puzzle out the syntax of the rugged lines that followed "Arma virumque cano," the opening phrase of Virgil's "The Aeneid."

A few lucky students, in that era of required Latin, reveled in the ablative absolute and exulted at their ability to piece together the meaning of a Latin sentence from the seemingly random scattering of stems and inflections. Most students, it is safe to say, found the experience more trying than pleasant; some, like Winston Churchill, might even recall primitive pedagogy and physical brutality from their Latin teachers. But no one finished his years of Latin class without at least a grim respect for a language that could demand so much of young readers centuries after the fall of Rome.

You can read the rest here.

An Interesting Take on Plato and Socrates

2007-12-07T13:01:00.000-05:00

'Let us go back to Plato for another illustration. The one thing which has caught everyone's imagination in Plato is the figure of Socrates, the archetypal teacher and prophet, "corrupting" the youth of Athens by showing them than when they express social stereotypes about love or courage or justice or pleasure they have not the faintest idea what they are talking about. We see this Socrates, in the Apology and the Phaedo, facing martyrdom without making any concession to the ignorance and stupidity of his accusers. But Plato himself was a revolutionary thinker, and in the Laws he draws up a blueprint for his own post-revolutionary society. In that society all teachers are to be most strictly supervised and instructed what to teach: everything depends on their complete subservience to the overall social vision. Socrates does not appear in the Laws, and no such person as Socrates could exist in such a society. We should be careful to understand what Plato is doing here. He is really assuming that those who condemned Socrates were right in principle, and wrong only--if wrong at all by that time--in their application of it.'

--Northrop Frye, The Great Code, p. 132

A Nice Use of Irony

2007-12-07T10:05:00.000-05:00

This morning on the local radio station I heard a nice use of irony (first definition). Someone had requested Bob Seger, and the DJ said, 'I almost never play Bob Seger' (which is precisely the opposite of the actual state of things). He then proceeded to play not one, but two consecutive Seger tracks.

Throne Found in Herculaneum

2007-12-07T00:35:00.000-05:00

Here's the story, which I've copied in from here. If you follow the link, you can also find a link to photos.

ROME (Reuters) - An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there.

The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius.

The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79.

Restoration of the throne is still ongoing with restorers painstakingly trying to piece back together parts of the ceremonial chair.

While other wooden objects have been dug out in nearby Pompeii, experts have never before found such a significant ceremonial piece of furniture. Previously such pieces have only been observed in paintings or made of marble.

"The find of ancient wooden furniture is not an absolute novelty in Herculaneum or Pompeii. Organic materials in fact were preserved in these cities because of the peculiar way in which they were submerged by the Vesuvius volcanic mud," said the head of the dig, Maria Paola Guidobaldi.

"But we have never found furniture of such a significant structure and decoration," Guidobaldi said.

Little is known about how the throne would have been used but the elaborate decorations discovered on the chair celebrate the mysterious cult figure of Attis.

The most precious relief shows Attis, a life-death-rebirth deity, collecting a pine cone next to a sacred pine tree. Other ornaments show leaves and flowers suggesting the theme of the throne is that of spring and fertility.

The cult of Attis is documented to have been strong in Herculaneum the first century AD.

(Reporting by Antonio Denti, writing by Eleanor Biles, editing by Silvia Aloisi and Paul Casciato)

Dictionarese and the Death of Latin

2007-12-03T22:19:00.001-05:00

As I wrote to the colleague who forwarded a link to Harry Mount's op-ed piece in the NYT on Latin, this is painfully unreadable and barely Latin, which defeats for the most part its author's argument.

Aside from the countless errors (e.g., at age 9 Jefferson 'started learning' Latin and Greek, according to the English version, but in the Latin he 'docere coepit', which would be quite a feat), the style is virtually absent, by which I mean to say that he has written not Latin but simplified English with very little regard for Latin idiom.

Let's take briefly the opening line. Is there any student of Latin composition who would not be ashamed to write this:

'Primum, duces nostros linguam Latinam non iam studere triste non videtur.'

When he means to say this?

'At first glance, it doesn’t seem tragic that our leaders don’t study Latin anymore.'

Let's just ignore the awkwardness of the English. One could at least make an effort in the Latin to be readable or accurate or both. For example, why primum and not primo (or a more explicit phrase)? Why this clumsy and ambiguous construction with the impersonal verb when any number of more elegant constructions present themselves readily (e.g., a conditional sounds nice to my ear)? Why triste at all when a dozen other words are more suitable (e.g., clades)?

I won't waste any more time on this, but I would like to encourage others out there to make a genuine effort to promote good Latinity and reject bad.

Latin and the Emergence of the Space-Time Continuum

2007-11-14T16:12:00.000-05:00

Last night I attended a layman-oriented talk by Paul Davies on quantum physics and the big bang. He mentioned that, for Einstein, time and space are not two distinct things that transcend the physical universe, but are part of it, and that they are incredibly closely linked to one another. Moreover, in some recent models of the beginning of the universe time and space were at first indistinguishable and one somehow turned into the other (if I was understanding correctly. Regarding this last point, I was happy to see today while looking in Allen and Greenough for something else that the Latin language preceded quantum physics by more than a couple of millennia!

The Ablative of Time is locative in its origin; the Accusative [of time] is the same as that of the extent of space. (AG 423, Note)

Backdating Chocolate

2007-11-13T13:09:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON - Residents of Central America were enjoying chocolate drinks more than 3,000 years ago, a half millennium earlier than previously thought, new research shows.

Archaeologists led by John Henderson of Cornell University studied the remains of pottery used in the lower Ulua Valley in northern Honduras about 1100 B.C.

Residue from the pots contained theobromine, which occurs only in the cacao plant, the source of chocolate, the researchers said in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The find dates the first use of chocolate to some 500 years earlier than previously known, they said.

The style of the pottery indicates that cacao was served at important ceremonies to mark weddings and births, according to the authors.

On the Net:

PNAS: http://www.pnas.org

Ancient Quotation Marks?

2007-11-06T14:40:00.000-05:00

I was startled to read the following in the article linked above (emphasis mine):

'Instone-Brewer radically reinterprets the first passage using, of all things, quotation marks. The Greek of the New Testament didn't always contain them, and scholars agree that sometimes they must be added in to make sense of it.'

I would be interested to see the places where it did contain them.

Two Words

2007-10-26T09:38:00.000-04:00

In the entry for the Latin noun caput in Wheelock (ch. 11), several English derivatives are listed. Here are two good ones to add to your arsenal:

occiput: the back or posterior part of the head (ob + caput)
sinciput: the front part of the head or skull (semi + caput)

Also of interest is 'kerchief', consisting of 'chief' < ME chef, chief, < OF chef, chief (= Pr. cap, Sp. cabo, It. capo head):--Rom. type *capu-m:--L. caput head) (from OED entry for chief (n.)), and ker- (whole word from ME kerchef, syncopated form of keverchef, < OF cuevrechief (from OED entry for kerchief (n.)). 'Cover' ('coverchief' is an earlier form of 'kerchief'), in turn, goes back via Old French to the Latin verb cooperire.

Steven Runciman on the writing of history

2007-10-21T00:58:00.000-04:00

From the preface to volume one of his history of the Crusades:

It may seem unwise for one British pen to compete with the massed typewriters of the United States. But in fact there is no competition. A single author cannot speak with the high authority of a panel of experts, but he may succeed in giving to his work an integrated and even an epical quality that no composite volume can achieve. Homer as well as Herodotus was a Father of History, as Gibbon, the greatest of our historians, was aware; and it is difficult, in spite of certain critics, to believe that Homer was a panel. History today has passed into an Alexandrian age, where criticism has overpowered creation. Faced by the mountainous heap of the minutiae of knowledge and awed by the watchful severity of his colleagues, the modern historian too often takes refuge in learned articles or narrowly specialised dissertations, small fortresses that are easy to defend from attack. His work can be of the highest value; but it is not an end in itself. I believe that the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destinies of man. The writer rash enough to make the attempt should not be criticised for his ambition, however much he may deserve censure for the inadequacy of his equpiment or the inanity of his results.

I heartily agree. And if that makes me unfashionable, well, I just got my copy of Hardy Amies ABCs of Men's Fashion, so there's hope.

Housman's letters again

2007-10-20T20:28:00.001-04:00

Another review of Archie Burnett's edition of Housman's letters has appeared, this time by Paul Johnson in the Literary Review. Johnson is wrong when he says that Last Poems was 'reluctantly published'. Housman had no desire to publish for decades because he had nothing to publish, but once Last Poems began to present itself to him he surprised his friends and his publisher with the news that he had something. Housman rarely did anything reluctantly. He did it of his own accord or he curtly explained why he would not.

But Johnson does appreciate Housman as an epistolographer, and excerpts this fine specimen for his readers:

When the meaning of a poem is obscure, it is due to one of three causes. Either the author through lack of skill has failed to express his meaning; or he has concealed it intentionally; or he has no meaning either to conceal or express. In none of these cases does he like to be asked about it. In the first case it makes him feel humiliated; in the second it makes him feel embarrassed; in the third it makes him feel found out. The real meaning of a poem is what it means to the reader.

Not bad. But overall there's nothing new in this review, and nothing that indicates any greater familiarity with the letters than one can get from a good biography (e.g., Housman, the Scholar-Poet by Richard Perceval Graves).

Now Frank Kermode's review in the London Review of Books (which I can't seem to access at the moment)--there's one worth reading.

How do you make kids care?

2007-10-16T18:16:00.001-04:00

Admittedly it wasn't an inspired decision, but the other day I started off some of my classes with a piece from Nuntii Latini on the reelection of Pervez Musharraf. I thought that having them work through a current event in Latin would arouse some interest, and expected at least some of the students to recognize Musharraf. Not a single student did, and they found the whole thing incomprehensible without careful guidance and a modern history lesson. One student even asked what 'Pakistaniae' meant, after he failed to find it in his Latin glossary.

So that was a failure.

Today I was reminded just a bit of some of the silly things kids like to hear about when we came across fenestra, and I taught them defenestration. There was so much joy and laughter upon learning a word that means 'to throw someone out of a window', and to be honest I was surprised no one knew the word already. I think maybe I expect too much from them and have missed out on teaching opportunities because of it.

I'd like to hear from anyone who has thoughts on things that capture the interest and enthusiasm of students, however small. Please feel free to comment here.

West on Passages of Disputed Authenticity

2007-10-04T12:02:00.001-04:00

In M.L. West's commentary on the Theogony, he remarks in his introduction to the Typhoeus passage (820-80) that it is 'one of the sections of the Theogony whose authenticity has most often been disputed', and then briefly summarizes and responds to six arguments that it is not by Hesiod. Here is the third, followed by an important critical principle:

Gaia's part in producing an enemy to Zeus' regime is at variance with her benevolence toward Zeus in the rest of the Theogony. Again, comparison of an Oriental parallel (Enuma Elis) helps to explain the anomaly: see p. 24. The assumption of multiple authorship is the most naive of all ways of accounting for contradictions in mythology.

The dangers of the interweb

2007-09-29T19:12:00.000-04:00

I know you really can't reduce everything to the worst if its kind, but I found this on a site purporting to help teachers and students:

Virgil’s epic ‘Aenead’ tells the story of two brothers Romulus and Remus, direct descendents of the Trojan prince Aeneas founding the city of Rome on April 21st, 753 B.C. Romulus killed Remus and became the first of the seven kings of Rome. However, another legend suggests that a woman Roma founded Rome.

Keep your students away from such sites!

Try and fly

2007-09-23T08:28:00.000-04:00

An interesting little column in the Detroit Free Press (which should please Eric) notes too things that have occurred to me. The first (the derivation of 'flied' in baseball) I've always agreed with, the second ('and' used in place of the infinitive) is one that I considered but discounted, and now I'm reconsidering my position. Leave it to Fowler to find the poetry in a common construction. (The classical connection: hendiadys.)

Epic vade mecum

2007-09-23T06:54:00.000-04:00

The BMCR has gotten around to publishing its review of John Miles Foley's A Companion to Ancient Epic (2005), and it's a star-studded behemoth: nearly 700 pages by the likes of Gregory Nagy, Walter Burkert, Michael Putnam, and Craig Kallendorff. The incredible range of topics, the eminence of the authors, and the lack of a single theoretical bias—a plague among most companions—mean that I will definitely purchase of this book—if they ever publish a paperback edition. Unless, of course, some dear reader wants to donate $149.

More on Gladstone

2007-09-20T12:45:00.001-04:00

A couple of days ago I mentioned Burkert's reference to William Ewart Gladstone's noticing of the connection between the Enuma Elish and Homer in Burkert's article 'The Logic of Cosmogony'. His footnote to that passage directs the reader's attention to a place in his 1992 book The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, an English translation and revision of a work first published in German in 1984. In that book (pp. 92-3), he writes:

Ti-amat is the form normally written in the text of Enuma Elish for the mother "who bore them all." The Akkadian word which lies behind this, however, is just tiamtu or tamtu, the normal word for the sea. The name can also be written in this more phonetic orthography; but in the Enuma Elish we also find the form taw(a)tu. If one proceeds from Tawtu, then Tethys is an exact transcription. The different reproductions of the dentals, t and th, might disturb the purist; but Sophilos wrote Thethys, which, in normal Greek orthography, would automatically yield Tethys. In fact the Enuma Elish became known to Eudemos, the pupil of Aristotle, in translation; here we find Tiamat transcribed as Tauthe, which is still closer to the reconstructed form Tawtu. That the long vowel a is changed to e in the Ionian dialect even in borrowed words has parallels in Kubaba becoming Kybebe, Baal becoming Belos, and Mada known as Medes. Thus the proof seems complete that here, right in the middle of the Iliad, the influence of two Akkadian classics can be detected down to a mythical name.

In one of the footnotes in this passage [14], we find a reference to Gladstone:

The first to see the connection between Enuma Elish and Homer, Tiamat and Tethys was W.E. Gladstone, Landmarks of Homeric study (1890), appendix... .

'The Roman World: Religions and Everday Life'/Dayton Art Institute

2007-09-19T09:26:00.000-04:00

Not sure if this has already been posted elsewhere, but in case it hasn't...

Mosaics to highlight Rome exhibit

By Meredith Moss

Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

This Rome exhibit wasn't built in a day.

In fact, The Dayton Art Institute's first major exhibition on ancient Rome has been in the works since 2005 when Dr. Sally Struthers, a dean at Sinclair Community College, was first approached to serve as guest curator for a collection that would transport visitors back to the ancient Roman Empire.

"The Roman World: Religions and Everyday Life" officially opens to the public Saturday, with a series of preview openings slated this week for the press and DAI members.

"I like this whole idea of visual motifs that meant different things to different religions in the Roman world," says Struthers, who delights in pointing out specific symbols — the peacock, the palm leaf, the shell, the fish — that were adapted and used in ancient times by Polytheism, Judaism and Christianity.

The showcase of the exhibition is a group of colorful mosaic panels that were once part of a synagogue floor discovered in North Africa.

In order to give visitors a better appreciation of the art, the entire mosaic floor has been re-created, with the original mosaics positioned precisely where they would have been originally.

That portion of the exhibit, titled "Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire," is on loan from the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Curator Edward Bleiberg, who wrote the catalog that will be sold in conjunction with the show, will come to Dayton for a lecture Sept. 30. Ancient meets modern when Struthers and Bleiberg provide online streaming audio commentary for the exhibit and a podcast that DAI guests can download and play as they tour it.

Struthers, who visited Rome recently to photograph ancient sites for the exhibit, also has gathered favorite works from other museums dating from fifth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. and beyond: ancient sculptures of the gods, gold jewelry, coins, vases of Roman glass and textiles so sensitive to light that DAI patrons will lift a protective cloth to view them.

The museum has developed a variety of special programs to complement "The Roman World." Kids will "Meet the Romans" at the Experiencenter, teachers can request learning guides, and there are a number of lectures and special programs.

How to go

WHAT: "The Roman World: Religions and Everyday Life" featuring the Brooklyn Museum exhibition "Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire"

WHEN: Saturday through Jan. 6

WHERE: Dayton Art Institute, 456 Belmonte Park North

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with extended hours on Thursdays until 8 p.m. Closed holidays.

ADMISSION: $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, $7 for youth. $12 for groups of 10 or more. Members free.

TOURS: Docent-led tours at 2 and 6 p.m. Thursdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.

INFO: (937) 223-4ART or www.daytonartinstitute.org

When Politicians Knew Homer

2007-09-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

In his article called 'The Logic of Cosmogony', Walter Burkert writes, in a passage regarding how ancients attempted to tell the tale about 'the beginning' of 'everything' (pp. 92-3):

The most common response...is: in the beginning there was Water. This is not limited to the ancient world: it is also reported from America, e.g. the Popol Vuh of the Quiche/ Maya. The Egyptians developed water-cosmogonies in diverse variants, having the yearly flood of the Nile before their eyes; but Enuma elish too has ground water and salt water, Apsu the begetter and Tiamat who bore them all, as the first parents of everything. Surprisingly enough, this recurs in the midst of Homer's Iliad with Oceanus and Tethys, 'begetting of everything'; this may be direct influence. (It was William Ewart Gladstone, better known as British Prime Minister, who first saw this connection.)

Ben Stiller on the Ancient world

2007-09-09T08:56:00.000-04:00

"I am really interested in Roman history so if I could travel back in time I'd take look at Roman culture and possibly some Greek biblical history as well. I'd love to check out the orgies too!"

I'm wondering if there's supposed to be a comma between Greek and biblical, or if Ben just that into the OT.

On Mythological Terminology

2007-09-06T15:17:00.000-04:00

'Scholars have often found it difficult to distinguish between myth and other kinds of traditional tale: saga, legend, folktale, and fable. It is not always necessary or even possible to draw such distinctions. For speakers of German the term saga (Sage) is more or less synonymous with myth (Mythos): the best known collection of Greek myths is Gustav Schwab's Die schoensten Sagen des klassischen Altertums, and the most influential treatment of Germanic sagas is Jacob Grimm's Germanische Mythologie. In Grimm's usage the two terms are sometimes synonymous, though occasionally he seems to want to restrict myth (Mythus, as he writes it) to antiquity. If distinctions are drawn, they usually have to do with the cultural context in which the tale was generated.'

--Fritz Graf, Greek Mythology (p. 6)

Love of Sea Monsters?

2007-08-30T22:57:00.000-04:00

Has anyone else thought this upon spotting a bottle of Cetaphil lotion or cleanser?

Or am I just a dork?

Don't answer that.

I am tired of scholarship.

2007-08-19T17:28:00.000-04:00

The reason, I hope, will be plain when you read the title of a book reviewed in the BMCR and the following quotation from the reviewer: Feeling History. Lucan, Stoicism, and the Poetics of Passion.

Francesca D'Alessandro Behr [D.] has produced an excellent and thought-provoking study of the figure of apostrophe and its many implications in Lucan's De Bello Civili. New scholarship on the poem will now need to take account of D.'s examination of the narrator's voice in Lucan. Her basic thesis is that Lucan's narrator intervenes in his own narrative, at the expense of the reader's immersion, in order to guide his audience's interpretation of the events he is recounting.

I wonder first what the title is supposed to mean (what's wrong with 'Apostrophe in Lucan', for example?) and I'm at a loss so I'll just accept it and move on. What of the reviewer's statement?

The only reason we might need someone to tell us what the narrator was up to was if we hadn't read Lucan for ourselves. We haven't. In fact, we haven't read very much literature, have we? And because of that an endless run of PhDs does the reading for us, then pats one another on the back for telling us what they got out of it. They're always 'negotiating' or 'privileging' or talking vaguely about poetics or imputing subversion. In this case, we need more than 200 pages to learn that the poet tried to 'guide his audience's interpretation'. Wow.

This kind of scholarship wearies me, and made me stop caring about graduate school a long time ago. I don't like what it means to be a scholar, and I enjoy teaching all the more because of it.

Doin' tha running man (of many turns)

2007-08-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

Three crews of South Korean breakdancers have scored hit shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, underlining the nation's depth of talent and showing hip-hop moves did not die out in the 1980s, an expert said Friday.

. . . . .

"Spin Odyssey" takes on a more ambitious narrative -- the Last For One group attempts a loose re-telling of Homer's Greek epic with a few dashes of slapstick humour thrown in for good measure.

Odysseus was the original beta boy.

Housman's Letters

2007-08-18T11:36:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly certain that Dennis has already seen this, but just in case and for the benefit of other readers--David Butterfield has reviewed Archie Burnett's The Letters of A.E. Housman, a massive 960-page volume, in BMCR. Here is the lead paragraph:

The name of A. E. Housman (1859-1936) causes an instant reaction in the Classical community. The very intensity, and indeed variety, of sentiments that the letters 'A. E. H.' can evoke is startling when it is considered how few, whether scholars or not, have engaged directly with his Classical work. Housman has never lacked attention from both a deeply respectful following and a firm band, regrettably more numerous, of detractors. It is of course one of the wearying but unsurprising facts of Classical scholarship that each bold and revisionary scholar is met with a less than positive reception. Yet Housman's lot deserves particular attention: why should a man, reserved but polite in company, passionate for accuracy and excellence in print, inspire such strong feelings among academic circles even of the present day? A satisfactory answer to this question remains to be given.

The Spirit of the Anti-Classicist

2007-08-17T15:23:00.000-04:00

I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religion/Mythology/Anthropology

2007-08-15T16:56:00.000-04:00

Sorry for my absence of late. I now have regular access to the internet again, so thought I'd throw another Google Books post here. The topic can be seen above.

Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion

E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (4th ed., revised), vol. 1 and vol. 2

James Frazer, Totemism

James Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of Kingship

James Frazer, The Golden Bough (2nd. ed., revised and enlarged), vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3

Otto Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte

Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States

W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series: The Fundamental Institutions

Christian Gottlob Heyne, Ad Apollodori Bibliothecam observationes

Travels with Kapuściński

2007-08-12T17:52:00.000-04:00

I've finally gotten around to picking up Ryszard Kapuściński's Travels with Herodotus, which I mentioned previously. I'm 25 pages in and there's so much I could quote, but I thought I'd select the following and encourage others to pick the book up as well. The author relates how he purchased a copy of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls to work on his English once he'd settled in India:

I returned to the hotel, opened the Hemingway to the first sentence: "He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees." I understood nothing. I had a small English-Polish pocket dictionary, the only one that had been available in Warsaw. I managed to find the word "brown," but none of the others. I proceeded to the next sentence: "The mountainside sloped gently..." Again—not a word. "There was a stream alongside..." The more I tried to understand this text, the more discouraged I became. I felt trapped. Besieged by language. Language struck me at that moment as something material, something with a physical dimension, a wall rising up in the middle of the road and blocking my way, closing off the world, making it unattainable. It was an unpleasant and humiliating sensation.

We've all felt that way, but Greek and Latin have never left us alone in a foreign land. Even Herodotus, as Kapuściński notes, had the benefit of Greek being the lingua franca, which is why English was so important for Kapuściński to learn. How he did it showed great determination and possibly courage, though he really had no choice. One bit in particular could be taken as good advice by students of Greek and Latin:

I was never without the Hemingway, but now I skipped the descriptive passages I couldn't understand and read the dialogues, which were easier...

How to make Latin seem lame

2007-08-12T14:58:00.000-04:00

Something that always drives me nuts is seeing people who care about the same things I do making those things seem lame. Like Star Trek. Watching the interaction between Spock and McCoy isn't much different for me from reading Sherlock Holmes as he invites Watson to join him on a case and says he'll be lost without his Boswell. But then some jerk has to dress up in a costume and get into debates with other jerks about the smallest things, and make me feel like I shouldn't ever confess to liking Star Trek. But there. I said it.

I also like Latin.

And sometimes Latinists make Latin seem so ... dorky.

If you're like me maybe you wouldn't mind seeing the following on a t-shirt:

LATINAM STVDEBAM
ET VNVM ACCEPI HANC
SVBVCVLAM STOLIDAM

It beats some of what I've seen, that I know my students would never be caught dead in, and I can't blame them.

The Haunts of Orthodox Bulldog?

2007-08-08T09:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a brief notice of some recent archaeological work in northwestern Turkey, in the region of ancient Phrygia:

"Galleries, negropols, passageways and granaries, dating back to Roman and Byzantine periods, were unearthed during the excavations carried out in Han Underground City of central Anatolian city of Eskisehir," said Ahmet Oguz Alp from Anadolu University's Department of Art History.

"Although it is not clear yet, we think that the city might have been used as a military base in the past. People might have used the city as a place of shelter or to wage attacks in order to protect themselves from Arab and Turkish incursions as well," Alp affirmed.

Alp also noted that the city had a great importance, as it was used as a military route before the Ottoman Empire and a route for pilgrimage afterwards.

The excavation work at the historical site will end on August 22nd.

By 'negropols' is meant necropoleis (or, if you prefer, necropolises).

This just makes me wonder whether this 'Han Underground City' (about which I can find nothing else) is Dorylaeum (Δορύλαιον), which was the see of Eusebius of Dorylaeum, not to be confused with the more famous Eusebius of Caesarea.

This Eusebius is remembered for his support of Catholic orthodoxy and his doctrinal battles with the Nestorians and with Eutychus who espoused something like the monophysite doctrine. The latter controversy saw him physically abused, threatened with death, condemned, and removed from office. He found solace in Rome with Pope Leo I, and later participated in the Council of Chalcedon where he was fully vindicated, he helped to author the definition of faith, and his condemnation was annulled. The Catholic Encyclopedia article ends with this:

Flavian said of Eusebius at Constantinople that "fire seemed cold to his zeal for orthodoxy", and Leo wrote of him that he was a man who "had undergone great perils and toils for the Faith". In these two sentences all that is known of him may be fitly summarized.

This is about as clever as a Nashville lyric

2007-08-04T08:26:00.000-04:00

The Rockae, music and lyrics by Peter Mills, adapted from Euripides' The Bacchae by Peter Mills and Cara Reichel, directed by Cara Reichel.
"Pent-up King Pentheus takes on Dionysus and his frenzied female fans when the god of wine and theatre returns to Thebes. Get ready for moshing Maenads and thrashing catharsis in this rock musical adaptation of Euripides' classic, The Bacchae. Drama Desk-nominated writer Peter Mills fuses the intensity of heavy metal with the violence of ancient Greek tragedy. The Rockae will be presented as a partner event of the 4th Annual New York Musical Theatre Festival."

Two Articles on Rome

2007-08-01T10:37:00.000-04:00

The first is about the excavation of an ancient tannery outside of Rome that now stands in the way of progress, in the form of a rail line with only 109 yards to go for its completion. Either the rail line must be stopped, or the ancient complex will have to be moved to preserve it. My money is on the latter. Here is the lead:

ROME --Archaeologists excavating an ancient tannery believed to be the largest ever found in Rome said Tuesday they might need to move the entire work site, which is being threatened by railroad construction. The 1,255-square-yard complex includes a tannery dating to the second or third century, as well as burial sites and part of a Roman road.

At least 97 tubs, some measuring more than three feet in diameter, have been dug up so far in the tannery, archaeologists said.

In other news, Italian P.M. Romano Prodi is pushing for the restoration of the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.

THE ancient road on which pilgrims travelled from Canterbury to Rome could soon become a vibrant thoroughfare again.

The Via Francigena was first mentioned in the third century and is Europe's oldest route of pilgrimage.

After leaving England, it winds for roughly 600 miles through Arras, Rheims and Lausanne before reaching Tuscany and some of Italy's most beautiful landscapes.

The earliest map of the road was made in around 990 by Sigeric the Serious, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

However, the Via Francigena is much less famous than its Spanish counterpart, the Way of St James, which pilgrims use to visit Santiago di Compostela. Last year, around 100,000 Catholics registered with the church in Santiago but only about 8,000 people walked the Via Francigena. Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister and a devout Catholic, has vowed to restore the Via Francigena to its former glory. Before the arrival of the motorcar, the Francigena, which means "born in France", was Italy's transport spine.

I'm guessing there must be a nautical component to the road somewhere between, say, England and France. And I think everyone will agree that its first cartographer had an absolutely first-rate name. The earnestness implied by his name is evidenced in his effort in map-making--an activity which, to be sure, would never be undertaken by someone called, e.g., Gaiseric the Frivolous. I'll leave you with a quote from Mr. Prodi:

"It really makes me angry that we do not have pilgrims walking towards Rome any longer."

Latin Rules in Jingles

2007-07-31T14:23:00.000-04:00

From the same issue, sent in by one Eva Johnson, a first year student at Ballard High in Seattle, we find a helpful set of rhyming couplets to memorize the dative with special verbs:

Credo, credere, to believe or trust
Faveo, favere, to favor all just,
Pareo, parere, to obey and do right,
Noceo, nocere, to injure in fight.
Studeo, studere, to be eager for a's,
Resisto, resistere, to resist low grades,
Persuadeo, persuadere, to urge or persuade.
To memorize these will be of great aid,
With all these verbs the Dative is used,
But by students of Latin they are often confused.

Any suggestions for other verbs?

The Pedagogical Value of Parody

2007-07-31T14:05:00.000-04:00

This exceddingly entertaining time capsule is excerpted from B.L. Ullman's Hints for Teachers (CJ 19.5, p. 330):

Parodies
In the "Hints" for June, 1922, I pointed out that parodies had a distinct teaching value, in addition to that gained from the interest created by them, because they presupposed a thorough knowledge of the passages parodied and thus encouraged reading for thought. Miss Helen S. Conover of the Hillsboro, Ohio, High School sends the following Ciceronian parody by a junior in her school:
How long, O flapper, will you try our patience? How long will your wildness elude us? For what purpose do you display your lip stick so publicly? Do the laments of your mother, the growls of your father, the horrified countenance of your grandmother, and the bold glances of many men move you not at all? Do you not see that your tricks are known and your wishes are made harmless by the knowledge of all who know you? Do you think any one of us is ignorant of what dance hall you visited night before last, what time you came home last night, where you were, who was with you and what exciting lark you planned?

O the times, O the customs! The town knows these things, the families see them, yet they continue. Do they continue? Nay, they even grow worse and worse. Chic flappers draw flasks from wondrous corsages and mark with their eyes what man they are going to lure to ruin. But the brave fathers and mothers lift not one finger to prevent and think they have done enough for their children's souls if they give them more money than they ask for and more clothes than they can wear.

With a few changes it might be relevant today.

Teaching oratio obliqua: A to B, X to Y

2007-07-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

In the April 1921 edition of B.L. Ullman's 'Hints for Teachers,' once a regular feature of the Classical Journal, I found the following in which we see that a current pedagogical concern (movement and active learning) was current nearly a century ago as well.

Ullman cites the 'difficulty in the understanding of continuous indirect discourse as we find it in Caesar' which is rooted in 'the failure of the students to understand its workings in English.' He recommends trying the suggestion of L.W.P. Lewis in Practical Hints on the Teaching of Latin (Macmillan, 1919):

He says (p. 64): "Begin with those Indirect Statements only which are clearly reported, and start with the English. The work proceeds like this:—Q 'What is an Indirect Statement ?' —A. (to be obtained) 'An Indirect Statement is a statement made by A to B and reported by X to Y.'

The basic procedure is simple: set two groups of students before the class to put the words into action.

Make A say to B 'The weather is fine,' and X report to Y in the form 'A told B that the weather was fine.' (Here we get a bit of the much recommended movement and action even in Latin.)

So far so good. Now Lewis wants to complicate matters:

Then have another set of boys out and let them arrange another example in whispers for themselves. Put a boy A in charge and he will arrange the parts, so to speak. He will explain what he is going to say to B and will instruct X how to report to Y the statement he makes. Then let them go through it for the class. I call it making a charade, and I always know when I am doing well, as if anything goes wrong in an ordinary lesson with a duller boy (the change of pronouns, for instance, is liable to give trouble, and the tense) there is sure to be a hand up at once with 'Please, sir, may I make a charade for him?' Lastly, we make our A, B, X, and Y report in all sorts of ways, so that the various reported statements begin with, 'He told him,' 'He told me,' 'I told him,' 'I told you,' 'You told me,' etc. Let there be plenty of it. The boys like it, and they soon get to grasp the pronoun changes and other points. Finally we give them the reported statement and let them get back to the original words spoken."

Ullman calls Lewis's book 'reactionary,' though useful in parts, and unsuited to American teachers. But activities of this sort, properly adapted, certainly have their use.

Also Seen

2007-07-28T10:59:00.000-04:00

I hope this exercise is at least useful for collecting some resources and cutting down on search time. Thanks to Dennis for his contribution. Just saw a couple of other books I thought I'd link to.

Vergil in the Middle Ages by Domenico Comparetti (Benecke translation)

Vergil: A Biography by Tenney Frank

And while we're on the subject of former Bryn Mawr faculty, here is Tenney Frank's Roman Imperialism.

The Cults of Ostia, Lily Ross Taylor's doctoral thesis

And a couple from Paul Shorey:
The Unity of Plato's Thought

Horace: Odes and Epodes

Byzantinistik on Google Books

2007-07-27T16:41:00.000-04:00

Following Eric's lead I thought I'd link to some useful old works in my hobby area, Byzantine studies. Some of these may be outdated, but still useful.

First up, Karl Krumbacher's Geschichte der byzaninischen Litteratur von Justinian bis zum Ende des Oströmischen Reiches. This is the expanded second edition of 1897, and an incredibly important work.

I was interested also to find Immanuel Bekker's edition of the histories of Nicetas Choniates. Bekker was so prolific as an editor and collator of manuscripts that, it was said, 'he could be silent in seven languages' (Sandys iii 87). Har har.

I then started in trying to catalogue the rest of the 50 volumes of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, but really should have guessed that Mischa Hooker had already done it.

But there are still many important works to be found. (The legendary Du Cange's Histoire de l'empire de Constantinople sous les empereurs francais, for instance.) The rest of this list will be heavily indebted to the introduction to Ostrogorsky's History of the Byzantine State.

What about both volume 1 and volume 2 of John Jacob Reiske's text and commentary on the De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae by Constantine Porphyrogenitus? Ostrogorsky called the discovery of this manuscript 'without doubt one of the greatest events in the history Byzantine studies.'

Though incomplete overall, a certain volume of George Finlay's comprehensive history of Greece is available that includes all of the chapters on Medieval Greece and the Trebizond, covering the years 540-1453. Finlay is described as a philhellene and a friend of Byron. He consciously states in his preface that he has written a supplement to Gibbon, 'until something more worthy to be placed beside the writings of the great historian shall replace it,' and we can infer from this that he intended to be fairer to his subject than Gibbon was while acknowledging Gibbon's labor and achievement.

Then there's Alfred Rambaud's L'empire grec au dixième siècle: Constantin Porphyrogénète, which Ostrogorsky calls 'epoch making.'

Both volume 1 and volume 2 of Sabatier's Description des monnaies byzantines are available.

Karl Neumann's Die Weltstellung des byzantinischen Reiches vor de Kreuzzügen is there too, which Ostrogorsky calls 'stimulating' and describes as 'a masterpiece of research and presentation.'

If Karl Eduard Zachariä von Lingenthal's seven volume Jus graeco-romanum is not available, then at least his Geschichte des Griechisch-römischen rechts is.

That does it for now.

Primary Texts/Late Antiquity

2007-07-27T13:41:00.001-04:00

I don't have time for anything substantive at the moment, but I'll post a few more links to Google Books. Today's topic is primary sources from Late Antiquity.

Avitus (ed. Chevalier [LIBRAIRIE GÉNÉRALE CATHOLIQUE ET CLASSIQUE ])

Heptateuch-poet/Cyprianus Gallus (ed. Peiper [CSEL])

Juvencus (ed. Huemer [CSEL])

Nonnus--Paraphrasis S. Evangelii Ioannei (ed. Scheindler [Teubner])

Sedulius (ed. Huemer [CSEL])

The centaur at the forest's edge

2007-07-26T12:34:00.000-04:00

As I work on making my first pot roast and in the lull before my daily workout (summers off are a nice perk for the teacher) I'm reading a bit of Jacob Burckhardt's Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (translated inexplicably as 'Force and Freedom' and later republished by the Liberty Fund as 'Reflections on History'). Burckhardt is perhaps most famous today for the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. He was a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and an accomplished art historian who was lampooned by the likes of Wilamowitz for his views on the Greeks, but whom modern historians have followed and vindicated (cf. Oswyn Murray's edition of Burckhardt's The Greeks and Greek Civilization published by St. Martin's).

Early in the introduction to WB he uses the following image in rejecting Hegel's philosophy of history:

Diese ist ein Kentaur, eine contradictio in adjecto; denn Geschichte, d.h. das Koordinieren, ist nicht Philosophie und Philosophie, d.h. Subordinieren, ist Nichtgeschichte.

For the Deutchless (and perhaps the unLatined) among us:

This ('philosophy of history') is a centaur, a contradiction in terms; for history, i.e., that which coordinates, is not philosophy, and philosophy, i.e., that which subordinates, is unhistorical.

Burckhardt objects to the attempt of imposing a system onto something non-linear and unsystematic, and considers the first principals of the philosophy of history to lead necessarily to contradictions, and sees the obsession with origins as futile and necessitating predictions of the so-called progress of history.

The centaur soon reemerges, though, and we find that he isn't all bad:

Immerhin ist man dem Kentauren den höchsten Dank schuldig und begrüßt ihn gerne hie und da an einem Waldesrand der geschichtlichen Studien. Welches auch sein Prinzip gewesen, er hat einzelne mächtige Ausblicke durch den Wald gehauen und Salz in die Geschichte gebracht. Denken wir dabei nur an Herder.

And again a translation:

Still, we are very grateful to the centaur and gladly welcome him now and again at the edge of forest of historical studies. Whatever his principles have been, he has hewn several powerful vistas through the forest and added salt to history. We need only think of Herder.

Herder is best remembered today for his devotion to the notion of die Völker, or peoples, which may have helped pave the way to German nationalism. It's interesting though that Herder was reacting against the nationalism of his own day and was interested in elevating all 'peoples' of the world equally. He did shake things up to say the least.

Bruce Lincoln's Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, which is concerned with what scholars have done with myth throughout history, contains a lot of useful and insightful information on Herder. Not that I endorse Lincoln's conclusions, his own theoretical framework, or especially his shoddy treatment of historical linguistics in the epilogue, but it is definitely worth reading and generally fair (if sometimes bordering on sensational).

More Google Books

2007-07-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

Today we'll feature some full-view volumes by Gilbert Murray.

The Rise of Greek Epic

A History of Ancient Greek Literature

Anthropology and the Classics (Murray is the author of one of the six lectures; other authors include Andrew Lang and Arthur Evans)

The Stoic Philosophy (Conway Memorial Lecture, 1915)

Our Great War and the Great War of the Ancient Greeks (Creighton Lecture, 1918)

A Couple of Notes

2007-07-25T11:50:00.000-04:00

I was happy to find that Eduard Norden's book Die Antike Kunstprosa is readable and fully downloadable at Google Books. I was hoping that they would have his commentary on Aeneid 6, but alas.

Also available is the 1908 edition of Richard Heinze's Virgils epische Technik, which you can find here.

For those interested in the history of classical scholarship, volume 2 of Sandys is available here, though I haven't been able to find the other volumes on Google Books.

Some volumes of Mommsen's Römische Geschichte are available in English translation here.

Also seen was Gilbert Murray's translation of two lectures by Wilamowitz. But they don't have his Geschichte der Philologie.

Finally, I saw Eleanor Dickey's new book Ancient Greek Scholarship (APA/Oxford, 2007) on the new books shelf today. It looks interesting and includes a 'reader' (chapter 5), the purpose of which is 'to provide practice in reading scholarly Greek' (p. 141). That seems to me to be a very good idea indeed. A review by William Slater is here.

The Last Legion trailer

2007-07-24T13:59:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned the movie poster with some notes on the story, and now you can see the trailer:

Museum Exhibition + Website

2007-07-23T18:51:00.000-04:00

The Indianapolis Museum of Art will be the first U.S. city to host a travelling exhibition of Roman Art from the Louvre. Here are the first three paragraphs of the press release:

INDIANAPOLIS – In preparation for hosting the United States premiere of the Roman Art from the Louvre exhibition, the Indianapolis Museum of Art has launched www.theRomansareComing.com , a special web site that features exhibition information, images, a calendar of events and a series of 10 IMA-produced downloadable videos that will bring to life various themes in the exhibition. Roman Art from the Louvre is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Musée du Louvre and will be on view from September 23, 2007 to January 6, 2008.

Earlier this year, a team of five IMA staff members traveled to Rome and Paris to conduct interviews with Louvre representatives and to gather footage of historic monuments, buildings, and examples of Roman and Parisian culture. The IMA team then transformed the HDV footage into engaging, two- to three-minute videos called “webisodes” that will be available on www.theRomansareComing.com . The first video currently is available and more will be posted during the course of the exhibition. Upcoming video topics include the city of Paris, which is home to the Musée du Louvre; conservation techniques for antiquities; the art’s journey from Italy to the Louvre; and an analysis of the Roman influence on architecture throughout Indianapolis. An episode titled “I Love the A.D.s” investigates Roman pop culture and is patterned after the VH1 show “I Love the 80s.”

To further explore Rome and its culture, the web site also will feature lists of books and movies, a glossary of terms used in the exhibition, a calendar that includes upcoming programs and events at the IMA and teacher and school resources. Visitors may purchase advanced tickets to Roman Art from the Louvre on the web site as well. Exhibition admission is $12 for adults (ages 18-64); $6 for children (ages 7-17) and college students; $10 for seniors (65+) and groups of 10 or more. The exhibition is free for children six and under and for all school groups booked through the IMA Education Division.

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