More on the APA

I listened to the first selections of section 35: Memory and Destruction, presided by Harriet Flower who has done some important work recently on damnatio memoriae.

The second paper, 'City-Destruction in Athenian and Theban Social Memory,' was delivered by Bernd Steinbock of Michigan and incorporated modern psychology in a way I'm not used to (i.e. in a good way) and powerfully used the Morgenthau plan, fueled by Nazi propaganda and spread by word of mouth, as a parallel to the way social memory is formed in wartime. I was especially interested in Steinbock's mention of the First Sacred War though I expected him to emphasize its role in influencing social memory. All in all a refreshingly good paper.

The first however, Julia Shear's talk on 'Stasis, Good Victory, and the Athenian Demos,' plodded along to a predictable end (the Athenians de-emphasized stasis in accord with decree of Demophantos -- *yawn*), so it was especially annoying when she showed up during section 44: Athenian Culture and History only to unduly attack a presenter who'd received a bachelor's degree just a year ago. Sarah Murray's 'Man Overboard: A Re-evaluation of the Underrepresentation of the Navy in Classical Athenian Art' might have benefited from some polish, but that's hardly a thing to hold against a young scholar.

Murray argued succesfully that the navy itself had never been depicted on Athenian vases, countering a common view that there was a decline in their representation during a certain period due to fear and disdain on the part of the citizenry. In the second half of her paper, Murray showed that pride in naval victory was depicted through mythological symbolism. One vase employing a divine scene showed two individual sailors on the opposite side exercising.

This vase alone damaged Shear's criticism, which was essentially that the Athenians may have taken pride in naval victories while hating the sailors. But I suppose anything is possible.

What was really objectionable was that Shear, while pretending to question Murray, began lecturing all in attendance, turning several times to address the room as though we were her students, virtually pleading with us to see through Murray's holes. Then she would turn back to Murray and tell her sternly that her work was essentially evasive and incomplete.

To her credit Murray handled herself well and countered Shear successfully.

I'm afraid I may end up focusing on negatives, but I will eventually get to Robert Tordoff, who delivered one of the most satisfying papers of the convention.

one more APA report

i also caught part of the 'lucretius, vergil, and ovid' session and heard two papers on vergil. the second was called 'the aristeia and the poetics of failure in book nine of vergil's aeneid', given by mark a. thorne of the university of iowa. he cites three times in book 9 in which an aristeia seems to be on the horizon and in which it ultimately fails: turnus' attack on the fleet (9.69ff.), compared to hector's attack in iliad 12; nisus' failed aristeia in 9.339ff., compared to the doloneia in iliad 10; finally, turnus almost gets his aristeia at 9.573-76. this is interesting, because turnus slays 7 opponents within three lines (citations taken from handout):

Ortygium Caeneus, victorem Caenea Turnus,
Turnus Ityn Cloniumque, Dioxippum Promolumque
et Sagarim et summis stantem pro turribus Idan... .

but then, right at the moment when the action seems to be taking off, vergil gives us this:

Privernum Capys.

he changes the subject and diverts attention away from turnus. when turnus finally does get his aristeia, thorne argues that it ends in strategic failure (9.759ff.). if he had let his fellow soldiers in at the gates, vergil states that that would have been the last day of the war (759-61):

ultimus ille dies bello gentique fuisset.
sed furor ardentem caedisque insana cupido
egit in aduersos...

finally, he pointed out the importance of the final victim of turnus' aristeia, the poet cretheus, who is intended to remind us of the singer of the aeneid himself (semper equos atque arma virum pugnasque canebat, 9.777). if i remember correctly, thorne argued that, because the poet sang of arms, a man, and battles, he is the one person who should have been able to control the aristeia, but he is unable to--hence, epic failure and the need for a new form of combat (see summary below). in the death of cretheus, it seems to me, vergil also may be saying that poetry/art is ruined by war, or that it is powerless in the face of war.

here is thorne's summary of his argument (taken from handout):

In Book 9, Vergil sets up an aristeia three times only to abort each one as a poetic tactic to delay the start of the fighting. These are linked with the images of tragic death and mourning that lie at the center of the book. When Turnus finally is granted his full aristeia, it accomplishes nothing. I argue that Vergil has transformed the Homeric aristeia to show how glory through combat in the traditional "epic" sense must not be sought by Rome as its own end, for to do so will only result in further loss and defeat.

That was a pretty boss town

And at long last my first APA report. I hope there really wasn't much anticipation.

We picked Mo up at Philadelphia International at 9:30 Friday night, and made it to Boston by 4am. We slept two to three hours then had to face the regrettable consequences of requesting a wake-up call.

After getting lost in the maze of the hotel/convention center, I ran into Professor Kitchell, who is as funny and charming as ever. He proceeded to tell someone who seemed important to watch out for me because I'm a thief and a liar, and the stories about the goat are all true.

From there I snuck into section 31: Using Linguistic Evidence to Enrich the Teaching of Classical Languages and Cultures. I caught the second half of Mary Bacharova's talk, yeah? But I didn't really see the usefulness of the approach and felt that her extensive treatment of the so-called English 'get passive' was tedious and often incorrect. Mastering the verb is the key to reading Greek, and the teaching of individual verb forms based on relative frequency can at best give a temporary satisfaction to the textbook learner. What happens when the most common forms are not encountered, and your students have no idea how to determine what it is they're looking at?

Rex Wallace in turn offered his own approach, namely teaching Greek pronunciation from an articulatory perspective from day one, and empowering students throughout the first year of Greek to determine forms which most people would consider irregular but which are in fact perfectly consonant with native phonetic rules. This answered part of Bacharova's paper in which she noted that her students often can't find words in the dictionary.

Andrew and I were taking a coffee break today and for some reason I asked him what the aorist of βλώσκω is. It took a minute to remember ἔμολον and it occurred to me that it's probably not irregular. I reckoned that the root might well be *mol(o)-. The present would then be zero grade, *ml(o)-, with the bi-labial nasal affected by native phonological rules to produce the stem *blo-. Understanding phonology early can eliminate a lot of the confusion.

Professor Wallace's examples included Grassmann's law and loss of voice before -s, among others.

To be continued ...

Calvinists and Epicureans

and now for the next installment of the piecemeal report on the APA.

i attended part of a panel called 'epicureanism in the renaissance' and heard a paper by kirk summers entitled 'the calvinists against the epicureans: whom are they attacking?' the epicureans are frequently mentioned in reformation texts as a currently existing group with whom Christians must contend, and are rebuked with force. prof. summers, if i am remembering correctly, suspected, before he began his investigation, that the calvinist disagreement with the epicureans would be on ethical grounds; as it turned out, however, ethics were a basis on which Catholics disagreed with epicureans. calvinists, on the other hand, found fault with them because they viewed God as uninvolved in His universe--a view which flew in the face of calvinist ideas and doctrine about Divine Providence. these epicureans were viewed as such important opposition that they received mention in both the belgic confession and the second helvetic confession. from the belgic confession (as quoted in the handout):

On Providence
"For that reason we reject the damnable error of the Epicureans, who say that God involves himself in nothing and leaves everything to chance."

and from the second helvetic confession:

The Epicureans. We therefore condemn the Epicureans who deny the providence of God, and all those who blasphemously say that God is busy with the heavens and neither sees nor cares about us and our affairs.

Ausonius and Catullus

of the panels of which i attended at least a part, the one on late antiquity was the most interesting to me. the papers read included bret mulligan's aforementioned 'epistolarity in claudian's carmina minora'; 'constantius II and eusebius' constantine', given by david potter; 'eusebius' chronological tables and the invention of Christian history in late antiquity'; scott mcgill's 'ausonius and recitation'; and joseph pucci's 'catullan extremism in fortunatus' poem to agnes'.

but there's something that's been bothering me since then that i am glad to be able to report on. after joseph pucci's talk, there was some dispute over, if i understood correctly, the availability of catullus to late antique authors. i was almost certain that i had seen direct reference to catullus in ausonius, and, now back at home, i submit that there are at least two quotations in ausonius of catullus 1. the first is in Praefationes Variae 4 Green ('G' hereafter) (one of only two surviving ausonius passages in hendecasyllables; the other is Ep.13G.82-104). here are ll.1-9, which, in addition to the direct quotation, contain a number of other allusions to catullus 1 and to catullus himself (italicized, and cf. the use of ineptiae elsewhere in catullus):

'Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?'Veronensis ait poeta quondam
inventoque dedit statim Nepoti.
at nos illepidum rudem libellum,
burras quisquilias ineptiasque,
credimus gremio cui fovendum?
inveni--trepidae silete nugae--
nec doctum minus et magnis benignum
quam quem Gallia praebuit Catullo.

the other quotation of catullus 1 is found in the preface of the Griphus Ternarii Numeri, addressed to Symmachus:

dein cogitans mecum, non illud Catullianum 'cui dono lepidum novum libellum', sed amousoteron [sorry, no greek] et verius 'cui dono illepidum, rudem libellum', non diu quaesivi... .

au bon pain

alright, just got back from the APA. just a quick note for the moment after the whirlwind trip up and back. i heard a number of interesting and stimulating papers, including one by a reader of the campus on claudius claudianus and epistolarity in the carmina minora. i tried to ask a question, but my hand-raise must have been too low and too late. alas!

also, welcome to coke! it's about time he posted on here! be sure to check out his hexameter in the comments section a couple of posts below--a line which deserves a post of its own (hint, hint). anyway, more soon, i hope.

love,
your friendly misanthropologist