An Interesting Take on Plato and Socrates

'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

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

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

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.