Male Graduate Students:
un-serious in terms of studies since 1931.
The other day I posted a snippet of Horace that was appropriate to our snowy conditions. Since it's warmed up and everything has started to melt, I thought I'd post another snippet, even though it's not quite spring yet. These are the first four lines of Odes 1.4.
Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni
trahuntque siccas machinae carinas,
ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni
nec prata canis albicant pruinis.
I believe, then, that the classicist should see interpretation and theory as interdependent activities. But the interdependence is not symmetrical. Interpretation without theoretical reflection may be limited in scope and is vulnerable to various kinds of muddle; that certainly makes it worth less. But theory that is not rooted in our existing interpretative skills is at risk of being vacuous speculation; and that would make it worthless.'
BMCR has a new review of a book that looks very interesting, which is centered around 'the publication of a nearly word for word transcript of Wilamowitz's lectures on Homer's Iliad in 1887/1888'. The reviewer, Edith Foster, goes on to say:
Paul Draeger and a team of sub-editors surround these lectures with a very copious and responsible supporting apparatus. However, the book reaches far beyond the editing and publication of transcripts, since in addition to the lectures it offers a portrait and defense of Wilamowitz himself.
This many layered volume begins with a short essay in praise of Wilamowitz by Walter Burkert (who is simultaneously the dedicatee of the volume), after which Paul Draeger provides an essay on Wilamowitz's character as a lecturer. He describes Wilamowitz's broad activities both as a university and a public lecturer, citing many vivid eye-witness accounts. Student accounts emphasize the appeal of Wilamowitz's deep knowledge and rhetorical power.
This introduction to Wilamowitz as lecturer is followed by introductions to the lectures themselves. First, Draeger offers information on the student copyists and on the character and history of their transcripts of the Homer lectures. Second, he provides an outline of the lectures and detailed remarks on Wilamowitz's personality as it emerges from the lectures. For instance, he compares how Wilamowitz characterized scholars with whom he agreed or disagreed (62-64), and discusses how and how often Wilamowitz mentioned himself (65-66). Draeger also lists and evaluates Wilamowitz's terms of praise and blame (56-57). Other questions have a more practical orientation. Draeger argues about whether or not Wilamowitz used a blackboard and maps (probably, 54) or brought any books other than the Iliad with him to the lectures (probably not, 55-59). Without neglecting to mention Wilamowitz's errors, Draeger provides detailed demonstrations of his astonishing memory (56, 66-70). The description of the lectures is laudatory; 21st Century practices are seen in negative contrast (53, 55).
The third and penultimate element of the introduction is a description of the close connections between these lectures and Wilamowitz's book Die Ilias und Homer (1916). Draeger argues that Wilamowitz's Homer lectures of 1887/88 are still useful even though Wilamowitz's main hypotheses about book 11 of the Iliad are nearly universally rejected (77). He points out that the lectures offer a very comprehensive discussion of the material from book 11 and that this discussion is not available in Wilamowitz's later publications (77-78). He also provides a sequence of examples to show that the lecture notes contain readings which have not yet been considered for critical editions (79-81), as well as a list of passages about which Wilamowitz changed his mind by 1916 (82-83). He might have been better off to let Wilamowitz speak for himself by this point and to place such arguments after the lectures, or even in an appendix. They give the impression that the lectures will be interesting mainly to an audience studying Wilamowitz, whereas in fact, both readers studying Homer, as well as readers studying their own received practices in historical context will find them useful.
We’re all familiar with the idea of a person’s ‘two cents’. Someone pontificates on a given topic, and rounds it off with something like, ‘Well, those are my two cents, anyway.’ I’m wondering if I’ve come across an ancient way of expressing a similar sentiment.
Toward the end of Book 1 of Macrobius’ Saturnalia, Symmachus proposes that everyone present at their discussion tell of what they have noticed to be exceptional de Maronis ingenio. Here are his words:
reliquos omnes qui adestis impense precatus sim, ut quid vestrum quisque praecipuum sibi adnotaverit de Maronis ingenio, velut ex symbola conferamus.
So says Macrobius' Symmachus:
haec est quidem, Euangele, Maronis gloria ut nullius laudibus crescat, nullius vituperatione minuatur... .
Saturnalia 1.24.8
