Some Favorites

Two of my favorite scholars that I've been reading recently on Late Antiquity are Alan Cameron and Robert Kaster. Their writings are models of careful, well-documented scholarship, presenting interesting ideas in a lucid and clearly-argued fashion.

Two absolutely wonderful articles by Prof. Cameron on Macrobius, inter alia, are:

'The Date and Identity of Macrobius', JRS 56 (1966) 25-38
'Macrobius, Avienus, and Avianus', CQ 17 (1967) 385-99

Prof. Kaster has written, in addition to his monumental study on the Late Antique grammarian entitled Guardians of Language, a number of other fascinating articles on Late Antique education and literary culture. See, for example:

'The Grammarian's Authority', CP 75 (1980) 216-41
'Macrobius and Servius: Verecundia and the Grammarian's Function', HSCP 84 (1980) 219-62
'Notes on "Primary" and "Secondary" Schools in Late Antiquity', TAPA 113 (1983) 323-46
'Servius and Idonei Auctores', AJP 99 (1978) 181-209

If you have access to JStor, all of these articles can be found there.

Another List of Classics Blogs

While looking through our site visitation data at Site Meter, I was taken to a Wikipeda page that has a list of Classics and Ancient Languages blogs; you can find it here.

Bruce Metzger, R.I.P.

Bruce Metzger, an expert on the text of the New Testament (and a Ph.D. in Classics to boot!), has died. Anyone who has used the reddish-covered New Testament text published by United Bible Societies will be familiar with his name. One of the pre-eminent names in the field of biblical studies has departed from this earth.

May he rest in peace.

Snow/Horace

We've been getting some snow here in the Philadelphia area today, so I thought I would post the wintry opening stanzas of Horace Odes 1.9, followed by David West's translation:

Vides ut alta stet niue candidum
Soracte nec iam sustineant onus
siluae laborantes geluque
flumina constiterint acuto?

Dissolue frigus ligna super foco 5
large reponens atque benignius
deprome quadrimum Sabina,
o Thaliarche, merum diota.

You see Soracte standing white and deep
with snow, the woods in trouble, hardly able
to carry their burden, and the rivers
halted by sharp ice.

Thaw out the cold. Pile up the logs
on the hearth and be more generous, Thaliarchus,
as you draw the four-year-old Sabine
from its two-eared cask.

Any readers out there have any other favorites for 'wintry' passages in classical literature?

Aristotle and the NBA

Today I was watching part of the Lakers/Cavs game on TV, and during one of the commercial breaks there was an ad for the NBA starring Yao Ming shooting the same shot over and over again. At the end was shown a black screen with this quote from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in white lettering: 'Excellence is not an act, but a habit'.

Apparently this is a popular sentiment in the NBA. A quick Google search revealed the following portion of an article in a May, 2006, issue of the Miami Herald:

Miami Heat giant Shaquille O'Neal enjoys giving himself playful nicknames. A few years ago, when he stood alone atop his sport, he collected a trophy as basketball's most valuable player and dubbed himself "The Big Aristotle" while quoting the ancient philosopher.

"We are what we repeatedly do," O'Neal said. "Excellence is not an act but a habit."

O'Neal was not remotely close to excellent Monday night, and the New Jersey Nets dropped him and his Miami Heat teammates like a bad habit. What the Nets repeatedly did during this 100-88 scorching in Game 1 of this second-round playoff series was rain basket after basket upon Miami's baffled, weary head as Heat fans fled the arena early as if being chased by something equal parts hairy and scary.